
Giant plastic catcher heads for Pacific Ocean clean-up - bauc
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-45438736
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17899395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17899395)

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Mizza
To preempt the discussions that happen every single time this project comes
up:

* Being able to clean up environmental messes is more important than preventing them in the future, and they are not mutually exclusive.

* The quality of the recovered plastics is lower than conventional recycled plastics, but they are sold at a premium to brands who want environmental responsibility credit.

* Yes, we should prevent plastics from reaching the ocean by cleaning at the mouth of the contributing rivers - but the only reason we have identified these primary sources contributing to the ocean garbage problem is because of the research published by this same group.

~~~
ebikelaw
Can you provide some supporting statements for your point 1(a)?

~~~
daveFNbuck
If your goal is to not have a mess, you can get there by cleaning up all your
messes. You can't get there by not adding to the existing mess.

~~~
ebikelaw
There are messes that cannot be cleaned up. We have the leverage to destroy
everything. Therefore it is better to focus on preventing the mess, than in
futilely pretending we can clean it.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Obviously it doesn't make sense to clean up messes that can't be cleaned.
There are also messes that can be cleaned, and it can make sense to do so.

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ericabiz
Good.

It seems like science needs more experiments and fewer naysayers. No one
really knows if this will work, but it's relatively cheap ($23M--a rounding
error on the scale most governments work at.)

I get tired of the folks who bash experimental solutions like this (a couple
of whom are quoted in this article.) Yes, there is a possibility this will
harm marine life. But, unquestionably, the plastic that is already in our
oceans is _already_ harming marine life. So we need to try.

This experiment will, if nothing else, provide additional data about what
plastic is out there and what methods we can use to clean it up.

I hope the scientific community encourages and funds more of these
experiments.

~~~
jsonne
100% agreed. Cynicism abounds, but at least they're doing _something_ even if
it fails. Embracing failure, moving fast, learning, and pivoting needs not be
limited to early-stage tech companies.

~~~
cultus
Solutions to ocean trash are well known, we just need to do them.

This absolutely will fail. There is no question about that.

edit: [https://www.kcet.org/redefine/6-reasons-that-floating-
ocean-...](https://www.kcet.org/redefine/6-reasons-that-floating-ocean-
plastic-cleanup-gizmo-is-a-horrible-idea)

[https://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-
of-p...](https://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-
with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/)

Folks, I do quantitative work in ocean conservation. I know what I am talking
about here. Everyone in ocean conservation, including marine engineers,
ecologists, etc, consider the Ocean Cleanup project to be misguided at best.

~~~
baxtr
Haters gonna hate? I don’t get it. What’s wrong with preventing _and_
cleaning? We’re enough people and there should be enough money around. Let’s
just try

~~~
cultus
The thing is that this won't clean up anything. It is terrible for ecology,
because it acts like a big net. It will kill plankton and other life. The long
booms will (and have in testing) fail in storms. It also doesn't go deep
enough to even collect most of the plastic.

I get that magical silver hammer solutions are attractive, but this is a
global problem that will take actual work to solve.

~~~
baxtr
Ok thanks for clarifying and editing your original post. It sure helps to
state your credentials/knowledge in the field upfront.

------
andrewstuart
The actual solution is to stop manufacturing infinite plastic, and stop
wrapping every single thing that is sold in throwaway plastic.

The idea that we can "clean it up" is the sort of foolish impossibility that
the packaging industry / recycling industry / garbage manufacturing industry
will latch on to to distract us from the real problem which is the never
ending infinite unstoppable flow of garbage that they pour out every single
day.

We need to stop making garbage, not try to clean up the flow that we make.

If you want to solve the "garbage world" that we now live in, start putting
the blame on the packaging industry / the garbage makers.

~~~
emtel
Well, okay, but "make the entire world stop making plastic" is not something
that an individual can actually _do_ , while "build a big ocean plastic
harvester" evidently is.

~~~
skookumchuck
Putting a tax on plastic would be a great start.

~~~
jessaustin
After swimming (or attempting to swim, in those cases like Bacolod Philippines
where the ocean was completely choked with floating trash) in the waters off
various Pacific nations, I doubt that the nations who could possibly institute
such a tax are the same as those who are causing this problem.

