
Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says - elorant
https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/ocean-plastic-waste-probably-comes-ships-report-says-doc-1kv8e91
======
paulgerhardt
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 third is one-time use food packaging related - soda and water bottles
mainly, but also so many bags for snacks, or tangentially cleaning bottles for
hands/dishes. We could do better making less plastic waste with each meal.
Straws are a very small part of that and a weird thing to fixate on relative
to all the other one time use food waste we generate.

And the last third is various forms of hydrocarbon foams. This last one kills
me because I see foams everywhere in the supply chain for consumer goods. TVs
are shipped out in white styrofoam. Chips are shipped in with pink styrofoam.
If it’s fragile lab equipment it gets shipped in a box three times it’s size
full of packing peanut foam. Every product in the room you are in probably
generated an equivalent volume of foam during its production. The foam lasts
forever. I refuse to use it for anything we package and glad to see it phased
out.

I would much prefer biodegradable paper like pulps to foam. As I understand
the chemicals used to make hard paper bowls and straws may be their own kind
of nasty endocrine disrupters but for all other packaging purposes, yes
please. Less foam, more paper. Especially if some tweaks we can make packaging
a carbon sink.

~~~
Tomminn
The fishing gets me. I used to fish from the shoreline a lot, but when I went
snorkeling in a couple of beautiful places in the world all the lost tackle
and line just made me angry at my past self. It's very hard to fish from the
shoreline without leaving trash everywhere.

It's hard to think that every dollar I spent on tackle was a dollar I spent
polluting the shoreline. It was out of sight, so it was out of mind.

I remember this incredible natural aquarium, formed in a wide, deep circular
depression of a coral reef. And a single 30m piece of neon line riiight
through the middle of it. Doubtless, it was left by a fisherman who swore at
losing another $2 sinker, with no concept of what else they'd just done.

~~~
forgotmypw3
It's thinking like this that led me down the path of rejecting money/currency
for the most part. Every dollar I spent is a vote for producing more of
whatever I'm buying, directly correlated with habitat loss (for humans
included) and animal deaths. And each transaction is like a curtain from
behind which the finished product appears, handed to you with no information
about its origin.

~~~
stekern
That's an interesting perspective. How does such an approach play out in
practice?

~~~
forgotmypw3
The freeganism link in sibling comment provides a pretty good overview.

In my case, I live outdoors more than half the time, sometimes couchsurfing.

I obtain food primarily from waste.

My electronics are hand-me-downs.

For getting around, I ride with people going my way or walk. I am a careful
driver, and sometimes I help drive as contribution. Sometimes I ride trains
and buses, which cost minimal money.

I pay a few hundred a year for domains and hosting.

Occasionally, people offer me money. I used to not accept it, but now I just
do my best to limit its use to the above.

If I go to a coffee shop, I typically do not buy a coffee. If I sit at a fast
food place, I don't buy anything.

I do not feel that I owe anything to anyone just for occupying space.

I do, however, place some properly logoed cups (reused) on my table, and I
pick up any trash on the floors, and fix the chairs, and sometimes wipe the
tables with abandoned napkins.

It seems kind of silly sometimes, but it's a system that's working well for me
now.

I like to visit libraries, though hours are typically limited.

It has taken me about 5 years to transition to this life from full-time job,
apartment, and cat.

I had previous camping experience, and a relatively low regard for social
norms. I am a man, which obviously helps with safety. But women do it too.

This practice has helped me develop my meditation practice, write more code I
can be proud of, and travel without worry about where I'm going to stay when I
get there.

Because my past jobs contributed to selling soft drinks, securities, oil,
etc., I think that my "environmental karma" is much better. I also have the
time to stop and pick up the trash everywhere I go, a practice I find to be
both enjoyable and great "natural" exercise.

~~~
kbos87
I’m honestly curious and not trying to be contrarian - what does your code
produce if not more consumption in some way?

~~~
forgotmypw3
Well, it is not producing much at the moment, and it is consuming electricity
and resources to run.

