Claim the Pacific Garbage Patch as a Nation!

Proposal

Claim the Pacific Garbage Patch as an independant nation.

Arrive onsite with the kind of equipment required to harvest and refine the floating plastic. Assemble large plastic bouys onsite, link em up and floor em with plastic harvested and repurposed onsite.

These plastics are durable, thats the whole problem.... but thats not a problem anymore, because the (eventual) floating City State wont rust.

this would also be the first nation in history that you could drive around.

I would like input from the ATS community, is this idea impossible? In addition to removing the garbage itself, the traveling city state could generate income, as a traveling tourist paradise... Or maybe it could generate power, through some innovation... Even it only served as a new nation state where commerce and freedom flourish outside of control and tyranny that would be something.

But i feel that a third benefit at least is possible in this idea...

So ATS, should someone claim the Pacific Garbage Patch as an independant State? Should this party recycle the floating plastic into a floating platform and build a city on it? How would this city power and feed itself? What kinds of industry could be supported? Who would be interested in doing this and how would they, and all of us, benefit from it?

reply to post by uwascallywabbit


LMAO!!!

Wow. Always refreshing when you read an idea that you thought was too ridiculous to share with anyone else.

how you are not a multi millionare with that idea i don't know some bloke in england did that years ago with a old platform offshore and got invaded by the crown .

good idea i was wondering when i heard about that patch the size of florida why it was not being cleaned up now you have the answer 10/10 bud

reply to post by uwascallywabbit

I'm wondering who should run for election as king of this nation - Oscar the grouch or Al Gore?

reply to post by Maluhia


For the King of garbage? Probably Alex Jones. Then again the whole thing would sink with the weight of that ego (and bottom).

ETA, sorry, fat floats. As hamburglary as Jones is, I still think his ego would sink it.

reply to post by Domo1

Oh come on be creative - there are so many kings of garbage in the headlines today, the line should be longer than an American idol audition!

I feel pretty that you'd be able to power it with bullcrap.

Unless you plan on investing in a lot of light weight adhesive, you might have to wind up melting all the plastic together for cost savings and then you're going to wind up with a nation much smaller than what you had in mind. It will probably be more like a run down efficiency apartment complex that smells like burnt plastic and is infested with tired seagulls and if you try to exterminate, your roommates will know what a horrible person you really are and form a mutiny and it will be like a really bad modern day version of rhyme of the ancient mariner and you'll be doomed to a miserable future of growing old and telling your tale to everyone on message forums and bumming them out.

Originally posted by NotAnAspie
I feel pretty that you'd be able to power it with bullcrap.

Unless you plan on investing in a lot of light weight adhesive, you might have to wind up melting all the plastic together for cost savings and then you're going to wind up with a nation much smaller than what you had in mind. It will probably be more like a run down efficiency apartment complex that smells like burnt plastic and is infested with tired seagulls and if you try to exterminate, your roommates will know what a horrible person you really are and form a mutiny and it will be like a really bad modern day version of rhyme of the ancient mariner and you'll be doomed to a miserable future of growing old and telling your tale to everyone on message forums and bumming them out.

Stop thinking so small. An entire community could be built around it using just recycling alone, and probably generate income/profit. To build a "city" directly ON it, might not be immediately feasible, but large portions of some of the worlds richest cities weren't exactly spear headed by pitching flags and making claims on the trash heaps of the denizens of New York/London. It took time and ingenuity to turn those garbage piles into prime real estate.

Originally posted by DeadSeraph

Originally posted by NotAnAspie
I feel pretty that you'd be able to power it with bullcrap.

Unless you plan on investing in a lot of light weight adhesive, you might have to wind up melting all the plastic together for cost savings and then you're going to wind up with a nation much smaller than what you had in mind. It will probably be more like a run down efficiency apartment complex that smells like burnt plastic and is infested with tired seagulls and if you try to exterminate, your roommates will know what a horrible person you really are and form a mutiny and it will be like a really bad modern day version of rhyme of the ancient mariner and you'll be doomed to a miserable future of growing old and telling your tale to everyone on message forums and bumming them out.

Stop thinking so small. An entire community could be built around it using just recycling alone, and probably generate income/profit. To build a "city" directly ON it, might not be immediately feasible, but large portions of some of the worlds richest cities weren't exactly spear headed by pitching flags and making claims on the trash heaps of the denizens of New York/London. It took time and ingenuity to turn those garbage piles into prime real estate.

I think your plan might fall through... literally.

I guess if you really wanted to go for it that spray foam in a can is very lightweight and super sticky, but it's like four bucks a can. You can think recycling all day but you know it's going to turn into more of a renovation project if you plan on living there, which ALWAYS costs way more than what you originally calculate... not to mention that homedepot is not going to deliver to you. You gotta think about these things.

reply to post by uwascallywabbit


LOL im sure garbage city will have proper healthcare and sanitation....

Sounds like a great place to raise kids.

