The Ocean Cleanup Is Starting
forbes.com
forbes.com
There are some people who dismiss the Millennials, but it's clear to see that many of them want to have a positive impact and prefer a meaningful life over hedonism.
I hope the project works out, but even if it won't work, the signal he's sending is very empowering.
> Roughly eight million tons of plastic enters the ocean every year. That’s according to a 2015 report, which also identified where the bulk of this trash originates. At the top of the list: China, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/04/explore-...
There's a certain attraction to centralized cleanup efforts substituting for this near-impossible task of enforcing source standards worldwide. While it's theoretically less efficient to pollute and then clean it up, this model may have the advantage of actually working.
Yes, enforcing standards worldwide is a "near-impossible" task. But cleaning up waste at the scales we're talking about, after it's entered the ecosystem, is impossible. There is no magic bullet here, and the more people who ignore what has to be done to fix the problem, hoping projects like this will make it better, the worse it will get.
That's a very strong claim, especially attached to an article about cleanup mechanisms. Are you sure some kind of synthetic biology mechanism couldn't work?
Waste removal (be it carbon or plastic) is an engineering problem; source regulation is a political problem, and political problems tend to remain unsolved until it is impossible that they remain unsolved.
Then move the plastic collection to the mouth of the 10 rivers in south east asia where the plastic is being emitted from.
Many of the objections to clean-up in the open-ocean are not relevant here. The depths are very restricted, the ecosystems are more limited, the weather conditions less extreme and less variable, the plastics should be less broken down. The impacts and infrastructure would be similar to, and on the scale of, projects such as locks and dams.
I would see this as a first step to source control. Looking at collected materials, it would become quickly obvious where the major sources of the plastics are, and they could start being addressed.
There is a social issue here too though. I would expect this kind of project would be resisted in the same way that more local clean-up and source-control efforts in those regions are already resisted.
Edit: There is also the issue that a sizable portion of the ocean plastics seem to be from discarded/lost fishing equipment.
This would probably be helpful to deploy at scale: http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/
Alone it's not an entire solution, but the technical challenges are not terribly difficult if you can constrain by the rivers dumping waste into the ocean. This is more a funding/political/logistical issue (as others have mentioned/insinuated in-thread).
A synthetic biology mechanism could be a viable approach at these scales, and there are some very interesting developments in this area in regards to breaking down and conversion of waste materials. There is a whole host of potential problems, largely of the "impossible to predict and impossible reverse" kind, that come with the idea of introducing a synthetic orgasm into the global ecosystem.
Yes, waste removal is an engineering problem, but one that may not have a safe and viable solution. Source regulation is a political problem, with all complexities that come with it, but it's a workable solution, and also has the additional advantage of at least helping even if only partially implemented.
Framing the issue is important. Yes, the environment is all good, but what the polluting nations will gain from reducing their pollution needs to be highlighted. Less plastic in rivers probably requires less plastic on streets which probably requires better sanitary conditions in general which means healthier workers and higher productivity. Cleaner air means less breathing problems means healthier workers and higher productivity, etc. Eventually, people might notice the nicer environment and develop that as a cultural goal in itself, as the US eventually did after getting tired of rivers catching on fire, but emphasizing worker productivity is probably a quicker way to get developing countries on board. Something about healthy oceans = more protein from the sea should help a bit too.
This made me think of the trash often visible on a river shores because it is caught by tree branches.
I wonder if beavers dams can be used for that to ?
That's not going to work. The proceeds from recycling the plastic aren't even going to pay for recycling the plastic.
What they are collecting is partially broken down by ocean salts and UV light, and has absorbed contaminants (a lot of these plastics are actually from fishing equipment, but the post-consumer component largely enters the ocean via some exceptionally polluted river systems). These are going to be small and unmarked plastic pieces, you would need spectrographic analysis on each piece to determine the type of plastic before it could be recycled.
Also, how many thousands of tones of souvenirs can someone sell? :P
I don't think that such a bad idea actually.
https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/adidas-shoes-made-f...
Clearly they’re not going to turn all the ocean plastic into flip flops, or anything necessarily, but multiple options do need to be explored.
Amazing that nay sayers seem to manage to write off the whole problem with nitpicks at minor or temporary aspects of actual attempts to do something about it. Early attempts at green energy largely failed, often having carbon footprints and costs greater than conventional approaches, but without all that work we’d never tackle the problem. You have to start somewhere.
What about AND?
work on reducing plastic waste AND try to get it out of the water. Deploy this solution, try it AND iterate on it. Do this AND the next idea AND the next. Keep trying things until you find the right solution.
