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Why the Ocean Cleanup hasn't solved the plastic pollution crisis

97 points by sohkamyung 2mo ago

xnx 2mo ago
> The Ocean Cleanup didn’t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn’t. What can we learn from this? Listen to experts. At least they recognize the "I told you so".
nexawave-ai 2mo ago
They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. I've seen firsthand how their solutions have been implemented and have had a positive impact on the environment. How often do we hear promises from NGOs or government entities claiming they will solve humanitarian issues such as housing shortages or hunger, only to fail miserably while spending billions of dollars in the process? Meanwhile, others grow rich from government tenders and contracts at the expense of the unfortunate beneficiaries.
- arionhardison 2mo ago
  > They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. TY for saying this. I am having an especially hard time right now because this is my attitude as well and it seems; even here on HN that its now cool to literally just not try. Complain, call everything AI-slop and just concede defeat to Altman, Dario and Zuck. I literally had someone tell me its stupid and pointless to try and build efficiencies into systems like Medicare etc... and we should just wait on "mind-control". At a time when the barrier to entry and the cost of just fucking trying has never been lower it seems like there are more people than ever just waiting to tear everything down and recruit you into their cult of apathetic misery.
  - crote 2mo ago
    Not everything is worth trying. If we want to stop the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets, and someone says "Hey, perhaps the penguins are the problem. We should murder all the penguins!", should we go all-in on that? If it inevitably doesn't end up working, should we just shrug and say "Well, at least we tried..."? Personally I believe it is probably better to listen to the scientists who keep yelling that it isn't going to work and that we should focus on this "climate change" thing instead, but that's just me. Doing something can be worse than doing nothing, and you don't get a participation trophy for a failed obviously-ludicrous moonshot - all you've done is leech money away from the people working on real solutions.
    - arionhardison 2mo ago
      This genuinely made me laugh. Fuck the penguin's LOL; but I actually do see your point here. There is a big diff in the online and offline world in terms of cost/resources spent and I did not consider that so I digress. Thankfully Elon/Trump shaved a cool 2 trillion off the budget so maybe we have some room to fudge a bit. #MoonShot Sometimes, I think my bias is more with the "who" gets a chance at a moonshot vs what it is and thats obviously problematic. I will do better.
- kadal 2mo ago
  The point of the article is that this intervention is actively harmful for exactly the same reasons raised by experts a long time ago. > In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. This attitude is wrong IMO. The issue with high-profile half-baked interventions is that they distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean. This is self-evident from data on their own website! https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/ https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/ . River mouths/estuaries are also some of the most densely populated regions in the world. This bites in that it is easy for plastic to enter the ocean. But it's also a lot easier to run cleanup at the source, next to humans, rather than 3000km away in the middle of the ocean.
  - IncreasePosts 2mo ago
    What evidence is there that people would start funding river clean up if they stopped funding in-ocean initiatives?
    - andai 2mo ago
      Well, when I talk about fixing the core issues with JavaScript, these days people say "why bother, just paper it over at the TS layer..."
    - natebc 2mo ago
      [dead]
  - hklgny 2mo ago
    My read of the article is that they’ve also pivoted to the methods experts suggest as well. The article actually phrases that in a negative way weirdly. I agree with the original comment, at least they’re trying and iterating. You get conflicting feedback from experts in all cases. At some point you have to commit and try.
  - mnau 2mo ago
    > distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean. They pivoted to mostly river cleanup (interceptors) many years ago. And they clearly show that it is just one step back, not a full time solution. Ocean cleanup is last step, river grab is the step before that and having proper garbage collection would be best. Which is literally written in TFA: > Now they mostly intercept plastic when it first leaves rivers and enters the ocean instead of trying to scoop it out of the middle of the ocean, though the open ocean work is still mentioned on their website
- SergeyKa 2mo ago
  NGOs don't "fail miserably" - their actual goal is laundering tax money, and they very much do succeed!
- hencq 2mo ago
  Spot on. Another thing these experts fail to mention is that a lot of the data on the Pacific Garbage patch actually comes from the Ocean Cleanup, since, you know, they actually went out there to look.
  - ortusdux 2mo ago
    There is the Marine Debris program at NOAA as well as satellite based tracking methods: https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/discover-marine-debris/garbage-patches https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/discover-marine-debris/garbage... https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9449485 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9449485
- enraged_camel 2mo ago
