7 ms·

The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets. Ground based sources of oceanic plastic are coastal cities. Rivers in developed countries carry very little

by Iv 7y ago

The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets. Ground based sources of oceanic plastic are coastal cities. Rivers in developed countries carry very little plastic to the sea. Actually a fistful of rivers in poor population basin account for most of the inland sources of oceanic plastic. Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean.

CaptArmchair 7y ago
No. That's incorrect. This study published in Nature (2017) by the Ocean Cleanup researcher contradicts your statement entirely: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15611 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15611 > Our model is calibrated against measurements available in the literature. We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year from rivers, with over 74% of emissions occurring between May and October. The top 20 polluting rivers, mostly located in Asia, account for 67% of the global total. The findings of this study provide baseline data for ocean plastic mass balance exercises, and assist in prioritizing future plastic debris monitoring and mitigation strategies. The likelihood of your trash ending up in the ocean depends entirely on where you live and how your trash gets processed. The only part of your statement that's somewhat correct is that rivers in developed countries carry less plastics to the oceans compared to developing countries. But "very little" is creating a false impression of the problem. Processing disposable plastic waste is a problem that can be avoided by... not using disposable plastics at all. This is first and foremost a moral choice: whether or not we want to put the health of the ecosystem of which we are part above our own personal short-term convenience. Thailand banned the use of disposable plastic bags this month: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-thai-retailers-single-use-plastic-bags.html https://phys.org/news/2020-01-thai-retailers-single-use-plas... You'd think that the Thai would oppose the ban. That's not what's happening if you gauge the sentiment on social media: https://www.boredpanda.com/unusual-ways-people-dealing-plastic-bag-ban-thailand/ https://www.boredpanda.com/unusual-ways-people-dealing-plast...
- anamexis 7y ago
  Without comparison to the amount of plastic coming from fishing nets and coastal cities, this didn't contradict anything in the parent post.
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago
    His first assertion isn't based on any actual numbers or research either: > The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets. Whereas the research shows: > We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year from rivers So, that leaves only two conclusions if you connect both statements: the vast majority of what is disposed by rivers is fishnets, or there's millions of tonnes of fishnets in the oceans next to what's disposed by rivers.
    - anamexis 7y ago
      I think it's obviously the second conclusion being asserted. A cursory Google search produced some supporting sources, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
- Iv 7y ago
  > You'd think that the Thai would oppose the ban Why? Anti-ecologism is not really a thing in most of the world. It is a far-right thing in a few countries like Brazil and US, but a lot of nations don't consider "fick the environment, I want to save one cent on packaging" to be edgy.
  - ulzeraj 7y ago
    Well its good that you are doing the things you think its correct but please stop with the gratuitous generalization. We don't love pollution as much as you think here in Brazil.
    - Supermancho 7y ago
      > We don't love pollution as much as you think The national policies don't reflect this right now.
      - ulzeraj 7y ago
        National policies aren't people. If anything the current state of things prove that Brazilians have no say over their own government through elections wathever side you pick. Please don't be a bigot towards an entire country.
        Supermancho 7y ago
        The country and nation are synonyms. You mean to say "don't be a bigot toward a people". Trying to fractionate the discussion between the innumerable number of differing outlooks when speaking about a nation, is not practical or constructive. A nation is a reflection of the people within it, even if it doesn't reflect exactly what an individual or set of the people believe. The enlightenment laid this out. Sort out your administration, you can proselytize about simpler topics, like environmentalism and expect to be understood clearly. Until then, Brazil as a nation, sucks in too many ways to mention.
    - Iv 7y ago
      I explicity pointed out that in these countries it is a far-right thing.
- Iv 7y ago
  Don't make bold statement, exactly like I used to do a few months ago about this very subject :-) I got pointed to more recent studies by an oceanographer. Here is a Nature (2018) paper stating that the amount of fishing nets were underestimated in previous studies https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w > Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6 million km2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than previously reported. We explain this difference through the use of more robust methods to quantify larger debris. Over three-quarters of the GPGP mass was carried by debris larger than 5 cm and at least 46% was comprised of fishing nets. Microplastics accounted for 8% of the total mass
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago
    Wait, that's comparing very different things here. That's a study on the Great Plastic Garbage Patch in the Pacific ocean specifically. The study I referred to is about the yearly emission of plastics through rivers globally.
    - Iv 7y ago
      Yes, and the article we discuss about is about oceanic plastics.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  Nature is a bunk journal. I can't tell you how much crap I read in there that is complete garbage.
- peteradio 7y ago
  What here is disputing the above comment? Is OP from Asia or something?
- twic 7y ago
  > The likelihood of your trash ending up in the ocean depends entirely on where you live and how your trash gets processed. And spodek, to whom lv was replying, lives in the northeast USA, where plastic waste doesn't end up in rivers. > Processing disposable plastic waste is a problem that can be avoided by... not using disposable plastics at all. In the first world, it's a solved problem, so it's not a problem you need to avoid.
