14 ms·

Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

227 points by VBprogrammer 8y ago

ryanmercer 8y ago
We need to get our heads out of our asses. I don't want to be that guy but... we either need to radically change the way we live or 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist although I'm sure the remaining 750 million people would still find ways to sabotage our planet. 'SHTF' fiction and science fiction often turns to a pandemic wiping out large chunks of the population... that would be bad for you, for me, for most people but we aren't the only life on earth. We need to realize this, NOW. We need to grow up and start being responsible for ourselves as individuals and as a species. As far as we know we have exactly one habitable world in all of the universe and certainly only one habitable world within our current technological means. Come on people! We're ruining this planet multiple ways for not only ourselves but nearly all other species. Nearly 40 gigatonsof carbon this year, microplastics are now in the water and air the world around and has even been found in human feces on multiple continents, at least one factory in China is using CFCs again, we're doing all sorts of environmental damage strip mining resources for our throw-away phones and MacBooks, we are depleting groundwater the world around at alarming rates, we're losing our social abilities by staring at screens, we are using an alarming amount of electricity just to speculate on cryptocurrency, we drive 100-200 species extinct on average DAILY, we wage wars over religion and oil and where an imaginary line should divide a group of people, we murder each other for sneakers and pocket change or because someone beat us in a video game, we die in internet cafes throwing our lives away on virtual characters trying to get the latest super epic bind on pickup gear while people starve to death, suicide rates rise as people feel overwhelmed and trapped and that there is no hope and that they'll have to work until they die, we chase billion dollar exits on our iPad fruit of the month SAAS app as we walk by homeless people outside of our offices, we ship produce halfway around the world to eat out of season and throw away enough spoiled food to feed every hungry mouth on the planet... we are a scourge on the earth, but we needn't be. We can sacrifice, we can make immediate changes to the way we go about things to slow the damage we are doing, to buy ourselves some time to not only stop but reverse it. Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. Maybe we will get lucky and some advanced species will fill our skies with their ships and temporarily take control of the situation. More likely, we'll destroy ourselves like probably countless other intelligent species that the universe has seen come and go. It's depressing.
- antidaily 8y ago
  Which guy? Thanos?
  - beatgammit 8y ago
    Thanos was merciful by comparison since he only wanted to kill 50%...
  - CzechTech 8y ago
    Probably. Btw I like how OP wrote shit about killing 90% of people even if that included him/his loved ones and then edited it. Nice. As if people who write such things have loved ones, lol (your mom doesn't count).
- vectorEQ 8y ago
  losing 90% of humans still leaves 10% of humans. so 10% of problem. don't be that guy. be a guy who works toward a solution for the root-cause. i'd expect people in an it/hacker community to get that :D guess we're all 'those humans' after all eh :D
- CzechTech 8y ago
  > I think we really need a pandemic to kill off 90%+ of humans. Even if that means me and/or people I care about. ... > It's depressing. Yeah, I agree. The absolute trash people post on the internet is sometimes depressing. Such as your post.
- asdkhadsj 8y ago
  I say all of this as a thought experiment. But: > Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. I mean, if we're making mental jumps to wiping out billions of people - I'd argue that, does it even matter? Ie, in your example human life largely doesn't matter. Human survival maybe, but clearly not billions of lives. I'm not saying this negatively either, just acknowledging what topic we're discussing. So if we're throwing away cultural norms on what we consider valuable, such as human life, why even care about nature? Our species? Other species? The planet? It's an honest question. I imagine you could argue that human life is still the most important thing, but we simply can't exist with 7 billion people. Perhaps 6 Billion people need to die. Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion to save 1 billion? That's a tough pill to swallow. It's not like killing 1 person to save a million. Mentally I think I struggle at that thought so much that I'd almost rather choose inaction, passively killing 7 billion people, so I can't feel responsible for the decision to kill 6 billion people. Interesting thought analysis nonetheless.
smileysteve 8y ago
Reasons to switch from oil based plastic to hemp oil based plastics.
- ainiriand 8y ago
  > https://www.eppm.com/blogs/editors-blog/speaking-up-for-plastics-in-a-plastic-bashing-world/ https://www.eppm.com/blogs/editors-blog/speaking-up-for-plas...
Frye 8y ago
Are there any clean up projects going on at the major gyres shown in the article? Seems like that would be a good place to start.
- tim333 8y ago