  >> They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. The alternative is not "doing nothing at all." It's spending the money effectively and in ways that don't kill marine life. TFA gives an example near the end: "So if we can’t scoop all the plastic trash out of the ocean without killing large numbers of marine animals, what can we do instead? One effective (and cost-effective) solution is the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. This amazing program has removed more than 400 million pounds of trash from beaches, where it’s much easier to access than in the middle of the ocean, before it gets swept back to sea. They do this at incredibly low cost, because more than 19 million people around the world have volunteered to help. “Our total annual budget for all our plastics advocacy work, which includes cleanup, science and policy efforts, is about $6 million,” says Jordana Lewis, director of communications for the Ocean Conservancy Director of Communications. “Every organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place.” As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings. Meanwhile Dr. Richards points out that in 2024 Ocean Cleanup’s System 002 “was out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day, picking up less plastic than a bunch of volunteers on beaches.” (A representative for the Ocean Cleanup told me via email that they are working on improving the cost efficiency of their operations.)"
  - happyopossum 2mo ago
    > for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place.” As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings That math doesn't show what the author might want it to - The Ocean Cleanup removed ~118Mlbs of waste for $72m, while it would take $246M to do the same with the "incredibly low cost" methods of the Ocean Conservancy?
- ortusdux 2mo ago
  Perfect is the enemy of good. I think the Ocean Cleanup has been one of the most effective (non- political/commercial) PR campaigns of the last decade.
  - crote 2mo ago
    Sure, it was an excellent PR campaign, but did it actually achieve something as well or could the same money have gotten a better outcome if it had been applied more effectively?
  - wredcoll 2mo ago
    Is there meaningfully less plastic waste in the oceans now?
    - HPsquared 2mo ago
      Less than there otherwise would have been, for sure.
- thinkthatover 2mo ago
  I'm curious, what have firsthand experience have you seen of solutions implemented by The Ocean Cleanup? There will always be misallocation of resources in the private and public sector, I think the main point of this article is "trusting the experts in complex situations", which in my opinion is valid and needs to be said more emphatically in the current political climate. “There was this spirit at the time that a few well-meaning young people with a lot of passion would find solutions, but for complex problems like this one, the teenage geniuses and their billionaire backers aren’t going to save us, and they’re going to take us on a wild and expensive ride along the way,” Helm says.
- SlightlyLeftPad 2mo ago
  On a much smaller scale, a pool of water recently required renovation with a bill of $16 million. Failed miserably. I think it’s a great example of your point nonetheless.
- dajonker 2mo ago
  Did you read actually read the article and if so, did you read until the end? Let me just respond by quoting the article: > When experts started speaking out about the Ocean Cleanup several years ago, I witnessed several of them endure online harassment from supporters of the organization, often phrased as “At least they’re trying to do something to help, all you do is complain.” (Note that this was being said to people who devoted their lives and careers to evidence-based solutions to cleaning up the ocean).
- cpill 2mo ago
  the only thing that will be effective is if governments start taxing the production of plastic to the point it's not a cheap alternative anymore. these types of projects are too make people feel better while pissing in the wind
- aaron695 2mo ago
  [dead]
msandford 2mo ago
The title of the article is kind of technically correct but still misleading. It is true that The Ocean Cleanup "we're going to trawl the ocean for plastic" approach isn't working terribly well. But they did pivot to stopping trash from washing out of rivers and into the ocean which is working. Stopping the mess from growing is also a very good thing. This seems like some combination of the enemy of good is perfect and also sour grapes that someone else is doing the thing.
- JoeAltmaier 2mo ago
  Read again? Negative is the enemy of good, and this project was a net negative. As PR it went well, if you didn't examine it too closely. It was a misnomer from the start - it was 'harbor cleanup' or 'river cleanup' really. Where the big obvious plastic objects are. I don't believe they proposed any method for actually cleaning up the 'garbage patch' which consists of pepper-sized particles of plastic that requires a sieve to see. And which has been colonized by many marine creatures, so 'cleaning it up' would have the side effect of mass sterilization. Issues are hard. PR is easy, especially if you hand-wave over the hard stuff.
  - dpcx 2mo ago
    They're still doing ocean cleanup, too. Getting the fishing equipment out of the water is a huge improvement.
    - JoeAltmaier 2mo ago
      Agreed
  - msandford 2mo ago
    I'm confused about the idea that the project was a net negative. Based on what? River cleanups are happening that weren't happening before. That seems relatively positive. Is the negative that they spent too much money on the trawling that didn't work?
jonahbenton 2mo ago
Sympathetic to other strategies but that writeup is wholly unconvincing. It comes across as astroturf.
21asdffdsa12 2mo ago
The plastic devouring bacteria breeding program is going very well. Typing this on a phone that dissolves as we speak. As if a million million-sided dice are thrown in unison, always landing on the six-up - a thousand times in a row to get through a labyrinth.
- marginalia_nu 2mo ago
  Yeah it'll be great when plastic starts to rot like wood. Thank god we haven't spent the last 60 years using plastic as a water proof electrical insulator.
  - rickypp 2mo ago
    Now I'm imagining an eco-terrorist that develops a plastic eating fungus as ubiquitous and hardy as yeast and releases it into the world.
greenavocado 2mo ago
Sources of ocean plastic https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-emissions-of-plastic-into-the-ocean-A-The-geospatial-distribution-of-plastic_fig3_351269287 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-emissions-of-plas...
- ricardobeat 2mo ago
  Curiously maps to the places where they are doing river cleanup, who would have figured!? https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/ https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
nextstep 2mo ago
It’s capitalism. The market has determined that plastic in the ocean is the most efficient way to produce goods and services.
