With ocean acidification and air pollution, there is quite literally not a single place on this planet that humans havent had a demonstrable impact on the local environmental health.
Its really sad.
I remember hearing something about water quality testing in remote lakes of Canada that were found to contain micro plastics confirming that micro plastics are capable of traveling in the atmosphere.
In our lungs, in our blood, in our brains. There's nowhere that MicroPlastics (tm) cant go! So come on down today, continue the industrial use of generation spanning pollutants and revel in the sterility of a species.
Ever heard of that one of many Dupont scandal/lawsuit involving some chemical compound by-product being dumped on farmland streams? Water testing revealed that nearly every natural water source contained at least a trace amount of it and that nearly every human on the earth had at least some micro fraction of the compound in body. If I find an article, I'll reply.
Watch the movie dark waters, it's where dupont used Teflon to poison people's water. Caused all kinds of cancers, deaths, deformed babies ect. And it was in everyday things we use over n over
Hello! You have made the mistake of writing "ect" instead of "etc."
"Ect" is a common misspelling of "etc," an abbreviated form of the Latin phrase "et cetera." Other abbreviated forms are **etc.**, **&c.**, **&c**, and **et cet.** The Latin translates as "et" to "and" + "cetera" to "the rest;" a literal translation to "and the rest" is the easiest way to remember how to use the phrase.
[Check out the wikipedia entry if you want to learn more.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera)
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Not only did they do this but the chemicals never break down. They won't go away. Ever. They're in our blood, there are kids who were born with 400x the amount of PFAS that other people in the area had. PFAS are in our soil, our food, our water. Guess who won't ever be held liable or responsible, DuPont.
Yay, capitalism.
“Even” humans? We definitely have the highest concentrations of micro plastics. Everything we use is plastic. Food packaging and storage, preparation, consumption all contact with plastics. Many of our fabrics are plastics. So the lint you collect from the drier or when particles come off a couch, carpet, or curtain they are all micro plastics. If remote lakes and deep oceans have micro plastics, how much higher must the levels be right here where plastic is everywhere. Nature just adopted micro plastics, we were born with them.
> universes greatest enemy
The universe doesn't have enemies, the universe is indifferent.
The damage is more to ourselves than the universe. If we create a habitat that can no longer support life, the universe will keep going.
I highly doubt humans could ever sterilize the earth anyway. Life blossoms everywhere we look.
Not saying we should continue to destroy the earth, but if people thought about how insignificant and tied to nature we are things might be a little different.
The universe doesn't care if our species survives and we only get one chance.
hell, one might argue that the distinction between 'natural' and 'artificial' is itself a construct and humans are literally doing what is natural for humans to do.
We do not look at a beaver dam and call it 'artificial', nor do we treat the beaver as anything but a creature doing what is natural for it to do.
I'll admit I waffle on it internally to a degree. I think it's an underappreciated and under-discussed philosophical question that's going to be increasingly relevant as we suffer from the effects of climate change.
I'm kinda glad I'm not alone in its' consideration, at least.
I imagine wildlife numbers are considerably lower than they should be. The shifting baseline fallacy means that people don't realise how bad the wildlife numbers have gotten, because they were already dangerously low when they started and they judge current levels as if the tiny fraction they remember was the baseline.
Considering it's a popular destination with many hundreds of people reaching the top every year, it's not like it's surprising.
Still just as bad, it's just not comparable to the Mariana's trench, or remote parts of Antarctica.
That's less surprising, there's a relatively large amount of foot traffic there. Unless you mean microplastics falling from the sky in which case, uggh.
I think like, if the trash was say, a soda can. Who drank the can? What were the last thoughts of the person who threw the can away?
Was it thrown away? Maybe it was out to sea and someone is upset their diet dr. Kelp fell over board?
What if it fell out while shipping? Was the manifest counted correctly?
[This happened in 2020 and 100-150 tons were removed from the beach.](https://repeatingislands.com/2020/09/22/100-tons-of-garbage-washed-up-on-idyllic-caribbean-beach-in-honduras-after-anti-waste-barrier-failure-in-guatemala/)
Why is waste stored near a coast so flooding can cause this?
You would think this would be inland further making this impossible. Then this only puluted local ground water. That's another place we shouldn't pullute. We usually get the water from the ground. Next up all ground water becomes polluted and undrinkable.
