The trend I chose is the Ocean Clean Up Project. The goal of this project is to clean up the plastic waste in the oceans, particularly in the “subtropic gyres” where most of the plastic concentrates.
Analyzing current trends, at this rate if there is no clean up, plastic pollution in oceans will only exponentially increase. If there is clean up, plastic pollution will reduce to zero by 2050. This project’s solution is by using the natural current, wind, and waves of the ocean to direct plastic pollutants, they will be able to clean up the ocean to our benefit by understanding the ocean and not using external energy sources to power the clean up processes.
The future implications of not cleaning up the plastic waste in the oceans is that the plastic will break down and poison the oceans — killing wildlife and poisoning the water. By poisoning the water, chemicals could even affect human life as we depend on water to live. Different kinds of bacteria will grow in the water and potentially different diseases we have never dealt with before. A drawback would be to clearer plastic pollutants in other smaller areas in the ocean where there are also wastes specifically in poorer communities. Another is how some of the plastic regurgitates and does not get captured in the “net.” This is due to lack of research in the ocean and the way it functions.
A solution to tackle the lack of research about the ocean is first by understanding how to collect trash in water by conducting several tests — perhaps in a smaller scale, as well as collecting data about ocean currents and unpredictable weather conditions and use machine learning to understand and predict the movement of the oceans. Not only that, we need to rethink how we dispose of our waste globally and better ways to be sustainable in the future.
Through this, I think we need to create a software that analyze patterns of the ocean through satellite and a trackable device that can sense the direction of the ocean. We also need to analyze how we collect trash from the water — analyzing the best solutions to scooping up pollutants in order to find the best way of cleaning up plastic waste. Finally, we need to enforce programs which rethink the way we dispose of our plastic waste and inform the implications it has in our environment. We need to prioritize it and its sense of emergency.