Lots of Pacific garbage…
…has been hauled up from off the coast of Hawaii.
But it wasn’t tsunami debris, nor was it plastic bags from grocery stores. It was the cast-off detritus of the fishing industry.
But it’s been put to some use:
The massive amount of garbage pulled from the ocean will now be put to use as fuel for electricity generation. Hawaii’s Nets-to Energy program removes metal from broken-down nets and cuts them up for combustion. The steam from the fires runs a turbine to create energy.
50 tons is equivalent to about one tractor-trailer load. It’s not that much. I had a job in college with the Army Corp of Engineers and every summer the best few days were cleaning the shoreline. We had a little tug with a boom and used that to corral the deadwood that the Spring’s high water had deposited on the shoreline. Is there anything better than where water meets land?
This is a form of environmental work that I think is good. But it’s probably expensive. Costs more to retrieve the nets than the electricity produced. Only a wealthy country can afford to do this sort of thing. A country that can’t pay its debts probably should suspend this until we get our finances in order.