I feel like ocean cleanup is done more to make us feel better about using plastic bottles than to actually solve the problem. Maybe that money would have been better spent lobbying against some kinds of platics rather than on boats to scoop the coastline?
[1] https://help.plasticbank.com/en_US/collection-community-memb...
Also, the criticism I’ve read runs along the lines “they can’t clean up a huge proportion of ocean plastic,” but the engineer in me can’t help but feel that that’s the wrong angle—it seems like the question should be “how does it compare to other methods on $/(kg plastic removed)”? Of course that question is currently unanswerable because what the critics propose is research, whose results are by definition undefined, but I guess I wish it was the focus of the conversation.
What is it that you're wondering about exactly? The article mentions and explains the progress of the "plastics in rivers blocking" that they're doing, in the "PREVENTING PLASTIC AT ITS SOURCE" section.
> Our mission goes beyond cleaning the oceans; we also work to stop plastic from entering waterways in the first place.
It is irrelevant how small their impact is right now - at least someone is actually doing something against the behemoth problem of pollution.
Previous discussion on this
- Come at it from an angle assuming people and nations will continue to pollute and try to clean up the mess (what this group is doing). It is a bit defeatist but more realist than other takes. I would assert that it is the opposite of helplessness. This is a group actually doing something that they are capable of doing and having some impact. Likely more impact than your or I. - Try to shame individuals into doing better. This seems to have limited success as collective action today is much weaker than in the past, and this is more of a systems / incentives / externalities problem than an individual one.
- There is the financial solution: taxing the hell out of plastic packaging.
- There is the policy solution: simply not allowing plastic products.
- There is the consumer solution: people refusing to buy plastic crap.
- There is the R&D solution: producing better packaging (biodegradable, non-toxic etc)
- There is the waste disposal solution: making sure plastic is properly separated and recycled/upcycled/disposed of.
This is not a problem that's out of reach, it's a problem of human greed, wrong incentives, no political will, and general population apathy. But yeah, when babies start being born en massse with disabilities and grown ups start dying due to microplastics accumulation in soft tissues, the apathy will turn to anger, and suddenly political will will be there!
But for now, all we have is relying on a Dutch guy's startup to clean our rivers and oceans cause we simply.gotta.drink.from.a.plastic.bottle. \s.
It’s been an almost 100 year battle to get laws and business culture to be more mindful.
It’s clear that it doesn’t really work. At best it works, but far too slowly.
The most any small group of people can do is treat symptoms.
I don’t have faith in our ability to solve the root cause in the face of the political-industrial machine.
Just in 2020 we saw crypto explode. An insane money hungry machine that burned energy to literally waste time so that the value of a record in a ledger increased.
Both individuals and large businesses jumped on that trend with 0 care towards the environment.
LLMs are similar in terms of energy consumption as well.
I’m sorry, but I can’t share your optimism.
How do you agree with something when you don't even take 2 minutes to read a bit more, especially about what you're complaining about? They're not only trying to pick up plastics in the ocean, but also stop plastic from going from the rivers that flow into the oceans, and preventing plastic from entering the rivers in the first place.