This is the kind of thinking we need on The Hill. I mean really... How ingenious is that? I am not a very scientific type person so I can't tell right off if your idea would "sink or swim", but I like the cut of your jib sir/madam. In all seriousness this is a far better proposal for solving a problem than I have heard from 99% of our elected officials in quite a while. Sometimes the answer is as plain as the nose on our faces yet we can not see it for looking at the more complicated/costly solutions.

I am not sure it would work. But I like it.... I like it a lot.

The idea itself sounds decent. Unfortunately, it turns out that not only is this "garbage patch" not nearly as large as many people have made it out to be, it's mainly comprised of microscopic pieces of plastic, and is for the most part, completely invisible.

Lies You've Been Told About The Pacific Garbage Patch
Great Pacific Garbage Patch A Hoax?
Great Pacific Garbage Patch Turns Out To Be "Grossly Exaggerated"

Cheers,
Nos

Originally posted by Nostalgic
The idea itself sounds decent. Unfortunately, it turns out that not only is this "garbage patch" not nearly as large as many people have made it out to be, it's mainly comprised of microscopic pieces of plastic, and is for the most part, completely invisible.

Lies You've Been Told About The Pacific Garbage Patch
Great Pacific Garbage Patch A Hoax?
Great Pacific Garbage Patch Turns Out To Be "Grossly Exaggerated"

Cheers,
Nos

Yeah, I was about to post that the Pacific "Garbage Patch" really isn't a patch... more like an abnormal concentration of human waste. I had the idea of taking the "Garbage Patch" and recycling the plastic back into oil by using a heated vacuum chamber for profit when I was younger. After some research I became a little disappointed. Anyways, here is a video about the patch:

reply to post by Nostalgic

it's mainly comprised of microscopic pieces of plastic, and is for the most part, completely invisible.

Thats a load of garbage. Because they say its as large as Texas, doesn't mean its an island of junk that big. What they mean is the junk is being swirled around in an area the size of Texas. There are mega tons of it to be sure. The problem is most of it is either huge gobs of fish net and buoys all strung together in masses that can't be cleaned up because they are simply too big to haul aboard a ship without a lot of heavy cranes. Or swimming with it and cutting it up which is incredibly dangerous.

Those are the clumps that look like floating seaweed that act as nurseries for small fish and turtles. The rest of the bits are a mix of little sun lotion containers that they give you complimentary at hotels and cruise ships. The caps from those, the Bic lighters, Visine, Chapstick, tooth brushes, combs and shavers that everyone throws away on land thinking it doesn't wind up in the bellies of fish, turtles and seabirds. They literally die of starvation from eating all these brightly colored bits that resemble their food.

Theres a thread about the dead Albatross birds on ocean islands whose guts are filled with our junk.Please don't come on here and say its nothing.

ETA: Heres one thread...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

The idea of having a floating free and economically independent state is not new along with using the Pacific garbage patch as a source of materials. The problem is with the patch and the amount of plastic contained therein. Economically the retrieval of the plastic is unfeasible at this time.

As for the floating free state, this has been proposed and feasibility studied. It could in fact be done on a scale much smaller than the OP had in mind. Even on a smaller scale it would be wonderful to see.

Gorillaz! Welcome to the world of the plastic beach!

Seriously. That's my whole contribution.

I want to be a garbage patch kid.

I remember hearing about a guy in Mexico who made a barge (or floating island) from empty plastic jugs & bottles and he even lived on it. That was a long time ago and I'm not sure if that was true or not.

reply to post by CrikeyMagnet

Thats not that far fetched... words fail me so I'm just showing pictures...

Your plastic beach...



Do you like your bird salad dry or with dressing?



choking on it...



and drowning in it...



The "floating islands" lure seals, whales and birds that become entangled and drown. The floating bits look like the food they eat. A plastic bag becomes a death sentence for a young turtle as it lines their stomach and prevents digestion of real food. They starve to death. So do the birds who become clogged with the detritus of our "vacations".

Funny thread premise, "Lets call it a nation, Ha Ha".

im thinking that the plastic itself could be refined, smelted as it were onsite and recast into new forms.

these would be the bouys that the would provide flotation, and the actual "real estate" would then be a platform cast from the same re-purposed plastics.

so its a bit more involved than just trapping all the bottles together with a net or some glue.

in the earliest phases this community would be based on the ships that provide the industrial power to start the transformation.

In phase 2, the platform could serve as base camp for a small community still involved in the retrieval and clean up / re-purposing effort.

by phase 3, the site is becoming independant of the water craft that birthed it.

by phase 4 the (small) city state should be discovering its economic role in our global system and thats really where im hungry for input.

IF this idea were possible, and IF it were carried out...

what kind of long term activity would such a site be best suited for.

FOR EXAMPLE.

we could use it as a traveling solar powered ocean water de-salination station, and simply arrive on various coasts and sell clean water.

WHAT ELSE DO YOU ATS GUYS & GALS THINK?

I have seen something like this posted here before,

then
This