
Great Pacific garbage patch cleanup fails to collect plastic - mlthoughts2018
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/20/great-pacific-garbage-patch-20m-cleanup-fails-to-collect-plastic
======
clay_the_ripper
Maybe I’m the only one, but I like this project. Yes, we need to prevent
plastic from going in in the first place, but what about al the plastic that’s
already there? There’s a lot of it. Does this system address every single
issue? No. (Like the plastic that’s more than 3 meters down). But to me this
seems like an “and” project. Let’s prevent plastic from entering AND try to
remove it. Let’s get rid of the top layer AND develop a solution for the lower
depths. Let’s try this AND another idea.

At least they are trying something rather than twiddling their thumbs and
conducting studies and not taking action because the thing isn’t perfect. The
oceans are in a dire situation and action needs to be taken.

Maybe this thing doesn’t work. Maybe they have to start over. Maybe someone
else comes up with something better. Great! Do that.

People pointing out that it might harm marine life. Ok I get it. You know what
else harms marine life? Damn near everything else humans put into the oceans
too.

At this point the oceans are basically screwed if someone doesnt start trying
to fix something. And to the people pointing out that it’s a waste of 20 mil,
come on. 20 mil is basically nothing and it’s no skin off your teeth. Better
than money went to this than making more juceros or whatever other dumb ideas
that get a lot more funding than 20 mil, and have no possibility of a net
upside.

~~~
shrumm
THIS.

20m is a drop in the ocean (sorry!) compared to what other projects get funded
with. To me, climate change is like the white walker threat in the Game of
Thrones series. Everyone's squabbling over petty politics while the real
threat gets increasingly worse.

I'm actually annoyed that they only got 20m. A few weeks ago, I sat in as a
judge for a university startup challenge. The students were given all semester
to build a product and present their attempts in commercializing it. I was
seated next to another startup founder and we both came to the same
conclusion. The projects that had a social good / environmentally positive
objective were the ones we WANTED to support but the least attractive
investment wise. Social good has little intrinsic market value. Investors want
to invest $1 and make $10 - that's grossly incompatible with these kind of
projects. Ironically, it's probably where we need the best minds and
investment focused on.

Props to to this guy for trying something, and inspiring others to contribute
to the project. I hope there's more like him...

~~~
daemin
Arguably this is where the Billionaires and others that have "made it" should
be spending their wealth. Trying to fund these social and environmental
projects.

~~~
BonesJustice
I was just thinking that this would be a great way for Zuckerberg to garner
some positive press for a change.

~~~
dylan604
Why not setup a foundation so that the money is not an investment, but a
contribution. People with that kind of money are always looking for ways to
not pay taxes on it. Set up a charitable foundation where the 1% look to lower
their tax liability can donate. The foundation can specialize in hiring crews
to go collect ocean trash. How is it not a win-win. I know I'm over
simplifying, but seriously, how is this not a thing?

Yes, running trash removal from the ocean is not profitable, so nobody will
want to invest. So solve the problem by coming at it the other way. Even if it
only gets enough money for a couple of years worth of operation, to an early
comment's point, isn't that better than nothing?

------
cultus
The Ocean Cleanup Project is essentially a scam at this point. It can't work
for numerous ecological (scoops up ocean life) and engineering (the ocean is
HUGE, corrosive, and violent) reasons. Not to mention that ocean microplastics
are distributed throughout the first 100 meters of ocean water, and this goes
nowhere near that deep. Of course, they dismiss these concerns or deflect with
scientific BS (which the media gobbles up) whenever they are brought up.

They can't get this to work on such a minuscule scale in placid water off the
coast of the Netherlands, it won't work in the North Pacific on a far grander
scale.

~~~
keypusher
Cleaning up the significant amount of plastic that is on the surface still
seems like a step in the right direction, even if there is other micropastic
further down. The impact on ocean life is not well understood, but we do know
that plastic is already having a devastating impact on such life, and I have a
hard time imagining this would be worse. The engineering challenges are
significant, as they are clearly discovering, but they are at least trying.
Are there other more promising projects to clean up existing plastic from the
ocean you are aware of?

