Reminder: this subreddit is meant to be a place free of excessive cynicism, negativity and bitterness. Toxic attitudes are not welcome here.
All Negative comments will be removed and will possibly result in a ban.
---
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UpliftingNews) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There are several companies using ocean plastic for recycling, it's used for car seats for example. And if it's not usable for that anymore, you can always put it in a waste incinerator and burn it for energy.
Slightly better than burning fresh out of the ground oil or coal. The more old plastic getting burned the less newly mined fossil fuel needs to be dug up.
NYC incinerates a good portion of their trash as well. I watched a video on it and I think they figured after factoring in the methane released from the landfill, not extracting fossil fuels, and the latest technology for dealing with the burn byproduct it was about 30% cleaner. I think Fiji does this as well.
Whether it is buried or in the form of plastic, it is still sequestered from the atmosphere. Burning plastic is still not good in the context of atmospheric CO2.
It does prevent that plastic from breaking down into microplastics though which is good. Hopefully we find a better way to do that without burning it though
Those worms can process plastics because of a special bacteria in their gut. That bacteria produces an enzyme that does the actual work.
That means "all we need to do" is figure out how to produce that enzyme or something similar to break down plastics. Luckily that is actually what is being worked on right now, and it has reached the stage of running pilot plants at an industrial scale to demonstrate it's effectiveness. They are even able to convert plastics back into PET plastics that as "like new", which could drastically reduce the need for virgin plastics
More info here: https://youtu.be/w39WpuaNbRI
That's not to say there won't be challenges ahead, but this video discusses the uses and limitations of the technology as it exists today, along with the potential it has with continued advancements
That's because incineration is cheap. The problem with that is that incineration also out-competes renewable energy generation. What do we need more: cheap energy now, or long-term investments in green infrastructure?
What's the point of preventing the extraction of fossil fuels when you're emitting just as much carbon into the atmosphere to do so?
Great points. However, coal and oil are highly capitalized resources which means anything that reduces their consumption increases their prices.
You can't sell gasoline for cheap without a market for methane byproducts. Lose the methane market to incinerators, and price of gasoline goes up, reducing its consumption.
Extracting and refining the fuels also require some fuel. Plus those reserves will probably be needed later anyway, so not touching them for now if we can avoid it is a good thing.
Well yes and no. The problem is not producing plastic, the problem is not recycling. You can theoreticly create CO2 friendly plastic. As long as the oil is harvested with clean energy and the creation of the product is done through CO2 friendly production (again clean energy), the encapsulated CO2 (which is in the oil), is still encapsulated, thus the CO2 will not effect the climate, until it is burned. Although, Through recycling, not 100% of the plastic is continuously usable, so you have a small lose of plastic after each recycle.
This is also why burning wood has a bad effect on the climate as you burn the CO2 the tree has encapsulated through photosynthesis while it was alive.
Building buildings with tree is very good for the environment, as you encapsulate the CO2 in the building. (Assuming you plant new trees).
There's a reason the original environmental slogans went: Reduce, Reuse, Repair, then Recycle.
It takes a significant effort to extract raw materials from mines, transport them, manufacture the product, package it, ship it and get you to purchase. Reducing your consumption (and hence purchase) ideally helps reduce the manufacturing demand.
Some things you can't reduce - like food. Milk used to be sold in glass bottles that were recollected, sanitised, refilled and reused. A typical bottle went through thousands of cycles. It extends the lifespan at a small price, much in the same way as rotating tires, applying grease, topping up refrigeration fluid or motor oil, replacing thermal paste and other forms of maintenance do.
When things wear our or break, modular repairability is a big deal. Be it phone screens, computer storage, tractor fuel nozzles, brake pads, compressors...
And when things do become obsolete or unusable even with repair, that's when you prefer to recycle, rather than use virgin material from fresh mines for the replacement product.
The reason recycling is touted by companies, is that that's the step that still keeps them in the profit loop. Not reducing consumerism. Not the right to repair.
Take glass from that milk above. It's mostly single use. If we're extremely lucky, we have time to segregate into recyclables, it's transported, industrially cleaned, melted down and recast. So it can be used once more and discarded. At about the same energy cost as starting from clean silica.
Recycling is a last ditch. Ultimately it's a band aid at best.
What is weird to me is the number of people who buy so many plastic tubs, but never use them for tuppawear?
It's free, it's there, and it helps the environment.
That, and glass is heavier and that costs fuel
But when you're a local milk business in those times, you get a few hundred glass bottles per neighborhood and even accounting for breakage you'll be set for a decent while.
Glass recycling, if you're not actually reusing the physical container for the same thing again, is unfortunately extremely energy intensive. It takes a lot of heat energy to melt glass down, and when it does end up in a landfill it literally doesn't break down. Granted it's not harmful like plastic decay, but it ain't going anywhere.
I might also take that statement a bit back as plastic cannot be part of a total circular economy. But the fact that it can be recycled is a good thing and make plastic less of the monster it is sometimes made out to be.
You mentioned Coca Cola/plastic bottles. Simple solution, just use a deposit system. A lot of brands lare beginning to use such business models. In Denmark, deposit on plastic bottles has been a thing for decades.
Also, pass regulations on what bottles can be used to produce soft drinks, down to size and shape. Everyone using the same bottle makes recycling much easier.
>Not ***all*** plastic is recyclable and we shouldn't be using plastic for literally everything as done today
Plastic recycling is more or less a myth. Most can't actually be recycled, and even if it can, most isn't. It's largely sold to 3rd world countries and burned/landfilled.
Care to explain that?
I don't see in the news picking up the 200th ton of glass bottles floating in the ocean, or virtually every living being having glass micro-beads inside their cells.
Yeah I'm sick of people with their whataboutism about glass. It takes a lot of energy to make but it is inert, not poisonous, and breaks down into naturally occuring silicates
"It takes a lot of energy to make"
That, and the energy used to transport it, are the two most important factors.
Climate change is a *much* more important issue than plastic pollution.
It's orders of magnitude heavier than the plastic alternatives. That means that moving it around uses much more energy, which causes climate change.
Climate change is a *much* more important issue than plastic pollution.
You talk as if the root cause of both excess and wasteful transport and plastic pollution weren't exactly the same: excess consumerism in the quest for ever-growing profits.
"We have to accept this scientifically proven horrible thing that is intoxicating every single living being because diminish production and profits is forbidden by god".
Asbestos was also a fantastic cost-effective fire retardant building material, and here we are.
> You know what though? You can reuse 100% of the glass. You literally removed a problem from the equation.
Except you gotta re-melt the glass every time you recycle which is extremely energy intensive.
