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The Ocean Cleanup's Machine Is About to Set Sail
- azinman2 9y agoI wish them massive success. Glad to hear someone is at least trying for large scale cleanup. Also glad the article mentioned needing to attack the root cause as well — in some ways it’s harder because it’s a political/economical/cultural, not engineering problem.
- SirFatty 9y agoGood on him, and ignoring the naysayers.
- lozenge 9y agoWhy? The naysayers have some very good points (discussed elsewhere in the thread).
- offbytwo 9y agoI would say a serious attempt at cleaning any amount of the ocean is better than no attempt.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago...unless its doing more damage than good. The project uses screens which 'because they are not nets' will do no harm. Wha? How about to microscopic life, say, the size of plastic particles? Isn't it going to sterilize the surface of the ocean of all those animals? The vast bulk of life in the ocean is in the top meter - exactly where they're vacuuming up everything.
- offbytwo 9y agoIf your taking the 'protect wildlife' route, then it doesn't make sense to argue against taking trash out of the ocean which directly kills a god-awful lot of animals as it stands.
- JoeAltmaier 9y agoIs that even true? Does the Sargasso sea plastic particulate harm animals? To what degree? Straining billions of sea creatures out of the top meter of water is an actual harm. It makes no sense to have to argue that's a net loss. Unless we're taking the 'save the large, cuddly animals first' route, which is so often part of eco-theatre.
- ForHackernews 9y ago> The system uses a giant floating tube–the first one will be 2,000 feet long–made of a durable plastic called HDPE, which can float in the water, flexible enough to bend with the waves, but rigid enough to form a U-shaped barrier to stop the plastic floating on the ocean’s surface. What are the odds on a bad storm destroying this device and adding another big chunk of garbage plastic to the ocean?
- aqme28 9y agoI don't think that's enough plastic to make a dent in the amount of plastic already out there. If that happens, at least we'll get valuable information on how to improve the system for next time.
- sp332 9y agoIf it's a big chunk, it won't get eaten by fish and it will be easy to clean up.
- giarc 9y agoI'm wondering what are the chances a big storm disperses all the plastic it collected up until that point?
- yakshaving_jgt 9y agoIf this happens, would they not just redeploy and begin collecting again? It's not like dispersion is additive.
- giarc 9y agoYes but if a storm displaces the plastic from the trap every 30 days, seems like a waste of that resource.
- andriesm 9y agoJordan Peterson used this guy as an example of someone that is truly committed to environmentalism, as compared to the typical clueless feel-good armchair activist that achieves little.
- themodelplumber 9y agoPeterson has a force/action bias by his psychology, so the criticism (apart from being an apparent straw man which doesn't help matters, though it doesn't look like you're quoting him directly) needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Keep in mind that much of what Peterson himself does is take an armchair approach. That is fine, but it means he will tend to swing broadly between "critique" and "action" as two possible alternatives.
- xingped 9y agoI think that might be a little unfair to most people that care about the environment. A lot of this is coming up with a feasible idea that you or someone you know can execute on. Would I or most people be able to come up with this idea? Myself definitely not and most people probably not. If I were to have the domain knowledge to be able to come up with this idea and understand how to execute upon it, then would I pursue it? Most likely. I think a lot of people want to do something, but coming up with the right ideas and knowledge to be useful is a totally different story.
- yakshaving_jgt 9y agoIs the idea all that impressive? Is it not essentially just a big floating wall? To me, the impressive thing is that the young guy has actually put this in motion. In business, we say ideas are worthless and it's all in execution. I think the same principle applies here.
- danieljohnson 9y agoWith all of the ways that we hear the environment is being damaged by humans, it's nice to hear about a way we're trying to improve it. This give me hope.
- awat 9y agoI’ll second that and fingers crossed that the publicity encourages a cascading effect of environmental kindnesses.
- Overtonwindow 9y agoMaybe Sunday we can get something like this attached to all oceangoing vessel’s of size that cross back-and-forth.
