Ocean cleaning device succeeds in removing plastic for the first time

https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/02/tech/ocean-cleanup-catching-plastic-scn-trnd/index.html

by lelf • 7 years ago

401 273 7 years ago

jacknews• 7 years ago

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'

esotericn4• 7 years ago

The same company also has exactly those barriers at major polluting rivers.

ocschwar3• 7 years ago

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.

arkitaip2• 7 years ago

They are already on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyZArQMFhQ4

arkitaip2• 7 years ago

The fact that it can catch microplastics is very impressive.

gus_massa2• 7 years ago

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.

bagacrap7• 7 years ago

Perhaps larger pieces of plastic contain trapped air that increases their bouyancy.

ridgeguy• 7 years ago

There will be a size below which fluid turbulence determines particle motion rather than particle density. This minimum size will increase for particles with rough surfaces or high shape drag coefficients, or both.

In air, this size is ~ 10µm diameter [1]. In seawater, it should be considerably larger because Reynold's number.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/airborne-pa...

spaceandshit• 7 years ago

Joe Rogan recently talked to the organization's founder for a second time, and discussed some of these things.

https://youtu.be/whRVyywTov4

lsh• 7 years ago

that was a good watch actually, recommended

bagacrap7• 7 years ago

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.

spodek9• 7 years ago

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.

Iv6• 7 years ago

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.

CaptArmchair6• 7 years ago

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...

chmod775• 7 years ago

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.

dylan6043• 7 years ago

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.

neuronic2• 7 years ago

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.

spodek9• 7 years ago

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.

monk_e_boy• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

ehnto6• 7 years ago

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.

esotericn4• 7 years ago

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.

vic-traill• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

spodek9• 7 years ago

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.

beatgammit2• 7 years ago

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.

voisin• 7 years ago

“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.

the_gastropod• 7 years ago

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)

syshum4• 7 years ago

>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.

edflsafoiewq2• 7 years ago

In a democracy, getting regulation passed is also a complicated distributed problem subject to all those problems.

vxNsr3• 7 years ago

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?

Pfhreak• 7 years ago

Buy from a local farmer or butcher. And eggs usually come in compostable packaging.

spodek9• 7 years ago

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.

forwhomst• 7 years ago

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.

almost_usual• 7 years ago

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.

lopmotr3• 7 years ago

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.

keymone• 7 years ago

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?

yesenadam• 7 years ago

I really like this idea. It has a fun element, which the subject desperately needs. Could be like the Ig Nobel prize[0], but for products/inventions that do the most harm, that make the world a worse place. Although I guess people wouldn't turn up to accept their prize. Maybe something like it already exists?

[0] which celebrates "unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research", mostly papers with totally absurd-sounding titles. https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/

The associated Luxuriant Flowing Hair Clubs for Scientists is possibly even more awesome. https://www.improbable.com/hair/

Cthulhu_• 7 years ago

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.

syshum4• 7 years ago

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.

ocschwar3• 7 years ago

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.

syshum4• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

agumonkey2• 7 years ago

a random googling gave http://www.eoht.info/page/Political+thermodynamics

I'm curious now

jacquesm14• 7 years ago

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)

agumonkey2• 7 years ago

For people in the US: does the SF zero waste lady still has followers ?

gpvos• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

dylan6043• 7 years ago

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.

laserDinosaur• 7 years ago

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.

croisillon• 7 years ago

The meat industry hates this weird trick against meat packaging.

konschubert2• 7 years ago

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)

iso947• 7 years ago

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)

rockinghigh2• 7 years ago

Even in landfills, plastics pollute water and soil via phthalates and Bisphenol A.

https://www.unenvironment.org/news-and-stories/story/plastic...

arnoooooo• 7 years ago

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".

spodek9• 7 years ago

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.

notatoad• 7 years ago

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.

KaiserPro• 7 years ago

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.

philliphaydon2• 7 years ago

Even tho most developed countries ship it overseas?

chrisseaton3• 7 years ago

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.

jacquesm14• 7 years ago

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.

close04• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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

vxNsr3• 7 years ago

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.

jacquesm14• 7 years ago

No paper bags were ever made of rainforest hardwoods.

walrus01• 7 years ago

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.

neuronic2• 7 years ago

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.

bagacrap7• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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-...

mostlyjason• 7 years ago

They also built a system called The Interceptor that cleans rivers https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/

radicsge4• 7 years ago

This is really cool technology, should get more advertisement

comicjk2• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

keanzu5• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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.

Aunche• 7 years ago

Rather than remove plastic from the ocean, wouldn't it be easier and better for the environment to just build landfills in developing countries.

bagacrap7• 7 years ago

Yeah but you don't get invited on an international book tour for obvious ideas like that.

gizmo4• 7 years ago

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.

hanniabu8• 7 years ago

This also assumes that the landfill is properly prepared. An unlined pit leaching chemicals into underground wells isn't that great.

sharcerer• 7 years ago

Is banning plastic from packaging really beneficial or not?

Came across this 2 days back. https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/status/121521275667838566...

ourlordcaffeine2• 7 years ago

The ocean cleanup device is absolutely terrible for floating marine life.

titzer2• 7 years ago

Not as bad as the plastic.

mcv6• 7 years ago

Is there evidence for that? I've seen people claim this, but I haven't seen any supporting evidence for it.

The ocean is big. At the moment, the ocean cleanup is still small. I'd suggest investigating the impact, rather than claiming there is impact without evidence. If it turns out the cure (cleanup) is worse than the disease (plastic), then it makes sense to stop the ocean cleanup. Until then, let's continue and see what this will accomplish.

ourlordcaffeine2• 7 years ago

It's been pointed out by experts in the field of floating marine life[1] [2]. Boyan has not been very co-operative with the scientists raising these concerns.

