The Gigantic Machine to Pick up Ocean Rubbish

There are 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 80,000 tons currently afloat in an area known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it is rapidly getting worse. Scientists have a solution at last. They have created a gigantic machine to pick up the ocean trash. It is the world’s first machine to clean up the planet’s largest mass of ocean plastic. The clean-up machine consists of 12-metre-long pipes that are fitted together to form a long, snaking tube and create the largest floating barrier ever made. More than 8 million tons of plastic is dumped into oceans every year. The trash kills more than 100,000 whales, dolphins and seals each year. Seabirds and other marine life are increasingly being found dead with stomachs full of small pieces of plastic. The great machine 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. “What I really hope is that the machine can be a symbol for us using technology to make things better,” says Slat.