Social Issue Analysis and Response. Communications & Media Essay

Social Issue and Response
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The Ocean Cleanup Project company objectives were noble, and they were attempting a never tried before approach to cleaning the oceans. Attempting to clean the oceans in itself is a big undertaking. Attempting to address the problem with a never before tried technology would be harder. The pioneer of the company and its management must have had assumptions and hypotheses while attempting to achieve their objectives. They were the guiding principles of the mission, and they shaped the strategic direction of the company. The information they disseminated to the public about their mission must have been based on their assumptions and hypotheses. They had to feed the public, investors, and donors with information, and it became inevitable that they had to make many assumptions about their goals. As the project progressed and new information came to light, their earlier information would be fact-checked, and many fallacies emerge. For example, at face value, the company, through the COO Lonneke Holierhoek, claimed they’d need 60 systems to clean around 50% of the ocean in 5 years (Holierhoek, 2018). Upon doing the math and the data the site provided on the efficacy of their system, I found out that their existing systems can only harvest 23,760 tons of plastic. Given that there are around 4.8 to 12.7 million tons pouring into the oceans every year (Jambeck, et al., 2015), it is impossible to achieve that objective. Either they need more effective systems and perhaps many times larger or about twenty thousand of the existing system to keep up with the incoming plastic waste. This is to achieve zero plastic disposal in the oceans. To reverse the problem, the company would need more systems deployed in the oceans.
Secondly, the information the company released to the public is partly to secure funding for the project, which is in its infancy stages. Currently, the company is operating as a non-profit and aims to develop technologies to remove plastics in the ocean. Their mission was partly to be sponsored by donors. The profitability of the company would come later when it would be extracting plastic from the oceans and recycling it. To market, the objectives and the mission of the company to potential donors and financiers of the project compelled the company to make many assumptions that were later debunked.
The Ocean CleanUp company is justified to issue its fallacious statements. The inaccuracy in their statements is unintended. The company is charting new waters and innovating new technologies. The gravity of the mission they are undertaking and the enormity of the technologies they have to develop prompt the company to build their objectives on assumptions. One of the assumptions they have had to make is based on the hypothesized efficacy of the systems they hope to develop. Their system, which is touted to clean a gyre in 5 years, is both ambitious and unlikely. Setting their sight on cleaning the 5 gyres in five years will provide a measurable target. However, to develop such a system, which would need to cover over 315 million square kilometers using unproven technology, is nearly impossible. Rather than projecting to clean...