  Yeah https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ Though the majority of the plastic comes from people in Indonesia and China chucking it in the river. Those countries really need to stop that with old fashioned things like littering fines and sticking it in landfills. Plus recycling etc naturally.
- vwcx 8y ago
  Cleaning up gyres are important, but realize that when one removes trash from a gyre, more is back the next day. Stopping production is the most important first-step.
erikig 8y ago
Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).
- dawhizkid 8y ago
  what are you saying...? that whatever toxicity of ingesting plastic is proportional across all living things by weight?
  - PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
    Generally we measure how lethal something is by using an LD 50 that looks at mass of chemical per mass of body. There are exceptions to this, but as a first assumption it seems reasonable.
    - jweir 8y ago
      You are a moron. If you cut open your stomach and found a measurable amount of plastic you would known something was terribly wrong with your environment. You shouldn't have plastic in your stomach.
      - sctb 8y ago
        It's not OK to call names like that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - peteradio 8y ago
      I don't think toxicity (LD 50) is relevant for plastic consumption. This sort of stuff packs into the gut and doesn't move or decompose. So the animal has to vomit it up or get surgery because it won't move down. I think the relevant comparison is ratio of pyloric sphincter between two species (the exit of the stomach). I'd be curious to know what that ratio is and it might be surprisingly close to one almost certainly less than 10. I do not know what the skill with which a whale can vomit, I do know that my lab mix pup is especially skillful.
ericdykstra 8y ago
93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - South China Sea (Asia)
- ninkendo 8y ago
  How much of that plastic is shipped there "for recycling" by other countries? Everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate we send tons of plastic to places that we know aren't really going to recycle it.
  - carapace 8y ago
    It's shipped there because it's bought. It's bought because the buyer intends to make money off of it, not throw it in a river. Although a lot of crap does wind up in the air and water, the environmental havoc wreaked by thousands of backyard plastic smelters is incredible. "Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade" by Adam Minter https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286721-junkyard-planet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286721-junkyard-planet
    - isostatic 8y ago
      Many recyclers are paid to take rubbish (especially unsorted rubbish). They claim they sort it and responsibly recycle or dispose. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/plastic-recycling-industrys-problems-costing-councils-up-to-500000-a-year https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/plastic-...
- admn2 8y ago
  Feels like such a helpless situation. Is there anything to be done in the US to help with these rivers?
johnydepp 8y ago
Over the past few months I have been trying to figure out a solution for environmental issues in developing countries (like India where I'm from). Conclusion is, because of the democracy, the change is not possible from inside, some external force has to be there. Here governments take decision for the short term because they have to please the common (& uneducated) men for the next election. Hence the agenda of environment doesn't get much attention. That's why have poor plastic management. Educating people about these issues will take decades (& it will be too late). Only way forward could be if some constant external pressure is put on their governments using agreements/accords (like Paris Agreement) and some system is setup which will monitor issues like plastic management and carbon-emission. If countries are not following some standard they should be penalized. Countries like US, Canada, Germany can take initiatives in doing so. Its not only about their carbon-emission & plastic-management, its about the whole planet. Developing countries should be pressurized(!!) for reducing their population as well. In India, from past 2 decades, no government had an agenda to control population (which is the root of all the problems here). With some external pressure this could also be done I guess. And most importantly, large & impactful countries like US and China shouldn't waste their time on petty issues like trade-war & focus on big issue here!
- mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
