The system, launched in October, aims to collect plastic waste in the Pacific The OCEAN CLEANUPEfforts to clear the oceans of plastic have been dealt a blow after a project to sift waste from the Pacific using a £20 million wind- and wave-propelled barrier ended in failure. A 60ft piece has broken away from the rest of the 2,000ft barrier in the ocean only two months into the ambitious project. The entire structure will now have to be towed to the United States for repairs. Boyan Slat, the 24-year-old Dutch conservationist and entrepreneur behind the “Ocean Cleanup” group, which raised money from corporations to build the system, admitted that the project had failed. “We hoped to stay out for a bit longer to collect more data on plastic-system interaction,” he said.…

Source: The Times January 03, 2019 12:00 UTC