- marginalia_nu 2mo ago
  It's also chemistry. As long as we're using natural gas, there be a surplus of cheap ethane and we'll indirectly subsidize plastic, since making plastic out of the ethane puts that waste product to use (by creating plastic waste instead).
- citrin_ru 2mo ago
  I know it's fashionable to blame capitalism for everything which is wrong with the world but it's the people and governments who don't care about the pollution and think that's it's fine to throw garbage on the ground or in the river instead of disposing it properly. The Soviet Union did a fair amount of damage to the environment, despite not being a capitalist country. Update: a small grammar fix.
  - hamper653 2mo ago
    Soviet Union did a fair amount of damage to the environment being a capitalist country.
- trgn 2mo ago
  it's largely because it's being dumped or littered instead of being disposed in a garbage can.
- natoliniak 2mo ago
  it wasn't that long ago that most daily use goods were sold in reusable glass bottles, jars, paper bags. Clothes, shoes, appliances, furniture was durable, lasting multiple years, sometimes even passed on between generations. Then, late stage capitalism decided to optimize the hell out of everything, told us that glass is too heavy for economic distribution of goods, paper not hygienic enough and that we need internet enabled toasters. We now end up drowning in plastics, forced to replace cars, heavy appliances every 2 years but most of all are seeking weird solutions and feel good stories to solve this, well in line with the principle of the orphan crushing machine.
pelagicAustral 2mo ago
Sometimes is crazy how deluded people can be on all this safe the planet initiatives... All you have to do to figure out whos contributing the most with the whole plastic in the sea is go a beach and see what plastic do you see... maybe in a few hours walk you collect about 2 shopping bags of coke bottles, the other 2 tons you cant carry is all fishing industry discarded gear. Cleaning the ocean, yeah right... tackle the fishing industry first.
burnt-resistor 2mo ago
Ocean Cleanup is still hard at it cleaning major plastic emissions sources worldwide. I'm surprised they're still going and that they've managed to scale into different modalities of mass cleaning. Sure, it's not cleaning the world or placing consumer deposit on all plastic, but they're doing significant good.
ckemere 2mo ago
"The river interceptor design was clearly based on existing solutions" like Mr. Trash Wheel, Dr. Richards says. "Rather than work with the organizations who had successfully been removing trash from rivers for years, they ‘reinvented’ a similar design, at a much higher cost, and claimed to be innovators." This is a great summary of lots of flashy commercial and non-profit work. Proposal for a product: AI-assisted "Who is already doing this?" database. Extra credit for linking to audited annual reports.
- ckemere 2mo ago
  And extra extra credit for NGOs (and startups) that openly advertise "competitors".
- WarmWash 2mo ago
  Reminds me of the endless "12 year old wins $25k young innovator award for inventing a solar panel that can go on the roof of an EV to charge while you drive!" type proclamations
  - kotaKat 2mo ago
    And yet we all ended up sucking our beverages out of glue-lined paper straws for a hot minute. :\
zerof1l 2mo ago
Once plastic is in the middle of the ocean, it's game over. Much better to invest in reducing plastic use in the first place all those one-time-use plastics and invest in developing and improving recycling of the plastic. Germany, for example, has facilities that can automatically sort plastic both by type and color, which is quite impressive.
- mnau 2mo ago
  > automatically sort plastic both by type and color, which is quite impressive .... I am sorry, but how can that impress you? That would be impressive in 1990. Today, with deep learning and all AI, I would consider having robots open trash bags and sort whatever is inside for more processing (e.g. organic waste, plastic and so on, depending on how dirty it is) only slightly impressive. Unlike Amazon pick up challange, they don't need to be perfect.
65 2mo ago
Ah right, so it would be far better if the Ocean Cleanup did not exist, technology were to not have been tested for cleaning up ocean plastic, and people would not have known about plastic in the ocean via the Ocean Cleanup's social media? Right, trust the experts, who appear to be more interested in their own expertise than people at least trying to do something, trying to create better technology, and trying to educate the public on plastic ocean waste. What's the point of this article again?
alex_c 2mo ago
I'm not arrogant enough to think I know more about this than an expert who's devoted their life to ocean research, but the article itself comes across as a list of grievances against the Ocean Cleanup project rather than an objective review - mostly due to emotionally charged language like "apparently killing enormous numbers of marine organisms" and "out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day" It took a bit of digging, but it looks like around 80% of the plastic the Ocean Cleanup has captured comes from rivers - while the article focuses mostly on criticizing the open ocean catch. It would be interesting to see what is the budget split between the two methods, but I couldn't easily find it. It makes sense to me that removal requiring infrastructure will be more costly than unpaid volunteers on land. It is NOT clear to me if that means the infrastructure solution is not worth pursuing in parallel. It does seem the open ocean catch is ineffective compared to the river capture, and I can understand that argument. Not so clear to me if / why river capture should be scrapped in favor of the volunteer beach cleanup, as the article seems to imply. Intuitively, pursuing both would makes more sense. Again, this would be a very interesting analysis to see. > Unfortunately, it also shows how some people can take certain ideas too closely to heart — and take it personally when those ideas are criticized. When experts started speaking out about the Ocean Cleanup several years ago, I witnessed several of them endure online harassment from supporters of the organization, often phrased as “At least they’re trying to do something to help, all you do is complain.” To be honest, yes, this article seems to be getting the same response. Doesn't mean the criticism is invalid, but public communication is a skill in itself, separate from depth of expertise in a subject.
