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Plastic Bag Found at the Bottom of World's Deepest Ocean Trench

359 points by techrede 8y ago

JTbane 8y ago
One can only hope that eventually a solution will be developed that fixes the long-lived problems that plastics cause- perhaps a bacteria or chemical that breaks them down. In the meantime plastic waste is here to stay.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  This was mentioned before. Plastic is used in all sorts of applications for its durability and lack of reactivity. It doesn't rot. It doesn't corrode. In certain environments it dries out and cracks but that's about it. While there's a lot of plastic in the ocean it's relatively thinly distributed. It's not like there's a bunch of bottles floating in one place. It's a bunch of plastic dust in the water column. Any sort of bacteria or chemical that is self sustaining enough to be dropped in the ocean and expected to clean up the plastic would likely wreak havoc on all sorts of things. Any sort of bacteria or chemical that is sensitive enough that it won't wreak havoc in the environments where we don't want it to likely can't be applied in a effective or economical manner in the oceans.
  - EGreg 8y ago
    So there is no solution?
    - ISL 8y ago
      Reduce, reuse, recycle.
    - creep 8y ago
      In a couple hundred million years the Earth will regenerate, new species will evolve, etc. I do think we have a responsibility as self-aware beings to pick up after ourselves, but at the same time the Earth will be fine long-term. You could even say it's fine now. Yes, species are going extinct at an alarming rate, but we came from the Earth too and are not the only contributing factors to Earth's various disasters. I'm not about to throw trash out the window because of that fact, it's just that I don't have so much anxiety about totally destroying the planet. Maybe we will destroy the planet inasmuch as we can't live on it anymore, but that's our own damn fault and it's almost nothing compared to the longevity of the Earth.
  - artmageddon 8y ago
    > While there's a lot of plastic in the ocean it's relatively thinly distributed. It's not like there's a bunch of bottles floating in one place. It's a bunch of plastic dust in the water column. But it's distributed over a very large area, and affects sea-life. Guess what that means for people who consume fish?
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      I don't know how it affects sea-life. Other than the occasional scare-tactic picture of a turtle with a plastic web stuck to it, what is the systemic effect? Sure there's lots of plastic in the ocean; there's lots of sand too. What's really at issue?
      - at-fates-hands 8y ago
        The United Nations Ocean Conference estimated that the oceans might contain more weight in plastics than fish by the year 2050.[33] Some long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine animals, mature and immature.[6][34][35] The food chain is affected as the plastic attracts seabirds and fish. When marine life consumes plastic allowing it to enter the food chain, this can lead to greater problems when species that have consumed plastic are being eaten by other predators. Besides the particles' danger to wildlife, on the microscopic level the floating debris can absorb organic pollutants from seawater, including PCBs, DDT, and PAHs.[40] Aside from toxic effects,[41] when ingested, some of these are mistaken by the endocrine system as estradiol, causing hormone disruption in the affected animal.[38] These toxin-containing plastic pieces are also eaten by jellyfish, which are then eaten by fish. Many of these fish are then consumed by humans, resulting in their ingestion of toxic chemicals.[42] While eating their normal sources of food, plastic ingestion can be unavoidable or the animal may mistake the plastic as a food source.[43][44][45][46][47] Marine plastics also facilitate the spread of invasive species that attach to floating plastic in one region and drift long distances to colonize other ecosystems.[15] Research has shown that this plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide.[48] Great Pacific garbage patch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
      - 8y ago
- chinathrow 8y ago
  At least these guys are trying to clean up the mess others did. https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/
- titzer 8y ago
  I know that it's a natural reaction to try to think of a technical solution to a massive problem like this, but to be completely and brutally honest I think humans, as a race, are now obligated to get off our fat asses and pick up some trash. Hands and knees, trash bags, buckets, shovels. A single person can easily pick up 10kg of trash an hour. The 8 million metric tons that will likely end up in the ocean this year, if it were instead collected by people (on land, before it gets in the ocean) at 10kg/hr, 2000hrs/yr, that's 400,000 people. That's really not many when spread across dozens of countries. Also, it's way easier and cheaper to just put garbage in the garbage bin. So in reality it could be far less than this number that are all that is needed to keep the planet free of trash. Also, robots. But mostly we just need to get off our asses and pick up some trash!
  - creep 8y ago
    Okay, you first.
    - titzer 8y ago
      I picked up 300 bags of litter last year.
      - creep 8y ago
        I pick up bottles and cigarette butts.
        titzer 8y ago
        Thank you!
  - curun1r 8y ago
    I'm not sure that's the answer. I got an eye-opening view of the problem when I took a trip to Southeast Asia a couple years ago. Being in the third world, there's very few recycling plants to process plastic waste. The next best option, as you've implied, is landfills to sequester plastic waste...sacrifice that land to keep the rest of our planet clean(er). But even that's hard in many places. On many of the islands I visited, people did make a conscientious effort to throw their plastic garbage in bins and do the right thing. And that worked great, up until one of the massive deluges of rain that the area gets would come. And since they had no landfill area that was far enough from the water, the rains would wash the entire landfills out to sea in a massive river of plastic waste. It was one of the most depressing sights I've ever seen. On one of the scuba dives I went on, we found ourselves surfacing in a debris field that had washed out to sea and it was astonishing to see the magnitude of it. Collecting everything together, as in your suggestion, just led to a massive batch dump into the ocean and it didn't do anything to keep the waste out of the ocean. What we really need is a way to simply produce less plastic products. Increased use of glass, increased emphasis on reusing what plastic we do have and, yes, new technology to replace plastics with materials that break down faster so that when they do end up in the oceans, which in much of the world is inevitable from the moment of creation, they don't cause the amount of damage that plastics do.
- bcheung 8y ago
  It already exists. https://www.popsci.com/bacteria-enzyme-plastic-waste https://www.popsci.com/bacteria-enzyme-plastic-waste Given sufficient time evolution makes pretty much any waste a resource. Oxygen used to be a toxic pollutant. Then nature evolved and started using it to produce energy in cells.
madman2890 8y ago
Horrible
cobbzilla 8y ago
Since it's already at a trench, it will be among the first plastic to be subducted into the mantle. It's sad but it's not the most worrisome plastic in the ocean.
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  That sounds like a perfect place doe waste. Just pump it I to the mantle. Put this stuff back in the ground where it belongs. Better than in out air or floating around our water.
  - BTinfinity 8y ago
