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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Can Be Cleaned for $7.5B
- alexandrehtrb 2y agoWebpage doesn't allow scrolling... Firefox 130.0 Desktop
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- andyjohnson0 2y agoThis is great, and should be done. But we also need to stop it happening again. Which means stopping fishing nets and plastic trash from being dumped in the sea by ships. And preventing plastic that is dumped into rivers in developing countries [1] from reaching the sea. These are hard problems. [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803
- chakintosh 2y agohttps://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/ https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
- nathancahill 2y agoGreat case study in my home country: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/introducing-the-interceptor-barricade-the-ocean-cleanup-returns-to-guatemala/ https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/introducing-the-intercep...
- wiz21c 2y agoThe fishing market is 600B $... So if they invest 1% of that market size into the cleaning, they can go on with current practices... They can even improve the process and make it cheaper.
- boringg 2y agoGood luck getting them to pay...
- nxicvyvy 2y agoIt's just a tax, we all pay.
- hammock 2y ago1% is a lot.. gross margin for the big bulk fishing operations is around 10% so you are asking them to give up 10% of their profits To put 1% in more context, the biggest companies like P&G, Verizon, Progressive Insurance etc will never spend more that 3% of revenue MAXIMUM on their total marketing budget..and that is money that they directly measure ROI from.
- petesergeant 2y ago> in developing countries In this particular case I think it’s worth specifically calling out The Philippines, who are responsible for a third of all ocean waste. India are second at ~12%, but also with a billion and a half people that’s a little more understandable
- MrsPeaches 2y agoWow, didn't realise India had that many people! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_India
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoWhat about China?
- petesergeant 2y agoAbout 1/5 as much as the Philippines overall, so two orders of magnitude less per capita, and about half as much as India per capita. Here’s a pretty picture: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic-waste-pollution-by-country/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/visualized-ocean-plastic...
- snarf21 2y agoGiven that ~80% of the GPGP is from commercial fishing, I don't know how we ever stop them or catch them. A factory can be checked at its outflows. We'd have to monitor and catalog everything on every fishing ship and that just doesn't scale. At best we could add a fee to global commercial fishing fee to all boats based on the wholesale of their catch and spend that on clean up and other sustainability efforts.
- loceng 2y agoAre all countries currently honest with their fishing practices, e.g. catch sizes, etc?
- liveoneggs 2y agoNo countries are honest about any aspect of fishing
- snarf21 2y agoI assume not but that could become tied the ability to import and the western countries could try to drive that. Again, not an easy thing to even get your head around let alone implement.
- c420 2y agoYou're assuming Western countries are compliant https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/06/eu-failing-to-enforce-fishing-rules-say-campaigners https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/sep/06/...
- loceng 2y agoSo the solution is use tax money instead to commission citizen-run oversight then?
- hammock 2y ago>This is great, and should be done. But we also need to stop it happening again. The patch was discovered 27 years ago (1997). So, $7 billion to clean it up, and then $250 million a year to keep it clean thereafter
- dartos 2y agoNot too bad in the grand scheme of things.
- thefz 2y agoChina and India do not give a shit about climate/ecology agreements
- elisharobinson 2y agofuture mob bosses gonna be competing for ocean cleanup rights XD.
- vincefutr23 2y agoWhere does the garbage get moved too? What if the least societally harmful place for waste is the middle of the pacific ?
- troyvit 2y agoLandfills really aren't so bad. Article from a previous HN post: https://practical.engineering/blog/2024/9/3/the-hidden-engineering-of-landfills https://practical.engineering/blog/2024/9/3/the-hidden-engin...
- interactivecode 2y agoWhy would contaminating the environment of a major food supply be the least harmful place? how is that better than purpose built infrastructure to contain that trash?
- vincefutr23 2y agois there any commercial fishing in the middle of the pacific? Why is it better to ship it to leech into the groundwater near population centers ?
- alnwlsn 2y agoLandfills. Theoceancleanup's own figure is that there is 100,000 tonnes of plastic. This one [0] landfill in Ohio gets 2 million tonnes each year. That's out of ~250 million tonnes produced by the US each year [1]. So it seems there is plenty of room. 0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpke_Sanitary_Landfill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumpke_Sanitary_Landfill 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfills_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfills_in_the_United_States
- vincefutr23 2y agoSo the plan is to spend 7 billion and however much carbon over 10 years to move pollutants from the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from anyone or any rich fisheries, to landfills near population centers?
- throwaway5752 2y agohttps://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pollution-cleanup https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pol... It will kill marine life, it will cause further pollution, and it won't address the root cause. It is only one of 5 oceanic garbage patches. They should focus on preventing pollution at the source. This is misguided, even though they mean well.
