Seagrass 'Neptune balls’ sieve millions of plastic particles from water | Hacker News Reader

Seagrass 'Neptune balls’ sieve millions of plastic particles from water

theguardian.com

158 pointsmontalbano40 comments

It's obvious but always worth noting that no amount of imperfect ocean cleanup tech will work until the source of the problem is fixed.

Plastics entering the ocean is particularly a problem in developing nations where there is no municipal waste disposal that at least concentrates the garbage in sealed landfill (and monitors the leachate).

After decades of indifference, the world is starting to move towards banning single-use plastics, which is a start.

Bans in developed nations are progressing, but less progress in developing nations so far. To be expected, but does set the timeframe a bit further out than might appear from first-hand experiences.

We’re also seeing issues with landfill breakouts starting to occur as extreme weather events increase in severity and frequency. It might be that some talk of re-interment starts coming up in the next few years, to move them to safer locations.

The economic depression this all causes gives me pause as to how likely it is to progress.

Kenya banned the manufacturing, sale and distribution of plastic carrier bags back in 2017. Not just for large retailers, not just a 10 cent charge, total ban.

Looking at the map here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_plast...

It seems that Africa is far more progressed than Europe and North America.

I had China/Russia in mind when writing that, and didn't know so many African nations had implemented bans. You're quite right!

Well, bans are just one part, the other is paying for recycled plastic and those program are very expensive to start, many countries can't afford it. I've seen firsthand a miracle of what paying people some small amounts for plastic bottles can do in a relatively poor country. Many are now collecting bottles and aluminum cans after tourists like a full-time job in summers. You literally can't see a plastic bottle laying around anymore, and they've used to be everywhere.

I’ve kind of noticed the opposite around Portland, OR in that there may not be any bottles or cans on the ground anymore but there’s literally all other forms of garbage everywhere because people just dump trash cans on the streets and parking lots and pick up the bottles and walk away. Kind of ironic if the actual intent of the tax was to keep bottles and cans and garbage off of the street but I don’t actually know if that was the intent

Then ban synthetic clothes :

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/12/clothes-...

Or, instead of banning anything, we could try convincing a very small number of countries to use landfills instead of just chucking it in a river.

90% of plastic polluting our oceans comes from just 10 rivers:

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

The number of rivers does not really reflect the amount of contributing countries. For example the Nile passes through almost a dozen, the Niger through five and the Indus through three.

Yangtze --- China [1]

Indus --- China, India [2], Pakistan [3]

Yellow --- China

Hai He --- China

Ganges --- India, Bangladesh [4]

Pearl --- China, Tiny bit in Vietnam [5]

Amur --- China, Russia [6]

Mekong --- China, Myanmar [7], Laos [8], Thailand [9], Cambodia [10], Vietnam [11]

Nile --- Egypt [12], Sudan [13], South Sudan [14], Ethiopia [15], Uganda [16], Congo [17], Kenya [18], Tanzania [19], Rwanda [20], Burundi [21]

Niger --- Benin [22], Guinea [23], Mali [24], Niger [25], Nigeria [26]

So 26 countries, with China clearly the worst.

However the majority of the plastic coming out of these countries is because of goods destined for western countries. Import tax based on Oceanic plastic emissions, with money used to clean up oceans, is the solution. This funds ocean cleanup, encourages better disposal, and puts the cost on the person driving it (the consumer)

Like CO2, plastic in the ocean is an externality that the world pays for, but doesn't benefit from.

> However the majority of the plastic coming out of these countries is because of goods destined for western countries.

Citation needed.

This is an anecdote but almost every small plastic thing I can buy in a Walmart here in the States was manufactured in China

If you throw away the plastic in North America how does it get into Chinese rivers?

A lot of the microplastics in ocean come from Fishing nets.

Do you have a source on this? It just seems, intuitively, that the amount of microplastics from fishing nets would be minuscule compared to other "trash-related" sources.

First hit on google with "microplastics in ocean come from Fishing nets" leads to:

https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-...

For what it's worth.

900M sounds like a lot, but how many "particles" or plastic are there in the ocean. I'd have to think.. quadrillions at least?

I think a study said, that by 2045? Or was it 2025? There is more plastic than fish in the ocean. Go figure.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/02/will-plastic-really-...

That's not to say that it isn't true, just that the study is somewhat flawed.

To quote from the link:

  There’s no question that accumulating ocean plastic is a
  problem—but simple factoids can mask the fact that we still
  have a lot to learn about what’s in the world’s oceans.

