Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic | Hacker News Reader

Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

nytimes.com

195 pointsokket141 comments

My wife and I were traveling in Borneo a few years back. They have "water villages" there where all the houses are built on stilts in shallow water. You could not see the shore because it was completely covered in a layer of garbage. It was like living on top of a landfill. At first I thought it was garbage thrown out by the villagers, but it's not. It was garbage that washes in on the tide. Every now and then the villagers try to clean it up, only to be overwhelmed by a new batch. We were told that it only takes a few weeks for the garbage to completely cover the shore again. It was heartbreaking.

[UPDATE] Here's a photo: http://www.flownet.com/ron/trips/Borneo/Images/165.jpg

> You could not see the shore because it was completely covered in a layer of garbage. It was like living on top of a landfill.

I've seen the same thing in many different parts of the world. The coastlines are an absolute mess, but then again so is the interior. Garbage is just everywhere in the developing world, strewn about with no concern no matter where you are.

Part of the problem is development shock and part of it is externality. As the neighboring post says, before non-biodegradable stuff it might not have been as big a problem. It is plausible that if they had developed at their own pace, or that the relevant infrastructure and institutions were put in along with the commercial products, things might have been different.

As it is they are not capable of fixing this problem.

I saw that on the Malaysian peninsula. Chinese fishing villages that still speak an old dialect of Cantonese. It's worse in what looks to be the dry season and low tide like you have there.

The other issue is that it's not important to them to clean it up - as it was explained to me. I talked to a local while there and she explained that growing up she never saw it, but years away and she doesn't like it now but knows no one is interesting in picking it up. Partly because they don't seem to care in her opinion partly because they don't have trash service there anyhow, a lot of the trash is put there by the people that live right above it. So it seems like double work to them. Why spent weeks cleaning it up when they're dumping their daily trash there and have been for a hundred years - before plastic it wasn't really a problem of course.

There is another issue that many of these little above water fishing villages do have running water - but no sewage. I've seen toilets and sinks that look right down into the water. You DO NOT want to go down there.

I think an important thing to note was of the trash I saw, none of it had American or Chinese labels, instead was bahas-malay writing, or local brands. So it's a little hard to say "oh how awful! I need to do something" when unfortunately, they're doing a lot of it it to themselves directly or their countrymen.

It is sad thought, totally agree. And Borneo was awesome, but don't tell anyone!

> You DO NOT want to go down there.

I don't actually know if this village had sewers or not (I suspect not) but we did see people swimming in the water.

That was more of a YOU don't want to go in there. They might be way more used to it in terms of built up resistance.

I live in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the US. Most of the houseboats on Lake Washington and Lake Union dumped their sewage straight into the lakes until the late 60s.

It was only this year that we passed an ordinance prohibiting dumping treated sewage from boats into Puget Sound and the lakes. That's a shudder-inducing thought when you consider that many of the delicious oysters we have here are directly under those boats, filtering everything they can out of the water.

Most of human history has involved treating bodies of water like magical devices that teleport waste away forever.

> Most of human history

Most of life, really. It's only recently (the last century) that we've hit upon such economies of scale, population and production capacity that our natural renewal processes can no longer handle the load.

That, and plastic material making up much of that load. Dumping large quantities of wood =/= dumping large quantities of styrofoam.

I thought federal regulations required the dumping of sewage 12-25 miles from coastline.

They do - this expands those regulations (which have exceptions for discharge of treated sewage) into a full-blown "no discharge zone" (NDZ), where even treated effluent can't be dumped.

As I understand it, the federal regulations reference distance from land - and the Puget Sound is really more of a sea than an open coastline. The previous regulation was something like being 3 miles away from land to dump untreated sewage.

https://www.marineinsight.com/tech/sewage-treatment-plant/

https://ecology.wa.gov/Water-Shorelines/Puget-Sound/No-disch...

Yes, like oasisbob says, the "treated" in my sentence is significant. Federal regulations prohibit dumping untreated sewage, but allow dumping it if it's treated (chemically broken down, I think roughly similar to what you'd do in a septic tank). Call me crazy, but I'm still not super keen on eating oysters that have had treated sewage raining down on them either.

Nope. I don’t eat oysters and if I see someone eat one I excuse myself before I vomit. Thanks dumpers.

But is there some inherent and real quality of biowaste that remains with the oysters after they filter-feed on it?

> Most of human history has involved treating bodies of water like magical devices that teleport waste away forever.

For much of human history, bodies of water effectively did magically dispose of any waste. If you're a small family group or a small tribe, you can pretty much dump anything down a river with no ill consequences.

It was only once extremely large populations gathered around bodies of water for many generations while creating much more and much more toxic waste did it become a problem.

Well it’s also recently we’ve come up with indispodable items like plastic.

