Giant Trap Is Deployed To Catch Plastic Littering the Pacific Ocean (nytimes.com) 227
A nonprofit has deployed a multimillion-dollar floating boom designed to corral plastic debris littering the Pacific Ocean (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source). The 2,000-foot-long structure left San Francisco Bay on Saturday. According to The New York Times, Ocean Cleanup "aims to trap up to 150,000 pounds of plastic during the boom's first year at sea." From the report: Within five years, with the creation of dozens more booms, the organization hopes to clean half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Over the next several days, the boom will be towed to a site where it will undergo two weeks of testing. If everything goes as planned, the boom will then be brought to the garbage patch, nearly 1,400 miles offshore, where it is expected to arrive by mid-October, said Boyan Slat, 24, the Dutch inventor and entrepreneur who founded Ocean Cleanup.
The cleanup system is supposed to work like this: After the boom detaches from the towing vessel, the current is expected to pull it into the shape of a "U." As it drifts along, propelled by the wind and waves, it should trap plastic "like Pac-Man," the foundation said on its website. The captured plastic would then be transported back to land, sorted and recycled. The boom has an impenetrable skirt that hangs nearly 10 feet below to catch smaller pieces of plastic. The nonprofit said marine life would be able to pass underneath.
The cleanup system is supposed to work like this: After the boom detaches from the towing vessel, the current is expected to pull it into the shape of a "U." As it drifts along, propelled by the wind and waves, it should trap plastic "like Pac-Man," the foundation said on its website. The captured plastic would then be transported back to land, sorted and recycled. The boom has an impenetrable skirt that hangs nearly 10 feet below to catch smaller pieces of plastic. The nonprofit said marine life would be able to pass underneath.
Giant Trap (Score:5, Funny)
People For The Ethical Treatment Of Giants will start a protest campaign.
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Simpsons? One of my moms friends used to work on the Sea Shepherd. This is how people can protect the environment. Set up a non profit and go off to sea and fight the ignorance, hate and misery against Mother Earth created by white privilege.
I trust that you are being sarcastic or ironic rather than stupid. Almost all of the ocean plastic comes from China and Africa.
I'm more of an environmentalist than most in here, but banning plastic straws in 'Murrica is virtue signalling, and the problem being caused by "white privilege" is about as wrong as you can get.
Solve the problems that can be solved (Score:3)
I'm more of an environmentalist than most in here, but banning plastic straws in 'Murrica is virtue signalling, and the problem being caused by "white privilege" is about as wrong as you can get.
Reducing use of plastic straws is nothing more than solving a problem that can be solved. Sure there probably is some virtue signalling and other stuff too but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem or that we shouldn't bother. Nobody who knows what they are talking about is claiming it is the biggest source of plastic pollution. It's a relatively small part of the problem but if we can mitigate that waste stream then we damn well should. Plastic straws are merely low hanging fruit so pick it while we can
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Plastic straws are merely low hanging fruit so pick it while we can.
There is plenty of fruit that's even lower and bigger. Plastic grocery bags for instance.
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And that's been/being done. Some municipalities require stores to charge for bags. Usage is down and reuse of those purchased is up because they now are seen to have a cost/value.
Plastic microbeads have been largely banned in cosmetics. And so now straws. Keep looking for low hanging fruit. Find/attack all of it.
And when that mass of trash they collect comes back, look through it to see what's non-obvious but something we can eliminate/reduce. (The pile they bring back will not really be clean data --
Re: Solve the problems that can be solved (Score:2)
In San Diego, dozens of people have died from a Hep outbreak which was traced back to the fee on bags, which were previously being used by the homeless to safely dispose of feces.
How many people have plastic straws killed?
There are unintended consequences to decisions like this. They are usually bad consequences for people, because the people - when they had the freedom to choose - chose the status quo.
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It's a relatively small part of the problem but if we can mitigate that waste stream then we damn well should. Plastic straws are merely low hanging fruit so pick it while we can.
I would say that plastic straws are the six-pack rings of the 2010s, except that six-pack rings are still here and still killing wildlife so they are the six-pack rings of the 2010s. Still, plastic straws seem to have a disproportionate effect on sea life, so it seems reasonable to prioritize them. Yes, I cut up my six-pack rings, and I prefer glass in cardboard to aluminum cans (yum, plastic liner!) in six-pack rings anyhow.