    Surely this would result in the high temperatures of the mantle burning the waste; the air pollution associated with this must make this a poor option for waste disposal.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      From my understanding when things burn hot enough -- which I think the mantel burns hot enough -- this sort of thing is not that big of an issue. Also, I am not entirely sure this would raise the temperatures of something so massive. In any case it would probably become the "global mantel worming" debate.
      - mbrumlow 8y ago
        Noo! Not the worming! I meant to type warming. Again, no posting before coffee next time! Although a worming might be fun. Trimmers anybody?
    - TylerE 8y ago
      Don't get much air pollution through 50 miles of rock.
      - njarboe 8y ago
        This statement is not strictly true but in context correct. Any volcanic eruption is full of really nasty gasses like carbon monoxide, sulfur, chlorine, and even fluorine, to name just a few. This comes from the content of the earth already (well, all the garbage comes from the earth originally also). But like you implied, adding the tiny amount of garbage generated by humans to the mix to an entire crustal column of rock would have insignificant impact on what comes out on top.
christophilus 8y ago
> ... by 2015, humans had produced 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste That's about 0.86 metric tons (or 859 kg or 1895 lbs) per person. Crazy.
- njarboe 8y ago
  Or a cube of solid plastic about 1.5 miles on a side. It would be cool if some country took the West's plastic and recycled it by creating a series of kilometer sized geometric objects in a desert somewhere.
  - Freestyler_3 8y ago
    > took the West's plastic Does it have to be the west's? Why do so many people blame the west solely, because other countries can't help it, or because other countries export to the west, or because the west exports an amount of trash to other countries? Not even a Billion people in the west, those other 6 had nothing to do with it? It seems like many here are making excuses why only the west is at fault. While most trash going in the ocean happens not in the west.
    - bllguo 8y ago
      1. western countries developed faster and started all this mad consumption and environmental abuse. Everyone else is copying us 2. the west is in the best position to start addressing this. Better educated, more prosperous, etc. 3. Much of the waste produced in other countries is for making things to ship to the western world We should not be playing the victim.
      - Freestyler_3 8y ago
        It is not about who is victim. It is about who is doing it NOW, and what can be done about it. Some plastic program in the west has 0% impact on the polution on global scale. That doesn't mean that the west shouldn't be active in addressing the problem, but it means focussing on where the problem is and actually doing somethig about it. You can blame the west all you want, but please don't think that other countries only produce for the west. There is a much bigger market.
revel 8y ago
I like the "Where did the plastic come from?" section in this article. Pretty sure it was a fish that carelessly tossed away the bag after going grocery shopping.
Maro 8y ago
I'm not pro-plastic waste (obvously), but it'd be interesting to see a pro-con analysis. What is all this plastic use getting us, how could we replace it with sth else, and what would it cost. Also, based on the article 40% of the waste here is from discarded shipping equipment. So it seems to me this can't be that must waste actually, compared to what we produce and presumably store on/in land [presumably that's a lot more than fishing equipment]. Or I'm reading it wrong.
- lloydde 8y ago
  It is that much waste. I suspect you underestimate the size of the fishing industry and fleets of boats. In 2004 the estimate of commercial fishing boats was over 4 million. As an example of the impact of their waste consider the great pacific garbage patch: “the patch is 1.6 million square kilometers and has a concentration of 10-100 kg per square kilometers. They estimate there to be 80.000 metric tonnes in the patch, with 1.8 trillion plastic pieces, out of which 92% of the mass is to be found in objects larger than 0.5 centimeters.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch Obviously, it is not all fishing vessel waste, the belief is that the majority is, particularly discarding fishing net creating the body that all the other waste gets trapped in.
  - SaltyBackendGuy 8y ago
    > the patch is 1.6 million square kilometers Haven't really thought about how big that actually is until now. Basically the size of Mongolia[0] [0] - http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Geography/Land-area/Square-miles http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Geography/Lan...
    - lostcolony 8y ago
      Or for the Americans with little concept of the rest of the world (no judgement; I'm one of them), over twice the size of Texas (which is just under 700k square kilometers).
jensv 8y ago
I use plastic bags (from groceries) as a garbage can liner and always feel bad because I suspect there might be a better or less wasteful way to reduce plastic usage. Anyone have any ideas or tips? I feel like I should use reusable grocery bags but then I have to clean the garbage can (boohoo).
- Ysx 8y ago
  There are some biodegradable plastic bags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_bag#Biodegradable_plastic_bags https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_bag#Biodegradable_plastic_...
- cpeterso 8y ago
  I use BioBags, which are compostable. They are a little flimsy, however, and break down quickly with wet trash or food scraps. http://biobagusa.com/products/retail-products/ http://biobagusa.com/products/retail-products/
  - stevekemp 8y ago
    I live in Finland where recycling is wide-spread, and most buildings have facilities for disposing of: * Plastics * Cardboard * Paper * "Biological stuff" My single biggest gripe is that the biological (i.e. food) waste has to be put in biodegradable bags, and these break very very easily when moist. The end result is that you need to throw out quartyer-empty bags every day, rather than full bags every few days. If you gamble chances are your bag will tear en route to the garden/central bins.
    - krrrh 8y ago
      Keep a paper bag in the freezer. When it is full toss the whole thing.
      - oriolid 8y ago
        Great idea. I have to take out bio waste every couple of days just because of the smell.
vimy 8y ago
There seems to be a movement now in the West to ban plastic bags and put higher taxes on plastics among other things. This is pointless as the West is only responsible for a tiny fraction of the plastic waste in our oceans. The study linked in the article claims that "The 10 top-ranked rivers transport 88−95% of the global load into the sea." Those rivers are: Chang Jiang, Indus, Huang He, Hai He, Nile, Bramaputra, Zhujiang, Amur, Niger and Mekong. Eight in Asia, two in Africa. To put it bluntly, these are regions where most people don't know the meaning of the word recycling. This is a cultural problem, not a technological one. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368
- timmaah 8y ago
  Lead by example
  - vimy 8y ago
    We are. We have recycling programs, we have fines and social pressure against littering, city workers cleaning the streets. Those simple things can reduce almost 90 % of ocean plastic.
    - stevenleeg 8y ago
      What is the problem with implementing bag taxes/bans then? Even if it’s simply symbolic, don’t you think it sets a good example for the rest of the world and further ingrains the idea of “reduce, reuse, recycle” in our own societies?
      - vimy 8y ago
        Because it's worse for the environment to ban plastic. And who likes to be taxed more? A new Danish study claims that low-density polyethylene (LDPE) has the smallest impact on the environment. Meaning plastic bags are more environment-friendly than paper bags, bio-plastic bags or cotton bags. "The use of a unbleached paper bag is equivalent, as it needs to be recycled 43 times, a bag made of renewable PP needs to be recycled 45 times, and a cotton-bag has to be brought to the supermarket and back up to 7100 times (and around 20,000 times, if the cotton is organic),to assure the environmental impact is similar to the LDPE-bag." https://stateofgreen.com/en/profiles/state-of-green/news/plastic-bags-are-more-environmentally-friendly https://stateofgreen.com/en/profiles/state-of-green/news/pla...
