Credits: Mikkel Pitzner, Project Baseline Gulfstream
I just read one of the most absurd stories in modern history when it comes to environmental disasters, so much so that I had to look for more sources because I couldn’t believe it was real; it is the Osborne Reef in Florida, born from an idea that at the time was presented as innovative.
In the 1970s, someone seriously thought that dumping two million used tires into the ocean was a great idea. It all comes from the problem of that era, when there was an enormous amount of this type of waste to dispose of and no one knew how to get rid of it, between illegal dumps, fires, etc... and so the Broward Artificial Reef (BARINC) came up with the idea of dumping them all into the sea, not only to get rid of them but even with the belief of creating a new artificial marine ecosystem off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, basically killing two birds with one stone.
Credits: http://www.projectbaseline.org/
And the incredible thing is that we are not talking about a project improvised by a few crazy people. There were companies involved, public authorizations, advertising campaigns, even the Goodyear blimp flying over the area while this “artificial reef” was inaugurated by dropping a golden tire into the ocean as if it were a historic event. It almost sounds like a comedy film.
But then the fanciful project collided with reality: the structures holding the tires together started breaking apart within a few years, making the tires mobile, ocean currents dragged them across the seabed so that no marine life could properly thrive on them and instead they ended up hitting and destroying the real coral reefs in the area. Basically they had turned the ocean into a gigantic underwater landfill.
And the most unsettling part is that even today, after decades and millions spent on various recovery operations (2001-2002-2007-2016-2019-2021), hundreds of thousands of those tires are still down there after all these years and no one even knows exactly how many are left.
I just wonder how comes that back then, in all the organizations involved to make this absurd solution for tires, no one asked the simple question: "what if it is simply a terrible idea?"
References: https://www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/osborne-tire-reef-how-many-left/