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Reducing use of plastic straws is nothing more than solving a problem that can be solved.
Explain how the US banning plastic straws solves the problem of Africa and China polluting the ocean with their plastic?
As much as I think about it, it just doesn't.
Sure there probably is some virtue signalling and other stuff too but that doesn't mean it isn't a problem or that we shouldn't bother.
I'd be all in favor of making posession and use of plastic straws a crime if I owned a facility that makes paper straws. Then again - why do we not ban straws altogether? Less trees cut down you know. You do care about the trees dont you?
Nobody who knows what they are talking about is claiming it is the biggest source of plastic pollution.
The problem isn't people who know what they are talking about. The problem is the cynical manipulation of p
Re: Giant Trap (Score:2)
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Stainless steel straws are also great for growing bacteria.
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So is your nose. You can expect that if you don't clean an object, it'll get dirty, and fun things will grow on them. Most of those fun things you had introduced via your lips. Most of those fun things won't hurt you as they're re-introduced into your biome.
If you're a habitual straw user (and many are), you can re-use the same straw many times without cleaning it and surprise, it won't hurt you! At some point, you're welcome to clean it.
The same can be said for most reusable cups, too. Obtain the size and
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So is your nose. You can expect that if you don't clean an object, it'll get dirty, and fun things will grow on them. Most of those fun things you had introduced via your lips.
You can get your lips inside your nose?
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And if you don't have a dishwasher ?
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You boil the straws. That should work for sanitizing any drinking straw made of glass, metal, or even plastic.
If you don't have a pot and something to heat it to boiling then you have bigger problems than finding a drinking straw. If you don't have water to boil your drinking straws then what are you drinking?
I remember reading that certain metals have natural antiseptic properties. Silver and brass/bronze/copper will kill bacteria, as I recall. Get a straw made of such materials, either as an alternati
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Not to mention banning straws is actively fucking over people without the motor-skills necessary to drink from a glass.
Nobody is banning straws. .
Correction: http://www.foxnews.com/politic... [foxnews.com] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com] https://www.fastcompany.com/40... [fastcompany.com]
Yes, there is a lot ov virtue signaling going on, while the countries that are doing the actual plastic pollution continue unabated.
For me, it is a matter of whether we want to pat ourselves on the back, perhaps give out friend of the earth trophies, or actually fix the problem.
Banning plastic straws in the US is simply not going to accomplish anything.
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No, it's actually a smart plan. Start with biggest polluters that can be removed for the smallest cost.
That's linear thinking. Measures can be done in parallel; there's no need to not do A because B is more important.
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Measures can be done in parallel; there's no need to not do A because B is more important.
Yes, sounds good, except they aren't being done in parallel. People get rid of straws, and then feel so good about themselves that they stop.
False dilemma (Score:3)
No, it's actually a smart plan. Start with biggest polluters that can be removed for the smallest cost.
Wow, where to start...
1) There is no resource constraint here necessitating a particular order of action. We have the money and manpower to address multiple waste streams at the same time.
2) There is no reason to delay mitigate a small waste stream merely because it is (relatively) small if we have the ability to mitigate it (which we do)
3) The biggest sources of plastic pollution will almost certainly take much longer to address so delaying action on the smaller ones is foolish
4) You're line of thinking i
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Plenty of places are choosing only to get rid of straws, while still selling (much bigger) plastic cups lids, and bags, so people are not doing everything in parallel that they could.
delaying action on the smaller ones is foolish
Nope. Every action has a cost, and not just monetary but also public goodwill. If you start doing trivial stuff that is not really bringing any benefit to the oceans, but you annoy the public, then you lose credit, and you'll have a harder time getting support for further regulations.
Moving the goal posts (Score:2)
Plenty of places are choosing only to get rid of straws, while still selling (much bigger) plastic cups lids, and bags, so people are not doing everything in parallel that they could.
