
A big patch of plastic garbage has been discovered in the Arctic - endswapper
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/19/15358950/plastics-arctic-ocean-microplastics-polar-ice-caps-birds-animals
======
readams
I think when people imagine these "garbage patches" they picture a floating
garbage dump you could set a lawn chair on. The reality is that they are
regions of slightly increased concentration of plastic. Here, the worst areas
are between 100-500 grams of plastic per square kilometer. That is 5 empty
water bottles in a square kilometer.

This doesn't mean that having this debris is a good thing but it's important
to get some perspective as the rhetoric here is very misleading.

~~~
wavefunction
Why is trash ending up in the Arctic, that's my takeaway.

Half a kilo of plastic per square kilometer is a lot for water that shouldn't
have any plastic in the first place. I guess it is all about perspective.

~~~
emmelaich
It's because of the currents. Have a look at any body of water with a bit of
debris - e.g. a backyard pool with leaves on it. It tends to concentrate in a
few areas.

It's a good thing in a way; it allows us to spend a lot less clearing it up.

------
spodek
Let's talk personal responsibility and what we can change.

What percent of readers of this site drank water from a plastic bottle in the
past, say, 24 hours? ... in places with potable tap water making bottles
unnecessary... Or nalgene containers... Or soda, juice, etc in bottles...

I recycle what I can, but I've taken to treating recyclables as landfill
garbage, since most of it ends up there, which means I avoid consuming it as
much as practicable. The more I do it, the easier I find consuming less
without any loss of happiness.

Actually, less stuff has increased my happiness.

Someone will inevitably write that consuming less won't make much difference.
Well, why not do it to improve your life anyway?

~~~
enugu
I remember reading a book by British energy person on renewables who talked
about importance of 'order of magnitude' calculations and how switching off
cell phone chargers is not the way to campaign for energy savings.

So, yes getting past the plastic problem is super important. But our solution
has to match the scope of the problem. Personal responsibility, reducing
consumption is good, but that shouldnt come in the way of thinking in terms of
systems. Typically, the conversation moves away from a focus on the issue to
an evaluation of ourselves and others.

Some countries have packaging free supermarkets. There are biodegradable
alternatives to plastics which keep being proposed but havent become popular
for whatever reason. Discussing that would be a good place to start. Funding
research or entreprenurship would be a great approach.

~~~
spodek
The book is Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air, a free download from
[http://withouthotair.com](http://withouthotair.com). An excellent resource.

I agree with avoiding packaging and more. Since I started avoiding food with
packaging, I've reduced my landfill garbage to having to empty my household
garbage two or three times _per year._

With an increase in deliciousness, convenience, and saving money.

Here are a couple posts on it, for those interested:

[http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-
packaging](http://joshuaspodek.com/avoiding-food-packaging)

[http://joshuaspodek.com/want-run-leaner-waste-less-
literally...](http://joshuaspodek.com/want-run-leaner-waste-less-literally-
produce-less-waste)

These small practices contributed to a bigger practice of not flying for a
year (and counting): [https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-
flying.ht...](https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-flying.html)
so discovering the joys and rewards of consuming less have compounded, at
least in my experience.

I'm also teaching a course in systems thinking, always seeking ways to apply
more.

------
nh2903840
On the plus side: covering the ocean with white plastic garbage will reflect
solar radiation and thus combat global warming. In fact we should be dumping
as many plastic bags and styrofoam cups in the ocean as possible, as well as
producing billions of white plastic buoys and just dumping them in the ocean.

There are definitely no possible downsides or unintended consequences to this
idea.

~~~
Yahivin
We may luck out and two wrongs may make a right :)

------
spraak
We're continually creating our own demise. As much as technology has been
intended to extend our life, it's more often just used to extend someone's
wallet, and trash everything else.

