[HN Gopher] Our biggest ever river catch?
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Our biggest ever river catch?
Author : nickburns
Score : 119 points
Date : 2024-04-18 16:00 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theoceancleanup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theoceancleanup.com)
| songeater wrote:
| does anyone have a view of Ocean CleanUp as a charity to donate
| to?
| IshKebab wrote:
| They're clearly doing something concrete and good and less
| ephemeral than most charities, so I say go for it. I did for
| ages and they never spammed me. Only stopped because my payment
| details changed and I never quite got around to updating them.
|
| My only complaint is their use of kg instead of tonnes to let
| them use big sounding numbers. You don't need to do that guys.
| It's lame. We can see the photos. It's clearly worthwhile even
| if it is only a small part of global waste.
| cdrini wrote:
| I like the work they're doing, they seem well managed, the guy
| who founded the project, Boyan Slat, I follow on twitter and he
| seems very competent. I did some research into this and various
| other orgs when YouTube focused on Ocean cleanup a few years
| ago, and was impressed by ocean cleanup. Donations are also tax
| deductible in a few countries.
|
| https://theoceancleanup.com/faq/are-donations-to-the-ocean-c...
| nickburns wrote:
| i'm curious about the split between capital versus philanthropic
| funding for an operation like this.
|
| i feel certain that this relatively new (sub?)industry--
| waterway/ocean waste management--is here to stay for a very long
| time. but i struggle to see how it could ever turn a profit,
| unless and until they're able to generate revenue/s from the
| waste they're retrieving. it all feels like a fascinatingly super
| long play.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| I imagine that it is not onerously expensive to run, and it's a
| good way for larger companies to look like they care by
| throwing a few nickels their way.
|
| Further, I imagine that for some cities, the potential increase
| in tourism from having clean waters might be worth the
| investment.
| dang wrote:
| Sorry for the offtopicness - would you mind putting an email
| address in your profile so we can send you repost invites? I
| was able to re-up* the current thread but it was right on the
| cusp of being too old for that system to work; in which case I
| would have tried (but failed) to email you a repost link! (Btw
| the email field in user profiles is only seen by admins.)
|
| * System described at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998309 and links back
| from there
| bastawhiz wrote:
| I'm curious how much effort is being put into avoiding this trash
| ending up in the rivers in the first place. Obviously it's
| important to catch it before it gets in the ocean, but if people
| are just dumping directly into the river far upstream, this feels
| like a Sisyphian task
| snielson wrote:
| Having been to Guatemala, the culture is to throw most trash on
| the ground. The trash is then washed into the rivers during
| heavy rains. It's sad to see. The country has a lot of natural
| beauty, but there is trash everywhere.
| Octokiddie wrote:
| Any insights into what makes this culturally acceptable?
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| No Ladybird Johnson like figure driving public policy in
| the 1960s, melding the hippies and government together?
|
| The TV was inundated with public service announcements
| shaming trash throwers in the USA for maybe 15 years. It
| made a difference.
|
| Having seen similar "just throw it on the ground" behavior
| in India and china, I think that it may be a natural
| response in a rural culture that needs to be changed once
| it is in a city and non degrading packaging is used
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Even "Don't mess with Texas" started as an anti-littering
| campaign in the mid-80's into the 90's
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Mess_with_Texas
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The country lacks any real garbage collection
| infrastructure. And I'm not just talking about ritzy
| landfill/recycling/compost bin sets every few hundred feet
| on the sidewalk, emptied by the municipality, I mean
| there's literally nowhere for any service to actually take
| the trash if it was in a bin and not on the ground.
|
| Most cities don't even have a functioning, modern landfill,
| just clandestine piles served by dump truck. Much of the
| trash picked up by this effort may have literally already
| been collected and dumped by a truck in a pile by the
| river.
|
| There's a big "broken windows" element to the continuation
| of the problem. It's going to take altruistically
| motivated, powerful regulators and a lot of money to fix,
| and neither is not easy to come by in Guatemala.
| nickburns wrote:
| very, very well said.
|
| just from one language learner to another, so i hope you
| can appreciate this small grammatical correction:
|
| > and neither is not easy to come by in Guatemala.
|
| ...the infamous 'double negative' que es correcto en
| espanol y otros, !pero es incorrecto en ingles!
