[HN Gopher] Ocean cleaning device succeeds in removing plastic f...
___________________________________________________________________
Ocean cleaning device succeeds in removing plastic for the first
time
Author : lelf
Score : 305 points
Date : 2020-01-12 10:06 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnn.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnn.com)
| spaceandshit wrote:
| Joe Rogan recently talked to the organization's founder for a
| second time, and discussed some of these things.
|
| https://youtu.be/whRVyywTov4
| lsh wrote:
| that was a good watch actually, recommended
| bagacrap wrote:
| Meh, I thought Joe failed to ask any tough (but obvious)
| questions, like for an economic comparison between collection
| and prevention. The technologically easiest and no doubt
| cheapest solution is to tax plastic production. Ideally this
| would help shift us towards greener alternatives (corn based,
| silica based, paper based, reusables, etc). The revenues can
| go towards cleanup. I bet we could spend less money to get
| the same amount of used plastic if we simply paid Kuala
| Lumpur for their trash. Sounds a bit ludicrous but better
| than converting the world's waterways into a conveyor belt
| for trash.
|
| We simply don't have the political will though. So that will
| fail and so will this.
| radicsge wrote:
| Why do you expecting that they should solve every problem
| in the world? It is really parallel (collection until
| prevention).
|
| They really put down something on the table, pitched for
| their idea and delivered it. You can go ahead and execute
| your dream as well.
| spodek wrote:
| Let's keep in mind that prevention -- less production -- reduces
| pollution more than cleaning after it's there.
|
| Regulation can help, which results from popular support. Bans and
| other legislation in cities and nations around the world are
| resulting from people voicing and acting against plastic and
| pollution, but we're barely started.
|
| When enough of us act as consumers not to buy polluting products,
| producers will respond to products not selling by producing less.
|
| I would have thought I couldn't do much until I started avoiding
| packaged food. A few years' practice led to me filling only one
| load of garbage per year in 2019, 2018, and 2017
| http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging-2 -- while saving
| money and time and increasing meals with friends and family and
| meeting my farmers. Those in food deserts or who had less time
| asked me to teach them to do it since it helped them.
|
| Food packaging is only one source of plastic. We can avoid other
| junk too, particularly relevant after Christmas. Anecdotally,
| here in Manhattan, piles of garbage around discarded pine trees
| look larger, overflowing with packaging.
| Iv wrote:
| The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets. Ground
| based sources of oceanic plastic are coastal cities. Rivers in
| developed countries carry very little plastic to the sea.
| Actually a fistful of rivers in poor population basin account
| for most of the inland sources of oceanic plastic.
|
| Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean.
| monk_e_boy wrote:
| I was at the beach today (UK) and there was more net than I
| could carry. It was in about 100 bits that I tied together
| into a giant ball. There were around 60 plastic bottles, a
| few big plastic cans (oil) and lots of micro plastic.
| api wrote:
| Not all coastal cities. Multiple studies have sourced most
| ocean plastic to Chinese rivers and coastal cities (90th
| percentile) followed by India and a few other places.
|
| Why do we have to pretend that all coastal cities are equally
| at fault when this is clearly not true? Are people afraid its
| somehow racist? It has nothing to do with race but with
| certain governments that just don't care. It's become a pet
| peeve of mine when charges of racism is used to deflect
| political criticism of governments.
|
| In the US dumping trash in rivers is a crime and will get you
| in serious trouble: large fines, seizure of trucks and
| equipment, maybe even criminal charges.
| jorblumesea wrote:
| > Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean.
|
| Except if you live in Asia or a developing country, which is
| a large percentage of the world population. After traveling
| through that region I can honestly say that I am not
| surprised to see so much plastic in the oceans. People dump
| trash in the water, throw plastic bottles on the ground,
| waste and recycling infrastructure is largely non-existent.
| Even in richer middle tier countries like China people just
| toss their plastic into the rivers.
| andrekandre wrote:
| when visiting some island resorts (like 2 hour boat ride
| out) in thailand i was shocked at how much plastic garbage
| was floating around those otherwise beautiful islands...
|
| it's my opinion these things need to become laws and
| business, not just individuals need to be fined heavily for
| jut dumping trash out
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| No. That's incorrect. This study published in Nature (2017)
| by the Ocean Cleanup researcher contradicts your statement
| entirely:
|
| https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15611
|
| > Our model is calibrated against measurements available in
| the literature. We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41
| million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean
| every year from rivers, with over 74% of emissions occurring
| between May and October. The top 20 polluting rivers, mostly
| located in Asia, account for 67% of the global total. The
| findings of this study provide baseline data for ocean
| plastic mass balance exercises, and assist in prioritizing
| future plastic debris monitoring and mitigation strategies.
|
| The likelihood of your trash ending up in the ocean depends
| entirely on where you live and how your trash gets processed.
|
| The only part of your statement that's somewhat correct is
| that rivers in developed countries carry less plastics to the
| oceans compared to developing countries. But "very little" is
| creating a false impression of the problem.
|
| Processing disposable plastic waste is a problem that can be
| avoided by... not using disposable plastics at all. This is
| first and foremost a moral choice: whether or not we want to
| put the health of the ecosystem of which we are part above
| our own personal short-term convenience.
|
| Thailand banned the use of disposable plastic bags this
| month:
|
| https://phys.org/news/2020-01-thai-retailers-single-use-
| plas...
|
| You'd think that the Thai would oppose the ban. That's not
| what's happening if you gauge the sentiment on social media:
|
| https://www.boredpanda.com/unusual-ways-people-dealing-
| plast...
| twic wrote:
| > The likelihood of your trash ending up in the ocean
| depends entirely on where you live and how your trash gets
| processed.
|
| And spodek, to whom lv was replying, lives in the northeast
| USA, where plastic waste doesn't end up in rivers.
|
| > Processing disposable plastic waste is a problem that can
| be avoided by... not using disposable plastics at all.
|
| In the first world, it's a solved problem, so it's not a
| problem you need to avoid.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Is it a solved problem?
|
| Did you know that developed countries export thousands of
| tonnes of plastic waste to developing countries?
|
| https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/1
| 570...
|
| > The U.S. Census Bureau recently published complete 2018
| export data for shipments of plastic waste (officially
| called "waste, paring and scrap") generated in the U.S.
| and sent to other countries. As shown in Figure 1, 78%
| (0.83 million metric tonnes) of the 2018 U.S. plastic
| waste exports were sent to countries with waste
| "mismanagement rates" greater than 5%. That means about
| 157,000 large 20-ft (TEU) shipping containers (429 per
| day) of U.S. plastic waste were sent in 2018 to countries
| that are now known to be overwhelmed with plastic waste
| and major sources of plastic pollution to the ocean. The
| actual amount of U.S. plastic waste that ends in
| countries with poor waste management may be even higher
| than 78% since countries like Canada and South Korea may
| reexport U.S. plastic waste. The data also indicates that
| the U.S. continued to export about as much plastic waste
| to countries with poor waste management as we recycle
| domestically [1].
|
| Whereas:
|
| https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2018/08/01/epa-u-
| s-p...
|
| > The EPA's Facts and Figures Report states the U.S. in
| 2015 recycled 9.1 percent of the plastic generated, down
| from 9.5 percent during the previous year.
|
| Then there's this:
|
| The U.S. used to export waste to China. Until China
| decided to ban importing waste, leaving the U.S. waste
| disposal industries with a problem:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK20t11He14
|
| And finally I'll leave you with these:
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-plastic-
| polluti...
|
| https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/06/14/china-
| plastics-b...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-
| recyc...
|
| https://www.plasticsforchange.org/blog/category/why-are-
| plas...
| gengchun88 wrote:
| And another factor should be put into consideration is
| that wasted plastics in developed country actually can be
| recycled. But low quality plastic produced in developing
| country using those recycled plastics are very unlikely
| to be recycled again due to high cost.
|
| Anyway exporting, burning and landfills are not real
| solutions. The highly developed countries published some
| so called models for the purpose of blaming poor
| countries for those messes.
|
| The pointing fingers kind of behaves like those are not
| good strategies to let everyone work together and fix
| things. But only to make someone feels better about
| himself and do nothing.
| Iv wrote:
| > You'd think that the Thai would oppose the ban
|
| Why? Anti-ecologism is not really a thing in most of the
| world. It is a far-right thing in a few countries like
| Brazil and US, but a lot of nations don't consider "fick
| the environment, I want to save one cent on packaging" to
| be edgy.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| Well its good that you are doing the things you think its
| correct but please stop with the gratuitous
| generalization. We don't love pollution as much as you
| think here in Brazil.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > We don't love pollution as much as you think
|
| The national policies don't reflect this right now.
| ulzeraj wrote:
| National policies aren't people. If anything the current
| state of things prove that Brazilians have no say over
| their own government through elections wathever side you
| pick. Please don't be a bigot towards an entire country.
| Iv wrote:
| Don't make bold statement, exactly like I used to do a few
| months ago about this very subject :-)
|
| I got pointed to more recent studies by an oceanographer.
| Here is a Nature (2018) paper stating that the amount of
| fishing nets were underestimated in previous studies
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w
|
| > Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and
| aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45-129) thousand
| tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6
| million km2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than
| previously reported. We explain this difference through the
| use of more robust methods to quantify larger debris. Over
| three-quarters of the GPGP mass was carried by debris
| larger than 5 cm and at least 46% was comprised of fishing
| nets. Microplastics accounted for 8% of the total mass
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Wait, that's comparing very different things here. That's
| a study on the Great Plastic Garbage Patch in the Pacific
| ocean specifically. The study I referred to is about the
| yearly emission of plastics through rivers globally.
| acollins1331 wrote:
| Nature is a bunk journal. I can't tell you how much crap I
| read in there that is complete garbage.