  At the bottom most level it really does boil down to education and awareness. One could argue they go hand in hand. Even in western nations being educated is not enough, you must be aware of your actions. This is why I always point at legislation as the most effective means of getting anything done. Lead by example through innovation, investment into sustainable tech, methods and living and pass legislation that does away with the bad and promotes the good. I guess to even get to this point we need to rewrite laws on lobbying to get special interests out of politics. Why stop there, might as well get campaign funding an overhaul to eliminate conflict of interest. Put in short term limits that do away with politics as a career choice and pass laws that promote it as civic duty. To add to the recipe, make representatives directly accountable to votes against public majority with the ability for the people to kick them out of the office through expedited voting where a majority can remove a representative within a 48 hour time window. While we are at it, start imposing prison time for corporate crimes and start enforcing it. Add transparency to all political conversation online and offline for any member of the public to review. Face to face meetings are to be accompanied by a third party for documentation. Creeped out? Yeah... so I think we need a total overhaul of values, economy, social systems, work policies and many laws to get to a point where we can do some good. Of course it al starts with education which is cut short by insufficient funding by said politicians. Ok, it’s hopeless and we’re doomed.
IshKebab 8y ago
> Items found included 115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags and two flip-flops. How many straws though?
IshKebab 8y ago
> pieces of string (3.26kg) Over half of it was string? Is this from fishing or something?
- ryanmercer 8y ago
  Likely from nets. https://www.worldoceanfest.org/new-blog/2017/6/9/the-impact-of-abandoned-ocean-fishing-nets-on-marine-life https://www.worldoceanfest.org/new-blog/2017/6/9/the-impact-...
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  Clothing?
- alumowa 8y ago
  The original wording is "tali rafia", which is a flat plastic string used for tying down/lashing many common everyday items. So no, not related to fishing.
nurzo 8y ago
If you can't convince Indians not to shit on the streets, good luck explaining to them what throwing plastic bags in the river does to the planet as a whole. With this I'm not saying that Indians will always be dirty, but a loooong time will pass until reeducation is successful, so we have to think of other, more direct (and aggressive) ways.
- mav3rick 8y ago
  To anyone reading this, no a billion people don't shit on the streets of India. India is a young democracy bursting at the seams, education is probably the most important challenge it faces right now and my hope is that it alleviates a lot of these issues. To your point about plastic bags, many many people are cognizant of the ill-effects of plastic bags in India. Many of my friends actively try to avoid it. It's just that when you're a developing nation or minority everyone talks in blanket statements than nuanced views like "rural India" or "10% of Northern India", it has to be all "Indians shitting on streets". Whereas, some flaw in the developed countries is always attributed to the actual states where there is a problem rather than all of the population.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - nurzo 8y ago
    What does being a young democracy have to do with how clean people are? Are you arguing that only people who have lived under a democracy for hundreds of years recognise how important it is not to shit on the streets or fill rivers with rotting corpses and plastic? Also, I'm not even sure education can fix this. Nature made turds foul-looking and smelly so everybody knows to stay away from them. If Indians can't even act under their most inner urges, that's a whole different problem.
    - mav3rick 8y ago
      Have you been to India ? No one does this in the cities, it's a problem in the villages where the govt. hasn't built enough toilets (due to corruption or plain neglect). The current govt. organized a program just to counter this, how effective this program is up for debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_mission Any problem, including education about safe hygiene practices, is massively difficult at scale. Educating people in the rural areas will solve this problem, but when it's many millions it can be slow so more innovative methods need to be thought of. Even in the US there is a rise in the "anti-vaccine" crowd. A topic that is supposedly so-obvious that everyone should be against it. Yet, education at scale is an important solution to protecting kids against anti-vax parents.
OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
'see? nature's taking care of itself!' - plastic peddler
patagonia 8y ago
Callum Roberts wrote “The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea” in 2013. Everyone should read it. This article is discussing issues that are not at all new. That we treat it as new information is a symptom of the problem.
eezurr 8y ago
This is something I have been thinking about (and mindfully being unattached to either side). We know what it's like for society to go through an economic depression and how poverty effects developing countries, and I think it's pretty clear if we start wiping out the economy (which is the core of the problem besides over population) the save the planet, we will create one. How many jobs exist/created from engineering, manufacturing, selling, marketing, transporting, and managing crap that we don't need? What would the world look like if we wiped out all of those jobs? How will developing countries be affected when their income from manufacturing these products is drastically reduced? What do we have that replaces plastic for transporting and storing goods/food? Sand (silica?) is expected to become low in supply (e.g. for glass). How many trees would we have to cut down to replace plastic? Part of me is wondering if the route we are currently taking is the best one, because change will happen gradually, giving us time to adapt. A sudden kick to the balls of our the global economy, on the other hand, would have an immediate, devastating impact; especially on developing countries.