  - CaptArmchair 7y ago
    Is it a solved problem? Did you know that developed countries export thousands of tonnes of plastic waste to developing countries? https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018 https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/1570... > The U.S. Census Bureau recently published complete 2018 export data for shipments of plastic waste (officially called “waste, paring and scrap”) generated in the U.S. and sent to other countries. As shown in Figure 1, 78% (0.83 million metric tonnes) of the 2018 U.S. plastic waste exports were sent to countries with waste “mismanagement rates” greater than 5%. That means about 157,000 large 20-ft (TEU) shipping containers (429 per day) of U.S. plastic waste were sent in 2018 to countries that are now known to be overwhelmed with plastic waste and major sources of plastic pollution to the ocean. The actual amount of U.S. plastic waste that ends in countries with poor waste management may be even higher than 78% since countries like Canada and South Korea may reexport U.S. plastic waste. The data also indicates that the U.S. continued to export about as much plastic waste to countries with poor waste management as we recycle domestically [1]. Whereas: https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2018/08/01/epa-u-s-plastics-recycling-rate-declines/ https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2018/08/01/epa-u-s-p... > The EPA’s Facts and Figures Report states the U.S. in 2015 recycled 9.1 percent of the plastic generated, down from 9.5 percent during the previous year. Then there's this: The U.S. used to export waste to China. Until China decided to ban importing waste, leaving the U.S. waste disposal industries with a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK20t11He14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK20t11He14 And finally I'll leave you with these: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-plastic-pollution-oceans-recycling-export-waste-malaysia-vietnam-thailand-a8400761.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-plastic-polluti... https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/06/14/china-plastics-ban-malaysia-vietnam-poland/ https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/06/14/china-plastics-b... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recycling-industry-under-investigation-for-and-corruption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc... https://www.plasticsforchange.org/blog/category/why-are-plastic-recycling-rate-so-low https://www.plasticsforchange.org/blog/category/why-are-plas...
chmod775 7y ago
> Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean. Except that the plastic waste of certain countries tends to get "exported" to these places and then dumped there - if it doesn't get dumped into the ocean before it can even get there. The poorest places don't tend to generate so much plastic waste because it is mostly a by-product of "luxury goods" (read: trash) in developed countries bought by clueless consumers. For instance I will never understand the people who buy plastic-wrapped pre-sliced "salami" that hardly resembles the real thing in anything but name. I recently saw croissants(!) getting sold off the shelf in a supermarket. How the hell do you even make that work? Of course they were wrapped in plastic. I don't even want to know how they them make them last long enough. No way they're still crisp outside if the whole thing hasn't turned into a rock. I feel like some people will buy something not despite it being a plastic wrapped faint imitation of the real thing - but because it is.
- ascar 7y ago
  > For instance I will never understand the people who buy plastic-wrapped pre-sliced "salami" Well, if I don't buy it presliced from the butcher I always buy packaged presliced milano salami, because it's nearly impossible to slice it thin enough with a knife. There is also not really a difference in quality. Both products are imported from Italy anyway.
  - rch 7y ago
    My butcher slices it, and weighs it out, and wraps it in recycled paper, which I store in glass containers at home.
- beatgammit 7y ago
  I've had croissants individually wrapped (e.g. at airports and other grab and go type places) and wrapped as a group (supermarkets and warehouse stores), and while neither are as good as buying fresh from a bakery, they're surprisingly good. The ones from Costco can last a few days before they're too dry to be good. If you care more about convenience than utmost quality, plastic does a pretty good job. In fact, I can't recall the last time I've had a croissant from a bakery, and I have definitely purchased dozens of packaged, off-the-shelf croissants in that time. Even though they're not as good as fresh, they're still good, to the point where it's not worth the time or extra money to go to the bakery. This is true for many other products as well. My grocery store butcher packages everything in plastic wrap, even if you get it from the counter (I think they have paper upon request). My self-serve, bulk foods company (WinCo) requires you to use their plastic bags instead of bringing your own containers (simplifies checkout process). Nearly everything I could want to buy is more conveniently purchased wrapped in plastic. People but plastic-wrapped products because of convenience, not because they prefer the packaging. I honestly prefer getting meat wrapped in paper because it's much easier to unwrap than plastic. I prefer getting bakery items in a paper bag than a clamshell or cellophane wrap, again, because it's easier to unpackage. However, to get those items packaged that way, I need to go out of my way, and specialty shops tend to have less reliable inventories because they're lower volume businesses. I doubt anyone prefers wasteful, inconvenient packaging, people just prefer convenience, and wasteful, inconvenient packaging is more convenient for stores, so that's what gets used. If you want to change the world, make a more convenient, cost-effective way to package things than plastic.
dylan604 7y ago
> Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean. Daily, I see people getting rid of the plastic wrapping around their new cigarette pack by throwing it out the car window or just dropping it straight to the ground. It's that type of plastic that makes its way to the city's runoff which makes its way to streams/rivers/lakes/oceans/etc. After any significant amount of rain, there's a few places I can drive by to see where the trash from throughout the city has washed into the grassy areas around bends in creaks/rivers. It's a good visual example of where the plastic pollution is originating.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Cellophane is biodegradable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane Most people worry about the wrong thing. If you live in the West, you're not appreciably contributing to ocean plastic pollution (and no, you're almost certainly not doing so by "shipping your garbage to china" either). Smokers, definitely not contributing to plastic pollution.
  - spodek 7y ago
    > Smokers, definitely not contributing to plastic pollution National Geographic and Phys.org report otherwise: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigarettes-story-of-plastic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigar... and https://phys.org/news/2019-07-cigarette-butts-forgotten-plastic-pollutionand.html https://phys.org/news/2019-07-cigarette-butts-forgotten-plas... Others producing more doesn't reduce their pollution.
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      Cellulose acetate aka cigarette butts, turns into dirt 4 months in the soil or a few years out in the open sunlight[1]. It's vastly more biodegradable than your hoodie, your socks, your Starbucks cup or even something like dried up egg yolk. I don't think people should throw it on the ground, because trash barrels and ash trays are there for a reason, but it's basically not an environmental problem at all. It's just unsightly litter. > Others producing more doesn't reduce their pollution. If you actually want to solve environmental problems, how about solving actual problems instead of picking on lower class cigarette smokers who aren't causing any issues? It sure seems like an awful lot of "environmentalism" is nothing more than a disgusting social class pose. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate
neuronic 7y ago
Our own trash is shipped to Asia first and then it ends up in some of those rivers. We pay Asian countries a lot to take our garbage.
- comicjk 7y ago
  We pay other countries to take our garbage only because we prefer to imagine it is being recycled. It's not like we don't have enough landfill space here, if we were willing to treat it as the trash that it is.
  - WoahNoun 7y ago
    Yea there was a great two part planet money series on recycling this year. And the economic take away is that the current state of recycling in the US is broken and we have more than enough landfill space for thousands of years. One idea was to just burn it which this mentioned is what some European countries are doing. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-boss-a-garbage-boat-and-why-we-recycle https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-b... https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-should-we-recycle https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...
spodek 7y ago
> The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets So apply what I wrote and you get: eat less fish. Since this is HN, people will talk about pros and cons of eating fish, but there's only one reason people create fishing nets. If people consume less of things that damage the environment, we will produce less of it and therefore damage less of it. If some populations have to eat it, most can still eat less. I last ate fish in 1990.
- jsilence 7y ago
  Or eat aquacultured fish from your region. For example from an aquaponic system. But there are few viable commercial operations on the market so far.
  - millettjon 7y ago
    The large scale fish farms also pollute heavily.
    - jsilence 7y ago
      Absolutely! Sustainable, low emission recirculating aquaculture comes at a price. It is not yet clear whether customers are willing to pay the premium for products from a good solution.
    - atdrummond 7y ago
      The operations described by your OP aren’t large scale fish farms.
  - the8472 7y ago
    Aren't aquacultured fish fed with fishmeal, which means even more fishing nets due to the conversion inefficiencies of carnivorous fish?
    - jsilence 7y ago
      At the time fishmeal and fish oil are neccessary to supply certain nutrients, lysin and methionine for example, but suppliers have been successfully reducing the amount of fishmeal and oil in recent times. The goal is to reduce it to a minimum. Not all fishmeal is unsustainable. The slaughtering residue from wild catch and from aquaculture as well as the bycatch are ressources for fish feed that we should not waste.
monk_e_boy 7y ago
I was at the beach today (UK) and there was more net than I could carry. It was in about 100 bits that I tied together into a giant ball. There were around 60 plastic bottles, a few big plastic cans (oil) and lots of micro plastic.
api 7y ago
Not all coastal cities. Multiple studies have sourced most ocean plastic to Chinese rivers and coastal cities (90th percentile) followed by India and a few other places. Why do we have to pretend that all coastal cities are equally at fault when this is clearly not true? Are people afraid its somehow racist? It has nothing to do with race but with certain governments that just don't care. It's become a pet peeve of mine when charges of racism is used to deflect political criticism of governments. In the US dumping trash in rivers is a crime and will get you in serious trouble: large fines, seizure of trucks and equipment, maybe even criminal charges.
jorblumesea 7y ago
> Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean. Except if you live in Asia or a developing country, which is a large percentage of the world population. After traveling through that region I can honestly say that I am not surprised to see so much plastic in the oceans. People dump trash in the water, throw plastic bottles on the ground, waste and recycling infrastructure is largely non-existent. Even in richer middle tier countries like China people just toss their plastic into the rivers.
- andrekandre 7y ago
  when visiting some island resorts (like 2 hour boat ride out) in thailand i was shocked at how much plastic garbage was floating around those otherwise beautiful islands... it’s my opinion these things need to become laws and business, not just individuals need to be fined heavily for jut dumping trash out