| peteradio wrote:
| What here is disputing the above comment? Is OP from Asia
| or something?
| anamexis wrote:
| Without comparison to the amount of plastic coming from
| fishing nets and coastal cities, this didn't contradict
| anything in the parent post.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| His first assertion isn't based on any actual numbers or
| research either:
|
| > The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets.
|
| Whereas the research shows:
|
| > We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes
| of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year
| from rivers
|
| So, that leaves only two conclusions if you connect both
| statements: the vast majority of what is disposed by
| rivers is fishnets, or there's millions of tonnes of
| fishnets in the oceans next to what's disposed by rivers.
| anamexis wrote:
| I think it's obviously the second conclusion being
| asserted. A cursory Google search produced some
| supporting sources, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/envi
| ronment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean.
|
| Except that the plastic waste of certain countries tends to
| get "exported" to these places and then dumped there - if it
| doesn't get dumped into the ocean before it can even get
| there.
|
| The poorest places don't tend to generate so much plastic
| waste because it is mostly a by-product of "luxury goods"
| (read: trash) in developed countries bought by clueless
| consumers.
|
| For instance I will never understand the people who buy
| plastic-wrapped pre-sliced "salami" that hardly resembles the
| real thing in anything but name. I recently saw croissants(!)
| getting sold off the shelf in a supermarket. How the hell do
| you even make that work? Of course they were wrapped in
| plastic. I don't even want to know how they them make them
| last long enough. No way they're still crisp outside if the
| whole thing hasn't turned into a rock.
|
| I feel like some people will buy something not despite it
| being a plastic wrapped faint imitation of the real thing -
| but _because_ it is.
| ascar wrote:
| > For instance I will never understand the people who buy
| plastic-wrapped pre-sliced "salami"
|
| Well, if I don't buy it presliced from the butcher I always
| buy packaged presliced milano salami, because it's nearly
| impossible to slice it thin enough with a knife. There is
| also not really a difference in quality. Both products are
| imported from Italy anyway.
| rch wrote:
| My butcher slices it, and weighs it out, and wraps it in
| recycled paper, which I store in glass containers at
| home.
| beatgammit wrote:
| I've had croissants individually wrapped (e.g. at airports
| and other grab and go type places) and wrapped as a group
| (supermarkets and warehouse stores), and while neither are
| as good as buying fresh from a bakery, they're surprisingly
| good. The ones from Costco can last a few days before
| they're too dry to be good. If you care more about
| convenience than utmost quality, plastic does a pretty good
| job.
|
| In fact, I can't recall the last time I've had a croissant
| from a bakery, and I have definitely purchased dozens of
| packaged, off-the-shelf croissants in that time. Even
| though they're not as good as fresh, they're still good, to
| the point where it's not worth the time or extra money to
| go to the bakery.
|
| This is true for many other products as well. My grocery
| store butcher packages everything in plastic wrap, even if
| you get it from the counter (I think they have paper upon
| request). My self-serve, bulk foods company (WinCo)
| requires you to use their plastic bags instead of bringing
| your own containers (simplifies checkout process). Nearly
| everything I could want to buy is more conveniently
| purchased wrapped in plastic.
|
| People but plastic-wrapped products because of convenience,
| not because they prefer the packaging. I honestly prefer
| getting meat wrapped in paper because it's much easier to
| unwrap than plastic. I prefer getting bakery items in a
| paper bag than a clamshell or cellophane wrap, again,
| because it's easier to unpackage. However, to get those
| items packaged that way, I need to go out of my way, and
| specialty shops tend to have less reliable inventories
| because they're lower volume businesses.
|
| I doubt anyone _prefers_ wasteful, inconvenient packaging,
| people just prefer convenience, and wasteful, inconvenient
| packaging is more convenient for stores, so that 's what
| gets used. If you want to change the world, make a more
| convenient, cost-effective way to package things than
| plastic.
| rch wrote:
| I find it mind boggling that organic produce in Switzerland
| is often sold in plastic packaging. Of course some
| consumers seem to be focused on the promise of health
| benefits from avoiding pesticides themselves, but as far as
| I know reducing the impact of agricultural runoff was the
| primary reason the term was popularised in the first place.
| Wrapping the end product in plastic seems to completely
| defeat the purpose.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| It can significantly reduce food waste. Better to have a
| little bit of plastic than to discard a larger percentage
| of the produce, because ecologically that would be even
| more expensive.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| You're touching indirectly on a hugely fundamental thing
| here: the price of production and the price consumers pay
| for food.
|
| Why does agriculture produce an excess that doesn't get
| sold? Because the less is produced, the more
| prohibitively expensive production becomes per unit due
| to power laws. Hence why it's far more cost effective to
| cultivate a large volume of livestock compared to
| sustenance farming.
|
| Meat is a great example. As the demand for cheap meat is
| high, agricultural enterprises have optimized their
| production of livestock in order to attain an optimum
| profit margin per individual unit. For instance, the
| financial upkeep of infrastructure remains the same
| whether you have one 1 cow or 10 cows. If you raise and
| sell 10 cows, the production cost per individual cow goes
| down. Then there's market demand and supply. The cheaper
| the price per unit, the more an enterprise needs to
| produce if it wants to stay competitive. Hence why mega-
| farms exist.
|
| While the financial cost or production per unit of food
| has dropped exponentially in the 20th century, the carbon
| cost for that same unit has increased tremendously.
|
| Harking back to your original statement about plastic.
| It's true that wrapping food in plastic allows for longer
| conservation per unit. But then this effect is largely
| negated because:
|
| Producers will keep on producing excess volumes in order
| to drive financial production costs down and meet market
| prices. Retail chains will keep buying large bulk
| quantities to drive costs down and throw the unsold
| excess away. What you conserve in your fridge gets wasted
| elsewhere along the entire chain from cradle to consumer.
| The carbon costs, however, pretty much remain the same.
|
| Production and processing of disposable plastic wrapping
| just adds to the carbon cost of excess production.
|
| One conclusion you could draw from all of this is that we
| simply shifted the cost of food consumption from a
| financial to an ecological cost. If we want to reduce
| emissions created by industrialized farming, then there
| are few options ahead of us.
|
| There's the technological road in which we look for ways
| of capturing excess emissions, but this might prove
| extremely hard and raises all kinds of ethical questions
| re: GMO's or how we treat animals. How much wiggle room
| do we have to implement solutions that keep the consumer
| price of food as they are?
|
| The other road is... produce less, reduce production an
| order of magnitueds in order to reduce carbon emissions
| and pay the actual cost of food as a consumer. That is,
| increase the price of meat and other produce so it
| reflects the true cost of the impact on the environment.
|
| When you start thinking about the true cost of food, then
| you may look at the past and at how we approach food. Our
| culinary culture around the world. With the advent of
| globalization and mass-consumption, something else
| happened: the gradual replacement of local cuisine -
| based on local produce and associated habits - by western
| diets which contains ingredients with a high carbon cost.
|
| I recommend watching Michael Pollan's Cooked series on
| Netflix in order to get the idea of what cooking really
| means across the world and the impact of this evolution
| on our dietary choices.
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epMAq5WYJk4).
|
| Our habits and behaviour as consumers really is one of
| the big keys to this problem.
|
| When you come to think of it, there's little reason why
| millions of people in Europe or America should be able to
| buy tiger prawns on a daily basis produced in the Mekong
| delta at discount prices worth pennies. If there is a
| high demand for tiger prawns, then that's likely a demand
| created because of their mere availability and low price
| in supermarket chains.
| spodek wrote:
| > The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets
|
| So apply what I wrote and you get: eat less fish.
|
| Since this is HN, people will talk about pros and cons of
| eating fish, but there's only one reason people create
| fishing nets. If people consume less of things that damage
| the environment, we will produce less of it and therefore
| damage less of it. If some populations have to eat it, most
| can still eat less. I last ate fish in 1990.
| rsp1984 wrote:
| _If people consume less of things that damage the
| environment, we will produce less of it and therefore
| damage less of it._
|
| Fish don't damage the environment. Fishing nets do, when
| thrown into the ocean by irresponsible fishermen. Eating
| less fish would punish all fishermen, including the
| environmentally-responsible ones. What we need instead is a
| better enforcement of existing laws against env. pollution.
| lopmotr wrote:
| Do discarded fishing nets really cause more harm to fish
| than actively used ones? The whole job of fishermen is to
| kill fish. How can you say they're environmentally
| responsible for not losing their nets? The environmental
| problems caused by fishing already exist and are far more
| severe than those caused by plastic which so far are
| mostly only theoretical or imaginary. The UN says that
| "half the world's fishing fleet could be scrapped with no
| change in catch." That's how much overfishing they're
| doing. It's not environmentally responsible.
| gfodor wrote:
| An aside: why do those advocating for ways to improve the
| environment continue to land themselves in a place where
| their final answer to a problem is "simple: people should
| just do X instead of Y." These are not solutions, unless
| you explain how you are going to shift the behavior of
| billions of people to a point where it makes a real,
| sustainable difference. Nearly any other approach is more
| feasible to solving problems. If you _are_ going to say
| such a thing, to be taken seriously you must articulate how
| you can re-align incentives to cause such a behavior change
| to happen at a large scale enough to move the needle. Your
| own experience doing so also does not move that argument
| forward in any way.
|
| A system where people still consume as much fish as they
| please, and our technological and governmental structures
| lead to downstream processes that mitigate the
| environmental impact of that situation may not be a
| globally maximal solution compared to a world where we end
| fish consumption. But it does have one nice attribute: it
| may actually be possible to achieve. Personally, I do hold
| out hope for an even better solution, where we get to
| consume the foods we love but they are created without the
| need for animals to live and die to give it to us.