I am hoping that it will produce a better way for people to talk and connect,
as well as provably reliable information store.

------
rantwasp
This is known. The number I have heard floated around is 45%. So, commercial
fishing nets are a big problem when it comes to plastic in the oceans.

And here we are "saving the planet", by reducing the plastic straw
consumption:

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-straw-
mo...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/07/18/anti-straw-movement-
based-unverified-statistic-500-million-day/750563002/)

[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-07/plasti...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-06-07/plastic-
straws-aren-t-the-problem)

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-
straws-b...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-ban-
fact-check-nyt.html)

Mental gymnastics at its best:

> “Whether it’s 500 million or 500 a day, we shouldn’t lose sight of the real
> issue: Straws should be disposed of properly and should never, ever be
> littered on land or in waterways,” she said.

~~~
MichaelApproved
And here you are creating a _straw_ man argument.

Reducing straws won’t “save the planet” on its own. We will improve the planet
by doing multiple things.

Reducing plastic use (less packaging, fewer straws, reusable shopping bags)
all play a _role_ in a much bigger effort.

~~~
ibeckermayer
Except that’s not improving the planet even a bit — chances are, every one of
those straws being used in an American city would end up in a well run
landfill and have minimal impact on the environment. It’s yet another example
of knuckle dragging elites using state force to virtue signal. Meanwhile the
real sources of the problem get ignored.

~~~
athenot
> chances are, every one of those straws being used in an American city would
> end up in a well run landfill

My front yard disagrees. It's adjacent to a somewhat busy road, and straws are
part of the debris I have to routinely clean up (along with various wrappers
and cigarette butts).

~~~
kgermino
> and straws are part of the debris I have to routinely clean up

I assume this cleaning includes putting them in your trash and the city taking
them to a landfill?

It's obviously not the best path, but cities[0] (by necessity) generally do a
good job cleaning up the trash that gets scattered around.

Bigger issue is non-urbanized areas where there isn't the density/wealth to
clean up litter.

[0] The collection of people and institutions, not just the government.

~~~
the_gastropod
Let's consider the biggest city in the U.S., NYC. Manhattan? An island of 1.8
million no more than 2 miles wide. Brooklyn and Queens are on a spit of land
called "Long Island". Together they have 4.8 million residents. Staten Island
is, you guessed it, an island. And the Bronx is necessarily very close to a
lot of water.

People litter. Cigarette butts, straws, plastic bottles, etc. all very
regularly and easily wind up in the ocean with an assist of a slight breeze.

~~~
rabidrat
I saw it in action firsthand in NYC. A garbage truck picked up an overflowing
trash bin around midnight, and the dome of trash on top fell off and into the
street, and the worker did not even break stride. Many well-meaning people
took the time to carefully place their trash on the trash that was in a
garbage bin, but they may as well have just dropped it on the street directly
for all the good it did.

~~~
jessaustin
After I saw this happen a few times, I stopped taking the time to carefully
place my trash, and just held onto it until I found an emptier receptacle.
After all, emptying public trashcans is already a terrible job. The garbageman
isn't carrying a broom and dustpan. Why make his job more difficult?

(I would distinguish public trashcans like this from e.g. commercial trashcans
for the use of customers of private businesses. First, they should never fill
over halfway. Second, the whole thing should be kept clean. Anything else is a
failure of management.)

------
tomweingarten
Most of this comes from a single type of ship waste:

"Half of the great Pacific garbage patch is made up of fishing nets, by
weight, according to a report published last year in Scientific Reports."

~~~
irrational
So the ocean is being overfished and is being polluted by fishing. The clear
answer is to ban fishing. Though, as someone who dislikes all seafood, this is
easy for me to say.

~~~
fulvous
"Approximately 1 billion people people are dependent on fish as the principal
source of animal protein"

[http://www.suds-en-
ligne.ird.fr/ecosys/ang_ecosys/intro1.htm](http://www.suds-en-
ligne.ird.fr/ecosys/ang_ecosys/intro1.htm)

~~~
intarga
Is there something in particular necessary about animal protein, that it gets
a distinct category from just protein in general?