1970-01-01 2mo ago
We have plastic that lasts a few years instead of hundreds. The pollution problem slowly solves itself if we just put in a bit of effort to ban the cheapest of the cheap plastics. The technology is here, we're just refusing to do anything.
- hollowturtle 2mo ago
  What is then the impact of dissolving plastics in a few years? Can't believe it's a zero impact scenario. We can't still figure out what microplastics do to our health. As usual the best solution is the simplest: prevent plastics to ever reach the ocean. As simple as that and that doesn't costs much
  - 1970-01-01 2mo ago
    Well, it depends on the plastic, but the impact can be engineered to become fertilizer for soil. https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/how-riken-university-of-tokyos-dissolvable-plastic-works https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/how-riken-university-... https://pubs.acs.org/jacsat/article-abstract/147/48/44507/3739302/Supramolecular-Ionic-Polymerization-Cellulose https://pubs.acs.org/jacsat/article-abstract/147/48/44507/37...
latchkey 2mo ago
After living in Vietnam / Cambodia / Laos for 4 years, I came to the conclusion that there is no hope to the problem. It is literally in the local culture to just throw trash into the gutters. You can pick up as much as you want, but there will be 1000x more thrown into the rivers and flushed into the oceans. Changing the culture of people who are living moment-to-moment on absolutely nothing at all, isn't realistic either. Depressing AF, but far better to spend our time focused on other things than just trying to clean it up.
- pstuart 2mo ago
  [dead]
markkat 2mo ago
We need to tax non-degradable plastics for this externality. Also, I highly doubt this is from run-off of plastics carried to the sea. It's far more likely it's just being dumped. Probably much of it from people that thought it was getting recycled.
michael1999 2mo ago
This showed the same dynamics as most carbon-capture boondoggles. They can never work, and receive funding _because_ they distract from the core problems.
jayess 2mo ago
Ocean Cleanup always felt scammy to me. Just a feeling. The videos they released of the nets dropping tons of plastic trash onto the deck of a ship just seemed off. All of the plastic looked brand new. And knowing that the "great garbage patch" is really just a bunch of microplastics also screamed fake to me.
- guywithahat 2mo ago
  The great garbage patch was entirely made up, and it was unfortunate more people didn't call them out on it because it ultimately hurt the reputation of anyone working on ocean cleanup. There are certainly issues with garbage in the ocean but the issue is surrounded by mysticism and imagination making it hard to determine what's real and what isn't.
ricardobeat 2mo ago
Strangely negative piece. They switched focus to collecting plastic at river mouths, as the article mentions near the end, around 2019. That is seven years ago. That strategy does not harm sea life and has been very successful collecting 40 million kilos of plastic so far. Their only activity in the ocean is in the 'great pacific garbage patch' - what % of that surface dwelling sealife lives in this exact spot? The article doesn't actually go into the environmental impact.
SamBam 2mo ago
> That criticism and feedback haven’t dissuaded The Ocean Cleanup [One paragraph later] > the team pivoted in 2019 toward a new model that was first suggested by critics and skeptics as an alternative in 2015. So.... It did dissuade them away from their original vision and towards something suggested by critics and experts. I hate it when people cite someone changing their mind about something as a gotcha or a fault. So they switched towards a better direction seven years ago! But the rest of the article is still about how terrible the old idea was, and how it proves that people have an "only I can fix it mentality," when it actually proves the exact opposite! > their picture shows HUNDREDS of floating animals trapped with the plastic. I'm curious to know how many animals die from the plastic. This article seems to think that any deaths caused by cleanup are reason to stop. Just like people who point to dead birds as reasons to ban wind turbines, despite far more wildlife being at risk from a warming planet. It's quite possible that ocean cleanup efforts do more damage, I don't know, but the article doesn't even try to grapple with quantifying it. It's just a fear-mongering screed.
pseudosavant 2mo ago
Honestly the title of this article is ridiculous. A global problem like plastic pollution, decades in the making, won't be solved by a single organization, especially an NGO, in only 13 years. I still applaud the word TOC is doing and find it very worthwhile. But let's just be reasonable with our expectations.
arjie 2mo ago
> Every organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place Okay so the article’s prime version costs $2/lb of trash removal. Looking at a random report from a couple of years ago they did 11 m pounds[0]/year Let’s look at the next paragraph to see how the non-profit they’re comparing against did: > As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings. Okay, so the competitor is $0.6/lb. I mean that sounds great. The whole article is like a price comparison against a competitor where they say “the other guys are more efficient, cheaper and we cost 3 times as much”. Honestly, this kind of Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science vs Seventh Day Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science stuff is always pitched as such high stakes and it’s always some aggrieved party upset because they “don’t want to live in a world where someone else saves the Earth better than [they] do”. 0: https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Splash-2025-Spring.pdf https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Spla...
al_borland 2mo ago
I don’t see the critics making any big impacts. At least they’re trying. It seems what is really need are policies to ban single use plastics in the areas that pollute the most plastic into the ocean. Paper straws in Kanas and probably doing nothing to make things better.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

