Finally, ocean cleanup!

[whispercricket]

The massive amount of floating plastic bits in the ocean has made me sad for a long time - now someone's doing something about it!

https://www.theoceancleanup.com

Here's hoping their pilot goes well. :)

Comments

[keshwyn]

You're still here! Yay!

[whispercricket]

I know, I lurked a long time, but I suddenly posted Tarot and was like, this isn't quite so scary after all...

Maybe in 2017 I can learn how to be a bit more brave. :)

[wispfox]

I thought I'd hear about this before: There are a lot of major concerns about this project, unfortunately. https://discardstudies.com/2015/06/05/how-the-ocean-clean-up-array-fundamentally-misunderstands-marine-plastics-and-causes-harm/

[whispercricket]

Thanks for the link!

I don't agree with some of their concerns - for example, I wouldn't think that having something to clean up ocean plastic would derail any attempts to reduce disposable plastics (single use plastics drive me crazy and I wish there was a greater emphasis on using biodegrable options, but I don't see much progress being made there right now regardless). I wish there was - single use plastic lined shipping envelopes, styrofoam cups, etc. seem so wasteful to me. Why do we use materials that last such a long time to make something that's going to be almost immediately thrown away?

The argument that the plastic makes its own ecosystem now and shouldn't be disrupted is...interesting. Not sure that would be a big consideration to me.

The arguments about hurting regular marine life and the sea floor make sense - I thought their website mentioned going through an environmental review, but I don't know how strict that would be.

The issue of not getting 98% of the (tiny) plastics and what to do with the plastic afterwards are definitely large technological obstacles, for sure.

I guess my biggest concern with the article is that at some point, the big problems can feel so big that it leads to helplessness and hopelessness - it's at least nice to see people trying.

[wispfox]

Yeah, I'm definitely glad people are trying. I am worried about the marine life, myself. Partly because it is damned hard to _not_ injure it doing something like that; ecosystems are both surprisingly resilient and unfortunately fragile. And I don't know which would apply here.

[artan]

As it is with all complex situations, likely some faction of both. I tend to think that even with damage caused by cleanup it will still lead to a preferable outcome than non-cleanup.

[whispercricket]

Agreed - I'm just not sure where it falls - is it like wind farms, where iirc if properly done, the impact on wildlife is less than what currently exists from conventional power plants but that's still used as an argument against, or is it a bigger issue that needs to be addressed? I just hope that a real environmental impact study that isn't biased either way can be done (but these days, I always kind of consider studies biased one way or another, which I guess is human but makes science more difficult...).

(True thanks again for giving me the counterpoint, btw.)

[wispfox]

Yeah, it's all really complicated. I suppose we see what happens, like everything else? :/

[kaifu]

Oh, nice! I will have to add that to my class on ocean trash, students always like hearing good news rather than ending on a depressing note.

[artan]

On an unrelated note - this journal is set up to mirror to LJ at the moment but doesn't have the "I'm at Dreamwidth" tag at the bottom in any form, so people don't know it is. I don't know if that is intentional or not.

If you want to turn it on there's a box at account settings under Other Sites, set the Footer drop down to "always" to have it do it automatically.

[whispercricket]

Done, thanks - I knew about it but forgot to clicky.