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> The world produces a whopping 380 million metric tons of plastic annually, and a large part of that plastic ends up in the world’s oceans and rivers. That's

> The world produces a whopping 380 million metric tons of plastic annually, and a large part of that plastic ends up in the world’s oceans and rivers. That's an average of about 50 kg of plastic produced per person per year which is insane but I wonder what the median is and what the distribution looks like. How much plastic does a person in the US go through compared to someone in a developing country? How much of that plastic is used in industrial settings to support our infrastructure compared to plastic we actually touch? This is horrible but now I really want to add some plastistone to my mineral specimen collection.

tnmom 3y ago
Very likely the plastic used by first world people is much more, but much less of it ends up in waterways. At least for me, it’s an order of magnitude easier to throw plastic into a trash bin than to drive down to the river and dump it in.
- buro9 3y ago
  Where do you think your trash goes?
  - tnmom 3y ago
    I really doubt the municipal trash service dumps it in the river.
    - foobarian 3y ago
      Yeah they burn it :cry-blood:
      - buro9 3y ago
        Exactly this. Waste incineration to create electricity, and also (according to those companies) to reduce emissions from landfills, and the need for land for waste. Even if you think it's going to landfill, a lot is not. And when it's burned, plastics are released into the environment, if not immediately then over shorter time than if they were left intact and buried.
        datadrivenangel 3y ago
        Appropriate incineration should have exhaust controls that minimize the amount of particulate emissions, including residual plastics.
        buro9 3y ago
        Agree, but now you have microplastic particulates to dispose of, and containing these long term is a far harder problem than containing the original larger plastics.
        logtempo 3y ago
        Large plastic end up smaller and smaller over time. Also microplastic mostly come from clothes and tires.
        aziaziazi 3y ago
        Micro plastics mostly comes from fishnets.
      - ars 3y ago
        Why :cry-blood:? Burning waste is by far the best way to dispose of trash. Like the next best option is not even close. It's best in every single possible way, except for one: Emotional people who don't realize it's the best way.
  - margalabargala 3y ago
    It goes to the landfill 10 miles from my house. And there it stays. Recycling, who knows. But trash, I know exactly where it goes.
- wedernoch 3y ago
  We put it in trash bins. Companies with contracts collect it. It get's shipped to asia or africa for recycling. Job done. Recycled ... It is dumped where ever it is convinient for the contracting company But I totaly undersand your point. For me, it would also be real work to not put waste in the trash bin, but to drive somewhere to dispose it
  - margalabargala 3y ago
    > We put it in trash bins [...] This isn't the case, at least in the US. Trash from trash bins is almost exclusively dealt with locally, whether in landfills or incinerators. Essentially zero US household trash is shipped internationally. Recycling is another matter. Plastic recycling frequently does follow the path you mentioned. For this reason it can sometimes be more environmentally friendly to throw away plastic waste, sequestering it in your local landfill, than "recycling" it into the Pacific ocean.
    - wedernoch 3y ago
      > This isn't the case, at least in the US. Trash from trash bins is almost exclusively dealt with locally, whether in landfills or incinerators. It's exactly the same in Germany. I was talking about plastic. In germany we recycle paper and "some" plastic. But all I've seen/read is, it's a miniscule amount. Like greenwashing. Most of it get's just shipped somewhere else with some super shady "we recycle it for you, so you can can wash you hands in innocence" deals. And IIRC it's the same for the US. During Covid there were numerous chinese container ships waiting on the US coast after unloading, to load "recycling material", because waiting was cheaper than driving back empty. (they just dump it somewhere in the end)
