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Our biggest ever river catch?

theoceancleanup.com

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Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#81

Post by missedthecue »

stevage wrote: post #77
missedthecue wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic is very good for the environment relatively speaking. - It's a carbon sink, - it's lightweight (reducing transport emissions) - it takes very little energy to produce compared to glass or metals which require furnaces - and has very little carbon emissions during production unlike paper packaging which has a huge carbon footprint. The only problem with plastic is that it doesn't always make it to the proper d…

What do you mean it is a carbon sink? Extracting oil from underground then turning it into plastic above ground? Or do you mean something different?

Basically yes. Petroleum burned produces CO2. Petroleum plasticized does not. The more market share that plastic packaging eats up, the lower emissions are.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#82

Post by pentae »

A commendable operation but sadly, this is a very small fraction of a percentage of the 8-10 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year.

The Ocean Cleanup themselves have estimated at least 75% of ocean trash is from fishing boats, and from living on a remote tropical island myself, at least 90% of the things you find washed up on the beach appear to be from Chinese fishing vessels. (there's usually Chinese characters on the bottles and plastic)

Imagine how much more cost effective it would be for these NGO's to lobby (bribe) politicians and the UN to require all fishing vessels to bring back their trash to port to be weighed and processed, their nets counted.

They say theres about 10 rivers in the world that contribute the remainder of the ocean plastic, so if they can put these recovery systems on those next then we're half way towards solving the problem

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#83

Post by beeeeerp »

missedthecue wrote: post #81
stevage wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean it is a carbon sink? Extracting oil from underground then turning it into plastic above ground? Or do you mean something different?

Basically yes. Petroleum burned produces CO2. Petroleum plasticized does not. The more market share that plastic packaging eats up, the lower emissions are.

I’d call that being more neutral than a sink unless I’m misunderstanding you.

I consider paper a sink, because trees are actively sequestering atmospheric CO2.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#84

Post by stevage »

missedthecue wrote: post #81
stevage wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean it is a carbon sink? Extracting oil from underground then turning it into plastic above ground? Or do you mean something different?

Basically yes. Petroleum burned produces CO2. Petroleum plasticized does not. The more market share that plastic packaging eats up, the lower emissions are.

Well it's certainly an unusual take

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#85

Post by cdrini »

pentae wrote: post #82

A commendable operation but sadly, this is a very small fraction of a percentage of the 8-10 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year. The Ocean Cleanup themselves have estimated at least 75% of ocean trash is from fishing boats, and from living on a remote tropical island myself, at least 90% of the things you find washed up on the beach appear to be from Chinese fishing vessels. (there's usually Chinese…

Those percentages surprised me, so I did some research and it looks like the stat from their research is that 80% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is fishing industry plastics. Not all ocean plastic, which is what the 8-10mil refer to. Ref: https://theoceancleanup.com/ocean-plastic/#other-sources-of-... . Plastics from rivers gets caught in currents that bring it near ocean coastlines/beaches, and takes a long while to make it out to free sea/GPGP. These plastics are mostly non-fishing related. (note: this link is actually a great write-up of why their mission is what it is, and their research backing it).

There are NGOs working on legislation/lobbying fixes to the problem; eg Ocean Conservancy. But those changes will take a looooong time to get through the system. And regardless, there's already plastic in the oceans that will have to be cleaned up regardless, causing damage right now. So starting on the cleanup at the same time seems reasonable to me.

The ocean cleanup also funds various research initiatives -- like the numbers you mentioned -- which lobbyists can use to help change legislation.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#86

Post by cdrini »

missedthecue wrote: post #75
aspectmin wrote: post #72

I LOVE this company. We need more of them. Innovative, Solving world problems. Aware of their impact. I am always encouraging people to donate. These are the kinds of projects that might save us. I wish YC, and it's kin, would fund companies like this.

Does it have a sustainable revenue stream or is it more of a charity?

It's donation driven. Not sure if you were implying this, but I wouldn't call that unsustainable. Wikipedia, Internet Archive, and many other nonprofits are donation driven and have been around for decades.

Edit: I just watched their 2023 summary video, and it seems like they might also be doing more stuff with the plastic they extract that can be recycled/repurposed. That might be a potential revenue source, but not sure.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#87

Post by klysm »

aspectmin wrote: post #72

I LOVE this company. We need more of them. Innovative, Solving world problems. Aware of their impact. I am always encouraging people to donate. These are the kinds of projects that might save us. I wish YC, and it's kin, would fund companies like this.

Wouldn’t make sense for YC - where’s their return?

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#88

Post by klysm »

missedthecue wrote: post #76
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

Plastic is very good for the environment relatively speaking. - It's a carbon sink, - it's lightweight (reducing transport emissions) - it takes very little energy to produce compared to glass or metals which require furnaces - and has very little carbon emissions during production unlike paper packaging which has a huge carbon footprint. The only problem with plastic is that it doesn't always make it to the proper d…

Calling plastics a carbon sink is dubious because you have to spend energy to get the oil out in the first place. How about calling it an oil sink?

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#89

Post by riffraff »

amatecha wrote: post #73
aunty_helen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can definitely comprehend it. When it's garbage pickup day in my city, sometimes people are going by on bicycles rooting through trash bins (or recycling bins if it's recycling pickup day) and taking anything they can turn in for a recycling deposit. This is in Vancouver, Canada. It's probably not nearly as prevalent as in Colombia, but yeah... And yes, for sure, the root cause is the creation of pla…

> I wonder if I can just tell them I don't want a bag, and arrive with my own...

I bet you can. I've recently discovered you can ask the cold cuts/cheese counter to pack things in containers you brought.

Admittedly I'm not sure that ends up as a net win (is washing liquid better than a gram of oil paper?) but it shows we have a lot of mental dark spots for reuse.

Re: Our biggest ever river catch?

#90

Post by darylteo »

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

Ocean Cleanup is also trying to tackle this

From 4 days ago! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGY4rpOnbhw

(that is a depressing and amazing amount of trash, I can't imagine the big one in the ocean)

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