System001
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Giant plastic-collecting 'pool noodle' breaks apart in the Pacific
The "giant pool noodle" dispatched into the Pacific Ocean last September to catch and clean up thousands of tonnes of floating plastic has run into trouble. Invented by Boyan Slat when he was 17, the 2,000-foot-long U-shaped floating barrier was designed to travel with wind and wave propulsion collecting pieces of plastic as small as a millimetre in size from the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" between Hawaii and California. But after just a few months at sea, the device -- called System 001 -- is heading back to land after seeing major setbacks.
