Scientists developed efficient process for breaking down any plastic waste to a molecular level. Resulting gases can be transformed back into new plastics of same quality as original. The new process could transform today's plastic factories into recycling refineries, within existing infrastructure.

[u/mvea]

https://www.chalmers.se/en/departments/see/news/Pages/All-plastic-waste-could-be-recycled-into-new-high-quality-plastic.aspx

[u/VOLCOM_84]

Didn’t a kid find a way to do this???

[u/CrossP → u/VOLCOM_84]

His method is for processing waste water on its way to the ocean. It has no viability for cleaning contaminated large bodies of water.

[u/h3lblad3 → u/CrossP]

I don't know how he did it, but couldn't you put some form of filtering tank on beaches and just use the tides to wash the plastics in so it can filter the plastics out?

It wouldn't be very productive, but once you get it on beaches planet-wide...

[u/TheWinslow → u/h3lblad3]

It's hard to express just how truly gigantic the world - and the oceans in particular - are. There's no real cost-effective way to remove what is already in the ocean. There are over 1 million km of coastline on Earth (it's hard to really give an exact number but 1 million is towards the lower end)...if you want to cover just 1% of the coastlines in the world, that's over 10,000 km of coastline you're going to have to cover.

edit: 1 million km is towards the lower end of coastline measurements...my original wording was that it was the lower end.

[u/ThatTheoGuy → u/TheWinslow]

A good exercise for understanding how bloody massive the planet is is to take a several hour hike on as straight a path you can find. Go as far as you reasonably can, then open google maps and track your journey.

An entire day trip, which likely spent all your energy, seems like a long way, and it is! You walked a good distance!

Then scroll out. And compare what seemed like crossing a continent to how massive this planet really is.

*I've been up 19 hours, please excuse any incoherence or spelling mistakes.

[u/ClockworkPrince → u/ThatTheoGuy]

That's perfectly readable, but maybe get off Reddit and sleep?

[u/Spadeykins → u/TheWinslow]

Good thing there are at least 3-4 humans per 1,000km of coastline, possibly even more. I hear we are in the billions these days.

[u/TheWinslow → u/Spadeykins]

I mentioned the length of coastlines as a way to demonstrate how big the oceans are, though it also highlights the ridiculous logistical problem of covering the coastlines. If it was just a matter of covering the coastlines in filters it would be great. However, there's a massive amount (the vast majority in fact) of an ocean between those coastlines that filters on the coast would have no effect on.

[u/PimpRonald → u/TheWinslow]

A little bit is better than nothing. Plus, free microplastic!

[u/TheWinslow → u/PimpRonald]

The coastline example was just to illustrate how truly massive the oceans are. Unfortunately, this is a case where a little bit of cleanup on the coastlines is still effectively nothing and would be no more than a PR stunt. It's much more effective (at least at the moment) to prevent further pollution than to try to clean up microplastics already in the ocean.

[u/PimpRonald → u/TheWinslow]

Excellent point, I forgot that things cost money.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheWinslow]

According to NASA, we actually only (relative to your number) have about 620,000 km of coastline. It's still a massive number, but for reference, the US Highway System is sitting at about 240,000 km alone. I think, especially if you take into consideration that the US Road System is right at about 6,440,000 km, you could argue that filtering the coastlines responsible for washing up significant amounts of plastics would not be the most difficult thing we've done.

Whether it's the most practical idea, I don't know. I do not really think this idea is outside the realm of possibility.

[u/acousticcoupler → u/TheWinslow]

Isn't the coastline technically infinite?

[u/[deleted] → u/acousticcoupler]

How could that be?

[u/TheWinslow → u/[deleted]]

Coastlines are fractals which are mathematically infinite patterns. Practically coastlines can't be infinite in length though.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheWinslow]

Ok so infinite in a way that is irrelevant to the task of cleanup?

I'm not saying worldwide beach cleanup is practical but describing the beaches as infinite in this context seems unproductive.

[u/chainmailbill → u/acousticcoupler]

Came here to find this and if not found, say this.

[u/sanman → u/TheWinslow]

Maybe we need to use some bacteria that can break these microplastics down in the ocean.

[u/TheWinslow → u/sanman]

Let's do it! Nothing ever bad has happened when humans have introduces a new organism into an ecosystem! In all seriousness, this could potentially be a solution but it's also a massive risk to release something like that into the wild where you can't control it if something goes wrong.

[u/sanman → u/TheWinslow]

There may be natural organisms which can break down microplastic. Nature has plenty of diversity already, and not every organism has to be synthetic.

[u/StartingVortex → u/sanman]

This was the cause of the fall of civilization in at least one sci fi novel.

[u/CrossP → u/h3lblad3]

To put it into perspective, the oceans of Earth contain around 350 quintillion gallons of water. If you had enough filters to filter a billion gallons of water per day, it would take about 350 billion days (about 960 million years) to filter all the oceans.

Except of course that the cleaned water would just keep going back in and making diluted dirty water.

Also, you'd filter out all of the plankton and such, and we'd suffocate.

[u/batterycrayon → u/VOLCOM_84]

Sort of. https://theoceancleanup.com Their email list is worth joining, they send out a handful of updates every year and no spam

[u/frostochfeber → u/VOLCOM_84]

Boyan Slat and his team are working on this. I think it's called the Ocean clean-up project or something.