~~~
zdragnar
I don't mean to sound condescending, but I truly don't understand this line of
thinking, as I've seen it crop up every so often.

The notion that "at least they're doing something" isn't a valid justification
in my mind. There are plenty of reasons to believe that this wouldn't work,
and adding more garbage certainly does make matters worse (even if by a
miniscule amount, relatively speaking).

As for more promising projects, we'd be better off doing research to find
those projects than throwing away people's money on a pipe dream. Pretty much
any project at this point would be better- engineering bacteria to eat it,
Dyson funnels to very slowly separate it out, whatever. I'm not a marine or
materials scientist. I'm a person with limited funds to contribute towards
things, and I don't like being sold snake oil, especially when the response to
criticism is "well at least they're doing something!"

~~~
hevi_jos
Innovation has always been trowing money in pipes dream, because by definition
everything that does not exist is an idea, a dream.

Most ideas fail. The people that spend their lives doing something are the
people that create worthy things in the end, because they learn from failures.

"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried."

"An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a
narrow field." \- Niels Bohr

There is this delusion coming from academics education that successful people
are those that never fail. This is true in Academics, where all the knowledge
is already known. But for a researcher or innovator you need to fail.

Even when most projects fail, those who do not gives enormous rewards.

~~~
eesmith
You wrote: "This is true in Academics, where all the knowledge is already
known."

I don't understand that. What academic believes that all knowledge is already
known?

Wasn't Bohr an academic? He was President of the Royal Danish Academy of Arts
and Sciences, a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and
Sciences, he won a gold medal competition sponsored by the Royal Danish
Academy of Sciences and Letters.

That really sounds like an academic researcher, which you seem to suggest is
impossible.

BTW, your Bohr quote appears to be from Teller
([https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004316...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/004316489090069M)
), who attributed it to Bohr
([https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/28983/McG...](https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/handle/1842/28983/McGlinchey2018.pdf?sequence=1)
)

I prefer:

“An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in
his subject, and how to avoid them” - Werner Karl Heisenberg (1971) Physics
and beyond: Encounters and conversations

and:

"you must learn from the mistakes of others—you will never live long enough to
make them all yourself" \- [https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/09/18/live-
long/](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/09/18/live-long/)

------
afarrell
I wish there was some ISO standard for packaging decomposability in water.
Then folks could design to a specific grade and companies could get another
“hey we’re green” cookie from consumers.

Grade 1 - 6 days in fresh water/8 days in salt water.

Grade 2 - 4 weeks in fresh water/7 weeks in salt water

Grade 3 - 3 months in fresh water/6 months in salt water

Grade 4 - 2 years in fresh water / 3 years in salt water

Flip those numbers around as appropriate.

Materials scientists, I’d be interested to know the barriers to some standard
like this being designed. The ones I can think of are:

\- What is the bacterial culture in the water? What ph?

\- How powerful would the incentives be?

\- How much more expensive would the packaging be to make? Would it result in
notably greater spoilage?

~~~
keypusher
> plastic bags can take 20 years to decompose, plastic bottles up to 450 years

[https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/01/26/our-oceans-a-
plasti...](https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/01/26/our-oceans-a-plastic-
soup/)

~~~
coryfklein
20 years for plastic bags is actually a shorter time span than I would have
guessed, but still plenty long enough to cause outsized harm to ocean life.

------
duchenne
Most people believe that this garbage patch (aka plastic continent) looks like
what is in their trash bin. The picture in the article reinforces this
misconception:

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/20/great-
pa...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/dec/20/great-pacific-
garbage-patch-20m-cleanup-fails-to-collect-plastic#img-2)

However, most of this plastic is actually so small and sparse that you cannot
even see it. That makes cleanup really difficult.

