Collect it, decorate with it
Abstract

W201905-1 Shizuoka Prefectural Mishima Kita SHS : Takuto Horie

Nowadays, ocean plastic pollution is one of the most serious problems affecting the environment. People
make plastic products, and they throw them away into the ocean. Ocean creatures eat them by mistakeand they die. It is no wonder that people are also at risk of consuming them without realizing. I designed ahand-made device to collect ocean plastics and attempted to introduce a possible way to make people
aware of the existence of ocean plastics: art. I hope to inspire more people to learn about ocean plastics.

Present situation

Exposure of waves and UV rays

Plastic Pollution in the World's Oceans( 2007 ～ 2013)

The rise in ocean plastics evidenced
from a 60-year time series

The cycle of ocean plastics

Biologicalconcentration

MarineIntakeLeft side：The rate of macro plastics and natural items in
the northeast Atlantic and adjacent seas (％)
Right side：cumulative sum of macro plastics

Fieldwork

Micro plastics

The Earth Children SummitOceans 47 in Tokyo, Aug 8th, 2019
High school students and foreign
children discussed this urgent issueof ocean plastics with experts.

Action1 a device to collect ocean plastics“Kibou No.1” uses the Venturi
system at the bottom part. Theventuri system makes it possible toproduce micro bubbles. The bubbles
lifts up the ocean plastics to thestorage chamber.

ResultProduceHave you ever touched ocean plastics?
6238 students
I know, but I have never touched
I know, and I have touched
No, I don't know

Action2 Making the collected ocean plastics into art motifs“ Let’s experience ocean plastics”

In order to inform people whohave never touched ocean
plastics to experience them, I
produced “Accessible ocean
plastics art”, using ocean plastics
that I collected.

Collect

How can people help?
Before making this device, it wasvery difficult to collect micro
plastics (<5 mm). But now, we cancollect them in the seawater.

Summary

According to the survey,
about 83％ of students havenever touched ocean plastics
though they know thisproblem.

* At Numazu sea coast

I want to try!
If you go to the sea, please pay
attention to foreshores and preparea bucket. Take sea sands and washthem, and you can easily collectmicro plastics. You can produce
your own art work.

* At Miho sea coast

Ocean plastic pollution is a severe problem. But it is difficult to raise awareness of this problem. If people find it engaging,
they will be inspired to also collect ocean plastics to make their original artworks. Thus, the environment will be kept cleaner.
Furthermore, improving my “Kibou” prototype and making it more accessible to others will also ameliorate the issue.

References

・“The rise in ocean plastics evidenced from a 60-year time series”, Ostle, C. et al, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09506-1/figures/1 (accessed 2019/4/16)
・“Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans: more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea”, Eriksen M, et al,
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0111913 (accessed 2019/12/10)
・The Earth Children Summit® https://www.earthchildrensummit.org/ (accessed 2019/12/17)
・Cooperation : Tokai University’s School of Marine Science and Technology, Izumi Sakamoto, an associate professor