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Comment by JR1427 | Hacker News Reader

One thing I find interesting is how much more traction the problem of litter in the ocean has gained, compared to litter everywhere else, or any number of the other problems we have.

I wonder why this is. Perhaps people can still see the ocean as a wilderness, where litter doesn't belong, whereas we are very used to seeing highways etc lined with rubbish?

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The thing is most pollution and changes in the ocean are not visible right away, while hiking or on land in general I directly see consequences of littering and environmental impact and its possible to act upon (littering on highways)

in the oceans on the other hand a lot of environmental impact is just not visible, thus it needs to be made visible, I see a nice beach... I don't see particles floating just under the surface, I don't see the destroyed eco systems by trawling, I don't see "death zones" where there is no marine live...

so this is a good step into direction making these things visible

Ocean trash has interests groups supporting it. Plenty of groups taking money to deal with it (or not) and part of that is to advertise the issue to ensure more money keeps coming into this industry. There is are no large international organizations or government efforts going out there to remove all the trash outside the more commercial or industrial parts of town, no ones buying ads about it, so its not in the public awareness as much. It also doesn't help that over time people grow blind to it. Heres an experiment you can run: find some litter on the sidewalk and see how many minutes or months go by before someone bends over and picks it up who isn't paid to do so. Chances are it will be in the months to never category, unless the person picking it up owns the land under that trash.

None?

Ohio has a pretty well-established Adopt-a-Highway program that ultimately exists to help with removing litter, and it works mostly in places that are absolutely not "in town" at all.

It has been operating for decades and is advertised on signs alongside these highways.

Elsewhere in Ohio, I've seen ODOT employees picking up trash -- and I assure you that they aren't doing this [or anything else] for free.

(But the state of Ohio only maintains ~49,000 miles of roadways, so maybe none of this can combine to equal a "large effort".)

Most of the places I've lived, litter isn't much of an issue. There's certainly more than I'd like, but you've got to go looking for it other than around overflowing public trash cans and such. Vegetation near highways has a pretty high carrying capacity for litter, too.

I've visited places where it's much worse. And have heard it used to be very commonly a lot worse throughout the US. But anti-littering campaigns with slogans such as Don't Mess With Texas and Litter and It Will Hurt and penalties seem to have had at least reasonable success.

It's because litter in the ocean can travel and pollute anywhere else in the ocean. A landfill in Germany doesn't affect anywhere except the immediate surroundings.

The ocean is a shared resource. Land isn't.

Huh… rubbish lining the highways always stands out to me due to its rarity.

There are some stretches in the UK where rubbish collects by the roadside in large amounts, tangled in hedges etc, presumably because winds concentrate it there.

Even in my area, the most visible litter is along waterways. Regardless of where the trash originated, it will pretty much always find its way to waterways. Which might be part of why it's rare for you to see along the highways unless you have a very active group working off their community service hours.

What you are seeing is a ratio of awareness and ease of solving the problem.

It’s a lot easier to stop throwing crap into the ocean than it is to replace a century of sunk cost in carbon emitting energy technology. We are plenty aware of climate change but almost don’t even want to face that challenge.

This is my feeling, too. I'm all for clean oceans, but we shouldn't think that this is the biggest threat right now.

It goes something like "not my fault, let's focus on others' problems not mine." You don't throw trash into the ocean so you feel like the real issue comes from something you are not knowingly contributing to with your hand.

I think indeed the ocean is often seen as one of the last frontiers of untouched wilderness

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