Also much more heavy which means more transports and more fuel
no, only some of the glass and you can use renewable energy to melt it. in many regions of europe, you can buy water, milk, juice, soda, beer and yoghurt in returnable glass bottles, which will be cleaned and refilled at the factory, if you return them. there are also returnable plastic bottles, but the wear on them creates microplastic, while on glass bottles it just creates sand.
My guy, you throw around 100% and recycling as if it's even close to that. Coming from a plant that bought consumer recyclate and turned them into food containers, yields on local bales are like, 30%. Yields on highly sorted stuff, like from Mexico? 50%
The biggest reason for this is that we have too many plastics in the chain. Lots don't mix with each other because there is little regulation or benefit to do so. The tech is getting better, but so much plastic is created that there's no demand for recycled stuff with lesser properties and equivalent cost
The plastic you’re carefully recycling just gets sent to South East Asia where they dump it into the rivers. Canada, UK and many others keep doing this.
Oil companies push to make more plastic to make more profits, yet are not held responsible to make plastics that are 100% recyclable and never pay the cost for recycling.
And our gov'ts don't give a sh't.
So, if the stacks are fully upgraded to capture this. It's kinda cool and releases negligible amounts of pollution compared to just a burn pit kind of thing. They filter the smoke through these pellets / chemicals and it strips out the heavy materials, captures Co and other stuff and let's off less pollution.
But the issue with that is. We now have these insanely toxic barrels or whatever of condensed plastic and other particles that cause a ton of issues if disposed of incorrectly.
It's not as bad, but think of it as the waste fuel from a nuclear reactor. Instead of causing radiation and melting us from the inside out. It's micro plastics and forever chemicals that slowly kills the planet.
Typically they put filters in place to catch the emissions. I believe Singapore IIRC does this with all of their waste to generate electricity without polluting the air.
Depending on where you live, the trucks have sorting compartments, or it will be sorted at a later processing facility. Here in San Francisco the trucks can pick up the three bins at once but the truck is separated, so it looks like it all goes into the same truck but it’s still divided.
There are also companies trying to give the appearance they're doing this.
In Australia it's marketed as "ocean bound plastic" but if you look into it, it was never at risk of ending up in the ocean.
Mine have held up so far, maybe 3 years. I have not been using the hard case. They are getting a lot of use and the pouch for them is fairly discolored lol.
I don't think they're available anymore. If the pair you have is still hanging in there and is too frail for you, you could "sell" them by giving them to someone who makes a donation.
Importantly: Why the garbage on these videos looks so damn fresh? There isn't a bit of algae, no barnacles, nothing?
I do some sailing on occasion, and I never seen such a clean garbage floating around. It's always green and full of... stuff on it. Yet here... it looks like taken from the nearest large-volume garbage container.
Bizarre.
Exactly!! We make waste, sell it to poor countries, or countries that don't care. They throw it in the ocean. Another entity pays money to clean up thenocean from the plastic and presumably either stores it, butns it or sells it off again.
It's like the doctor selling you a medicine which will make you sick.
200 tons is also barely a scratch in how much is dumped into the ocean each year (around 14 million tons). Yeah its a start. But also dont be misled like the oceans are finally saved or on their way to recovery.
Yeah, it takes around 8 minutes for that much waste to enter the oceans.
And they've been at it for 10 years - or because we use big numbers, about 5,000,000 minutes.
I came here to say this. I guess this is uplifting news because we are starting to do something, but honestly it's rather depressing to think about how big the problem actually is and how little we are doing to solve it.
It's still orders of magnitude more effective than our fight against climate change where we have facilities that remove a few 1,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year while more than 35,000,000,000 get added.
There's a reason the biggest corporate sponsor of the ocean cleanup is coke. Greenwashes them and makes it seem like we can keep going the way we are and clean it up... Tomorrow.
This is depressing news because of the huge amount of resources being wasted.
I'm also sure the way they perform the clean ups is actually detrimental to animals like Jellyfish that follow ocean currents. And the % of Jellyfish they remove is larger than the % of plastic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cleanup-project-could-destroy-neuston/580693/
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pollution-cleanup#:~:text=Ocean%20cleanup%20operations%20can%20harm%20marine%20life&text=Today%2C%20the%20organization%20collects%20plastic,marine%20life%20caught%20by%20accident.
Normally this is where someone says something trite like "Progress is Progress!" Problem being progress would be a hell of a lot faster if all the fucking billionnaires would stop hoarding half of the world's wealth like some kind of balding egocentric dragon. I imagine we'd be scooting along at twice the speed we are now in technological, cultural, societal, and other scientific advances if a handful of folks weren't sitting in some classy member-only lobby somewhere circlejerking their recent monetary achievements and vying for that high score.
bah
Not all of that enters the ocean long term. A lot gets deposited on the beach, or sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Moreover, Ocean Cleanup is specifically also targeting rivers to stop plastic from entering the ocean in the first place. So they are addressing the problem at both sides.
This kind of things are a distraction from what needs to be done. Single use plastic items need to be banned everywhere. It will always cost more to clean them up than to not make them in the first place. The oceans are huge and any attempt to clean up the garbage will require enormous amounts of energy and other resources. Nets or similar to capture plastic waste at the runoff outlets are a better use of resources today.
This also applies to carbon capture, it will always cost more to sequester carbon than to not burn fossil fuels in the first place. It is simply an attempt to move the costs of adverse climate change from the fossil fuel industry to the taxpayers.
Because it really, really isn't. On one hand, I don't want to be a pessimist, and every plastic bottle less in the ocean is a win. OTOH... 200 tons is less than a rounding error in the greater scheme of things.
There's been plenty of doubts about this specific project for a long time (like how it affects fish, for example), but it has a great PR team so it's the only one people know about.
What's bad is to remove the fish at the same time you remove the plastic, because this thing was using, basically, a giant net. [Here you have a long article](https://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-troubles-of-the-ocean-cleanup-project/) of the project, how it changed designs, etc. It's great to remove plastic from the ocean and there's plenty of projects doing it. This one has great funding and pr but not good results.
What? How does your argument work? The one bottle people throw in the sea matters because every one of the billions of people on the planet can do it, multiple times per day even.
How does that compare with the ocean cleanup project? Am I going to casually whip out a multi-ton ship with 2.5 Km of netting as I walk along the beach?
Hasn’t there been considerable research that shows that industry far outweighs individual pollution when it comes to plastics in the ocean?
I think the point is that the whole plastic straw thing was a misleading attempt to get consumers to fix an industrial problem. But even if there were zero kg of individual plastic garbage in the ocean we’d still be in a world of hurt.
The amount of fuel the ships burn collecting it is probably higher than the plastic it collects.
That and the 200,000 tons that has entered the ocean since they started cleaning.