97 points by sohkamyung 2mo ago

xnx 2mo ago

> The Ocean Cleanup didn’t work, for the reasons experts said it wouldn’t. What can we learn from this? Listen to experts. At least they recognize the "I told you so".

nexawave-ai 2mo ago

They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. I've seen firsthand how their solutions have been implemented and have had a positive impact on the environment. How often do we hear promises from NGOs or government entities claiming they will solve humanitarian issues such as housing shortages or hunger, only to fail miserably while spending billions of dollars in the process? Meanwhile, others grow rich from government tenders and contracts at the expense of the unfortunate beneficiaries.

arionhardison 2mo ago
> They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. TY for saying this. I am having an especially hard time right now because this is my attitude as well and it seems; even here on HN that its now cool to literally just not try. Complain, call everything AI-slop and just concede defeat to Altman, Dario and Zuck. I literally had someone tell me its stupid and pointless to try and build efficiencies into systems like Medicare etc... and we should just wait on "mind-control". At a time when the barrier to entry and the cost of just fucking trying has never been lower it seems like there are more people than ever just waiting to tear everything down and recruit you into their cult of apathetic misery.
- crote 2mo ago
  Not everything is worth trying. If we want to stop the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets, and someone says "Hey, perhaps the penguins are the problem. We should murder all the penguins!", should we go all-in on that? If it inevitably doesn't end up working, should we just shrug and say "Well, at least we tried..."? Personally I believe it is probably better to listen to the scientists who keep yelling that it isn't going to work and that we should focus on this "climate change" thing instead, but that's just me. Doing something can be worse than doing nothing, and you don't get a participation trophy for a failed obviously-ludicrous moonshot - all you've done is leech money away from the people working on real solutions.
  - arionhardison 2mo ago
    This genuinely made me laugh. Fuck the penguin's LOL; but I actually do see your point here. There is a big diff in the online and offline world in terms of cost/resources spent and I did not consider that so I digress. Thankfully Elon/Trump shaved a cool 2 trillion off the budget so maybe we have some room to fudge a bit. #MoonShot Sometimes, I think my bias is more with the "who" gets a chance at a moonshot vs what it is and thats obviously problematic. I will do better.
kadal 2mo ago
The point of the article is that this intervention is actively harmful for exactly the same reasons raised by experts a long time ago. > In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. This attitude is wrong IMO. The issue with high-profile half-baked interventions is that they distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean. This is self-evident from data on their own website! https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/ https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/ . River mouths/estuaries are also some of the most densely populated regions in the world. This bites in that it is easy for plastic to enter the ocean. But it's also a lot easier to run cleanup at the source, next to humans, rather than 3000km away in the middle of the ocean.
- IncreasePosts 2mo ago
  What evidence is there that people would start funding river clean up if they stopped funding in-ocean initiatives?
  - andai 2mo ago
    Well, when I talk about fixing the core issues with JavaScript, these days people say "why bother, just paper it over at the TS layer..."
  - natebc 2mo ago
    [dead]
- hklgny 2mo ago
  My read of the article is that they’ve also pivoted to the methods experts suggest as well. The article actually phrases that in a negative way weirdly. I agree with the original comment, at least they’re trying and iterating. You get conflicting feedback from experts in all cases. At some point you have to commit and try.
- mnau 2mo ago
  > distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean. They pivoted to mostly river cleanup (interceptors) many years ago. And they clearly show that it is just one step back, not a full time solution. Ocean cleanup is last step, river grab is the step before that and having proper garbage collection would be best. Which is literally written in TFA: > Now they mostly intercept plastic when it first leaves rivers and enters the ocean instead of trying to scoop it out of the middle of the ocean, though the open ocean work is still mentioned on their website
SergeyKa 2mo ago
NGOs don't "fail miserably" - their actual goal is laundering tax money, and they very much do succeed!
hencq 2mo ago
Spot on. Another thing these experts fail to mention is that a lot of the data on the Pacific Garbage patch actually comes from the Ocean Cleanup, since, you know, they actually went out there to look.
- ortusdux 2mo ago
  There is the Marine Debris program at NOAA as well as satellite based tracking methods: https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/discover-marine-debris/garbage-patches https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/discover-marine-debris/garbage... https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9449485 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9449485
enraged_camel 2mo ago
>> They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. The alternative is not "doing nothing at all." It's spending the money effectively and in ways that don't kill marine life. TFA gives an example near the end: "So if we can’t scoop all the plastic trash out of the ocean without killing large numbers of marine animals, what can we do instead? One effective (and cost-effective) solution is the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. This amazing program has removed more than 400 million pounds of trash from beaches, where it’s much easier to access than in the middle of the ocean, before it gets swept back to sea. They do this at incredibly low cost, because more than 19 million people around the world have volunteered to help. “Our total annual budget for all our plastics advocacy work, which includes cleanup, science and policy efforts, is about $6 million,” says Jordana Lewis, director of communications for the Ocean Conservancy Director of Communications. “Every organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place.” As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings. Meanwhile Dr. Richards points out that in 2024 Ocean Cleanup’s System 002 “was out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day, picking up less plastic than a bunch of volunteers on beaches.” (A representative for the Ocean Cleanup told me via email that they are working on improving the cost efficiency of their operations.)"
- happyopossum 2mo ago
  > for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place.” As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings That math doesn't show what the author might want it to - The Ocean Cleanup removed ~118Mlbs of waste for $72m, while it would take $246M to do the same with the "incredibly low cost" methods of the Ocean Conservancy?
ortusdux 2mo ago
Perfect is the enemy of good. I think the Ocean Cleanup has been one of the most effective (non- political/commercial) PR campaigns of the last decade.
- crote 2mo ago
  Sure, it was an excellent PR campaign, but did it actually achieve something as well or could the same money have gotten a better outcome if it had been applied more effectively?
- wredcoll 2mo ago
  Is there meaningfully less plastic waste in the oceans now?
  - HPsquared 2mo ago
    Less than there otherwise would have been, for sure.
thinkthatover 2mo ago
I'm curious, what have firsthand experience have you seen of solutions implemented by The Ocean Cleanup? There will always be misallocation of resources in the private and public sector, I think the main point of this article is "trusting the experts in complex situations", which in my opinion is valid and needs to be said more emphatically in the current political climate. “There was this spirit at the time that a few well-meaning young people with a lot of passion would find solutions, but for complex problems like this one, the teenage geniuses and their billionaire backers aren’t going to save us, and they’re going to take us on a wild and expensive ride along the way,” Helm says.
SlightlyLeftPad 2mo ago
On a much smaller scale, a pool of water recently required renovation with a bill of $16 million. Failed miserably. I think it’s a great example of your point nonetheless.
dajonker 2mo ago
Did you read actually read the article and if so, did you read until the end? Let me just respond by quoting the article: > When experts started speaking out about the Ocean Cleanup several years ago, I witnessed several of them endure online harassment from supporters of the organization, often phrased as “At least they’re trying to do something to help, all you do is complain.” (Note that this was being said to people who devoted their lives and careers to evidence-based solutions to cleaning up the ocean).
cpill 2mo ago
the only thing that will be effective is if governments start taxing the production of plastic to the point it's not a cheap alternative anymore. these types of projects are too make people feel better while pissing in the wind
aaron695 2mo ago
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msandford 2mo ago

