AbTech Industries has had a "smart sponge" technology developed for some time now and much to the disappointment of the company, it is not being used for what it was developed for - oil spill clean up!

The man in the video demonstration has been trying to get this sponge to be used to clean up the BP mess but because they outsource cleanup efforts - BP does not want to deal with him, and neither does the clean up companies. Why? I've no clue and no one else does.

Considering the scope of this mess, why isn't this guy going directly to the president with this? I mean the time is ripe. Obama made a speech regarding this the other day and frankly, I agree with him.

LINK to the AbTech website.




Years ago I saw an educational program showing a different technology for cleaning up Oil spills. They were showing how the same stuff used to make chewing gum can be used to soak up oil in the water and be vacuumed up and the spill cleaned up in HOURS vs months.

It's a damn shame no one is taking more of an initiative in these things. It would certainly make drilling for oil so much less distasteful when you can leave virtually no mess behind implementing such products in your operations.

This should beg the albeit conspiratorial sounding question: But do they (US govt) really WANT to clear this up quickly or is it an opportunity to push an anti-oil agenda?

Bear in mind that the "greenies" seem to be willing to stop at nothing to see that their agenda is pushed through at any cost. Might this be the factor which has them not utilizing the technology available?

Food for thought.

You sound like a conspiracy theorist! NO. This thing with the gum I mentioned is easily 15 years ago. Long before the major green movement. Long before the Exxon Valdez fiasco.

Obama slammed the fed, private industry and the oil companies and he was right in doing so. Using this technology wouldn't prevent us from going green.

I think there are better reasons to go away from oil.

Well I DID say it would sound conspiratorial.

There have been cases in the past where there was available technology and for whatever reason it was not utilized. I would like to hear a reasonable explanation in this case why either of these methods are not being tried.

As far as getting off oil......good luck with that. Petrochemicals reach much farther than what most people realize. You are using a computer which contains products derived from oil.

Yeah I know. But I like to bust your chops.

Anything plastic is petrol derived. But, it ALL can be replaced with any other kind of oil resource. I think Vizzy posted something some time ago about bio plastics or some shit like that.

They ought to be taking advantage of everything they can to clean up the mess. I know they were considering hair for awhile, right? But then I heard that although salons were collecting hair for the effort, it wasn't being used.

I'm no scientist but I'm not sure how you'd collect the water and force it through that sponge type filter (especially on such a large scale). I mean, if you just stick the sponge on the water it would just push the oil around, right? It appears you actually have to somehow put the water through like my little Brita system, lol.

Anyway, I have questions about how that would work but if it could be used...I don't know what the hell they're waiting for.

It makes me sick thinking about all that oil spewing in to the water. Worse that they haven't even stopped it yet!

It's easy enough to "vacuum" large areas of water out into a "pool" of the sponges. I'm sure with the help of the developer of the technology and his knowledge of it I'm sure he already has a way of implicating it.

If you watch the video carefully, it's not forced through the sponge anyway, he just simply poured it through.

Ah geeze...if everybody makes a great big deal out of this they will bitch till they ban drilling off shore and gas will be $12 a gallon. I know, I know, the poor wildlife and the fish, oh the fish. I baked some fish yesterday it was farm raised in China, I don't even know where the fish and shrimp and stuff from the gulf goes.
In the end of it all Mother Nature is a hard nosed bitch, she will reclaim what is hers one way or the other. You know, everything that was on this planet (with the exception of that electric car we left on the moon in 1970) when it was created is still here, it just changes form sometimes. That oil will go back to earth and reform. Mother Nature will see to that. The problem is that WE are in a big damn hurry, earth will still be here and all the stuff here will still be here long after we are gone, this oil spilling out is just a little glitch, hell, that volcano in Iceland is probably doing more damage than this oil, but nobody will pay you off for bitching about the volcano.
Those wood ducks and sea otters seem to soak up lots of oil, we should send a few truck loads of them in to mop up.

I know, I know, I'm an asshole.....I'm just in one of those moods.

At least no one has agreed with the asshole part.......yet.