150 years ago, the entire human population could poop into the ocean and I’m sure the ocean would be able to handle it (given it’s not all in the same place)

The ocean is huuuuuuge. However plastic can survive for a looooooooong time.

This photo is surreal. I can't believe a trash filled planet is becoming a reality and we are doing little to nothing to stop it.

Human nature being what it is, it's inevitable. Making it about personal responsibility to recycle and dispose tidily is guaranteeing a tragedy of the commons. This frees manufacturers to create ever more packaging crap and chase an extra fraction of a cent.

Only way to stop it is to go back to packaging that decomposes or is inert like glass which soon loses the sharp edges.

We need to get back to paper/cardboard packaging. Trees can be and are farmed. You can use as much paper as you want and never run out of trees.

Also makes it a natural carbon sink (trees->paper packaging->landfills).

Isn't the paper decomposing in the landfill still part of the carbon cycle? Landfills break down, shrink, venting gases back into the atmosphere.

Yes, but at a reduced rate. And the methane at landfills is either burned off or used to generate electricity.

> And the methane at landfills is either burned off or used to generate electricity.

There's a retired landfill not far from my childhood home which was covered with grass and the area turned into a park. It had vent pipes dotting the large hill colloquially referred to as "mount trashmore", but nothing else was done to manage the vented gases.

Perhaps you meant "may be", rather than "is". Especially if we're talking about landfill practices across the globe.

As with everything, it’s nuanced. The EPA regulations requiring methane management are fairly recent, although some waste management orgs have been more progressive than others historically (and there’s money to be made in piping or burning that methane).

With that said, it’s entirely possible there are older landfills that are simply exhausting methane into the atmosphere. I expect their numbers to fall over time, as the EPA has a substantial budget (~$100MM) for landfill custodians who would like to remediate their methane disposal.

https://www.epa.gov/lmop

According to their fact sheet, the majority of active and recently close landfills aren't collecting methane.

It also implies that a modest majority of landfills where collection is economically viable are collecting, but there's apparently ~1400 landfills where it isn't gonna happen.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-08/documents...

No we do not. We need to do this instead:

1. Reduce 2. Re-use 3. Recycle

In that order.

Stop making crap that breaks. Stop buying crap we don't need.

Please, the Western world is doing a lot of work in keeping it out of water ways and oceans. The majority of trash is from China and other Asian countries. [1]

What can we do? Simple, this is where trade requirements include treating the environment right. We already have restrictions on seafood harvesting and protecting certain species like whales and dolphins. no reason we cannot hold trade to require proper handling of waste and pollution to include penalties and fees on offending nations

[1] https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-01-13/5-countries-dump-more...

To be fair, part of the way we "take care" of it is by shipping a bunch of it's trash to China [0].

[0] https://bigthink.com/philip-perry/why-china-isnt-taking-amer...

I mean, true in the most technical sense, but given the Chinese paid an estimated half billion dollars for it in 2016 [1], the implication that it's being dumped there is disingenuous.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/china-bans-foreig...

I think you are misleading yourself by recycling policies and waste management that takes the trash out to a place where you cannot see it, precisely the point of the article. The amount of trash a person generates in a country like the US is astounding. One person in the US generates in average 4.4 pounds of trash every day, and that makes Americans the top polluters in this sense.

Having lived in North America, South America and China, I can tell you the main difference is packaging. The trash can itself is huge in the US, while in South America people use something closer to a small paper bin. A lot of the trash is organic, but in general, waste management and wastewater treatment in Latin America is awful.

China on the other hand has a big wastewater treatment problem, especially in provinces like Sichuan from what I saw. One village I visited had its main creek contaminated in our generation by a nearby factory. waste generation is also low over there.

https://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/trash-number...

For this reason I'm kinda glad stuff like this is happening, it will be a clear reminder of what we're doing to the planet. Kinda like when our rivers caught on fire in the 70s.

It's unfortunate that it's happening to someone, but people need visual reminders that there's a problem.

I'm curious. Quotes from the article:

“It happens pretty much all the time if there is a strong rainfall or a storm,”

The phenomenon is not confined to the Dominican Republic, he said, and can be seen in many developing nations with a coastline. “Everybody uses the rivers and the beaches as dump sites.” --

So we're being told that ocean's plastic garbage patch is somehow made out of the contents of landfills around the globe (and western countries) making it into the ocean with rain water. To anyone who has seen a landfill in real life that looks wildly improbable, except for a very minuscule amount of material.

I feel like developing countries using ocean as a waste dump is much more likely to be the true cause of the garbage patch.

86% of the oceans plastic comes from Asia[1].

[1] https://www.theoceancleanup.com/sources/

This statistic shows that as NA or EU residents, what we do basically does not matter. The plastic waste of Asia will only grow.

What we can do is focus on the cleanliness of our local communities as that is the only place where we can have an effect.

But on the global scale, unless if we manage to strongarm Asia into behaving, it's borderline meaningless.

