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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 western
by 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 agoWe 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 agoSomeone 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 agoOne 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 agoI 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.
- Kluny 8y agoObviously if there's so much trash that it's overwhelming, you disregard it for the sake of your peace of mind. Picking up one bag out of millions in your immediate area feels futile. There also might not be any place to put it. First-world trash management programs don't magically spring out of nowhere. They are planned, developed, and maintained.
- freedomben 8y agoThis is largely the way things are in Jerusalem. There is tons of trash all over the place, stuffed into crevices and just loose on the street. It seems to be largely ignored by the locals (it is like this even in very non-touristy areas as well, so it's not just messy tourists).
- RobertRoberts 8y agoI took a quick look at the google on this topic and found this: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-total-rubbish-why-is-israel-so-filthy-1.6006920 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/MAGAZINE-total-rubbish-w... That is incredible. I have been all over the US in many, many parks over 40 years and never once, anywhere, did I see a pile of trash like this. Even in the early 80s this never happened at a park. (I know many, many other countries are way worse, but being 3rd world is at least a partial excuse) In a big city, in a few places, (I lived on the streets for a bit in a few big cities) there wasn't even trash like this. Even the worst places in Portland, LA and other big cities, unless it was a total slum, it was not like this. Anywhere there their is a public interest, the US actually gives a crap about keeping it clean. It's surprising how other cultures give the US such a hard time about "recycling" and "being green", I am about to be sick of hearing it. Considering the size and magnitude of the park systems in the US, we are one of the cleanest, greenest friggin nations the world as ever known. (besides the nasty pollution from factories, but that is another issue)
- irrational 8y agoMaybe they should get better garbage trucks. Ours load from the top, so there is no way for trash to fall out.
- wanderr 8y agoLike so? https://imgur.com/gallery/YiwxQKy https://imgur.com/gallery/YiwxQKy
- ravenstine 8y agoI knew it would be that gif before I clicked on it. It's compelling to watch, in a weird way. Sort of like the reverse effect of watching "satisfying" videos, the anticipation of waiting for something to go really wrong is nonetheless fascinating. I always end up staring at the one for a good minute or two.
- seanp2k2 8y agohttps://goo.gl/images/MFrL2h https://goo.gl/images/MFrL2h
- irrational 8y agoHah! Yes exactly! Only I've never seen that happen ;-)
- ManFromUranus 8y agoYou're right, it's most likely our fault https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=8PavA4rUypE https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=8PavA4rUypE
- RobertRoberts 8y agoNot sure why you got voted down. It seems HN users don't like snark or can't understand sarcasm? (need a /sarcasm tag?)
- ManFromUranus 8y agoA little from column A, a little from column B. I've spent too much time on reddit.... HN likes their comments snark free and I understand, It really is better that way. Sometimes I just can't resist though.
- RobertRoberts 8y agoThat is an interesting idea, an entire social group that shuns the minutiae. It explains some of my bad experiences here. They should have a "social rules" next to the "actual rules". I like the idea though, thanks for mentioning it. Plenty of other places for humor and stupidity, doesn't need to be on HN.
- erw1 8y agoPretty sure that until recently, the preferred mode of trash disposal in NY was to tug it into the ocean and let it loose. edit: Yep, see [1] > Through most of its history until the mid-1900s, New York’s primary method for disposing of its waste was simply to dump it into the ocean. At one point, as much as 80% of New York’s garbage ended up out at sea. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/27/new-york-rubbish-all-that-trash-city-waste-in-numbers https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/oct/27/new-york-rubb...
- ams6110 8y agoWhile true, there was a lot less plastic in the trash then.
- reaperducer 8y agoNot just China, but many countries across Asia. I don't know much about Africa, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same wasn't true there. Can anyone speak to that?
- protonfish 8y agoWe ship most of our "recycling" to Asia and smugly pat ourselves on the back that we are saving the world. It would not surprise me that the original source of a significant portion of the plastics in the oceans are domestic recycling programs.
