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Comment by someperson | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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