- eagerpace 2y agoI generally agree that the root cause should be addressed first (student debt is a great example) and the good news is that I believe this project is tackling both simultaneously.
- Aditya_Garg 2y agoFrom the article >They aim to achieve this goal through a dual strategy: intercepting in rivers to stop the flow and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. They are already doing that
- abeppu 2y agoThis organization also has projects about stopping plastic in rivers from entering the ocean. Maybe this isn't the ultimate source, but it's literally upstream of the ocean. This is more of a "yes and" situation -- we need both. https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/ https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
- interactivecode 2y agoThey do also work on intercepting from rivers [0], but what do you propose? We should just leave all that garbage in the ocean and just try not to look at it? [0]: https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/ https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
- changoplatanero 2y agoWe already have a giant 380 mile barrier sticking out in the ocean that can catch washed up trash. It's called Florida!
- phendrenad2 2y agoMake that $75B to give the middlemen their customary 900% tip.
- cs702 2y agoThis is the cost of cleaning the Pacific Ocean's great garbage patch[a] with System 03[b], a cleaning process designed, deployed and operated by the OP's organization for removing garbage from the ocean and recycling much of it (e.g., non-biodegradable plastics) into new products. Even if the cost estimate of $7.5B is off by a factor of 2x or 3x, deploying this technology to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch looks like a no-brainer to me. The long-term financial benefits for the world could be multiple orders of magnitude larger. --- [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch [b] https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-03-a-beginners-guide/ https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/system-03-a-beginners-gu...
- petesergeant 2y ago> The long-term financial benefits for the world could be multiple orders of magnitude larger. I mean I think we should do it for the sake of it, but, I’m keen to know where you think we get financial benefits.
- concordDance 2y ago> The long-term financial benefits for the world could be multiple orders of magnitude larger. I'm curious how you came to this conclusion. What are the economic benefits and how are they linked to this patch in the middle of the Pacific?
- hobofan 2y agoIts hard to put concrete numbers to it, but there are many ways you can generally draw connections from "intact wildlife ecosystems" to economic benefits on n-th order effects. E.g. - Less plastic in the ocean -> less microplastics in fish -> healthier people -> less cost due to sickness, and a more productive population - Less fishing net debris in the ocean -> less species of turtles going extinct -> more tourism for turtle watching (IDK if that's a thing) On some fronts with wildlife conservation you can also draw a more direct line. E.g. vulture conservation essentially pays for itself, as vultures do carcass cleanup of diseased animals for free (preventing the spread of the disease through the ecosystem, eventually reaching humans), where the equivalent cleanup would be quite expensive. My guess with ocean conservation is that the "direct economic benefit" is mostly in the realm of fish as food resource.
- briandear 2y agoTake 10% of the money being sent to Ukraine for the war and this can be handled many times over.
- KHRZ 2y agoJust take 10% of the Russian war economy to clean the garbage patch, then we would have double the money fro Ukraine weapon savings!
- tankaiji 2y agoFor the war? What if your home country gets invaded with soldiers shooting and raping? What do you do?
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- MaxHoppersGhost 2y agoOr even less than the % we give to Israel
- abeppu 2y ago> The Ocean Cleanup’s operations demonstrate that the elimination of the GPGP can be done at today’s level of performance in 10 years at a cost of $7.5bn > Data and modelling indicate that the removal of the GPGP could be achieved in 5 years at a cost of $4bn We should do this at either price point, but ... what's the difference here? If we can do it faster and cheaper, why put the higher price quote in the headline? Is the 'data and modeling' including some extrapolation that assumes performance will increase meaningfully once they're started at scale?
- aeturnum 2y agoI believe what they are saying is two fold: 1) We have been doing some cleaning and, based on our real results that we have recorded, we are saying it can be cleaned up for $7.5bn over 10 years. 2) Separately, we have also done some thinking and modeling about other approaches and we project that we could probably clean up the same area in less time for less money.
- abeppu 2y agoIf so, that's great, but I'd love to hear them say something about the other faster cheaper approaches in 2 rather than just dangle that they exist.
- aeturnum 2y agoYah, the press release is written in a confusing way. I wish they were more clear about where those two numbers are coming from but that is my read of what they are trying to say.
- fedeb95 2y agoonce cleaned, can it be kept so? At what cost?