paulcole 8y ago
It's always in the last place you look.
mrb 8y ago
How can the author write that a plastic bag has been found in an (open!) database of photos and videos, and not actually show the photo?? So I found it there: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/09/worlds-deepest-plastic-bag-found-bottom-mariana-trench-highlighting/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/09/worlds-deepest-p...
- newswriter99 8y ago
  Good work. I was digging around the original study looking for the gd photo. Some of the geo data was available but I have no idea where they buried the photo in there.
- ChuckMcM 8y ago
  That was weird for me too, the picture at the start of the article looked like a plastic bag in space.
- vatueil 8y ago
  Yeah, even the original scientific article didn't show the plastic bag itself. Had to go digging in the linked scientific database. Here's the entry for the plastic bag in the Mariana Trench, discovered in 1998 at 10,898 m (archive link to reduce burden of traffic): https://archive.is/qBl2y https://archive.is/qBl2y Adobe Flash required to view the photo and video, or registration to download. Mirrors: Photo (1801x1201): https://i.imgur.com/7RVIpJH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7RVIpJH.jpg Video (480x360, 2:55): https://gfycat.com/RightBitesizedBrownbear https://gfycat.com/RightBitesizedBrownbear (Source: JAMSTEC deep sea debris database. Used for non-profit educational purposes.)
  - sacado2 8y ago
    Amazing how the floor seems flat and even, down there. I would have expected... I don't really know, something looking more like the surface of the moon, that kind of thing.
- enriquto 8y ago
  for some strange reason, journalists hate to link to other sources
mimac 8y ago
I propose to put a plastic bag on the Moon. Just to make a statement and make people think.
- robotresearcher 8y ago
  It’s likely we already did, along with boxes, cables, half of each of the moon landers, an electric car and a few American flags.
  - mimac 8y ago
    That is true, but nothing is as iconic as a plastic shopping bag.
brundolf 8y ago
In Austin, TX we've outlawed these kinds of bags. All grocery store bags are required by law to be sturdy enough to be reusable. This results in a few different things: - Bags are heavy enough to not get blown away in the wind - Half of the time, the bags are made of paper instead, meaning they're recyclable and (presumably) at least partially biodegradable - The plastic bags that do exist are larger, robust enough to be brought with you to the store again and again, and at least at HEB they cost 25 cents, which discourages people from getting them unless they actually need them Seeing things like this make me proud of my city.
- newswriter99 8y ago
  -Plastic is recyclable. Why would you think it's not? -Besides that, paper bags are made up of (dun dun dun) plant material. Which means CO2 is being brought into the equation. -The energy required to make a paper bag versus a plastic one are still neck and neck. https://ecomyths.org/2014/05/27/myth-paper-bags-are-greener-than-plastic/ https://ecomyths.org/2014/05/27/myth-paper-bags-are-greener-... I'm not saying plastic bags are better than paper, but they're not really worse, aside from the fact that people suck at disposing of them. You need to get society better at recycling. It's not really the bag's fault.
  - koube 8y ago
    IIRC plastic bags are not recyclable, you cannot meaningfully put them in the recycle bin[0], and the plastic bag collection bins outside of grocery stores go directly to the trash. Looks like that may have changed recently[1] but I'm a bit skeptical that all grocery stores have set up the correct supply chain to have the plastic bags be recycled. [0]: https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-can-i-recycle-plastic-grocery-bags-in-the-recycling-bin https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-can-i-re... [1]: https://sfenvironment.org/plastic-bags-plastic-wrap-recyclable https://sfenvironment.org/plastic-bags-plastic-wrap-recyclab...
    - tialaramex 8y ago
      The plastic bags are made from can be recycled. If you're determined you can recycle almost anything. However, the bags are a total nightmare for automated or semi-automated sorting of mixed recycling. If you give me 10 trucks per day of mixed soda cans and newspapers, I can build a factory the size of a small building that separates and processes them into bales of crushed steel cans, bales of crushed aluminium cans, and bales of newspaper, all three have recycling markets and I can sell them. If we add "some plastic bags" to those truckloads my machine is now a nightmare. The bags will tangle with anything, and they might more or less at random "hop" over or fall into holes sized to match objects, the machine that sorts alumium cans can't handle them, the machine that bales newspapers can't handle them, everywhere is now "also plastic bags", and all my customers don't want plastic bags, their specifications are clear, a little bit of Pepsi or Budweiser in the bale of steel cans is tolerable, a plastic bag is not; One cardboard loo roll mixed in with the newspaper is tolerable, a plastic bag is not; And so on. I visited a plant in Central London that handles their area's recycling - very noisy, very interesting, they said if visitors took away just one single idea from their visit that idea should be "Don't put any fucking plastic bags in the general recycling".
chiefalchemist 8y ago
Not a surprise. Sadly. That said, what other unknowns might we find there from previous civilizations. __That__ could be surprising.
twistedanimator 8y ago
This inspired me to write a haiku: Maybe life's purpose is to trash its home planet then get the fuck out
- colordrops 8y ago
  From George Carlin: "The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" "Plastic... asshole." Full quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/251836-we-re-so-self-important-everybody-s-going-to-save-something-now-save https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/251836-we-re-so-self-import...
  - fpoling 8y ago
    So maybe the plastic is there to force humans out of this planet quicker and spread life beound Earth...
- mygo 8y ago
  we generally see the outdoors as property of the government or public property, and the property that we rent or “own” as our home. We generally have low regard for keeping public property clean. We’re not leaving earth, we’re just going to have clean yards and clean homes and dirty streets.
- s_kilk 8y ago
  Jokes on us, there's no way out.
guelo 8y ago
Name names. Most plastic in the ocean comes from Chinese rivers. Western countries don't just throw their garbage into the ocean like China does. Making westerners feel guilty doesn't help fix the problem.
- wanderr 8y ago
  We don't intentionally throw our garbage directly into the ocean, but it still makes its way there. Follow a garbage truck for a while and note how much loose trash falls out either while it's driving around or while it's picking up a garbage can and collecting the contents. Realize that much of the garbage in the street will be washed down a storm drain, usually without a filter, and that the storm drain will dump into a creek or river.
  - martinald 8y ago
    Someone analysed the Thames in London and found it had 18 tonnes a year of plastic waste in it. The Yangtze (which is longer to be fair) has 1.5 million tonnes of year of plastic waste. Probably 1000x the waste per-river-km. GPs point is entirely correct; plastic waste isn't a huge problem (unsightly perhaps) in Western world, it's the developing world which is causing nearly all of this problem. Be far better to focus resources on there, it would literally have a 1000x+ better RoI than the west.