Nice attempt to move the goalposts by introducing a separate issue. Yes we should deal with the other waste streams as well but we need to start somewhere. Straws are easily the least necessary and most easily replaced component so it's a reasonable place to start. (most people can drink from a cup without a straw but a straw isn't very useful without a cup) Nobody is arguing that there aren't other sources of plastic waste that we should be working on as well. Plenty of places are already starting to
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This is why there is poop all over the streets in San Francisco.
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This is why there is poop all over the streets in San Francisco.
There is poop all over the streets of San Francisco because San Francisco does not have enough public restrooms. They avoid installing them because the nation's mentally ill and/or homeless are sent to California, and they will shit all over them, causing a maintenance problem. So in fact, there is poop all over the streets of San Francisco because the rest of the country doesn't take care of its own.
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This is very likely the only time the AC expresses any interest in the problems of the disabled, when it is an excuse to say "fucking liberals". If someone were to suggest that laws require restaurants to keep a supply of plastic straws for the disabled the AC would probably post to denounce those "fucking liberals" imposing snowflake requirements on "the market".
The free floating anger that Republicans tap into. Teach the stupid to blame everything on a target group, and it is amazing what you cen get them to do.
Anyhow, it remains that the gyres of plastic and the mechanically degraded forms are indeed a problem, no matter the political inclinations of any one person.
I am not a modern Republican because I point out that blaming the usual targets will not fix the problem. We can't clean this up by New York or Tennessee banning plastic drinking straws.
New Yor
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It comes from China and Africa because we send our garbage there, not because they're using so much plastic on their own.
Right. They pay us for the plastic, then just throw it in the river for the lulz.
Coolest freaken story ever, bro!
You are like a Republican trying to explain how trickle down theory works. Only the narrative of "evil white people" is your touchstone.
problem should be fought at the source (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of the plastic in the ocean comes from a handful of rivers. Put the giant trap in the mouths of those rivers, and you'll catch a lot more.
Re:problem should be fought at the source (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the plastic in the ocean comes from a handful of rivers. Put the giant trap in the mouths of those rivers, and you'll catch a lot more.
This is actually what most scientists who study the issue suggest. The boom idea in the open ocean has been tried and found seriously lacking for almost 30 years at this point.
Prevention or collection near shore is much more cost effective with a lot fewer of the negative impacts on sea life. The mid ocean gyres will dissipate on their own if the source of more plastics is reduced or eliminated.
This revived idea has been criticized since the kid first proposed it 5 years ago and he does not seemed to have learned anything and is much more concerned with promoting himself than actually having a real impact on the problem.
http://www.deepseanews.com/201... [deepseanews.com]
http://www.deepseanews.com/201... [deepseanews.com]
http://www.deepseanews.com/201... [deepseanews.com]
And actual research on where the best place to make an impact is:
http://iopscience.iop.org/arti... [iop.org]
Re:problem should be fought at the source (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most people don't know just how big Texas is.. Maybe I can help..
You could drive more than 8 hours on interstate highways and barely be able to cross Texas either north and south, or East and west. And our speed limits range up to 75 mph in places.
Two of the top ten most populated metropolitan are in Texas. Dallas-Ft Worth is #5 and Huston is #6. Don't forget San Antonio is there too (like #35 of 50).
The GDP of Texas would be #11 in the world if it was a country of it's own.
It's the second largest st
Re:problem should be fought at the source (Score:4, Funny)
It's the second largest state (only Alaska is bigger)
And if Texas doesn't stop bragging about how big it is, Alaska is going to divide itself in two and thus make Texas into the 3rd biggest state instead of the 2nd.
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There is no pile of garbage twice the size of Texas. There's an area twice the size of Texas that has a relatively high concentration of garbage, but if you're swimming in the middle of it odds are you can't spot a single piece of garbage at any given time. The actual mass of the great pacific garbage patch, according to the article, is a mere 87,000 tons.
Anyway, the proposal was I believe about 60 booms. The first one is just the test. All unpowered, carried by natural currents, which isn't so bad when you
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And this boom takes out just 70 tons of plastic per year and costs multiple millions. Seriously?
Yes, Seriously: people are still profiting from being a source of plastic which finds its way into the oceans. They should be taxed to pay for all this plastic to be removed.