It also stands to reason that if that many people really are dependent on
fish, it will be devastating to them when overfishing and pollution destroy
fish stocks. All the more reason to reduce fishing and build alternatives now.

~~~
easytiger
> 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.

~~~
hombre_fatal
Humans can get EPA from algae, same as where fish get it, among other sources.
Just look up "algae based omega 3 supplement". The body synthesizes DHA from
all sorts of seeds and oils, else we'd be screwed.

Weirdly smug, alarmist post.

There are people who never eat seafood. Reading your post, you'd have to
assume such people would be dead.

~~~
easytiger
Historically none of the above is true. iodized salt, and the OM3 where almost
universally received from sea based foods.

You are talking about sources that have only affected people in the last small
period of time. There are a couple of million years of development that got
you to the point of fortified cereals and pills.

> There are people who never eat seafood.

Woosh

------
mc32
Wonder if this will have an impact on plastic straw bans on land. It was
always a feel-good hi-viz, low-impact measure given little evidence behind the
measures.

~~~
mumblemumble
Or even the context. A coffee shop in my neighborhood started keeping straws
behind the counter, so that you have to ask for them.

And yet, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that there's less plastic
in a straw than in a disposable coffee cup, let alone the doubled cups that
they serve the coffee in in lieu of using those paper sleeves. _Certainly_
after they've stuck one of those plastic sippy lids on top of the whole
affair. If they're worried about their waste stream, that's the place to
start.

~~~
mc32
Many will have paper straws as substitutes, but I’m very skeptical they did a
study regarding cradle-to-grave impact of the substitution. Maybe they are net
positive (results wise), but I doubt they looked at numbers and said, yes,
clearly paper straws are less impactful.

~~~
scottLobster
I imagine it's similar to the grocery bag situation. Reusable cotton canvas
bags keep plastic out of the environment, but their production emits thousands
of times more CO2 per bag than disposable plastic bags. If you buy groceries
once a week, you basically have to use the cotton canvas bags the rest of your
life to even have a chance at breaking even, everything's a trade-off.

~~~
noselasd
Aren't there better materials to make the resuable bags out of than cotton ?

Also, you can reuse the plastic bags.

~~~
mumblemumble
My favorites are made of nylon. It's a much lighter material than what most
stores are selling as reusable bags. Enough so that you can easily keep 1 or 2
with you all the time if you're the kind of person to carry a purse or courier
bag. Meaning that, unlike those canvas bags or the ones made out of that big
heavy stiff plastic material, they're convenient enough to actually get used
regularly.

I found one study that suggested, though, that the lowest environmental load
came from the regular disposable bags as long as you reuse them until they
wear out. The main reason I don't do that is that I've discovered that
supermarket employees seem to really hate that, in a way they don't with the
bags that are made for reuse.

I'm also inclined to guess that it's still bikeshedding. The shopping bag is
really visible, but it's maybe a small amount of waste compared to all the
unnecessary packaging for the products it's being used to carry home.

~~~
jwilk
How does this hatred manifest?

~~~
undersuit
Maybe because the normal unused plastic bags are in that sheet you can just
peel one off and it is easily opened up thanks to the design of the plastic
bag holder. While if I was recycling them they are probably a wadded bundle
inside another plastic bag.

------
tda
I sometimes see biodegradable packing peanuts that resemble tasteless Cheese
puffs used as alternative. So much better, I wonder why the styrofoam puffs
are even still allowed.

Another side note, look at this sign that I've seen aboard vessels:
[https://vesselplacards.com/product/garbage-overboard-
marpol-...](https://vesselplacards.com/product/garbage-overboard-marpol-sign/)

It basically states "Don't throw garbage overboard, You could be breaking the
law" as if it being illegal should be the only reason not to dump your waste
in the environment.

~~~
benj111
"resemble tasteless Cheese puffs"

Resemble in looks or taste?

