A half-mile installation just took 20k pounds of plastic out of the Pacific

I think a lot of the criticism this article levels at The Ocean Cleanup's efforts is pretty unfair.

Whilst it might take 10 Jenny's (20 ships) 5 years to clean up 50% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that's significantly less plastic in the sea than if they sat on the sidelines because what they've got isn't perfect. 20 small ships traveling incredibly slowly is nothing compared to the tankers and freighters delivering all the cheap plastic crap in the first place.

Similarly, mentioning that their efforts are negligible compared to the plastics still being dumped into the sea whilst also pointing out that removing it from the sea is more costly than preventing it in the first instance actually undermines the snarky "why bother" tone they've taken.

Yes, preventing plastic from entering the sea, and reducing the amount of plastic created in the first place is something we should (and are?) trying to accomplish world-wide as that's where the biggest payoff lies, but it still leaves plastic in the sea that needs removing: something these guys have taken a good crack at solving and done better than anyone else as far as I know.

Whole article reeks of a defeatist — "it's hopeless, why bother?" — attitude. I'm pleased to see progress, however small.

There seems to be an opportunity for wider adoption here if governments and ports would chip in a bit more. I keep seeing news articles about ships being stuck out of port for potentially weeks at a time due to backups at the ports and supply chain issues. Why not have governments pay these container ships to wait in trashy areas and collect trash while they are waiting to unload or load their cargo? If ships know they are going to be stuck waiting at ports for 10 days, then they can simply drive their ships much more slowly so they arrive at their destination 10 days later and collect more trash.

> "Once plastic has gotten into the open ocean, it becomes very expensive and fossil-fuel intensive to get it back out again," Miriam Goldstein, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress think tank, recently told Reuters.

It's a great effort, but for now it seems like it's just trading pollution for pollution...

> 20k pounds of plastic

aka 7 tons? and no timeframe was specified, and the ships in the picture look like they will happily burn 10 tons of fuel per day.