Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

theverge.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 83 posts

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#51

Post by pitaj »

spodek wrote: post #18

Let's talk personal responsibility and what we can change. What percent of readers of this site drank water from a plastic bottle in the past, say, 24 hours? ... in places with potable tap water making bottles unnecessary... Or nalgene containers... Or soda, juice, etc in bottles... I recycle what I can, but I've taken to treating recyclables as landfill garbage, since most of it ends up there, which means I avoid co…

Forget about Nalgene containers. Just reuse your old plastic water bottles. Then you don't have to worry about washing or anything.

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#52

Post by diggernet »

flukus wrote: post #37
Waterluvian wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly right. I skimmed the link looking for photos of trash island until I thought critically about it. Especially embarrassing as I majored in geography and remote sensing and know exactly what these studies are like :)

I think when it's describe as an island it's crossed the line into intentional dishonesty.

Yes. And I've seen articles about the Pacific patch illustrated with a photo of a garbage dump with a lot of water in it, giving the first impression of a mound of trash floating in the water. Do these people really not care about their credibility?

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#53

Post by lstyls »

killjoywashere wrote: post #45
ezzaf wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your 'standard' bottled water bottle is more like 15 grams[1], so to use that metric we're talking 6 to 35 bottles per square kilometre. Personally I'm more concerned about these plastics getting into my food than I am about whether they'll support my chair. We're going to have serious ecological issues long before these garbage patches become visible - or floatable. [1] http://www.bottledwater.org/news/weight-pet-bo…

Unless you're fish poo or bird poo, I wouldn't worry too much. The animal digestive tract is an active transport system operating at the molecular level and reasonably selective about hydrocarbons.

The problem is that essentially any modern polymer product isn't pure hydrocarbons. Consumer plastics rely heavily on plasticizers, which change the physical characteristics of the material. The effect of plasticizers on health isn't really widely understood.

I agree with the OP's point that the headline is alarmist. Though I find the idea of even few dozen coke bottles per km^2 at the ends of the earth pretty depressing.

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#54

Post by lstyls »

pbreit wrote: post #50
pyromine wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, even when put in the terms of 5 empty waterbottles per square kilometer is still an astounding amount of pollution.

I can't tell if you are being sarcastic or not. 5 bottles in a square kilometer is practically none.

Maybe we can both agree that the human brain is pretty terrible at judging proportions such as these. I can see both of your points. I'll trust the people who dedicate their lives' work on this one over my intuition, however.

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#55

Post by reitanqild »

pitaj wrote: post #51
spodek wrote: post #18

Let's talk personal responsibility and what we can change. What percent of readers of this site drank water from a plastic bottle in the past, say, 24 hours? ... in places with potable tap water making bottles unnecessary... Or nalgene containers... Or soda, juice, etc in bottles... I recycle what I can, but I've taken to treating recyclables as landfill garbage, since most of it ends up there, which means I avoid co…

Forget about Nalgene containers. Just reuse your old plastic water bottles. Then you don't have to worry about washing or anything.

This is what I do: I rarely by bottled water but when I do I keep that bottle for a while to refill and have water in my office. I then recycle them (you pay a few cents extra for new bottles around here and get it refunded if you return the bottles).

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#56

Post by alkonaut »

yummybits wrote: post #31

Capitalism is the problem.

It's not the fault of capitalism but our oversimplified version of it. Externalities such as pollution are not properly included into the price of things. Plastic trash in the water should have been a tiny cost on every bottle and plastic bag. That money could go to whatever resolves the problem (authorities chasing polluters, cleanup/recycling, ...).

In the end, a transaction should leave everything balanced i.e. the buyer gets his soda and the seller gets his money AND (this is the part we are currently missing) every party not involved in the transaction is unaffected, so the environment can't be worse because A bought soda from B.

What we try to do now is regulate capitalism by e.g environmental reuglations and so on - but far from enough, and it doesn't stand a chance of becoming enough as long as it's local efforts in different countries. Large international organizations (OECD, WTO, EU, UN, ...) really need to get this into agreements.

It IS my business if free flimsy plastic bags are allowed in supermarkets in China, whether antibiotics are given to healthy animals in the US or Denmark, or what fertilizer Polish farmers use. The question is what I can do about it? In some cases I can just not sponsor it (e.g. not buy Danish pork) but what do I do about plastic bags in China?

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#57

Post by blitmap »

readams wrote: post #8

I think when people imagine these "garbage patches" they picture a floating garbage dump you could set a lawn chair on. The reality is that they are regions of slightly increased concentration of plastic. Here, the worst areas are between 100-500 grams of plastic per square kilometer. That is 5 empty water bottles in a square kilometer. This doesn't mean that having this debris is a good thing but it's important to g…

I do understand the importance of keeping a realistic view of the problem - I'm just wondering why with all the open ocean area we don't create massive solar-powered debris collectors. I guess using wave motion is cooler, but you'd think there'd be more innovation to do something that can just go out and "collect".

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#58

Post by thinkMOAR »

This is as much as a discovery as finding that banknote of 100 in your old jeans that you forgot about.. Garbage can't be 'new'

Don't get me wrong, horrible issue and glad to see some articles pass by on HN that try to address this issue. But calling it a 'discovery' is a bit odd imho.

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#59

Post by pjc50 »

blitmap wrote: post #57
readams wrote: post #8

I think when people imagine these "garbage patches" they picture a floating garbage dump you could set a lawn chair on. The reality is that they are regions of slightly increased concentration of plastic. Here, the worst areas are between 100-500 grams of plastic per square kilometer. That is 5 empty water bottles in a square kilometer. This doesn't mean that having this debris is a good thing but it's important to g…

I do understand the importance of keeping a realistic view of the problem - I'm just wondering why with all the open ocean area we don't create massive solar-powered debris collectors. I guess using wave motion is cooler, but you'd think there'd be more innovation to do something that can just go out and "collect".

"Mr Trash Wheel" http://baltimorewaterfront.com/healthy-harbor/water-wheel/

Re: A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic

#60

Post by phireal »

thinkMOAR wrote: post #58

This is as much as a discovery as finding that banknote of 100 in your old jeans that you forgot about.. Garbage can't be 'new' Don't get me wrong, horrible issue and glad to see some articles pass by on HN that try to address this issue. But calling it a 'discovery' is a bit odd imho.

This is an odd attitude: we have all sorts of new discoveries of things that are ancient. The whole field of geology is based on very ancient things and it makes discoveries all the time. A discovery just means it's new to us, not necessarily that it's entirely new (whatever that means).
Post reply on HN