It seems to me that this project does a lot more good than harm, even if it doesn’t work, it paves the way for solutions that might.
The amount of naysaying and nitpicking here is depressing. Is it perfect? No. Does it address every problem? No. Is it a start? Yes.
How many times has the right solution been the first thing someone tried? Rarely. But you keep trying stuff until you find something that works.
At least this guy is DOING something rather than endlessly debating how to fix it.
It’s easy to be an armchair engineer saying you could dream up 10 better solutions. Well great, go do it then.
Props to this kid and his organization for taking action on a problem to try and do some good in the world.
And even if that doesn't happen, getting rid of even a small amount of pollutants from the ocean can't be a bad thing, can it?
Imagine how much plastic is in one garbage truck, now chop it up into small, 5cm bits. Now spread it across a beach, try to pick that up. It takes all day.
We need machines to help us.
However, on the beach near me, there isn't much garbage. And pretty much any day I go, there is a group of students picking up garbage on the beach. When I used to work at the school, each home room would have beach days where they go and pick up garbage. And each club has beach days where they go and pick up garbage.
I live on Suruga bay, so it's not right on the Pacific and I'm sure that cuts down a lot of the garbage. But just with the local high school sending 20 people down there practically every day, it seems to keep it under control.
It's one of those cultural things. There is garbage everywhere because we don't have a culture to clean it up. We feel like we shouldn't have to. We feel like it should be someone else's job. Maybe that's true and maybe it's not, but a consistent effort by a small group of people can make a big difference.
If you separate it by type and size properly it can just be sold/recycled.
While it could be commercially viable I do think money should be pumped in from other sources. Preferably from [remaining] industries creating and using the materials found.
Ours are rocks, cliffs, deep bays, long sandy beaches that there is no way in hell they'd allow diggers or tractors on (conservation sites)
I suspect most of the concerns are stemming from how quickly they are trying to move. The apparent afterthought of how this will impact wildlife while collating the debris, and early failed trials with mild weather. These are good critiques. I'd like to see answers for those issues, out a plan proposed to investigate and about for these concerns. I don't think it's reasonable to push all of that on a company that's trying, without offering some support or an alternative.
Also, re: adding more plastic than was removed:
While that may be technically correct if it doesn’t work, the way I see it is this:
-this project:
-potential benefit to the oceans: high
-potential risk to the ocean: comparatively low
—99.9% of companies we debate about on this site:
-potential benefit to the oceans: zero
-potential risk to the oceans (assume here we are talking about any company that creates or purchases, directly or indirectly, any kind of plastic): high
On that alone, it seems like the risks far outweigh the benefits.
I also think if you think about the types of companies you see created every day: delivery services, manufactured products of any kind etc. All those companies have the externality of potential plastic waste. For example a delivery startup is going to be purchasing plastic spoons or plastic food boxes. No one is sitting around criticizing them for potentially adding plastic to the oceans. We all talk about economics and scale and product and software. But that company is almost certainly adding to the growing problem of plastic in the oceans without providing any upside.
Meanwhile this company is proposing launching large objects that could become waste in the oceans, yes. Although they are satellite tracked and I’m sure could be removed easily. But the upside is removing way more waste than they are discharging. So it seems worth the risk to me.
https://www.theoceancleanup.com/updates/a-peculiar-survey/
https://www.theoceancleanup.com/updates/environmental-impact...
> But the vast majority of plastic in the ocean is made up of particles one centimeter and smaller, remnants of larger pieces broken up by ultraviolet light, the corrosive effects of seawater, and physical abuse from wave action and marine creatures.
But the posted article claims instead:
> "Research shows the majority of plastic by mass is currently in the larger debris," as noted on The Ocean Cleanup website. "By removing the plastic while most of it is still large, we prevent it from breaking down into dangerous microplastics" that can absorb toxic substances and travel up the food chain.
So which is it?
And even if the claim that "the majority of plastic by mass is currently in the larger debris" is wrong, because they didn't sample deeply enough, doesn't the argument that "removing the plastic while most of it is still large, we prevent it from breaking down into dangerous microplastics" remain valid?
The risk of structural failures generating more debris, and problems with anti-fouling treatments, seem manageable through good maintenance. Or better design.
But then, what to do with the debris collected? Recycling per se does seem hopeless. I mean, we aren't even recycling much regular plastic waste, because it's mixed and contaminated. But maybe just crack it down to simple hydrocarbons, and make sure to capture the metals and halogens.
And not to be boring, but ignoring externalities is why humanity will get seriously screwed through global climate change. There isn't any workable mechanism to price that, as far as I know. Carbon credits are a joke. So it bugs me when people go on about price signals. When there's substantial time lag, the price signal is too late to be useful.