~~~
quakeguy
As hard as it seems to acknowledge, but i think you are right. Greed and
individual(or corporate) growths always had the biggest influence on the
planet. We are indeed doomed should this trend continue. I see no signs this
trend will stop.

~~~
deelowe
I think it's less greed and more simple population growth. These technologies
were invented in the name of efficiency. We all have a bit of the burden to
share here.

For example, fishing line. What would happen if we banned this? I think there
might be dire consequences for cultures that depend on seafood for sustenance.

~~~
emodendroket
Was it solely population growth that led oil concerns to hide their own
research into greenhouse gases and also fund research to undermine efforts to
restrict emissions?

------
gambiting
Serious question - where does this plastic come from? Living in a 1st world
country I can't imagine any significant amounts are thrown into the sea, sure,
an occasional tourist will throw a bottle into the sea, but how do you end up
with millions of tonnes? Are there any countries where dumping garbage into
the sea is a standard procedure?

------
hoodoof
I visited the beautiful pacific recently and even on very remote tropical
islands there were plastic bottles in the water and on the beaches everywhere.

Very sad - hopefully one day the world will come to see plastic as the scourge
that it is.

~~~
ashark
I read a whole lot of posts by a Russian world traveling photo-blogger a few
years back, and one of a few consistent themes was that most remote Pacific
islands kinda look like garbage dumps, if anyone lives on them. Others
included: former French colonies are usually way worse off than former British
colonies, and that the US (and Australia a bit, though less) has like 100x as
many posted instructions and regulations as anywhere else.

~~~
seszett
It doesn't take anyone living on islands for them to be littered with trash.

I stayed on Kerguelen island for about a year (in the Indian Ocean, not the
Pacific) and the North coast is just completely full of plastic trash brought
there by the sea. Plastic bottles, tanks, buoys, ropes. The West coast is a
bit too remote to survey, but it's probably even worse.

So, people living on islands create trash obviously, but the uninhabited ones
might not be better.

------
sbhere
Go to preciousplastic.com ... donate or fund them or refer a local
organization of interest to help recycle.

Seriously. That (website) combined with personal responsiblilty (reusing water
bottles as shared in other comments) would make a huge difference. Personal
responsibility: When was the last time you (the reader) tossed a cigarette
butt on the ground? ... threw something in the trash instead of taking it to a
recycling bin? ...

This hits the front page the same day HN has an article about Russia being
better at STEM outreach to young girls than the USA. If you're in the USA and
want to promote STEM, go to your local school and fund construction of one of
the Precious Plastic machines. It's probably the same cost as a student would
have to fund raise for drama club or football team. Get Precious Plastic into
schools, integrated with the shop/tech ed classes, involved with Home Ec (or
whatever it's called now), and encourage [girls and boys] to be more
interested, more involved, more creative.

We can solve more of these problems simultaneously with good solutions. Let's
do it people!

------
wu-ikkyu
Relevant: George Carlin - Saving the Planet

[https://youtu.be/7W33HRc1A6c](https://youtu.be/7W33HRc1A6c)

------
stouset
On a longer-term scale, what is the risk that having such large troves of
plastic lying about brings about a bloom of plastic-consuming bacteria that
emit CO2 as a waste product? Should that happen, would it contribute
measurably to the scale of current carbon emissions?

~~~
LeifCarrotson
"Such large troves" are, in this case, on the order of 1000 tons. That's like
a few dozen dump trailers of wood chips or compost or other organics that
might be decomposed.

When spread as a film on and mixed in the surface of the ocean, it's a big
deal, but it's less than a millionth of the 30 billion tons of CO2 that we're
annually pumping into the atmosphere.

~~~
stouset
Thanks. It's good to have an understanding of the scale involved here.

That said, I'm not just talking about the plastic accumulated at this location
but our waste plastic globally. That carbon might be considered "sequestered"
in plastic for the time being, but that might not continue to be the case.

------
ihsw2
The article mentions on plastic _somehow_ finding its way to the Arctic ocean
and then later briefly mentions an important term -- the thermohaline
circulation.

