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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 firsthan

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 1mo 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]

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 1mo 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]