The title of the article is kind of technically correct but still misleading. It is true that The Ocean Cleanup "we're going to trawl the ocean for plastic" approach isn't working terribly well. But they did pivot to stopping trash from washing out of rivers and into the ocean which is working. Stopping the mess from growing is also a very good thing. This seems like some combination of the enemy of good is perfect and also sour grapes that someone else is doing the thing.

JoeAltmaier 2mo ago
Read again? Negative is the enemy of good, and this project was a net negative. As PR it went well, if you didn't examine it too closely. It was a misnomer from the start - it was 'harbor cleanup' or 'river cleanup' really. Where the big obvious plastic objects are. I don't believe they proposed any method for actually cleaning up the 'garbage patch' which consists of pepper-sized particles of plastic that requires a sieve to see. And which has been colonized by many marine creatures, so 'cleaning it up' would have the side effect of mass sterilization. Issues are hard. PR is easy, especially if you hand-wave over the hard stuff.
- dpcx 2mo ago
  They're still doing ocean cleanup, too. Getting the fishing equipment out of the water is a huge improvement.
  - JoeAltmaier 2mo ago
    Agreed
- msandford 2mo ago
  I'm confused about the idea that the project was a net negative. Based on what? River cleanups are happening that weren't happening before. That seems relatively positive. Is the negative that they spent too much money on the trawling that didn't work?

jonahbenton 2mo ago

Sympathetic to other strategies but that writeup is wholly unconvincing. It comes across as astroturf.

21asdffdsa12 2mo ago

The plastic devouring bacteria breeding program is going very well. Typing this on a phone that dissolves as we speak. As if a million million-sided dice are thrown in unison, always landing on the six-up - a thousand times in a row to get through a labyrinth.

marginalia_nu 2mo ago
Yeah it'll be great when plastic starts to rot like wood. Thank god we haven't spent the last 60 years using plastic as a water proof electrical insulator.
- rickypp 2mo ago
  Now I'm imagining an eco-terrorist that develops a plastic eating fungus as ubiquitous and hardy as yeast and releases it into the world.

greenavocado 2mo ago

Sources of ocean plastic https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-emissions-of-plastic-into-the-ocean-A-The-geospatial-distribution-of-plastic_fig3_351269287 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-emissions-of-plas...

ricardobeat 2mo ago
Curiously maps to the places where they are doing river cleanup, who would have figured!? https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/ https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/

nextstep 2mo ago

It’s capitalism. The market has determined that plastic in the ocean is the most efficient way to produce goods and services.

