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Our biggest ever river catch?

theoceancleanup.com

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Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#51

Post by dredmorbius »

wlesieutre wrote: post #36
readthenotes1 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even “Don’t mess with Texas” started as an anti-littering campaign in the mid-80’s into the 90’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Mess_with_Texas

"Individual responsibility" anti-littering campaigns, most notoriously the 1971 "crying indian" advert, were strongly driven by industries associated with single-use packaging and products which overwhelmingly constituted such pollution. By putting the onus on individual "consumers", the producers were off the hook for responsibility.

Create an economy in which there is nothing to throw away, or in which costs of recovery and recycling are built in to the products themselves and effectively incentivise round-trip material flows, and the problem largely solves itself. Market dynamics tend strongly away from such mechanisms.

Free-market advocates like to point to the general success of anti-pollution, clean air, clean water, safety, and other similar measures in rich Western countries, without acceding in the least that overwhelmingly such progress has come through courts, legal processes, and social advocacy, rather than market mechanisms. Wealth overwhelmingly has shown that it is self-serving power, as Adam Smith noted nearly 250 years ago.

There's a 1967 interview of Ralph Nader by Studs Terkel I've recently run across, and which describes very much what's happening now as it did the circumstances of nearly 60 years ago, though the industries addressed have shifted somewhat. I cannot recommend this highly enough.

https://studsterkel.wfmt.com/programs/ralph-nader-discusses-...>

Direct audio: https://s3.amazonaws.com/wfmt-studs-terkel/published/11364.m...> (MP3)

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#52

Post by dredmorbius »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #34
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If that's the case, then what is this charity going to do with all this trash? Send it back up the river to be dumped again?

"After trash is removed from the Interceptor Barricade using excavators, it is weighed on-site to determine the total catch quantity and passed to local partners and waste management authorities for processing."

Caption to the first photo in TFA.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#53

Post by cdrini »

nickburns wrote: post #3

i'm curious about the split between capital versus philanthropic funding for an operation like this. i feel certain that this relatively new (sub?)industry—waterway/ocean waste management—is here to stay for a very long time. but i struggle to see how it could ever turn a profit, unless and until they're able to generate revenue/s from the waste they're retrieving. it all feels like a fascinatingly super long play.

This isn't meant to be an industry; the founder, Boyan Slat, has said a few times that the goal of this organisation is to no longer be needed in the future, iirc. But at the same time: there's a lot of plastic in the ocean!

It's a non profit org, although they did have an effort a few years ago where they created fancy sunglasses from the plastic they removed, and raised more money from there. The Wikipedia page lists a number of big donation campaigns/big partners who provide funding.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#54

Post by cdrini »

mirekrusin wrote: post #23

How is this funded?

They're a non profit that appears to be funded by various types of donations.

- initially funded via crowdfunding

- individual donations

- a few big partner/company donations

- occasional fundraising campaigns for donations

- occasional awards

- a while back they made fancy sunglasses from the plastic they removed, and sold those. Not sure if that's still a thing though.

Wikipedia has a good summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ocean_Cleanup#Funding

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#55

Post by linuxftw »

The 'plastic problem' seems like it could be easily solved with a weight-based deposit system. Start paying people $1/lb for plastic rubbish and you won't be able to find any laying around. Plastic isn't very dense, so you might need to up the price per lb, but paying people for their waste means municipalities don't have to send people around to collect it in the first place and you don't have to fund cleanup efforts.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#56

Post by dav43 »

Why can’t we just start charging producers of waste a direct cost. If we charged producers (McDonald’s, coke, Pepsi, supermarket, uniliver etc) $1 for every plastic bottle they used, we’d have a budget for clean up and a change in motivations. Suddenly glass reuse programs are suddenly cost comparable etc

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#57

Post by mathgradthrow »

aunty_helen wrote: post #48
bastawhiz wrote: post #4

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

Here’s how it works in Colombia, we separate our rubbish and recycling, put the bags out for the garbage truck in the morning. Homeless “recyclers” come around and pick through your trash looking for plastics they can sell to fund their crack addiction. Sometimes they just take the whole bag down to the river bank, cut it open and sort through the stuff they want discarding the rest on the bank. Next time it rains th…

>The western mind cannot comprehend...

Haha, don't most of the users here live in the bay?

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#58

Post by pratikel »

dav43 wrote: post #56

Why can’t we just start charging producers of waste a direct cost. If we charged producers (McDonald’s, coke, Pepsi, supermarket, uniliver etc) $1 for every plastic bottle they used, we’d have a budget for clean up and a change in motivations. Suddenly glass reuse programs are suddenly cost comparable etc

Can you do this globally? Most ocean plastic is not from the US or EU.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#59

Post by [deleted] »

pratikel wrote: post #58
dav43 wrote: post #56

Why can’t we just start charging producers of waste a direct cost. If we charged producers (McDonald’s, coke, Pepsi, supermarket, uniliver etc) $1 for every plastic bottle they used, we’d have a budget for clean up and a change in motivations. Suddenly glass reuse programs are suddenly cost comparable etc

Can you do this globally? Most ocean plastic is not from the US or EU.

[deleted]

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#60

Post by aussieguy1234 »

latchkey wrote: post #31
snielson wrote: 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.

SE Asia is the same. Literally in the culture. The mind boggles.

I have personally witnessed people in the Philippines who live next to the ocean quite literally taking out the trash from their bins, then tossing it directly into the ocean current to be taken away. No functioning garbage collection service there either.
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