What would help is to develop a material that is just as good as plastic (or better), degrades easily and is cheaper as well, and then wait for them to copy. Germany basically did this for solar energy.

I think the issue is no matter what policies are adapted outside of Asia, the current status of ocean plastics will remain until Asian countries modify their internal policies.

Such as biodegradable plastics, which can, in some cases, fully decompose in as little as 24 months![1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic

The point of plastic is that it doesn't degrade. How could you make a bottle that maintains its integrity when storing lemonade but dissolves once it hits the ocean or a lake? There is no useful signal that separates the situations. You could try continuous disintegration, but this requires people accepting part of a dissolving bottle in their drinks.

We could not send our recycling to Asia to deal with and build plants to process it here at home.

There was a recent study which has been circulating. Most (90%) of the plastics in the ocean that are not related to fishing equipment come from 8 rivers in Asia and then the Nile and Niger rivers in Africa. Mostly due to poor or unregulated waste disposal infrastructures.

Can you link the study? Why do they believe that's the case? Is it just the lack of a waste disposal infrastructure?

A simple google search yields:

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti...

https://www.dw.com/en/almost-all-plastic-in-the-ocean-comes-...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

Is this myth still going around? If you read more than the headlines you will see that it is 90% of the plastics coming from rivers are from 10 big rivers, so it is not including any plastic that go directly into the ocean. Not that it would not help to clean up those rivers, but what you do also matter https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...

The Scientific American article states that 25% of the plastic pours into the Ocean from 10 rivers. 8 of them in Asia.

God forbid I use a straw, though.

Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw?

It's a step forward, a small one at that, but it's progress. I don't understand those complaining - they usually fall back to people with disabilities, and yet establishments will still have straws on-hand for those folks.

I don't know if the parent comment was complaining of inconvenience.

Straws are a trivial step forward, and I don't think we shouldn't feel better because of it and think we've done something meaningful.

Straw bans are a particularly easy topic to make fun of, because of some internet analysis that Starbucks' solution uses more plastic than using straws.

It was “some Internet analysis” — by a 9 year old apparently? — that got the ball rolling on this latest legislative fleecing.

Banning straws are a non-trivial step backwards which will lead to more pollution IMO.

It’s a mockery of real steps which could be taken that would have orders of magnitude more effect on actual pollution levels.

If you think banning straws are an actual benefit, I think you’ve left science behind and moved on to politics.

> establishments will still have straws on-hand for those folks

Not everywhere, they won't. Santa Barbara just passed a straw ban without any exceptions for disabled people who actually need plastic straws. In other places, it's still legal for restaurants to keep straws around for those who need them, but the restaurants don't all know that.

From what I can tell, reading what straw-using disabled people have to say about this, it's as frustrating for them as if there were suddenly a ban on toilet paper in public restrooms. They absolutely need this disposable item, and they have never needed to carry their own before, or ask about it in advance. Now all of a sudden they're stuck having to be super-prepared at all times they're out in public, or they risk not being able to meet a basic bodily need.

How hard is it to carry a metal straw with you? You hear news about the ban, and you put a couple plastic ones in your bag until the metal one from amazon arrives.

Why are people so helpless? Jesus christ, it takes half a second to figure out this solution for yourself.

How hard is it to carry some TP with you? NBD, right? So you wouldn't mind having to take your own with you everywhere you go?

> Why are people so helpless?

I... you are literally talking about disabled people. A decent society should have some care for the needs of these people, and not ignore them when they tell us what is important to them.

Toilet paper and drinking straws are not equivalent. TP is biodegradable and EVERYBODY needs it. If stores were to stop carrying TP, then everyone would need to carry it around and that's silly.

Disabled people aren't helpless, they generally will do everything they can up until their disability stops them. I'm really struggling to think of a disability where someone would be prevented from putting a straw on their persons.

Don't listen to me on this, listen to actual disabled people: https://www.eater.com/2018/7/19/17586742/plastic-straw-ban-d...

I read your article, thanks for sharing. Just because she is disabled doesn’t mean she can’t change too. I understand that disability makes change difficult, but I think these issues are important enough that the struggle to change is worth it.

There are solutions to her problems, she just doesn’t want to change. The solutions she presents are regressive (“keep plastic straws behind the counter”) or dismissive (“don’t take away MY straws, take away someone else’s plastic”). I understand and I sympathize but I want to reduce plastic usage more than I want her to maintain her drinking strategy.

> How hard is it to carry a metal straw with you? You hear news about the ban, and you put a couple plastic ones in your bag until the metal one from amazon arrives.

Metal straws are dangerous due to for many disabled people due to the risk of injuring themselves by biting down involuntarily because of the same disabilities which necessitate their use of straws in the first place. For many others, the inflexibility of metal straws mean that they do not actually enable them to drink independently.

> Why are people so helpless? Jesus christ, it takes half a second to figure out this solution for yourself.

