Wednesday 31 August 2016

Adidas' Recycled Plastic Shoe

Adidas have recently created a shoe that is mostly made of recycled plastic from the ocean. The only non-recyclable part is the sole, which is made from Adidas' boost technology.




Tuesday 30 August 2016

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch




The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California. These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another.

The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. An ocean gyre is a system of circular ocean currents formed by the Earth’s wind patterns and the forces created by the rotation of the planet. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is created by the interaction of the California, North Equatorial, Kuroshiro, and North Pacific currents. These four currents move in a clockwise direction around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles).The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped.


What people think the Great Pacific Garbage Patch looks like



What the Great Pacific Garbage Patch actually looks like, most debris consist of micro plastics

To many people who have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the "Trash Vortex" or "Plastic Island", they think of an island that is literally made of rubbish floating in the middle of the sea, which is wrong. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made of millions of small and microscopic pieces of plastic, about 4 pieces per cubic meter, floating over a roughly 5000 square km area of the Pacific. This amount has increased significantly over the past 40 years. Plastic is not biodegradable meaning it does not disintegrate, it only breaks into smaller and smaller pieces known as micro plastics. The large area but low density of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the reason it is sometimes not visible to the naked eye, and is also not visible to satellite imagery. It sometimes just seems like a cloudy patch of sea.

About 80% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from land-based activities in North America and Asia. Trash from the coast of North America takes about six years to reach the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, while trash from Japan and other Asian countries takes about a year . The remaining 20% of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from boaters, offshore oil rigs, and large cargo ships that dump or lose debris directly into the water. The majority of this debris—about 705,000 tons—is fishing nets. More unusual items, such as computer monitors and LEGOs, come from dropped shipping containers.

Nobody who studies ocean ecosystems would ever argue that this plastic isn't harmful. But many documentaries and articles about the garbage patch make it seem as if the main problem is that the garbage is killing animals. Birds and fish mistake the plastic for food, eat it, and then slowly starve to death. There is clear evidence that both birds and fish are eating the plastic, but it's very hard to draw conclusions about whether eating it is killing them. Generally, scientists are only able to examine the stomachs of animals who are already dead. Some studies of albatrosses show plastic correlating with poor nutrition and you do see a lot of dead chicks with their stomachs absolutely stuffed with plastic. Fish digestive systems are a lot different from those of birds, so it's possible that what's harmful to the albatrosses isn't affecting the fish as much. The "plastisphere" is a term coined by marine biologist Erik Zettler to describe the creatures — like water skaters — who thrive in an environment with hard surfaces in the water. They are similar to creatures who cling to piers or the hulls of ships. Some animals are good at hitching a ride and they can be destructive. By adding big chunks of plastic these species can move around better, and could be introduced to places like the Northwest Pacific Islands, where there are some of the best coral reefs in the world. In other words, the plastisphere isn't destroying the ocean ecosystem the creatures who ride on the plastic are. We're witnessing an ecosystem that is slowly falling off balance.