5 ms·

The Ocean Conservancy report has been cited by quite a few articles now, and it pains me every time I see it. As ever, the conclusions drawn are quite misleadin

The Ocean Conservancy report has been cited by quite a few articles now, and it pains me every time I see it. As ever, the conclusions drawn are quite misleading. 1) The source of the data is cleanup on beaches, not ocean trash. If anything it's more likely to be representative of items discarded on beaches or waterways. 2) Cigarette butts are greatest purely in number of individual pieces, not in terms of weight or volume. The following paper reports fishing nets to be the largest contributor to ocean plastic (by volume). Cigarette butts aren't even worthy of a mention in their report (see Supplementary Table 4 which lists the top 5 items per item size group). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w

shireboy 8y ago
Then it was also 10 Asian rivers that account for most plastic: 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... I guess I understand it is a hard problem to calculate, but it is an area where I wish the approach was more reasoned and less governed by fad and hype. Sure clean and prevent straws and cigarette butts if that’s really a problem, but divvy our resources in proportion to where data says the issues are...
- alistairSH 8y ago
  The Asian rivers was something I learned fairly recently. It wasn't a big shock, but it wasn't obvious either. Do you know if the report also broke down the rivers by size and waterfront population? IE, do the communities along those Asian rivers pollute more than those in the US or EU, or are they simply the largest rivers in the world by volume and/or local population? (Yes, I know the Ganges in filthy)
  - deanCommie 8y ago
    I imagine, being in China, the pollution is also an externality of the manufacturing for the entire world that Europe/US is happy to occur in China instead of locally.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      Yeah, western countries can outsource all manufacturing there, lower their businesses costs, and then play holier than thou on green matters too...
      - pas 8y ago
        Severly poor communities without any wastewater treatment letting effluent into the river they live next to is the problem. It is the prime recipe for Cholera. So EU/US usually makes cleaner wastewater, but uses a lot more energy (so pollutes by CO2). Manufacturing's externalities outsourcing is of course something that should be handled by import tariffs and supply chain verification.
      - alistairSH 8y ago
        Sure, but I was asking specifically about the plastic waste and other trash, which was the original topic. Not general pollutants.
- hutzlibu 8y ago
  Cigarette butts are really a problem ... at least for me. They are disgusting. So even though they are not a significant source for ocean plastic, they should be avoided or cleaned.
- DoctorOetker 8y ago
  For any kind of pollution, the prime polluter has incentive to spread factoids pointing to significant other polluters. The comment you respond to mentions fishing nets to be the biggest pollutant by volume (which is quite logical if one thinks about it). Obviously a marine source has incentive to highlight landbased sources such as rivers. If one hears about the most polluting river one is easily confused into thinking rivers are the biggest polluter. Also note the questions surrounding metric of river pollution (i.e. per capita pollution of rivers and so on ...)
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  I'm probably what you'd call an environmentalist, but the movement is wrought with people who are more concerned with getting high off of self-flagellating moral outrage than fixing problems. Legislative solutions to large polluters and trash generators don't feel like penance in the same way that individual sacrifices do, so a huge chunk of people who are nominally concerned with environmental issues misallocate their complaints, wrt the actual severity of polluters. I'm not sure this is solvable, humans being what they are, and I don't think it's unique to environmental issues.
  - sitkack 8y ago
