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Our biggest ever river catch?

theoceancleanup.com

21–30 of 190 posts

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#21

does anyone have a view of Ocean CleanUp as a charity to donate to?

They're clearly doing something concrete and good and less ephemeral than most charities, so I say go for it. I did for ages and they never spammed me. Only stopped because my payment details changed and I never quite got around to updating them.

My only complaint is their use of kg instead of tonnes to let them use big sounding numbers. You don't need to do that guys. It's lame. We can see the photos. It's clearly worthwhile even if it is only a small part of global waste.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#22

does anyone have a view of Ocean CleanUp as a charity to donate to?

I like the work they're doing, they seem well managed, the guy who founded the project, Boyan Slat, I follow on twitter and he seems very competent. I did some research into this and various other orgs when YouTube focused on Ocean cleanup a few years ago, and was impressed by ocean cleanup. Donations are also tax deductible in a few countries.

https://theoceancleanup.com/faq/are-donations-to-the-ocean-c...

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#25
post #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

Right. Slowing/stopping the flow into the ocean doesn't magically clean the oceans. It would always need to be a multi-step approach.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#26
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?

on a smaller scale, I've been involved in many outdoor events with large number of attendees. if you put a trash can further apart than every 10', people will think it is too far and choose to not bother. it's one of those weird things seeing the seemingly large number of trash cans placed around before the crowds.

so i can totally see how it would happen if a country just doesn't have the proper infrastructure to start

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#28
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/

This river cleanup is brilliant and effective.

Messing with the top meter of ocean water does its own kind of damage.

So much of the life in the ocean surface layer is going to be involved with the floating trash, like it or not.

Ocean surface sterilization seems incautious and worrisome. Never mind we don't like to see trash. Stripping the ocean surface water will have unforeseen consequences.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#29
post #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".

i read that a lot of ocean plastic comes from the fishing industry

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This river cleanup is brilliant and effective. Messing with the top meter of ocean water does its own kind of damage. So much of the life in the ocean surface layer is going to be involved with the floating trash, like it or not. Ocean surface sterilization seems incautious and worrisome. Never mind we don't like to see trash. Stripping the ocean surface water will have unforeseen consequences.

Are you talking about sea life?

According to the video on the site, the boats travel at less than 3km/h and they have live video feeds monitoring the nets. Am I missing anything here?

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