~~~
skookumchuck
Taxing plastic would make it cost effective for manufacturers to switch to
cardboard packaging.

I.e. how things were packaged before 1960.

~~~
jessaustin
A switch to cardboard packaging would be fine in nations with lots of forests
like USA. It would be a calamity in e.g. India, however.

~~~
skookumchuck
Why? The US can't find uses for all the recycled paper after China stopped
taking it.

~~~
jessaustin
Are you suggesting that India and similarly deforested nations will decide
they need paper so badly that they'll pay to ship it from USA? Rather than
just cutting down the last trees they have, or (more likely) continuing to use
plastic? They can't afford virtue-signaling frivolities like we can. If
recycled cardboard packaging makes so much sense why are we shipping paper
waste to China and anywhere else that will take it? Answer: landfills overseas
aren't as embarrassing for "recycling" programs as landfills in the same
county.

Personally I have nothing against paper/cardboard packaging. However, I note
that people in USA have chosen plastic packaging for many applications. We can
assume that the same reasons that motivate us, also motivate others. They also
have other issues, like poverty. More regressive taxes on these populations
will lead to more children dying of starvation.

As another comment noted, the way to actually fix the plastic pollution
problem (distinct from the plastic cleanup problem that TFA targets) is to
identify the watersheds that produce 95% of the plastic, and then help them
set up modern garbage handling at price points that those people can actually
afford to use. They are very poor, which is why they're polluting in the first
place. Also many of these watersheds are islands with few suitable landfill
locations. Instead of talking about silly things like laws that should be
passed in other nations, let's talk about how much aid will be required to
actually fix this problem.

~~~
skookumchuck
The US has to pay to deal with the recycled paper, and I'm pretty sure it was
cheaper to pay to ship it to China. So why not ship it to India? Container
ships are very cheap.

> I note that people in USA have chosen plastic packaging for many
> applications.

Because it's cheaper. Taxing it fixes that.

> more children dying of starvation.

Geez, use the taxes to subsidize the paper packaging. This isn't all that
difficult to figure out.

~~~
jessaustin
You seem to think this will be easy, this taxing-and-cross-subsidization. It
has been proposed often enough to imagine that might be the case. Where has it
been implemented? How did it work there? Might there be reason to suspect that
it would be easier in a place where complicated tax laws already exist and
most residents already pay taxes? Please note, the watersheds producing the
bulk of this pollution are not such places. If you can't convince Americans to
implement this scheme, why do you expect it will be easy to convince people in
Southeast Asia?

------
cultus
This project is a borderline scam, as anyone in ocean conservation will tell
you. It is completely unpractical and impossible for numerous reasons. It
would also devastate ocean ecosystems.

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/critics-say-plan-
drif...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/critics-say-plan-drifting-
ocean-trash-collectors-unmoored)

~~~
24gttghh
Emphasis, mine:

>Slat replies that there is not an either-or solution. _“We need to do both,”_
he says. _“We need to intercept plastic before it becomes ocean plastic. And
we need to clean up what is out there.”_ Eriksen says that plastic on the high
seas is mostly lost or discarded fishing gear. Fishermen could be paid or
encouraged to collect it, which he says has worked reasonably well in the
North Sea. _The rest will eventually break down._

From your link. The last part is why we should get rid of it now, because it
breaks down into the micro-plastics that marine life inevitably ends up
consuming.

~~~
cultus
By the time it gets into these "garbage patches" it is already microscopic and
distributed over the water column. What does make sense is to get fishermen to
avoid losing gear. Also, trash collectors in bays and estuaries work very,
very well. For example the Baltimore trash wheel. The difference is that near-
shore trash collectors get it where it is highly concentrated, and before it
breaks down into microplastics.

------
vinayan3
Video on local news: [https://abc7news.com/technology/first-of-its-kind-ocean-
clea...](https://abc7news.com/technology/first-of-its-kind-ocean-clean-up-
system-to-launch-from-sf-bay-saturday/4168070/)

Saturday it launches from Alameda. It will pass under the Bay Bridge at 1pm
and then pass infront of the SF water front. Finally, at 2pm it will pass
under the Golden Gate to leave out to sea.

If anyone has a drone it'd be so cool if they could take a video of it sailing
out.

------
alwaysdoit
I'm sure someone here would be happy to explain to me why this won't work, but
what if we built a recycling center in the middle of the Great Pacific Garbage
Patch?