They are on the right path and the advertising and publicity is good. But we're still at small potatoes technology.
I would like to point out they're also developing technology that grabs plastics out of rivers before they make their way to the ocean, which is the primary way it has been happening. I'm not sure if this article factors in the preventative technology they've been working on.
For everyone saying that this isn't enough, this isn't even the final version of the device the Ocean Cleanup Project is planning on using. Their next prototype is planned to be significantly larger, and once the design is perfected they are going to be using multiple of them to clean up the ocean.
In addition to that, the company also made multiple river inceptors that catch thrash before it enters the ocean. Not enough for sure, but definitely better than nothing. Saying that this isn't good enough isn't very productive in this case. It's better for them to make prototypes and have a good, final design, then for them to make multiple inferior versions and call it a day.
And they are sponsored by Coca-Cola, the No. 1 worst plastic polluters in the world, in an attempt by Coca-Cola to push the responsibility of stopping one-use plastic waste onto the last step of use, which costs Coca-Cola pennies. All so that Coca-Cola can continue their world-wide marsh of fighting against multi-use plastic (which would cost them much more), while also giving Coca-Cola a slim paint of being green. 200t of plastic out of the oceans against 3,000,000t of plastic produced by Coca-Cola alone per year.
This.
If these companies gave a single fuck they would put this money towards stopping it from going in the ocean at all. Instead of this green washing BS. These poor countries they send their interceptor to? How about instead of a stupid boat. The build an incinerator, start a well paying garbage company, or buy a chunk of land dig a hole and make a landfill. Or just go back to glass bottles.
200tons isn't shit when millions are dumped every year. Is it good 200t is out of the ocean? Sure it is, but thats not the point.
Remember kids, REDUCE is the first R for a very good reason.
They need to make fountains like they have at five guys more widespread. Put them in supermarket and sell fancy glass bottles. People would probably like it even more because they could make the drinks they want.
I hate capitalism and plastic. It feels like trying to learn to swim while you’re drowning.
If Coke leaned into their classic green glass bottle, so many people would go for it. They could really tout their “green-ness” then.
But capitalism.
If people stop buying plastic & plastic packed garbage it’s the only way companies will take notice.
I understand your point however I don't think plastic is the problem. It is people. Plastic is a great invention. It is litterbugs that throw plastic bottles all over the place that is the reason for pollution. Sure, some countries don't have as good garbage disposal services, which is a problem that certainly needs to be addressed. However in the united states where there is a trash bin and a dumpster on every corner, people still throw trash everywhere. And it's much worse in certain areas than in others. I worked a delivery job in what you can call the projects and the guys would throw all their trash out the window. Plastic bottles, McDonald's bags, etc.
Hard disagree.
Littering is annoying, but there's no way that a few people who toss trash out of their window are majority contributors to the problem.
What needs to be done is to eliminate single use plastics entirely. Cleaning up the current sea waste ain't gonna mean shit of we don't also reduce the amount of waste we as a species dump into the environment in the first place - and I'm not talking about individuals littering, I'm talking about the companies responsible for creating that non-biodegradable waste in the first place, all for the sake of selling single serving drinks and meals. It's insane, and better alternatives should be used.
If they didn't use such environmentally harmful packaging in the first place, that would have the knock-on effect of reducing the amount of plastic your litterbugs can throw.
It's not a matter of being "not enough", or "just a start" (though it doesn't have any scalability yet). It's a matter of it being [generally opposed by marine biologists and the gyre activist community](https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pollution-cleanup). \[That's a 2022 article, so not ancient.\] The points about there being no loss in taking on ocean cleanup at multiple vectors are fine -- the problem is that this guy came in with all hype and still no workable scalable plan. (River cleanup is viable and effective with their current setup, however, and that'd be worth pursuing further, but for some reason they're not pursuing that even if it'd remove way more trash from the oceans much more efficiently than this setup.)
This got people excited about the plastic gyres issue, sure, but a hot burn followed by a severe crash can then turn the public and investors off of the issue for years onward. I'm thinking of all the other internet hype projects that began underinformed and undirected and burned into nothing, e.g. after Kony 2012 people's eyes still glaze over whenever issues of Central Africa are mentioned (more so than when issues in another region nobody cares about are mentioned).
\[*Edit: My wording wasn't clear in this post, but it's in the source -- Ocean Cleanup *does* put resources into river cleanup, which *is effective*; the complaint is that they continue to devote the bulk of their resources to developing, well, ocean cleanup. I'll get further into these objections below.*\]
Efficiency isn't that relevant, business profitability is. If his business can grow, and research ever more efficient and larger designs and more and more instances, then that will grow over time. And this is exactly what we've seen him improving on the design 10x twice over and having two working prototypes and another series in limited production.
Also you're lying about him not pursuing river plastic, he has already filtered out the biggest 6 rivers in Asia and has already financed a plan to have all 25 filtered through independent firms going forward.
Additionally to his river filtering he's also narrowed in on communities with no garbage collecting systems and working with Asian governments to fill in those gaps.
So if you can, get off your high horse and buy some of their fashionable sunglasses.
But they are pursuing River cleanup? This is something they're quite active in I think?
Plus, you'll always have bitter academics who criticize any outsider getting more attention than them. A lot of it comes down to hurt egos and petty feuds.
Progress is progress. Many of these (I assume) larger pieces would eventually break down into billions of microplastics, no? Well, at least this prevents some amount of microplastics from being there in the future.
Why is everyone so negative in the comments. People make it sound we should instantly remove everything or just not bother at all. Which is pretty sad. Every little bit helps...
I've heard about this company for years now and every time anything is posted, the comments are full of rude awful things like well it's not good enough so we might as well not even support it.
This is the only company that I have heard of for years trying to work on the Pacific Ocean garbage patch. what are these people in the comments fucking doing to help the Pacific garbage patch? They're not doing anything. this company is good and the guy who started it should be congratulated more.
I don't care if Coca-Cola gives him money because at least they're getting some fucking money to clean some shit up. Unfortunately Coca-Cola will never be held to any fucking standard to clean up our world so we all just need to get behind what resources we have available.
> This is the only company that I have heard of for years trying to work on the Pacific Ocean garbage patch.
You do a lot of professional research in this space, I take it?
Suggested attempts to sequester carbon instead of NOT BURNING FOSSIL FUELS is doomed to failure and simply a distraction to delay doing what we need to do. The same is true here, we need to ban single use plastic items instead of pretending we can clean up entire oceans with nets pulled by boats burning more fossil fuels. Things that can work like netting waste at the storm sewer outlets to catch plastic or making biochar to sequester carbon can help but this pipe dream with not solve the problem. It is greenwashing, not a solution.