From wikipedia:

> Disintegration means that much of the plastic is too small to be seen. In a
> 2001 study, researchers found concentrations of plastic particles at 334,721
> pieces per km2 with a mean mass of 5.1 kg (11.3 lbs) per km2, in the
> neuston.

~~~
kijin
Most of the small plastics come from the breakup of large plastics. By
removing large plastics floating on the top, you can (at least theoretically)
prevent more small plastics from being made.

------
keypusher
I hope they can figure it out, but it seems like they may have missed
something significant in their simulations. If the water basically pools and
becomes stagnant within the boundary of the catcher, then it makes sense that
currents will route around the boundary and therefore carry plastic around it
also. The long skirt seems like part of the problem, as it's trapping all the
water in that area, but my knowledge of fluid ocean dynamics is nonexistant so
perhaps I'm wrong. The idea of a passive system is nice, but it seems like the
problem would be easier if they had some form of propulsion with a renewable
energy source to drive it forward.

------
snissn
Does anyone know what the origin of the plastic is? Specifically what
percentage of it is from a) what countries and b) what sort of products?

~~~
goatsi
>Around 90 percent of the plastic polluting our oceans comes from just ten
rivers, a new study has shown.

>Eight of those rivers are in Asia, with the remaining two — the Nile and the
Niger — in Africa.

[https://nypost.com/2017/12/12/10-rivers-are-responsible-
for-...](https://nypost.com/2017/12/12/10-rivers-are-responsible-for-90-of-
the-plastic-in-the-ocean/)

~~~
epicureanideal
So it seems that filtering the output of these rivers seems like a feasible
solution to dramatically reduce ocean plastic. It doesn't sound prohibitively
expensive.

------
hevi_jos
In other news: After writing a program, developer finds bugs!!

With engineering problems are even worse than programming. you can expect
setbacks on the field that you need to solve.

Those guys are working on solving those issues. This alone earns my respect.

Even if they fail, they will be taking more risks than those criticizing the
project while doing nothing to improve the situation.

------
solarengineer
I have been tracking them since early 2014, and I follow their video updates
regularly.

I'm surprised at how many scientists and experienced people are concerned
about the booms harming marine life. If you see this video, you'll understand
that they're sweeping and shepherding surface-level plastic in a boom. If a
turtle or dolphin were to swim into the collection area, then the creature can
easily swim out or beneath the booms. Indeed, non-living plastic too is
slipping out beneath the boom (what this article itself infoms us!)!

I recently saw their video [1] where they showed how they've been able to
detect that some (not "all", like this article insinuates) plastic has slipped
under the boom. They tried some things on the spot, like bringing the boom
ends closer, raising the boom arms, etc. This is a video that they had
themselves published, and is thereofre hardly a "scoop" or an exposé.

See also their FAQ, that they update regularly.

For e.g. they intend to visit each boom once in six weeks, cleaning up,
revising future designs based on lessons learned, etc, thus preventing the
boom from becoming a Fish Aggregating Device.

Their techonology page [3] is also informative.

I urge HN readers to please review the videos and the FAQ, and not just
conclude based on one article.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1EAeNdTFHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1EAeNdTFHU)

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcRIE98y_UM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RcRIE98y_UM)

[2]
[https://www.theoceancleanup.com/faq/#](https://www.theoceancleanup.com/faq/#)

[3]
[https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/](https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/)

~~~
cultus
This project cannot work. Here's some information written by an actual
oceanographer:

[http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/07/the-ocean-cleanup-
part-2-...](http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/07/the-ocean-cleanup-
part-2-technical-review-of-the-feasibility-study/)

[http://www.deepseanews.com/2016/06/the-ocean-cleanup-
deploye...](http://www.deepseanews.com/2016/06/the-ocean-cleanup-deployed-a-
prototype-and-i-honestly-have-a-lot-of-questions/)