maplebush 8y ago
Is it weird that this headline makes me think of Jon Bon Jovi?
AndrewOMartin 8y ago
So you're saying whales can be used to conveniently filter plastic from the sea? How many whales do we need to deploy to get an entirely clean ocean?
- goldfeld 8y ago
  If you can't harbor any feeling for even a huge, complex and intelligent mammal, you're a much bigger threat to the environment than 6kg of plastic could ever be.
  - dang 8y ago
    Please don't respond to a bad comment by making the thread even worse. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
pasta 8y ago
Just today the Ocean Cleanup Project posted the first results on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RcRIE98y_UM https://youtu.be/RcRIE98y_UM
SeanFerree 8y ago
This is so sad. Something has to be done with all the plastic if it can't be recycled.
carapace 8y ago
A lot of doom and gloom here. I feel ya but I want to point out we have the necessary solutions to save ourselves if we just notice and apply them. For example, olivine just might "cure" atmospheric CO2. [1] The primary things to look to are: Bucky Fuller's "Design Science Revolution"; applied ecology (aka Permaculture); and Neurolinguistic Programming to help us get over our BS. [1] https://climitigation.org/category/olivine/ https://climitigation.org/category/olivine/
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  You know that neurolinguistic programming is pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit, right? Normally I give people the benefit of the doubt and presume they meant natural language processing and expanded the acronym wrong, but I can't see how that could apply here.
  - carapace 8y ago
    Yes, I meant the other NLP. > You know that neurolinguistic programming is pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit, right? I know no such thing. I'll grant you that most of the people talking about it, and many of the practitioners, are saying "pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit", and that's extraordinarily unfortunate. Nevertheless, the foundations and principles of NLP are sound and the reproducible results should not be ignored. NLP develops algorithms for change that work. Is it a scientific body of knowledge? No. But it should be. We should do science to it. I'll point out that it originates with an application of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar to transcripts of therapy sessions with very effective therapists (Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erikson. I think I spelled the names right.) It's not pseudoscience because it doesn't claim to be scientific. Despite it's unscientific nature it does provide reliable, repeatable algorithms for overcoming our worser natures. We can use the techniques without buying into any "new age magic bullshit" whatsoever. The whole point is that you don't have to believe in any particular thing to have the techniques work. It's like aspirin. You don't have to believe in aspirin to relieve your headache with it. Aspirin doesn't care. NLP is the same way. In fact, you can alter your belief structures using NLP, so logically it's ontological status must be "meta-belief", but that's getting way far afield. My main point stands: NLP works. (So who cares if it's wrapped in astrology or the "Enneagram", or wearing rubber pants? We can clean it up later when the fire has been put out, eh?)
mrtrombone 8y ago
I recently came back from Padang, Sumatra, was really impacted by the level of pollution and did quite a bit of research. - It is too simplistic to just say it's all about education. Yes it needs work however there is just not the infrastructure to manage the level of rubbish. Jakarta has a giant landfill that receives 9000 tonnes of rubbish a day. It had a landslide in 2005 that killed 143 people [1]. Indonesia are working with Sweden around waste to energy technologies but it seems locked up with other environmental concerns. This would be a great area for R&D spend - making efficient / environmentally sound waste to energy systems that are cost effective (and robust enough) for this part of the world [2]. - So much of the rubbish I saw was from single serve items, particularly snacks and toiletries. Reducing plastic bags would help but I think it's not focussed on the primary issue. I think pressure on companies like Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Unilever etc to move towards biodegradable single serve packaging would go a long way - perhaps pragmatically this is a much better place for governments to provide subsidies?? - As can be seen with the Sulawesi earthquake other countries cannot just show up and expect Indonesia to welcome them with open arms. It has to very much be a partnership not a 'we know best' colonial spirit - Perhaps an effective thing for universities to do is increase scholarships in these key areas for Indonesian students. [1] https://geoenvironmental-disasters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40677-014-0010-5 https://geoenvironmental-disasters.springeropen.com/articles... [2] https://www.infrastructureasiaonline.com/strategic-partnership/indonesia-cooperation-sweden-developing-renewable-energy https://www.infrastructureasiaonline.com/strategic-partnersh...

