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Our biggest ever river catch?

theoceancleanup.com

11–20 of 190 posts

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#11

I'm curious how much effort is being put into avoiding this trash ending up in the rivers in the first place. Obviously it's important to catch it before it gets in the ocean, but if people are just dumping directly into the river far upstream, this feels like a Sisyphian task

Narrowing their focus to rivers makes it easier to name & shame, & trace to source.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#12
post #7

I'm curious how much effort is being put into avoiding this trash ending up in the rivers in the first place. Obviously it's important to catch it before it gets in the ocean, but if people are just dumping directly into the river far upstream, this feels like a Sisyphian task

Having been to Guatemala, the culture is to throw most trash on the ground. The trash is then washed into the rivers during heavy rains. It's sad to see. The country has a lot of natural beauty, but there is trash everywhere.

Any insights into what makes this culturally acceptable?

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#13
post #9

Credit to this organization from pivoting (AFAIK) from their original plan to scrape the plastic out of the water on the open ocean ("System 001"). Intercepting plastic at river mouths seems much more practical and cost effective.

My understanding from last year is that they’re doing both prevention and cleanup. They have a good explanation on their website on microplastic sizes

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#14
post #9

Credit to this organization from pivoting (AFAIK) from their original plan to scrape the plastic out of the water on the open ocean ("System 001"). Intercepting plastic at river mouths seems much more practical and cost effective.

They're still working on open oceans: https://theoceancleanup.com/oceans/

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#15
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been to Guatemala, the culture is to throw most trash on the ground. The trash is then washed into the rivers during heavy rains. It's sad to see. The country has a lot of natural beauty, but there is trash everywhere.

Any insights into what makes this culturally acceptable?

No Ladybird Johnson like figure driving public policy in the 1960s, melding the hippies and government together?

The TV was inundated with public service announcements shaming trash throwers in the USA for maybe 15 years. It made a difference.

Having seen similar "just throw it on the ground" behavior in India and china, I think that it may be a natural response in a rural culture that needs to be changed once it is in a city and non degrading packaging is used

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#17
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having been to Guatemala, the culture is to throw most trash on the ground. The trash is then washed into the rivers during heavy rains. It's sad to see. The country has a lot of natural beauty, but there is trash everywhere.

Any insights into what makes this culturally acceptable?

The country lacks any real garbage collection infrastructure. And I'm not just talking about ritzy landfill/recycling/compost bin sets every few hundred feet on the sidewalk, emptied by the municipality, I mean there's literally nowhere for any service to actually take the trash if it was in a bin and not on the ground.

Most cities don't even have a functioning, modern landfill, just clandestine piles served by dump truck. Much of the trash picked up by this effort may have literally already been collected and dumped by a truck in a pile by the river.

There's a big "broken windows" element to the continuation of the problem. It's going to take altruistically motivated, powerful regulators and a lot of money to fix, and neither is not easy to come by in Guatemala.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#19

I'm curious how much effort is being put into avoiding this trash ending up in the rivers in the first place. Obviously it's important to catch it before it gets in the ocean, but if people are just dumping directly into the river far upstream, this feels like a Sisyphian task

Ironically this is what people said when they were focusing on cleaning the ocean: "they should focus on rivers, that's how most trash gets into the ocean".

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any insights into what makes this culturally acceptable?

The country lacks any real garbage collection infrastructure. And I'm not just talking about ritzy landfill/recycling/compost bin sets every few hundred feet on the sidewalk, emptied by the municipality, I mean there's literally nowhere for any service to actually take the trash if it was in a bin and not on the ground. Most cities don't even have a functioning, modern landfill, just clandestine piles served by dump…

very, very well said.

just from one language learner to another, so i hope you can appreciate this small grammatical correction:

> and neither is not easy to come by in Guatemala.

...the infamous 'double negative' que es correcto en español y otros, ¡pero es incorrecto en inglés!

it would seem to be true, and i would certainly defer to you, that altruistic minded and not toothless regulators, plus a whole lot of money are both necessary—and *neither is easy to come by in Guatemala.

again, great explanation of what might be difficult to comprehend from the perspective of others in this modern, interconnected world.

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