Cleaning plastic from the ocean using the flow of ocean currents (2017) | Hacker News Reader

Cleaning plastic from the ocean using the flow of ocean currents (2017)

bostonreview.net

32 pointshuihuiilly12 comments

The latest reports are that Boyan Slat's invention has not worked well in practice. And experts are skeptical it will work as intended.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/01/17/experts-wa...

It is built by experts.

Nobody know excactly how to do it. So it is great the first step is set.

The team will now alter the design to make it better.

From the Washington Post article: “Scientists unaffiliated with the project are skeptical that this system, or future iterations, will work as intended.” And they point out some of the reasons. May be Slat will prove them wrong. I was mainly provding an update as to what has happened since the 2017 BostonReview.net article.

The first test revealed problems that need to be addressed. That's what tests are for. The journalists reporting it does not work as wel as intended because a test version revealed issues that are being solved are being quite disingenuous if you ask me.

It's disingenuous to assume the problems are being solved. Many issues were pointed out before any large scale test but Slat has dismissed them and argued from authority.

This was in 2014 and now 4 years later a group of experts launched the first version.

Slat did not dismiss them because he said most are valid concerns.

But he is working with a large team of experts so most of the concerns might already be discussed.

I posted this article here. No one voted it up, so I assume no one read it or had much interest. I personally believe many of these Green Schemes will have terrible consequences, but time will tell.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cl...

I read/skimmed the whole article with the sole intent of discovering who the expect will pay them once they're bootstrapped. I failed.

Most of the plastic gets into the oceans from a couple of rivers in Asia. I wonder whether it'd be possible to build such cleanup facilities close to those river mouths (still in the rivers, not in the ocean). It'd be easier to maintain and clean the filter systems - to me that seems easier and more effective. It could be an addition to filter systems in the ocean.

This has been debunked. 10 rivers in China account for 90% of plastic carried to the ocean by rivers.

"...all rivers contribute between 5 and 34.4% of the total annual land-based input of plastics into the ocean, and 88-95% of this comes from 10 rivers. That means that the overall percentage of land-based plastics coming from these 10 rivers is somewhere between 4.5 and 31%. Possibly a substantial amount, but nowhere near the claimed 90%."

https://www.reddit.com/r/badscience/comments/aj0idr/debunkin...

Sickeningly trite title.

I know the article itself is actually called Gamifying the Ocean, but I still feel that title does a disservice. It's a slapped-on headline that grabs attention, but the article is really just using "The Ocean Cleanup" as a launchpad for discussing something much more interesting and important: shifting responsibility for sustainability from consumers to producers.

We should be talking more about circular economies, and the futility of downcycling.

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