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Comment by rex_lupi | Hacker News Reader

Microplastics is hardly the only concern about plastic nets. In garbage patches, nets are a major constituent. Marine animals, small and big, get strangled in the nets. Marine animals indirectly consume plastic nets which doesn't get passed on with feces and they die of gastric obstruction.

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that is basically a fringe issue considering 80% or so of plastic pollution in the ocean comes from mismanaged waste streams in the third world. fix that and I’m sure marine animals will have a much easier time avoiding the rest

certainly the question is: every plastic alternative tends to have higher impacts with regards to emissions to produce it or transport it. knowing that netting is only a minor contributor to plastic pollution, it is worth trying to solve plastic pollution by worsening the problem of carbon emissions? everything is a trade-off, to solve one problem you have to contribute to another

The problem isn't plastic, the problem is everyone throwing it onto the oceans. And blaming the "third world" isn't gonna help

it’s not everyone, it is specifically poorer countries that contribute the vast majority to plastic pollution in the ocean via waste mismanagement. if you want an issue to be solved, it helps to look up and understand the specifics first!

e: since you basically asked

https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade

Google “global waste trade”, it’s the same mafiosi level as carbon credits: rich countries proclaims to have clean hands because someone in another juridiction accept their money.

Waste management is also a joke within the rich countries: landfills still exists and those recycling program seems nice on a consumer (=voter) side: you have a colored special bin, state flyers tells you how recycling (is supposed to) work and buy sometimes a (partially) recycled bootle or pullover. In practice 5% of stuff put in the bin is recycled, the rest goes to landfill or incinerators.

Both landfills and incinerators are good places for waste as long as they're not next to water bodies.

They don't contribute to the waste in oceans that this sub-thread seemed to be about.

They do: landfill are surrounded by fence and/or buried but most (not all) plastics degrades due to heat, sun, rain, ph of other materials and micro organism. Then all of those little flakes

- fly away with the wind

- are carried down the groundwater by rain. This is called leachate Modern landfills are protected by liners but those have a lifespan and eventually any of them could leak.

Foremost I am absolutely of the opinion that plastic in the ocean is not a good thing.

But I was surprised to hear that at this point, according to at least one person that studies this, removal may have consequences as well. It’s been there long enough for new eco systems to evolve.

This was rather enlightening in that nothing is as simple as it seems.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unexplainable/id155457...

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