Recycled Island Is Hawaii On Floating Trash

It was a couple years ago that our older siblings at VICE went to visit the Pacific garbage patch. Locked in the North Pacific Gyre, it's a massive eddy of floating trash sent from all over the world. It's quite literally the size of Texas, and it's a horrifying thing to witness.

Flooding the ocean with plastic that won't ever really go away (aside from breaking down into plastic molecules that are working their way through the oceanic food chain) is a serious problem. Awhile back, we chatted with Ramon Knoester of WHIM architecture, who said he'd designed the solution: Recycled Island, a proposed 10,000 square kilometer floating piece of land built right on top of the Pacific garbage patch. According to Knoester, that's an island the size of the Big Island of Hawaii built on top of bundled-up floating garbage.

The idea is to gather up all of the trash in the Pacific patch, bundle it together securely, and build a self-sustaining city, complete with agriculture and the like, on top. Knoester's idea is that it will clean up the ocean by putting all the trash in one massive bag. By putting a city on top, it will bring awareness to just how big the garbage patch really is.

Is it feasible? Who knows. It would take one hell of a concerted effort to pull of, but it may be possible. Knoester is still hyped on the idea, and has just released a new concept video that's shared above. Right now he's looking for multidisciplinary scientists to help with the project, and the whole thing may yet gather steam. Until then, Recycled Island is a great reminder that we've filled the Pacific with a lot of trash.