June 4, 2021
A decade after Deepwater Horizon, we’re still cleaning up oil spills the same way
A sinking boat off the coast of Sri Lanka is about to spill tons of oil into the ocean. The cleanup will uses the same, ineffective techniques as the major oil spills before it. But there are better solutions.
Off the coastline of Sri Lanka, where a burning cargo ship has been spilling toxic chemicals and plastic pellets over the past two weeks, the government is preparing for the next possible stage of the disaster: As the ship sinks, it may also spill some of the hundreds of tons of oil in its fuel tanks.
The government is readying oil dispersants, booms, and oil skimmers, all tools that were used in the massive Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. They didn’t work perfectly then—more than 1,000 miles of shoreline were polluted—and more than a decade later, they’re still commonly used. But solutions that might work better are under development, including reusable sponges that can suck up oil both on the surface and underwater.