- Cokainsky 2y ago[dead]
- bArray 2y ago> The Ocean Cleanup’s operations demonstrate that the elimination of the GPGP can be done at today’s level of performance in 10 years at a cost of $7.5bn > Data and modelling indicate that the removal of the GPGP could be achieved in 5 years at a cost of $4bn 10 years at $7.5bn or 5 years at $4bn? I'll take 2.5 years at $2.5bn. That kind of tells me that there are enormous labour costs. What I really want to know is what they are doing with it once collected. > Ocean plastic pollution is one of the most urgent problems our oceans face today, costing the world up to $2.5 trillion per year in damage to economies, industries, and the environment I'd like to see a breakdown of that. My suspicion is that this random floating patch of rubbish hardly affects economies or industries at all. > To put the cost of clean oceans in context, the annual spend in the US on Halloween decorations is $10.6bn USD; US pet food spending in 2024 was $66.9bn USD; the combined net worth of the top 10 richest people is $1.66tn USD, and 1% of the annual net profits of the world’s plastic producers is $7.2bn USD. What has the predicted worth (that is mostly non-liquid) of the top 10 richest people got to do with anything? I did think "why not just scoop it up into a retrofitted ship and take it away?". The following seems interesting [1]: > Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density (4 particles per cubic metre (3.1/cu yd)) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area. This is because the patch is a widely dispersed area consisting primarily of suspended "fingernail-sized or smaller"—often microscopic—particles in the upper water column known as microplastics. Sounds like a fun problem. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
- mschuster91 2y ago> What has the predicted worth (that is mostly non-liquid) of the top 10 richest people got to do with anything? There used to be a time when rich people did something for the common good with all their (often questionably) gotten money. Even kings had to buy the favor of the commoners, lest they start a riot, and the various variants of mafia are generally known for their generosity in areas where they set up shop. Today's neo-feudalist class has completely forgotten this very basic rule, and people are getting pissed massively. As for why that is related? Well, easy, for someone like Jeff Bezos, funding ocean cleanup or whatever would be not even a tiny dent in his bank accounts...
- newsclues 2y agoWhat is the cost of a solution for the few locations that are generating most of the plastic waste that ends up in the ocean?
- duxup 2y agoLet's say they clean it. What's to keep it from continuing to fill back in?
- brycethornton 2y agoI don't think anybody is assuming it will stay clean without continued work to clean and improve the root causes of the pollution. Still worth doing.
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- TheRealPomax 2y agoBecause those are two separate problems, and not having a solution for one shouldn't stop you from dealing with the second. If you can remove it faster than it grows, other folks can deal with tackling the vastly more complex issue of getting the entire planet to reduce their dependency plastics.
- eastbound 2y agoNothing. Philippines is the largest contributor [1], Western countries will clean, Indonesia will continue, it’s a money transfer from the West to Philippines through a garbage medium. [1] https://www.theseacleaners.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/screenshot-2023-03-17-at-16.18.50-1600x0-c-default.png https://www.theseacleaners.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/sc...
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hobofan 2y agoThat is factored into their approach. See https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers for multiple approaches on how to prevent plastic from making its way into the ocean. Also from the about section of the blog post: > They aim to achieve this goal through a dual strategy: intercepting in rivers to stop the flow and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean. [...] To curb the tide via rivers, The Ocean Cleanup has developed Interceptor™ Solutions to halt and extract riverine plastic before it reaches the ocean.
- rKarpinski 2y ago"of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today ... fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets."[1] [1]https://web.archive.org/web/20190618030308/https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190618030308/https://news.nati...
- loceng 2y agoAny way to identify where that fishing gear is coming from or produced? Obviously anyone from anywhere could be buying it to use and then trashing it.
- Workaccount2 2y agoEveryone knows who is leaving most of those nets in the ocean.
- Larrikin 2y agoSo who?
- lantry 2y agoMust be the "Republic of They" that everyone is always talking about. "They are coming here and taking our jobs!", "They are polluting the ocean!", etc
- loceng 2y ago"They are spreading propaganda that it isn't they doing it!"
- keyringlight 2y agoThey're likely referring to China, over the past 5+ years there's been a number of articles about how they're taking liberties with the ocean territory of other countries, doing things like turning off transponders to hide, and the vast scale of their fleets.
- adamgordonbell 2y agoI understood the garbage patch better once I understood it's misnamed. It's more like the great Pacific micro plastic slurry patch. It's a huge area, where the water is filled with lots of tiny debris that is floating micro plastic chunks. The plastic gets physically broken down by nature into sand size particles but then just gathers in that massive area due to water currents.
- nkurz 2y agoTrue, but "filled with lots" and "slurry" might also be misleading. It's many tiny particles of plastic across a really big area, with the pieces so small and far between that it's generally not visible from the surface. Here's John Cook's description: So how dense is it? Let’s assume 80,000 metric tons over an area twice the size of Texas. The area of Texas is 700,000 km² , so that’s 8 × 10^10 grams of trash over 1.4 × 10^12 square meters, or 57 milligrams per square meter. An empty water bottle weighs about 20 grams, and an American football field covers 5300 square meters, so this would be the same density of plastic as 15 empty water bottles scattered over a football field. https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/09/10/density-of-the-gpgp/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2018/09/10/density-of-the-gpg... 1/20th of a gram per square meter spread suspended in the top few meters of water is real, but it doesn't look anything like a floating garbage pile.