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While this is true, you also have to develop and demonstrate the plastic catching boom system.
This boom is not being tested in the ideal location for maximum plastic removal, it is being tested where there is already a lot of plastic that needs to be removed. I don't see why this should be seen as a failure or a problem. If it works well, more can be deployed in other areas.
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Agree that indeed lots of plastic enter the ocean from a river but also beach tourism, (cargo) ships, illegal dumping,...
Of the plastic entering, only 2% comes from North American sources. China/Asia are responsible for the vast majority of plastic in the oceans.
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There's no point in working on cleaning up the plastics already in the deep ocean until we've addressed the much simpler and much bigger problem of the new plastics flow. If we expend great resources to solve the harder problem and clean up the whole ocean before we've stopped the new flow, the problem we solved will be right back where it was in a few years.
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And in phase 3, the traps should grind the plastic into slush, dry it, burn it, and use it to fuel themselves.
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Even if these devices just dried and burned the trash as it’s collected, converting it into atmospheric CO2, we would still be environmentally better off than having it floating in the ocean.
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Yes, we would. The greenies would hate it of course. I do have to wonder though if one could figure out a way to make the collection process slightly energy positive, so that in addition to being self-contained ocean cleaners, the surface support vehicles could also become emergency fueling stations.
Re:problem should be fought at the source (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think there is an easy solution to this. However a good start might be to require countries receiving foreign aid to demonstrate advances in sanitation and pollution control and hold them to it.
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I recall watching a BBC documentary about a large town, in Africa IIRC, and people just slung their garbage in the river. Just dumped it all in. Human waste, glass, plastic, metal, everything. And the factories dumped pollutants like dyes and other assorted toxic materials in there too. Consequently the river downstream to this craphole was completely dead and covered floating garbage.
al-Jazeera has an article up about a landfill in India. Originally designed to be no more than 20 meters high it is currently 65 meters high and has already killed people in an Idiocracy-style trash landslide. It's really rather mind blowing how things can get into a state like that so quickly.
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If we can drive drown the price of robotics and drive up (this will happen naturally, unfortunately) the cost of raw materials, that garbage dump will turn into a mine. This really is the key -- monetize the garbage. When you can profit from your trash, you won't throw it in the river, and the developed nations will work to do a good job on recycling it en masse.
Right now, garbage is not worth enough.
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Presently, unfortunately, the USA does the exact opposite: we deny foreign aid to any organization connected to abortions.
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Dude, it's worse than THAT.
https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
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In fairness, our ancestors in North America and Europe did the same stuff
Yeah, before it was understood what a problem it was. What year is it?
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I recall watching a BBC documentary about a large town, in Africa IIRC, and people just slung their garbage in the river. Just dumped it all in. Human waste, glass, plastic, metal, everything. And the factories dumped pollutants like dyes and other assorted toxic materials in there too. Consequently the river downstream to this craphole was completely dead and covered floating garbage.
I don't think there is an easy solution to this. However a good start might be to require countries receiving foreign aid to demonstrate advances in sanitation and pollution control and hold them to it.
"Require"?
You racist imperialist!
Right. So, back to the technological solutions ...
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This is crazy talk. Foreign aid is a really cheap way of influencing how countries develop. The key is not to stop giving them aid, it's to aid the things you like (birth control, small businesses, intelligent policing) and not aid the things you don't (military policing, expansionist armies, trade agreements with China, etc.).
The key is to have a strong structure for negotiating and monitoring aid, rather than eviscerating the State Department based on nutty ideas about foreign aid not being cost-effecti
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Most of the plastic in the ocean comes from a handful of rivers. Put the giant trap in the mouths of those rivers, and you'll catch a lot more.
Yet the plastic shaming is aimed at the US and Europe.
Its like looking under a streetlamp for your lost keys when you know you didn't lose them there, but hey, the light's better.
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Most of the plastic in the ocean comes from a handful of rivers. Put the giant trap in the mouths of those rivers, and you'll catch a lot more.
Yet the plastic shaming is aimed at the US and Europe.
Its like looking under a streetlamp for your lost keys when you know you didn't lose them there, but hey, the light's better.
