tidewoven

Warm hearts cold toes. Happy 2009

This is outrageous, and unfortunately out of sight and mind of most everyone.

Excerpt from “Our oceans are turning into plastic…are we?”

Except for the small amount that’s been incinerated—and it’s a very small amount—every bit of plastic ever made still exists,
-Charles Moore

Read these articles about the trash phenomenon in the Pacific.

Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

Trashing the Oceans

Our oceans are turning into plastic…are we?

We had an outstanding run of Pinks in the sky river this year. I managed to get in the water with them and after patient waiting in the turbulent shallow and freezing water, the fish would move back into the good gravel and proceed with the ancient ritual untill their battle worn bodies joined the food web. After watching the breeding on the beds I let myself drift with the eggs and witnessed the chain of events that followed. The small sea run cutthroat trout take the drifting eggs, sculpins jet in to grab what they can before the eggs drift into the crevices. As the water drops down deeper the large carp waited at the bottom in clean up position. I’m blessed to live in this place. It is a miracle the salmon survive in the river with the city of Monroe so close by and human disregard. From their perspective you can see life from a very different angle and the photos don’t even brush the surface of what was going through my mind. I would encourage anyone to take risk and discomfort and witness the real thing. We all know the story but it adds a great perspective to be in the web.

This is the first of a series of designs to be used on canvas shopping bags and the like.

When the creations of man are reclaimed by the sea.
photos by Don Barnett ©

The innocence and unbridled optimism (and pessimism)of youth is inspiring. I was ranting to a teenage friend about sensible ways of making power instead of oil when he asked me to just complete my thoughts and make a plan. You may already know I have an issue with the masses of waste plastic. Mix that with the need for alternative power… you can see where I’m headed. Clean Power generating devices made with that old plastic. Dams on rivers are efficient but can be ecologically imposing. Windmills are pretty great but they have unpredictable performance and they take up huge amounts of landscape far away from the power loads. What other options are there? I have an Idea, I have been thinking about this for many years but it is time to bring it to some form of a working model to prove or disprove it’s credibility. I’d love to get constructive criticism and or offer these designs to be used.

I’m not the first one to conceive of the idea of harnessing tidal power, tidal barrages have been used for centuries but they too are problematic to estuarine life. I propose a slow moving impeller made of recycled plastic, submerged in areas of predictable tidal currents. Two key elements are crucial. It has to elegantly fit with it’s environment, and it has to be simple. The idea is a machine that lives in harmony with it’s surroundings. Not just visually but as part of the ecosystem as well. Norway and the UK have a similar idea for undersea generators. Also interesting is the wave hub which can utilize the brilliantly designed waveswing.The waveswing only requires areas of good wave exposure and I could see it potentially using recycled plastic. These ideas are great innovations but most are fairly expensive to make. One simple solution I propose is that a mechanical form of power like a shaft should come out of the water to generate the electricity on land, away from corrosive salt and avoiding expensive technology required in waterproofing as well as maintenence. The materials are plastic from recycling, concrete ( possibly even based on the type the romans had that used salt water to cure) and some easily replaced bearing surfaces. The other problem the Norwegian style generators face is fishing nets and other entanglement. This is because the design is not streamlined nor simple enough. Maybe it is just an even slower propeller design with a smoother profile, encircled more like an impeller. The concept of tidal power is fascinating and promising if the designs we use are smart enough to be low impact and beneficial across the board.

some rough visualizations of my ideas:

outside links to underwater power generating devices
waveswing
wave dragon
pelamis
seagen
pelamis video
wavehub
The Ocean Renewable Energy Coalition

Honestly, does the average beverage container need to last ten thousand years.

I’ve been paying attention to how many plastic bags, wrappers, liners, etc. go into the trash every meal, shopping excursion or just about any function of life or commerce these days. The mind boggling mass of flimsy suffocating petroleum based baggy creatures is insane. We’ve all heard the stories of Turtles at sea ingesting and drowning on bags but do we realize how BIG the issue really is. Apparently I’m not the only one because somewhere in California they are outlawing the things. I usually think California is over the top but this time I think they are on to something. I do the usual refusal of plastic when I’m purchasing, unless I absolutely can’t carry the stuff without a bag and paper is not available, but lets consider breakfast cereal. You buy it in a box with a bag liner, carry it home in another bag and throw away the bag in a trash bag lined trash can. Try counting for just one day the numbers of flimsy little chokers you use. You know those things are flying off the back of the trash truck and never making it to the dump, even if you properly dispose of them. They will be on a bush waving goodbye to you on your commute, the day after trash day. It has been said that every item ever made of plastic, unless it has been burned, still exists.