Robots Dropped in Ocean to Detect and Clean Oil!

When you think of the millions spent on the BP oil spill (largest oil spill  in U.S. history and second-largest in world history) just two years ago, and the millions of marine life and 11 people killed, you can't help but wonder if anything is happening to prevent this from ever occurring again. 

Credit: GreenPeace/http://www.danielbeltra.com/

Fear not! Scientists have recently developed both a robotic fish that can detect pollution in the ocean and a robot that can be dropped from a helicopter to clean up the pollution/oil spills.

The robotic fish was developed by European scientists to improve pollution monitoring, with the goal of reducing the time it takes for detection of a pollutant from weeks to seconds. Note that this robotic fish could also be used for under water national security, aquariums, diver monitoring and search or rescue efforts.

The robotics are designed in the shape of fish, 1.5 meters (5 feet) long and cost a staggering $31,600 (20,000 pounds) each and are made to sim like real fish would. Indeed, the fish swim independently, can co-ordinate with each other and transmit their readings back to a shore station up to a 1 km away!!  Although the cost is very high, when you consider the dollars spent on relief efforts for cleaning up so many horrific oil spills over in the past, not to mention the millions given to families who lost jobs, it seems like pennies. Note that these robotic fish are also fitted with sensors to pick up pollutants leaking from ships or undersea pipelines. 

Yanko Robots Designed to Clean up Oil and Filter Water Back into Ocean
Source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/05/21/sea-cleaning-drone/

Now that we have sorted out how to find the pollutant, how do we clean it up? There is a very neat concept by Yanko Design that just came out which consists of a small robot that can swim/propel itself and has a   built in pump to separate out water from oil. It also has a compartment with bacteria that can degrade oil! The cleverest part is an "acoustic wave device" that emits high-frequency sound waves designed to keep animals at bay, so they don't join the ranks of the oil-soaked creatures that rarely survive.

source: http://www.yankodesign.com/2012/05/21/sea-cleaning-drone/

Carbon Dioxide Absorbing Labels

So many companies today won't switch their packaging to make it more sustainable (compostable, biodegradable). Often this comes down to cost as industry has to pay x-dollars annually to recycle or dispose of their packaging. 

Yes, recycling plastic is better than throwing it away and it being sent to a landfill but the process uses a lot of energy (manufacturing, sorting, shipping) and the plastics have to be incinerated which often releases toxins into the atmosphere. In fact, last year, of the 28.9 million tons of plastic packaging generated, only 5.7% was recycled or reused in some way, and 94.3% was sent to a landfill and discarded or combusted into the environment.[i]

If companies and citizens do not take responsibility and an interest in this matter soon, the amount of waste generated is going to reach an incredible high, and result in unforgivable damage to the ecosystem. Datamonitor.com, a world-leading provider of premium global business information, is already predicting market production for containers and packaging to reach to 8.7 million tonnes by the end of 2013, representing a current annual growth rate (CAGR) of 1.6% for the 2008-2013 period. 

Since it is difficult to completely eliminate the whole incineration process involved when companies recycle their plastics, Sato America has come up with a solution to reduce the impact on the environment while adapting these existing practices. They have created an ECONANO® series of labels that absorb and reduce the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere when the labels are incinerated.

So how is it possible for a label to absorb carbon dioxide? Well, Sato America Inc., a leader in barcode printing, has created a special carbon dioxide absorbent to the label's adhesive that reduces the amount of carbon dioxide released at the point of incineration by more than 20% compared with conventional labels. Even better, than when this technology is combined with their SATO’s NONSEPA® liner-less label series, it is possible to achieve an approximate 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions at the time of incineration, the company claims.

To better understand the scope of SATO's environmental claims, they provide an example on their website that put these statistics into perspective...

"If you were to replace 1 million 50mm x 85mm standard labels used over the course of one year with ECONANO® labels, the CO₂ released at incineration would be reduced by 224kg. This is equivalent to the amount of CO₂ released during the manufacture, treatment and incineration of 4,814 plastic bags."

Note that this ECONANO® lable was developed by the SATO Group in collaboration with Professor Masahiko Abe of the Tokyo University of Science, and the University’s venture company, ACTiiVE.

In a recent interview, found on SatoAmerica's website they had all but good things to say about ECONANO and their company objectives...

"Reducing carbon emissions is a challenge for all businesses today,” said Etsuo Fujii, President of SATO CORPORATION. But the cutting-edge technology SATO employs in its ECONANO® series labels offers our customers a helping-hand in achieving their environmental targets, and provides them with solutions beneficial to all levels of consumer goods product identification and supply chain labeling."

What's most intriguing about this new product is how SATO is working with the current system set in place for disposing of plastics, instead of inventing something completely new that countries don't have the proper infrastructure to support.

 

References

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[i] Ruixiang, Z., Torley, P., Halley, P. (2008) Emerging biodegradable materials: starch- and protein-based bio-nanocomposites. Journal of Material Science, 43, 3058-3071.