- unit91 9y agoSunday's probably too early. Monday perhaps. :-D
- petermcneeley 9y agoWhy did he drop out of school? This sounds like a modern application of mechanical engineering. Do we believe so little in our education system that we wouldnt want this to be designed by a mechanical engineer? edit: I just thought he was responsible for the mechanical innovation.
- lostapathy 9y agoHe thought the problem was too urgent to wait until he was done with school. Surely there are engineers working on the project, even if he didn't finish school.
- tspike 9y agoHe didn't do it alone. Here's one job posting open at the moment: https://www.theoceancleanup.com/careers/senior-engineer/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/careers/senior-engineer/ I'm assuming he dropped out of school because he saw an opportunity, had momentum, and decided to ride it.
- giarc 9y agoThere's a ton of engineers on the 70+ team designing and working on this. https://www.theoceancleanup.com/careers/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/careers/
- titojankowski 9y agoAdidas sold 1 million pairs of its shoes made from ocean plastic [1]. Wonder what the market for ocean plastic is like? https://www.theinertia.com/environment/adidas-sold-1-million-pairs-of-shoes-made-of-ocean-trash-in-2017/ https://www.theinertia.com/environment/adidas-sold-1-million...
- look_lookatme 9y agoI suspect it will continue to be good at the expense of the markets for recycled plastic, which have already taken a nosedive.
- ars 9y ago> The money made from selling the plastic to manufacturers, who want the cachet of using ocean plastic, will theoretically fund the operation. Ouch. Trying to reuse mixed plastic that is in little tiny pieces, and very highly contaminated? Maybe they'll catch some large nets. Oddly enough, in this case a little greenwashing will help. Tell people it's "recycled ocean plastic", but actually use just a tiny bit and landfill the rest. It's still a win because the plastic is no longer in the ocean.
- twic 9y agoThe article slips in a link to a fact which i think is not well known, but rather imporant - the punchline is in the URL slug: http://www.dw.com/en/almost-all-plastic-in-the-ocean-comes-from-just-10-rivers/a-41581484 http://www.dw.com/en/almost-all-plastic-in-the-ocean-comes-f... > It turns out that about 90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world's oceans gets flushed through just 10 rivers: The Yangtze, the Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, the Nile, the Ganges, Pearl River, Amur River, the Niger, and the Mekong (in that order). > These rivers have a few key things in common. All of them run through areas where a lot of people live — hundreds of millions of people in some cases. But what's more important is that these areas don't have adequate waste collection or recycling infrastructure. There is also little public awareness that plastic trash is a problem at all, so a lot of garbage, gets thrown into the river and conveniently disappears downstream. The biggest thing we can do to fix the ocean plastic pollution problem isn't visionary technology like Slat's cleanup machine (don't get me wrong - we should cheer that project on!), or virtuous self-flagellation like using reusable drinking straws, it's good old fashioned hard work: hire more bin men, and put up more information posters. EDIT: Here's another paper, applying related methods and coming to a broadly similar, although fatter-tailed, conclusion - "The top 20 polluting rivers, mostly located in Asia, account for 67% of the global total": https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611 https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15611 One of the authors on that paper is Boyan Slat! SECOND EDIT: The latter paper includes a couple of sentences i struggle to reconcile: "We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year from rivers" ... "It has been estimated that between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean every year from coastal populations worldwide". I'm not sure if they're quoting the 4.8 - 12.7 figure to endorse it (coastal populations significantly outweigh rivers) or criticise it (ie it's rivers, not coastal populations).
- giarc 9y agoThe Ocean Cleanup project is obviously needed since the plastic is already out there. However, I wonder if there are any projects that look to clean up the plastic output by these rivers at the transition between river and ocean? The mouth of the Yangtze is only a 1km wide at terminal points. Although heavy in boat traffic, I wonder how much affect removing the plastic here would have.
- kwoff 9y agoJust for context, from a month ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16654524 . (I'm still wondering if the "mass" of plastic is relevant, so clue me in.)
- legulere 9y agoHardly any plastic can be found at the surface of the ocean (1%). It makes much more sense to clean up beaches that have a higher concentration by several magnitudes and a serveral times bigger total amount of plastic (5% of the ocean) Numbers are from http://www.eunomia.co.uk/reports-tools/plastics-in-the-marine-environment/ http://www.eunomia.co.uk/reports-tools/plastics-in-the-marin...