227 points by VBprogrammer 8y ago

We need to get our heads out of our asses. I don't want to be that guy but... we either need to radically change the way we live or 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist although I'm sure the remaining 750 million people would still find ways to sabotage our planet. 'SHTF' fiction and science fiction often turns to a pandemic wiping out large chunks of the population... that would be bad for you, for me, for most people but we aren't the only life on earth. We need to realize this, NOW. We need to grow up and start being responsible for ourselves as individuals and as a species. As far as we know we have exactly one habitable world in all of the universe and certainly only one habitable world within our current technological means. Come on people! We're ruining this planet multiple ways for not only ourselves but nearly all other species. Nearly 40 gigatonsof carbon this year, microplastics are now in the water and air the world around and has even been found in human feces on multiple continents, at least one factory in China is using CFCs again, we're doing all sorts of environmental damage strip mining resources for our throw-away phones and MacBooks, we are depleting groundwater the world around at alarming rates, we're losing our social abilities by staring at screens, we are using an alarming amount of electricity just to speculate on cryptocurrency, we drive 100-200 species extinct on average DAILY, we wage wars over religion and oil and where an imaginary line should divide a group of people, we murder each other for sneakers and pocket change or because someone beat us in a video game, we die in internet cafes throwing our lives away on virtual characters trying to get the latest super epic bind on pickup gear while people starve to death, suicide rates rise as people feel overwhelmed and trapped and that there is no hope and that they'll have to work until they die, we chase billion dollar exits on our iPad fruit of the month SAAS app as we walk by homeless people outside of our offices, we ship produce halfway around the world to eat out of season and throw away enough spoiled food to feed every hungry mouth on the planet... we are a scourge on the earth, but we needn't be. We can sacrifice, we can make immediate changes to the way we go about things to slow the damage we are doing, to buy ourselves some time to not only stop but reverse it. Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. Maybe we will get lucky and some advanced species will fill our skies with their ships and temporarily take control of the situation. More likely, we'll destroy ourselves like probably countless other intelligent species that the universe has seen come and go. It's depressing.

antidaily 8y ago
Which guy? Thanos?
- beatgammit 8y ago
  Thanos was merciful by comparison since he only wanted to kill 50%...
- CzechTech 8y ago
  Probably. Btw I like how OP wrote shit about killing 90% of people even if that included him/his loved ones and then edited it. Nice. As if people who write such things have loved ones, lol (your mom doesn't count).
vectorEQ 8y ago
losing 90% of humans still leaves 10% of humans. so 10% of problem. don't be that guy. be a guy who works toward a solution for the root-cause. i'd expect people in an it/hacker community to get that :D guess we're all 'those humans' after all eh :D
CzechTech 8y ago
> I think we really need a pandemic to kill off 90%+ of humans. Even if that means me and/or people I care about. ... > It's depressing. Yeah, I agree. The absolute trash people post on the internet is sometimes depressing. Such as your post.
asdkhadsj 8y ago
I say all of this as a thought experiment. But: > Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care. I mean, if we're making mental jumps to wiping out billions of people - I'd argue that, does it even matter? Ie, in your example human life largely doesn't matter. Human survival maybe, but clearly not billions of lives. I'm not saying this negatively either, just acknowledging what topic we're discussing. So if we're throwing away cultural norms on what we consider valuable, such as human life, why even care about nature? Our species? Other species? The planet? It's an honest question. I imagine you could argue that human life is still the most important thing, but we simply can't exist with 7 billion people. Perhaps 6 Billion people need to die. Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion to save 1 billion? That's a tough pill to swallow. It's not like killing 1 person to save a million. Mentally I think I struggle at that thought so much that I'd almost rather choose inaction, passively killing 7 billion people, so I can't feel responsible for the decision to kill 6 billion people. Interesting thought analysis nonetheless.

smileysteve 8y ago

Reasons to switch from oil based plastic to hemp oil based plastics.

ainiriand 8y ago
> https://www.eppm.com/blogs/editors-blog/speaking-up-for-plastics-in-a-plastic-bashing-world/ https://www.eppm.com/blogs/editors-blog/speaking-up-for-plas...