| spodek wrote:
| I don't pretend to know how to solve everything, but a
| few podcast episodes describe my strategy.
|
| https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
| environment/episod...
|
| http://joshuaspodek.com/my-tedx-talk-is-online-find-your-
| del...
|
| https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
| environment/episod...
|
| https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-
| environment/episod...
|
| Many people misinterpret to think I'm saying this
| strategy will solve everything by itself.
|
| Note that at the root, it's helping people live by their
| values. Polluting less doesn't create a worse life,
| however much people who haven't seriously tried fear it
| will. Nearly all of my guests who act report preferring
| acting, saving time and money, improving relationships,
| self-awareness, etc.
| corporate_shi11 wrote:
| Your strategy still suffers from the unattractive aspect
| of behavior constraint. Human civilisation serves to
| enable us, not to constrain us. Regulation on the
| management of fishing nets is far more preferable to me
| than just advocating people constrain themselves by
| eating less fish.
|
| The fetish of constraint seems to be popular among
| environmentalists, but it's certainly not the only way or
| even most preferable path forward.
| umvi wrote:
| There's at least one way to get people to eat less
| meat/fish:
|
| Make plant based alternatives cheaper than the real
| thing. I would definitely buy impossible meat if it were
| cheaper than real beef. As it stands it is several times
| more expensive than real beef. Same for impossible fish
| (if such a thing were to exist).
|
| If impossible fish sticks taste nearly identical to real
| fish sticks, but it's cheaper and plant-based, why
| _wouldn 't_ your average consumer buy impossible fish
| sticks for their kids?
| corporate_shi11 wrote:
| Just one reason: imitation beef is often highly
| processed, while beef itself is all natural.
| soperj wrote:
| Lots of fish sticks are made from tilapia, which are
| plant feeding fresh water fish. They're basically
| impossible fish sticks.
| samastur wrote:
| We already eat too much fish as it is and stocks all over
| the world in dire state, plastic or no plastic. Millions
| depend on them for their survival, but many of us don't
| and could eat less.
| lopmotr wrote:
| Curiously, overfishing used to be a serious environmental
| problem before global warming and plastic took over public
| awareness. It's done far more harm to fish numbers than
| those other things are predicted to, but people still
| weren't convinced enough to eat less fish.
| 93po wrote:
| Or eat line&pole caught fish. It's much more expensive,
| especially the canned tuna, but I feel like if I can afford
| the more sustainable option then it's my responsibility
| exhilaration wrote:
| Can you point me a specific brand of canned tuna? I was
| totally unaware there were line caught options.
| adamsea wrote:
| Can't recall off the tip of my head but brands usually
| advertise on the packaging if the fish is line-and-pole
| caught.
| nkurz wrote:
| Searching for "pole and line caught tuna" will turn up a
| bunch. If you are in the US, Wild Planet probably has the
| best grocery store distribution. Raincoast seems bigger
| in Canada, but has some US distribution. American Tuna
| sells on Amazon and is great.
|
| One of the other differences that most of the line caught
| tuna brands cook the raw tuna directly in the can, rather
| than cooking first and then canning. This results in much
| better texture. Other than price, it's a superior product
| in almost every way.
| 93po wrote:
| I believe Wild Planet is what I buy - it's printed on the
| can for sure
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| This type of thinking essentially amounts to planning an
| economy, but the currency is pollution instead of effort.
| This doesn't work. Money does it infinitely better, and
| that's what we need to use here, too: tax pollution
| appropriately and the actual pollutants will automatically
| surface. Money works extremely well for this, but we need
| to apply it correctly. Polluting is too cheap.
|
| Case in point: farmed fish doesn't require fishing nets.*
| Adjust it again, "don't eat wild fish." Until they release
| a new type of hemp net that is bio degradable, or a new
| type of fyke that doesn't tear. Now you need to update it
| again. Meanwhile you're always behind, and the real
| polluters will remain one step ahead. You're playing a
| never ending game of whack-a-mole that money has been
| designed to solve.
|
| * edit: Reading some sibling comments this comes with many
| caveats. Which, in a way, further proves the point.
| [deleted]
| jsilence wrote:
| Or eat aquacultured fish from your region. For example from
| an aquaponic system. But there are few viable commercial
| operations on the market so far.
| millettjon wrote:
| The large scale fish farms also pollute heavily.
| jsilence wrote:
| Absolutely!
|
| Sustainable, low emission recirculating aquaculture comes
| at a price. It is not yet clear whether customers are
| willing to pay the premium for products from a good
| solution.
| atdrummond wrote:
| The operations described by your OP aren't large scale
| fish farms.
| the8472 wrote:
| Aren't aquacultured fish fed with fishmeal, which means
| even more fishing nets due to the conversion
| inefficiencies of carnivorous fish?
| jsilence wrote:
| At the time fishmeal and fish oil are neccessary to
| supply certain nutrients, lysin and methionine for
| example, but suppliers have been successfully reducing
| the amount of fishmeal and oil in recent times.
|
| The goal is to reduce it to a minimum.
|
| Not all fishmeal is unsustainable. The slaughtering
| residue from wild catch and from aquaculture as well as
| the bycatch are ressources for fish feed that we should
| not waste.
| anovikov wrote:
| Don't forget that about half of world's fish and seafood
| come from aquaculture, it's a very doubtful advice.
|
| In general, advices to reduce consumption of anything to
| solve environmental problems are missing the point. Goal is
| not to get back to the stone age and thus clear up the
| environment (even that won't work: stone age people
| destroyed environment even worse than us, they eradicated
| whole lot of species of big animals and destroyed the
| tundro-steppe by disturbing the nitrogen cycle - however
| destructive we are now we didn't manage to destroy a single
| whole biome, yet). Goal is to make more with less. Increase
| consumption of everything, while fixing environmental
| issues. This is what will happen anyway: majority of the
| world is still poor and they are catching up. It will be
| absolutely awful and elitist to say them: no you can't
| catch up pals, you will ruin the environment if you try!
| They want and they will catch up with the Western world.
| And the Western world also can't go back to their level:
| someone has to move technologies ahead...
| dylan604 wrote:
| > Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean.
|
| Daily, I see people getting rid of the plastic wrapping
| around their new cigarette pack by throwing it out the car
| window or just dropping it straight to the ground. It's that
| type of plastic that makes its way to the city's runoff which
| makes its way to streams/rivers/lakes/oceans/etc. After any
| significant amount of rain, there's a few places I can drive
| by to see where the trash from throughout the city has washed
| into the grassy areas around bends in creaks/rivers. It's a
| good visual example of where the plastic pollution is
| originating.
| scottlocklin wrote:
| Cellophane is biodegradable:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane
|
| Most people worry about the wrong thing. If you live in the
| West, you're not appreciably contributing to ocean plastic
| pollution (and no, you're almost certainly not doing so by
| "shipping your garbage to china" either). Smokers,
| definitely not contributing to plastic pollution.
| nadezhda18 wrote:
| what about cigarette butts?
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/ci
| gar...
| jamil7 wrote:
| How about eating fish?
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm really not so sure cigarette packing is cellophane
| [0]. Just because something is biodegradable doesn't mean
| it's cool to just chuck it out the window. While that
| cellophane is still intact (it's main use is to keep out
| moisture) is traveling along water ways/drains where it
| can clog up the works.
|
| [0]https://meshrinkwrap.com/news/cigarette-packaging-
| explained/
| afc wrote:
| Strawman. There are many things that, like tossing
| biodegradable stuff out the window, aren't cool that
| don't appreciably contribute to ocean plastic pollution.
| spodek wrote:
| > Smokers, definitely not contributing to plastic
| pollution
|
| National Geographic and Phys.org report otherwise: https:
| //www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigar...
| and https://phys.org/news/2019-07-cigarette-butts-
| forgotten-plas...
|
| Others producing more doesn't reduce their pollution.
| scottlocklin wrote:
| Cellulose acetate aka cigarette butts, turns into dirt 4
| months in the soil or a few years out in the open
| sunlight[1]. It's vastly more biodegradable than your
| hoodie, your socks, your Starbucks cup or even something
| like dried up egg yolk. I don't think people should throw
| it on the ground, because trash barrels and ash trays are
| there for a reason, but it's basically not an
| environmental problem at all. It's just unsightly litter.
|
| > Others producing more doesn't reduce their pollution.
|
| If you actually want to solve environmental problems, how
| about solving actual problems instead of picking on lower
| class cigarette smokers who aren't causing any issues? It
| sure seems like an awful lot of "environmentalism" is
| nothing more than a disgusting social class pose.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate
| neuronic wrote:
| Our own trash is shipped to Asia first and _then_ it ends up
| in some of those rivers. We pay Asian countries a lot to take
| our garbage.
| comicjk wrote:
| We pay other countries to take our garbage only because we
| prefer to imagine it is being recycled. It's not like we
| don't have enough landfill space here, if we were willing
| to treat it as the trash that it is.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| Yea there was a great two part planet money series on
| recycling this year. And the economic take away is that
| the current state of recycling in the US is broken and we
| have more than enough landfill space for thousands of
| years. One idea was to just burn it which this mentioned
| is what some European countries are doing.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mo
| b-b...
|
| https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-
| shou...
| lopmotr wrote:
| The funny thing is people confuse recycling with reducing ocean
| plastic. I've had conversations like this "Why do you recycle?"
| "Because plastic kills birds." "But only if it gets washed out
| to sea, right?" "Yea, sometimes it blows away from the landfill
| or an abandoned landfill erodes into a river.".
|
| Then a newspaper report of volunteers cleaning rubbish off the
| beach has them complaining that it's mostly plastic items
| people put in their recycling bins that got blown out and
| washed down the drain into the sea.
