
Cleaning plastic from the ocean using the flow of ocean currents (2017) - huihuiilly
http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/matthew-king-gamifying-ocean
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bakul
The latest reports are that Boyan Slat's invention has not worked well in
practice. And experts are skeptical it will work as intended.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/01/17/experts-
wa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/01/17/experts-warned-this-
floating-garbage-collector-wouldnt-work-ocean-proved-them-right/)

~~~
pasta
It is built by experts.

Nobody know excactly how to do it. So it is great the first step is set.

The team will now alter the design to make it better.

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bakul
From the Washington Post article: “Scientists unaffiliated with the project
are skeptical that this system, or future iterations, will work as intended.”
And they point out some of the reasons. May be Slat will prove them wrong. I
was mainly provding an update as to what has happened since the 2017
BostonReview.net article.

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classicsnoot
I posted this article here. No one voted it up, so I assume no one read it or
had much interest. I personally believe many of these Green Schemes will have
terrible consequences, but time will tell.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-
cl...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/ocean-cleanup-
project-could-destroy-neuston/580693/)

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mac01021
I read/skimmed the whole article with the sole intent of discovering who the
expect will pay them once they're bootstrapped. I failed.

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Flip-per
Most of the plastic gets into the oceans from a couple of rivers in Asia. I
wonder whether it'd be possible to build such cleanup facilities close to
those river mouths (still in the rivers, not in the ocean). It'd be easier to
maintain and clean the filter systems - to me that seems easier and more
effective. It could be an addition to filter systems in the ocean.

~~~
maccam94
This has been debunked. 10 rivers in China account for 90% of plastic carried
to the ocean _by rivers_.

"...all rivers contribute between 5 and 34.4% of the total annual land-based
input of plastics into the ocean, and 88-95% of this comes from 10 rivers.
That means that the overall percentage of land-based plastics coming from
these 10 rivers is somewhere between 4.5 and 31%. Possibly a substantial
amount, but nowhere near the claimed 90%."

[https://www.reddit.com/r/badscience/comments/aj0idr/debunkin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/badscience/comments/aj0idr/debunking_90_of_landbased_plastics_comes_from_10/)

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plink
Sickeningly trite title.

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darkerside
I know the article itself is actually called Gamifying the Ocean, but I still
feel that title does a disservice. It's a slapped-on headline that grabs
attention, but the article is really just using "The Ocean Cleanup" as a
launchpad for discussing something much more interesting and important:
shifting responsibility for sustainability from consumers to producers.

We should be talking more about circular economies, and the futility of
downcycling.