It is indeed very easy to think of this approach. For people with disabilities which make metal straws unusable or dangerous, it probably doesn't take very long to think of why it isn't a solution for them.

(As a minor aside, as a person lacking any such disability: metal straws can be quite a painful experience with hot beverages. Although I'm given to understand that it's traditional in Argentina with mate, and my Argentine in-laws seemed much more comfortable doing so at a higher temperature than I was, so I guess it is probably possible to get used to that.)

If we were to answer every use case every time we need to make a societal change, then nothing would get done.

The scope of people you mention with that disability is very very small. And still, they could work around metal by using a piece of rubber on the tip. Hell, someone could invent a special straw just for disabled people (we could make it longer and more flexible, you might call it a tube!).

Instead of ripping apart my lay ideas and complaining about our attempts at fixing climate change, perhaps we ought to be thinking of better solutions for our friends with disabilities. Because ultimately, climate change will take the lives of people with disabilities before it takes the lives of able-bodied people.

Any issue can be explained away by claiming it is "very very small" - including the matter of straws. I'm skeptical that use of plastic straws by developed countries will ultimately cause enough climate change to kill disabled people as your comment implies. Let's not confuse litter and climate change. That kind of hyperbole does not help.

Environmentalism would be better served if environmentalists focused on deeper solutions and did not waste societal attention and resources on distractions of negligible outcome. Black-and-white thinking and choosing to die on every hill only serves to breed false self-satisfaction and alienate potential supporters.

Totally fair, it was a hyperbolic comment. But environmentalism takes many small steps to achieve, it’s not done overnight in one fell swoop. If we fight all of these small steps, then it never moves forward. We need to “die on this hill” so that we don’t die on a bigger hill much later.

We need to think about a world without throw-away plastic. Banning plastic straws is an exploration in to that world. If it turns out that there is absolutely no way to live in a world without plastic straws, then I am sure the ban will be undone. But I think we can get ahead of this challenge, it’s not that big.

A better approach compared to banning things currently needed by disabled people and then, once disabled people object, saying "well, we need to develop better alternatives for disabled people, but we can't let these issues get in the way" would be to first develop alternatives and then, once there are good alternatives that are actually usable and safe for disabled people, ensuring their availability as part of the same policies that reduce or eliminate the use of the environmentally problematic things.

There's no reason why the needs of disabled people must conflict with taking care of the environment. The apparent conflict in this situation was introduced because people developed their environmental policy proposals without any awareness of or care for the interests and needs of disabled people: if we do not account for the effects of policies on disabled people when deciding which policies to prioritize and how to implement them, some policies will look artificially more appealing because of our inattention to some of their costs and the policies we do choose to pursue will end up implemented in needlessly harmful ways simply because we weren't paying attention to whether we ended up causing harm to some people.

> Santa Barbara just passed a straw ban without any exceptions for disabled people who actually need plastic straws

Reusable straws (both plastic and metal) are available, as are paper and non-paper compostable straws. I don't know of any disability that requires people to use single-use-but-stays-around-forever straws.

If businesses aren't accommodating disabled patrons with any of the legal, readily available, reasonable solutions available, that seems like an ADA issue, though anyone who needs or wants straw should probably be proactive in preparing themselves in case facilities fail, which is simple enough to do.

I suspect the problems here are transition issues that'll disappear fairly soon (and will probably be dealt with better in the future as new jurisdictions adopt bans but have the benefit of seeing where the transition was rocky in the early places.)

> Reusable straws (both plastic and metal) are available, as are paper and non-paper compostable straws. I don't know of any disability that requires people to use single-use-but-stays-around-forever straws.

Many of these alternatives are usable in some contexts for people with some disabilities requiring them to use straws, however, they're all also dangerous or unusable to some disabled people (paper straws can be a choking hazard, rigid straws of all kinds are dangerous for people with tics or other conditions that may lead to them biting down involuntarily, non-paper compostable straws pose allergy risks and are rarely labeled in such a way as to communicate whether they contain possible allergens, several types of reusable or compostable straws can be dangerous in sufficiently hot drinks) and disabled people with some combinations of conditions can end up having all of the alternatives potentially unsafe for them, save disposable non-compostable plastic.

> anyone who needs or wants straw should probably be proactive in preparing themselves in case facilities fail, which is simple enough to do.

That would be simple for most abled people to do, yes. It would be less simple for those disabled people for whom fetching a straw they brought with them and putting it in their drink would require assistance, which, as it happens, are also people who are rather likely to need straws to drink.

> I suspect the problems here are transition issues that'll disappear fairly soon

You don't seem to be aware of the problems that disabled people have been pointing out, so I think your suspicion may not be very well founded here.

How about if I'd rather drink acid drinks like Coke (when I do) without damaging my teeth?

What about my freedom of choosing whether I'd use straws or not?

