Project Kaisei To Turn 100 million Tonnes of Pacific Waste To Fuel
Conservationists are hoping to turn into fuel up to 100 million tonnes of plastic waste floating in the Pacific. The giant waste collection, known as the ”Great Pacific Garbage Patch” or Plastic Vortex, lies in the between California and Hawaii and has been growing for 60 years as a result of currents. Sydney “plastic man” Ed Kosior is one of the advisors on the Project Kaisei team.
A report from Los Angeles in The Age (9 March 2010):
Conservationists are hoping to turn into fuel up to 100 million tonnes of plastic waste floating in the Pacific.
The giant waste collection, known as the ”Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, lies between California and Hawaii and has been growing for 60 years as a result of currents.
It now covers an area twice as large as Texas and contains everything from shampoo bottles, children’s toys, and tyres to plastic swimming pools.
Volunteers from Project Kaisei, a conservation project based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, plan to use two ships to bring back some of the waste. Australian filmmaker Richard Pain plans to cross the rubbish patch in a craft made of plastic bottles to raise awareness of the problem.
Source: www.theage.com.au
Project Kaisei is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, established to increase the understanding and the scale of marine debris, its impact on our ocean environment, and how we can introduce solutions for both prevention and clean-up.
Our main focus is on the North Pacific Gyre, which constitutes a large accumulation of debris in one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on the planet. To accomplish these objectives, Project Kaisei is serving as a catalyst to bring together public and private collaborators to design, test and implement break-throughs in science, prevention and remediation.
Kaisei means “Ocean Planet” in Japanese, and is the name of the iconic tall ship that was one of the two research vessels in the August expedition. The other was the New Horizon, a Scripps Oceanography vessel that was arranged via a new collaboration between Project Kaisei and Scripps to provide additional research on the impacts of debris in the gyre. Each vessel obtained a wide variety of samples from this part of the ocean which are now being analyzed. What was evident was the pervasiveness of small plastic debris that was found in every surface sample net that was used for regular sampling over 3,500 miles between the two vessels.
In the summer of 2010, Project Kaisei will launch its second Expedition to the North Pacific Gyre, where it will send multiple vessels to continue marine debris research, and in particular, to test an array of marine debris collection systems. Debris collected will be used to further study the feasibility of converting this to fuel or other useable material. As a collaborative action program, Project Kaisei is seeking sponsors, participants and leaders in their respective industries who can help to make a difference, on land, or at sea, in reducing marine debris.
Why is the Plastic Vortex a problem?
Plastics and other wastes in the oceans:
• Can kill marine life;
• May be entering our food chain (studies on this issue will be undertaken by the Project Kaisei Science Team and other researchers);
• Continues to increase due to poor waste management practices on land and sea; and
• Can have a negative effect on people’s health and safety.
It is estimated that over 60% of the plastic and other wastes (including rubber and aluminum) in the ocean come from land-based sources, and once in the sea, they are at the mercy of the confluence of tides, currents and winds because they are buoyant. Over time through exposure to the sun and heat, some plastic materials can disintegrate into ever smaller pieces due to weather and UV impact.
Ed Kosior – Sydney

Edward Kosior has been involved in Plastics and Rubber technology for the past 30 years. In 2004 he established NEXTEK Pty Ltd to provide new technical solutions to the environmental and recycling challenges facing the polymer industry. Currently he is the Technical Director of Closed Loop London which is establishing London’s first plastics recycling plant (http://www.visyclosedloop.com/index.) He is also an Adjunct Professor of Polymer Engineering and Recycling at Swinburne University, Melbourne. Since 1997, at Visy Industries Pty, he has been involved in the planning, construction, commissioning and expansion of Australia’s foremost post-consumer plastics recycling plants where he developed a wide range of markets for PCR plastics.
He is especially interested in developing career paths for young people through education and employment in the international plastics and rubber industries. He has won numerous awards in the plastics recycling industry, has 6 patents, 82 conference papers, two books and has specific expertise in the following: food grade approval of polymers, sustainable technology applied to polymer packaging, design for recycling and minimal environment impact, and computer-aided engineering applied to polymer processing. He has a Masters of Engineering Science in Polymer Engineering from Monash University, Australia, 1985.
Source: www.projectkaisei.org