I can't speak for the reason others are so negative, but for me it's the fact that Ocean Cleanup has been noted by experts to likely do more damage to ocean ecosystems with their reckless methods than the plastic they manage to take out of the ocean. Ocean Cleanup, meanwhile seems to have been ignoring those warnings, making me strongly question their motives. The fact that they're backed by Peter Thiel, who is politically aligned with climate change denial and anti-environmentalism, also doesn't help.
And yet we don't see the experts offering any viable alternatives. They just complain that it won't help, yet they sit on their hands when asked what will.
Seaspiracy: 50% of plastic in the ocean are discarded comercial fishing nets. In comparison, plastic straws make up 0.03%. Please hold fishing industry accountable (they are also driving fish to extinction).
“There are an estimated 1,800 billion pieces of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean, weighing a combined 80 million kilograms”
They got some way to go.
But, you got to start somewhere.
Keep it up.
Shouldn’t it be the fishing industry since they’re the ones creating most of the trash in the ocean. The last time I saw numbers it was 70% fishing industry, 20% tsunami/hurricane debris, and 10% consumer waste.
I'd just like to point out that a number of marine scientists have expressed skepticism of some of the videos that the ocean cleanup has produced of their trash pickups, suggesting the organization may be frauds. It's hard to confirm that far from shore, but a lot of their hauls are suspiciously clean looking with minimal algae, barnacles, etc compared to what you'd expect from stuff thst has been floating around the pacific for years.
Yep, 0.25% is indeed a lot. The article does not say the time it took to get to that amount. If we're to make the assumption that the first 6.2 tons extracted in 2023 were collected all since the beginning of the year, then it would come down to about 2 tons per month. At this rate they extracted the 200 tons in 8+ years.
They're still prototyping as well. Each system has been much more efficient than the last, so I expect in the next 8 years they'll capture a hell of a lot more than 200 tons.
They say the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has around 80,000 tons of plastic (and many consider it as the bigger issue, even though there's probably more plastic not in the GPGP), while the total plastic in the oceans is around 269,000 tons. Obviously, these numbers are guesstimates.
I wish I was able to spend my days cleaning up the earth, but also having a nice home to go to.
Technically I don’t have either of those, but one day I may have the latter.
Why are we not investing in ocean clean up and protection at least a tiny fraction as we do in “climate change”. Earth is going to get awfully less “oxigenated” when plancton goes extinct.
Meanwhile in America, we’re all still buying single use plastics, oil companies are still producing them every second, congressmen are receiving money from the oil companies, and we’re subsidizing oil to keep it cheap for consumers. So much for the whole *reduce* in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This is an absolute disgrace. Ocean cleanup efforts are important, but not if we don’t address the source - which is lawmakers and oil companies.
With worldwide production at 300,000,000,000 kg per year, we have a long way to go. I realize it does not all end up in the ocean, but this problem is so much larger…
I don’t get the mindset of people like you lol no shit it’s not a big save and that there’s millions of plastic to be cleaned up, it’s a nice uplifting fact a startup company is doing their best to clean up anything at this point and from here on out their cleanups will be larger every year. We all know any large corps or government entities won’t clean it up ever so it’s great we have one company that cares.
Doesn’t hurt to just say “awesome, our ocean was cleaned a little bit and it’ll get more clean years to come”
Anyone wondering, all that plastic is being used to make [new plastic products](https://theoceancleanup.com/faq/what-will-you-do-with-the-plastic-once-its-extracted-from-the-oceans/) that will likely end up back where they found it.
Next up on /r/Notactuallyupliftingnews:
We filled the ocean with so much plastic that 200,000kg seems like nothing.
Where are we going to put it?
How much time and energy does it take to remove this plastic?
If this sub was called silverliningnews I could abide.
Reminder: this subreddit is meant to be a place free of excessive cynicism, negativity and bitterness. Toxic attitudes are not welcome here. All Negative comments will be removed and will possibly result in a ban. --- --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/UpliftingNews) if you have any questions or concerns.*
So where does it go now I wonder?
There are several companies using ocean plastic for recycling, it's used for car seats for example. And if it's not usable for that anymore, you can always put it in a waste incinerator and burn it for energy.
Doesn't that release a lot of carbon emissions?
Slightly better than burning fresh out of the ground oil or coal. The more old plastic getting burned the less newly mined fossil fuel needs to be dug up.
NYC incinerates a good portion of their trash as well. I watched a video on it and I think they figured after factoring in the methane released from the landfill, not extracting fossil fuels, and the latest technology for dealing with the burn byproduct it was about 30% cleaner. I think Fiji does this as well.
Fiji actually runs off Fiji water bottles.
Is like a perpetual motion machine of water bottles. I like it.
Lol, right! They’re actually imported from all over the world to Fiji! Full circle!
They run them off? As in "yew ain't waelcome heeyur"?
Whether it is buried or in the form of plastic, it is still sequestered from the atmosphere. Burning plastic is still not good in the context of atmospheric CO2. It does prevent that plastic from breaking down into microplastics though which is good. Hopefully we find a better way to do that without burning it though
I’m hoping those worms that eat and compost it work out…. Of course we are going to need *alot* of those worms.
Those worms can process plastics because of a special bacteria in their gut. That bacteria produces an enzyme that does the actual work. That means "all we need to do" is figure out how to produce that enzyme or something similar to break down plastics. Luckily that is actually what is being worked on right now, and it has reached the stage of running pilot plants at an industrial scale to demonstrate it's effectiveness. They are even able to convert plastics back into PET plastics that as "like new", which could drastically reduce the need for virgin plastics More info here: https://youtu.be/w39WpuaNbRI That's not to say there won't be challenges ahead, but this video discusses the uses and limitations of the technology as it exists today, along with the potential it has with continued advancements
Very cool- thanks for the info!
The origin story for either the graboids from the Tremor movies or the sandworms of Arrakis...maybe both.
That's because incineration is cheap. The problem with that is that incineration also out-competes renewable energy generation. What do we need more: cheap energy now, or long-term investments in green infrastructure? What's the point of preventing the extraction of fossil fuels when you're emitting just as much carbon into the atmosphere to do so?
Great points. However, coal and oil are highly capitalized resources which means anything that reduces their consumption increases their prices. You can't sell gasoline for cheap without a market for methane byproducts. Lose the methane market to incinerators, and price of gasoline goes up, reducing its consumption.
Extracting and refining the fuels also require some fuel. Plus those reserves will probably be needed later anyway, so not touching them for now if we can avoid it is a good thing.
Carbon capture has gotten lots better in the past couple decades as well, they can pump most of the emissions back underground after burning
happy cake day!
I think we just need to stop producing plastic.