Sooo? Buisness as usual and ignore the problem?

> written from my phone, full of plastic.

Oh the irony.

>Sooo? Buisness as usual and ignore the problem?

pwagland never said anything close to that. It is the opposite of conversation to instantly lump anybody who says anything out-of-catechism into an extreme, mortal-enemy-to-the-cause bucket.

As a local, the Poseidonia seagrass is very strongly protected in Spain and boats/yatchs going to Ibiza+Mallorca are not legally allowed to drop their anchor on most of the islands. Of course it doesn't help that these are holiday places, where drunk tourists and locals conspire to do whatever they want. I'm interested to see if they are conducting studies now with Covid that tourism has stopped, my guess would be that the seagrass has recovered quite a lot.

So I see this as a challenge on how to produce artificial balls to capture the plastics and remove them on a massive floating boom. I'll take 10%, you're welcome.

Just don’t make them out of plastic.

>"Underwater seagrass in coastal areas appear to trap plastic pollution in natural bundles of fibre known as “Neptune balls”, researchers have found.

With no help from humans, the swaying plants – anchored to shallow seabeds – may collect nearly 900m plastic items in the Mediterranean alone every year, a study reported in the journal Scientific Reports said."

PDS: Nature understands producer/consumer models better than the most educated human businessman; it also understands the age-old axiom that "One organism's trash -- is another organism's treasure" (The human equivalent of this is: "One man's trash is another man's treasure"; this is the backbone idea that powers Ebay, Thrift Stores and Recyling efforts, in the human world...)

Applied to Climate Change (formerly known as Global Warming), Plants absolute love all of the CO2 that mankind produces; they use it for food, and turn it back into oxygen.

Global Warming / Climate Change (AKA CO2 emissions) -- while potentially terrible for mankind(!) -- is absolutely stunningly spectacular for Plants and Plant growth -- it's more food for them!!!

And if Plants grow... us humans get more Oxygen in return!

Now that's a win-win deal, in my book!!! <g>

> As they are slowly buried by sedimentation, the damaged leaf sheaths form stiff fibres that intertwine into a ball, collecting plastic in the process.

I thought this was due to being rolled around by currents and waves, rather than sedimentation. Or is that the same thing?

Dear Agence France-Presse, "900m" is 900 metres, use "900M" instead.

900 metres would be "900 m", not "900m".

European here: 900m makes sense (and I see it a lot, 900 m (space) doesn't. I tried '400 m run' in youtube and all results came back as '400m'.

I often see things like 500hz or 500g without the space. Are these incorrect too?

The safest answer is to consult your preferred publisher's style guide; there may be differences of opinion on issues like this.

https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/checklist.html, for example, says (item #15):

> There is a space between the numerical value and unit symbol ...

(although they fail to recommend making it a non-breaking space, which I think would be wiser).

There's plenty of further discussion to be found; e.g. https://forum.wordreference.com/threads/typography-rules-for...

By the way, it's Hz not hz

If most of the balls are still in the water, the plastic wasn't removed from the water, it's still stuck in the seagrass... and for the few balls that get beached during storms, the plastic doesn't go away... now it's clumped in an organic mess.

Another headline written by the single-use plastic industry.

Still better than it floating around aimlessly and killing animals who intake it into their body. It works as nature's filter, and I say plant more. It's a band-aid, and not the best solution of all time, but it's better than absolutely nothing... For now.

If a fish ate the plastic, would you say the plastic is in the fish? Or is it still in the water, because a fish is in the water? Which industry would have written that headline?

The fish is killed and eaten, or dies and decomposes. The plastic is still part of that ecosystem.

How long do these neptune balls last before they break apart and release that plastic back into the environment?

> How long do these neptune balls last?

A lot. I have some of them in a few pots as decorative objects. My mother just likened them. Being basically raw cellulose mixed with salt they are pretty indestructible. Still lying there since the last 5-10 years or so.

Not exactly a few, is the marine equivalent to leaves falling from the trees at fall. There are mats lying in the beaches each september. Some of them are very thick.

On the other hand, can't help to mention that Neptune balls is a bad choice for something that is not normally spherical and is made by Posidonia, a creature named in honor of Poseidon. (Ironically there is also a Neptunia plant, and their flowers are shaped as balls).

So some plastic moves from one place to another, and this is considered a cleanup?

Can't say I'm impressed.

The stuff is routinely moved to a dumpster by the authorities each year in all Mediterranean countries with Posidonia fields.

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