    - noiv 8y ago
      One way to see it. Another may consider population, the western world massively exporting trash, having decades of head start on polluting the oceans with plastic (micro plastic needs time) and totally fails to develop exportable clean consumer products or to build or sell the machines needed to produce them. I don't like plastic in sea food, but it's probably to late with or without China. Pointing now at countries copy pasting our lifestyle is just ridiculous, they didn't invent plastic bags.
    - abraae 8y ago
      I think its a poorly understood cultural thing. If you go to a beach e.g. in Phuket, Thailand, you'll find a mountain of rubbish just off the part where the tourists sit. Plastic bags and bottles, old car parts, tin cans, all sorts of shit. Same in Rarotonga, or many of what you might label third world countries that tourists go to. Right next to where people live and work, blowing around. In some cultures, rubbish is just ignored. You'd think if you worked next to the beach, you'd at least clean up the little patch next to your stall when you had some downtime, but this just doesn't seem part of the mindset. I don't know if its some kind of "tragedy of the commons" type thinking or what it is.
reaperducer 8y ago
That one's mine. Sorry. I missed the bin. Where can I go to get it back?
mehly 8y ago
Whats next? A plastic bag beats humans to Mars?
throwawaymanbot 8y ago
Maybe we had it all wrong. After settling literally everywhere on earth, maybe its the plastic bags that become sentient ... not the apes.
notadoc 8y ago
Not even slightly surprising given the shear volume of trash on most beaches and reefs in the world. As any fishermen, diver, or snorkeler knows, the ocean is literally full of garbage, and the problem has gotten exponentially worse over the last few decades. Tourists often don't see it because most tourist destinations have workers (or volunteers) raking up the daily trash load from the sand in the early mornings before everyone else wakes up, but if you get up at say 4am and take a peak outside your hotel, whether in the Caribbean or most pacific islands, you'll see the people raking the beaches for trash. And then if you travel to developing Asia in particular, you see why it's such a problem to begin with. There is trash literally everywhere, their landscapes, streets, creeks, rivers, are like a never ending open garbage dump or landfill. Not that the rest of the developing world is much better, and frankly much of the USA is increasingly full of garbage, litter, and detritus too, though not nearly to the extent of China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, etc. But just yesterday I watched a group of US tourists visiting a stunning scenic vista and proceed to toss multiple bags of fast food wrappers and garbage out of their Range Rover, they must think the litter magically takes care of itself.
spodek 8y ago
There is no substitute for you, the person reading these words, to stop accepting plastic bags and as much similar things -- coffee cups, utensils, etc. Each reduction makes the next easier and simpler. Eventually you work up to fewer cars and bigger reductions. Most importantly, you find the reductions improve your life. Most Americans could probably cut 75% with zero problem. More likely increased self-awareness, community, savings, health. I cut out about 95% of packaged food about 3 years ago. The last time I had to empty my trash was June 2017. More importantly, I've never eaten more delicious (nor saved as much time and money). The success led to reductions in other areas and I keep finding more because I look because it improves my life. There's nothing special about me. Anyone can do the same.
- drderidder 8y ago
  Thanks for saying that. Somewhat related, inspired by John Robbin's "Diet for a New America" [1], since 2015 going mostly vegetarian for breakfast/lunch was one of the better ways for me to reduce my footprint. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_for_a_New_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_for_a_New_America
- rland 8y ago
  They call it Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. There's a reason Reduce is first in line. I think many people stop at Recycle and call it a day.
  - newnewpdro 8y ago
    I believe you meant to say "I think many people start at Recycle and call it a day."
- yostrovs 8y ago
  Oceans are big and mysterious, but land is right here and if you go to just about any forest from California to Vermont, you'll stumble on human garbage about roughly every thirty steps. Cans, bags, shotgun shells, shoes, buckets, really just about anything. And same for inland waterways. And yet besides Earth Day, it doesn't get cleaned up. I put fault on the abstract environmentalism we practice. This is easily done with cheap resources, yet so much is spent on meetings, treaties, awareness and education, science and studies, etc. Edit: To make things less abstract, I now tend to bring a plastic bag on walks in the woods to collect the litter.
sandworm101 8y ago
The problem of ocean plastic isn't an issue of plastic use. It's about disposal. That sandwich bag used at a California Whole Foods is going to a landfill, not a deep sea trench. Landfill's aren't pretty or environmentally good, but a bag in a landfill is infinitely better than one wrapped around a baby turtle. 90+% of Ocean plastic comes from ten rivers, none of which are in north America or Europe. (See 100s of articles based on a study published last november.) This is a cultural issue. We don't need to stop using plastics in the west. We need the east to stop throwing plastics into rivers. In that sense, the problem is much easier. We don't need to invent new schemes or hamper development. We just need people in some countries to do what other have been doing for generations: stop treating waterways as trash disposals. That is not a big ask.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  It's microplastics that are the main problem, and it's primarily not macro physical impact (trapping creatures in plastic) it's biological and chemical impact on the organisms affected; in part due to other chemicals carried with, or accumulated with, the microplastics. That bag in landfill can break down to small particulates that get washed away to local rivers which are cleaned out in to the sea. https://eic.rsc.org/feature/the-massive-problem-of-microplastics/2000127.article https://eic.rsc.org/feature/the-massive-problem-of-microplas...
chicob 8y ago
Pollution just hit a new low.
foxhop 8y ago
https://upcyclesantafe.org/you-can-upcycle/plastics-and-synthetics/ecobrick-it/ https://upcyclesantafe.org/you-can-upcycle/plastics-and-synt...
agumonkey 8y ago
What a lucky plastic bag.
userbinator 8y ago
I think the saddest part of this is that we've managed, as a species, to come up with such a resilient and durable material, and yet we've come to simply waste it in great quantities, treating it like it's useless rubbish. From the picture posted in one of the comments here, that bag looks quite intact and certainly could've been reused. It probably comes from a time when most plastic bags were made with much better quality, thicker plastic than the ones today.
bitCromwell 8y ago
a problem but also a profound solition for storage of some kimd?
BurningFrog 8y ago
Other than disturbing the beauty sense of homo sapiens, do stray plastic bags cause any real damage to eco systems?
- always_good 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics#Potential_effects_on_the_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics#Potential_effect...
muriithi 8y ago
Kenya banned plastic bags last year and the difference is remarkable. A lot less trash floating around. https://www.nema.go.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106&Itemid=120 https://www.nema.go.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=art...
swerveonem 8y ago
I hope they find one with the logo of a major retailer.
asab 8y ago
How long did it take to sink to the bottom?