- pathseeker 8y agoThat doesn't excuse the behavior of them turning around and dumping it in the ocean.
- chillydawg 8y agoChina banned foreign trash imports recently. That whole merry go round is coming to an end.
- protonfish 8y agoYes, so we are shipping our garbage to other countries now.
- jhowell 8y agoLooking at you continent of Africa...
- carapace 8y agoWe aren't forcing it on anybody. They buy it, ship it, and make $$$. "Junkyard Planet, Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade" by Adam Minter > Minter traces the export of America's recyclables and the massive profits that China and other rising nations earn from it. What emerges is an engaging, colorful, and sometimes troubling tale of consumption, innovation, and the ascent of a developing world that recognizes value where Americans don't. https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/junkyard-planet-9781608197910/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/junkyard-planet-9781608197910/
- acct1771 8y agoThere's at least one nation that gets most, if not all, of their power from burning other nation's trash. Having a hard time remembering which, perhaps a Scandinavian country.
- Dirlewanger 8y agoWe need to get Trump on the Twitter bully pulpit (actually, he's been there since before being inaugurated) and chide China. He's already got the trade war narrative going, what's one more issue?
- alchemism 8y agoHave you seen the vast region of plastic bags floating in the Caribbean, between Puerto Rico and the Northeast US? I'd wager that is all American trash, one way or another.
- wz1000 8y agoThis meme needs to die. Developed countries produce much more waste than developing countries. The disparity is even more striking if you look at the figures per capita. The US generates almost 3 times as much waste per capital as China. On top of that, a huge proportion of waste is exported by developed countries to developing countries. The US also only recycles 9% of its plastic waste, compared to 25% for China. > Europe, the biggest exporter worldwide of waste plastic intended for recycling, depends largely on China: 87% wt. is exported to China either directly or via the Hong Kong SAR. The exported quantity is 46% of the overall quantity collected for recycling, and 12% of the entire plastic waste arisings in Europe. In contrast, Europe exports only 1.2% of its primary plastics products to China. > The USA is the second largest consumer of plastics in the world and depends mainly to China and HK for absorbing its waste plastics. Neighbouring countries such as Canada and Mexico are also a small market outlet. According to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) reporting data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the USA exported 2.1Mt of plastic waste to China https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/galleries/Task_Forces/TFGWM_Report_GRM_Plastic_China_LR.pdf https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/galleries/Task_Forces/TFGWM_R... http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTURBANDEVELOPMENT/Resources/336387-1334852610766/Chap3.pdf http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTURBANDEVELOPMENT/Resou... http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782.full
- vamin 8y agoI think you make a good point, but there's a big difference between the amount of waste produced and the amount of waste that makes it into the natural environment, as opposed to a recycling center or dedicated landfill. Just because developed countries are producing more waste does not mean that they are contributing more waste to the bottom of the ocean. (I am not suggesting that we should not all aim to produce less waste and handle what waste we do produce better.)
- wz1000 8y agoThe point is that a large amount of waste produced by developed is dumped/exported to developing countries like China, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam. And a large amount of waste generated by these countries is done so in the production of goods meant for Western consumption.
- HumanDrivenDev 8y agoBut you'll never succeed in making the Chinese feel guilty. Why should they care that their trash flows into Chinese tributary states or - as they increasingly claim - Chinese oceans?
- extralego 8y agoAs long as Americans insist on dirt cheap Chinese labor, how can we imagine ourselves innocent? We have not taken responsibility but merely abstracted or outsourced that responsibility to another party.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoA recent study found a UK river to have the highest recorded inshore levels of micro-plastics in the world. I suspect there are few records, but still. http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/uk-rivers-microplastics/ http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/uk-rivers-micropla...
- collyw 8y agoDoes that somehow make it all right? What happens to westerners plastic bags? They end up in landfill. not a whole lot better in my opinion.