High hopes for ocean cleanup

A Dutch man barely out of his teens is leading one of the most ambitious ocean cleanup efforts ever: to halve the amount of plastic debris floating in the Pacific within a decade. The man’s name is Boyan Slat, and he’s come up with a pretty ingenious way of doing it. Instead of clamoring around the globe on a never-ending junk hunt, he wants the ocean to “clean itself.” Every year, 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the oceans. Slat’s plan is to place enormous floating barriers in rotating tidal locations around the globe, and let the plastic waste naturally flow into capture. These barriers aren’t nets - sea life gets tangled in those. They’re big, V-shaped buffers anchored by floating booms. Slat’s nonprofit, the Ocean Cleanup, says the current will flow underneath those booms, where animals will be carried through safely. The buoyant plastic is funneled above and concentrates at the water’s surface along the barriers for easy gathering and disposal. Of course the irresponsibly dumped trash will still have to be removed using human effort, but the job is now that much easier because it's all being moved to one place. Sadly, you won't find this in action just yet - this ocean-cleaning system will be deployed next year. They’re planning to station it near the Japanese island of Tsushima, situated in between Japan’s Nagasaki prefecture and South Korea. The detritus-catching apparatus will be 6,500 feet (almost 2 km) wide and is being called the longest floating structure ever placed in the ocean. Eventually, more of these storm-resistant, plastic-gathering structures will be placed around the world, if all goes according to plan. But enough about that because here's a question for you all: ever wanted more from your batteries? How about 800% more? Most new batteries contain 1.5V of energy when first bought. The problem is that many devices stop functioning at around the 1.3V mark. That's what California-based startup Batteroo have in mind with their new product, the Batteriser. It uses micro-circuitry that lets you instantly tap into the 80% energy that is usually thrown away, and is crafted from stainless steel at just 100 micrometres thin to fit into your devices' battery compartments, yet tough enough to be reused over and over. Need more convincing? Check out the website here.