No it isn't, so stop playing a victim. Article after article and paper after paper points out that sampling has shown that the vast majority of the material in the Pacific garbage patches, for example, is generated by China and about 10 other Asian countries, here the US is in 20th place. Basically he is right, plugging those sources of garbage would solve a huge part of the problem. This does not mean that plastic shaming is misplaced since use-once-and-throw-away plastic packaging is a huge problem, the n
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It's like asking a millionaire to keep his yard sanitary, even though the homeless guy by the river doesn't. When Europe was impoverished and industrializing it polluted a lot more too.
Also, a significant fraction of the pollution in the developing world is from the manufacture of products for developed world consumption -- and so altering consumption can still change the market incentives and help that problem.
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It's like asking a millionaire to keep his yard sanitary, even though the homeless guy by the river doesn't.
It's exactly like that, which is why it's reasonable. The millionaire has a much larger yard, and has a lot more money to put stuff in his yard, so he can do a lot more damage.
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Honestly, this sounds smart. Not as a 'don't-do-the-ocean-thing-now' but as a cheaper preventative.
What rivers? Where should the traps go?
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Are these people a little new? Did they consider that this net is also going to catch some plankton, fish, dolphins, turtles, etc?
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Oh, and how are ships going to avoid this huge obstruction?
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As you do this, your have probably noticed how light and bulky recyclable material is compared to what gets trashed. It largely consists of containers and packaging. Separating this at the source would really cut into our landfill problem.
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It's even better to fight the problem at the source: don't dump it in those rivers. Or still better, fight the problem at the source: don't make single use articles from material that lasts for ever. With that out of the way, let's think about what we could do about the plastic that's already in the oceans. I heard a young guy from the Netherlands is working on something...
Given that almost all of the ocean plastic comes from China and Africa, if the US and Europe made all plastic packaging illegal, it would have no effect on the problem. It is probably better to talk to the people that are causing the problem.
The problem isn't plastics, it is what some people do with them.
Paper packaging involves cutting down trees. If the packaging needs to be structurally sound, it needs to be first use.
Glass takes a lot of energy to produce
And if people just threw their paper pack
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The issue with this world view is that unless you have more to offer than talk how exactly do you expect to persuade poorer nations to change? The west got rich while creating massive pollution (and in many cases still pollutes more per person than countries like China). You can talk to them all you like, but they want to get wealthy to and a nation that already got wealthy while
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The issue with this world view is that unless you have more to offer than talk how exactly do you expect to persuade poorer nations to change?
I've already addressed this in some other posts, but I'll try to do a listing here.
One of my ground rules is when working a problem, I insist on working the problem.
So the problem is that there are ten specific and known rivers that are putting over 90 percent of the plastic that ends up in the pacing and Atlantic Gyres.
The problem is also that after abrading or other decomposition, the plastic ends up in sea life.
The answer to the problem is to reduce the amount of plastic that ends up in the oce
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Glass recycling is more about reducing raw material consumption/removal than saving energy.
Developed nations are responsible for this mess (Score:3, Insightful)
This may not really help with cleanup but we can at least agree that developed nations are 100% responsible for this plastic mess.
Sadly, these same nations preach to the developing ones about the "need to protect the environment."
Huh!!
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Most of the plastic comes from India and China. I'll let you argue about their development.
Re:Developed nations are responsible for this mess (Score:4, Insightful)
> Most of the plastic comes from India and China
and the so-called developed nations (a) started it and (b) are doing their best to keep it running. Where do you think most of the crap at WalMart is coming from? Exactly.
That's "exporting pollution".
Wise up before spewing nonsense.
Re:Developed nations are responsible for this mess (Score:4, Interesting)
Where do you think most of the crap at WalMart is coming from? Exactly.
WalMart is not the one telling the manufacturers to dump their garbage in the rivers.
Besides, check google images for "plastic garbage rivers", and you'll see that it's a lot of plastic bottles and bags, not manufacturing waste.
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1000 times no. You're not INVESTING. You're cash hording.
When the US and other developed nations start paying for better packaging that is
fetishized elsewhere
produced for export in those target countries
a target for developing cheaper manufacturing processes
all of these come together to make India's trash look more like what we want to see. It also makes it easier for us to point to the trash and say "all of this is unacceptable -- look at what we do."