Please explain to me how you can drink without the liquid touching your teeth. Do you stick the straw directly down your throat?

uh? I minimize the contact to my teeth, I guess?

Afaik, Acid damage to teeth is mostly from long term effects of acid produced by bacteria on the teeth, not acidic liquids that transit through the mouth.

In any case, disposable plastic straw bans do not affect your freedom of choosing whether you use a straw or not.

It's not all good banning straws - Starbucks, for one, is finding out it uses more plastic with their new lids[1][2][3][4].

Sure, they're more recyclable, but a big part of the problem is many people don't throw their Starbucks cup in the recycle bin as it is! So, more plastic is being manufactured and used, and maybe some of it will be recycled... not such a clear cut win after all...

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/23/starbucks-s...

[2] https://reason.com/blog/2018/07/12/starbucks-straw-ban-will-...

[3] https://www.thekitchn.com/starbucks-no-straws-new-lids-more-...

[4] https://www.vox.com/2018/6/25/17488336/starbucks-plastic-str...

Explain the benefit.

Straws are too small to be processed by recycling facilities. They just get tossed.

Even if the Starbucks lids are larger, they can be recycled because they can be caught by the recyclers.

Leptospirosis is the reason people are trained from childhood to require drinking straws in many parts of Asia. Rats piss on bottles and cans, and the bacteria their urine contains kept alive due to the ice used to keep them cold. So if you refuse the straw while on holiday, remember it is flu like symptoms with a high chance of death.

> Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw?

Simple, I like using straws. Now I can't get one. It's not a small step forward, it's a minuscule step forward. Nothing significant has changed except peoples silly image of themselves.

Why does it need to be inconvenience, why not just preference? The detrimental effects of straw usage in the US are extremely minimal. We are basically going through a stage where we ban all straws in the country because of a sad photo of a turtle from Costa Rica.

> Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw?

Do you have young children? If you do, you know very well the inconvenience of not having straws.

How about know anyone with facial nerve paralysis like Bells Palsy where they need a straw to drink without spilling liquid all over themselves?!

Carrying your own straws won’t help if the lid isn’t designed to take one.

The straw ban is just more faux outrage virtue signaling bullshit which makes people think they are doing something that is helping, so that when it comes to actually doing something worthwhile they don’t bother because — yah! No more straws!

Sometimes I am terribly disappointed in the way these movements develop, percolate through false narratives, fake stats, and outright lies, and then when exposed as grandstanding bullshit the argument shifts to; but at least it’s something?

Actually, the truth? It’s not something. It’s a step backwards (see Starbucks). It’s draining, it’s inconvenient, and it saps goodwill from a lot of people who really would be willing to make meaningful changes... but instead we’re out there banning straws and banning serving water at restaurants without having to ask.

Sigh.... </rant>

Should modern countries stop making improvements until the developing ones catch up? We still consume far more than those countries, meaning how we manage resources can cause large swings.

Correct - for instance, we could have diverted all the resources we used to ban straws into educational anti-waste programs in the biggest offender countries.

> developing countries using ocean as a waste dump

I thought this was common knowledge by this point. The most polluted rivers in the world are located in India, China, South America, Africa, and Indonesia.

Developed countries don't help by shipping their waste to developing countries and removing the problem from their sight. China recently stopped accepting garbage from California and now the problem is back in the USA.

I understand what you're saying, but now China gets clean rivers, and OUR rivers are a mess and begin pumping garbage and pollution into the ocean. (I guess, since we already pump garbage and pollution into the ocean it might be more accurate to say that we begin to pump more garbage and pollution into the ocean.)

Point is, mankind still has the issue. China is not solving any problems by making us keep our own garbage. They're not helping mankind at all. And neither are we with our penchant for plastic products. I guess I'm just pointing out that the problem has not been fixed, it's been transferred.

The waste generated by countries that have over 1 billion inhabitants each will dwarf the amount of garbage we could ship them even if all garbage storage in the US was outsourced to them.

It's a simple numbers game. 300 million will never produce as much waste as 1 billion.

> 300 million will never produce as much waste as 1 billion.

I dont have the numbers but Americans do produce more trash compared to majority of those billion. Its hard to compete with Americans when you live on $2 per day.

Note that I wrote shipped, not produced. That being said:

Sure, but that doesn't bode well for the future when that population of 1 billion starts elevating more of its people to the middle class.

Yes, poverty means less waste, but the global goal seems to be getting people out of poverty, which increases net pollution.

> China recently stopped accepting garbage

You mean, they stopped buying recyclables? That's fairly different than just accepting raw waste: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-b...

Is that landfill claim a bit of a strawman (pardon the pun)? I've seen little to nothing about it being the result of landfills, and everything about it being a result of the culture of disposable plastics. We're all to blame for disposable plastics.

I think the point is that disposable plastics are not an issue if they end up in landfills.