|
| it would seem to be true, and i would certainly defer to
| you, that altruistic minded and not toothless regulators,
| plus a whole lot of money are both necessary--and
| *neither is easy to come by in Guatemala.
|
| again, great explanation of what might be difficult to
| comprehend from the perspective of others in this modern,
| interconnected world.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| If that's the case, then what is this charity going to do
| with all this trash? Send it back up the river to be
| dumped again?
| dylan604 wrote:
| on a smaller scale, I've been involved in many outdoor
| events with large number of attendees. if you put a trash
| can further apart than every 10', people will think it is
| too far and choose to not bother. it's one of those weird
| things seeing the seemingly large number of trash cans
| placed around before the crowds.
|
| so i can totally see how it would happen if a country just
| doesn't have the proper infrastructure to start
| latchkey wrote:
| SE Asia is the same. Literally in the culture. The mind
| boggles.
| euroderf wrote:
| Narrowing their focus to rivers makes it easier to name &
| shame, & trace to source.
| navane wrote:
| Ironically this is what people said when they were focusing on
| cleaning the ocean: "they should focus on rivers, that's how
| most trash gets into the ocean".
| woleium wrote:
| i read that a lot of ocean plastic comes from the fishing
| industry
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| To me it seems like this would potentially encourage more of
| the behavior that lead to all this trash in the river, since
| now people may know it is not going to the ocean.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| This is the kind of effort that money should be directed towards.
| Not the ad infested crap on eyeballs.
|
| The ROI is literally cleaner environment. If there was only a way
| to tax proportional to emissions producers.
| xnx wrote:
| Credit to this organization from pivoting (AFAIK) from their
| original plan to scrape the plastic out of the water on the open
| ocean ("System 001"). Intercepting plastic at river mouths seems
| much more practical and cost effective.
| ljlolel wrote:
| My understanding from last year is that they're doing both
| prevention and cleanup. They have a good explanation on their
| website on microplastic sizes
| dylan604 wrote:
| Right. Slowing/stopping the flow into the ocean doesn't
| magically clean the oceans. It would always need to be a
| multi-step approach.
| buovjaga wrote:
| They're still working on open oceans:
| https://theoceancleanup.com/oceans/
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| This river cleanup is brilliant and effective.
|
| Messing with the top meter of ocean water does its own kind
| of damage.
|
| So much of the life in the ocean surface layer is going to be
| involved with the floating trash, like it or not.
|
| Ocean surface sterilization seems incautious and worrisome.
| Never mind we don't like to see trash. Stripping the ocean
| surface water will have unforeseen consequences.
| laborcontract wrote:
| Are you talking about sea life?
|
| According to the video on the site, the boats travel at
| less than 3km/h and they have live video feeds monitoring
| the nets. Am I missing anything here?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| As most people do, you are considering only fish and
| such. Things we can see. Not the bulk of all ocean life,
| the tiny microscopic creatures that dominate the
| ecosystem.
|
| It's only the top surface, right? The ocean can be miles
| deep!
|
| But the density of life in the ocean decreases
| geometrically with depth. By mass, the top inches contain
| more life than the entire balance of it. Because,
| sunlight.
| NamTaf wrote:
| Except the net completely transparent to microscopic
| organisms like plankton? The section "The System at Sea"
| on this site [1] goes into detail about the multitude of
| systems they have to prevent the impact on ocean life.
| There's some 9 image slides give information about it.
| With all those considered, am I missing something?
|
| [1]: https://theoceancleanup.com/oceans/
| riffic wrote:
| more on its wikipedia page (there's one in Los Angeles too)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ocean_Cleanup
| doctorhandshake wrote:
| Inspiring stuff. I love to donate to orgs like this in lieu of
| giving gifts to people who have the resources and inclination to
| buy anything they want already.
| mirekrusin wrote:
| How is this funded?
| kibwen wrote:
| Realizing that the oceans are the toilet of the world made it
| real easy to stop eating seafood.
| moqster wrote:
| Cant even deny cookies with ublock. Whos taking care of that kind
| of "trash"?
| hm-nah wrote:
| Thank god! An example of human ingenuity going to clean up our
| human impact on the natural world INSTEAD of YAStory of boiling
| the ocean to generate the perfect cat meme.
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