The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Can Be Cleaned for $7.5B
theoceancleanup.com
theoceancleanup.com
[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20190618030308/https://news.nati...
"The United States’ contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean"
Abstract:
> Plastic waste affects environmental quality and ecosystem health. In 2010, an estimated 5 to 13 million metric tons (Mt) of plastic waste entered the ocean from both developing countries with insufficient solid waste infrastructure and high-income countries with very high waste generation. We demonstrate that, in 2016, the United States generated the largest amount of plastic waste of any country in the world (42.0 Mt). Between 0.14 and 0.41 Mt of this waste was illegally dumped in the United States, and 0.15 to 0.99 Mt was inadequately managed in countries that imported materials collected in the United States for recycling. Accounting for these contributions, the amount of plastic waste generated in the United States estimated to enter the coastal environment in 2016 was up to five times larger than that estimated for 2010, rendering the United States’ contribution among the highest in the world
But we also need to stop it happening again. Which means stopping fishing nets and plastic trash from being dumped in the sea by ships. And preventing plastic that is dumped into rivers in developing countries [1] from reaching the sea. These are hard problems.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/06/...
In this particular case I think it’s worth specifically calling out The Philippines, who are responsible for a third of all ocean waste. India are second at ~12%, but also with a billion and a half people that’s a little more understandable
The patch was discovered 27 years ago (1997). So, $7 billion to clean it up, and then $250 million a year to keep it clean thereafter
To put 1% in more context, the biggest companies like P&G, Verizon, Progressive Insurance etc will never spend more that 3% of revenue MAXIMUM on their total marketing budget..and that is money that they directly measure ROI from.
So you never clean your toilet because it's just going to get dirty again?
> Data and modelling indicate that the removal of the GPGP could be achieved in 5 years at a cost of $4bn
We should do this at either price point, but ... what's the difference here? If we can do it faster and cheaper, why put the higher price quote in the headline? Is the 'data and modeling' including some extrapolation that assumes performance will increase meaningfully once they're started at scale?
1) We have been doing some cleaning and, based on our real results that we have recorded, we are saying it can be cleaned up for $7.5bn over 10 years.
2) Separately, we have also done some thinking and modeling about other approaches and we project that we could probably clean up the same area in less time for less money.
It's a huge area, where the water is filled with lots of tiny debris that is floating micro plastic chunks.
The plastic gets physically broken down by nature into sand size particles but then just gathers in that massive area due to water currents.
Here's John Cook's description:
So how dense is it? Let’s assume 80,000 metric tons over an area twice the size of Texas. The area of Texas is 700,000 km² , so that’s 8 × 10^10 grams of trash over 1.4 × 10^12 square meters, or 57 milligrams per square meter.
An empty water bottle weighs about 20 grams, and an American football field covers 5300 square meters, so this would be the same density of plastic as 15 empty water bottles scattered over a football field.
https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/09/10/density-of-the-gpg...
1/20th of a gram per square meter spread suspended in the top few meters of water is real, but it doesn't look anything like a floating garbage pile.
Even if the cost estimate of $7.5B is off by a factor of 2x or 3x, deploying this technology to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch looks like a no-brainer to me. The long-term financial benefits for the world could be multiple orders of magnitude larger.
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[a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
[b] https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-03-a-beginners-gu...
> Why is System 03 so much bigger than System 002?
> Size matters because cleaning the ocean becomes cheaper and more efficient with bigger systems. By making System 03 so much bigger than our previous efforts (alongside the multiple upgrades we’ve implemented) we can cover a much larger area of ocean in less time and using fewer resources – driving down our cost per kilogram of plastic removed and maximizing our benefit on the marine environment. System 002 proved our technology and demonstrated that cleaning the GPGP is feasible; System 03 aims to prove that it is also economically viable. Scaling up to this size is an essential step towards meeting that objective.
It's refreshing to see this vocabulary/way of talking used on an environmentalist website.
These are unknowable at these scales and levels of complexity. Such lack of imagination shouldn't be an obstacle to starting anyway. Some things are self-evidently "gonna be great".
I am fascinated by the era of National Projects, like Apollo and the Hoover (Boulder) dam. What we need in this world right now (other than love sweet love) is a massive feel-good project. 7bn is piffling small change in the context of projects like Apollo (the US Moon landings).
What we now understand about the "space race" in its cold-war context is that it was more about pride, signalling achievement and willpower than any actual strategic significance. Stuff you do "because you can".
William James penned "The Moral Equivalent of War" (which president Carter riffed on) in an era when there was so much less cynicism, disaffection, resignation and apathy, and when grand projects were something people got excited about, and got behind instead of shrugging "who will pay for it?"
Instead of seeing this as a chore, and arguing about whose garbage it is, a smart political leader would see an opportunity. America (or whatever coalition gets there first) might re-invent herself as the "responsible citizen" of the Earth. There are good, and unexpected things that happen to wealth when stepping up and becoming the "moral leader".
