Our Self-sustaining Active Ocean Cleanup process is defined by a Carbon-Negative, Plastic-Negative, Ecosystem Positive triple bottom line
Addressing a Conservation Emergency
![Photo Credit: Chris Jordan CC BY 2.0 [CC BY 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons](http://img1.wsimg.com/isteam/ip/36c75418-eedb-4cbf-8343-9cfcf5ebe53f/0f02f584-0d3f-4cdd-b930-d8c62e73dca2.jpg/:/cr=t:11.54%25,l:0%25,w:100%25,h:76.92%25/rs=w:1209,h:605,cg:true)
We are Scientists, Engineers, Entrepeneurs
Addressing the growing problem of Plastic Pollution using methods inspired by natural processes, modern technology, and history.
What's with all the plastic?
300 million metric tonnes of plastic are produced every year - much of this ends up in the Ocean. In the mid-1970s it was thought that most of this plastic derived from discarded trash by ocean-going vessels. Now, we know that in addition to marine-derived sources from fishing, aquaculture, petroleum, and shipping industrial sources, plastic debris in the oceans comes from terrestrial sources, exported by nearly all the major rivers of the world. These plastics are long-chain polymers that are extremely durable in the environment, which is in part, why they become troublesome pollution.
In the environment, they are frequently mistaken as food by fish and wildlife or they create entanglement hazards. By some estimates, 100,000 marine mammals die every year from ingesting plastics. In addition, untold millions of birds and fish suffer mortal consequences because they eat or are entangled in floating plastic, and more than half of all sea turtles have eaten plastic. In the North Pacific sub-tropical gyre (aka the Great Pacific Garbage Patch), it is estimated that fishes near the surface eat 12,000 to 24,000 tonnes of plastic every year.
In addition to direct morbidity and mortality caused by eating plastic, the less observable, and lesser-known delayed consequences such as reduced reproductive success in these organisms are extremely worrisome and should be researched further.
It is clear that plastic debris in the ocean has created a conservation biology emergency. We formed this company in response to this problem.
The Siskowet Model
Legend has it that a siskowet trout contained sufficient energy stores that when tossed into the boiler, burned as hot as coal and could run the fishing boat. Taking inspiration from legend, we seek to integrate existing technologies to power a self-sustaining process to remove plastics from the World’s Oceans.
- We use battery powered autonomous drones to sweep up the plastic and bring it back to a "mother ship" where the plastic is converted to electricity through high efficiency waste to energy incineration.
- Following Optimal Foraging Theory, each drone is in competition with all the others to maximize cleanup efficicency.
- Obviously, sweeping up the Ocean is a big job. Some estimates of time to completion according to effort are included below.
Table 1. Estimated time to achieve full coverage of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) using sweeper drones with 5m, 7.5m and 10m apertures on collection apparatus.
No. of Years to Years to Years to
Sweeper cleanup cleanup cleanup
Drones (5m) (7.5m) (10m)
10 3774 2516 1887
20 1887 1258 943
50 755 503 377
100 377 252 189
500 75 50 38
1000 38 25 19
5000 8 5 4
Updates and Highlights
Siskowet gets some very welcome recognition from the folks at the Sustainable Islands Platform!
Siskowet gets some very welcome recognition from the folks at the Sustainable Islands Platform!
Siskowet gets some very welcome recognition from the folks at the Sustainable Islands Platform!
Siskowet has been Invited to submit a full proposal to NSF Small Business Innovation Research
Siskowet gets some very welcome recognition from the folks at the Sustainable Islands Platform!
Siskowet gets some very welcome recognition from the folks at the Sustainable Islands Platform!
"...Upon reviewing your submitted Project Pitch, I am pleased to inform you that you are invited to submit a full proposal to the NSF SBIR/STTR Phase I program. " ...