    We probably need (but don’t want) algorithmic control of our actions.
    - nielsole 8y ago
      What else is a constitution?
  - sigi45 8y ago
    I'm able to complain about plastic and cigarette butts in parallel.
    - wutbrodo 8y ago
      Congratulations, you should be very proud of yourself. That's quite an accomplishment. It's also a bizarrely defensive interjection, given that it has nothing to do with my comment, which was about the set of ostensible environmentalists that focus on self-flagellatory concerns at the expense of actually significant ones, a group that you're saying you're not part of.
      - fenwick67 8y ago
        Perhaps tone down your externally-flagellatoriousness if you're in agreement with somebody
- thatoneuser 8y ago
  God can’t they engineer some kind of filter system at the ends of those rivers?
sureaboutthis 8y ago
It's television "news". Why would anyone expect better? The headline tomorrow will say/read, "A new study shows ..." and state the exact opposite.
belorn 8y ago
If we combine that data with data on annual amount of plastic being thrown into the ocean, we get 4 tons of fishing nets per year being lost by the part of the finish industry that use fishing nets. Buying new fishing nets are quite expensive, and by experience, fishermen tend to spend a large part of the year repairing them. I wonder what the lost rate is per fisherman, national region, and caught fish.
- darkmighty 8y ago
  Skimming the articles it estimates there are 42000 tons of mega(large) plastics, of which 86% would be fishing nets, so 36120 tons. Didn't find the per annum data, but that's certainly much more than 4 tons a year (else it would've taken 9030 years to get current weight), I'd guess at least 2000 tons per year.
jmull 8y ago
The general problem with this kind of criticism is that it can be leveled at any article citing a statistic. No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what? Here I guess the root of your objection is that the article seems to conflate the ocean-sides with the entire ocean. That's fair: the article is really about ocean sides, but in a few places it refers generally to the ocean. It appears to be purposeful, too, since it's in the headline and lede while the rest of article is straight. Still, that the headline and lede is overly strong is, unfortunately, almost a universally applicable criticism these days. Headlines and ledes are written for attention-grabbing not accuracy. That's a problem not of individual articles, but of a system that lives on click-through. A less superficial criticism would be to examine the degree to which the main point of the article -- that cigarette butt pollution is a problem that should be addressed -- is fair, or whether it's making this out to be a significantly more substantial problem than it really is. (Remember, the context here is activism to reduce pollution, where there was recently a lot of focus and traction on plastic drinking straws, for which there was some backlash, with people arguing that there was a lot of focus on a tiny part of the problem. So a really good question here is, is this just more plastic straw BS or is there a really issue here?) And keep in mind that if cigarette butts are a coastal pollution problem it doesn't mean something else, like fishing nets in the ocean, isn't a problem.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >The general problem with this kind of criticism is that it can be leveled at any article citing a statistic. Only if it cites a badly done statistic or misleads as to the statistic's conclusions, as this article does. >No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what?* That's not the accusation here. It's that what they chose to highlight is not the most important pollutant of oceans by any reasonable metric. The purpose of citing a statistic in the first place is to consider things in their respective relevance. Now, restricting this to the ocean side (which the article editors should have done already in their chosen title), it doesn't seem to be such a problem either (and I'm from a country where most smoke and has tons of beaches).
legulere 8y ago
The paper you cite is just about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