Frye 8y ago

Are there any clean up projects going on at the major gyres shown in the article? Seems like that would be a good place to start.

tim333 8y ago
Yeah https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/ Though the majority of the plastic comes from people in Indonesia and China chucking it in the river. Those countries really need to stop that with old fashioned things like littering fines and sticking it in landfills. Plus recycling etc naturally.
vwcx 8y ago
Cleaning up gyres are important, but realize that when one removes trash from a gyre, more is back the next day. Stopping production is the most important first-step.

erikig 8y ago

Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).

dawhizkid 8y ago
what are you saying...? that whatever toxicity of ingesting plastic is proportional across all living things by weight?
- PurpleBoxDragon 8y ago
  Generally we measure how lethal something is by using an LD 50 that looks at mass of chemical per mass of body. There are exceptions to this, but as a first assumption it seems reasonable.
  - jweir 8y ago
    You are a moron. If you cut open your stomach and found a measurable amount of plastic you would known something was terribly wrong with your environment. You shouldn't have plastic in your stomach.
    - sctb 8y ago
      It's not OK to call names like that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - peteradio 8y ago
    I don't think toxicity (LD 50) is relevant for plastic consumption. This sort of stuff packs into the gut and doesn't move or decompose. So the animal has to vomit it up or get surgery because it won't move down. I think the relevant comparison is ratio of pyloric sphincter between two species (the exit of the stomach). I'd be curious to know what that ratio is and it might be surprisingly close to one almost certainly less than 10. I do not know what the skill with which a whale can vomit, I do know that my lab mix pup is especially skillful.

ericdykstra 8y ago

93% of plastic polluting the world's oceans comes from 10 rivers. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas... Yangtze - East China Sea (Asia) Indus - Arabian Sea (Asia) Yellow River - Yellow Sea (Asia) Hai He - Yellow Sea (Asia) Nile - Mediterranean (Africa) Ganges - Bay of Bengal (Asia) Pearl River - South China Sea (Asia) Amur - Sea of Okhotsk (Asia) Niger - Gulf of Guinea (Africa) Mekong - South China Sea (Asia)

ninkendo 8y ago
How much of that plastic is shipped there "for recycling" by other countries? Everything I've read on the subject seems to indicate we send tons of plastic to places that we know aren't really going to recycle it.
- carapace 8y ago
  It's shipped there because it's bought. It's bought because the buyer intends to make money off of it, not throw it in a river. Although a lot of crap does wind up in the air and water, the environmental havoc wreaked by thousands of backyard plastic smelters is incredible. "Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade" by Adam Minter https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286721-junkyard-planet https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286721-junkyard-planet
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Many recyclers are paid to take rubbish (especially unsorted rubbish). They claim they sort it and responsibly recycle or dispose. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/plastic-recycling-industrys-problems-costing-councils-up-to-500000-a-year https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/20/plastic-...
admn2 8y ago
Feels like such a helpless situation. Is there anything to be done in the US to help with these rivers?

johnydepp 8y ago

Over the past few months I have been trying to figure out a solution for environmental issues in developing countries (like India where I'm from). Conclusion is, because of the democracy, the change is not possible from inside, some external force has to be there. Here governments take decision for the short term because they have to please the common (& uneducated) men for the next election. Hence the agenda of environment doesn't get much attention. That's why have poor plastic management. Educating people about these issues will take decades (& it will be too late). Only way forward could be if some constant external pressure is put on their governments using agreements/accords (like Paris Agreement) and some system is setup which will monitor issues like plastic management and carbon-emission. If countries are not following some standard they should be penalized. Countries like US, Canada, Germany can take initiatives in doing so. Its not only about their carbon-emission & plastic-management, its about the whole planet. Developing countries should be pressurized(!!) for reducing their population as well. In India, from past 2 decades, no government had an agenda to control population (which is the root of all the problems here). With some external pressure this could also be done I guess. And most importantly, large & impactful countries like US and China shouldn't waste their time on petty issues like trade-war & focus on big issue here!

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
At the bottom most level it really does boil down to education and awareness. One could argue they go hand in hand. Even in western nations being educated is not enough, you must be aware of your actions. This is why I always point at legislation as the most effective means of getting anything done. Lead by example through innovation, investment into sustainable tech, methods and living and pass legislation that does away with the bad and promotes the good. I guess to even get to this point we need to rewrite laws on lobbying to get special interests out of politics. Why stop there, might as well get campaign funding an overhaul to eliminate conflict of interest. Put in short term limits that do away with politics as a career choice and pass laws that promote it as civic duty. To add to the recipe, make representatives directly accountable to votes against public majority with the ability for the people to kick them out of the office through expedited voting where a majority can remove a representative within a 48 hour time window. While we are at it, start imposing prison time for corporate crimes and start enforcing it. Add transparency to all political conversation online and offline for any member of the public to review. Face to face meetings are to be accompanied by a third party for documentation. Creeped out? Yeah... so I think we need a total overhaul of values, economy, social systems, work policies and many laws to get to a point where we can do some good. Of course it al starts with education which is cut short by insufficient funding by said politicians. Ok, it’s hopeless and we’re doomed.