359 points by techrede 8y ago

One can only hope that eventually a solution will be developed that fixes the long-lived problems that plastics cause- perhaps a bacteria or chemical that breaks them down. In the meantime plastic waste is here to stay.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
This was mentioned before. Plastic is used in all sorts of applications for its durability and lack of reactivity. It doesn't rot. It doesn't corrode. In certain environments it dries out and cracks but that's about it. While there's a lot of plastic in the ocean it's relatively thinly distributed. It's not like there's a bunch of bottles floating in one place. It's a bunch of plastic dust in the water column. Any sort of bacteria or chemical that is self sustaining enough to be dropped in the ocean and expected to clean up the plastic would likely wreak havoc on all sorts of things. Any sort of bacteria or chemical that is sensitive enough that it won't wreak havoc in the environments where we don't want it to likely can't be applied in a effective or economical manner in the oceans.
- EGreg 8y ago
  So there is no solution?
  - ISL 8y ago
    Reduce, reuse, recycle.
  - creep 8y ago
    In a couple hundred million years the Earth will regenerate, new species will evolve, etc. I do think we have a responsibility as self-aware beings to pick up after ourselves, but at the same time the Earth will be fine long-term. You could even say it's fine now. Yes, species are going extinct at an alarming rate, but we came from the Earth too and are not the only contributing factors to Earth's various disasters. I'm not about to throw trash out the window because of that fact, it's just that I don't have so much anxiety about totally destroying the planet. Maybe we will destroy the planet inasmuch as we can't live on it anymore, but that's our own damn fault and it's almost nothing compared to the longevity of the Earth.
- artmageddon 8y ago
  > While there's a lot of plastic in the ocean it's relatively thinly distributed. It's not like there's a bunch of bottles floating in one place. It's a bunch of plastic dust in the water column. But it's distributed over a very large area, and affects sea-life. Guess what that means for people who consume fish?
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    I don't know how it affects sea-life. Other than the occasional scare-tactic picture of a turtle with a plastic web stuck to it, what is the systemic effect? Sure there's lots of plastic in the ocean; there's lots of sand too. What's really at issue?
    - at-fates-hands 8y ago
      The United Nations Ocean Conference estimated that the oceans might contain more weight in plastics than fish by the year 2050.[33] Some long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine animals, mature and immature.[6][34][35] The food chain is affected as the plastic attracts seabirds and fish. When marine life consumes plastic allowing it to enter the food chain, this can lead to greater problems when species that have consumed plastic are being eaten by other predators. Besides the particles' danger to wildlife, on the microscopic level the floating debris can absorb organic pollutants from seawater, including PCBs, DDT, and PAHs.[40] Aside from toxic effects,[41] when ingested, some of these are mistaken by the endocrine system as estradiol, causing hormone disruption in the affected animal.[38] These toxin-containing plastic pieces are also eaten by jellyfish, which are then eaten by fish. Many of these fish are then consumed by humans, resulting in their ingestion of toxic chemicals.[42] While eating their normal sources of food, plastic ingestion can be unavoidable or the animal may mistake the plastic as a food source.[43][44][45][46][47] Marine plastics also facilitate the spread of invasive species that attach to floating plastic in one region and drift long distances to colonize other ecosystems.[15] Research has shown that this plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide.[48] Great Pacific garbage patch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
    - 8y ago
chinathrow 8y ago
At least these guys are trying to clean up the mess others did. https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/
titzer 8y ago
I know that it's a natural reaction to try to think of a technical solution to a massive problem like this, but to be completely and brutally honest I think humans, as a race, are now obligated to get off our fat asses and pick up some trash. Hands and knees, trash bags, buckets, shovels. A single person can easily pick up 10kg of trash an hour. The 8 million metric tons that will likely end up in the ocean this year, if it were instead collected by people (on land, before it gets in the ocean) at 10kg/hr, 2000hrs/yr, that's 400,000 people. That's really not many when spread across dozens of countries. Also, it's way easier and cheaper to just put garbage in the garbage bin. So in reality it could be far less than this number that are all that is needed to keep the planet free of trash. Also, robots. But mostly we just need to get off our asses and pick up some trash!
- creep 8y ago
  Okay, you first.
  - titzer 8y ago
    I picked up 300 bags of litter last year.
    - creep 8y ago
      I pick up bottles and cigarette butts.
      - titzer 8y ago
        Thank you!
- curun1r 8y ago
  I'm not sure that's the answer. I got an eye-opening view of the problem when I took a trip to Southeast Asia a couple years ago. Being in the third world, there's very few recycling plants to process plastic waste. The next best option, as you've implied, is landfills to sequester plastic waste...sacrifice that land to keep the rest of our planet clean(er). But even that's hard in many places. On many of the islands I visited, people did make a conscientious effort to throw their plastic garbage in bins and do the right thing. And that worked great, up until one of the massive deluges of rain that the area gets would come. And since they had no landfill area that was far enough from the water, the rains would wash the entire landfills out to sea in a massive river of plastic waste. It was one of the most depressing sights I've ever seen. On one of the scuba dives I went on, we found ourselves surfacing in a debris field that had washed out to sea and it was astonishing to see the magnitude of it. Collecting everything together, as in your suggestion, just led to a massive batch dump into the ocean and it didn't do anything to keep the waste out of the ocean. What we really need is a way to simply produce less plastic products. Increased use of glass, increased emphasis on reusing what plastic we do have and, yes, new technology to replace plastics with materials that break down faster so that when they do end up in the oceans, which in much of the world is inevitable from the moment of creation, they don't cause the amount of damage that plastics do.
bcheung 8y ago
It already exists. https://www.popsci.com/bacteria-enzyme-plastic-waste https://www.popsci.com/bacteria-enzyme-plastic-waste Given sufficient time evolution makes pretty much any waste a resource. Oxygen used to be a toxic pollutant. Then nature evolved and started using it to produce energy in cells.

madman2890 8y ago

Horrible

cobbzilla 8y ago

Since it's already at a trench, it will be among the first plastic to be subducted into the mantle. It's sad but it's not the most worrisome plastic in the ocean.