|
| People see news about the ocean plastic and somehow assume the
| moral thing they've been taught about recycling is the cure.
| They don't want to know that it's mostly fishing gear and
| rubbish from S.E. Asian cities where people directly drop
| rubbish into the rivers on purpose.
| almost_usual wrote:
| The problem is most people don't care and won't change even
| with this information. Society pretty much runs on consumption.
| While I 100% agree that reduction is a better solution it only
| works if it's applied.
| ehnto wrote:
| I think we should focus more on remedial treatments for these
| problems, because I don't believe humanity has it in itself to
| prevent it from continuing any time soon.
|
| I agree that we need to try and achieve prevention. Consumer
| action has proved nearly powerless though, frankly. There will
| never be enough consumer buy in. We've been campaigning for
| recycling for decades and it's gotten us here. Our modern lives
| are built on oil and plastic, not even the ones who care and
| try are doing good enough. You're far and wide an outlier, you
| would probably have a hard time convincing other avid recyclers
| to go to your level, to say nothing of the consuming majority.
|
| We are going to need to prescribe this change, not ask politely
| for it. Through regulation and economic policies. If there is a
| buck to be made you will have the immense power of capitalism
| on your side, the same forces that cause the situation can be
| used against it. Perhaps if we tax oil so much that plastic
| stops being a cheap material, and plastic recycling and
| recapture from the oceans becomes profitable, technology and
| investment in fixing the oceans can prosper.
| esotericn wrote:
| It's really only a matter of changing packaging in
| supermarkets.
|
| It's the sort of thing that could be done in a blanket
| fashion within a couple of years if a major government just
| stepped up and said "no bullshit plastic waste everywhere".
|
| That is to say - it's preventable as soon as a major
| government says so.
|
| Unfortunately none of them seem to have the balls. It's fine
| and dandy to spend multiple years on political fluff (see
| UK), but god forbid we make any serious changes in packaging
| regulation.
| ehnto wrote:
| Plastic packaging isn't the leading cause of plastic in the
| oceans mind you. But I agree wholeheartedly, it's up to
| government policy to fix this. Consumers have proven they
| won't give it up. Businesses are economically encouraged to
| keep it around. There is no hope outside of regulation.
| esotericn wrote:
| Sure, but stuff like plastic bottles are everywhere and
| they're essentially completely pointless. People use them
| because they can, but if they didn't exist, it would be
| no great loss at all.
| CaptArmchair wrote:
| Thailand just banned disposable plastic bags... and the
| Thai seem to have totally embraced the decision:
|
| https://www.boredpanda.com/unusual-ways-people-dealing-
| plast...
|
| https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/plastics/majority-of-
| thais-s...
|
| As far as the U.K is concerned: it will off the use of
| plastic straws, cotton buds and drink stirrers in april
| 2020:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/22/england
| -...
|
| Following a complete ban adopted by the European Parliament
| in 2018 which will be implemented across all members of the
| union:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/24/europea
| n...
|
| Seems like politicians do have balls to tackle the problem.
|
| Sadly, we lost so much time over the past decades when
| everyone knew that this was a problem.
| esotericn wrote:
| None of those items are packaging. Carrier bags are
| optionally taken by individuals.
|
| Most of my household waste and that of those around me is
| endless plastic trays, cling films, bottles from tiny
| package sizes with high surface area etc.
|
| Even if it's not polluting it's annoying because it takes
| up so much space unnecessarily. I'd rather go to the
| store with a bottle and fill it.
|
| That's what is not being addressed. Most people can just
| stop using straws. Buying food without OTT packaging for
| most means going to a different town which has a hippie
| health foods store with bins or whatever and paying over
| the odds.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Regulation? Decent waste retrieval and processing. Plenty of
| trash bins and pay people (you know, employees) to pick up what
| others don't.
|
| And remember that most plastics that end up in the ocean are
| from south-east Asia. Part of which are likely exported from
| Europe and / or the US.
| voisin wrote:
| "When enough of us act as consumers not to buy polluting
| products, producers will respond to products not selling by
| producing less."
|
| This argument bothers me a great deal. It takes a simple
| solution (regulation) and turns it into a complicated
| distributed solution (convincing the majority of consumers to
| make the right decision) prone to disinformation campaigns,
| green washing, confusion, and simple lack of attention.
|
| We have governments for reasons. This is one of those reasons.
| They need to do their job and stop using our behaviour as an
| excuse for inaction.
| syshum wrote:
| >>We have governments for reasons.
|
| How Authoritarian of you, what other area's of life should
| the governments of the world control for everyone denying
| them their human right of choice?
|
| It is sad to me that as civilization "advances" more and more
| people want to go back to a time where people were subjects
| of their government, instead of free people. I know it has
| only been a few hundred years of human civilization where
| people have had any kind of freedom, why are we so willing to
| give all of that up?
|
| The types of invasive regulations that will require
| increasing food costs, as well as lowering shelf life for
| every day people will cause massive problems for not only the
| poor but the middle class as well.
|
| What is next mandatory vegan artisanal organic diet to save
| the climate? Each meal having to be hand picked by a local
| farmer that day.
| andrekandre wrote:
| > It is sad to me that as civilization "advances" more and
| more people want to go back to a time where people were
| subjects of their government, instead of free people.
|
| if you live in a real democracy, is it really authoritarian
| that a majority decide that we want to live in a cleaner
| world?
|
| the earth isn't some computer program where you have
| infinite ram and can just alloc as much as you want, at
| some point you start pushing other process out of memory,
| and you wonder why stuff starts crashing and freezing...
|
| (i'll stop with the computer analogy now ^^)
| syshum wrote:
| >>if you live in a real democracy,
|
| I don't, nor do I want to. I live in a Constitutional
| Representative Republic. where the majority is not
| allowed by the constitution to invoke their mob rule on
| others
|
| The Founders of my nation did not trust democracy any
| more than they trusted monarch's and I agree with them
|
| I desire individualism, and individual rights not
| democracy and mob rule
|
| >>the earth isn't some computer program where you have
| infinite ram and can just alloc as much as you want, at
| some point you start pushing other process out of memory,
| and you wonder why stuff starts crashing and freezing...
|
| I 100% agree with this, I disagree that a Authoritarian
| Centrally managed government is the best or ideal way to
| allocate though resources
|
| I am not going to get into a computer analogy, but I tend
| to following Geo-Libertarian philosophy as a structure
| for human organization
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I live in a Constitutional Representative Republic.
| where the majority is not allowed by the constitution to
| invoke their mob rule on others
|
| Instead, that privilege is reserved to a minority
| privileged by geographic distribution, which is much
| better.*
|
| * If you are in the privileged minority; not so much
| otherwise.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| These things are not mutually exclusive. You can (and should)
| both do your best to consume as ethically as possible, and
| advocate, vote, etc. for action. I find it troubling how
| readily so many of us are to change nothing about our
| behavior and point the finger at some scapegoat. The
| unfortunate reality is:
|
| - the more money we spend on <thing> the more <thing>'s
| manufacturer has to lobby for its continued existence
|
| - the more we standardize that product as "normal" we make
| regulating it less politically viable (see blowback re:
| plastic straws)
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Paper straws are horrible! They get soggy so quickly! Also
| paper bags cause more harm than plastic, and it wouldn't
| surprise me if the same were true of straws. At home i use
| stainless straws but when I'm out I refuse paper straws.
| Why can't someone make a recyclable straw?
| NeedMoreTea wrote:
| Recyclable is worse than reusable, both are worse than
| reducing use in the first place. Best option is giving a
| drink in a mug or cup. Customer can provide a takeaway
| container or bring their own mug. All behaviour needs to
| be adjusted -- individual, and corporate via regulation.
|
| This whole expectation of disposability is the problem in
| the first place.
|
| > paper bags cause more harm than plastic
|
| Citation needed. As I understand it, they _can_ be more
| harmful if unsustainable methods of production are used.
| Unbleached paper from sustainable forestry should be less
| harmful. It may not be cheaper. Cheapest should not be
| the only aim. c.f. regulation.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| What do people use straws for in the first place? Just
| drink out of the cup.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Yeah I agree. I mostly get a straw for ice tea, which
| comes in styrofoam... Styrofoam is unfortunate. It is
| super easy to recycle, but too inefficient to transport.
| I've been trying to come up with a solar powered
| Styrofoam recycler that stores up blocks of solid
| polystyrene for pickup. The hard part is knowing people
| will put other things in to mess it up. Otherwise a tank
| of gasoline to dissolve it with a closed evaporation loop
| is all you would need.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Most common reason to use a straw is when drinking from a
| vessel that's full of ice.
|
| It's funny how luxurious a simple ice-filled straw-
| included one-time-use styrofoam cup of Coke from the
| McDonald's drive-thru is, really, and how much we take it
| for granted.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| In a democracy, getting regulation passed is also a
| complicated distributed problem subject to all those
| problems.
| vic-traill wrote:
| >A few years' practice led to me filling only one load of
| garbage per year in 2019, 2018, and 2017
|
| That's impressive. I've been trying to reduce plastic use on a
| room by room basis, and it's tough as almost every product has
| a plastic component in the packaging at least. The kitchen has
| been the most difficult thus far; for example, I cannot find a
| alternative to mayonnaise in a plastic jar. I've tried making
| my own but this is a work in progress as I haven't got it quite
| right yet.
|
| I heard a commentator say (paraphrased) 'Buy food that looks
| like food. The more writing there is on it, the less reason to
| buy'. This was in the context of healthy eating which has a
| great side-effect of generating less garbage. And vice versa.
| shaklee3 wrote:
| I'd suggest this recipe:
|
| https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/10/two-minute-
| mayon...