In the marine community, this project is a punchline.

~~~
coryfklein
> This project cannot work.

This assessment is not supported by the links you posted. Here is a summary of
the critiques you linked.

* They are using RO-BOOMS, a proven tech since 1988 for oil cleanups

* They are painted black, which makes them hard to see

* When testing the booms at the Marin Facility, waves would cause gaps underneath where garbage could pass through the barrier

* They haven't tested them yet to see whether they collect plastic

* The author couldn't find the public proposal

* Many of the above comments are now admitted to be out of date

* Author believes the momentum from the project could lead to real change but some changes are needed for a workable solution

* Author desires transparency

* No scientific reviews have been done on the project

* Sections of the feasibility study require editing

* The feasibility study doesn't account for extreme ocean currents

* The feasibility study doesn't prove it will work

* Doesn't capture plastic at depth

* Further testing and analysis is needed

* Biofouling hasn't been solved yet

* Available advanced computer simulation software was not used in the design

* Some sections of the feasibility study are out of date due to design changes

* More than one ship will be required

* Several design hurdles haven't been overcome yet

* Legal issues regarding bycatch haven't been resolved

While certainly many of these are valid, they are also pretty much what one
would suspect from early stage modelling, prototyping, and testing. The
authors you linked actually deem the project worth the time of providing
professional critical feedback, and they believe that the momentum can lead to
real workable solutions.

------
swampthinker
Wouldn't it be very effective to deploy this technology around the major
plastic pollution sources instead?

~~~
sp332
Stopping the pollution from happening or cleaning up water in the rivers
before it reaches the ocean will have a bigger impact over the long run. But
neither of those can remove the plastic that is already in the ocean, which is
what this project is for.

~~~
josefx
Unless their cleanup efforts manage to outpace the poluters we would still
need to stop the constant flow of garbage for this project to have any
meaning.

~~~
michelb
Stopping the polluters is a much harder behavioural, but mostly political
problem. I am 42, I don't think I will see a solution to that in my lifetime.
I applaud anything that makes this problem more visible and tangible (pictures
of that patch are not enough), and if Boyan has a shot at getting some plastic
out after some iterations, awesome! If not, then this has been an inexpensive
awareness campaign, showing that it is indeed a much harder problem then
anyone thinks.

------
austincheney
Effectively collecting micro-plastics (the real problem) will likely require
new technology that provides an attractive field that resonates with plastics.
Plastics are complex hydrocarbons (oils) so you would need to provide some
sort of magnetic effect that energizes and attracts the hydrocarbons to a
central point. This would be something that is chemically non-polar on both
ends of a chemical chain, emits a high resonance electro-static field, and
something that repels polar chemicals and anything with a covalent bonding.
Essentially, it would be a static electricity anti-soap fixed to a point.

~~~
vfinn
I maybe ignorant, but couldn't you just heat up the water to have a leftover
lump (or something) of microplastics. At least if energy consumption wasn't an
issue.

~~~
austincheney
No, water is extremely efficient at conducting heat. Until the creation of
synthetic fluids for this purpose, in about the last 25 years, deionized water
was the most efficient conductor of heat known. Using a heat based process on
the ocean would thus mean heating the entire ocean, which simply isn't viable.

------
guelo
If I had $20 mil for helping the oceans I would try to build a few miles of
netting around the mouth of a polluting asian river. But I don't know how I'd
pay for the continual maintenance and cleaning.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Have you seen the mouth of a river? I surf in one regularly (a very very small
river) and there is no way a net would last more than a week.

Plus boats, fishing, fish, birds etc etc

------
michaelbuckbee
Lots of negativity here for this, but it sounds like a design /implementation
issue and not necessarily something fundamental.

Like anything it's not a silver bullet, but one small tool to help deal with
the larger problem.

Things like Baltimore's Trash Wheel in the Inner Harbor have prevented
literally tons of waste from outflowing. They needed a few design iterations
before it worked as well.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkQbcrzyAeE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkQbcrzyAeE)

~~~
irishcoffee
Yeah that trash wheel doesn't run nearly as much as you'd think. It exists.

------
chaser999
So let's say we can pull all this plastic out of the ocean, then where do we
put it? Won't it just find it's way back to the ocean?