- jessriedel 9y ago> and a serveral times bigger total amount of plastic (5% of the ocean) Looking at your link, you mean "5x the ocean" not "5% the ocean". That link claims the beach plastic density is 2000 times larger, implying that by their definition "beaches" are 2.5km wide on average (since there are 361 M km^2 of ocean and 356,000 km of shoreline).
- legulere 9y agoThere’s still 94% of the plastic on the ocean floor which is not tackled at all. I don’t get where you have your number of shoreline from. I find numbers threee times yours. Further the report states that the pollution of the ocean surface is less than 1%
- jessriedel 9y agoFirst result on Google & CIA world Factbook are both about 350,000 km. https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-of-coastline-are-there-in-the-world https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-of-coastline-are-there-...
- carlmr 9y ago>356,000km of shoreline At what feature size? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coastline_paradox
- jessriedel 9y agoIn this case, the appropriate size is of order 2.5 km.
- sselbe 9y agoThis project is hugely problematic, both because there are some pretty fundamental flaws in how he characterizes plastic pollution and the lack of any responses from the Ocean Cleanup about the criticism from just about every ocean plastics expert out there. None of the major plastics pollution nonprofits endorse this work, not out of jealousy but frustration with an idea getting so much attention and funding purely because some charismatic kid has talked about it. Assuming that it is engineered to survive storms (which is DEFINITELY not an easy feat given the design), anything like this will have an impact on marine life. Anything that floats like this will act like a FAD (fish aggregating device) and attract animals, and should be designed in a way to minimize impact or incidental catch. It seems like his discussion about what that includes has been pretty vague to date. This includes the small things in the ocean that will certainly be harmed by this device. The dispersion of plastics in the ocean seems to follow a different profile than this device addresses. Contrary to what people imagine when they think of the “Pacific Garbage Patch,” the bulk of plastic in the oceans is not large pieces that are floating. Pretty much all plastic in the ocean has broken down into small pieces and sits through the entire water column following the mixed layer phenomenon. There’s been a lot of great research on that, including microplastics which are now found in practically every water body on Earth. Anyways, there are much smarter people than me who outlined the flaws. You can read More here: http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/07/the-ocean-cleanup-part-1-alternatives-to-reduce-ocean-plastic/ http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/07/the-ocean-cleanup-part-1-... http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/07/the-ocean-cleanup-part-2-technical-review-of-the-feasibility-study/ http://www.deepseanews.com/2014/07/the-ocean-cleanup-part-2-... http://deepseanews.com/2013/03/the-ocean-cleanup-the-newest-of-the-new-plans-to-remove-marine-plastic/ http://deepseanews.com/2013/03/the-ocean-cleanup-the-newest-... http://climateadaptation.tumblr.com/post/46515698066/this-invention-keeps-popping-up-in-my-daily http://climateadaptation.tumblr.com/post/46515698066/this-in... http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-plastic-with-a-floating-ocean-cleanup-array/ http://inhabitat.com/the-fallacy-of-cleaning-the-gyres-of-pl...
- throwaway299792 9y agoTotally agree. As someone familiar with their scale model tests, I can attest to them knowing very little about what they are doing. I will/cannot not go into too much detail, but (1) not wanting to listen to any wave experts and (2) them expecting a failing(!) scale model test to magically work on full scale are laughable and major red flags. The only reason the project has gotten so much funding is because it allows companies to buy an indulgence of sorts and clear their conscience. I am 100% certain it will not work, and will actually pollute the ocean more, for the "machine" itself will turn to waste.
- manigandham 9y agoA good conversation/interview on the Joe Rogan podcast with Boyan Slat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J145vnEZX6w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J145vnEZX6w
- hguhghuff 9y agoWe should pay fishing boats to haul in garbage.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- andrewstuart 9y agoLess effort should go into cleaning up, and more into killing the communities acceptance of the garbage manufacturing / packaging industry, which spews this stuff out at a virtually infinite rate. Stop mopping up, turn off the tap.