|
| If you have an immersion blender, it takes literally 2
| minutes, and is fool-proof. Doing it other ways, such as
| manually or a food processor is a little trickier. I've done
| this way now for a while and never need to buy mayonnaise
| anymore. Kenji has a vegan recipe too using aquafaba if
| you're in to that.
| spodek wrote:
| Experience teaches how to avoid packaging. For example, I had
| your mayonnaise issue with vinegar until I started making my
| own, which turns out incredibly easy and fun.
|
| My bulk food store sells soy sauce, soap, and other things
| into containers I bring.
|
| With mayonnaise, you might consider my solution for oil: stop
| buying it. I haven't used oil in years and eat a lot more
| nuts. Everyone's tastes are unique, but I love this trade.
| [deleted]
| beatgammit wrote:
| Honestly, I would continue to focus on the easier stuff
| first. If the choice becomes "make your own", move on to
| another product because that's a very time consuming path to
| do down. The only "staple" I make regularly is yogurt because
| it's easy, healthy (I control the sugar content), I can do a
| lot at once, saves money, and generates a ton less waste.
|
| Everything else in my pantry is either purchased infrequently
| or requires a _lot_ of work to make myself that I 've moved
| on to other things. Instead of trying to create those things,
| I try to reduce my use of them. Making mayo or ketchup isn't
| worth it IMO (mustard is easy though), and they're not
| particularly healthy either, so I just try to reduce how much
| I eat them.
|
| I think reducing waste should involve a more complete review
| of our lifestyle, not just replacing items one by one. For
| example, I only really use mayonnaise when making certain
| sandwiches, and I only eat those sandwiches because they're
| convenient and semi healthy. Instead of figuring out how to
| make mayonnaise more ecologically sustainable, I instead look
| for more healthy foods that I can make more convenient, like
| salads, burritos, and sir fry, all of which don't need
| mayonnaise.
| vxNsr wrote:
| I'm guessing the answer is you've gone vegan, but I gotta
| ask... eggs, milk, cheese and meat? how do you do get them
| without packaging?
| forwhomst wrote:
| Milk in glass bottles. Meat is wrapped in paper. Eggs go in a
| a paper carton. Cheese is tricky, most markets still wrap cut
| cheese in plastic, so I have to buy it from an actual cheese
| shop that uses waxed paper. Consequently I don't eat much
| cheese.
| SXX wrote:
| You can just buy whole head of cheese and it's not only can
| be stored in fridge for months without getting bad, but
| also almost always matured in wax to begin with. Of course
| not all cheeses sold this way, but certainly most are never
| packed with plastic until product get to the end of supply
| chain at grocery store.
|
| It's alao cheaper to buy this way and quality of product on
| your table going to be much higher.
| vxNsr wrote:
| Isn't paper going to be thrown out anyway? And I've read
| that wax paper especially is difficult to recycle.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Pretty sure wax paper can be composted.
| spodek wrote:
| Bea Johnson talks about meat and cheese in some of her videos
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bea+johnson&oq=.
| ...
|
| I see the egg vendors at the farmers market filling cartons
| that people bring, then stacking the cartons they brought the
| eggs in, I presume to reuse.
|
| My top strategy is to lose taste in such things, like
| everyone I know looks at cigarettes. People's diets are their
| business, but I used to eat a lot of those things and now
| find them not remotely like food.
| Pfhreak wrote:
| Buy from a local farmer or butcher. And eggs usually come in
| compostable packaging.
| keymone wrote:
| Also relentless public shaming. Like, who's idea was it to put
| micro plastics in shower gels and stuff? I want to know their
| names and the whole chain of management that made it happen.
| They should be publicly humiliated, win international prizes
| for shittiest inventions, etc. Why is it that we only celebrate
| good contributions and never reflect on the bad with same
| degree of publicity?
| sharcerer wrote:
| Is banning plastic from packaging really beneficial or not?
|
| Came across this 2 days back.
| https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/121521275667838566...
| OscarCunningham wrote:
| These comments are full of arguments where one person suggests a
| course of action and another person replies that the alternatives
| are worse (plastic vs paper, wild fish vs farmed, cleaning up
| plastic vs cutting carbon). It's impossible for anyone to fully
| foresee the environmental consequences of the products they buy.
| This is the reason why the only solutions to these problems is
| for our governments to impose Pigovian taxes for harms to the
| environment (and equal subsidies for helps to the environment).
| Then all the consequences of our choices filter back to us in
| monetary terms. No other method is capable of weighing all the
| different factors.
| Steuard wrote:
| Last I heard, there were serious concerns that these cleanup
| devices would wind up absolutely devastating ocean ecosystems
| that naturally form in the same places that plastic piles up:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cl...
|
| I got this link from a Twitter thread last fall:
| https://twitter.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1179861389575245824 The
| Ocean Cleanup folks responded (there's a link in the thread), and
| the author who raised concerns responded in turn (also linked).
| To my eye, it seems like there are some pretty wide open
| scientific questions about the impacted ecosystems, and I'm not
| at all convinced that the Ocean Cleanup folks have demonstrated
| sufficient care about those uncertainties and concerns.
| radicsge wrote:
| Since the plastic is breaking down (these patches would
| disappear without supply) and I guess you yourself also doesn't
| want to pollute the ocean with new plastic not sure why is this
| an issue.
|
| Or do you suggest to continue to pollute the ocean?
| popopje wrote:
| An interesting article re wildlife that lives at the ocean's
| surface and drifts around in the same way that plastic does and
| how this may affect it
| https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cl...
| plus their response https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/the-
| ocean-cleanup-and-th...
| ykevinator wrote:
| This is great. Doers versus talkers,nice to see a doer get a win
| mrtrombone wrote:
| This has been an interesting discussion but I am surprised at the
| high level of criticism towards the project. There seems to be
| two primary critiques of the project:
|
| 1. This should not be an area of focus - There are better climate
| change opportunities to put money towards
|
| 2. The project is ineffective and introduces a lot of other
| environmental problems
|
| For the first point it seems like people are arguing as if it is
| a binary problem. It isn't - The threat of climate change /
| environmental damage is an incredibly complex one that will not
| be fixed by a single technology / focus/ policy change. For me
| the questions are a. 'Are existing plastics in our ocean a
| problem? (yes) b. If someone is passionate about this should they
| have a crack at improving things? (yes) This is not consuming all
| the worlds available financing for environmental action so I
| don't think wasted resourcing is a particularly good argument.
| Several commentators also talk about focusing on other 'lower'
| hanging fruit but this is not an objective measure - For a team
| made up of excellent engineers, oceanographers, fluid dynamics
| experts etc this may be a lower hanging fruit than trying to
| implement large scale policy change.
|
| For the second point it comes down to the motivations of the team
| and their capacity and capability to improve the product. I would
| presume the team are incredibly passionate about improving the
| environment and so things like danger to floating marine life,
| use of diesel in boats etc would absolutely be something they are
| aware of and actively looking to mitigate. The fact this is (at
| least) the third iteration demonstrates they are working to
| improve on what they know is a currently flawed solution - This
| is development cycle!
|
| This is not to say that critique is bad. Hopefully the team are
| humble enough to absorb the critique and continue to iterate on
| their solution to resolve the real issues raised but as long as
| there is a continued focus on the goal of environmental cleanup
| and good governance surrounding this I think this is a fantastic
| project and hopefully it is joined by many more ambitious
| activities.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I would add that people have noted that the Pacific Garbage
| Patch is large and has a low density of plastic. I assume that
| ocean also has a relatively low density of fish altogether but
| industrial fishing is able to catch a pretty large proportion
| of these at this point (with beneficial and problem
| consequences). With plastic not trying to flee and fish moving,
| it doesn't seems a-priori impossible to create a device that
| would just skim a large portion of the plastic off.
|
| Of course, unless the world's nation change their policies,
| this will be moot and environmental destruction generally will
| accelerate given our present politics. But shitting on this
| particular project hardly seems a useful way to force this
| absolutely necessary general change.
| itcrowd wrote:
| The threat, some argue, with the Ocean Cleanup is not so much
| to "traditional", underwater fish, but rather to an obscure
| floating type of species known as the neuston [1]. Marine
| biologists are warning about the impact of the OC on this
| species because so little is understood of their value to
| marine life.
|
| [1] The entry is very short on Wikipedia:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleuston#Neuston
| Reedx wrote:
| Cleanup is good, but are there efforts in identifying and cutting
| off the major inputs? That should be step 1 to have the biggest
| impact.
|
| As long as there are are literal dump trucks of trash being
| emptied straight into rivers...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDY3I841q0
|
| ...it feels like we're spinning our wheels in almost comical
| fashion.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Yes the same startup is trying to collect trash at the mouths
| of rivers. But even that is not far enough upstream. The
| problem must be tackled before the trash gets into the river.
| But how do you convince a developing country to invest in waste
| disposal infrastructure that has no economic benefit to them?
| Politics is much harder than tech.
|
| This startup might as well be funded by the petroleum industry.
| If they can convince the lay person that "we're on it" ie that
| someone else is solving the plastic issue, and individual
| consumers can go back to using as much plastic as they wish, it
| will be a terrific investment.
| ourlordcaffeine wrote:
| The ocean cleanup device is absolutely terrible for floating
| marine life.
| titzer wrote:
| Not as bad as the plastic.
| syshum wrote:
| This is an example of Environmental Action vs Environmental Talk
|
| Innovation and actions are var more valuable than lecturing
| everyone and demanding governments to use taxation and violence
| to solve the problem.
| ocschwar wrote:
| 2nd law of thermodynamics: it's always cheaper to avoid a mess
| than it is to clean it up. Ergo, better to use the political
| route.
| syshum wrote:
| While yes it is cheaper to avoid the mess, innovation can
| lead to avoiding the mess
|
| I do not believe that the "political route" of taxation and
| violence is the best way to "avoid the mess", in fact I
| believe that will only prolong and increase the mess and do
| nothing to avoid it.