~~~
slavik81
No. According to _Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean_ (2015) [1],
the plastic waste entering the oceans from land is mismanaged waste. They
define mismanaged waste as "material that is either littered or inadequately
disposed. Inadequately disposed waste is not formally managed and includes
disposal in dumps or open, uncontrolled landfills, where it is not fully
contained. Mismanaged waste could eventually enter the ocean via inland
waterways, wastewater outflows, and transport by wind or tides."

They claim that in the United States, only about 2% of waste is mismanaged
(though, the total amount of waste generated is enormous and growing). The
recovered plastic waste would probably be disposed of effectively, especially
since the people collecting it presumably care more than average that it does
get disposed of correctly.

[1]:
[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768.long](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768.long)

~~~
davidwitt415
I think it's important to note that the US ships a huge amount of its
'recyclables' to Asian countries who are happy to take the money and don't
have environmental standards for dumping.

------
_Codemonkeyism
I think we (they) learn a lot, next try will be better and we need to learn
how to clean up the oceans and currently we have no clue.

Would there be cheaper ways to learn what works? Perhaps.

------
nartz
Idea: Make the 'net' much more fuzzy/pronged, so plastic bumping against it
against it naturally clings or clumps (i'm thinking naval hair/fuzz here)

~~~
Y_Y
Is that supposed to be a pun on "navel" and "naval"? Ouch.

------
walrus01
previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17899395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17899395)

------
bcheung
This article makes me think of the game Raft. I'm now wondering how easy it
would be to expand the net using garbage collected from the net.

------
known
6.3 billion tons of plastic is to be recycled.

------
jwitchel
Is it a waste of your time or your money when someone else picks up a can off
the beach?

Help. Don't help.

But sneering at their effort is just mean.

Bravo and +1 to all the engineers on this very excellent project.

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
Beach plastic is different from ocean plastic. At the scale which the ocean
cleanup intends to operate, removing plastics from the ocean is almost always
worse than leaving it alone and sometimes just as effective as doing nothing.
It sounds counter-intuitive, but it is the truth. This system will not remove
92% of the plastics in the gyre. It will neither remove nor reduce plastics
which already contaminate the human food, air and water supplies. Its wide-
scale, automated deployment will result in by-catch and contribute to the
rising food-security issues throughout the pacific due to dwindling fish
populations.

The ocean is extremely fragile. The ocean, and the communities who depend on
it are on the brink of irreversible collapse, and Mr. Slat really, truly,
objectively, is not helping.

~~~
kijin
So what do you propose that we do? Even if everyone stopped throwing plastic
into the water right now, it will not remove an ounce of plastic that's
already in the water and killing the ecosystem.

Instead of dismissing attempts like this with a hand wave, perhaps we should
actually start calculating the amount of damage done by potential by-catch
versus the damage avoided by removing X tons of plastic from the top Y meters
of the water column. Or compare the amount of plastic this project will end up
adding to the oceans with the amount it will remove in the meantime.

It's okay to be naysayer if you have real numbers to back up your claims. It's
not okay to throw around phrases like "Mr. Slat is really, truly, objectively
not helping" when you don't have any numbers to back up your claims.

------
casper345
tl;dr More funding for this program!!

It is hard for most people to grasp the engineering hardship and complexity to
work in the ocean especially with only 20 million$ to solve a massive problem.
Just a thought, but we were able to land a man on the moon before ever
reaching the Challenger Deep (lowest recorded point in ocean). This team needs
more funding in order to achieve this or even just make a dent.

------
HillaryBriss
they're optimistic. they're calling it a success. they're motivated to keep
working on this device. who knows?

------
chihuahua
Just use Katamari technology. Boom, problem solved.

------
SirLJ
This project will never work or collect anything... For anyone interested, it
was clear from the start that tHis is indeed a PR stunt designed to collect
money...

The only way to stop polluting is to start with a ban on single use
plastics...

~~~
macspoofing
Ocean plastics are the result of mismanaged waste from third world countries,
but the _only_ solution is to ban 'single use' plastics.

