prices are high enough that i'm surprised that no one has created a scrapping ship that uses a conveyer to lift garbage out of the ocean directly into a crusher.
A ship like that would need to completely offload its payload of garbage multiple times a day.
So, it either needs to come to port (several days voyage) or have an elaborate loose waste transfer system to migrate its contents to another ship. Or more likely a fleet of ships, that ferry the waste back somewhere.
Then when those ferries arrive in port, you'll need customized equipment to remove the loose waste from its holds and divide it up for ground transport to take it to a landfill.
Then you need a landfill that is willing to take the entire Pacific Ocean's flotsam pile. Or, you need multiple port facilities willing to take portions of it at each location.
After all that, all you are doing is taking decomposing waste out of the water (where it will eventually settle to the bottom of the ocean and be buried by mud, coral or magma flows) and putting it into the land (where it will be buried by dirt, trees, golf courses or urban renewal projects).
How many ships like that do you think it would take to even draw even with the rate of waste deposited into the Pacific Ocean? That waste isn't coming from the US and Japan (with the rare exception of Fukushima-type events). It's coming every day from Thailand, Malaysia, India, Indonesia and their neighbors.
Studied by the pros, they determine it can't be stopped unless you tackle the 3rd world waste that generates it faster than we can clean it up.
http://www.boyanslat.com/plastic/