marginalia_nu 2mo ago
It's also chemistry. As long as we're using natural gas, there be a surplus of cheap ethane and we'll indirectly subsidize plastic, since making plastic out of the ethane puts that waste product to use (by creating plastic waste instead).
citrin_ru 2mo ago
I know it's fashionable to blame capitalism for everything which is wrong with the world but it's the people and governments who don't care about the pollution and think that's it's fine to throw garbage on the ground or in the river instead of disposing it properly. The Soviet Union did a fair amount of damage to the environment, despite not being a capitalist country. Update: a small grammar fix.
- hamper653 2mo ago
  Soviet Union did a fair amount of damage to the environment being a capitalist country.
trgn 2mo ago
it's largely because it's being dumped or littered instead of being disposed in a garbage can.
natoliniak 2mo ago
it wasn't that long ago that most daily use goods were sold in reusable glass bottles, jars, paper bags. Clothes, shoes, appliances, furniture was durable, lasting multiple years, sometimes even passed on between generations. Then, late stage capitalism decided to optimize the hell out of everything, told us that glass is too heavy for economic distribution of goods, paper not hygienic enough and that we need internet enabled toasters. We now end up drowning in plastics, forced to replace cars, heavy appliances every 2 years but most of all are seeking weird solutions and feel good stories to solve this, well in line with the principle of the orphan crushing machine.

pelagicAustral 2mo ago

Sometimes is crazy how deluded people can be on all this safe the planet initiatives... All you have to do to figure out whos contributing the most with the whole plastic in the sea is go a beach and see what plastic do you see... maybe in a few hours walk you collect about 2 shopping bags of coke bottles, the other 2 tons you cant carry is all fishing industry discarded gear. Cleaning the ocean, yeah right... tackle the fishing industry first.

burnt-resistor 2mo ago

Ocean Cleanup is still hard at it cleaning major plastic emissions sources worldwide. I'm surprised they're still going and that they've managed to scale into different modalities of mass cleaning. Sure, it's not cleaning the world or placing consumer deposit on all plastic, but they're doing significant good.

ckemere 2mo ago

"The river interceptor design was clearly based on existing solutions" like Mr. Trash Wheel, Dr. Richards says. "Rather than work with the organizations who had successfully been removing trash from rivers for years, they ‘reinvented’ a similar design, at a much higher cost, and claimed to be innovators." This is a great summary of lots of flashy commercial and non-profit work. Proposal for a product: AI-assisted "Who is already doing this?" database. Extra credit for linking to audited annual reports.

ckemere 2mo ago
And extra extra credit for NGOs (and startups) that openly advertise "competitors".
WarmWash 2mo ago
Reminds me of the endless "12 year old wins $25k young innovator award for inventing a solar panel that can go on the roof of an EV to charge while you drive!" type proclamations
- kotaKat 2mo ago
  And yet we all ended up sucking our beverages out of glue-lined paper straws for a hot minute. :\

zerof1l 2mo ago

Once plastic is in the middle of the ocean, it's game over. Much better to invest in reducing plastic use in the first place all those one-time-use plastics and invest in developing and improving recycling of the plastic. Germany, for example, has facilities that can automatically sort plastic both by type and color, which is quite impressive.

mnau 2mo ago
> automatically sort plastic both by type and color, which is quite impressive .... I am sorry, but how can that impress you? That would be impressive in 1990. Today, with deep learning and all AI, I would consider having robots open trash bags and sort whatever is inside for more processing (e.g. organic waste, plastic and so on, depending on how dirty it is) only slightly impressive. Unlike Amazon pick up challange, they don't need to be perfect.

65 2mo ago

Ah right, so it would be far better if the Ocean Cleanup did not exist, technology were to not have been tested for cleaning up ocean plastic, and people would not have known about plastic in the ocean via the Ocean Cleanup's social media? Right, trust the experts, who appear to be more interested in their own expertise than people at least trying to do something, trying to create better technology, and trying to educate the public on plastic ocean waste. What's the point of this article again?

alex_c 2mo ago

I'm not arrogant enough to think I know more about this than an expert who's devoted their life to ocean research, but the article itself comes across as a list of grievances against the Ocean Cleanup project rather than an objective review - mostly due to emotionally charged language like "apparently killing enormous numbers of marine organisms" and "out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day" It took a bit of digging, but it looks like around 80% of the plastic the Ocean Cleanup has captured comes from rivers - while the article focuses mostly on criticizing the open ocean catch. It would be interesting to see what is the budget split between the two methods, but I couldn't easily find it. It makes sense to me that removal requiring infrastructure will be more costly than unpaid volunteers on land. It is NOT clear to me if that means the infrastructure solution is not worth pursuing in parallel. It does seem the open ocean catch is ineffective compared to the river capture, and I can understand that argument. Not so clear to me if / why river capture should be scrapped in favor of the volunteer beach cleanup, as the article seems to imply. Intuitively, pursuing both would makes more sense. Again, this would be a very interesting analysis to see. > Unfortunately, it also shows how some people can take certain ideas too closely to heart — and take it personally when those ideas are criticized. When experts started speaking out about the Ocean Cleanup several years ago, I witnessed several of them endure online harassment from supporters of the organization, often phrased as “At least they’re trying to do something to help, all you do is complain.” To be honest, yes, this article seems to be getting the same response. Doesn't mean the criticism is invalid, but public communication is a skill in itself, separate from depth of expertise in a subject.

