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Comment by wnissen | Hacker News Reader

You're picturing plastic waste in the oceans wrong. Most of it comes from fishing gear that's abandoned or lost, not disposal of waste like plastic bags. In total 80-90% come from Asian and African countries with poor environmental policies.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/26/asia-africa-cause-90-pl...

For the record, I am a scuba diver who has participated in the "Dive Against Debris", we use paper straws at home, I bike to work a couple days a week, and switched to reusable bags years before they were required in my locale, etc. I'm not saying that reducing single-use plastics isn't a worthy goal (and microplastics are just as bad as they seem), but developed country waste is getting safely landfilled. Your plastic straw is not ending up at the bottom of the Marinara trench.

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> but developed country waste is getting safely landfilled

That's definitely not true in the UK. A lot of our "recycling" has been being shipped to China until recently. I believe that other countries have been doing that too.

It's hard to define "safely" landfilled as well. Many places still leak out toxic leachate into water tables due to a lack of barriers on the landfill. They also severely disrupt large tracts of land. They also vent off tremendous amounts of methane. There isn't much safe about most landfills out there.

True, there is a lot of variety there. Around here everything is properly lined and the water table monitored for various poisons, but that's not true everywhere. The methane is a very potent greenhouse gas, and I see little progress on that, even in eco-conscious California. Composting more or less eliminates the methane but I see maybe half of the households in our neighborhood putting out a green waste cart.

Global warming is really the problem, and I will admit to being a huge hypocrite on that. I drive about half the average American's 13.5K miles / 21.K 7km, but fly a lot, probably 20K miles / 32K km. Sigh.

Indeed, and China didn't always keep un-use-able plastic out of their river systems (therefore leading to the oceans). Now that China stopped accepting recycled plastic, it's going to countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, etc that not only can't handle the volume, but don't have the facilities in place to handle the plastic. Lots of plastic that consumers believe is recycled is indeed ending up in oceans.

While this does not invalidate your point, be aware that the American Council on Science and Health is predominantly funded by industries. For example: ExxonMobil, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Bayer Cropscience, Procter & Gamble, Syngenta, 3M, McDonald's and Altria. [1]

They probably have a conflict of interest on this specific subject (disposable consumer plastic) with some of the companies that fund them.

[1] Read the Wikipedia article for more information, the talk page is interesting as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Council_on_Science_an...

That's very helpful, I was not aware. Thank you.

Yes, plastic straws are not single handedly polluting the oceans. It’s a feel good PR campaign that inconveniences those who need them.

That number comes from just one sample. In reality it's just around 20%:

https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#ocean-plastic-s...

I looked at your link under "Mismanaged plastic by region" and it says that East Asia and Pacific is 71%: https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#mismanaged-plas... North America, Europe, and Central Asia combined are under 5%.

I was talking about marine or land sources of plastic.

That article suggests that all of the work in Europe and the Americas is spitting in the ocean and that we need to lean on Asian countries a lot more to literally clean up their mess.

A lot of effort spent on paper straws and reusable bags could probably have a lot more effect in funding the creation of basic sanitation services in Asian countries.

> Marinara trench

Just FYI on the misspelling. Probably an autocorrect issue :)A funny one though!

Sorry, must have been hungry when I posted that! Not autocorrect, just an old-fashioned spelling issue.

Au contraire, a Marinara Trench sounds delightful!

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