mbrumlow 8y ago
That sounds like a perfect place doe waste. Just pump it I to the mantle. Put this stuff back in the ground where it belongs. Better than in out air or floating around our water.
- BTinfinity 8y ago
  Surely this would result in the high temperatures of the mantle burning the waste; the air pollution associated with this must make this a poor option for waste disposal.
  - mbrumlow 8y ago
    From my understanding when things burn hot enough -- which I think the mantel burns hot enough -- this sort of thing is not that big of an issue. Also, I am not entirely sure this would raise the temperatures of something so massive. In any case it would probably become the "global mantel worming" debate.
    - mbrumlow 8y ago
      Noo! Not the worming! I meant to type warming. Again, no posting before coffee next time! Although a worming might be fun. Trimmers anybody?
  - TylerE 8y ago
    Don't get much air pollution through 50 miles of rock.
    - njarboe 8y ago
      This statement is not strictly true but in context correct. Any volcanic eruption is full of really nasty gasses like carbon monoxide, sulfur, chlorine, and even fluorine, to name just a few. This comes from the content of the earth already (well, all the garbage comes from the earth originally also). But like you implied, adding the tiny amount of garbage generated by humans to the mix to an entire crustal column of rock would have insignificant impact on what comes out on top.

christophilus 8y ago

> ... by 2015, humans had produced 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic waste That's about 0.86 metric tons (or 859 kg or 1895 lbs) per person. Crazy.

njarboe 8y ago
Or a cube of solid plastic about 1.5 miles on a side. It would be cool if some country took the West's plastic and recycled it by creating a series of kilometer sized geometric objects in a desert somewhere.
- Freestyler_3 8y ago
  > took the West's plastic Does it have to be the west's? Why do so many people blame the west solely, because other countries can't help it, or because other countries export to the west, or because the west exports an amount of trash to other countries? Not even a Billion people in the west, those other 6 had nothing to do with it? It seems like many here are making excuses why only the west is at fault. While most trash going in the ocean happens not in the west.
  - bllguo 8y ago
    1. western countries developed faster and started all this mad consumption and environmental abuse. Everyone else is copying us 2. the west is in the best position to start addressing this. Better educated, more prosperous, etc. 3. Much of the waste produced in other countries is for making things to ship to the western world We should not be playing the victim.
    - Freestyler_3 8y ago
      It is not about who is victim. It is about who is doing it NOW, and what can be done about it. Some plastic program in the west has 0% impact on the polution on global scale. That doesn't mean that the west shouldn't be active in addressing the problem, but it means focussing on where the problem is and actually doing somethig about it. You can blame the west all you want, but please don't think that other countries only produce for the west. There is a much bigger market.

revel 8y ago

I like the "Where did the plastic come from?" section in this article. Pretty sure it was a fish that carelessly tossed away the bag after going grocery shopping.

Maro 8y ago

I'm not pro-plastic waste (obvously), but it'd be interesting to see a pro-con analysis. What is all this plastic use getting us, how could we replace it with sth else, and what would it cost. Also, based on the article 40% of the waste here is from discarded shipping equipment. So it seems to me this can't be that must waste actually, compared to what we produce and presumably store on/in land [presumably that's a lot more than fishing equipment]. Or I'm reading it wrong.

lloydde 8y ago
It is that much waste. I suspect you underestimate the size of the fishing industry and fleets of boats. In 2004 the estimate of commercial fishing boats was over 4 million. As an example of the impact of their waste consider the great pacific garbage patch: “the patch is 1.6 million square kilometers and has a concentration of 10-100 kg per square kilometers. They estimate there to be 80.000 metric tonnes in the patch, with 1.8 trillion plastic pieces, out of which 92% of the mass is to be found in objects larger than 0.5 centimeters.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch Obviously, it is not all fishing vessel waste, the belief is that the majority is, particularly discarding fishing net creating the body that all the other waste gets trapped in.
- SaltyBackendGuy 8y ago
  > the patch is 1.6 million square kilometers Haven't really thought about how big that actually is until now. Basically the size of Mongolia[0] [0] - http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Geography/Land-area/Square-miles http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Geography/Lan...
  - lostcolony 8y ago
    Or for the Americans with little concept of the rest of the world (no judgement; I'm one of them), over twice the size of Texas (which is just under 700k square kilometers).

jensv 8y ago

I use plastic bags (from groceries) as a garbage can liner and always feel bad because I suspect there might be a better or less wasteful way to reduce plastic usage. Anyone have any ideas or tips? I feel like I should use reusable grocery bags but then I have to clean the garbage can (boohoo).

Ysx 8y ago
There are some biodegradable plastic bags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_bag#Biodegradable_plastic_bags https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_bag#Biodegradable_plastic_...
cpeterso 8y ago
I use BioBags, which are compostable. They are a little flimsy, however, and break down quickly with wet trash or food scraps. http://biobagusa.com/products/retail-products/ http://biobagusa.com/products/retail-products/
- stevekemp 8y ago
  I live in Finland where recycling is wide-spread, and most buildings have facilities for disposing of: * Plastics * Cardboard * Paper * "Biological stuff" My single biggest gripe is that the biological (i.e. food) waste has to be put in biodegradable bags, and these break very very easily when moist. The end result is that you need to throw out quartyer-empty bags every day, rather than full bags every few days. If you gamble chances are your bag will tear en route to the garden/central bins.
  - krrrh 8y ago
    Keep a paper bag in the freezer. When it is full toss the whole thing.
    - oriolid 8y ago
      Great idea. I have to take out bio waste every couple of days just because of the smell.

vimy 8y ago

There seems to be a movement now in the West to ban plastic bags and put higher taxes on plastics among other things. This is pointless as the West is only responsible for a tiny fraction of the plastic waste in our oceans. The study linked in the article claims that "The 10 top-ranked rivers transport 88−95% of the global load into the sea." Those rivers are: Chang Jiang, Indus, Huang He, Hai He, Nile, Bramaputra, Zhujiang, Amur, Niger and Mekong. Eight in Asia, two in Africa. To put it bluntly, these are regions where most people don't know the meaning of the word recycling. This is a cultural problem, not a technological one. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368

timmaah 8y ago
Lead by example
- vimy 8y ago
  We are. We have recycling programs, we have fines and social pressure against littering, city workers cleaning the streets. Those simple things can reduce almost 90 % of ocean plastic.
  - stevenleeg 8y ago
    What is the problem with implementing bag taxes/bans then? Even if it’s simply symbolic, don’t you think it sets a good example for the rest of the world and further ingrains the idea of “reduce, reuse, recycle” in our own societies?
    - vimy 8y ago
      Because it's worse for the environment to ban plastic. And who likes to be taxed more? A new Danish study claims that low-density polyethylene (LDPE) has the smallest impact on the environment. Meaning plastic bags are more environment-friendly than paper bags, bio-plastic bags or cotton bags. "The use of a unbleached paper bag is equivalent, as it needs to be recycled 43 times, a bag made of renewable PP needs to be recycled 45 times, and a cotton-bag has to be brought to the supermarket and back up to 7100 times (and around 20,000 times, if the cotton is organic),to assure the environmental impact is similar to the LDPE-bag." https://stateofgreen.com/en/profiles/state-of-green/news/plastic-bags-are-more-environmentally-friendly https://stateofgreen.com/en/profiles/state-of-green/news/pla...