shireboy 8y ago

Then it was also 10 Asian rivers that account for most plastic: 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... I guess I understand it is a hard problem to calculate, but it is an area where I wish the approach was more reasoned and less governed by fad and hype. Sure clean and prevent straws and cigarette butts if that’s really a problem, but divvy our resources in proportion to where data says the issues are...

alistairSH 8y ago
The Asian rivers was something I learned fairly recently. It wasn't a big shock, but it wasn't obvious either. Do you know if the report also broke down the rivers by size and waterfront population? IE, do the communities along those Asian rivers pollute more than those in the US or EU, or are they simply the largest rivers in the world by volume and/or local population? (Yes, I know the Ganges in filthy)
- deanCommie 8y ago
  I imagine, being in China, the pollution is also an externality of the manufacturing for the entire world that Europe/US is happy to occur in China instead of locally.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Yeah, western countries can outsource all manufacturing there, lower their businesses costs, and then play holier than thou on green matters too...
    - pas 8y ago
      Severly poor communities without any wastewater treatment letting effluent into the river they live next to is the problem. It is the prime recipe for Cholera. So EU/US usually makes cleaner wastewater, but uses a lot more energy (so pollutes by CO2). Manufacturing's externalities outsourcing is of course something that should be handled by import tariffs and supply chain verification.
    - alistairSH 8y ago
      Sure, but I was asking specifically about the plastic waste and other trash, which was the original topic. Not general pollutants.
hutzlibu 8y ago
Cigarette butts are really a problem ... at least for me. They are disgusting. So even though they are not a significant source for ocean plastic, they should be avoided or cleaned.
DoctorOetker 8y ago
For any kind of pollution, the prime polluter has incentive to spread factoids pointing to significant other polluters. The comment you respond to mentions fishing nets to be the biggest pollutant by volume (which is quite logical if one thinks about it). Obviously a marine source has incentive to highlight landbased sources such as rivers. If one hears about the most polluting river one is easily confused into thinking rivers are the biggest polluter. Also note the questions surrounding metric of river pollution (i.e. per capita pollution of rivers and so on ...)
wutbrodo 8y ago
I'm probably what you'd call an environmentalist, but the movement is wrought with people who are more concerned with getting high off of self-flagellating moral outrage than fixing problems. Legislative solutions to large polluters and trash generators don't feel like penance in the same way that individual sacrifices do, so a huge chunk of people who are nominally concerned with environmental issues misallocate their complaints, wrt the actual severity of polluters. I'm not sure this is solvable, humans being what they are, and I don't think it's unique to environmental issues.
- sitkack 8y ago
  We probably need (but don’t want) algorithmic control of our actions.
  - nielsole 8y ago
    What else is a constitution?
- sigi45 8y ago
  I'm able to complain about plastic and cigarette butts in parallel.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    Congratulations, you should be very proud of yourself. That's quite an accomplishment. It's also a bizarrely defensive interjection, given that it has nothing to do with my comment, which was about the set of ostensible environmentalists that focus on self-flagellatory concerns at the expense of actually significant ones, a group that you're saying you're not part of.
    - fenwick67 8y ago
      Perhaps tone down your externally-flagellatoriousness if you're in agreement with somebody
thatoneuser 8y ago
God can’t they engineer some kind of filter system at the ends of those rivers?

sureaboutthis 8y ago

It's television "news". Why would anyone expect better? The headline tomorrow will say/read, "A new study shows ..." and state the exact opposite.

belorn 8y ago

If we combine that data with data on annual amount of plastic being thrown into the ocean, we get 4 tons of fishing nets per year being lost by the part of the finish industry that use fishing nets. Buying new fishing nets are quite expensive, and by experience, fishermen tend to spend a large part of the year repairing them. I wonder what the lost rate is per fisherman, national region, and caught fish.

darkmighty 8y ago
Skimming the articles it estimates there are 42000 tons of mega(large) plastics, of which 86% would be fishing nets, so 36120 tons. Didn't find the per annum data, but that's certainly much more than 4 tons a year (else it would've taken 9030 years to get current weight), I'd guess at least 2000 tons per year.

jmull 8y ago

The general problem with this kind of criticism is that it can be leveled at any article citing a statistic. No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what? Here I guess the root of your objection is that the article seems to conflate the ocean-sides with the entire ocean. That's fair: the article is really about ocean sides, but in a few places it refers generally to the ocean. It appears to be purposeful, too, since it's in the headline and lede while the rest of article is straight. Still, that the headline and lede is overly strong is, unfortunately, almost a universally applicable criticism these days. Headlines and ledes are written for attention-grabbing not accuracy. That's a problem not of individual articles, but of a system that lives on click-through. A less superficial criticism would be to examine the degree to which the main point of the article -- that cigarette butt pollution is a problem that should be addressed -- is fair, or whether it's making this out to be a significantly more substantial problem than it really is. (Remember, the context here is activism to reduce pollution, where there was recently a lot of focus and traction on plastic drinking straws, for which there was some backlash, with people arguing that there was a lot of focus on a tiny part of the problem. So a really good question here is, is this just more plastic straw BS or is there a really issue here?) And keep in mind that if cigarette butts are a coastal pollution problem it doesn't mean something else, like fishing nets in the ocean, isn't a problem.

coldtea 8y ago
>The general problem with this kind of criticism is that it can be leveled at any article citing a statistic. Only if it cites a badly done statistic or misleads as to the statistic's conclusions, as this article does. >No matter what value an article chooses to highlight they could have highlighted a different one. True... but so what?* That's not the accusation here. It's that what they chose to highlight is not the most important pollutant of oceans by any reasonable metric. The purpose of citing a statistic in the first place is to consider things in their respective relevance. Now, restricting this to the ocean side (which the article editors should have done already in their chosen title), it doesn't seem to be such a problem either (and I'm from a country where most smoke and has tons of beaches).

legulere 8y ago

The paper you cite is just about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.