IshKebab 8y ago

> Items found included 115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags and two flip-flops. How many straws though?

IshKebab 8y ago

> pieces of string (3.26kg) Over half of it was string? Is this from fishing or something?

ryanmercer 8y ago
Likely from nets. https://www.worldoceanfest.org/new-blog/2017/6/9/the-impact-of-abandoned-ocean-fishing-nets-on-marine-life https://www.worldoceanfest.org/new-blog/2017/6/9/the-impact-...
erikpukinskis 8y ago
Clothing?
alumowa 8y ago
The original wording is "tali rafia", which is a flat plastic string used for tying down/lashing many common everyday items. So no, not related to fishing.

nurzo 8y ago

If you can't convince Indians not to shit on the streets, good luck explaining to them what throwing plastic bags in the river does to the planet as a whole. With this I'm not saying that Indians will always be dirty, but a loooong time will pass until reeducation is successful, so we have to think of other, more direct (and aggressive) ways.

mav3rick 8y ago
To anyone reading this, no a billion people don't shit on the streets of India. India is a young democracy bursting at the seams, education is probably the most important challenge it faces right now and my hope is that it alleviates a lot of these issues. To your point about plastic bags, many many people are cognizant of the ill-effects of plastic bags in India. Many of my friends actively try to avoid it. It's just that when you're a developing nation or minority everyone talks in blanket statements than nuanced views like "rural India" or "10% of Northern India", it has to be all "Indians shitting on streets". Whereas, some flaw in the developed countries is always attributed to the actual states where there is a problem rather than all of the population.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nurzo 8y ago
  What does being a young democracy have to do with how clean people are? Are you arguing that only people who have lived under a democracy for hundreds of years recognise how important it is not to shit on the streets or fill rivers with rotting corpses and plastic? Also, I'm not even sure education can fix this. Nature made turds foul-looking and smelly so everybody knows to stay away from them. If Indians can't even act under their most inner urges, that's a whole different problem.
  - mav3rick 8y ago
    Have you been to India ? No one does this in the cities, it's a problem in the villages where the govt. hasn't built enough toilets (due to corruption or plain neglect). The current govt. organized a program just to counter this, how effective this program is up for debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_mission https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_mission Any problem, including education about safe hygiene practices, is massively difficult at scale. Educating people in the rural areas will solve this problem, but when it's many millions it can be slow so more innovative methods need to be thought of. Even in the US there is a rise in the "anti-vaccine" crowd. A topic that is supposedly so-obvious that everyone should be against it. Yet, education at scale is an important solution to protecting kids against anti-vax parents.

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago

'see? nature's taking care of itself!' - plastic peddler

patagonia 8y ago

Callum Roberts wrote “The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea” in 2013. Everyone should read it. This article is discussing issues that are not at all new. That we treat it as new information is a symptom of the problem.

eezurr 8y ago

This is something I have been thinking about (and mindfully being unattached to either side). We know what it's like for society to go through an economic depression and how poverty effects developing countries, and I think it's pretty clear if we start wiping out the economy (which is the core of the problem besides over population) the save the planet, we will create one. How many jobs exist/created from engineering, manufacturing, selling, marketing, transporting, and managing crap that we don't need? What would the world look like if we wiped out all of those jobs? How will developing countries be affected when their income from manufacturing these products is drastically reduced? What do we have that replaces plastic for transporting and storing goods/food? Sand (silica?) is expected to become low in supply (e.g. for glass). How many trees would we have to cut down to replace plastic? Part of me is wondering if the route we are currently taking is the best one, because change will happen gradually, giving us time to adapt. A sudden kick to the balls of our the global economy, on the other hand, would have an immediate, devastating impact; especially on developing countries.

maplebush 8y ago

Is it weird that this headline makes me think of Jon Bon Jovi?

