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Biomimetic Design Brief for The Clean Oceans Project Written By Jake Hvistendahl

Cleaning up The Great Pacic Garbage Patch

The Issue
There is a patch of oating man-made garbage

Design Requirements
The design should lter, capture,

roughly 1.5 times the size of the United States in the middle of the Pacic Ocean. 90% of this debris is plastic, much of it in pieces smaller than 5mm (micro-plastics), and almost none of it is biodegradable. Most of this (70%) will eventually sink to the sea oor, but some will remain oating indenitely. Natural processes continually break apart and shred the plastic into smaller and smaller pieces, much of which is ingested by animals or washes up on beaches. Green Peace estimates that over one million birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and turtles are killed every year from ingesting plastics.

and collect plastics from the surface and subsurface of the ocean. The design should attempt to prevent harm to ocean fauna and plankton that may live on or in the plastic soup of the Great Pacic Garbage Patch. The design should operate autonomously and continually, in an attempt to limit time in transit to port for repairs, refueling, or o loading. The design should incorporate strategies inspired by natural systems and biological functions.

Project Goals
Reduce the amount of plastics oating in the

Why Use Biomimicry?

The Clean Oceans Project is convinced that the most sustainable way to attack this challenge is to locate successful strategies in nature that perform the functions required for this project. The guiding questions is: If nature saw this plastic debris as a resource, what strategies would it use to locate, lter, reclaim, and process this material?

Great Pacic Garbage Patch. Reclaim and reuse as much of this plastic resource as possible. Protect Marine Life that is negatively eected by this plastic soup. Ensure healthier beaches and help sustain marine based tourism economies. Educate people about the dangers of plastic waste and how it spreads to marine habitats.

Suggested Design Functions

Filtering Plastic Debris Capture solid particles Expel excess water Expel biotic particles Store Solids Reform Plastic into Floating Structure
Capture energy Store energy Expel heat Expel gasses Modify size and shape

Movement and Power Capture solar energy electricity Capture wind energy movement Use free energy currents Use free energy dynamic soaring Modify buoyancy Survival and Resiliency Protect from chemicals Protect from compression and shear Prevent fatigue Respond to signals Prevent Harm to Life Forms Dierentiate materials Sense electro-magnetism Prevent biotic intrusion Prevent Leakage

Communication Between Drones Cooperate Maintain community Coordinate activities Diversity / specialization Send / receive signals

Biomime7c Design Example

Some whale species use baleen plates to lter very small prey, usually krill and other microfauna from sea water. Baleen is made from cartilage. The baleen plates divide fractally as they reach their tips.

Messages of Note
Over the years there have been many dierent ocean cleaning designs brought forth from designers, inventors, and engineers, but most of these fail to take into account the size of the problem (the oceans are huge and many millions of miles need to be covered), and that the plastics are moving and are not all oating on the surface. TCOP has been using tracking equipment to predicatively model where large concentrations of plastics should be located. The Clean Oceans Project also recognizes that there is signicant need to prevent plastics migrating into the ocean, while still attempting to clean up the existing problem before more environmental damage occurs. The solution to this problem cannot be simply engineered, there needs to be a concerted eort to curtail plastic pollution on a multinational level as well as a collaborative eort to reclaim what we have already carelessly tossed into the oceans.