paulcole 8y ago

It's always in the last place you look.

mrb 8y ago

How can the author write that a plastic bag has been found in an (open!) database of photos and videos, and not actually show the photo?? So I found it there: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/09/worlds-deepest-plastic-bag-found-bottom-mariana-trench-highlighting/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/09/worlds-deepest-p...

newswriter99 8y ago
Good work. I was digging around the original study looking for the gd photo. Some of the geo data was available but I have no idea where they buried the photo in there.
ChuckMcM 8y ago
That was weird for me too, the picture at the start of the article looked like a plastic bag in space.
vatueil 8y ago
Yeah, even the original scientific article didn't show the plastic bag itself. Had to go digging in the linked scientific database. Here's the entry for the plastic bag in the Mariana Trench, discovered in 1998 at 10,898 m (archive link to reduce burden of traffic): https://archive.is/qBl2y https://archive.is/qBl2y Adobe Flash required to view the photo and video, or registration to download. Mirrors: Photo (1801x1201): https://i.imgur.com/7RVIpJH.jpg https://i.imgur.com/7RVIpJH.jpg Video (480x360, 2:55): https://gfycat.com/RightBitesizedBrownbear https://gfycat.com/RightBitesizedBrownbear (Source: JAMSTEC deep sea debris database. Used for non-profit educational purposes.)
- sacado2 8y ago
  Amazing how the floor seems flat and even, down there. I would have expected... I don't really know, something looking more like the surface of the moon, that kind of thing.
enriquto 8y ago
for some strange reason, journalists hate to link to other sources

mimac 8y ago

I propose to put a plastic bag on the Moon. Just to make a statement and make people think.

robotresearcher 8y ago
It’s likely we already did, along with boxes, cables, half of each of the moon landers, an electric car and a few American flags.
- mimac 8y ago
  That is true, but nothing is as iconic as a plastic shopping bag.

brundolf 8y ago

In Austin, TX we've outlawed these kinds of bags. All grocery store bags are required by law to be sturdy enough to be reusable. This results in a few different things: - Bags are heavy enough to not get blown away in the wind - Half of the time, the bags are made of paper instead, meaning they're recyclable and (presumably) at least partially biodegradable - The plastic bags that do exist are larger, robust enough to be brought with you to the store again and again, and at least at HEB they cost 25 cents, which discourages people from getting them unless they actually need them Seeing things like this make me proud of my city.

newswriter99 8y ago
-Plastic is recyclable. Why would you think it's not? -Besides that, paper bags are made up of (dun dun dun) plant material. Which means CO2 is being brought into the equation. -The energy required to make a paper bag versus a plastic one are still neck and neck. https://ecomyths.org/2014/05/27/myth-paper-bags-are-greener-than-plastic/ https://ecomyths.org/2014/05/27/myth-paper-bags-are-greener-... I'm not saying plastic bags are better than paper, but they're not really worse, aside from the fact that people suck at disposing of them. You need to get society better at recycling. It's not really the bag's fault.
- koube 8y ago
  IIRC plastic bags are not recyclable, you cannot meaningfully put them in the recycle bin[0], and the plastic bag collection bins outside of grocery stores go directly to the trash. Looks like that may have changed recently[1] but I'm a bit skeptical that all grocery stores have set up the correct supply chain to have the plastic bags be recycled. [0]: https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-can-i-recycle-plastic-grocery-bags-in-the-recycling-bin https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/because-you-asked-can-i-re... [1]: https://sfenvironment.org/plastic-bags-plastic-wrap-recyclable https://sfenvironment.org/plastic-bags-plastic-wrap-recyclab...
  - tialaramex 8y ago
    The plastic bags are made from can be recycled. If you're determined you can recycle almost anything. However, the bags are a total nightmare for automated or semi-automated sorting of mixed recycling. If you give me 10 trucks per day of mixed soda cans and newspapers, I can build a factory the size of a small building that separates and processes them into bales of crushed steel cans, bales of crushed aluminium cans, and bales of newspaper, all three have recycling markets and I can sell them. If we add "some plastic bags" to those truckloads my machine is now a nightmare. The bags will tangle with anything, and they might more or less at random "hop" over or fall into holes sized to match objects, the machine that sorts alumium cans can't handle them, the machine that bales newspapers can't handle them, everywhere is now "also plastic bags", and all my customers don't want plastic bags, their specifications are clear, a little bit of Pepsi or Budweiser in the bale of steel cans is tolerable, a plastic bag is not; One cardboard loo roll mixed in with the newspaper is tolerable, a plastic bag is not; And so on. I visited a plant in Central London that handles their area's recycling - very noisy, very interesting, they said if visitors took away just one single idea from their visit that idea should be "Don't put any fucking plastic bags in the general recycling".

chiefalchemist 8y ago

Not a surprise. Sadly. That said, what other unknowns might we find there from previous civilizations. __That__ could be surprising.

twistedanimator 8y ago

This inspired me to write a haiku: Maybe life's purpose is to trash its home planet then get the fuck out

colordrops 8y ago
From George Carlin: "The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed. And if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice toward plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" "Plastic... asshole." Full quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/251836-we-re-so-self-important-everybody-s-going-to-save-something-now-save https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/251836-we-re-so-self-import...
- fpoling 8y ago
  So maybe the plastic is there to force humans out of this planet quicker and spread life beound Earth...
mygo 8y ago
we generally see the outdoors as property of the government or public property, and the property that we rent or “own” as our home. We generally have low regard for keeping public property clean. We’re not leaving earth, we’re just going to have clean yards and clean homes and dirty streets.
s_kilk 8y ago
Jokes on us, there's no way out.

guelo 8y ago

Name names. Most plastic in the ocean comes from Chinese rivers. Western countries don't just throw their garbage into the ocean like China does. Making westerners feel guilty doesn't help fix the problem.

