It is hard to believe but thanks to recycled carpet and water bottles marine areas that are currently “dead zones” can be brought back to life.
Bruce Kania, CEO of Floating Island International has developed a way to create artificial islands from the garbage and, in the process bring life back to aquatic areas that would otherwise remain dead zones. Kania’s company takes the debris and uses it to create a “loofah-like mesh of plastic”. They then add soil and seeds and set it afloat. Nature takes over from there. The seeds bloom and grow and, as a post over on Wired.com explains,
Their roots become home to biofilms that gobble nitrates and phosphates, denying those nutrients to algal blooms. Small critters eat the biofilms, fish eat the critters, and the water gradually gets cleaner.
The company has already sold over 4,000 of the “islands” throughout the world. Sure an all-natural solution would likely be better but with the rate of damage we are inflicting on the planet Mother Nature can use all the help it can get, even if it comes from the most unlikely of sources!
via Wired.com