by Iv 7y ago

CaptArmchair 7y ago

No. That's incorrect. This study published in Nature (2017) by the Ocean Cleanup researcher contradicts your statement entirely: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15611 https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15611 > Our model is calibrated against measurements available in the literature. We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year from rivers, with over 74% of emissions occurring between May and October. The top 20 polluting rivers, mostly located in Asia, account for 67% of the global total. The findings of this study provide baseline data for ocean plastic mass balance exercises, and assist in prioritizing future plastic debris monitoring and mitigation strategies. The likelihood of your trash ending up in the ocean depends entirely on where you live and how your trash gets processed. The only part of your statement that's somewhat correct is that rivers in developed countries carry less plastics to the oceans compared to developing countries. But "very little" is creating a false impression of the problem. Processing disposable plastic waste is a problem that can be avoided by... not using disposable plastics at all. This is first and foremost a moral choice: whether or not we want to put the health of the ecosystem of which we are part above our own personal short-term convenience. Thailand banned the use of disposable plastic bags this month: https://phys.org/news/2020-01-thai-retailers-single-use-plastic-bags.html https://phys.org/news/2020-01-thai-retailers-single-use-plas... You'd think that the Thai would oppose the ban. That's not what's happening if you gauge the sentiment on social media: https://www.boredpanda.com/unusual-ways-people-dealing-plastic-bag-ban-thailand/ https://www.boredpanda.com/unusual-ways-people-dealing-plast...

