By now, everyone has heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the giant swirling heap of plastics and trash that collects in the gyres of the ocean. Our plastic trash is becoming a huge environmental problem. Most of the plastics we use won’t break down in our lifetimes, or even our children’s lifetimes. Environmentalists and scientists have been trying to think of ways to clean it up.  Well, Dutch architect Ramon Knoester is trying to find a way to repurpose our plastic trash into a living utopia.

He and his firm WHIM have been working with experts and government officials on the Recycled Island project to turn plastic debris that collect at the mouth of the Maas in Rotterdam into floating parks and villas.

Learn more about his vision here.

Photo: Recycled Island