Sea Chair Project Harvests Plastic From the Oceans To Create Furniture

cylonlover writes "You may have heard about the huge floating islands of garbage swirling around in the middle of the Earth's oceans. Much of that waterlogged rubbish is made up of plastic and, like Electrolux with its concept vacuum cleaners, U.K.-based Studio Swine and Kieren Jones are looking to put that waste to good use. As part of an ambitious project, they've come up with a system to collect plastic debris and convert it into furniture. Rather than collecting plastic that washes ashore or is snagged as by-catch in fishing nets, the team hopes to one day go where the trash is, collect and convert it to something useful while still at sea. Sea Chair envisions adapting fishing boats into floating chair factories that trawl for plastic and put it into production on-board."

Can they come to Hong Kong?

[jsse]

After a cargo accident, millions of tiny white plastic pellets have been washing up on the Hong Kong's shores [wsj.com]. No authority, no government cares. Civilians voluntarily organize cleaning up activities every weekend and the situation is still catastrophic. Uncountable fishes have their stomachs stuffed with plastic pellets, but Hong Kong Government still insists that those fishes are harmless and safe to eat. Those fishes are dying of staving because they couldn't take any more real food, and the Government only cares about whether it is safe to eat them.

Sadly, environmental disasters effect everyone in the same planet but they would hardly raise mass concern.

Re:Can they come to Hong Kong?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

You say:

No authority, no government cares.

But your linked article says:

By Sunday night, the government said that it has already collected half of the plastic pellets that had been spilled, including 50 tons of pellets in sacks that were scooped up from the water. The government said the clean-up effort is still continuing.

“This is an ongoing process,” secretary for the environment Wong Kam-sing told reporters on Sunday, pledging to stay attentive as the situation continues to develop.

In the meantime, environmental groups praised the government for its swift response to the spill,

Re:Great idea.

[DerekLyons]

But how much will it cost to harvest the plastic from the ocean rather than creating it from scratch

Despite all the hype - there are no 'islands' of plastic garbage, just areas of the ocean with a few extra tenths of a gram of microscopic bits of plastic per cubic meter. This suggests that it will be very expensive indeed to collect and recycle the plastic.