- skookumchuck 9y agoShould start with a tax on bottled water, an absurd and unnecessary industry if there ever was one.
- andrewstuart 9y agoHow about precisely standardised bottles that have return value, and a tax on manufacturers that use non standard sizes.
- wuliwong 9y agoIs the plastic that is coming from these 10 rivers substantially from bottled water?
- andrewstuart 9y agoI visited a relatively remote part of the pacific ocean and walked around a tiny island and every ten feet there was a soft drink bottle.
- Jaruzel 9y agoI live in London. The water that comes out of the tap is totally undrinkable, unless you filter it a few times AND boil it. Ergo, we live on bottled water for cold drinks. We recycle every bottle we use. IF the water came in returnable glass bottles, we'd switch to those in a heartbeat.
- stevesimmons 9y agoI live in London too. The water is perfectly drinkable straight out of the tap. Your comment about needing to boil the water to make it drinkable is truly bizarre. I know of precisely zero people here who boil tap water before drinking it. UK tap water is safer that bottled water because it is monitored much more closely. The responsible government body is the UK Drinking Water Inspectorate. You can read the reports on their website (a good overview is the annual summary letter to the government at [1]). In 2016, 99.96% of samples met the quality requirements of the EU Drinking Water Directive. If you are particularly sensitive to residual chlorine, the DWI advises letting the water stand for a couple of hours [2]. No need to boil or filter. Of course, if you search online, you are more likely to see advice from makers of water filters saying you need to filter the water... [1] http://www.dwi.gov.uk/about/annual-report/2016/letter-eng.pdf http://www.dwi.gov.uk/about/annual-report/2016/letter-eng.pd... [2] http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/chlorine.pdf http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/consumers/advice-leaflets/chlorine.p...
- parliament32 9y agoThis is an awesome project, good luck to them!
- andrewstuart 9y agoWe should require companies to report how much packaging/garbage they create every year.
- spodek 9y agoYou reading these words right now can reduce your consumption of plastic and fossil fuels, probably by 90% without any decrease in your quality of life. More likely you'll improve it. On a personal level, my commitment to avoid packaged food 3 years ago means I last had to empty my landfill garbage June 4. I've emptied my recycling I think twice since then. Now that feels like way too much. The main result is that my diet is more delicious than ever, more varied, more convenient, and saves me money. I'm in my third year of not flying too. I began by saying I would avoid flying for one year. It improved my life so much I kept going. These two changes sounded scary and impossible when I committed to them but experience showed me that living by my values improves my life. It took a while to let go of mainstream values that I couldn't stomach but had lived by for decades. Once I did, things got better and better. I'm not special. You can almost certainly cut your plastic use, fossil fuel use, pollution, and so on by a lot. I bet you'll find it improves your life.
- spraak 9y agoYour experience reminds me of the book and movie "No Impact Man", which I thoroughly enjoyed reading and watching. Thanks for sharing! I feel more motivated to reduce my trash. Have you shared any of this on e.g. a blog?
- spodek 9y agoI've shared a ton on my blog, Inc. column, and my podcast, Leadership and the Environment. At the risk of flooding you: Avoiding food packaging: http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/avoiding-food-packaging http://joshuaspodek.com/js_blogseries/avoiding-food-packagin... (the table of contents on the right is clickable) Not flying: https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-flying.html https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/365-days-without-flying.ht... Podcast: http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast http://joshuaspodek.com/podcast or https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-and-the-environment/id1320141457 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/leadership-and-the-envir... Picking up garbage: https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/a-millennial-making-america-clean-again.html https://www.inc.com/joshua-spodek/a-millennial-making-americ... Plenty more if you click "related posts" at the bottom of blog posts and in my Inc. profile: http://www.inc.com/author/joshua-spodek http://www.inc.com/author/joshua-spodek.
- Jaruzel 9y agoI think the irony that the the device to catch plastic is also made of plastic, seems to be lost on a lot people. More so that the project is unlikely to succeed, and if as some people are predicting, it's not storm proof, then it's very likely to just be adding [it's mass] to the problem.
- romdev 9y agoGeez, that thing is as big as a whale! I'd say it seats about 20.