      - tomatotomato37 3y ago
        Actually if you look at EU export statistics, so little actual plastic waste gets exported to the Pacific (in contrast to wood chips going to Netherland power plants or cubed cars going wherever) that if 100% of it did end up in the ocean it would only increase the level of plastic outflow by a single percent. One of my earlier comments here has the more proof with links and stuff, it's just really buried and I don't feel like finding it right now
- adonovan 3y ago
  About a third of all marine plastic comes from one country: the Philippines, which has essentially no landfill capacity. One would hope that this concentrated hot spot (to use profiling terminology) makes it "low-hanging fruit" for intervention, but that hasn't happened yet.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Who would intervene and why?
    - phs318u 3y ago
      Perhaps a global or regional coalition of commercial fishing associations interested in protecting their market. Speaking for myself, I can confirm that I've reduced my intake of ocean-sourced seafood over the last decade precisely because of the increasing prevalence of micro-plastics in the food chain (which seems to be a far greater problem for ocean-sourced food than land-sourced food).
      - wahnfrieden 3y ago
        You believe in a consumer driven intervention?
- thejazzman 3y ago
  You'd be surprised how often your responsibility ends up in the water anyway In the woods near me there is so much trash -- caused by wind storms knocking off recycling bins and carrying the stuff until it's "caught" in the trees and other nature Kinda eye opening
bertil 3y ago
A little more than half of the plastic found in the ocean and large enough to be recognizable comes from fishing nets. Those are enormous and are used very aggressively: raking the floor, pulling hard even when it’s stuck against rocks, etc. It’s cheaper to carry spares on the way out at sea than to care about not losing them: those will go gone soon enough and replaced by fish on the way back anyway. If you care about that, there are ways to get fish that isn’t caught with industrial trawlers like this, but it requires meaningful attention. Be conscious fishmongers will lie to your face, so traceability is critical. They routinely lied to my dad when they knew him personally; they knew he was in charge of fish stocks too, and he wasn’t shy about his ability to differentiate species. And not white lies, like misplacing the species with something equivalent or from the wrong part of the same bay: he was routinely told they were selling fish that was banned from sale after he had pointed out it wasn’t the right species, that species was extinct in that country, and the only stock available was farmed… All that to say: you can help, but it’s a big uphill battle. I guess that half counts as industrial that you don’t touch. The other half (of the plastic found in the ocean) is from countries without sufficient garbage collection. There was an effort to collect it around the “Team Rivers” effort (after “Team Trees”) from a couple of YouTubers. I remember someone criticizing the effort as whitewashing the reality: there were draft laws to collect garbage. However, in budget-constraint countries without an omnipresent tax collection capacity, that depends on financing it by collecting a fee from known brands using plastic packaging. Lobbyists from well-known international brands opposed the laws to protect margins. I couldn’t find that reaction with minimal effort, but I can try harder to track it if you are interested. There is plastic thrown out by pigs in Western countries. It flies in the wind and gets into rivers and the ocean, but that’s materially less overall. I’d still blame the same well-known brands for not using glass or metallic bottles, though. So, in that second case, you do touch it and the culprits are well-known sugary water vendors.
- Solvency 3y ago
  You're forgetting two absolutely massive and completely endemic plastic vectors: 1. Car tires. 2. And literally all clothes that aren't natural fibers. Which is a huge, absolutely huge percentage. Neither of these get any better by preventing littering. Driving and clothes washing and drying is spewing your plastic mist into the air 24 hours a day.

