Planet's Ocean-Plastics Problem Detailed In 60-Year Data Set (nature.com) 46
Scientists have uncovered the first strong evidence that the amount of plastic polluting the oceans has risen vastly in recent decades -- by analyzing 60 years of log books for plankton-tracking vessels. Nature reports: Data recorded by instruments known as continuous plankton recorders (CPRs) -- which ships have collectively towed millions of kilometres across the Atlantic Ocean -- show that the trackers have become entangled in large plastic objects, such as bags and fishing lines, roughly three times more often since 2000 than in preceding decades. This is the first time that researchers have demonstrated the rise in ocean plastics using a single, long-term data set, says Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. "I'm excited that this has been finally done," he says. The analysis was published on 16 April in Nature Communications.
Van Sebille says that because the study focused on large plastic items, it doesn't reveal much about the quantity of microplastics -- fragments fewer than 5 millimetres long -- in the oceans. These tiny contaminants come from sources such as disposable plastic packaging, rather than from fishing gear. Nevertheless, he adds, the study demonstrates that fisheries play a major part in plastic pollution, and will provide useful baseline data for tracking whether policy changes affect the levels of plastic in the oceans. "As fisheries become more professional, especially in the North Sea, hopefully we might see a decrease," he says.
Van Sebille says that because the study focused on large plastic items, it doesn't reveal much about the quantity of microplastics -- fragments fewer than 5 millimetres long -- in the oceans. These tiny contaminants come from sources such as disposable plastic packaging, rather than from fishing gear. Nevertheless, he adds, the study demonstrates that fisheries play a major part in plastic pollution, and will provide useful baseline data for tracking whether policy changes affect the levels of plastic in the oceans. "As fisheries become more professional, especially in the North Sea, hopefully we might see a decrease," he says.
Oceans (Score:5, Insightful)
We need oceans. The whole of life on earth is a chain of dependencies that goes back to them.
Keep consuming, though, there's still a tiny bit of time left before they're permanently fucked.
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3rd world countries are the biggest plastic polluters of the ocean. This is established fact now. But it is also not politically correct to repeat.
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Even if true, that doesn't free you from the responsibility to lead by example.
PS: China has banned plastic bags.Most of Africa has banned plastic bags (four years prison in Kenya!). Has your country.
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>"Even if true, that doesn't free you from the responsibility to lead by example. PS: China has banned plastic bags.Most of Africa has banned plastic bags (four years prison in Kenya!). Has your country."
Our country (USA) is responsible for almost none of the plastic in the ocean. We do lead by example by generally not littering, by reusing bags, by recycling them, and by disposing of them properly. Banning plastic bags (and straws) here would change very, very little in waste except make it more inco
Plastic pollution (Score:5, Informative)
Our country (USA) is responsible for almost none of the plastic in the ocean.
"Almost none"? Not even remotely true. Not the majority but we certainly contribute plenty. We are in the top 20 [earthday.org] as far as plastic polluting countries go so, let's not get too proud of ourselves for not being the worst of the worst.
We do lead by example by generally not littering, by reusing bags, by recycling them, and by disposing of them properly.
Are you shitting me? We litter plenty - just spend a little time cleaning up along a highway if you don't believe me. I have. In 2014 the US produced approximately 100 billion plastic bottles and an estimated 14% of those ended up as litter. We litter a huge amount. Just because you don't see it where you live doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Literally almost every grocery store in the US uses tens of thousands of disposable plastic one use bags every day and we certainly don't dispose of an awful lot of them properly. (protip - a landfill is not proper disposal of a plastic bag in most cases) Reportedly we use about 1 million of them per minute on average. 91% of plastic we use isn't recycled [nationalgeographic.com] and plastic bags are certainly a non-trivial piece of that 91%. About 40% of plastic is used for packaging of one sort or another.
Banning plastic bags (and straws) here would change very, very little in waste except make it more inconvenient for most people.
We already have paper bags and people can bring their own and we already have paper straws and people can bring their own of those too. Exactly who is being inconvenienced here? Now paper to be fair has its own pollution problems, but let's not pretend we're putting some huge burden on anyone. Nobody is claiming banning plastic straws is some cure-all but it's a low hanging fruit that does solve a measurable part of the problem. Your argument is that we shouldn't solve a small part of the problem just because we haven't solved the bigger parts of the problem yet. That's idiotic.
I imagine styrofoam is more of a problem, anyway.
What you imagine is irrelevant and in this case wrong as well. You appear to lack the data [arcadiapower.com] to really understand the problem.