You need
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This may not really help with cleanup but we can at least agree that developed nations are 100% responsible for this plastic mess.
Those developed nations where you were sending your first world garbage? Is that the developed nations you're talking about?
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This may not really help with cleanup but we can at least agree that developed nations are 100% responsible for this plastic mess.
Are you sure about that? Most developed nations are pretty good about getting the plastic either recycled or into a landfill. It's the undeveloped nations that do not have the proper sanitation where a majority of marine plastic originates. Also, somewhat surprisingly, undeveloped nations tend to use a lot single use plastic products because they are cheaper. Many of these plastic products might be designed in developed countries and developed countries are also indirectly involved as their technology i
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This may not really help with cleanup but we can at least agree that developed nations are 100% responsible for this plastic mess.
This is as wrong as it gets. Exactly where did you get that idea?
I know the UN has been putting out a lot of information that is trying to walk a tightrope, but with implied blame being white Usians. But they know exactly where the problem's sources are, And they aren't here.
Fact is, as much fun as it is to blame everything on us, it takes cognitive dissonance worthy of a senile Fox viewer to blame the problem on who they are trying to blame it on.
It doesn't fit their racial narrative, because the pe
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What mess? Plastic is inert. It literally doesn’t matter how much we dump in the ocean.
Even when you’rel lucky enough to get plastic that stays inert in seatwer, which eats into almost everything, it will still get mechanically ground into tiny pieces. Then these get into the food chain.
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Right, so packaging needs to become a foreign aid talking point.
Gentrification! (Score:2)
Great if it works; good luck to them (Score:2)
But I'm skeptical, as are some of the experts cited in the BBC article, I mean the GPGP is really, really big - 1.6 million square kilometers.
Gonna take a lot to clean that up...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Sounds like a good start (Score:3)
but with 5 billion new pounds of plastic ending up in the Pacific every year, they're gonna need a whole lot more booms.
Apparently there is also a large plastic presence in the Atlantic in addition to the East and West Pacific gyres.
Re:Sounds like a good start (Score:4, Funny)
but with 5 billion new pounds of plastic ending up in the Pacific every year, they're gonna need a whole lot more booms.
It will be a booming business.
Bad At Maths (Score:5, Interesting)
Eight million tons of plastic [nationalgeographic.com] is dumped into the Pacific every year, mostly by third-world countries. This floating boom is estimated to collect 150,000lb (68 tons) a year. So to stand still, you'd need 8000000/68 of them, i.e. 117,647 multimillion-dollar floating booms. Let's be generous and say they cost $2m each. That's $235,294,118,000.
As there are 195 countries in the world, it would be cheaper and far more effective to use that $235bn so that each country in the world runs a $1bn campaign to recycle/replace all plastic. Though considering that most of the plastic comes from just 10 countries...
Wrong math. That's not the point (Score:2, Flamebait)
Over 40,000 peoppe got to feel good while giving Boyan Slat $33 million and making him famous. A win for them and a win for him.
It's like donating at a dinner where Al Gore speaks about the environment. Donors feel good writing checks that cover the cost of the 200 gallons per hour of jet fuel burned in Gore's Lear jet to get him there. Donors feel good because he said "green" fourteen times, Gore gets to jet set around in a Lear jet. Win win.
red herring (Score:2)
1) Oversimplification: It's not a like in the details to make a fair comparison. You can simplify every action movie into "good guy kills bad people" and say they are all the same. You can not measure the impact Al Gore has trying to herd the cats; you can measure the impact of this plastic sifting. Getting whole countries to wake up earlier is immeasurable. let alone the donor impact easily offsetting jet fuel which Gore has bought CO2 offsets all by himself (for decades now... leading into fallacy 2:)
2) r
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Eight million tons of plastic [nationalgeographic.com] is dumped into the Pacific every year, mostly by third-world countries. This floating boom is estimated to collect 150,000lb (68 tons) a year. So to stand still, you'd need 8000000/68 of them, i.e. 117,647 multimillion-dollar floating booms. Let's be generous and say they cost $2m each. That's $235,294,118,000.