tnmom 3y ago

Very likely the plastic used by first world people is much more, but much less of it ends up in waterways. At least for me, it’s an order of magnitude easier to throw plastic into a trash bin than to drive down to the river and dump it in.

buro9 3y ago
Where do you think your trash goes?
- tnmom 3y ago
  I really doubt the municipal trash service dumps it in the river.
  - foobarian 3y ago
    Yeah they burn it :cry-blood:
    - buro9 3y ago
      Exactly this. Waste incineration to create electricity, and also (according to those companies) to reduce emissions from landfills, and the need for land for waste. Even if you think it's going to landfill, a lot is not. And when it's burned, plastics are released into the environment, if not immediately then over shorter time than if they were left intact and buried.
      - datadrivenangel 3y ago
        Appropriate incineration should have exhaust controls that minimize the amount of particulate emissions, including residual plastics.
        buro9 3y ago
        Agree, but now you have microplastic particulates to dispose of, and containing these long term is a far harder problem than containing the original larger plastics.
        logtempo 3y ago
        Large plastic end up smaller and smaller over time. Also microplastic mostly come from clothes and tires.
        aziaziazi 3y ago
        Micro plastics mostly comes from fishnets.
    - ars 3y ago
      Why :cry-blood:? Burning waste is by far the best way to dispose of trash. Like the next best option is not even close. It's best in every single possible way, except for one: Emotional people who don't realize it's the best way.
- margalabargala 3y ago
  It goes to the landfill 10 miles from my house. And there it stays. Recycling, who knows. But trash, I know exactly where it goes.
wedernoch 3y ago
We put it in trash bins. Companies with contracts collect it. It get's shipped to asia or africa for recycling. Job done. Recycled ... It is dumped where ever it is convinient for the contracting company But I totaly undersand your point. For me, it would also be real work to not put waste in the trash bin, but to drive somewhere to dispose it
- margalabargala 3y ago
  > We put it in trash bins [...] This isn't the case, at least in the US. Trash from trash bins is almost exclusively dealt with locally, whether in landfills or incinerators. Essentially zero US household trash is shipped internationally. Recycling is another matter. Plastic recycling frequently does follow the path you mentioned. For this reason it can sometimes be more environmentally friendly to throw away plastic waste, sequestering it in your local landfill, than "recycling" it into the Pacific ocean.
  - wedernoch 3y ago
    > This isn't the case, at least in the US. Trash from trash bins is almost exclusively dealt with locally, whether in landfills or incinerators. It's exactly the same in Germany. I was talking about plastic. In germany we recycle paper and "some" plastic. But all I've seen/read is, it's a miniscule amount. Like greenwashing. Most of it get's just shipped somewhere else with some super shady "we recycle it for you, so you can can wash you hands in innocence" deals. And IIRC it's the same for the US. During Covid there were numerous chinese container ships waiting on the US coast after unloading, to load "recycling material", because waiting was cheaper than driving back empty. (they just dump it somewhere in the end)
    - tomatotomato37 3y ago
      Actually if you look at EU export statistics, so little actual plastic waste gets exported to the Pacific (in contrast to wood chips going to Netherland power plants or cubed cars going wherever) that if 100% of it did end up in the ocean it would only increase the level of plastic outflow by a single percent. One of my earlier comments here has the more proof with links and stuff, it's just really buried and I don't feel like finding it right now
adonovan 3y ago
About a third of all marine plastic comes from one country: the Philippines, which has essentially no landfill capacity. One would hope that this concentrated hot spot (to use profiling terminology) makes it "low-hanging fruit" for intervention, but that hasn't happened yet.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  Who would intervene and why?
  - phs318u 3y ago
    Perhaps a global or regional coalition of commercial fishing associations interested in protecting their market. Speaking for myself, I can confirm that I've reduced my intake of ocean-sourced seafood over the last decade precisely because of the increasing prevalence of micro-plastics in the food chain (which seems to be a far greater problem for ocean-sourced food than land-sourced food).
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      You believe in a consumer driven intervention?
thejazzman 3y ago
You'd be surprised how often your responsibility ends up in the water anyway In the woods near me there is so much trash -- caused by wind storms knocking off recycling bins and carrying the stuff until it's "caught" in the trees and other nature Kinda eye opening

bertil 3y ago

A little more than half of the plastic found in the ocean and large enough to be recognizable comes from fishing nets. Those are enormous and are used very aggressively: raking the floor, pulling hard even when it’s stuck against rocks, etc. It’s cheaper to carry spares on the way out at sea than to care about not losing them: those will go gone soon enough and replaced by fish on the way back anyway. If you care about that, there are ways to get fish that isn’t caught with industrial trawlers like this, but it requires meaningful attention. Be conscious fishmongers will lie to your face, so traceability is critical. They routinely lied to my dad when they knew him personally; they knew he was in charge of fish stocks too, and he wasn’t shy about his ability to differentiate species. And not white lies, like misplacing the species with something equivalent or from the wrong part of the same bay: he was routinely told they were selling fish that was banned from sale after he had pointed out it wasn’t the right species, that species was extinct in that country, and the only stock available was farmed… All that to say: you can help, but it’s a big uphill battle. I guess that half counts as industrial that you don’t touch. The other half (of the plastic found in the ocean) is from countries without sufficient garbage collection. There was an effort to collect it around the “Team Rivers” effort (after “Team Trees”) from a couple of YouTubers. I remember someone criticizing the effort as whitewashing the reality: there were draft laws to collect garbage. However, in budget-constraint countries without an omnipresent tax collection capacity, that depends on financing it by collecting a fee from known brands using plastic packaging. Lobbyists from well-known international brands opposed the laws to protect margins. I couldn’t find that reaction with minimal effort, but I can try harder to track it if you are interested. There is plastic thrown out by pigs in Western countries. It flies in the wind and gets into rivers and the ocean, but that’s materially less overall. I’d still blame the same well-known brands for not using glass or metallic bottles, though. So, in that second case, you do touch it and the culprits are well-known sugary water vendors.

Solvency 3y ago
You're forgetting two absolutely massive and completely endemic plastic vectors: 1. Car tires. 2. And literally all clothes that aren't natural fibers. Which is a huge, absolutely huge percentage. Neither of these get any better by preventing littering. Driving and clothes washing and drying is spewing your plastic mist into the air 24 hours a day.