Millions of Stowaway Passengers Circling Around the Pacific Ocean
The tsunami which followed the Japanese earthquake devastated around 300km of coastal cities, towns, farmlands and greenhouses along Japan’s Pacific coastline. The wave was reported to have spread up to 10km (six miles) inland and inundated around 500km². Not only did the earthquake and tsunami create an estimated 25 million tonnes of rubble, but when the tsunami receded it dragged with it countless quantities of waste in the flooded zone.
A Plastic Sea in the Seine River
Millions of polypropylene widgets used to attract bacteria in wastewater treatment plants are drifting along in the Seine after being dumped by either the Essonne Intercommunal Union for Sanitation and River Restoration (1) or its subcontractors.
The Norwegian inventor describes the technology as “a 3-room apartment with a kitchen where bacteria can live comfortably and eat pollutants in wastewater.” The technology, described in France as Radical Flow Fluidized Filter (R3F), is considered easy and economical to operate. The lifespan of the “biomedias” (2) is 20 to 25 years. They are used in Bordeaux, Mulhouse and upstream of Paris, to name a few locations. These bacteria niches can amount to 19 million units per 100 m3 of water. Operators have obviously released them in large numbers into the natural environment.