As there are 195 countries in the world, it would be cheaper and far more effective to use that $235bn so that each country in the world runs a $1bn campaign to recycle/replace all plastic. Though considering that most of the plastic comes from just 10 countries...
No, a global campaign to minimise the use of packaging plastic and recycle what cannot be done away with would only be a good start. One way to do that would be to float the idea to slap tariffs on the products of polluter countries (which should play well in the current White House) unless they clean up their act over a given grace period. Once the flow of plastic has been drastically reduced it will still be necessary to clean up the oceans. It is utterly impractical to send the bill for the clean up to t
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Not only will it only collect up to 68 tons a year, but it will also use quite a few tons of fuel doing that, causing pollution. Plus the pollution cost of making and one day scrapping the thing. Is this really a good trade-off, or a feel-good measure?
Sigh (Score:4, Insightful)
Its a drop in the ocean. :(
Curious (Score:2)
I wonder how Hurricane resistant their design is. . . .
One question (Score:2)
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or a small rock?
Lewis Carroll Didditt! ;) (Score:2)
[RANDOM MODE]
"...If seven maids with seven mops
Swept it for half a year,
Do you suppose,' the Walrus said,
That they could get it clear?'
I doubt it,' said the Carpenter,
And shed a bitter tear..."
[/RANDOM MODE]
mnem
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43914/the-walrus-and-the-carpenter-56d222cbc80a9
`Use surface matting algae (Score:4, Interesting)
Seeding areas of open ocean with nutrients that promote the rapid growth of sutrface algae has been suggested as a way of sequestering atmospheric and ocean-dissolved CO2. The Pacific gyre would already be an ideal place to do this, because nutrient and algae would be held in the gyre by surface circulation, rather than being scattered.
Suppose we seed with one of the algal species that forms surface mats while it grows, with some closely matched nutrient that promotes temporary explosive growth of it? As it grows, a surface mat would entrain whatever is floating there. When it dies and sinks, it would pull down trash and particles floating near the surface. As a bonus, such a mat would kill and pull down a lot of fish under it - the fish that have been ingesting the plastic micro particles associated with the trash. We don’t want those fish to stay in the food chain.
We need more technological hubris. It’s the only way to solve the really big problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Technology hubris is a good thing, agreed. But you don't want the plastic dropping down. You want it near the top where it can be collected. Plastic on the bottom is out of sight out of mind, but still an issue.
Could we instead pick up the mats and monetize them somehow?
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No, you want the plastic dropping to abyssal depths, where the ongoing rain of biological debris will bury it, until geology turns it back into coal.
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Seeding areas of open ocean with nutrients that promote the rapid growth of sutrface algae has been suggested as a way of sequestering atmospheric and ocean-dissolved CO2.
Unfortunately, increased UV has driven most oceanic algaes to the subsurface [universityworldnews.com], where they do a lot less respiration.
Will never catch micro or nano scale plastics (Score:5, Interesting)
Tiny fragments of plastics are not going to be caught by such floating device.
The big chunks of plastic visible at the surface are only a fraction of the amount of plastic in the ocean.
The tiny bits of plastic are ingested by sea life and pollute all the food chain.
I know no solution for this other than stop using oil based plastics as disposable material entirely. But this device is not going to solve anything. At best it will hides the issue if it can remove the large and visible plastic chunks.
Crazy (Score:2)
This year's toy fad (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's later, when we figure out how to make money from what they pick up.
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I saw a study once that said you have to re-use a "bag for life" (the sturdy reusable palstic bags) over 178 times before it's actually economically / ecologically viable over just making thin disposable plastic bags. For a shopping bag, that's probably, what... several years of usage?
I imagine the aluminium bottle is similar.
That said, why people are drinking bottled water at all over what comes out of the tap, or just refilling those same bottles from... say... a 50l bottle of the same water... Isn't th
Re: (Score:2)
You would think that portion of it would actually be relatively easy to clean up. Patience and robotic determination (and some dangling hooks) could snag those with a lot less pushing of water out of the way. Grant you, that's going to get/kill a lot of fish, but I presume these floating nets are still getting fish, too.
Bottles, straws, etc. have got to be a lot harder to control, snag, collect, etc.