AndrewOMartin 8y ago

So you're saying whales can be used to conveniently filter plastic from the sea? How many whales do we need to deploy to get an entirely clean ocean?

goldfeld 8y ago
If you can't harbor any feeling for even a huge, complex and intelligent mammal, you're a much bigger threat to the environment than 6kg of plastic could ever be.
- dang 8y ago
  Please don't respond to a bad comment by making the thread even worse. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

pasta 8y ago

Just today the Ocean Cleanup Project posted the first results on YouTube: https://youtu.be/RcRIE98y_UM https://youtu.be/RcRIE98y_UM

SeanFerree 8y ago

This is so sad. Something has to be done with all the plastic if it can't be recycled.

carapace 8y ago

A lot of doom and gloom here. I feel ya but I want to point out we have the necessary solutions to save ourselves if we just notice and apply them. For example, olivine just might "cure" atmospheric CO2. [1] The primary things to look to are: Bucky Fuller's "Design Science Revolution"; applied ecology (aka Permaculture); and Neurolinguistic Programming to help us get over our BS. [1] https://climitigation.org/category/olivine/ https://climitigation.org/category/olivine/

hannasanarion 8y ago
You know that neurolinguistic programming is pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit, right? Normally I give people the benefit of the doubt and presume they meant natural language processing and expanded the acronym wrong, but I can't see how that could apply here.
- carapace 8y ago
  Yes, I meant the other NLP. > You know that neurolinguistic programming is pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit, right? I know no such thing. I'll grant you that most of the people talking about it, and many of the practitioners, are saying "pseudoscientific new age magic bullshit", and that's extraordinarily unfortunate. Nevertheless, the foundations and principles of NLP are sound and the reproducible results should not be ignored. NLP develops algorithms for change that work. Is it a scientific body of knowledge? No. But it should be. We should do science to it. I'll point out that it originates with an application of Chomsky's Transformational Grammar to transcripts of therapy sessions with very effective therapists (Fritz Perls, Virginia Satir, and Milton Erikson. I think I spelled the names right.) It's not pseudoscience because it doesn't claim to be scientific. Despite it's unscientific nature it does provide reliable, repeatable algorithms for overcoming our worser natures. We can use the techniques without buying into any "new age magic bullshit" whatsoever. The whole point is that you don't have to believe in any particular thing to have the techniques work. It's like aspirin. You don't have to believe in aspirin to relieve your headache with it. Aspirin doesn't care. NLP is the same way. In fact, you can alter your belief structures using NLP, so logically it's ontological status must be "meta-belief", but that's getting way far afield. My main point stands: NLP works. (So who cares if it's wrapped in astrology or the "Enneagram", or wearing rubber pants? We can clean it up later when the fire has been put out, eh?)

mrtrombone 8y ago

I recently came back from Padang, Sumatra, was really impacted by the level of pollution and did quite a bit of research. - It is too simplistic to just say it's all about education. Yes it needs work however there is just not the infrastructure to manage the level of rubbish. Jakarta has a giant landfill that receives 9000 tonnes of rubbish a day. It had a landslide in 2005 that killed 143 people [1]. Indonesia are working with Sweden around waste to energy technologies but it seems locked up with other environmental concerns. This would be a great area for R&D spend - making efficient / environmentally sound waste to energy systems that are cost effective (and robust enough) for this part of the world [2]. - So much of the rubbish I saw was from single serve items, particularly snacks and toiletries. Reducing plastic bags would help but I think it's not focussed on the primary issue. I think pressure on companies like Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Unilever etc to move towards biodegradable single serve packaging would go a long way - perhaps pragmatically this is a much better place for governments to provide subsidies?? - As can be seen with the Sulawesi earthquake other countries cannot just show up and expect Indonesia to welcome them with open arms. It has to very much be a partnership not a 'we know best' colonial spirit - Perhaps an effective thing for universities to do is increase scholarships in these key areas for Indonesian students. [1] https://geoenvironmental-disasters.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s40677-014-0010-5 https://geoenvironmental-disasters.springeropen.com/articles... [2] https://www.infrastructureasiaonline.com/strategic-partnership/indonesia-cooperation-sweden-developing-renewable-energy https://www.infrastructureasiaonline.com/strategic-partnersh...