A. Articles
B. Analysis
Boyan Slat is a 20 year old Dutch inventor, entrepreneur
and aerospace engineering student who works on methods of
cleaning plastic waste from the oceans. He designed a passive system for
concentrating and catching plastic debris driven by ocean currents. This
won a prize for Best Technical Design at Delft University
of Technology and he has established a foundation — The Ocean
Cleanup — to further develop and eventually implement the technology.
Initially, there was little interest but, since his TEDx talk, How
the Oceans can Clean Themselves, went viral, he has attracted thousands of
volunteers and $2M of funding for pilot installations. He gave this TEDx
talk when he was just 17 years old by the way!!!
I saw his TEDx talk a couple years
ago, and decided to do some googling for this post. Turns out, he is deploying
his first ocean cleaning system in 2016!! So exciting!
C. Bullet Answers
1. Global/National/Local/Personal
Impacts
Global: The company said that within
five years, after a series of deployments of increasing scale, it plans to
deploy a 100km-long system between Hawaii and California to clean up about half
the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is big!!! This is important!! This is so
dang exciting!!!
National: Is this technology going to
be something that finally sets people over the edge? If we start seeing the
massive amounts of plastic waste (physical evidence) will it finally get the
message across to world about what we’re REALLY doing to our planet? Or will we
ever change?
Local: Could something like this be
created for lakes, i.e. Minnesota lakes?
Personal: I think this is such a
magnificent invention and I’m so glad it didn’t die after his TEDx talk. The
power of the internet and of the media is so apparent in this case. Who knows
if this would have come to fruition if Boyan hadn’t given his speech on TEDx?
Who knows if he would have gotten all those donations? This story makes me feel
hopeful and proud of humanity, science, and perseverance.
2. Impact over time Short term/long
term
Short term: The pilot program will be
operational for at least two years in the proposed deployment location of Tsushima
island in Japan, where approximately one cubic meter of plastic pollution per
person is washed up each year. If the pilot program is a great success,
hopefully more of these ocean cleaning systems will be created and deployed
elsewhere.
Long term: What if there was an air
cleaning system similar to Boyan’s invention? Air balloons that took all the
toxins out and used those toxins for energy somehow? Wind farms that created
energy while simultaneously taking pollution out of the air? If Boyan’s invention
is a great success we could see more money going towards sustainability
inventions and creation!
3. Positive Outcome: Clean oceans! A
happier earth! Happier people! Less sickness!
4. Negative Outcome: What if the
cleaning system does not work and therefor discourages people from ocean
cleaning? Could it potentially hurt fish or coral reefs? Are there any other
negative side affects of this machinery we don’t know about and won’t know
about until it’s too late? That’s the danger of technology isn’t it…
5. Lens/Region of the Future : Super
tech - Limit Tech, Bio-tech - Human Tech / Social Tech
I find this really really interesting, and I can't wait to see what the outcomes will be in the next year when they start implementing this.
ReplyDeleteTo understand the dangers of this machinery, you'd have to understand its construction. I think that if Slat went to depths to invent something in reaction to the harm of something else, the plastics in the ocean and introducing a solution, I wanna be more optimistic that it's designed with the intent to repair and not further cause havoc on a already near hostile environment.