Imagine it being like an extension of this set of plastic piece masses: (100, 80, 50, 25, 10, 5, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1)
One large piece (say, a Troll doll) has more mass than the pieces is breaks down into, but those pieces are more numerous than the whole doll.
I am guessing, however, that their evidence shows that "the majority of plastic by mass" in the top whatever meters is in large pieces, but the distribution of small pieces goes far deeper.
It may already be too late due to the incredible amount of microplastics already in the Earth's major bodies of water and the fact that science doesn't know how much it will impact the ecosystem or create/exacerbate human medical problems.
I really can not fathom this sentiment, which seems to be the primary counter-argument to virtually all criticism of this project (as well as to criticisms of many other pie in the sky solutions to major issues). There are countless people who have devoted their lives to studying ocean eco-systems, safeguarding the nature, and understanding our impact on the environment. Many who have been trumpeting the problem of ocean plastics decades before it became a pop-issue. There are also millions of people, and billions of dollars worth of industry that is dependent on a healthy ocean eco-system.
Do you really believe that nobody else is trying to take action on this issue? Or could it be that people who have devoted lifetimes to understanding the reality of this issue and the engineering requirements and impact of large scale ocean structures have done the risk assessment and realized that this kind of approach is not viable?
The people who understand the problem have a solution, which is unfortunately the only viable one: The reduction of single use plastic products, more effective recycling and waste disposable programs, and a general reassessment of the volume of, and manner in which, we use plastics. But people want a magic pill that doesn't require them to accept that they are a part of the cause of ecological issues like this, and the only solution is for us, as a society, to change some of the aspects of our day-to-day lives. So they happily ignore the real solutions, click "Like" on posts that say their going to solve the world's problems, and berate entire fields worth of scientists, engineers, and ecologists for not "doing something about the problems".
There are many problems that need to be addressed, but plastics are continuing to get poured into the ocean and it doesn't appear that humanity is successfully addressing that problem at the moment unfortunately.
It's too late for that, investing in clean-up in _addition to_ prevention HAS to be a top priority for us. In fact, this is in the form of BECCS is the very basis of the Paris Climate Accords. Investing in prevention won't undo the damage that's been done, and a lot of environmental groups who only promote prevention (like those cited in your article) are doing more harm than good.
... which is like saying that the best way to clean dog poop off of your carpet is to not have a dog ...
I would argue the analogy is more "the best way to clean dog poop off of your carpet is to train your dog not to shit on your carpet." Yeah, there is still a shit stain we have to clean up, but we can't rent a steam-cleaner every time he needs to take a crap, and if we try to clean it up with a vacuum, it's going to make everything much worse.
Well, I would argue this analogy is also rather inapt. Much better would be training your 7.5 billion dogs not to shit on your carpet. Until most of those dogs are trained, it makes sense to search for tools to clean up the poop.
We haven't yet extensively tested the vacuum cleaner, and it's not clear how effective it will be, or whether it might make the situation worse.
I'm just trying to say that nobody is arguing for inaction here, on any front, they are arguing for trying to use the available resources in the most effective way possible. But people love magic bullet solutions, they want to back something that will just fix everything, so they ignore whole fields of experts and professionals, jump on the bandwagon with one buzz-worthy genius, and waste resources that could be better utilized elsewhere.
My concern is less that this particular project will fail, but more that it distracts people from the real long-term solutions, and the changes that need to be made for us to work towards those solutions, and actually gives them an excuse to ignore them. I've actually heard people cite projects like this as a reason NOT to worry about the amount of waste they generate. Attention is a valuable resource, and when it comes to ecological issues, it's in desperately short supply.
Also, unless any proposed clean-up solution can ultimately remove all the waste, it's actually less effective then any solution that uses the same amount of resources to prevent the same amount of plastics (yearly) from entering the ocean ecosystem. The net amount of plastic in the oceans each year will be the same in both cases, and you remove the negative impacts the new plastics have before they are removed from the ecosystem (leaching surface coating chemicals into the water for example), and since new plastic is not cycling is as quickly, it will increase the rate of decomposition. This is the argument for making reduction a bigger focus, as opposed to clean-up.
Develop a lifeform that lives in the sea and feeds on plastic, introduce it to the oceans.
If it just fell to the bottom of the ocean and was buried under sediment we probably wouldn't care that much.
But, as another post has explained that this isn't what the ocean-plastics are. They would be better described as a thin soup, or cloud, of tiny plastic particles dispersed over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of ocean, down to depths of up to 100m.