
Marium, the Dugong Who Charmed Thailand, Dies After Ingesting Plastic - laurex
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/17/752042032/marium-the-dugong-that-charmed-thailand-dies-after-ingesting-plastic
======
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>But last week, her caregivers found her listless and bruised, reports the AP.

>In addition to Marium eating plastic, biologists believe she was pursued by
an overly aggressive male during the mating season.

>"We assume she wandered off too far from her natural habitat and was chased
and eventually attacked by another male dugong or dugongs," Jatuporn Buruspat,
director-general of the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources, told the
AP.

It seems that Marium died after being attacked by one or more males. Although
the article mentions plastic in her intestines, nowhere does it say that the
plastic was the cause of death. There is a good chance that a lot of the
marine life invests plastic and we just notice it when we perform a necropsy
after a death.

~~~
xiphias2
The more I hear about plastic pollution the more worried I am that it's
working as a distraction for air pollution, global warming and problems of the
global economy:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X1830681X)

~~~
bb2018
I sort of wonder this too. The logic seems simple. Companies are attacked for
being bad for the environment. In ways such as fossil fuel consumption it is
impossible for them to change. However, in ways such as making packaging
slightly lighter or of different materials it is easy to change. Companies
support existing environmental groups fixated on fringe issues as a way of
appearing progressive while the main issue (which would be costly) goes on
touch.

As a resident of California who has seen plastic straws be banned (which are
highly visible but small) while millions of other types of waste are allowed I
suspect it is the case.

~~~
esotericn
That's more an issue of PR departments pushing out platitudes whilst not
actually doing anything.

The solution to plastic pollution is not 'make the container thinner' because
the amount of material used is not really relevant. Two thin plastic bags are
likely worse than one 3x thickness bag a pollution perspective.

It would be equally silly for companies to talk about "hey we now use 3% less
petrol" or whatever. They need to use 90%+ less.

~~~
azinman2
It’s not about platitudes. It’s about raising awareness with a small gesture
in hopes it will lead to a bigger change. It already is a pretty needless
thing (especially as compostable straws exist) that accumulates in large
numbers, and is purely single use. We already have had single use plastic bags
banned for a long time in SF, and I cannot imagine going backwards. We need to
continue moving onward... not bringing back straws but further reducing this
single use plastic lifestyle.

~~~
esotericn
I think you're misreading my comment. I agree with you.

I'm saying that making plastic containers a bit thinner is a platitude
(greenwashing), not that reducing plastic use is a platitude.

The meaningful move would be to stop producing single-use plastics entirely. A
jar of jam or something that lasts a few weeks is low priority at the moment.
A microwave meal is lazy. A plastic fork is just a piss take.

------
mantap
I consider all these articles about plastic pollution to be a kind of "fake
news" because they are completely misleading people as to the nature of the
problem.

The plastic waste that is entering the oceans is because people in developing
countries that lack waste management systems, dump their trash in rivers and
it floats out to sea.

The root cause is poverty and corrupt, ineffective governments. It's not a
problem that can be resolved by western consumer action or even western
legislation.

~~~
apatters
Western governments absolutely can and do apply geopolitical pressure via
measures like sanctions, tariffs and trade agreements.

Now whether they have the will to do it over plastic waste (or carbon
emissions or democratic governance or human rights) is another matter, because
they have only a few tools and there are thousands of priorities competing for
those tools.

It also doesn't help with leverage when there is a powerful economic actor
which doesn't require any of these terms as conditions of doing business:
China.

~~~
stevenjohns
Alternatively, instead of starving countries to death[0], maybe Western
countries should stop sending their trash to third world countries[1][2].

Perhaps it's not the fault of those poorer countries, but instead the fault of
the Enlightened West (those that care about carbon emissions, democratic
governance and human rights) illegally dumping their garbage onto other
countries[3]?

There's something funny about Western governments illegally dumping thousands
of tonnes of trash on the shores of poor countries[4] and then people having
the audacity to support _sanctions_ \- literally punishing the civilians there
by starving them through siege - for not having the ability to properly manage
the waste.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Effects...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanctions_against_Iraq#Effects_on_the_Iraqi_people_during_sanctions)

[1] [https://www.dw.com/en/tired-of-being-trashed-philippines-
rea...](https://www.dw.com/en/tired-of-being-trashed-philippines-ready-to-
dump-garbage-in-canada/a-48829282)

[2] [http://www.atchuup.com/countries-used-as-dumping-grounds-
of-...](http://www.atchuup.com/countries-used-as-dumping-grounds-of-worlds-
trash/)

[3] [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-29/malaysia-to-send-
tonn...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-29/malaysia-to-send-tonnes-of-
plastic-waste-back-to-foreign-nations/11159208)

[4]
[http://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:6349/PiP_Report.pdf](http://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:6349/PiP_Report.pdf)

