4 ms·

Too bad like 90% of plastic in the ocean from land based sources comes from the Yangtze, Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, Nile, Ganges, Pearl River, Amur, Niger,

• yardstick 7y ago
  It shows people can adapt. Hopefully other countries will see it can be done and adopt similar policies.
• simion314 7y ago
  I see a lot this weird reaction, some action is taken so the number of single use plastic is reduced in your country and area so your local rivers and beaches are 90% more clean but people like you can't see this good local thing because somewhere else this measures were not appalled yet. I assume you are the type that won't clean his house / room if is full of shit unless someone else also cleans it first.
  • pfisch 7y ago
    I'm just not even sure if this is good at the end of the day. If it takes less energy to create and use plastic and then properly store it in a landfill then that is what we should do. I feel like we get confused about the source of plastic in the oceans and think that we can help clean it up by switching away from plastic, when the actual problem is improper disposal of plastic by the 3rd world. So is it good that we are reducing single use plastic in our country where we dispose of plastic properly? Because instead we just use a different material that has a greater contribution to global warming than the plastic did.
    • simion314 7y ago
      Not sure in what country you are what I read on the internet most Western countries have issues with plastic bags floating int he air , bottles in rivers,side of the roads and forests where tourists hang out. I agree that collecting all plastic garbage and putting it in a big land fill is a good solution but encouraging people not to abuse the cheap or free plastic bugs systems in malls and shops is also a good solution. About poor countries I think you need to understand that there is no running water, public garbage collection and other western facilities there, accusing and not offering some real solution is just disingenuous,
      • pfisch 7y ago
        > Not sure in what country you are what I read on the internet most Western countries have issues with plastic bags floating int he air , bottles in rivers,side of the roads and forests where tourists hang out. That is really not what the US looks like. There is not plastic trash everywhere. There is practically a public trash can on every corner here. All I am saying is I'm not sure the ideas in this article are a solution. Maybe this policy would be helpful in the countries that are actually the source of the plastic that is destroying the oceans though.
        • simion314 7y ago
          So from this article https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/08/drinks-bottles-now-biggest-plastic-menace-for-waterways-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/apr/08/drinks-b... I can see that UK has such a problem so this article about UK should not upset you, I am glad that US is cleaner (I am wondering if this is the same in poorer cities because your perspective could be biased by your location)
        • andygates 7y ago
          In the UK, it used to be the norm to see a plastic bag tree, all aflutter with collected trash and generally foul. Since the free bag ban, those have disappeared. You may be young and/or wealthy if you don't remember trash everywhere.
• wetpaws 7y ago
  Better small improvement then no improvement at all
  • pfisch 7y ago
    I'm just not even sure if this is good at the end of the day. If it takes less energy to create and use plastic and then properly store it in a landfill then that is what we should do. I feel like we get confused about the source of plastic in the oceans and think that we can help clean it up by switching away from plastic, when the actual problem is improper disposal of plastic by the 3rd world. So is it good that we are reducing single use plastic in our country where we dispose of plastic properly? Because instead we just use a different material that has a greater contribution to global warming than the plastic did.
    • _Microft 7y ago
      Using more energy is not bad per se. Extracting fossil carbon and introducing it into the carbon cycle is the biggest issue we have right now.
• Liquid_Fire 7y ago
  Your claim is incorrect. This widely quoted statistic was incorrectly reported in the news. 90% of plastic in the oceans _which comes from rivers_ is from those 10 rivers. Source: https://marinelitter.no/ https://marinelitter.no/ https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368