~~~
jadell
Both. They're made of corn starch, which is what puffy Cheetos are made of,
and manufactured literally the same way, except without the cheese flavor
powder mixed in. They taste like "nothing" (well, they probably taste like
pure corn starch but I've never eaten that so I don't have a reference.)

Source: a member of my immediate family worked at a company that manufactured
them and brought home many samples. We'd freak people out by eating them. The
joke was always "What do you pack packing material in for shipping?"

~~~
asdkhadsj
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?

~~~
soperj
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.

~~~
pureliquidhw
please elaborate on why not? I would think they'd have to be relatively
sterile. Boxes are stacked flat, can tops must be in a pringles style stack
until they're assembled into a can.

Where are they contaminated?

~~~
excursionist
I remember a story going around about people dying from rat urine on soda cans
[1], but the veracity of the claim is questionable.

[1] [https://www.hoax-slayer.net/leptospirosis-death-warning-
rat-...](https://www.hoax-slayer.net/leptospirosis-death-warning-rat-urine-
soda-can-top/)

------
vfc1
I mean one thing does not take away from the other, it's necessary to stop
wasting so many fish nets, AND reduce single-use plastics, AND fish less, etc.
It's not OR it's AND.

This leads to reasoning like "it's fishing nets the actual issue, I might as
well continue throwing a full trash can full of packages every 3 days".

It's not true, fishing nets is actually only 45%, the other 55% we can still
work on that's a lot, it's the majority. Another way is to just stop eating
fish.

In my local supermarket, if I want to buy 4 peaches they come in a plastic
container wrapped in a transparent plastic sheet, not kidding.

~~~
rantwasp
agree that we have to work on multiple things, but the point was that a
disproportionate amount of resources are placed behind getting rid of
something that is a drop in the bucket. it's not "should we get rid of A or
B?" We agree it's A and B, but we need to focus on the thing that has the
bigger impact first.

~~~
vfc1
> we need to focus on the thing that has the bigger impact first

Why is this, why wait to solve the fishing net problems before taking other
measures?

I see this line of thought a lot here in Hacker News, especially in topics
related to climate change for example.

These things can and should be tackled in parallel at the same time. We can
all take responsibility personally, how about trying to use less single-use
plastics, buy in local grocery shops more with reusable bags, and stop eating
fish?

We can all do that, we don't need to wait for some international fishing
committee to decide for years on what is the best way to change the rules on
how nets can be made or handled.

~~~
therealdrag0
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.

~~~
philipkglass
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 suspect that it will involve a hellish trek through
the least-maintained code in the whole company before you can even isolate a
reproducible test case.

And if you have multiple developers working on bugs, one person may be doing
the first while a different person is handling the second.

~~~
therealdrag0
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.

------
weiming
Extensive air pollution from China or India that surpasses the West also
doesn't seem to get much attention, e.g. [1] [2]

Greta visited the US and gave some compelling speeches. Will she visit China
and India and do the same?

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/01/china-
emits-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2018/07/01/china-emits-more-
carbon-dioxide-than-the-u-s-and-eu-combined/#3ee0b6bc628c)

[2] [https://qz.com/india/1581665/indias-carbon-emissions-
growing...](https://qz.com/india/1581665/indias-carbon-emissions-growing-
faster-than-us-china-says-iea/)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It gets loads of attention, not least as both India and China have developed
_way_ beyond the free "developing nation" pass they got in previous climate
agreements. Which plenty said was a big mistake at the time, but we are where
we are.

No doubt if the climate movement in China and India invite her, she might well
go. Well, perhaps not China as they lack freedom of association and speech.
There have been protests in HK though. I doubt there is even as much in China
as in Russia.

Russia has school strikes for climate consisting of _one_ person
demonstrating, changing places with another every hour or two[1]. That's
because two or more demonstrating would fall foul of restrictions, as would
anyone under 18.

[1] (Photos, text in Cyrillic):
[https://twitter.com/Fridaysforfut20/status/11776740588482478...](https://twitter.com/Fridaysforfut20/status/1177674058848247810)