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You need to get better sources. Less than 2% of the US waste stream ends up "unmanaged", i.e. litter. 14% ... please. Even if you really, really want to believe in the great evil that is the US, just look around you. That number is not remotely plausible. It is like the made-up number for plastic straws that played such a big role in the original push for straw bans. All you had to do was pause and think for 5 seconds to realize that every man, woman and child in the US isn't using multiple straws p
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[citation needed]
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(Actually, to be clear, it's not even that I think a lot of this is wrong, but you're doing a lot of shouting and you should be providing links for some of this stuff; some of it is non-obvious when googling.)
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Adding up the "Marine Debris" column in your source, the U.S. is responsible for just 1.00% - 1.04% of the ocean plastic produced by the top 20 nations. If you include the rest of the world rather than just the top 20, it's almost certainly less than 1%. Considering the U.S. r
Re:Plastic pollution (Score:4, Informative)
"Almost none"? Not even remotely true. Not the majority but we certainly contribute plenty. We are in the top 20 [earthday.org] as far as plastic polluting countries go
We can agree that 1% is "not the majority," but I'm with OP that 1% is a lot closer to "almost none" then it is "plenty."
Looking at the actual numbers in your link, the U.S. generated about .28 million metric tons of plastic waste out of a total of roughly 26.5 million metric tons across the top 20 countries. That's about 1%. The U.S. share of marine debris given in the chart is also about 1%.
"Top 20" is a meaningless statistic in a vacuum.
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Our country (USA) is responsible for almost none of the plastic in the ocean. We do lead by example by generally not littering, by reusing bags, by recycling them, and by disposing of them properly.
.Agreed. I find the narrative in all of this plastic pollution business to be both fascinating and disturbing.
Present day narrative has deteriorated to the point where all problems are by definition caused by the USA. And a significant number of people in the USA have bought into that narrative.
Well, we can all suck our slurpees through bacteria laden bamboo straws, and waste money washing them, but it is only virtue signalling. Despite the present day narrative, the cause of this problem lies not wit
travel cures ignorant assumptions (Score:2)
>"Even if true, that doesn't free you from the responsibility to lead by example. PS: China has banned plastic bags.Most of Africa has banned plastic bags (four years prison in Kenya!). Has your country."
Our country (USA) is responsible for almost none of the plastic in the ocean. We do lead by example by generally not littering, by reusing bags, by recycling them, and by disposing of them properly. Banning plastic bags (and straws) here would change very, very little in waste except make it more inconvenient for most people. If you don't want to use them, nobody is forcing you to... bring/use your own reusable bags and straws.
I imagine styrofoam is more of a problem, anyway.
Before you spout such nonsense, I suggest you travel the world and visit a few developed countries to make up an educated comparison in where we are when it comes to recycling at the micro and macro level.
In before Kendall explains his moron's opine (Score:1)
That oceans don't matter because VR.
It's Everywhere (Score:2)
I think there needs to be a recycling tax (on everything)
Wrong (Score:2)
More libertarian is to come up with an alternative that is better, not to tax something in a way that inherently harms poor people - that's the domain of liberals seeking to create victims to exploit.
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I don't see how continuing to pollute the environment so the poor can buy cheaper junk helps anything; I suspect they will be poor either way. Paper bags versus plastic isn't their biggest problem.
For the bigger items, maybe implement a "recycling deposit" where the person gets his money back when he brings the TV to the recycling center. I don't know; 'just spit-balling.
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Regressive Tax (Score:2)
I think there needs to be a recycling tax (on everything) to mitigate this new disaster.
The problem is, where do you apply that tax? Because almost all of the ocean plastics [statista.com] come from the third world (and China, I don't really think of them as third world)... can they afford the tax you are proposing? I think instead of a tax some kind of viable alternative for the plastics they are using needs to be in place.
I agree that plastic trash is a problem everywhere but a lot of first world areas (like the U.S.
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AFAIK, the pull-tabs were only on tin cans. When aluminum cans were introduced, it was concurrent with the introduction of stay-on tabs. (For those of you too young to remember pull tabs, the scene in Jaws where Quint crushes his can with a single hand is a pretty amazing feat of strength. That's not an aluminum can. The beer cans back then were strong enough to support you
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But good luck getting a recycling tax passed in China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Egypt, Malaysia, South Africa, India, and Algeria. They are by far the biggest source of the problem, accounting for nearly 90% of the plastic dumped into the oceans. Tightening up plastic waste disposal in other countries is largely ineffectual because even if you completely eliminated plastic use in the other countries, it would hardly affect the problem.
Good point. I guess I was thinking about closer to home (on land), which is still a problem, but probably not as bad.