|
| Governments are ineffective and inefficient, all government
| solutions are based on threats of violence, and we know from
| centuries of history violence is not the solution to any
| problem, thus government is not the solution to any problem
|
| GOVERNMENT: If you think your problems are bad, just wait
| until you see our solutions
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I think that the point being made is that nothing is being
| done. It's all talk and show, including my many so-called
| activists.
|
| What is needed is action. Not only government action but
| individual action, right now.
|
| An example: Plastics used by supermarkets to pack fruits and
| veg. Arguably that should be banned. But equally supermarkets
| wouldn't do it if people didn't buy all the same. So let's
| just stop buying fruits and veg packed in plastic. It might
| mean not buying anything for some time, but we'll survive.
| That's called putting your money where your mouth is.
| agumonkey wrote:
| a random googling gave
| http://www.eoht.info/page/Political+thermodynamics
|
| I'm curious now
| aj7 wrote:
| Meaningless without metrics such as energy cost per kg removed,
| etc. Do we have adequate means to reuse or dispose of the waste
| acquired? Does it have value that improves the metrics, or are
| there additional costs once the boat comes in? This technology is
| more useful once we have eliminated the waste SUPPLY, I suspect.
| radicsge wrote:
| You are forgetting the damage that the plastic is doing for the
| wildlife / fishes.
|
| The plastic is breaking down to the size that is impossible to
| capture. This project is needed yesterday already.
| JetBen wrote:
| Already got the next assignment for this kid once he's done with
| this project - get rid of space junk. =)
| trekrich wrote:
| Five Asian Countries Dump More Plastic Into Oceans Than Anyone
| Else Combined: How You Can Help
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahleung/2018/04/21/five-asi...
|
| more focus needs to be placed here. Everyone can do their bit.
| But they need to do more.
| newguy1234 wrote:
| The same guy in the article is also making a device that cleans
| river water before it goes into the ocean. I think it is a good
| idea overall.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyZArQMFhQ4
| Polylactic_acid wrote:
| I think it might be useful for governments globally to try to
| tackle these international problems. We all suffer from plastic
| in the ocean so its in everyone's interest to stop it.
| _0ffh wrote:
| Boyan Slat was on the Joe Rogan Experience about a month ago. If
| you're interested in the topic, I recommend you watch (or listen
| to) it!
| remote_phone wrote:
| We need a law that bans all single use plastic. We should only
| allow one or two forms of plastic that are guaranteed recyclable
| and make everything else compostable.
| bagacrap wrote:
| I don't think we need a full ban. The problem is plastic is so
| damn effective and sooo damn cheap. And that countries in
| certain parts of the world basically dump straight into the
| ocean. If all the plastics just go to landfill, they're really
| not a problem. We have sufficient unused terra firma to store
| millennia worth of plastic. Space is not an issue, collection
| is. And that's pretty hard to solve in the long tail of
| developing nations.
| egdod wrote:
| We, as in the United States? Or we, as in every country in the
| world but mostly the third world?
|
| The first one would be comparatively easy but would do almost
| no good. The second one would actually help, if it weren't
| impossible, but it is.
| philshem wrote:
| Here's an interesting 2019 New Yorker article about Ocean Cleanup
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/04/a-grand-plan-t...
| ggregoire wrote:
| They also built a solar-powered plastics interceptor boat to
| clean at the source.
|
| https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://www.ecowatch.com/ocean-cleaning-device-
| plastic-26408..., which points to this.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's absolutely sickening how in the food department of a
| supermarket it has become pretty much impossible to avoid plastic
| packaging. _Everything_ that I could buy in paper wrappings only
| a few years ago is now wrapped in plastic. Even things like
| apples and sliced cheese now come with plastic attached in some
| way or other.
|
| Never mind the stuff in plastic clamshells that doesn't need
| packaging at all. (Scissors for instance)
| konschubert wrote:
| If you live in a developed country, you can be quite confident
| that your plastic rubbish won't reach the ocean on human time
| scales.
|
| It's almost a non-issue, especially considering the existential
| threat that is climate change.
|
| (The climate impact of plastic packaging is negligible)
| notatoad wrote:
| yeah, i'm not sure how plastic waste has become such a hot
| issue recently, when the immediate threat is climate change
| and plastic waste is such a small contributor to climate
| change.
|
| plastic helps us reduce food waste, and food waste _is_ a
| contributor to climate change. reducing plastic usage where
| it 's unnecessary is obviously good, but plastic isn't
| inherently bad. sometimes it really is the best solution,
| even in single-use form.
| iso947 wrote:
| The climate impact of paper bags is higher - even with
| recycling
|
| That said, plastic bags do reach rivers in the west - far
| more than other plastic packaging. It might only be 1/10th of
| 1%, but that's still a million bags a year clogging our
| rivers in the UK alone (at least until the number reduced)
| spodek wrote:
| > The climate impact of paper bags is higher - even with
| recycling
|
| Plastic poisons wildlife and kills in other ways, so
| climate is a secondary, though significant, problem with
| plastic.
|
| In any case, the impact of using bags you already have --
| that is, no new bags -- is far lower and practical. Thrift
| stores are overflowing with canvas bags companies give away
| that people haven't yet learned to stop accepting since
| they have so many. I'm still using a bag I got in the 90s
| and refusing new ones.
| spodek wrote:
| I live by the Hudson River and see plastic in it every time I
| go. That's not even trying to look for it. It's always there.
| I volunteer in beach clean-ups and there is always more trash
| than anyone can pick up.
|
| Plastic kills wildlife, disrupts our systems, and such.
| Mentioning climate is a red herring. Actually, it isn't since
| plastic production takes energy and its profits contribute to
| drilling fossil fuels.
| rockinghigh wrote:
| Even in landfills, plastics pollute water and soil via
| phthalates and Bisphenol A.
|
| https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-
| stories/story/plastic...
| [deleted]
| peteradio wrote:
| I don't see anywhere in the linked article making your
| claim.
| Wald76 wrote:
| It's there:
|
| > Chemical effects are especially problematic at the
| decomposition stage. Additives such as phthalates and
| Bisphenol A (widely known as BPA) leach out of plastic
| particles. These additives are known for their hormonal
| effects and can disrupt the hormone system of vertebrates
| and invertebrates alike. In addition, nano-sized
| particles may cause inflammation, traverse cellular
| barriers, and even cross highly selective membranes such
| as the blood-brain barrier or the placenta. Within the
| cell, they can trigger changes in gene expression and
| biochemical reactions, among other things.
| peteradio wrote:
| "Even in landfills" per OPs claim. I don't see that claim
| being made in your selection there.
| arnoooooo wrote:
| You're forgetting the incentives to externalize such things.
| Developed countries love to pass their trash on to others who
| will be far less scrupulous.
|
| For instance, it's been documented that most non final
| nuclear waste in France goes to sit in large open vats in
| eastern Europe. As far as the French nuclear industry is
| concerned, it's being "recycled".
| KaiserPro wrote:
| > you can be quite confident that your plastic rubbish won't
| reach the ocean
|
| Alas this appears to be false. Plastic is being exported to
| Thailand et al for "recycling", since china has stopped
| accepting lowgrade rubbish.
|
| This means that when they "process" it, can can endup being
| dumped in rivers, or blown by the wind.
| https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-plastic-
| polluti...
|
| Now, one can argue that plastic is a permanent store of
| carbon. The problem is that we continue to produce plastic,
| which releases loads of carbon.
|
| So unless we reduce, reuse, and as a last resort recycled, we
| are continue to have issues.
| [deleted]
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > sliced cheese
|
| Well why are you buying cheese pre-sliced? If you opt for pre-
| sliced cheese, and pre-peeled oranges, and whatever then yeah
| you're going to need more packaging and you're being wasteful.
|
| If you buy a block of cheese then you don't need as much
| packaging, and you can wrap it in just paper. I'm sure you can
| manage the slicing part yourself when you get it home.
| close04 wrote:
| Unfortunately from what I see where I live they use plastic
| coated paper to wrap cheese or meat, and this is not
| recyclable either as paper or as plastic. It's used because
| it keeps any moisture or fat inside, won't not stick to the
| product making it harder to peel off, and allows the package
| to be heat sealed which is what most customers want.
| yread wrote:
| If you go to dutch market and buy a piece of old cheese they
| will cut it with a steel wire even though the have knives
| around. You can imagine slicing it for a sandwich would be
| challenging with a wire
| [deleted]
| jacquesm wrote:
| Because with pre-teen kids in the house buying your cheese in
| block form is going to end up in the ER, especially if it is
| old cheese.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Unsliced cheese is dangerous - that's your argument?
| jacquesm wrote:
| If you wish to read it that way you are welcome to.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Even if you are being totally serious and this is a
| problem you have... why not buy cheese in blocks and then
| slice it for your children?
| jacquesm wrote:
| It's not a problem I have because the supermarket sells
| sliced cheese. Besides that the problem is not with the
| cheese in slices per se but with the packaging (see top
| of the thread) and unsliced cheese is also sold in
| plastic.
| carapace wrote:
| Ancedata: the lady who works at the cafe near my mom's
| house sliced her finger clean off making a sandwich. They
| managed to reattach it and (I've heard) it's healing
| nicely.
| the-dude wrote:
| In the eighties and before this did not seem to be a
| problem.
| jacquesm wrote:
| In the eighties and before people cutting themselves
| while cutting hard cheese was pretty common.
|
| Just like you can cut your meats yourself, you can slice
| your bread yourself and so on this is mostly a
| convenience, but in case of hard cheese _if_ you 've
| never tried slicing Old Dutch you maybe should try it
| first.