anamexis 7y ago
Without comparison to the amount of plastic coming from fishing nets and coastal cities, this didn't contradict anything in the parent post.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  His first assertion isn't based on any actual numbers or research either: > The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets. Whereas the research shows: > We estimate that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tonnes of plastic waste currently enters the ocean every year from rivers So, that leaves only two conclusions if you connect both statements: the vast majority of what is disposed by rivers is fishnets, or there's millions of tonnes of fishnets in the oceans next to what's disposed by rivers.
  - anamexis 7y ago
    I think it's obviously the second conclusion being asserted. A cursory Google search produced some supporting sources, e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
Iv 7y ago
> You'd think that the Thai would oppose the ban Why? Anti-ecologism is not really a thing in most of the world. It is a far-right thing in a few countries like Brazil and US, but a lot of nations don't consider "fick the environment, I want to save one cent on packaging" to be edgy.
- ulzeraj 7y ago
  Well its good that you are doing the things you think its correct but please stop with the gratuitous generalization. We don't love pollution as much as you think here in Brazil.
  - Supermancho 7y ago
    > We don't love pollution as much as you think The national policies don't reflect this right now.
    - ulzeraj 7y ago
      National policies aren't people. If anything the current state of things prove that Brazilians have no say over their own government through elections wathever side you pick. Please don't be a bigot towards an entire country.
      - Supermancho 7y ago
        The country and nation are synonyms. You mean to say "don't be a bigot toward a people". Trying to fractionate the discussion between the innumerable number of differing outlooks when speaking about a nation, is not practical or constructive. A nation is a reflection of the people within it, even if it doesn't reflect exactly what an individual or set of the people believe. The enlightenment laid this out. Sort out your administration, you can proselytize about simpler topics, like environmentalism and expect to be understood clearly. Until then, Brazil as a nation, sucks in too many ways to mention.
  - Iv 7y ago
    I explicity pointed out that in these countries it is a far-right thing.
Iv 7y ago
Don't make bold statement, exactly like I used to do a few months ago about this very subject :-) I got pointed to more recent studies by an oceanographer. Here is a Nature (2018) paper stating that the amount of fishing nets were underestimated in previous studies https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w > Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6 million km2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than previously reported. We explain this difference through the use of more robust methods to quantify larger debris. Over three-quarters of the GPGP mass was carried by debris larger than 5 cm and at least 46% was comprised of fishing nets. Microplastics accounted for 8% of the total mass
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  Wait, that's comparing very different things here. That's a study on the Great Plastic Garbage Patch in the Pacific ocean specifically. The study I referred to is about the yearly emission of plastics through rivers globally.
  - Iv 7y ago
    Yes, and the article we discuss about is about oceanic plastics.
acollins1331 7y ago
Nature is a bunk journal. I can't tell you how much crap I read in there that is complete garbage.
peteradio 7y ago
What here is disputing the above comment? Is OP from Asia or something?
twic 7y ago
> The likelihood of your trash ending up in the ocean depends entirely on where you live and how your trash gets processed. And spodek, to whom lv was replying, lives in the northeast USA, where plastic waste doesn't end up in rivers. > Processing disposable plastic waste is a problem that can be avoided by... not using disposable plastics at all. In the first world, it's a solved problem, so it's not a problem you need to avoid.
- CaptArmchair 7y ago
  Is it a solved problem? Did you know that developed countries export thousands of tonnes of plastic waste to developing countries? https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018 https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/1570... > The U.S. Census Bureau recently published complete 2018 export data for shipments of plastic waste (officially called “waste, paring and scrap”) generated in the U.S. and sent to other countries. As shown in Figure 1, 78% (0.83 million metric tonnes) of the 2018 U.S. plastic waste exports were sent to countries with waste “mismanagement rates” greater than 5%. That means about 157,000 large 20-ft (TEU) shipping containers (429 per day) of U.S. plastic waste were sent in 2018 to countries that are now known to be overwhelmed with plastic waste and major sources of plastic pollution to the ocean. The actual amount of U.S. plastic waste that ends in countries with poor waste management may be even higher than 78% since countries like Canada and South Korea may reexport U.S. plastic waste. The data also indicates that the U.S. continued to export about as much plastic waste to countries with poor waste management as we recycle domestically [1]. Whereas: https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2018/08/01/epa-u-s-plastics-recycling-rate-declines/ https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2018/08/01/epa-u-s-p... > The EPA’s Facts and Figures Report states the U.S. in 2015 recycled 9.1 percent of the plastic generated, down from 9.5 percent during the previous year. Then there's this: The U.S. used to export waste to China. Until China decided to ban importing waste, leaving the U.S. waste disposal industries with a problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK20t11He14 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK20t11He14 And finally I'll leave you with these: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-plastic-pollution-oceans-recycling-export-waste-malaysia-vietnam-thailand-a8400761.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/uk-plastic-polluti... https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/06/14/china-plastics-ban-malaysia-vietnam-poland/ https://unearthed.greenpeace.org/2018/06/14/china-plastics-b... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recycling-industry-under-investigation-for-and-corruption https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/18/uk-recyc... https://www.plasticsforchange.org/blog/category/why-are-plastic-recycling-rate-so-low https://www.plasticsforchange.org/blog/category/why-are-plas...

