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Comment by wombatmobile | Hacker News Reader

> To tackle plastic pollution we need to know where it’s coming from

So, where is it coming from?

TFA examined the last step - from river to ocean. But what is the source of all this plastic? Is it soda bottles, single use plastic bags, shrink wrap, structural plastic?

> It is estimated that 81% of ocean plastics come from Asian rivers. The Philippines alone contribute around one-third of the global total.

That's a start. We are becoming more informed.

What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured in Asia?

What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured in USA?

What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured in Europe?

What percentage of the ocean plastics are manufactured by the top 5 global food corporations?

The value of these questions is not to shift blame. It is to understand the system so we can target fixes.

The most informative question wasn't even raised in TFA.

Who profits from plastic waste?

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I would argue that these are the wrong questions. As this article, and those papers referenced by the article point out, this has to do overwhelmingly with inadequate waste disposal systems. More interesting questions for solving the issue might be:

What types of items end up in the oceans?

Are they dumped legally or illegally?

What are the reasons that certain countries don't have the infrastructure in place to dispose of waste?

How can wealthier countries do their part in supporting countries who need to develop better waste management infrastructure?

I think that it is better to ask questions that lead us directly towards solutions that are actionable. The data strongly suggests that ineffective or nonexistent waste management is the root cause, so I think we should direct our questions towards solving that issue.

> I think that it is better to ask questions that lead us directly towards solutions that are actionable.

That will require money.

Who profits from producing the plastic in the first place?

The reason that question addresses your point is that a viable systemic fix would involve repurposing a percentage of the revenue towards waste management.

> Who profits from plastic waste?

I think this is a hard question. Lots of people want to say that America is because it is consuming a lot of plastic and then shipping it to Asian countries for recycling. But they pay for that shipping and service. I do think there's a problem if you sell the service of recycling and then just dump it in the ocean/rivers. It's clearly a "both" players are at fault, but there's a key difference. One player is offering a service and the other player isn't checking if that service is being done in the way it is being claimed to be done. I don't think these two things are equal when we consider "fault." This comes down to a question of incentives and where those align. This is also why typically in law we come down harder on the person offering a service in bad faith.

So no matter why Philippines is contributing one-third of the global total, we should be talking about and criticizing them. That doesn't mean we shouldn't also be criticizing others (we should) nor that we shouldn't raise awareness of bad business practices. But we shouldn't shift the blame. We distribute the blame.

I'm not sure it's a question of anyone profiting from waste, it's more that dealing with waste correctly is a cost. Developed countries have comprehensive legislation around waste management that obliges municipalities to deal with it correctly (e.g. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:31...)

> But what is the source of all this plastic? Is it soda bottles, single use plastic bags, shrink wrap, structural plastic?

Stuff that washes out of rivers is almost all single-use containers like soda/water bottles, bottle caps, food containers, chip bags, consumer items from shampoo to mouthwash to toothpaste, toothbrushes, flip flops, combs, lighters, straws, toys, balls, cleaning products, oil cans, drums, tobacco tins, tupperware, disposable utensils, paddles, gas cans, pill bottles, syringes, milk crates.

Basically, if it's made out of plastic--doesn't matter the use, the lifetime--it ends up in the river and then the ocean.

Commercial fishing produces tons of discarded nets. I've seen an estimate that over half of ocean garbage is nets. I don't have a habit of trawling the deep ocean, so I can't confirm that. But I pick up beaches a lot and from volume, it's almost all consumer food items. Soda bottles in particular. It gives you a picture of what most people eat and drink. We're a bunch of sick monkeys from what I gather.

> Basically, if it's made out of plastic--doesn't matter the use, the lifetime--it ends up in the river and then the ocean.

I'll also say that what you find washing up on shore or down river is filtered out by a number of factors. Not all plastics are buoyant (i.e. less dense than water). Most plastic materials are actually really close to neutral, and some are slightly denser than water. That means that containers that get punctured and eventually fill up will simply sink. If those materials end up in surf breaks they will get obliterated and turned into a microplastic dust that will can still be suspended in the liquid. So you won't find them washing up (as much). The lighter plastics that are buoyant will tend to washed up onto shore just by wind and wave action. So the ocean sorts and filters things by their size and density. What you see on shore isn't what's out there in the deep ocean.

Case in point: plastic bottles are usually PET, which is denser than water. They will actually sink if they are punctured or without cap. The ones you find usually have a cap on. But the caps are polypropelene and they are generally less dense than water, so they float. That's why you'll always find a zillion more bottle caps and almost never find a plastic bottle without a cap on it, at least from wash up.

Makes you realize where all those damn missing bottles are. The ocean floor is fucked.

From experiences traveling I would also guess the packaging to content ratio is a lot worse in low income countries. Southeast Asia is littered with small shops selling snacks, and they mostly come in very small packages to be affordable (for a typical example see [1]). In Indonesia "gelas" (glass) is a popular packaging for drinking water, a yogurt cup like clear plastic packaging that contains just 220 ml water. It's empty after a few minutes, and the beaches and rivers are full of empty cups.

[1] https://www.alamy.com/portrait-of-a-man-amid-his-goods-in-a-...

Manufactured is probably less important than where it is consumed and disposed of.

We know the Philippines take in recycling from the rest of the world as they had a diplomatic spat with Canada over being send household waste rather than recyclables.

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/trash-talk-phi...

The data point that the Yangtze, Xi, and Huangpu rivers are no longer the biggest sources can be simply attributed to China banning the import of recyclable plastic; it now likely goes to the Philippines and Malaysia instead.

Small leap - corporations that sell goods packaged in single-use plastic.

Once they sell you something wrapped in minimal cost packaging, they socialize the problem. Rinse and repeat.

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