|
| Even the stores can have trouble slicing it. Anyway, no
| need to take my word, just buy some if you can and give
| it a shot, and let me know how it worked out. Using a
| cheese slicer isn't going to work either, you'll need a
| very sharp knife and a steady hand and it will take a lot
| of force.
| danieldk wrote:
| I usually do not have much trouble cutting Old Amsterdam
| with a cheese slicer. But perhaps it's is not old enough
| ;).
|
| When we lived in Germany, the cheese counter people in
| the supermarket we terrified when I asked for Old
| Amsterdam, worried that I'd want to have it sliced ;).
| jacquesm wrote:
| "Old Amsterdam" is for tourists, and isn't old. It is
| actually a cheese that didn't exist until a few years
| ago, and actually simply is medium aged Gouda. But that
| doesn't sell nearly as well.
|
| Next time you are in NL (anywhere will do), find a half
| decent cheese shop and get yourself some "overjargige
| kaas", you'll love it if you like Old Amsterdam.
| danieldk wrote:
| _" Old Amsterdam" is for tourists, and isn't old. [...]
| Next time you are in NL (anywhere will do),_
|
| I have been born and raised in The Netherlands. I have
| eaten plenty of old Dutch cheeses during my lifetime.
|
| The thing is, Old Amsterdam is one of the few
| old(-tasting) Dutch cheeses that you can easily get
| abroad, such as in rural German, which is where I picked
| up that admittedly bad habit ;).
| jacquesm wrote:
| I can send you a selection of others if you want, email
| in my profile. It's the one thing I miss about NL when
| I'm abroad.
| rockinghigh wrote:
| Can you explain what you mean?
| jacquesm wrote:
| We really like 'hard' cheeses and hard is literally rock
| hard. Getting it sliced is practical. Even adults have
| trouble slicing cheese that hard themselves (I can do it,
| but then again, I used to run a metal workshop ;) ).
| capableweb wrote:
| Well, hard cheeses you usually use a normal knife to take
| pieces from. Semi-hard/normal hard, the ones you usually
| buy in block form, especially in families, are easily
| sliced with a "cheese slicer" (lacking the proper name,
| if it has it). Kids can for sure use a cheese slicer, in
| many countries, cheese blocks is the most common (by far)
| way to consume cheese.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I live in the place where those cheeses originate
| (Netherlands), and there is no way you're going to
| properly slice old Dutch with a cheese slicer, if it
| works at all.
|
| I can see an argument for why buying bread sliced is
| nonsense, ditto with Salami (though some of that
| Hungarian stuff is quite impressive, wonder how it would
| fare on the Rockwell test) and other stuff people slice
| up for sandwiches.
| capableweb wrote:
| > and there is no way you're going to properly slice old
| Dutch with a cheese slicer, if it works at all.
|
| For sure, and I agree. But AFAIK, hard cheeses like that
| is not what most people eat and what you find in most
| supermarkets (outside of Netherlands). And fine, if the
| cheese is so hard to slice yourself, wrap a couple of
| slices in some plastic. Problem is when everything,
| including semi-hard cheese, is double wrapped in plastic.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It was just an example, really. Not sure why everyone is
| so bothered by the fact that the cheese is sold sliced,
| besides the blocks are sold in plastic as well so it
| wouldn't change much.
| carapace wrote:
| I think people are picturing Velveeta slices: https://duc
| kduckgo.com/?q=Velveeta+slices&t=ffcm&atb=v60-1&i...
| jacquesm wrote:
| That barely qualifies as cheese.
| carapace wrote:
| Oh I know, thus the indignation (maybe.) One way or
| another you seem to have touched a nerve, eh? :-)
| capableweb wrote:
| > why everyone is so bothered by the fact that the cheese
| is sold sliced
|
| Because it's unnecessary. For example, where I live, the
| cheese package is plastic first, and then in-between each
| slice there is a sheet of plastic. Then since the
| packages only contain 10 slices, people buy multiple of
| them.
|
| It's a complete waste when there could be just one layer
| of plastic, or people could buy block cheese (unless,
| they live in Netherlands, only buy hard cheese and who's
| name start with "j" and ends with "acquesm")
|
| The point is try to figure out how we can replace plastic
| with something better, in the cases where it makes sense
| to replace it. Common things like cheese-packaging makes
| sense to care about, as all other plastic packaging.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Every kind of food processing or pre-processing is
| essentially not necessary. That doesn't mean that people
| will stop doing it. But we're concentrating on the
| packaging, not on what is bought and sliced cheese can be
| sold just fine without 'spacers' _especially_ when it is
| old... (It is the younger cheeses that tend to stick)
|
| So, it is simple: replace plastic with paper. Done. Ditto
| for almost everything else packaged in plastic. Besides,
| the plastic that ends up getting burned releases very
| poisonous compounds into the eco-system (dioxins).
| konschubert wrote:
| I've never heard of this. Why?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Because old dutch cheese is super hard.
|
| This is the good stuff:
|
| https://www.hollandkaascentrum.com/hollandse-kaas/oude-
| brokk...
| vxNsr wrote:
| We moved away from paper because we wanted to save the
| rainforest, now we're killing the oceans and forgot that the
| rainforests still need saving.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No paper bags were ever made of rainforest hardwoods.
| agumonkey wrote:
| For people in the US: does the SF zero waste lady still has
| followers ?
| gpvos wrote:
| The weird thing is that paper tends to cost more energy to
| produce than plastic, so in that sense plastic can be seen as
| the more environment-friendly choice. But yes, there's lots of
| stuff that doesn't need packaging at all.
| foob4r wrote:
| The problem is plastic lasts for decades or even centuries,
| ends up in the oceans, becoming food for fish that then choke
| on it.
|
| More energy in production for paper while true, also means
| that with solar and other renewable getting cheaper, that
| argument will be a distraction.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Never mind the stuff in plastic clamshells that doesn't need
| packaging at all. (Scissors for instance)
|
| Nice example. I hate the fact that I have to use a pair of
| scissors to open up a brand new pair of scissors. I've been
| under the impression that the use of the plastic packaging has
| been a focus on stop-loss from theft. That makes sense to a
| degree in the retail environment. Remember when CDs came in
| those big boxes so people wouldn't shove them down their pants?
|
| The styrofoam shrink wrapped packages of meat is another one
| that gets me. I much prefer going to the butcher where the meat
| comes wrapped in paper. However, it's much more convenient for
| shoppers to walk up to a display to get prepackaged servings
| rather than waiting in line for the butcher.
| croisillon wrote:
| The meat industry hates this weird trick against meat
| packaging.
| laserDinosaur wrote:
| >The styrofoam shrink wrapped packages of meat is another one
| that gets me
|
| The grocery store near me used to wrap up all the meat from
| their in house butcher in paper with a string - it was neat.
| Now they wrap it in plastic on those styrofoam trays. But to
| make it worse, they wrap each individual item in plastic, so
| if you buy a few pounds of chicken you end up with about 6
| individual containers of chicken. Its insane.
| gizmo wrote:
| Unfortunately the approaches taken by Ocean Cleanup make no
| sense. What Ocean Cleanup is doing isn't new, they're trying
| strategies that have previously been tried and found to be
| uneconomical/ineffective. This startup has received a lot of flak
| from experts for a reason: they're big on hype but haven't
| produced any results. Sending big diesel powered boats into the
| sea to collect a few thousand pounds of plastic is a joke.
|
| If the goal is to capture a gigantic amount of plastic cheaply,
| just place nets where polluted rivers in southeast Asia meet the
| sea. Those rivers carry all the plastic waste from the cities to
| the sea, so that's where the focus should be. But cleaning the
| rivers in poor parts of the world isn't a sexy hi-tech problem
| that results in TED talks. So Ocean Cleanup will continue to make
| more solar-powered autonomous boondoggles and they will
| accomplish nothing.
| ehnto wrote:
| If we stopped producing all plastic right now, the oceans would
| still be full of plastic. Even if we treat the source we'll
| still need to clean up. The damage has already been done. It
| won't go away on it's own over time.
| gizmo wrote:
| It's much cheaper to prevent plastic reaching the ocean than
| cleaning it up after, so that's where the focus should be.
| It's not a matter of the damage "already been done". All
| additional plastic that ends up in the ocean is still bad.
| Estimates are that 10% of all plastics produced annually ends
| up in the ocean, about 10 million tonnes annually. That's a
| staggering amount.
|
| The great pacific garbage patch -- as mentioned in the
| article -- is twice the size of Texas, but the garbage
| density is low: only 4 parts per m3. And only 5% of the
| garbage is at the surface (10 meters deep or so). That's what
| makes the cleanup fiendishly difficult. So let's focus on the
| low hanging fruit first.
| titzer wrote:
| > so that's where the focus should be.
|
| See this a lot. You are using your own limited attention
| span to argue that others shouldn't be doing the work they
| are doing because you can only think about one problem at a
| time. There are 7.7 billion people on this Earth damn it,
| we can and should work on multiple different parts of a
| problem at once. The garbage which is in the oceans needs
| to extracted (and extracted _now_ , before it gets ground
| into microplastics), and as others have mentioned, other
| people are working on catching runoff waste at river
| sources.
|
| I never really understood people who shout from the
| sidelines that people who are actually working their asses
| off on the problem are doing it wrong. Have a little more
| respect.
| ehnto wrote:
| I'm not saying Ocean Cleanup is good at what they're doing.
| I'm just saying we have no choice but to get good at
| cleaning up the plastic that is there, because it's not
| going away on it's own and no amount of prevention will
| reverse time.
|
| As I've mentioned elsewhere, I also have no confidence that
| all nations involved in polluting will stop and I suspect
| we'll still be putting plastic into the ocean for decades
| to come. Being better at cleaning the ocean may actually be
| the low-hanging fruit.
