Introducing the 3D-Printed, Ocean-Cleaning Eco-Bikini

JaredJones

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Introducing the 3D-Printed, Ocean-Cleaning Eco-Bikini


Finally, the sex appeal shot in the arm that environmental conservatism has been waiting for.

Have you ever found yourself taking a dip off the shores of your favorite beach and wondering, "Gee, I wish I could help clean up the ocean *while* enjoying my leisure time?" Well now, you can!

That's thanks to UC Riverside electrical engineering professor Mihri Ozkan, who recently unveiled The Sponge Suit bikini: a water-repelling, recyclable, and highly porous swimsuit made from carbon materials that actually absorbs many of pollutants currently found in our oceans. As demonstrated in the above video, The Sponge Suit absorbs everything *except* water and traps the contaminants in its pores to keep them from coming into contact with the wearer's skin.

Capable of absorbing up to 25 times its own weight, the Sponge Suit then releases the contaminants it has absorbed when and only when it is heated to temperatures above 1,000 degrees Celsius.



Source: 3ders [http://www.3ders.org/articles/20151013-sponge-suit-3d-printed-bikini-with-clean-tech-material-cleans-water-as-you-swim.html]

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Chaosian

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Mar 26, 2011
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Sexy and futuristic, but I don't see any kind of real impact coming from this. It's just marketing...
 

Silentpony_v1legacy

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Jun 5, 2013
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I'm not sure how to feel? I like ladies in bikinis, but the ones that would wear bikinis aren't usually the ones that would be environmentally conscious enough to buy an ocean friendly bikini.

Captcha: Of Course

See? This guy gets it.
 

immortalfrieza

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Silentpony said:
I'm not sure how to feel? I like ladies in bikinis, but the ones that would wear bikinis aren't usually the ones that would be environmentally conscious enough to buy an ocean friendly bikini.

Captcha: Of Course

See? This guy gets it.
Yeah, this is definitely just a marketing gimmick. It will probably be far more expensive than a standard bikini thus nobody would've bought it without this gimmick and the pollutants it's gathering up would probably end up back in the oceans anyway, it's got to go somewhere.
 

Ukomba

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Seems like a material they should be making a cleansing system out of, not clothing. Do girls really want their swim suits full of toxins? I don't get it.
 

tzimize

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This seems absolutely brilliant. Imagine a vacation beach with people actually cleaning the oceans by having fun, instead of polluting everywhere. The vision is staggering to me.

Wether it will become a reality is something different, but seeing as the bikini is also meant to be cost effective, this is as good as science gets imo. Well done.
 

K.ur

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Wonder if this also absorbs sunscreen out of the water. Seemingly most brands aren't compostable and swim on the surface. Filtering the light of what plants need of it.
 

Dango

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OK, so I have 2 major issues with this.

1. If it's a sponge that absorbs several times it's own weight, won't it be kind of uncomfortably heavy by the time you're done going for a swim? I don't expect it to weigh a ton, but even a couple pounds is enough to make a swim suit feel uncomfortable.

2. Wouldn't it be hard to convince people "Hey, you know all those toxins in the ocean? You know where they'd be better off? All over your body and in your washing machine."

That said, I give an A+ to whoever thought of the future-y design.
 

Strazdas

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May 28, 2011
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Ah, yes, everyone wants their clothes to be a giant magnet for all the toxins it can find! Nothing potentially dangerous by hoarding 25 times the clothes weight in toxins around on your naked skin!

Ukomba said:
Seems like a material they should be making a cleansing system out of, not clothing. Do girls really want their swim suits full of toxins? I don't get it.
in comparison to what they themselves put on their skins daily, this would be considered clean ;)
 

Kahani

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Dango said:
1. If it's a sponge that absorbs several times it's own weight, won't it be kind of uncomfortably heavy by the time you're done going for a swim?
And of course, that swim is all you get, since you need to heat it to 1000 degrees in order to get all that crap out of it again. Given that most people don't have the equipment to do so, this would be a single-use bikini.

Which is actually what the makers admit, once you've read through the dishonesty about it being a "3D printed cleaning thingy". That's actually two entirely separate things, and one of them isn't true at all. Firstly, the 3D printed part is only the horrible plastic frame, the part that actually absorbs crap is just the pads, and you have to throw them away once they're full. They could have made the structural parts out of anything they liked, they just threw in 3D printing as a gimmick to get people to talk about it. And secondly, as others have noted this isn't actually a cleaning thing at all. It separates water from everything in it, and in sea water that mainly means salt and small organisms. If people actually used these things enough to make any significant difference to anything, they'd be far more harmful than helpful. So yeah, it's a 3D printed environmental product that is neither 3D printed or environmental.
 

direkiller

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K.ur said:
Wonder if this also absorbs sunscreen out of the water. Seemingly most brands aren't compostable and swim on the surface. Filtering the light of what plants need of it.
UVA/UVB are outside the ranges of what plants absorb, and all sunscreen breaks down, it's simply the nature of the reaction.
 

FPLOON

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Jul 10, 2013
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Eh... I would wear that for the novelty of it in general...

Other than that, I'm assuming it only comes in one default color...
 

martyrdrebel27

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Ukomba said:
Seems like a material they should be making a cleansing system out of, not clothing. Do girls really want their swim suits full of toxins? I don't get it.
right? like, if this works so well, why not make a big ass cube of it and drop it in the ocean, cook, rinse, repeat...
 

one squirrel

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I can see our bright future right before my eyes: People riding hoverboards over solar roadways to get to the beach and clean the water wearing magic bikinis...

The design though, is actually gorgeous. Isn't this Art Deco?
 

Mortuorum

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Um... if the material is so effective, why not just produce huge sheets of the stuff and trawl it behind ships, deploy it in harbors, etc.? That would seem to be a lot more effective (and safer) than slapping a couple of square feet of it into the body of someone that may not even wear it into the water.

And then how is the alleged bikini girl going to remove the contaminants? 1000 degrees Celsius is over 1800 degrees Farenheit... nobody's doing that in the oven at home. (In the spirit of total disclosure, I didn't watch the video, since streaming video is blocked by my office's web content filtering, so oops if the video addresses this issue.)

truckspond said:
I wonder how many will fall off due to the massive weight increase after a swim.
There shouldn't be any significant weight increase; the material absorbs contaminants, but not water.
 

Rayne870

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So how is this different than putting a bunch of sludge in barrels and burying it under a school playground? I mean really you swim, the swimsuit collects the pollutants and now instead of a polluted solution you have a sponge full of toxic crud to somehow dispose of.
 

Kahani

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Mortuorum said:
And then how is the alleged bikini girl going to remove the contaminants? 1000 degrees Celsius is over 1800 degrees Farenheit... nobody's doing that in the oven at home. (In the spirit of total disclosure, I didn't watch the video, since streaming video is blocked by my office's web content filtering, so oops if the video addresses this issue.)
Nope, they don't address it at all. Their vision of the future includes dedicated shops magically appearing all over the place for the sole purpose of autoclaving people's clothing, but until that happens you just have to bin it and buy a new one.

There shouldn't be any significant weight increase; the material absorbs contaminants, but not water.
As the article notes, it absorbs up to 25 times its own weight in crap.