~~~
asdfman123
If you were a rising country coming up from behind in a world where the US
dominates, would you want to reduce your growth to ensure you don't catch up
to the rest of the world as quickly?

~~~
matthewdgreen
You might if you were one of the nations most likely to be harmed by near-term
climate change, and you were already dealing with a severe water crisis to
boot.

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/india/india-water-crisis-
intl...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/27/india/india-water-crisis-intl-
hnk/index.html)

------
latchkey
I've traveled the entire coastline of Vietnam and much of Cambodia. It is
entirely covered in plastic trash. There is even plastic in all the rivers way
up in the mountains. I can't imagine this just being Chinese ships.

~~~
MiroF
Nobody in the comments read the article but all this is claiming is that land
waste is a smaller percentage of _deep sea_ plastic waste. It's still the vast
majority of coastal waste

------
tracker1
How long can we keep giving China, India etc a pass? And ourselves in allowing
this level of irresponsible trade to happen?

We're busy panicking about "climate change" in terms of something that is
going to end the world in a dozen years, it probably isn't... That said,
pollution in and of itself should be a goal in terms of not doing it, and not
trading with nations that do. As it is, there are cities in the U.S. I pretty
much avoid or won't go to because the air quality is so bad that I can't stand
being there. People need to stop with the boogie-man scare tactics pushing a
political agenda and actually start concentrating on the very real issues that
should be higher order priorities.

------
NeedMoreTea
It's undoubtedly some mix of "all of the above", thanks to plastic being
everywhere and used in nearly everything.

We save the ocean by requiring "all of the above" to act differently. Ships,
shipping, fishing, recycling, nations, individuals. Most especially
_producers._

------
imagetic
I recall reading two years ago several reports which claimed that around 90%
of all the plastic in the world's oceans flows there through just 10 rivers.

> "The shipping and fishing industries also play a part. In 2018 researchers
> found that, in terms of weight, almost half of the plastic in the Great
> Pacific Garbage Patch -- a notorious area of floating trash three times the
> size of France -- was made up of fishing nets. On the other hand,
> microplastics made up 94% of the estimated 1.8 trillion tiny pieces floating
> in the area."

[https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/24/health/plastic-pollution-
rive...](https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/24/health/plastic-pollution-rivers-
oceans-scn-intl/index.html)

Most of the time all the stats don't add up, but either way, humanity leaves a
big mess and plastic is probably one of those materials we will regret
inventing.

~~~
xsmasher
That study was WIDELY reported on, and most of the reporting was faulty. For
example this article says 'around 90% of all the plastic in the world's oceans
flows there through just 10 rivers.'

But that isn't what the study says - the study only deals with plastic that
comes from rivers, not all plastic in the ocean.

------
chappi42
I don't believe this. -- About two years ago there was a study which said that
88 to 95 percent of the total global load of plastics in the oceans [edit:
wrong see below] would come from 10 rivers:

\- [https://phys.org/news/2017-10-plastic-rivers-stem-
plastics-o...](https://phys.org/news/2017-10-plastic-rivers-stem-plastics-
ocean.html)

\-
[https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611)
and link to table
[https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611/tables/1](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611/tables/1)

Still, of course, fishermen shouldn't throw their plastic bottles over board
and better care to their fishing nets.

~~~
areyousure
From your own source:

> Now scientists have found that 10 rivers around the world where plastic
> waste is mismanaged contribute to most of the oceans' total loads THAT COME
> FROM RIVERS.

(emphasis mine)

~~~
chappi42
Uh, that's embarassing. Completely missed this (since two years... :-( ).
Thank you.

~~~
xsmasher
That study was WIDELY reported on, and most of the reporting was faulty. Now
this river factoid is stuck in millions of heads.

------
jxramos
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](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch)

I see a lot of illustrations depicting the scale of the patch but is the
reason there are no actual photos because the flotsam density is too low to be
picked up by a camera at the necessary height to capture a large area of it?
What's the deal?

~~~
slavik81
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.

~~~
jxramos
Nice find!