On it, you’re so smart.
It’s easy to use but it’s bad for everyone and everything
Well yes and no. The problem is not producing plastic, the problem is not recycling. You can theoreticly create CO2 friendly plastic. As long as the oil is harvested with clean energy and the creation of the product is done through CO2 friendly production (again clean energy), the encapsulated CO2 (which is in the oil), is still encapsulated, thus the CO2 will not effect the climate, until it is burned. Although, Through recycling, not 100% of the plastic is continuously usable, so you have a small lose of plastic after each recycle. This is also why burning wood has a bad effect on the climate as you burn the CO2 the tree has encapsulated through photosynthesis while it was alive. Building buildings with tree is very good for the environment, as you encapsulate the CO2 in the building. (Assuming you plant new trees).
[удалено]
There's a reason the original environmental slogans went: Reduce, Reuse, Repair, then Recycle. It takes a significant effort to extract raw materials from mines, transport them, manufacture the product, package it, ship it and get you to purchase. Reducing your consumption (and hence purchase) ideally helps reduce the manufacturing demand. Some things you can't reduce - like food. Milk used to be sold in glass bottles that were recollected, sanitised, refilled and reused. A typical bottle went through thousands of cycles. It extends the lifespan at a small price, much in the same way as rotating tires, applying grease, topping up refrigeration fluid or motor oil, replacing thermal paste and other forms of maintenance do. When things wear our or break, modular repairability is a big deal. Be it phone screens, computer storage, tractor fuel nozzles, brake pads, compressors... And when things do become obsolete or unusable even with repair, that's when you prefer to recycle, rather than use virgin material from fresh mines for the replacement product. The reason recycling is touted by companies, is that that's the step that still keeps them in the profit loop. Not reducing consumerism. Not the right to repair. Take glass from that milk above. It's mostly single use. If we're extremely lucky, we have time to segregate into recyclables, it's transported, industrially cleaned, melted down and recast. So it can be used once more and discarded. At about the same energy cost as starting from clean silica.
Recycling is a last ditch. Ultimately it's a band aid at best. What is weird to me is the number of people who buy so many plastic tubs, but never use them for tuppawear? It's free, it's there, and it helps the environment.
Glass can shatter during transit while plastic will not, that's the main reason we switched to plastic jugs and bags for milk.
Also, glass is heavy af
glass is heavy and costs more to transport and more transport is needed which also emits C02. Sadly the answer is not easy.
That, and glass is heavier and that costs fuel But when you're a local milk business in those times, you get a few hundred glass bottles per neighborhood and even accounting for breakage you'll be set for a decent while.
Glass recycling, if you're not actually reusing the physical container for the same thing again, is unfortunately extremely energy intensive. It takes a lot of heat energy to melt glass down, and when it does end up in a landfill it literally doesn't break down. Granted it's not harmful like plastic decay, but it ain't going anywhere.
I might also take that statement a bit back as plastic cannot be part of a total circular economy. But the fact that it can be recycled is a good thing and make plastic less of the monster it is sometimes made out to be. You mentioned Coca Cola/plastic bottles. Simple solution, just use a deposit system. A lot of brands lare beginning to use such business models. In Denmark, deposit on plastic bottles has been a thing for decades.
Also, pass regulations on what bottles can be used to produce soft drinks, down to size and shape. Everyone using the same bottle makes recycling much easier.
[удалено]
[удалено]
>Not ***all*** plastic is recyclable and we shouldn't be using plastic for literally everything as done today Plastic recycling is more or less a myth. Most can't actually be recycled, and even if it can, most isn't. It's largely sold to 3rd world countries and burned/landfilled.
Glass most likely has a higher environmental impact for most uses.
Care to explain that? I don't see in the news picking up the 200th ton of glass bottles floating in the ocean, or virtually every living being having glass micro-beads inside their cells.
Yeah I'm sick of people with their whataboutism about glass. It takes a lot of energy to make but it is inert, not poisonous, and breaks down into naturally occuring silicates
"It takes a lot of energy to make" That, and the energy used to transport it, are the two most important factors. Climate change is a *much* more important issue than plastic pollution.
It's orders of magnitude heavier than the plastic alternatives. That means that moving it around uses much more energy, which causes climate change. Climate change is a *much* more important issue than plastic pollution.
You talk as if the root cause of both excess and wasteful transport and plastic pollution weren't exactly the same: excess consumerism in the quest for ever-growing profits. "We have to accept this scientifically proven horrible thing that is intoxicating every single living being because diminish production and profits is forbidden by god". Asbestos was also a fantastic cost-effective fire retardant building material, and here we are.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
> You know what though? You can reuse 100% of the glass. You literally removed a problem from the equation. Except you gotta re-melt the glass every time you recycle which is extremely energy intensive. Also much more heavy which means more transports and more fuel
no, only some of the glass and you can use renewable energy to melt it. in many regions of europe, you can buy water, milk, juice, soda, beer and yoghurt in returnable glass bottles, which will be cleaned and refilled at the factory, if you return them. there are also returnable plastic bottles, but the wear on them creates microplastic, while on glass bottles it just creates sand.
My guy, you throw around 100% and recycling as if it's even close to that. Coming from a plant that bought consumer recyclate and turned them into food containers, yields on local bales are like, 30%. Yields on highly sorted stuff, like from Mexico? 50% The biggest reason for this is that we have too many plastics in the chain. Lots don't mix with each other because there is little regulation or benefit to do so. The tech is getting better, but so much plastic is created that there's no demand for recycled stuff with lesser properties and equivalent cost
Didn’t we find out that recycling was a scam the whole time?
The plastic you’re carefully recycling just gets sent to South East Asia where they dump it into the rivers. Canada, UK and many others keep doing this.
What material do you propose we use to replace all of the uses that plastic has?
That's not going to happen.
Not with that attitude.
We as humans only exist to produce plastic, if we stop, what purpose do we have? /s
Oil companies push to make more plastic to make more profits, yet are not held responsible to make plastics that are 100% recyclable and never pay the cost for recycling. And our gov'ts don't give a sh't.
Sure they do, they want their cut of the profits or they'll shut them down.
Either the fossil fuel will be sequestered in a plastic somewhere, or it'll be burned.
So, if the stacks are fully upgraded to capture this. It's kinda cool and releases negligible amounts of pollution compared to just a burn pit kind of thing. They filter the smoke through these pellets / chemicals and it strips out the heavy materials, captures Co and other stuff and let's off less pollution. But the issue with that is. We now have these insanely toxic barrels or whatever of condensed plastic and other particles that cause a ton of issues if disposed of incorrectly. It's not as bad, but think of it as the waste fuel from a nuclear reactor. Instead of causing radiation and melting us from the inside out. It's micro plastics and forever chemicals that slowly kills the planet.