I'm not sure how popular that claim is, but I've heard it multiple times. Especially as part of the eco-protective initiatives.

I was able to find this example[1]:

"Even if you live hundreds of miles from the coast, the plastic you throw away could make its way into the sea. Once in the ocean, plastic decomposes very slowly, breaking down in to tiny pieces known as micro plastics that can be incredibly damaging to sea life. 80% of plastic in our oceans is from land sources – but what does that really mean? Where is it coming from?

There are three main ways the plastic we use every day ends up in the oceans."

"1. Throwing plastic in the bin when it could be recycled. Plastic you put in the bin ends up in landfill. When rubbish is being transported to landfill, plastic is often blown away because it’s so lightweight. From there, it can eventually clutter around drains and enter rivers and the sea this way."

"2. Littering Litter dropped on the street doesn’t stay there. Rainwater and wind carries plastic waste into streams and rivers, and through drains. Drains lead to the ocean!"

"3. Products that go down the drain Many of the products we use daily are flushed down toilets, including wet wipes, cotton buds and sanitary products."

At no point they mention the fact that some countries are just using ocean as a landfill and that causes 90% of the pollution of it.

[1]: https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/how-does-plastic-end-ocean

Fair enough, but none of those are about items actually in the landfill. It's about the process of getting there. And even with recycling, a large percentage is sent to China, India, and other nations where its custody is uncertain.

The single raindrop never feels responsible for the flood. Whether it's CO2, plastics, CFCs, etc, our individual contributions might be tiny in the grand scheme of things, but together make a difference. The best thing we can do is change the culture of single-use disposables and export that to other nations.

To me it's like code optimization.

You may spend a lot of time optimizing the code responsible for 1% of run time, or you may spend that same time optimizing the code that takes 60% of the total run time.

That said, I'm not saying we should not work to reduce the pollution everywhere.

Those numbers are outdated. More recent studies show that 46% is discarded fishing gear: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/great-pacific-garb...

I think it’s absurd that we look for biodegradeable plastics as a solution when we could simple legislate common containers and reuse them. How much must we sacrifice because brands want to differentiate on the shape of the bottle instead of on what’s inside it and on the label?

You’re being told explicitly that “the garbage comes from the Ozama river that flows into the ocean near the beach”. That’s literally on the page. And then you’re being told that “[in many developing nations with a coastline], everyone uses the rivers and beaches as dump sites”.

Feelings aside, 46% of the garbage in the patch is discarded fishing material: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/great-pacific-garb...

Its not the landfills. Its the slums around cities in developing countries. They don't even have roads most of the time, much less effective trash collection. They usually just dump the trash down the hill or through some water drainage. You can clearly see the problem if you go there.

Who is telling you all the ocean's garbage /plastic patches are from landfills? I haven't read that personally. The evidence I've seen points to general litter, things falling from garbage receptacles, and in addition developing nations with very lax cultural norms around garbage. I don't think landfills are in the picture as one of the top factors.

It's definitely a belief that's out there. I've argued with people about it before. For example, jdavis703 and Reason077 seem to believe that material sent to the landfill will end up in the ocean. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17410483

I've wondered for a time, why we put so much energy into banning certain plastic items, instead of improving biodegradable plastic technologies in conjunction with efficient trash sorting at waste management plants.

If we can replace most plastics with biodegradable forms, a large part of these issues go away completely within our lifetime; plastics decomposing in as little as 24 months![1]

> According to a 2010 EPA report, 12.4%, or 31 million tons, of all municipal solid waste (MSW) is plastic. 8.2% of that, or 2.55 million tons, were recovered[1]

A large part of our recycling problem is that it's entirely dependent on people doing the right thing and putting recyclable materials in the correct bin. Why not have machines that can sort recyclables from true decompostable trash? Plastics tend to float, glass tends to sink, tin and many other metals are magnetic... etc. Removing a dependence on people to remember what's recyclable and where to dispose of used items would be a huge win for the environment.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic

I like this plan because if we make biodegradable plastic cheaper than regular plastic then it would even help in places like the DR and it's neighbor Haiti where there literally is no garbage collection infrastructure and it's easier to throw trash in the street thank to take it home and burn it.

The problem with Biodegradable plastic is that it still requires a special process to break it down. You can’t just toss it in the ocean and have it magically break down. Compostable materials are the ideal.

> The problem with Biodegradable plastic is that it still requires a special process to break it down

That's not true, actually. From the article:

> A peer-reviewed report of the work shows 91% biodegradation in a soil environment within 24 months, when tested in accordance with ISO 17556

> Under proper conditions, some biodegradable plastics can degrade to the point where microorganisms can completely metabolise them to carbon dioxide (and water). For example, starch-based bioplastics produced from sustainable farming methods could be almost carbon neutral.

The ocean is not a soil environment; so it degrading well in soil doesn't necessarily help if it is a waste stream that ends up in the ocean.

