We dump so much plastic into our oceans that there's no surefire way to estimate how much there is now.
We just have to assume there are trillions upon trillions of microscopic pieces, and we desperately need a way to clean it all up. And we might have it.
In a new study published in the journal Matter, Chinese scientists describe a new method to scour microplastics from the ocean. Unlike previous methods though, theirs doesn't involve a lengthy process to filter the waste out of the water.
The process uses tiny magnetic "nano-coils" that create chemical reactions in the water in order to break down the plastic. The microplastic bits are essentially converted into carbon dioxide and water, giving you a clean ocean, and no waste to dump.
Xiaoguang Duan, one of the study's co-authors, told Business Insider that the tech is still in its infancy. And yet, it holds the promise to fix one of the biggest problems in the entire world.
The "coils" in this case are microscopic carbon nanotubes coated in nitrogen and manganese. These two ingredients, with the coils, form highly reactive oxygen, which attacks the microplastics. The final stage involves the plastic breaking down into salt compounds, CO2, and water.
The team, in their tests, registered between a 30 percent to 50 percent in microplastic using the nano coils. And the best part is they can be easily deployed, retrieved, and can be reused later.?
All they need to do now is test the technology at a larger scale, and we could soon have an easier way to clean up the mess we made.