~~~
mreome
The ocean patch is hundreds of thousands of square kilometers, think 2x the
size of Texas and the plastics are dispersed through the top 100m of the water
column. This is an extremely thin 'cloud' of small plastic bits, not a
floating island of plastic bottles.

The problem with any collection-based solution such as this or the one being
discussed in the article, is that the scale of the infrastructure and
associated transport, maintenance, and support systems, required to actually
collect a meaningful amount of waste would be far more damaging to the
environment then the plastic waste itself, and would very likely introduce
more waste and pollution into the environment.

------
cryptozeus
Here is the animation explaining how it works. Its amazing how self sufficient
the system is.
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O1EAeNdTFHU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=O1EAeNdTFHU)

------
Endama
I wonder how the economics of this project will work considering that China
has really turned down the recyclables they accept for processing.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/28/6239729...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/28/623972937/china-
has-refused-to-recycle-the-wests-plastics-what-now)

~~~
jessaustin
If this effort continues, eventually the only reasonable sink for this
material will be to melt everything into slugs that may be dropped to the
bottom.

~~~
HillaryBriss
But, is there a way to keep the slugs from one day degrading into
microparticles which then reenter the food chain?

~~~
jessaustin
It's a good question. Perhaps the answer is that we don't care about the
benthic food chain? Perhaps the answer is that it will take a really long
time? There's not much energy at the bottom to cause this degradation.

------
justfor1comment
Ideal scalable solution to the problem: Engineering a bacteria that feeds off
of plastic and can only survive in saline water. The proposed solution in this
article only touches the surface of the problem, literally. Even if it pans
out, the surface of the ocean will be clean and may lead to the wrong
conclusion that the ocean is rid of plastic.

------
sandworm101
Want to really "solve" plastics? Warm up the crispr kits and build bacteria
capable of digesting the offending plastic. There is plenty of usable emery in
there for the taking. The fisher community will want your blood for destroying
all the fishing nets, followed by the plastics industry as a whole. But the
ocean would be cleaner.

------
dnautics
I wonder if an automated solar device that concentrates the plastic and warms
the water to a few degrees above ambient would be a good way to culture and
selectively enrich for bacteria capable of breaking down the plastic.

------
onewhonknocks
Link to Boyan's recent appearance on the JRE:
[https://youtu.be/J145vnEZX6w](https://youtu.be/J145vnEZX6w)

------
ourmandave
It's 5 year mission...

<checks size of Pacific ocean>

It's 50 year mission...

------
pq0ak2nnd
Funny that we laugh at a flat-Earther who tries to shoot himself into orbit _,
but applaud this effort, when both are on equal scientific footing.

_ [https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/03/27/flat-
eart...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2018/03/27/flat-earth-rocket-
man-finally-blasts-off-in-homemade-rocket-to-prove-earth-is-
flat/#38fdce599b6f)

~~~
cultus
I work in ocean conservation, and this thread makes me sad. Anyone in ocean
conservation can tell you this is BS, but sadly people in the tech industry
have a tendency to discount the knowledge and opinion of experts in other
fields.

~~~
Baeocystin
I don't work in ocean conservation, but I spent my childhood in Southeast
Asia, and saw very clearly how the plastic waste issue is more of a society
wide garbage collection one. And having a proper waste management
infrastructure would immediately improve the surrounding communities' health
in addition to lessening the load on the world's oceans.

Yet I find that whenever I mention this in Tech circles, it's like people
don't even hear what I said, and just go back to beating the 'plastic is bad'
drum. It's bizarre.

~~~
cultus
There's always this bizarre obsession with moonshot technological solutions to
problems that are social in origin.

~~~
mreome
People so fall in love of the idea of the lone young genius who did something
nobody else could, and will save the world so they don't have to change any
part of their life.

If you bring up the logistical, scientific and technical issues with the
approach this project is taking, the response is "Well at least someone is
doing something." It is so incredibly disrespectful to the countless people
who have devoted their lives to studying and understanding these issues,
ignoring that they have been trumpeting that this problem exists for decades
and proposing changes that would help.