chmod775 7y ago

> Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean. Except that the plastic waste of certain countries tends to get "exported" to these places and then dumped there - if it doesn't get dumped into the ocean before it can even get there. The poorest places don't tend to generate so much plastic waste because it is mostly a by-product of "luxury goods" (read: trash) in developed countries bought by clueless consumers. For instance I will never understand the people who buy plastic-wrapped pre-sliced "salami" that hardly resembles the real thing in anything but name. I recently saw croissants(!) getting sold off the shelf in a supermarket. How the hell do you even make that work? Of course they were wrapped in plastic. I don't even want to know how they them make them last long enough. No way they're still crisp outside if the whole thing hasn't turned into a rock. I feel like some people will buy something not despite it being a plastic wrapped faint imitation of the real thing - but because it is.

ascar 7y ago
> For instance I will never understand the people who buy plastic-wrapped pre-sliced "salami" Well, if I don't buy it presliced from the butcher I always buy packaged presliced milano salami, because it's nearly impossible to slice it thin enough with a knife. There is also not really a difference in quality. Both products are imported from Italy anyway.
- rch 7y ago
  My butcher slices it, and weighs it out, and wraps it in recycled paper, which I store in glass containers at home.
beatgammit 7y ago
I've had croissants individually wrapped (e.g. at airports and other grab and go type places) and wrapped as a group (supermarkets and warehouse stores), and while neither are as good as buying fresh from a bakery, they're surprisingly good. The ones from Costco can last a few days before they're too dry to be good. If you care more about convenience than utmost quality, plastic does a pretty good job. In fact, I can't recall the last time I've had a croissant from a bakery, and I have definitely purchased dozens of packaged, off-the-shelf croissants in that time. Even though they're not as good as fresh, they're still good, to the point where it's not worth the time or extra money to go to the bakery. This is true for many other products as well. My grocery store butcher packages everything in plastic wrap, even if you get it from the counter (I think they have paper upon request). My self-serve, bulk foods company (WinCo) requires you to use their plastic bags instead of bringing your own containers (simplifies checkout process). Nearly everything I could want to buy is more conveniently purchased wrapped in plastic. People but plastic-wrapped products because of convenience, not because they prefer the packaging. I honestly prefer getting meat wrapped in paper because it's much easier to unwrap than plastic. I prefer getting bakery items in a paper bag than a clamshell or cellophane wrap, again, because it's easier to unpackage. However, to get those items packaged that way, I need to go out of my way, and specialty shops tend to have less reliable inventories because they're lower volume businesses. I doubt anyone prefers wasteful, inconvenient packaging, people just prefer convenience, and wasteful, inconvenient packaging is more convenient for stores, so that's what gets used. If you want to change the world, make a more convenient, cost-effective way to package things than plastic.

dylan604 7y ago

> Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean. Daily, I see people getting rid of the plastic wrapping around their new cigarette pack by throwing it out the car window or just dropping it straight to the ground. It's that type of plastic that makes its way to the city's runoff which makes its way to streams/rivers/lakes/oceans/etc. After any significant amount of rain, there's a few places I can drive by to see where the trash from throughout the city has washed into the grassy areas around bends in creaks/rivers. It's a good visual example of where the plastic pollution is originating.