wanderr 8y ago
We don't intentionally throw our garbage directly into the ocean, but it still makes its way there. Follow a garbage truck for a while and note how much loose trash falls out either while it's driving around or while it's picking up a garbage can and collecting the contents. Realize that much of the garbage in the street will be washed down a storm drain, usually without a filter, and that the storm drain will dump into a creek or river.
- martinald 8y ago
  Someone analysed the Thames in London and found it had 18 tonnes a year of plastic waste in it. The Yangtze (which is longer to be fair) has 1.5 million tonnes of year of plastic waste. Probably 1000x the waste per-river-km. GPs point is entirely correct; plastic waste isn't a huge problem (unsightly perhaps) in Western world, it's the developing world which is causing nearly all of this problem. Be far better to focus resources on there, it would literally have a 1000x+ better RoI than the west.
  - noiv 8y ago
    One way to see it. Another may consider population, the western world massively exporting trash, having decades of head start on polluting the oceans with plastic (micro plastic needs time) and totally fails to develop exportable clean consumer products or to build or sell the machines needed to produce them. I don't like plastic in sea food, but it's probably to late with or without China. Pointing now at countries copy pasting our lifestyle is just ridiculous, they didn't invent plastic bags.
  - abraae 8y ago
    I think its a poorly understood cultural thing. If you go to a beach e.g. in Phuket, Thailand, you'll find a mountain of rubbish just off the part where the tourists sit. Plastic bags and bottles, old car parts, tin cans, all sorts of shit. Same in Rarotonga, or many of what you might label third world countries that tourists go to. Right next to where people live and work, blowing around. In some cultures, rubbish is just ignored. You'd think if you worked next to the beach, you'd at least clean up the little patch next to your stall when you had some downtime, but this just doesn't seem part of the mindset. I don't know if its some kind of "tragedy of the commons" type thinking or what it is.

reaperducer 8y ago

That one's mine. Sorry. I missed the bin. Where can I go to get it back?

mehly 8y ago

Whats next? A plastic bag beats humans to Mars?

throwawaymanbot 8y ago

Maybe we had it all wrong. After settling literally everywhere on earth, maybe its the plastic bags that become sentient ... not the apes.

notadoc 8y ago

Not even slightly surprising given the shear volume of trash on most beaches and reefs in the world. As any fishermen, diver, or snorkeler knows, the ocean is literally full of garbage, and the problem has gotten exponentially worse over the last few decades. Tourists often don't see it because most tourist destinations have workers (or volunteers) raking up the daily trash load from the sand in the early mornings before everyone else wakes up, but if you get up at say 4am and take a peak outside your hotel, whether in the Caribbean or most pacific islands, you'll see the people raking the beaches for trash. And then if you travel to developing Asia in particular, you see why it's such a problem to begin with. There is trash literally everywhere, their landscapes, streets, creeks, rivers, are like a never ending open garbage dump or landfill. Not that the rest of the developing world is much better, and frankly much of the USA is increasingly full of garbage, litter, and detritus too, though not nearly to the extent of China, India, Indonesia, Philippines, etc. But just yesterday I watched a group of US tourists visiting a stunning scenic vista and proceed to toss multiple bags of fast food wrappers and garbage out of their Range Rover, they must think the litter magically takes care of itself.

spodek 8y ago

There is no substitute for you, the person reading these words, to stop accepting plastic bags and as much similar things -- coffee cups, utensils, etc. Each reduction makes the next easier and simpler. Eventually you work up to fewer cars and bigger reductions. Most importantly, you find the reductions improve your life. Most Americans could probably cut 75% with zero problem. More likely increased self-awareness, community, savings, health. I cut out about 95% of packaged food about 3 years ago. The last time I had to empty my trash was June 2017. More importantly, I've never eaten more delicious (nor saved as much time and money). The success led to reductions in other areas and I keep finding more because I look because it improves my life. There's nothing special about me. Anyone can do the same.

drderidder 8y ago
Thanks for saying that. Somewhat related, inspired by John Robbin's "Diet for a New America" [1], since 2015 going mostly vegetarian for breakfast/lunch was one of the better ways for me to reduce my footprint. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_for_a_New_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_for_a_New_America
rland 8y ago
They call it Reduce, Re-use, Recycle. There's a reason Reduce is first in line. I think many people stop at Recycle and call it a day.
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  I believe you meant to say "I think many people start at Recycle and call it a day."
yostrovs 8y ago
Oceans are big and mysterious, but land is right here and if you go to just about any forest from California to Vermont, you'll stumble on human garbage about roughly every thirty steps. Cans, bags, shotgun shells, shoes, buckets, really just about anything. And same for inland waterways. And yet besides Earth Day, it doesn't get cleaned up. I put fault on the abstract environmentalism we practice. This is easily done with cheap resources, yet so much is spent on meetings, treaties, awareness and education, science and studies, etc. Edit: To make things less abstract, I now tend to bring a plastic bag on walks in the woods to collect the litter.

sandworm101 8y ago

The problem of ocean plastic isn't an issue of plastic use. It's about disposal. That sandwich bag used at a California Whole Foods is going to a landfill, not a deep sea trench. Landfill's aren't pretty or environmentally good, but a bag in a landfill is infinitely better than one wrapped around a baby turtle. 90+% of Ocean plastic comes from ten rivers, none of which are in north America or Europe. (See 100s of articles based on a study published last november.) This is a cultural issue. We don't need to stop using plastics in the west. We need the east to stop throwing plastics into rivers. In that sense, the problem is much easier. We don't need to invent new schemes or hamper development. We just need people in some countries to do what other have been doing for generations: stop treating waterways as trash disposals. That is not a big ask.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago
It's microplastics that are the main problem, and it's primarily not macro physical impact (trapping creatures in plastic) it's biological and chemical impact on the organisms affected; in part due to other chemicals carried with, or accumulated with, the microplastics. That bag in landfill can break down to small particulates that get washed away to local rivers which are cleaned out in to the sea. https://eic.rsc.org/feature/the-massive-problem-of-microplastics/2000127.article https://eic.rsc.org/feature/the-massive-problem-of-microplas...

chicob 8y ago

Pollution just hit a new low.

foxhop 8y ago

https://upcyclesantafe.org/you-can-upcycle/plastics-and-synthetics/ecobrick-it/ https://upcyclesantafe.org/you-can-upcycle/plastics-and-synt...

agumonkey 8y ago

What a lucky plastic bag.

userbinator 8y ago

I think the saddest part of this is that we've managed, as a species, to come up with such a resilient and durable material, and yet we've come to simply waste it in great quantities, treating it like it's useless rubbish. From the picture posted in one of the comments here, that bag looks quite intact and certainly could've been reused. It probably comes from a time when most plastic bags were made with much better quality, thicker plastic than the ones today.

bitCromwell 8y ago

a problem but also a profound solition for storage of some kimd?

BurningFrog 8y ago

Other than disturbing the beauty sense of homo sapiens, do stray plastic bags cause any real damage to eco systems?

always_good 8y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics#Potential_effects_on_the_environment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics#Potential_effect...

muriithi 8y ago

Kenya banned plastic bags last year and the difference is remarkable. A lot less trash floating around. https://www.nema.go.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=106&Itemid=120 https://www.nema.go.ke/index.php?option=com_content&view=art...

swerveonem 8y ago

I hope they find one with the logo of a major retailer.

asab 8y ago

How long did it take to sink to the bottom?