The "waste plastic bottles into brand new real estate" is actually only a half crazy idea.
There is actually a lot of sense in it too.
A lot of the world most expensive real estate, SF would a be a good example, is built on reclaimed land.
These gyres of waste plastic occur because of the world currents act as they do. These sites would remain good for further accumulations unless the worlds ocean currents change... and that is possible I suppose.
How ever, in the mean time, there is a vast amount of material that can be utilized for any large scale project.
Yes, plastic is burned for power in many modern waste processing plants and that power could be used for a project. So a large floating pontoon could be built with a medium sized processing plant to turn plastic into electricity. That power could used to help reprocess all the floating waste material into structural blocks that float (say a cubic meter in size) and /or could have spaces that could flood in a controllable way to add or subtract buoyancy.
In the 18th and 19th centuries there was a huge world wide project to make the sea channels safer by the addition of light houses to illuminate hazards. These light houses had to withstand horrendous weather and sea conditions to sustain their use, and many thought such constructions were impossible to build. In the end, a way was found using the strongest granite masonry blocks used as an outer defensive wall, and these blocks were constructed so they were keyed and dovetailed together. They would hold firm even under the shuddering blows of storm waves moving at 30+ mph and weighing thousands of tons. Most, if not all, of these light houses are still with us today and still in use but are operated by remote control and no longer need a crew on site.
Likewise these new plastic blocks could be built so they keyed into each other forming a giant kind of lego land, but with dovetails in three dimensions instead of the simple round heads used in lego. In this way huge pontoons could be constructed forming a man made island, as deep, high, and wide as we would like it. The outer barrier strips of the new material could be hinged together to attenuate wave action and in the process generate electricity too.
It would a be a project using the Earths natural processes to an advantage, and that is where the human race is, and always has been best at surviving.
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