1970-01-01 2mo ago

We have plastic that lasts a few years instead of hundreds. The pollution problem slowly solves itself if we just put in a bit of effort to ban the cheapest of the cheap plastics. The technology is here, we're just refusing to do anything.

hollowturtle 2mo ago
What is then the impact of dissolving plastics in a few years? Can't believe it's a zero impact scenario. We can't still figure out what microplastics do to our health. As usual the best solution is the simplest: prevent plastics to ever reach the ocean. As simple as that and that doesn't costs much
- 1970-01-01 2mo ago
  Well, it depends on the plastic, but the impact can be engineered to become fertilizer for soil. https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/how-riken-university-of-tokyos-dissolvable-plastic-works https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/how-riken-university-... https://pubs.acs.org/jacsat/article-abstract/147/48/44507/3739302/Supramolecular-Ionic-Polymerization-Cellulose https://pubs.acs.org/jacsat/article-abstract/147/48/44507/37...

latchkey 2mo ago

After living in Vietnam / Cambodia / Laos for 4 years, I came to the conclusion that there is no hope to the problem. It is literally in the local culture to just throw trash into the gutters. You can pick up as much as you want, but there will be 1000x more thrown into the rivers and flushed into the oceans. Changing the culture of people who are living moment-to-moment on absolutely nothing at all, isn't realistic either. Depressing AF, but far better to spend our time focused on other things than just trying to clean it up.

pstuart 2mo ago
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markkat 2mo ago

We need to tax non-degradable plastics for this externality. Also, I highly doubt this is from run-off of plastics carried to the sea. It's far more likely it's just being dumped. Probably much of it from people that thought it was getting recycled.

michael1999 2mo ago

This showed the same dynamics as most carbon-capture boondoggles. They can never work, and receive funding _because_ they distract from the core problems.

jayess 2mo ago

Ocean Cleanup always felt scammy to me. Just a feeling. The videos they released of the nets dropping tons of plastic trash onto the deck of a ship just seemed off. All of the plastic looked brand new. And knowing that the "great garbage patch" is really just a bunch of microplastics also screamed fake to me.

guywithahat 2mo ago
The great garbage patch was entirely made up, and it was unfortunate more people didn't call them out on it because it ultimately hurt the reputation of anyone working on ocean cleanup. There are certainly issues with garbage in the ocean but the issue is surrounded by mysticism and imagination making it hard to determine what's real and what isn't.

ricardobeat 2mo ago

Strangely negative piece. They switched focus to collecting plastic at river mouths, as the article mentions near the end, around 2019. That is seven years ago. That strategy does not harm sea life and has been very successful collecting 40 million kilos of plastic so far. Their only activity in the ocean is in the 'great pacific garbage patch' - what % of that surface dwelling sealife lives in this exact spot? The article doesn't actually go into the environmental impact.

SamBam 2mo ago

> That criticism and feedback haven’t dissuaded The Ocean Cleanup [One paragraph later] > the team pivoted in 2019 toward a new model that was first suggested by critics and skeptics as an alternative in 2015. So.... It did dissuade them away from their original vision and towards something suggested by critics and experts. I hate it when people cite someone changing their mind about something as a gotcha or a fault. So they switched towards a better direction seven years ago! But the rest of the article is still about how terrible the old idea was, and how it proves that people have an "only I can fix it mentality," when it actually proves the exact opposite! > their picture shows HUNDREDS of floating animals trapped with the plastic. I'm curious to know how many animals die from the plastic. This article seems to think that any deaths caused by cleanup are reason to stop. Just like people who point to dead birds as reasons to ban wind turbines, despite far more wildlife being at risk from a warming planet. It's quite possible that ocean cleanup efforts do more damage, I don't know, but the article doesn't even try to grapple with quantifying it. It's just a fear-mongering screed.

pseudosavant 2mo ago

Honestly the title of this article is ridiculous. A global problem like plastic pollution, decades in the making, won't be solved by a single organization, especially an NGO, in only 13 years. I still applaud the word TOC is doing and find it very worthwhile. But let's just be reasonable with our expectations.

arjie 2mo ago

> Every organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place Okay so the article’s prime version costs $2/lb of trash removal. Looking at a random report from a couple of years ago they did 11 m pounds[0]/year Let’s look at the next paragraph to see how the non-profit they’re comparing against did: > As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings. Okay, so the competitor is $0.6/lb. I mean that sounds great. The whole article is like a price comparison against a competitor where they say “the other guys are more efficient, cheaper and we cost 3 times as much”. Honestly, this kind of Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science vs Seventh Day Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science stuff is always pitched as such high stakes and it’s always some aggrieved party upset because they “don’t want to live in a world where someone else saves the Earth better than [they] do”. 0: https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Splash-2025-Spring.pdf https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Spla...

al_borland 2mo ago

I don’t see the critics making any big impacts. At least they’re trying. It seems what is really need are policies to ban single use plastics in the areas that pollute the most plastic into the ocean. Paper straws in Kanas and probably doing nothing to make things better.

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