| Retric wrote:
| Ocean plastics have a finite lifespan. A significant
| percentage is unusually stable and lasts more than 20 years,
| but quite a bit is breaking down every day.
|
| Assuming they could scale this to 20,000 trips per year for 6
| billion dollars every year, they might reduce the rate of new
| plastics by 10%. However, this does not scale as it depended
| on a specific unusual situation.
| Polylactic_acid wrote:
| And then it breaks down in to smaller bits that the fish
| can eat and die.
| Retric wrote:
| No, you're describing what happens during the break down
| process. Afterwards it's not plastic.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4802224/
| pizza234 wrote:
| There's actually disagreement about oceans self cleaning (or
| not).
|
| From https://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-
| of-p... (and Flotsametrics):
|
| > to clean the ocean of floating plastic, you don't need to
| go out and get it, it will come to you. Yep, that's right.
| Oceanographer Curtis Ebbsmeyer, author of, Flotsametrics [33]
| describes a rarely talked about phenomena that occurs
| naturally in the ocean called Gyre Memory. Gyre Memory
| demonstrates that upon each orbit of a gyre, the gyre will
| spit out about half its contents. These contents will then
| either enter another current or gyre or wash up on land. As
| this repeats, it means that eventually, all the plastic in
| the ocean will be spit
|
| Slat's reply, from
| https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/responding-to-critics:
|
| > There is no data to support this statement. Actually, using
| the best models currently available (the Van Sebille and
| LebretonModels) we attempted to quantify the natural loss of
| plastics from the gyres, producing a figure of <0.1%/yr.
| Based on communication between our modelers and the makers of
| the models, we eventually decided to exclude this figure from
| the report, because the models are unreliable near the coast.
| But it's safe to say a gyre does not spit out half of its
| contents per rotation. Unfortunately, it appears that the
| plastic that's already trapped in the currents of the gyres
| does not simply go away by itself.
| ars wrote:
| But aren't stopping plastic production.
|
| So that means we need to be as efficient as possible in
| fixing this, and cleaning the ocean is much more work
| compared to filtering the mouths of the 10 or so main
| polluting rivers in Asia.
| keanzu wrote:
| > collect a few thousand pounds
|
| In a mission to clean up trash floating in the ocean,
| environmentalists pulled 40 tons (36 metric tons) of abandoned
| fishing nets this month from an area known as the Great Pacific
| Garbage Patch.
|
| https://www.voanews.com/science-health/40-tons-fishing-nets-...
|
| 40 tons in a month by an NGO funded by donations and sponsors.
| andreasley wrote:
| For comparison: About 60 tons (53 metric tons) of fishing
| nets are lost each month, reportedly. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumpe
| d-f...
| Retric wrote:
| Yet, their was more plastic in the Pacific when they left
| than when they started. Filtering river discharge could make
| a meaningful difference, what their doing is at best a
| publicity stunt.
|
| _Another 9 million tons (8 million metric tons) of plastic
| waste, including plastic bottles, bags, toys and other items,
| flow annually into the ocean from beaches, rivers and creeks,
| according to experts._ So 8,000,000 /year vs ~36 per month.
|
| In other words they spent 300,000$ and reduced the oceans
| added plastic load that month by 0.0054%.
| eliaspro wrote:
| "Filtering river discharge could make a meaningful
| difference ..."
|
| So basically, what the Ocean Cleanup project is also
| already doing with their Interceptor systems?
| https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
| Retric wrote:
| Sort of, though without the need for a boat or people on
| it.
|
| My suggestion would be two different lines each
| collecting from over half the river. One upstream and one
| down so boats can still easily navigate the channel.
| Further, you need a system designed to operate in floods
| when the majority of plastics are washed out to sea.
| [deleted]
| mikkelam wrote:
| ...Which is why they built the interceptor which grabs plastic
| exactly at the source. As their CEO argues, you need to do
| both. Remove legacy ocean garbage and prevent newer garbage as
| well.
|
| https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
| bagacrap wrote:
| It would surprise me if nets at the mouths of rivers didn't
| royally screw up the wildlife and/or boat traffic. And what
| do they do with that plastic they trap? The root problem is
| those societies have no better way to dispose of plastic than
| letting it drift to sea. Proper waste collection and disposal
| services are far preferable to installing a net and telling
| everyone, "Yo it's ok to throw all your trash in the river
| now."
|
| This startup is long on hype and has zero results. Ok they
| spent tons of money to collect a few lbs of trash. The CEO
| was on Joe Rogan last month telling everyone he was going to
| clean up half the patch in 5 years (not even sure what that
| means since it's constantly growing). How much did those
| ships cost to run per day though? $50k. So he doesn't even
| have a working POC if you factor in costs. He's just out
| there on a premature victory tour, doing more harm than good
| by convincing people that someone else has solved the plastic
| problem for them. What a hero.
| pssdbt wrote:
| This is an impressive level of negativity.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Is it? What cleaned up my country's rivers of plastic
| after many failed projects was a government program of
| paying for returned plastic bottles. In poor countries
| (and that's where the most of plastic comes from) you
| don't really need complex or super-smart automatic
| systems to do this job as manual work is cheap. Just pay
| enough for recycled plastic so that it makes a viable
| source of profit for those in need, and you'll have a
| massive army of people collecting waste much more
| diligent than any net or automated system.
| jacknews wrote:
| Fantastic news, but how effective is it?
|
| EG, It might be more effective to catch the plastic at source,
| and put these barriers on river mouths. Especially in Asia, which
| seems to be aa major 'contributor'. Though perhaps there's also a
| 'great Atlantic garbage patch'
| esotericn wrote:
| The same company also has exactly those barriers at major
| polluting rivers.
| ocschwar wrote:
| Initially it looked like their idea was only feasible in
| river mouths and not the open ocean. Definitely more
| efficient to put them in rivers, but now it looks like the
| ocean is fair game too.
| arkitaip wrote:
| They are already on it:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyZArQMFhQ4
| walrus01 wrote:
| And how much fuel was required to tow it out to the great pacific
| garbage patch and back again? The support vessel in the photo
| looks quite large. The daily operating cost for an offshore
| support vessel of that size is significant.
| neuronic wrote:
| This HAS to be a troll post. This thing goes out and attempts
| to clean first world luxury pollution while 10 cruise liners
| with gullible tourists drive past it but the clean up vessel is
| the one where we have to bring attention to its pollution??
|
| Before we axe this lets axe useless and shitty cruise liners
| first.
| bagacrap wrote:
| This HAS to be a troll post. The cost of cleanup should not
| exceed the benefit of cleanup, or it is definitionally not
| cleanup. The societal benefit of cruise ships is not measured
| in improvements to the environment, so it's harder to make a
| direct comparison and say if they're worth it overall.
|
| In any case, these are totally orthogonal operations. Both
| should be optimized.
| hourislate wrote:
| These Cleaning Devices should be placed at the mouth of these 10
| rivers. It would prevent 90% of all Ocean plastic.
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/almost-all-plastic-in-the-ocean-comes-...
| comicjk wrote:
| I think that article is based on outdated information. More
| recently people have started to look at plastic released on the
| open sea through fishing, and found it to be bigger than all
| land-based sources.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
| adaml_623 wrote:
| Sorry I think you've misread that article. Gear from fishing
| is "estimated to make up 10% of ocean plastic pollution".
|
| 70% of large things. 10% of total.
| mostlyjason wrote:
| They also built a system called The Interceptor that cleans
| rivers https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
| radicsge wrote:
| This is really cool technology, should get more advertisement
| keanzu wrote:
| Over three-quarters of the GPGP mass was carried by debris
| larger than 5 cm and at least 46% was comprised of fishing
| nets.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w
| unexaminedlife wrote:
| If it gets bad enough future generations will outlaw non-
| biodegradable products. So it's also in the best interest of
| producers to help in these matters.
|
| In fact, this is a little off topic, but there are 2 things that
| may coincide here. Exorbitant salaries of executives at most if
| not all of those same companies that play a huge role in the
| devastation should redirect that money to fixing some of the
| environmental issues their companies are exacerbating.
|
| If those companies aren't putting enough into offsetting the
| problems they're causing to the environment they shouldn't be
| paying their executives so much money. Redirect that money to the
| planet.
|
| I'd go so far to say financial companies may not play a huge role
| directly, but certainly play an enormous role indirectly. They
| should be paying that same penalty (re: executive salaries /
| profits) based on their portfolio of companies.
| arkitaip wrote:
| The fact that it can catch microplastics is very impressive.
| gus_massa wrote:
| The article and the press release has no numbers, so it's
| difficult to estimate how much miroplastic they got. My guess
| is that the holes in the net are too big to catch microplastic
| unless it gets stranded with other bigger plastic of plants.
|
| Also, this sentence of the article doesn't make sense:
|
| > _The system 's success in capturing microplastics came as a
| welcome surprise since microplastics tend to fall to the ocean
| floor rather than float on the surface, according to the press
| release. Since microplasitcs tend to sink, Ocean Cleanup
| focused on large pieces of plastic._
|
| The plastic float or sink according to it's density, not it's
| size.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Perhaps larger pieces of plastic contain trapped air that
| increases their bouyancy.
| carapace wrote:
| I'm pretty sure "microplasitcs (sic) tend to sink" is bogus
| nonsense.
| Aunche wrote:
| Rather than remove plastic from the ocean, wouldn't it be easier
| and better for the environment to just build landfills in
| developing countries.
| bagacrap wrote:
| Yeah but you don't get invited on an international book tour
| for obvious ideas like that.
| gizmo wrote:
| Contrary to public perception, landfills are the most
| environmentally friendly way to dispose of most types of
| garbage. The challenge is to get the garbage to the landfill.
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