scottlocklin 7y ago
Cellophane is biodegradable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane Most people worry about the wrong thing. If you live in the West, you're not appreciably contributing to ocean plastic pollution (and no, you're almost certainly not doing so by "shipping your garbage to china" either). Smokers, definitely not contributing to plastic pollution.
- spodek 7y ago
  > Smokers, definitely not contributing to plastic pollution National Geographic and Phys.org report otherwise: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigarettes-story-of-plastic https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/cigar... and https://phys.org/news/2019-07-cigarette-butts-forgotten-plastic-pollutionand.html https://phys.org/news/2019-07-cigarette-butts-forgotten-plas... Others producing more doesn't reduce their pollution.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Cellulose acetate aka cigarette butts, turns into dirt 4 months in the soil or a few years out in the open sunlight[1]. It's vastly more biodegradable than your hoodie, your socks, your Starbucks cup or even something like dried up egg yolk. I don't think people should throw it on the ground, because trash barrels and ash trays are there for a reason, but it's basically not an environmental problem at all. It's just unsightly litter. > Others producing more doesn't reduce their pollution. If you actually want to solve environmental problems, how about solving actual problems instead of picking on lower class cigarette smokers who aren't causing any issues? It sure seems like an awful lot of "environmentalism" is nothing more than a disgusting social class pose. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellulose_acetate

neuronic 7y ago

Our own trash is shipped to Asia first and then it ends up in some of those rivers. We pay Asian countries a lot to take our garbage.

comicjk 7y ago
We pay other countries to take our garbage only because we prefer to imagine it is being recycled. It's not like we don't have enough landfill space here, if we were willing to treat it as the trash that it is.
- WoahNoun 7y ago
  Yea there was a great two part planet money series on recycling this year. And the economic take away is that the current state of recycling in the US is broken and we have more than enough landfill space for thousands of years. One idea was to just burn it which this mentioned is what some European countries are doing. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-boss-a-garbage-boat-and-why-we-recycle https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-b... https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-should-we-recycle https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...

spodek 7y ago

> The first source of oceans plastic is fishing nets So apply what I wrote and you get: eat less fish. Since this is HN, people will talk about pros and cons of eating fish, but there's only one reason people create fishing nets. If people consume less of things that damage the environment, we will produce less of it and therefore damage less of it. If some populations have to eat it, most can still eat less. I last ate fish in 1990.

jsilence 7y ago
Or eat aquacultured fish from your region. For example from an aquaponic system. But there are few viable commercial operations on the market so far.
- millettjon 7y ago
  The large scale fish farms also pollute heavily.
  - jsilence 7y ago
    Absolutely! Sustainable, low emission recirculating aquaculture comes at a price. It is not yet clear whether customers are willing to pay the premium for products from a good solution.
  - atdrummond 7y ago
    The operations described by your OP aren’t large scale fish farms.
- the8472 7y ago
  Aren't aquacultured fish fed with fishmeal, which means even more fishing nets due to the conversion inefficiencies of carnivorous fish?
  - jsilence 7y ago
    At the time fishmeal and fish oil are neccessary to supply certain nutrients, lysin and methionine for example, but suppliers have been successfully reducing the amount of fishmeal and oil in recent times. The goal is to reduce it to a minimum. Not all fishmeal is unsustainable. The slaughtering residue from wild catch and from aquaculture as well as the bycatch are ressources for fish feed that we should not waste.

monk_e_boy 7y ago

I was at the beach today (UK) and there was more net than I could carry. It was in about 100 bits that I tied together into a giant ball. There were around 60 plastic bottles, a few big plastic cans (oil) and lots of micro plastic.

api 7y ago

Not all coastal cities. Multiple studies have sourced most ocean plastic to Chinese rivers and coastal cities (90th percentile) followed by India and a few other places. Why do we have to pretend that all coastal cities are equally at fault when this is clearly not true? Are people afraid its somehow racist? It has nothing to do with race but with certain governments that just don't care. It's become a pet peeve of mine when charges of racism is used to deflect political criticism of governments. In the US dumping trash in rivers is a crime and will get you in serious trouble: large fines, seizure of trucks and equipment, maybe even criminal charges.

jorblumesea 7y ago

> Your own trash is very unlikely to end up in the ocean. Except if you live in Asia or a developing country, which is a large percentage of the world population. After traveling through that region I can honestly say that I am not surprised to see so much plastic in the oceans. People dump trash in the water, throw plastic bottles on the ground, waste and recycling infrastructure is largely non-existent. Even in richer middle tier countries like China people just toss their plastic into the rivers.

andrekandre 7y ago
when visiting some island resorts (like 2 hour boat ride out) in thailand i was shocked at how much plastic garbage was floating around those otherwise beautiful islands... it’s my opinion these things need to become laws and business, not just individuals need to be fined heavily for jut dumping trash out