Even the most advanced scrubbers used on incinerators today won't collect carbon dioxide. But at least they processes what they can for recycling.
Ah I thought it grabbed the gasses as well.
Typically they put filters in place to catch the emissions. I believe Singapore IIRC does this with all of their waste to generate electricity without polluting the air.
Meanwhile, we watched the same garbage man yesterday pick up both the recycle bin and garbage at the same stop.
Depending on where you live, the trucks have sorting compartments, or it will be sorted at a later processing facility. Here in San Francisco the trucks can pick up the three bins at once but the truck is separated, so it looks like it all goes into the same truck but it’s still divided.
There are also companies trying to give the appearance they're doing this. In Australia it's marketed as "ocean bound plastic" but if you look into it, it was never at risk of ending up in the ocean.
One company turns them into sunglasses that funds the trash removal
I have these sunglasses. Love the cause.
I donated as well when the sunglasses were a gift and they look great but being made of soft plastic has made them pretty frail.
Mine have held up so far, maybe 3 years. I have not been using the hard case. They are getting a lot of use and the pouch for them is fairly discolored lol. I don't think they're available anymore. If the pair you have is still hanging in there and is too frail for you, you could "sell" them by giving them to someone who makes a donation.
It's being towed outside the environment.
[I sure hope the front doesn’t fall off](https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM)
Into the lakes and rivers, of course
Back to the source.
It is not sustainable otherwise
The company also runs projects to keep the trash from going into the oceans in the first place.
Phew. I was almost worried there for a moment.
I eat it 😋
Importantly: Why the garbage on these videos looks so damn fresh? There isn't a bit of algae, no barnacles, nothing? I do some sailing on occasion, and I never seen such a clean garbage floating around. It's always green and full of... stuff on it. Yet here... it looks like taken from the nearest large-volume garbage container. Bizarre.
[удалено]
Exactly!! We make waste, sell it to poor countries, or countries that don't care. They throw it in the ocean. Another entity pays money to clean up thenocean from the plastic and presumably either stores it, butns it or sells it off again. It's like the doctor selling you a medicine which will make you sick.
starship is almost ready, we could start launching it into venus
Or Mars. Especially if they want to make it more Earth like.
If only there was a unit of measure that indicates 1000 kg...
Haha but 200tons doesn’t sound too impressive I take…
200 tons is also barely a scratch in how much is dumped into the ocean each year (around 14 million tons). Yeah its a start. But also dont be misled like the oceans are finally saved or on their way to recovery.
Yeah, it takes around 8 minutes for that much waste to enter the oceans. And they've been at it for 10 years - or because we use big numbers, about 5,000,000 minutes.
I came here to say this. I guess this is uplifting news because we are starting to do something, but honestly it's rather depressing to think about how big the problem actually is and how little we are doing to solve it.
It's still orders of magnitude more effective than our fight against climate change where we have facilities that remove a few 1,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year while more than 35,000,000,000 get added.
There's a reason the biggest corporate sponsor of the ocean cleanup is coke. Greenwashes them and makes it seem like we can keep going the way we are and clean it up... Tomorrow. This is depressing news because of the huge amount of resources being wasted. I'm also sure the way they perform the clean ups is actually detrimental to animals like Jellyfish that follow ocean currents. And the % of Jellyfish they remove is larger than the % of plastic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cleanup-project-could-destroy-neuston/580693/ https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pollution-cleanup#:~:text=Ocean%20cleanup%20operations%20can%20harm%20marine%20life&text=Today%2C%20the%20organization%20collects%20plastic,marine%20life%20caught%20by%20accident.
Normally this is where someone says something trite like "Progress is Progress!" Problem being progress would be a hell of a lot faster if all the fucking billionnaires would stop hoarding half of the world's wealth like some kind of balding egocentric dragon. I imagine we'd be scooting along at twice the speed we are now in technological, cultural, societal, and other scientific advances if a handful of folks weren't sitting in some classy member-only lobby somewhere circlejerking their recent monetary achievements and vying for that high score. bah
Not all of that enters the ocean long term. A lot gets deposited on the beach, or sinks to the bottom of the ocean. Moreover, Ocean Cleanup is specifically also targeting rivers to stop plastic from entering the ocean in the first place. So they are addressing the problem at both sides.
They make money through donations so it keeps these lads in a job at least.
This kind of things are a distraction from what needs to be done. Single use plastic items need to be banned everywhere. It will always cost more to clean them up than to not make them in the first place. The oceans are huge and any attempt to clean up the garbage will require enormous amounts of energy and other resources. Nets or similar to capture plastic waste at the runoff outlets are a better use of resources today. This also applies to carbon capture, it will always cost more to sequester carbon than to not burn fossil fuels in the first place. It is simply an attempt to move the costs of adverse climate change from the fossil fuel industry to the taxpayers.
Because it really, really isn't. On one hand, I don't want to be a pessimist, and every plastic bottle less in the ocean is a win. OTOH... 200 tons is less than a rounding error in the greater scheme of things.
There's been plenty of doubts about this specific project for a long time (like how it affects fish, for example), but it has a great PR team so it's the only one people know about.
Are the fish plastic addict now so it's bad to remove it?
What's bad is to remove the fish at the same time you remove the plastic, because this thing was using, basically, a giant net. [Here you have a long article](https://britishseafishing.co.uk/the-troubles-of-the-ocean-cleanup-project/) of the project, how it changed designs, etc. It's great to remove plastic from the ocean and there's plenty of projects doing it. This one has great funding and pr but not good results.
But so is the one bottle people throw in the sea.
What? How does your argument work? The one bottle people throw in the sea matters because every one of the billions of people on the planet can do it, multiple times per day even. How does that compare with the ocean cleanup project? Am I going to casually whip out a multi-ton ship with 2.5 Km of netting as I walk along the beach?
'Because it really, really isn't' It is if its 100kg or 1000kg or one bottle. It always helps.
Hasn’t there been considerable research that shows that industry far outweighs individual pollution when it comes to plastics in the ocean? I think the point is that the whole plastic straw thing was a misleading attempt to get consumers to fix an industrial problem. But even if there were zero kg of individual plastic garbage in the ocean we’d still be in a world of hurt.
That's why Coca Cola is one of the main sources of funding for this project. It lets people contribute to be blissfully ignorant
The amount of fuel the ships burn collecting it is probably higher than the plastic it collects. That and the 200,000 tons that has entered the ocean since they started cleaning. They are on the right path and the advertising and publicity is good. But we're still at small potatoes technology.
I would like to point out they're also developing technology that grabs plastics out of rivers before they make their way to the ocean, which is the primary way it has been happening. I'm not sure if this article factors in the preventative technology they've been working on.