I'm curious how you came to this conclusion. What are the economic benefits and how are they linked to this patch in the middle of the Pacific?
E.g.
- Less plastic in the ocean -> less microplastics in fish -> healthier people -> less cost due to sickness, and a more productive population
- Less fishing net debris in the ocean -> less species of turtles going extinct -> more tourism for turtle watching (IDK if that's a thing)
On some fronts with wildlife conservation you can also draw a more direct line. E.g. vulture conservation essentially pays for itself, as vultures do carcass cleanup of diseased animals for free (preventing the spread of the disease through the ecosystem, eventually reaching humans), where the equivalent cleanup would be quite expensive. My guess with ocean conservation is that the "direct economic benefit" is mostly in the realm of fish as food resource.
The plastic tends to accumulate far from land (or so the model animations I've seen indicate). And most of the fish and other wildlife are near land.
Indeed, overlaying models of where the plastic is with a fishing heat map (e.g. globalfishingwatch.org) shows very little overlap between fishing areas and garbage areas.
Besides that, you are conflating "where fish are fished" with "where fish live/grow up". Many fished species (and/or their prey) heavily migrate, and when migrating take advantage of the same ocean currents that lead to formation of the garbage patch, and are thus in close proximity. Of course the majority of fishing activity will be close to land, as that's more economical, but that doesn't mean that the fish fished there have only grown up their and/or not been exposed through to plastic via their food chain.
I mean I think we should do it for the sake of it, but, I’m keen to know where you think we get financial benefits.
[1] - https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s435...
What's to keep it from continuing to fill back in?
Also from the about section of the blog post:
> They aim to achieve this goal through a dual strategy: intercepting in rivers to stop the flow and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. [...] To curb the tide via rivers, The Ocean Cleanup has developed Interceptor™ Solutions to halt and extract riverine plastic before it reaches the ocean.
[1] https://www.theseacleaners.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/sc...
> Data and modelling indicate that the removal of the GPGP could be achieved in 5 years at a cost of $4bn
10 years at $7.5bn or 5 years at $4bn? I'll take 2.5 years at $2.5bn. That kind of tells me that there are enormous labour costs.
What I really want to know is what they are doing with it once collected.
> Ocean plastic pollution is one of the most urgent problems our oceans face today, costing the world up to $2.5 trillion per year in damage to economies, industries, and the environment
I'd like to see a breakdown of that. My suspicion is that this random floating patch of rubbish hardly affects economies or industries at all.
> To put the cost of clean oceans in context, the annual spend in the US on Halloween decorations is $10.6bn USD; US pet food spending in 2024 was $66.9bn USD; the combined net worth of the top 10 richest people is $1.66tn USD, and 1% of the annual net profits of the world’s plastic producers is $7.2bn USD.
What has the predicted worth (that is mostly non-liquid) of the top 10 richest people got to do with anything?
I did think "why not just scoop it up into a retrofitted ship and take it away?". The following seems interesting [1]:
> Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density (4 particles per cubic metre (3.1/cu yd)) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area. This is because the patch is a widely dispersed area consisting primarily of suspended "fingernail-sized or smaller"—often microscopic—particles in the upper water column known as microplastics.
Sounds like a fun problem.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
There used to be a time when rich people did something for the common good with all their (often questionably) gotten money. Even kings had to buy the favor of the commoners, lest they start a riot, and the various variants of mafia are generally known for their generosity in areas where they set up shop. Today's neo-feudalist class has completely forgotten this very basic rule, and people are getting pissed massively.
As for why that is related? Well, easy, for someone like Jeff Bezos, funding ocean cleanup or whatever would be not even a tiny dent in his bank accounts...
It was literally at the cost of death and the loss of wars.
> As for why that is related? Well, easy, for someone like Jeff Bezos, funding ocean cleanup or whatever would be not even a tiny dent in his bank accounts...
Are you going to revolt by not using Amazon services and products?
The earth is a precious precious thing and we don't deserve it.
While I agree with your main point, that isn't really solid reasoning. Oil wells are typically so deep down, that yeah, the oil was too far in the ground to have the potential to harm anyone. But ground water (and ground water pollution is one of the concerns with landfills) are much higher up in the ground, and if you now put a landfill on top of it, it has the potential of seeping into ground water (if badly managed).
... and then sent back in the Pacific.
https://practical.engineering/blog/2024/9/3/the-hidden-engin...
0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpke_Sanitary_Landfill 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfills_in_the_United_States
It will kill marine life, it will cause further pollution, and it won't address the root cause. It is only one of 5 oceanic garbage patches.
They should focus on preventing pollution at the source. This is misguided, even though they mean well.
I am convinced they mean well and are trying to tackle a tractable problem, but the garbage patch cleanup is not a good use of limited resources.
>They aim to achieve this goal through a dual strategy: intercepting in rivers to stop the flow and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean.
They are already doing that