The article references starch-based bioplastics - and the ocean is quite an environment, filled with micro-organisms and minerals which readily decompose other organic materials.

I don't see a reason we cannot create something that works in that environment too - however, the overwhelming majority of our plastic waste isn't going into the ocean; rather, it's going into landfills where it will sit for thousands of years.

Things sitting in landfills are not a problem for the environment. It is producing them in the first place that causes environmental damage. Imagine everything going into a landfill as a resource our ancestors can mine in the future.

> Things sitting in landfills are not a problem for the environment

That's not true either.

Toxins, leachate, and greanhouse gases are given off from landfills and leach into ground water, or pollute the land around landfills[1]. Plastics will stay there, be washed away into streams/rivers, or be unburied in the future, practically in the same condition they were originally - even hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

> Products that are not biodegradable or are slow to decompose, like plastic, can remain in landfill sites for centuries, often emitting gases that could be harmful to the environment.[2]

> Landfills and dumps buried over often become suburban home sites in later years, unbeknownst to people who may live on them. Landfills have a distinctive effect on air pollution, nature, land and humans. Soil in the area may be saturated with chemicals or hazardous substances[3]

[1] https://environmentvictoria.org.au/resource/problem-landfill...

[2] https://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/How_Does_Recycling_Affect...

[3] https://sciencing.com/effects-landfills-environment-8662463....

I guess I should have said, "Putting things into a recently (last 30is years) constructed landfill with methane capture is not a problem for the environment. The point is putting things into landfills is a great alternative to just releasing them into the environment. The major problem with stuff, from an environmental view, is not its disposal in well designed landfills, but surface dumping and the problems with how its made and transported.

> I guess I should have said, "Putting things into a recently (last 30is years) constructed landfill with methane capture is not a problem for the environment.

Well, other than the problem that landfills will need to continue increase in size and consume the entire environment, and the environmental impact of converting land into landfills in the first place, that might be approximately correct.

> The point is putting things into landfills is a great alternative to just releasing them into the environment.

In the sense that being kicked in the genitals is a great alternative to having cigarettes put out on them, sure, but neither is good from an environmental point of view.

The total US garbage production in 2016 was 254 million tons[1]. If you assume that compacted garbage has about the density of water(hard to find good figures for this), then all of the garbage for the US for one year can be fit into a space of about 2.30E+08 cubic meters. This works out to a square mile, 300ft thick. A huge pile of trash and would be large to walk around it on a human scale, but geologically an almost infinitesimal amount of the Earth surface.

I would say that current US farmland is about as destructive to the natural environment as a properly designed covered landfill, give or take. With about 1.5 million square miles of farmland in the US, landfill use for a hundred years of US dumping is about 15,000 times less of a problem than farming for the environment. Garbage is very visible and a visceral expression of humans impact on the planet, but farming, ranching, and housing uses of land are the real destroyers of the natural environment, not how we dispose of all the crap we make (in the US at least).

[1] https://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/trash-number...

"Under proper conditions" being the key words here.

The article title and introduction is pretty misleading, as only halfway the article it is revealed that "the plastic waste washing onto Montesinos Beach comes from the Ozama River". So while this is obviously an example of plastic reaching the ocean to form a garbage patch, the article's examples of beaches filled with plastic are not a result of the patches reaching the shore again.

The title makes you believe that this garbage comes from somewhere else, across the ocean, but it's actually coming from their own river into which everybody is dumping waste.

I'm assuming you don't know how oceans work. Eventually, we'll all be ingesting that.

Do you mean people that eat seafood will be ingesting that, or are you thinking of some other means by which we will be ingesting it?

I didn't realise how big of a problem it was until Blue Planet II last year, and then earlier this year I stayed in Unawatuna, and the hotel had a small private beach that is cleared of plastic daily, and it was covered again within hours. I didn't take any photos of the litter directly, but in the top-left of this photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg7qXxyH-2c/?taken-by=unfunco it is somewhat visible.

It's endless, it'll just keep washing up for the foreseeable future. In the UK you're now vilified if you ask for a plastic bag to carry your shopping home, and the pubs and bars near me no longer offer plastic straws, I'm fine with this, but our waste is an almost literal drop in the ocean compared to the waste being dumped in rivers and oceans by developing nations.

> Mr. Gutsch said that recycling was a short-term solution and amounted to only a bandage. Parley for the Oceans advocates phasing out single-use plastic altogether.

This is the key. We must hold the companies producing single use plastics responsible for the massive amounts of toxic waste they dump on our planet. For too long, they have been allowed to pass the responsibility and blame on to the consumer. Recycling programs have not been sufficiently successful. It's time to stop the problem at the source.

> The plastic waste washing onto Montesinos Beach comes from the Ozama River, which flows into the Caribbean nearby, one of those in charge of the cleanup, Gen. Rafael Antonio Carrasco, told Reuters.