It should be noted that this little-known oceanic phenomenon has a massive
impact on the ecology of the Earth and personally I think studying it is one
of the best starting points in determining how to measure our impact on the
Earth's ecology (eg: sources and destinations of pollution).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation#Effec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermohaline_circulation#Effects_on_global_climate)

------
thinkMOAR
This is as much as a discovery as finding that banknote of 100 in your old
jeans that you forgot about.. Garbage can't be 'new'

Don't get me wrong, horrible issue and glad to see some articles pass by on HN
that try to address this issue. But calling it a 'discovery' is a bit odd
imho.

~~~
phireal
This is an odd attitude: we have all sorts of new discoveries of things that
are ancient. The whole field of geology is based on very ancient things and it
makes discoveries all the time. A discovery just means it's new to us, not
necessarily that it's entirely new (whatever that means).

~~~
thinkMOAR
i agree, odd attitude towards odd claimed discovery. There is a difference
between ancient things, which have gaps between civilisations vs garbage we
threw out the last 30-40 years and chose to ignore?

~~~
phireal
The 'new' aspect of this discovery is that we didn't know it was there before.
I think that's a perfectly valid thing to call new.

I don't think anyone's claiming the plastic is new.

~~~
thinkMOAR
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/05/plastic-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/05/plastic-
waste-dumped-in-uk-seas-carried-to-arctic-within-two-years)

And that's why i think its not a discovery, we knew it was there before.

------
exabrial
Well at least we figured out where the $9mil went...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14159963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14159963)

------
dingo_bat
Meh, who cares. The Arctic is useless to us anyway. Also, it seems there is no
"patch of plastic garbage". It's just microscopic debris over thousands of
kilometers.

Do people really think 7 billion humans will not have _any_ impact on the
planet? They will. Things will change. As long as it serves our purpose, we
must utilize this planet to the maximum.

~~~
saagarjha
Are you serious?

~~~
mansigandhi
Yeah, I really couldn't make out if it the comment was in all seriousness or
some lame attempt at sarcasm / wit.

------
yummybits
Capitalism is the problem.

~~~
emmelaich
the problem is the distance in time between cause and effect and how much
motivation those in the current time have.

Capitalism* may be a problem, but a brief bit of reading will tell you that
Communism is a far far worse problem when it comes to pollution.

* whatever you mean by that.

~~~
yummybits
> Capitalism may be a problem

Capitalism is 1000% is the problem. No ifs, ends or buts. Specially,
unrestricted, unlimited, mindless consumption of resources (which is at the
core of capitalism) is the problem.

> brief bit of reading will tell you that Communism is a far far worse problem
> when it comes to pollution

Please do tell me what "reading" you're referring to. And no, China is not
communist. China is capitalist. In fact, there are no countries that communist
any more (maybe with the exception of NK).

~~~
emmelaich
Oh, here's some "reading" (what's with the quotes?)

Recent Venezualan Oil Tankers banned from many harbours.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-tankers-
insi...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-oil-tankers-insight-
idUSKBN17K0CE)

Less Recent (Soviet Era) [https://fee.org/articles/why-socialism-causes-
pollution/](https://fee.org/articles/why-socialism-causes-pollution/)

You might not like fee.org so here's a Wikipedia quote.

    
    
        "Kraków, Poland was covered by smog 135 days per year,
        while Wrocław was covered by a fog of chrome gas"
    

(from the Eastern Bloc article on Wikipedia)

There is a common cause of neglect of the environment in both so-called
Communist and Capitalist countries.

I urge you to discover what that is for yourself.

~~~
NoGravitas
> There is a common cause of neglect of the environment in both so-called
> Communist and Capitalist countries.

Rapid industrialization? That would explain worse pollution in Soviet-bloc
countries: they industrialized faster than capitalist western Europe/USA
because they were playing catch-up.