- paxys 2y agoThis is the same line of thinking as "we just need $X to wipe out all college debt/medical debt". Sure, you can do it, but what happens when the same amount of debt is racked up again in a couple years? Do you keep using taxpayer money/crowdfunding/whatever else to pay it off every time? Or should you stop and address the core problem first, then fix the symptoms?
- reaperducer 2y agoThis is the same line of thinking as "we just need $X to wipe out all college debt/medical debt". Sure, you can do it, but what happens when the same amount of debt is racked up again in a couple years? So you never clean your toilet because it's just going to get dirty again?
- paxys 2y agoI don't let my toilet get to a state where it is a national/global emergency.
- konfusinomicon 2y agonot sure i have the self control to avoid Chipotle burritos like yourself
- svardilfari 2y ago"I'm not spending a dime or a second of MY time cleaning this toilet (that I also use) until someone fixes the root-cause, now AND forever! (never mind that I am also at least partially a contributing factor if I've ever eaten a single fish in my entire life)"
- acover 2y agoThey are suggesting installing a toilet so you aren't just using a corner and remodeling the house every few years.
- Dudelander 2y agoIf the presser is correct (and I am extremely skeptical), then the $7.5B cost would be trivial - even if it had to be done annually.
- renewiltord 2y agoThe scale of various projects is quite interesting. This costs less than connecting SF's Transbay Terminal (near which I work) to its Caltrain station (near which I live). My commute is currently 7 min by city rental ebike. $8b to save the 7 min. Or $7.5b to clean the garbage patch.
- Dudelander 2y agoHave these numbers been verified by a neutral 3rd party? They seem awfully optimistic.
- kylerush 2y agoPardon my own ignorance, but isn't it also bad to have all of this trash on land? I would love for it to get removed from the ocean, but what's the terminal state plan? I'm sure there's a plan, I'm just wondering what it is.
- wizzwizz4 2y agoWell-managed landfills are among the best solutions I know. (After all, the oil that the plastic was made from was originally buried underground, and wasn't harming anyone there.)
- hobofan 2y ago> After all, the oil that the plastic was made from was originally buried underground, and wasn't harming anyone there While I agree with your main point, that isn't really solid reasoning. Oil wells are typically so deep down, that yeah, the oil was too far in the ground to have the potential to harm anyone. But ground water (and ground water pollution is one of the concerns with landfills) are much higher up in the ground, and if you now put a landfill on top of it, it has the potential of seeping into ground water (if badly managed).
- ninininino 2y agoIt's like scooping up chunks of feces from a drinking well but leaving behind a brown stained liquid with all the e. coli and other microbes you could ever need and everyone cheers, 'the village is saved!' all the stupid villagers cheer as they continue to shit in the well and grab their cups to get a drink. The earth is a precious precious thing and we don't deserve it.
- mostly_harmless 2y agoMaybe a dumb question, but why? I don't like that it exists, but isn't it self-contained? The main reason for cleaning it up seems to be quoted as [1], which oversimplfies to 'animals might eat plastic, and it affects them', and it will make microplastics. But these problems seem to be localized to the garbage patch. I could see it as a asbestos situation where its only problematic if you disturb it. Ongoing dumping seems to be a bigger problem as it's not localized. [1] - https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s43591-023-00074-2 https://microplastics.springeropen.com/articles/10.1186/s435...
- EnigmaFlare 2y agoYea, desire to fix a lot of environmental issues is driven by worry about the unknown consequences, which can be a genuine reason but it's hard to know how much you can justify spending on it, and willful ignorance because worrying about the environment is fashionable. It might turn out to be harmless or even beneficial, you never know. The article says the plastic costs up to $2.5T annually but doesn't specify a lower bound, so I assume the minimum cost is negative. It doesn't help that reporters use these dirty salesman tricks to fool people the same way a shop having sale might advertise "up to 50% off all stock" when really only a small minority of products have such a big discount.
- jauntywundrkind 2y agoWe could also build a nuclear aircraft carrier to go drive into the trash & reprocess it into a giant raft. Then a villain starts crafting a super virus & infecting people from the raft... Oh wait, that's the plot of Snow Crash.
- 486sx33 2y agoCough it up China
- hulitu 2y ago> The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Can Be Cleaned for $7.5B ... and then sent back in the Pacific.