Yes it was a strong claim, and I should clarify that I specifically meant impossible using a solution based on ultra-large-scale-infrastructure methods like this. The scales required to have a meaningful impact on the quantities of plastic in the ocean are such that the project itself would have a larger negative impact then the waste itself, and this specific solution seems to have some serious questions about how effective it will be at removing any amount of waste, given dispersion depths and scale of the plastic particles.

A synthetic biology mechanism could be a viable approach at these scales, and there are some very interesting developments in this area in regards to breaking down and conversion of waste materials. There is a whole host of potential problems, largely of the "impossible to predict and impossible reverse" kind, that come with the idea of introducing a synthetic orgasm into the global ecosystem.

Yes, waste removal is an engineering problem, but one that may not have a safe and viable solution. Source regulation is a political problem, with all complexities that come with it, but it's a workable solution, and also has the additional advantage of at least helping even if only partially implemented.

> Waste removal (be it carbon or plastic) is an engineering problem; source regulation is a political problem, and political problems tend to remain unsolved until it is impossible that they remain unsolved.

Then move the plastic collection to the mouth of the 10 rivers in south east asia where the plastic is being emitted from.

I would enthusiastically support research and testing on this solution.

Many of the objections to clean-up in the open-ocean are not relevant here. The depths are very restricted, the ecosystems are more limited, the weather conditions less extreme and less variable, the plastics should be less broken down. The impacts and infrastructure would be similar to, and on the scale of, projects such as locks and dams.

I would see this as a first step to source control. Looking at collected materials, it would become quickly obvious where the major sources of the plastics are, and they could start being addressed.

There is a social issue here too though. I would expect this kind of project would be resisted in the same way that more local clean-up and source-control efforts in those regions are already resisted.

Edit: There is also the issue that a sizable portion of the ocean plastics seem to be from discarded/lost fishing equipment.

> I would enthusiastically support research and testing on this solution.

This would probably be helpful to deploy at scale: http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/

Alone it's not an entire solution, but the technical challenges are not terribly difficult if you can constrain by the rivers dumping waste into the ocean. This is more a funding/political/logistical issue (as others have mentioned/insinuated in-thread).

That would be a good start.