Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says • Hacker News Board

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#291

Post by mraudiobook_com » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 3:18 PM UTC

paulgerhardt wrote: post #121

I spend a day or two every year cleaning up a beach on a island off the coast of China. Its location relative to local sea currents makes it a natural garbage trap. It has been a radicalizing experience but maybe not in the way you would think. Anecdotally about a third of the trash I pick up is fishing related - some nets, some buoys, but mostly thousands of small plastic sardine sized fishing net floats. About a th…

Sorry. I did a stint in the US Navy, stationed on a Japanese boat for 6 months out of the year. We threw out trash overboard once a week at the furthest from land part of our patrol. I have pictures of our trash trailing into the distance. We were supposed to only dump biodegradable but also, who wants to keep rotting plastic food wrappers onboard for months at a time?

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#292

Post by mraudiobook_com » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 3:19 PM UTC

Sorry. I did a stint in the US Navy, stationed on a Japanese boat for 6 months out of the year. We threw out trash overboard once a week at the furthest from land part of our patrol. I have pictures of our trash trailing into the distance. We were supposed to only dump biodegradable but also, who wants to keep rotting plastic food wrappers onboard for months at a time?

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#293

Post by easytiger » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 3:33 PM UTC

callalex wrote: post #262

easytiger wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there something in particular necessary about animal protein, that it gets a distinct category from just protein in general Pretty worrying that people don't know that the only real sources of essential acids critical to humans are from seafood, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) They aren't optional and the body sucks at synthesising them.

There are entire countries and cultures that survive without meat for centuries. I’d love to know how you decided sourcing those proteins from fish is “not optional”.

In your zeal you have both misquoted me to redirect the comment to be what you were hoping i had said so you could treat it combatively.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#294

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 3:57 PM UTC

paulgerhardt wrote: post #121

I spend a day or two every year cleaning up a beach on a island off the coast of China. Its location relative to local sea currents makes it a natural garbage trap. It has been a radicalizing experience but maybe not in the way you would think. Anecdotally about a third of the trash I pick up is fishing related - some nets, some buoys, but mostly thousands of small plastic sardine sized fishing net floats. About a th…

[deleted]

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#295

Post by undersuit » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:01 PM UTC

isthis1984 wrote: post #284

foobarian wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some packing peanuts are apparently made of puffed up rice. It's a fun trick to pull on coworkers who don't know this and eat a bunch when you get a package.

as long as they're not imported and have been sprayed with pesticide.

Apparently the majority of the carbohydrates and nutrients have been removed too, probably not tasty without the pesticide zest.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#296

Post by slavik81 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 4:45 PM UTC

jxramos wrote: post #275

Are there actual photos of the great pacific garbage patch? I've heard about it for sometime now but it seems a lot of the photos on image search depict small scale stuff, garbage visibly close to shore, or illustrations. I was disappointed to find Wikipedia didn't have any direct birds eye view of the patch in any photos. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch I see a lot of illustrations depict…

From your link:

> Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating rubbish, its low density (4 particles per cubic meter) 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 bits of plastic", often microscopic, particles in the upper water column.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#297

Post by modernista » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:37 PM UTC

undersuit wrote: post #267

rukittenme wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banning categories of plastic is an action . Choosing to expend political capital on banning certain plastics is an act of triage .

The political capital is being spent to stop the banning of plastics. Banning straws should really be a simple issue, but there are people opposed to the ban not for actual reasons, but because straws are first. They falsely argue that the ban will eliminate the straw, they use pleas of emotion feigning concern that the law won't have carve outs for legitimate use, they mock the minor efforts, snuggly knowing that al…

The article is about merchant and fishing ships.

Actually it was primarily about these ships as primary sources of plastic dumping in the ocean.

Not about the "ships" per se.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#298

Post by benj111 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

soperj wrote: post #182

asdkhadsj wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, do you risk rodent infestations using those? I would imagine rodents/bugs happily eat most human food, cheese puffs included, so if this is literally the same won't it suffer rodent risk?

The warehouse I worked in had a rodent infestation, they didn't eat the edible packing peanuts as far as I could tell though. -- never saw any with bites out of them and they didn't noticeably disappear. As an aside, don't drink from beer/pop cans without washing the tops.

I'm sure theres a joke about Carling/Budweiser/whatever here.

Edit, got it: Don't do that, you'll wipe away all the flavour!

Esprit de l'escalier

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#299

Post by superfreek » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 6:35 PM UTC

One of the problems with this, is that consumers are given no choice in packing material. I just bought a new TV. The TV had the protective sticky plastic, and was wrapped in plastic. Each individual component came in a plastic bag and then all in one larger bag.

All properly disposed of by local regulations.

The fault then somehow falls onto the consumer if it ends up in the ocean?

Taxing companies based on it seems like a trade dispute as most are not US companies. We've seen how easily those are won.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#300

Post by therealdrag0 » Thu, Oct 03, 2019, 8:56 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #227

therealdrag0 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have the experience of triaging bugs/features at work? There's always more problems then we can solve at once. There is only so many man hours/money/attention available.

I'm not sure which approach this analogy supports. Sometimes it makes sense to fix small obvious issues quickly ("oops, forgot to check for null here") before diving into potentially worse but more complicated problems ("user who signed up on legacy plan reports that some playlists are incomplete in new app"). Sometimes there's such a high impact issue that you have to try to address it immediately, even if you suspe…

There are different ways/philosophies to triage; but the fact remains that you have to triage. That's all I wanted to argue. You have to pick and choose what to work on, so, in the context of environmental-protections, it's worth arguing the merits of different problems/solutions IMO.