Scientists are preparing to launch the world's first machine to clean up the planet's largest mass of ocean plastic.
The system, originally dreamed up by a teenager, will be shipped out this summer to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, between Hawaii and California, and which contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic.
It will be the first ever attempt to tackle the patch since it was discovered in 1997.
The experts believe the machine should be able to collect half of the detritus in the patch – about 40,000 metric tons – within five years.
In the past few weeks they have been busy welding together giant tubes that will sit on the surface of the sea and form the skeleton of the machine, creating the largest floating barrier ever made.
Creatures eat plastic discarded in the sea thinking it’s food but then starve to death because they are not feeding properly.
Others are trapped and die of starvation or are strangled or suffocated by ghost gear.
More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into our oceans every year, according to the US-based Plastic Oceans Foundation.
The system to tackle the largest swirling mass of rubbish in the Pacific has been designed by a non-profit technology firm called The Ocean Cleanup, set up by Dutch inventor Boyan Slat when he was an 18-year-old aerospace engineering student.
The clean-up contraption consists of 40ft pipes – ironically made of plastic – that will be fitted together to form a long, snaking tube.
Filled with air, they will float on the ocean's surface in an arc, and have nylon screens hanging down below forming a giant floating dustpan to catch the plastic rubbish that gathers together when moved by the currents. The screens, however, will be unable to trap microplastics – tiny fragments.
Fish will be able to escape the screens by swimming underneath them.
The Ocean Cleanup team aim to launch the beginnings of the system from the shores of San Francisco Bay within weeks, start it working by July and then keep extending it.
They plan to have 60 giant floating scoops, each stretching a mile from end to end. Boats will go out to collect debris every six to eight weeks.
“Most of the plastic is still large, which means that in the next few decades if we don’t get it out, the amount of microplastics can be tenfold or 100-fold.
