• Question: How do you fell about the constant littering of plastic and waste being thrown into the ocean

    Asked by Agamveer to Oliver, Leah, Hannah, Graeme, Aleks on 5 Mar 2019.
    • Photo: Aleks Sokol

      Aleks Sokol answered on 5 Mar 2019:


      It makes me really angry and sad at the same time. We need to be way more proactive in changing the way we go about waste, because it is insane how badly we are treating this beautiful planet!

    • Photo: Graeme Burt

      Graeme Burt answered on 6 Mar 2019:


      Its really bad, it would take a very long time to clean it up and its really killing marine life. But this is exactly the sort of problems that engineers will be needed to solve. Geo-engineering is the next big thing, scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere, cleaning the oceans, maybe even changing how the earth reflects and collects sunlight.

    • Photo: Hannah Griffin

      Hannah Griffin answered on 11 Mar 2019:


      It is really sad to see the negative effect that human life has had on other animals lives. However I am quite excited to see the novel ways that scientists and engineers are investigating to try and help fix the mess we’ve got the planet in.

      By better understanding the chemistry of sugar-based plastic we could start to replace conventional plastic bottles in the near future. See this web page from where I work for more information https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Neutrons-used-to-study-sustainable-sugar-based-plastic.aspx

      Another example is possibly using our waste plastic bags to make better batteries. By heating plastic carrier bags to very high temperatures it produces a form of carbon that could help improve the properties of batteries. See this web page for more on this story https://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/Pages/Could-plastic-waste-make-better-batteries.aspx

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