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Is it a waste of your time or your money when someone else picks up a can off the beach? Help. Don't help. But sneering at their effort is just mean. Bravo a

Is it a waste of your time or your money when someone else picks up a can off the beach? Help. Don't help. But sneering at their effort is just mean. Bravo and +1 to all the engineers on this very excellent project.

jacobwilliamroy 8y ago
Beach plastic is different from ocean plastic. At the scale which the ocean cleanup intends to operate, removing plastics from the ocean is almost always worse than leaving it alone and sometimes just as effective as doing nothing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it is the truth. This system will not remove 92% of the plastics in the gyre. It will neither remove nor reduce plastics which already contaminate the human food, air and water supplies. Its wide-scale, automated deployment will result in by-catch and contribute to the rising food-security issues throughout the pacific due to dwindling fish populations. The ocean is extremely fragile. The ocean, and the communities who depend on it are on the brink of irreversible collapse, and Mr. Slat really, truly, objectively, is not helping.
- kijin 8y ago
  So what do you propose that we do? Even if everyone stopped throwing plastic into the water right now, it will not remove an ounce of plastic that's already in the water and killing the ecosystem. Instead of dismissing attempts like this with a hand wave, perhaps we should actually start calculating the amount of damage done by potential by-catch versus the damage avoided by removing X tons of plastic from the top Y meters of the water column. Or compare the amount of plastic this project will end up adding to the oceans with the amount it will remove in the meantime. It's okay to be naysayer if you have real numbers to back up your claims. It's not okay to throw around phrases like "Mr. Slat is really, truly, objectively not helping" when you don't have any numbers to back up your claims.

jacobwilliamroy 8y ago

Beach plastic is different from ocean plastic. At the scale which the ocean cleanup intends to operate, removing plastics from the ocean is almost always worse than leaving it alone and sometimes just as effective as doing nothing. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it is the truth. This system will not remove 92% of the plastics in the gyre. It will neither remove nor reduce plastics which already contaminate the human food, air and water supplies. Its wide-scale, automated deployment will result in by-catch and contribute to the rising food-security issues throughout the pacific due to dwindling fish populations. The ocean is extremely fragile. The ocean, and the communities who depend on it are on the brink of irreversible collapse, and Mr. Slat really, truly, objectively, is not helping.

kijin 8y ago
So what do you propose that we do? Even if everyone stopped throwing plastic into the water right now, it will not remove an ounce of plastic that's already in the water and killing the ecosystem. Instead of dismissing attempts like this with a hand wave, perhaps we should actually start calculating the amount of damage done by potential by-catch versus the damage avoided by removing X tons of plastic from the top Y meters of the water column. Or compare the amount of plastic this project will end up adding to the oceans with the amount it will remove in the meantime. It's okay to be naysayer if you have real numbers to back up your claims. It's not okay to throw around phrases like "Mr. Slat is really, truly, objectively not helping" when you don't have any numbers to back up your claims.