All plastics floating on the surface will eventually be broken down by UV radiation, but the whole of the problem will always come down to a rate balance equation. Obviously now, the rate of garbage being dumped is faster than the UV breakdown rate, hence the buildup. Even if Slat is very successful, will he be able to clean the stuff up faster than other people dump it into the ocean? This cycles back to the blindingly obvious; the dumping should be severely curtailed first.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/2000-foot-long-plastic-catcher-released-aid-cleanup-great-pacific-garbage-patch-180970256/

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/sunlight-converts-plastic-waste-to-hydrogen-fuel/3009467.article

The thing with the enzyme for PET bottles also sounds promising.

BTW, one reason China is no longer accepting plastic is that too much of it is dirty.

Yes the bacteria, fungi, and UV light can and will degrade plastic polymers eventually, but, until that happens ghost nets will continue to kill for example. So the hysteria (plastic straws in Santa Barbara) is of no use dealing with the main sources of the problem: discharges of plastics from rivers in China and India and rouge fishing practices (China),IMO.

ie. it dont last
nothing lasts.
nothing in this universe will stay in any stable state
if you think so, then you do not understand the universe at all

from the knowlege base i have, so many things are soooooo wrong in others heads in terms of stuff they watch, see, fantasize etc…

no wonder they think they cant do much and even less so after they learned from TV which plays with the constants of reality.. (time shifting, etc)

here is one…
Xmen, teleportation, sounds great.. right
flash out, flash in across the room, right?

well, in the 1/100th of a second to put time on it
you shed ALL momentum and so on
disappear, and want to move 10 feet
but thats 10 feet relative postion… ie hints of relativity

how fast did the planet rotate in that time?
how far did the planet move in orbit in that time?\
how far did the sun with the planet in orbit move in that time?

hey… and funny funny… even if you got ALL THREE right
you would also have to throw in frame dragging..
whats that you say?
thats the idea that space time is not smooth when there is an object of mass
a planet or a larger object, like a solar system spins…
and the time passage near the sun, is different than the time near pluto
just as the time difference exists between your feet and head!!!!

well, when such things move through space time, they kind of warp the fabric, they drag their frame of reference..

GPS would not work right without correcting for this

but thats just a bit of a hint
and ya know what?
i can do even more.

but i told them i was a genius
they said they got all they can use
so i am standing her depressing with the low down mind messing working at the car wash blues

Ideonella sakaiensis
Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium from the genus Ideonella and family Comamonadaceae capable of breaking down PET plastic which was isolated from outside a plastic bottle recycling facility

get rid of the plastic and your going to kill one of the newest animals on the planet…
funny
they clean up, and they will exterminate or extinctify what?

Ideonella sakaiensis was identified in 2016 by a team of researchers led by Kohei Oda of Kyoto Institute of Technology and Kenji Miyamoto of Keio University after collecting samples of PET debris in search for bacteria that relied on the plastic for carbon growth. The bacterium first uses PETase, an enzyme that works with water, to break down the PET plastic. It then breaks it down further using MHETase, another enzyme that further reacts with water to break down the plastics into terephthalic acid and ethylene glycol.

this is why socialism and all that stuff dont work
for the same reason the greenies cleaning up graffiti for the cause, scrubbed the famous cave paintings from neanderthals away in france…

this is why they went out and on their own, damaged the desert drawings by indians that you can see easily from the sky..

there is always more

The discovery of Ideonella sakaiensis has potential importance for the recycling process of PET plastics. Prior to its discovery, the only known consumers of PET were a small number of fungi including Pestalotiopsis microspora, and knowledge of the new species has spurred discussion about biodegradation as a method of recycling.[4] The bacterium can currently break down a thin film of PET in a little over six weeks, so it is thought that any prospective applications in mass recycling programs will have to be preceded by enhancement of its abilities through genetic modification

just think how much information i can spit out

Pestalotiopsis microspora is a species of endophytic fungus capable of breaking down and digesting polyurethane Originally identified in fallen foliage of common ivy (Hedera helix) in Buenos Aires, it also causes leaf spot in Hypericum ‘Hidcote’ (Hypericum patulum) shrubs in Japan

It’s unclear what happens to microplastics, but it is known that they enter the systems of aquatic animals and therefore the food chain. As far as their pace of biodegrading goes, that’s unclear as well:

In theory it is possible that some microbes have evolved the ability to break down plastics. Studies by Linda Amaral-Zettler of the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research show that the microbes colonising floating plastic are quite distinct from those in the surrounding water, and suggest some are feeding on pollutants.

In effect, the plastic is creating a whole new ecosystem that Amaral-Zettler and colleagues call “the plastisphere”.

But when ter Halle looked at the DNA of the organisms on floating plastic in the North Atlantic, she didn’t find any microbes known to be capable of breaking down plastic. That could be because they have not yet been discovered of course – there could be millions of unknown microbes still.

Amaral-Zettler and ter Halle think it is more likely that floating plastic is simply sinking to the seafloor as colonising organisms weigh it down, or breaking into such microscopic pieces that it is not being caught in the nets of research vessels. It could also be being swallowed by living organisms, or carried by currents to unexpected parts of the ocean.

The sinking explanation might also be compatible with his findings, says Sole. His study does not prove that microbes are metabolising plastic, but the lack of an upward trend can only be explained by a biological response that can increase in proportion to the amount of plastic. If a physical process was responsible, there would still be an upward trend, he says.

It is possible that some plastic is being biodegraded, Amaral-Zettler says, but it could be over too long time-scale – a hundred years, say – to explain the missing plastic. And even if it is happening much faster, there’d still be a problem.

Have you ever wondered why we do not hear much any more about the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico from the British Pete platform? That’s because the oil has disappeared. Bacteria have evolved in the ocean to eat the oil. Oil seeps have been pumping oil into the ocean for eons and these represent a source of food for the bacteria.

Plastic is just oil so I’m pretty sure that these bacteria can also eat this plastic. It looks like the plans for this young man’s device will just put the plastic on landfill somewhere on land. There they would not be subject to the actions of the waves and the sunlight to break the plastic into small pieces that can be digested by the bacteria. So Slat’s device is probably a bad idea.

“One thing it does not mention, however, is that the source of the plastic in the ocean is not generally the first world. It’s the third world.”

Regarding the source of the plastic waste, there was a television news report on local TV here in the Frisco bay area that said much of the plastic from this area is packed up and shipped to China. Apparently the Chinese have been buying it from the US and European countries and supposedly recycling it but in reality dumping anything they cannot use in the ocean. In their dispute with the US regarding trade policies, they have decided that they no longer want the garbage. So now the left-wing cities here in the Bay area can’t figure out what to do with their garbage. So the source of the garbage is not just the Chinese but also other countries that send their garbage to them.

I think we are going to find robotics will be able to provide solutions to a lot of problems, like pest control for crops, recycling, and apparently, collecting plastic from the ocean.