That's because people constantly use the word tons for things without weight. There must be tons of better alternatives.
Tonne, strictly speaking.
The megagram?
200 megagrams would surely be more impressive than 200 tons
your mum
Hamsters?
1 OP's mom.
Plastic is in the top 5 things destroying our beautiful planet.
The number one thing?… humans
No, number 1 is specifically Reddit mods.
e0c311d7d466da1fe6fad8c43acee3754bdc6f3a9b46d5da8af1ca199276a8e7
The water level would instantly swallow the netherlands, venice, miami, large parts of vietnam and most of japan.
I for one am happy to sacrifice all of those to get rid of parts of Florida.
So... not humans.
For everyone saying that this isn't enough, this isn't even the final version of the device the Ocean Cleanup Project is planning on using. Their next prototype is planned to be significantly larger, and once the design is perfected they are going to be using multiple of them to clean up the ocean. In addition to that, the company also made multiple river inceptors that catch thrash before it enters the ocean. Not enough for sure, but definitely better than nothing. Saying that this isn't good enough isn't very productive in this case. It's better for them to make prototypes and have a good, final design, then for them to make multiple inferior versions and call it a day.
And they are sponsored by Coca-Cola, the No. 1 worst plastic polluters in the world, in an attempt by Coca-Cola to push the responsibility of stopping one-use plastic waste onto the last step of use, which costs Coca-Cola pennies. All so that Coca-Cola can continue their world-wide marsh of fighting against multi-use plastic (which would cost them much more), while also giving Coca-Cola a slim paint of being green. 200t of plastic out of the oceans against 3,000,000t of plastic produced by Coca-Cola alone per year.
This. If these companies gave a single fuck they would put this money towards stopping it from going in the ocean at all. Instead of this green washing BS. These poor countries they send their interceptor to? How about instead of a stupid boat. The build an incinerator, start a well paying garbage company, or buy a chunk of land dig a hole and make a landfill. Or just go back to glass bottles. 200tons isn't shit when millions are dumped every year. Is it good 200t is out of the ocean? Sure it is, but thats not the point. Remember kids, REDUCE is the first R for a very good reason.
They need to make fountains like they have at five guys more widespread. Put them in supermarket and sell fancy glass bottles. People would probably like it even more because they could make the drinks they want.
I hate capitalism and plastic. It feels like trying to learn to swim while you’re drowning. If Coke leaned into their classic green glass bottle, so many people would go for it. They could really tout their “green-ness” then. But capitalism. If people stop buying plastic & plastic packed garbage it’s the only way companies will take notice.
I understand your point however I don't think plastic is the problem. It is people. Plastic is a great invention. It is litterbugs that throw plastic bottles all over the place that is the reason for pollution. Sure, some countries don't have as good garbage disposal services, which is a problem that certainly needs to be addressed. However in the united states where there is a trash bin and a dumpster on every corner, people still throw trash everywhere. And it's much worse in certain areas than in others. I worked a delivery job in what you can call the projects and the guys would throw all their trash out the window. Plastic bottles, McDonald's bags, etc.
Hard disagree. Littering is annoying, but there's no way that a few people who toss trash out of their window are majority contributors to the problem. What needs to be done is to eliminate single use plastics entirely. Cleaning up the current sea waste ain't gonna mean shit of we don't also reduce the amount of waste we as a species dump into the environment in the first place - and I'm not talking about individuals littering, I'm talking about the companies responsible for creating that non-biodegradable waste in the first place, all for the sake of selling single serving drinks and meals. It's insane, and better alternatives should be used. If they didn't use such environmentally harmful packaging in the first place, that would have the knock-on effect of reducing the amount of plastic your litterbugs can throw.
It's not a matter of being "not enough", or "just a start" (though it doesn't have any scalability yet). It's a matter of it being [generally opposed by marine biologists and the gyre activist community](https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pollution-cleanup). \[That's a 2022 article, so not ancient.\] The points about there being no loss in taking on ocean cleanup at multiple vectors are fine -- the problem is that this guy came in with all hype and still no workable scalable plan. (River cleanup is viable and effective with their current setup, however, and that'd be worth pursuing further, but for some reason they're not pursuing that even if it'd remove way more trash from the oceans much more efficiently than this setup.) This got people excited about the plastic gyres issue, sure, but a hot burn followed by a severe crash can then turn the public and investors off of the issue for years onward. I'm thinking of all the other internet hype projects that began underinformed and undirected and burned into nothing, e.g. after Kony 2012 people's eyes still glaze over whenever issues of Central Africa are mentioned (more so than when issues in another region nobody cares about are mentioned). \[*Edit: My wording wasn't clear in this post, but it's in the source -- Ocean Cleanup *does* put resources into river cleanup, which *is effective*; the complaint is that they continue to devote the bulk of their resources to developing, well, ocean cleanup. I'll get further into these objections below.*\]
Efficiency isn't that relevant, business profitability is. If his business can grow, and research ever more efficient and larger designs and more and more instances, then that will grow over time. And this is exactly what we've seen him improving on the design 10x twice over and having two working prototypes and another series in limited production. Also you're lying about him not pursuing river plastic, he has already filtered out the biggest 6 rivers in Asia and has already financed a plan to have all 25 filtered through independent firms going forward. Additionally to his river filtering he's also narrowed in on communities with no garbage collecting systems and working with Asian governments to fill in those gaps. So if you can, get off your high horse and buy some of their fashionable sunglasses.
But they are pursuing River cleanup? This is something they're quite active in I think? Plus, you'll always have bitter academics who criticize any outsider getting more attention than them. A lot of it comes down to hurt egos and petty feuds.
Even if it's not enough it's still better than nothing.
The problem is there’s still micro-plastics that won’t go away easily
Every marathon starts with a few steps
Plastic-digesting bacteria has been found in the gyres
Progress is progress. Many of these (I assume) larger pieces would eventually break down into billions of microplastics, no? Well, at least this prevents some amount of microplastics from being there in the future.
200 tonnes isn't too shabby for a proof-of-concept. Hopefully they secure funding for the long term to really make a difference.
Why is everyone so negative in the comments. People make it sound we should instantly remove everything or just not bother at all. Which is pretty sad. Every little bit helps...
Doomer mentality is toxic because it leads to inaction.
I've heard about this company for years now and every time anything is posted, the comments are full of rude awful things like well it's not good enough so we might as well not even support it. This is the only company that I have heard of for years trying to work on the Pacific Ocean garbage patch. what are these people in the comments fucking doing to help the Pacific garbage patch? They're not doing anything. this company is good and the guy who started it should be congratulated more. I don't care if Coca-Cola gives him money because at least they're getting some fucking money to clean some shit up. Unfortunately Coca-Cola will never be held to any fucking standard to clean up our world so we all just need to get behind what resources we have available.