~~~
apatters
You're aware that Iraq and the Malaysia are different countries, right? Just
checking.

~~~
stevenjohns
I didn’t realise sieges have different effects depending on which third world
country they’re applied to.

------
atsushin
I'm doubtful that humanity will be able to resolve its plastics crisis without
a radical, 'immediate' shift in how nations manufacture and consume product.
No matter what great research or innovations exist or are on the horizon,
we've long passed the point of no return and are entrenched in our habits.
There's been a profusion of news illustrating how egregious our situation is
and I'm always left wondering how the future is going to look like and in what
new ways people are going to adapt.

------
laurex
When I was in Vietnam earlier this year, I finally understood how much of a
problem we have. The ocean water was totally clogged with plastic and trash.
In North America, we are not seeing what a lot of the rest of the world is
dealing with in terms of persistent waste, presumably because we have more
land for landfills and money to move trash into them?

~~~
foxyv
You can put a LOT of trash in a small space. The cost of landfills is usually
measured in the cost to collect and transport garbage to the landfills. Also,
once the landfill is full it is often still usable after the fact. Especially
if it is managed properly. Add this to the fact that quarries are creating
excellent places to consign garbage.

The big problem is the cost of energy to move and bury the garbage. A lot of
third world countries don't have extensive waste management networks like the
USA.

------
jaggederest
I think it's a decent bet that future generations will see our usage of
plastic in the past few decades pretty similarly to the way we see the
historical usage of asbestos during the middle part of the 20th century.

~~~
Baeocystin
I really don't think so. Plastics are used because they solve a lot of very
real problems for the amount they cost to produce. That's a good thing. The
vast majority of the plastic waste in the environment comes from rivers that
flow through countries that lack even basic sanitation/garbage collection
facilities. A plastic bottle floating down a river has a real potential
environmental impact. A plastic bottle sitting in a landfill isn't hurting
anything, and isn't going to.

Investing in waste management infrastructure in these communities would
essentially solve the plastics problem, even if nothing else was changed. It
is, unfortunately, not very exciting to talk about civil waste management
infrastructure as the way forward, but it doesn't stop it from being the
correct answer.

~~~
azinman2
They’ll still exist for a long time, and will be eaten by birds, etc, even in
a landfill.

Managing AND reducing waste needs to happen simultaneously.

~~~
Baeocystin
Plastics that sit undisturbed in the earth are a form of carbon sequestration.
That is not a bad thing, as long as they are concentrated in a known place.

Landfills are lot more complex than just dumping trash in a pit.
[https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/swfacilities/landfills/needfor...](https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/swfacilities/landfills/needfor#EnsureSafety)
may be of interest. The tl;dr is that properly-managed ones genuinely are a
safe form of waste disposal.

~~~
abathur
Well-designed landfills are probably better than loading plastic into confetti
cannons, but calling anything in a man-engineered landfill "undisturbed in the
earth" is a stretch.

Plastics sitting in our landfills are, at human timescales, sitting relatively
undisturbed on the outer skin of this world, where they are probably a teensy
bit less "sequestered" than they were several thousand feet into the crust.

At anything approaching geologic time, some fraction of these feats of
engineering will be graciously buried by layer upon layer of new sediments;
others will be sundered by the same forces that flatten mountain-ranges and
carve canyons, their contents re-circulated through nature's supply chains.

------
mrnobody_67
We need biodegradable plastic bottles now, and an outright ban on
styrofoam....

~~~
Sawamara
Biodegradability means nothing in the context of plastic that ends up in
rivers, seas and oceans. Nothing. That is not a solution.

We need waste control, enforced harsh laws on producers (industries and
tourists and waste manager companies), and we needed it a decade ago.

This is what happens when capitalism relies on an externality and that
externality is fed up with its bullcrap.

------
pvaldes
Moral of the history: Nothing can substitute mother's lessons about what to
eat and what not. Orphans of species that need a long period of weaning and
teaching have more probabilities of die young.

~~~
rexpop
You think the moral has nothing to do with our deliberate industries?

------
kipqi
Natural selection. The ecosystem is evolving; if you can't stop yourself from
eating plastic you'll be wiped.

~~~
thih9
Some species cannot stop eating plastic, other populations can but will still
be seriously harmed.

Keep in mind that humans introduced plastic and have control over its
presence.

Perhaps the term „ecosystem evolution” is too general in this case; ecosystem
destruction might be more accurate.

It’s up to us what is the next step. We can leave things up to natural
selection, but do we want to?