The current impact is small, but they plan to have loads of these constantly operating - that will cause huge impact.

[1] https://twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/status/1179861389575245824?...

[2] http://www.deepseanews.com/2019/02/the-ocean-cleanup-struggl...

remote_phone• 7 years ago

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.

egdod• 7 years ago

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.

mcv6• 7 years ago

We, as in humanity, I'd assume. Of course that means we need laws in every country, or a binding international agreement or something. In any case, "we", as in "everybody", need to quit using non-degradable plastic wrappers and bags.

bagacrap7• 7 years ago

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.

philshem• 7 years ago

Here’s an interesting 2019 New Yorker article about Ocean Cleanup

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/04/a-grand-plan-t...

gizmo4• 7 years ago

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.

mikkelam• 7 years ago

...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/

bagacrap7• 7 years ago

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.

ehnto6• 7 years ago

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.

gizmo4• 7 years ago

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.

ars• 7 years ago

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.

Retric4• 7 years ago

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.

pizza234• 7 years ago

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.

stjohnswarts2• 7 years ago

Nihilism and throwing your hands up and giving up won't help anything.

keanzu5• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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/dumped-f...

Retric4• 7 years ago

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%.

ggggtez• 7 years ago

40 tons is about 80 thousand pounds. The above poster said "a few" thousand. 80 is usually more than a few... But, What is the scale of the problem? How much trash is there?

Maybe it is correct to think of 40 tons as not a big dent in the problem, but I'm not sure.

Steuard• 7 years ago

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.

radicsge4• 7 years ago

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?

Reedx• 7 years ago

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.

bagacrap7• 7 years ago

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.

OscarCunningham• 7 years ago

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.

aj7• 7 years ago

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.

radicsge4• 7 years ago

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.

_0ffh• 7 years ago

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!

JetBen• 7 years ago

Already got the next assignment for this kid once he's done with this project - get rid of space junk. =)

ggregoire• 7 years ago

They also built a solar-powered plastics interceptor boat to clean at the source.

https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers

mrtrombone• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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

belorn3• 7 years ago

I assume that ocean also has a relatively low density of fish altogether

Interesting assumption but false. The places where fish are located is often pretty dense in fish. That is to say, fish are not evenly distributed. They tend to swim in school of fish, and oceans have vast "desert" areas where the bottom is made of sand and very little else.

The Pacific Garbage Patch is interesting target for cleaning because it has a higher density of plastic compared to other areas. The question is if the density is high. Fishing technique has very little insight to give here beyond technology such as radar and echo sounding, but I am uncertain how effective that would be.

Creating an effective device to clean large swathes of low density ocean is going to require novel designs. For high density areas there are divers, and recreational divers are actually one of the current biggest force in cleaning up water around beaches. The problem is that it does not scale.

hinkley• 7 years ago

Have we got a clever word for rejecting one cause in favor of another? ”Whataboutism“ seems to miss the mark here.

The world is a big place, there are a lot of things that contribute to problems. I dunno why so many people think there is one way to solve them, or that pursuit of that priority should obviate all others.

For one, what if you’re wrong? If you haven’t hedged your bets you have to start from scratch, maybe undo what you’ve done first. Big problems require many solutions, not big solutions.

I mean, I don’t personally see how they’ll ever get the numbers to work, but you can’t have a marketplace for ideas and then evict everyone. There are some ideas that are similar to these that seem to actually work already, like the giant mesh bags over drain pipes. Who knows where inspiration will come from.

p1necone• 7 years ago

I see this particular brand of whataboutism a lot. It seems glaringly obvious to me that they're arguing in bad faith.

keanzu5• 7 years ago

Have we got a clever word for rejecting one cause in favor of another?

Either/or thinking, false dilemma, false dichotomy, false binary

Any of those resonate?

keanzu5• 7 years ago

Here's a guy who saw a problem. Decided to go out and do something about the problem. Raised money from sponsorships and donations. Did something about the problem.

Hard to see what's not to like.

istjohn• 7 years ago

At the risk of stating the obvious, The Ocean Cleanup has nothing to do with preventing climate change. That's not to say it is or isn't worthwhile.

hanniabu8• 7 years ago

While I agree, it also technically is associated since garbage in the ocean is leading to ecological issues, which through chain events can effectively affect the global ecology, which in turn affects the climate. I'm not saying this is any measurable amount, both due to complexity and relativity, but I think it's also important it's not forgotten that how we treat the environment has far-reaching affects one the food chain (and fauna) is affected.

hanniabu8• 7 years ago

Thank you for writing this. You've worded it a lot better and more cordial than I could have as I'm really astonished by the level of ignorance in this thread.

spookthesunset• 7 years ago

It is the same basic attitude that dismissed Dropbox or the iPod. Software Engineers love to think because their field requires constant learning it somehow translates into their ability to understand and pass judgment on fields outside of their own. I think the term is “engineers disease” and it is super frustrating.

Sangama34• 7 years ago

This should not be an area of focus - There are better climate change opportunities to put money towards

People who put money should decide the area of focus. Not others.

The project is ineffective and introduces a lot of other environmental problems

This achievement matters and useful in itself. May be they can figure it out how to scale or will find more commercially viable products from this sort of technology.

trekrich• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

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_acid2• 7 years ago

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.

dang• 7 years ago

Url changed from https://www.ecowatch.com/ocean-cleaning-device-plastic-26408..., which points to this.

popopje• 7 years ago

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• 7 years ago

This is great. Doers versus talkers,nice to see a doer get a win

Ocean cleaning device succeeds in removing plastic for the first time

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