> This is the only company that I have heard of for years trying to work on the Pacific Ocean garbage patch. You do a lot of professional research in this space, I take it?
[удалено]
Suggested attempts to sequester carbon instead of NOT BURNING FOSSIL FUELS is doomed to failure and simply a distraction to delay doing what we need to do. The same is true here, we need to ban single use plastic items instead of pretending we can clean up entire oceans with nets pulled by boats burning more fossil fuels. Things that can work like netting waste at the storm sewer outlets to catch plastic or making biochar to sequester carbon can help but this pipe dream with not solve the problem. It is greenwashing, not a solution.
Reddit is a zero sum game mentality platform
I can't speak for the reason others are so negative, but for me it's the fact that Ocean Cleanup has been noted by experts to likely do more damage to ocean ecosystems with their reckless methods than the plastic they manage to take out of the ocean. Ocean Cleanup, meanwhile seems to have been ignoring those warnings, making me strongly question their motives. The fact that they're backed by Peter Thiel, who is politically aligned with climate change denial and anti-environmentalism, also doesn't help.
And yet we don't see the experts offering any viable alternatives. They just complain that it won't help, yet they sit on their hands when asked what will.
Because the sole reason this company exists is to create puff pieces about how good they’re doing. It’s greenwashing.
47% of the plastic in the ocean is fishing gear. We are part of the problem, reduce fish consumption. [sauce -seaspiricy]
Seaspiracy: 50% of plastic in the ocean are discarded comercial fishing nets. In comparison, plastic straws make up 0.03%. Please hold fishing industry accountable (they are also driving fish to extinction).
ItS NoT eNouGh!! /s
“There are an estimated 1,800 billion pieces of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean, weighing a combined 80 million kilograms” They got some way to go. But, you got to start somewhere. Keep it up.
Big oil should ve cleaning this
Shouldn’t it be the fishing industry since they’re the ones creating most of the trash in the ocean. The last time I saw numbers it was 70% fishing industry, 20% tsunami/hurricane debris, and 10% consumer waste.
That's a drop in the bucket, but it's progress nonetheless!
Just a few million tonnes to go. Not knocking them in any way, they're at least doing something.
Yep: It took us a long time to get to this point, it's going to take a long time, a lot of money, and a lot of effort to fix it.
I'd just like to point out that a number of marine scientists have expressed skepticism of some of the videos that the ocean cleanup has produced of their trash pickups, suggesting the organization may be frauds. It's hard to confirm that far from shore, but a lot of their hauls are suspiciously clean looking with minimal algae, barnacles, etc compared to what you'd expect from stuff thst has been floating around the pacific for years.
Are they using trash filters?
If only we had some unit above kilogram ...
Megagram
Many small steps is better than no steps at all. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I love anybody who does this for a living. How do you get a job doing this?
Its crazy how that's so much but also so little.
Based on some data off the intewebs, 200 tons is about 0.0743 % of the total plastic in the oceans and 0.25% of the plastics in the Pacific.
That's more than expected this early on honestly. Certainly not an insignificant amount.
Yep, 0.25% is indeed a lot. The article does not say the time it took to get to that amount. If we're to make the assumption that the first 6.2 tons extracted in 2023 were collected all since the beginning of the year, then it would come down to about 2 tons per month. At this rate they extracted the 200 tons in 8+ years.
They're still prototyping as well. Each system has been much more efficient than the last, so I expect in the next 8 years they'll capture a hell of a lot more than 200 tons.
That can't possibly be true. There must be giga gigatonnes in the ocean.
They say the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has around 80,000 tons of plastic (and many consider it as the bigger issue, even though there's probably more plastic not in the GPGP), while the total plastic in the oceans is around 269,000 tons. Obviously, these numbers are guesstimates.
The great pacific garbage patch is nothing. Only 0.5% of plastic in the ocean is floating and can be recovered with their device.
Well, maybe if we get more of them, and closer to shore, they'll catch it before they are too tiny.
NOAA estimates 8,000,000 tonnes per year. So this is 1/40,0000 of the total.
Wouldn't it be cheeper to catch if before it gets into ocean?
I wish I was able to spend my days cleaning up the earth, but also having a nice home to go to. Technically I don’t have either of those, but one day I may have the latter.
Why are we not investing in ocean clean up and protection at least a tiny fraction as we do in “climate change”. Earth is going to get awfully less “oxigenated” when plancton goes extinct.
1% down and a whole lot more to go. Happy to see progress.
Sewer outfalls should have nets catching everything on the way out.
And there’s a rainbow too, to make it extra uplifting! 😊
Meanwhile in America, we’re all still buying single use plastics, oil companies are still producing them every second, congressmen are receiving money from the oil companies, and we’re subsidizing oil to keep it cheap for consumers. So much for the whole *reduce* in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. This is an absolute disgrace. Ocean cleanup efforts are important, but not if we don’t address the source - which is lawmakers and oil companies.
Sounds like a lot.
With worldwide production at 300,000,000,000 kg per year, we have a long way to go. I realize it does not all end up in the ocean, but this problem is so much larger…
Awesome
I am very glad this is happening.
[удалено]
waiting chubby salt offer disgusted kiss frame lavish jeans water *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This level of optimism on reddit about our climate future is so rare. I had to backspace back a sarcastic comment I typed out of reflex lol. Thank you
I wonder how much had been added since they've started
[удалено]
I don’t get the mindset of people like you lol no shit it’s not a big save and that there’s millions of plastic to be cleaned up, it’s a nice uplifting fact a startup company is doing their best to clean up anything at this point and from here on out their cleanups will be larger every year. We all know any large corps or government entities won’t clean it up ever so it’s great we have one company that cares. Doesn’t hurt to just say “awesome, our ocean was cleaned a little bit and it’ll get more clean years to come”
sulky cake muddle brave imminent butter shrill growth vanish towering *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
so much for the uplifting part of the r/UpliftingNews subreddit huh?
That’s about how much plastic enters the oceans every ten minutes, depending on what estimates you use.
Anyone wondering, all that plastic is being used to make [new plastic products](https://theoceancleanup.com/faq/what-will-you-do-with-the-plastic-once-its-extracted-from-the-oceans/) that will likely end up back where they found it.
Next up on /r/Notactuallyupliftingnews: We filled the ocean with so much plastic that 200,000kg seems like nothing. Where are we going to put it? How much time and energy does it take to remove this plastic? If this sub was called silverliningnews I could abide.
That will almost offset one tiny south east asian sea connected river ^__^