Maybe I misread this, but it sounds like the source of the garbage is relatively local.

It's not the Great Garbage Patch or anything like that, it's the DR's own garbage they they throw in the Ozama River that's washing up ashore.

Natgeo recently published this great data visualization / article on the ocean’s plastic and where it comes from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/the-jour...

Same thing happened in Mumbai a week back. The monsoon rains pulled back all the trash. http://observers.france24.com/en/20180720-video-mumbai-ocean...

Also the Dominican Republic is pretty developed country but in neighboring Haiti things are in pretty bad shape. I saw in a Youtube video by somebody who went there on an eco tour the piles on garbage on a river. He said the garbage was so bad you could walk across the river on the garbage. I can't locate the video clip anymore.

I was in Haiti. This is true, mounds and mounds of styrafoam lunch disposal because there is NO place to put garbage. If it is collected it's burned. The people will burn it themselves because again there is no place to collect it.

Ditto. Haiti's beaches near the city center were HORRIBLE. The only people on the beaches were poor folks trying to find scraps. Didn't help that they functioned as a de facto dump as well.

And nearly every other beach in the world. The amount of trash on shorelines, floating around, embedded in reef, etc is staggering.

The next time you're on vacation in the Caribbean, SE Asia, or South Pacific, wake up extra early and head out to the shoreline before any clean-up crews arrive to rake up the garbage (and seaweed). Or just visit an unmaintained beach away from resorts where tides work in favor of the garbage coming ashore and where the trash is never picked up. The oceans (and rivers which flow into them) are treated like a giant garbage dump in most of the world, and it shows.

While plastic in the ocean is a big problem, this amount of pollution is a local problem. It could be completely fixed by local people with known methods. "The plastic waste washing onto Montesinos Beach comes from the Ozama River, which flows into the Caribbean nearby." Caribbean beaches and the Gulf coast in general do not have beach pollution like this.

In a number of poorer regions in developing countries I've been too people don't have the capability or perhaps knowledge to properly dispose of garbage so it ends up on the side of the road, which eventually makes its way into rivers and the ocean.

Nice bit of auto playing video at the bottom of the article (picture worth a thousand words) or could have been an GIF.

My first thought was it looks like a great problem for some robots — they need a small fleet of floating Rhombas.

There are devices for scooping trash out of rivers, I don't know how well they could be adapted for the ocean.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/mr-trash-wheels-...

Why can't they organize a weekly trash service and tell all people to stack the trash at the end of the road?

Culture, Money, and Infrastructure (the latter of which requires a combination of Money and Time).

I bet if this happened in major US or Chinese beaches they’d actually enact policies to curb this dumping.

It reminds me of George Carlin save the planet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

Most probably created in China, used on the West then dumped in the sea...

Most of that garbage is usually from locales which lack a recyling infrastructure as well as a recycling culture. If you read the article they mention locals use beaches and streams as personal dumping grounds. So if by west you mean from the local west indies, you’re right.

Plastic recycling isn't. It's just a scheme to move the waste somewhere else (China) and make Westerners feel good about not having to change their wasteful lifestyles.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17368168

That explains some but not the nile or ganges, mekong, etc. China is “good” about dumping compared to others outside NE Asia.

I don't disagree that the recycling infrastructure isn't there, just that it doesn't do anything, except ship plastic from landfills in the west, to landfills in the east.

Since the infrastructure isn't there for these developing countries, it goes not into landfills anywhere, but into the oceans.

It says in the article it's from the Ozama river which is a local river that runs into the sea nearby.

I read that in the article, then i checked it on google maps https://goo.gl/maps/pVJeXBUE4Ck . It's still hard to believe so much trash can wind up on a beach through that river. Wait, what does the river look like? Should they just install a shallow net?

It's crazy

They should stop dumping trash in the river

I mean... yeah!

Easier said than done. First you have to develop the infrastructure (garbage trucks, dumps, entire departments in local government, etc...). Then you have to convince the villagers to change their way of life through littering fines that everybody will hate.

I don't think anybody is happy with the situation, but practical alternatives are in short supply. Worse, you have to apply the situation throughout the whole country or the people who follow the law but still get smothered in garbage from upstream will be angry and disincentiveized to continue trying to clean up.

In the 'west' or more specifically in the United States dump trash in rivers or in the ocean is hight legal and hight risky. You would very likely be caught if you did it with any frequency.

It gets old blaming America for problems America doesnt cause, and diminishes all of your future blame America comments.

Also, read the article...

The West seems to do a decent job of managing plastic waste instead of just dumping into the oceans.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/the-jour...

So the fish we consume is most probably consuming garbage and plastic. Veganism to the rescue?

There are many good reasons to go vegan nowadays. I am beginning the transition.

It's precisely why my wife and I no longer eat meat.

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