------
cwkoss
It is interesting that so much of the discussion of meat consumption and
climate change has been centered around cows and other terrestrial animals.
I'm curious if anyone knows of a good source that compares the greenhouse gas
emissions from fishing vs land-based livestock.

------
specialist
What about the military (navies) too?

I'm just now reminded of stories from a guy who served on a troopship. The
waste and pollution was staggering.

Dumping fuel, garbage, bilge water.

Expending all your ration of ammo, killing the porpoises riding the bow wave,
so that you don't have to unload all that ammo later.

------
superfreek
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.

------
codesushi42
The pointless use of plastic is astounding. Just the other day I was sorting
through electronic cables that were individually packaged in their own plastic
bags. What the fuck was the point? Even the actual connector pins had their
own dedicated plastic covers, and the cable was tied with a plastic tie. Yet
the plastic bags were somehow still needed?

Jesus fucking Christ.

~~~
knodi123
The reason is that each cable in its own package is a separate SKU, purchased
from a separate supplier, and tossed one-per on an assembly line that is
filling the box you finally received. I suspect that if, say, samsung or
nintendo was told to stop putting bags on every single cable, they'd just add
a step to their assembly line for snipping open the existing bags and tossing
them in the garbage.

The real solution will be (as usual) more complex than you'd guess at first,
and I don't have a good idea for where you'd start. Maybe find the point in
the supply chain where these baggies are first introduced and add a tax on
them at that point?

~~~
laughinghan
To be fair, that would still be an improvement because we could make them
isolate those bags and recycle or burn for energy or something. It is by
comparison impossible to control what consumers do with those bags.

------
BurnGpuBurn
Aren't there some laws prohibiting this kind of behavior? I mean, willingly
and purposely dumping tons of plastic waste in the ocean should be a crime
everywhere no? Can't do that with oil, why is it permitted with plastic?

Well, at least it's another group added to my list of people we could do
without.

------
TheGrassyKnoll
Go to virtually any parking lot and notice all the crap that's littered all
over it. Most of it will end up in the ocean eventually. (not to mention all
the crap in every street gutter)

------
alex_duf
It sounds like a great way to avoid bearing the responsibility. Better, we can
now point our finger at someone else.

------
dubliner2077
Sure if they dump it to the sea!

------
littlestymaar
So the problem is not bad habits from consumers or the over-use of disposable
plastic containers, it's some rogue _Chinese_ ships. How convenient.

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afiori
The question is not if those are bad, the question is where does that plastic
come from.

over-use of disposable plastic is bad independently from whether it ends in
the ocean or not. But if you want to reduce this specific pollution you need
to actually understand where it comes from.

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littlestymaar
There are two different things at stake here.

1\. The study. Scientific work is essential to the understanding of the
dynamics of ocean pollutions. Nothing to criticize here.

2\. The press coverage. Interestingly enough, it comes from a French media.
You're probably not aware of that if you don't live in France (especially
because of the big marketing stance on environmental issues Macron is taking
of the international scene) but there is a huge reactionary movement against
environmental policies nowadays in the medias in France. This article, and the
editorial angle taken around the study, completely fits into that (worrysome)
trend.

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is_true
Anyone that lives in a city next to a river/lake/sea knows that all the small
pieces of trash on land end up in the water.

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notacoward
Yes, but "in the water" includes both shallow water near shore and deep water
far out in the ocean. The OP is about one. You're talking about the other,
which might not even be relevant, so the "anyone knows" condescension is
misplaced.

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MiroF
What do you mean might not even be relevant?

Is there some hidden reason we should be focusing on deep sea plastics only?

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notacoward
It's not hidden. It's what the OP is about. It's right there in the title -
_ocean_ plastic waste, not coastal. Pollution on or near shore is _absolutely_
an important issue, but there are thousands of important issues that are not
germane to _this_ conversation.

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MiroF
I'm pretty sure the plastic coastal waste we're talking about it still in the
ocean, so I'm a bit confused by the distinction you're making.

Care to explain more?