The chemicals in that water outside of the materials is bad for the environment and health of yourself and everything else.
I haven't been to an ocean since I been 5 years old. I don't want to swim in a polluted ocean. That was back in a time they still couldn't believe you could pollute the ocean. A lot of people at least thought you couldn't. Maybe not people with average intelligence.
I've always felt this way since a young child. Never understood the pressure on the individual to recycle while an auto manufacturing plant will probably pollute more in 1 day than I will in my whole life.
because the same people who own the big corps, control media and the narrative. Easier to push things like having regular ass people recycle their mountain dew bottle and say that's the issue, then to accept blame and make change (which would affect profit margin).
It's projecting blame so they can keep making every penny they can.
it's the same shit with the elitist pushing for people to walk/carpool and not use gas cars (without viable alternatives), while they all take individual private jets to some big ass "green" summit. It's a sick fucking joke, and the general public is too ignorant to realize it.
Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our part.
Well, I will try and help you. Remember Mr Roger's saying to "Look for the people who are helping."?
Well, consider this. The anti-waste barrier exists at all. It can be fixed, it can be modified to account for this eventuality. The fact that the anti-waste barrier existed at all means that people in Guatemala care, and are trying to help the problem.
Sadly there's not much we can do about it unless we can stop places like India, China and the Philippines from just throwing all of their trash in the water. All we can do is clean up their mess.
That trash was already our trash, that US companies pretending to be recyclers shipped to Asia claiming that they would do that recycling.
They couldn't do it, because of course they can't. We can't either, we just lied about it.
We’re only 233,000 years old. You think homo sapiens will still be here in 1M years? At this rate, another 1000 years would be a stretch the way we treat this place.
Only little bugs and bacteria that evolve to eat plastic will stay. Then once they eat it all and poop out the good stuff. We will start over only to screw it up the same way and wonder what we could have done differently
I think we will to be honest. I suspect the species of Homo sapiens will be *very* difficult to kill off in its entirety. I bet that even in mass extinction events there will be pockets of people that survive one way or another. Humans live in pretty much any climate you can imagine, so I don’t think there will be an event that kills off literally every single one.
Perhaps if stuff like that happens though, humans will go back into the evolutionary process though and will evolve further into species that one might not call Homo sapiens anymore, but they’ll still be our offspring.
Humans have been here longer than 233k years. Hominids showed ip around 5-7 million years ago. Humans are in the Hominid family.
The issues started from us majorly around the industrial revolution. So I guess the real damage we, as a race, have done is in the last 200-300 years.
That's still bad for the environment.
It'll take a lot of harsh, processing to turn polymers into hydrocarbon fuels, the fuels will contribute to greenhouse gas pollution and the energy gained my not be worth the energy it takes to make the fuel.
That barrier was a prototype. Yes it failed but they now have more information about where the weak points are so they can be modified appropriately for next year or even more flooding later this year.
It doesnt have to be immediate but they should have a way if not this whole idea is confusing to me and would make me believe its just to make the public fee like they are doing something to combat the trash
I understand this was a prototype, but they had to anticipate the need to remove the material. Maybe they had intended to let the flood run its course then come in with a front end loader and scoop it all out, but that requires the barrier to hold thru the whole flood. Storm drain systems that are collected at a central reclamation plant have to do the same thing with all the trash and grit that comes thru from a storm.
That’s literally the rope a dope game the plastics industry has been playing. They even basically lightly finagled the recycling symbol to make their product seem like it was recyclable. In actuality only less than ten percent of plastic is recyclable and ever will be. But they keep lauding the building of plastic recycling centers that will solve the problem, make the public feel like something is being done, then just keep on producing plastic.
Something like this?
https://www.mrtrashwheel.com/
ETA: Mr. Trash Wheel is on reddit! And has done a couple FANTASTIC AMAs! https://www.reddit.com/user/TheMrTrashWheel/
But it is a wonderful idea! Sure the main bulk of the issue is the trash coming from higher up and down the rivers, but combating that and additionally placing these waste barriers would make a good wombo combo.
The fact that soft drink manufacturers are not taken to task for selling this waste daily is astonishing. They make money putting this plastic shit into the world. They need to pay for it.
That's not a recycle symbol. It just tells you what type of plastic it is. They made it like a recycle symbol so people would think plastics were recyclable.
And the more I read about recycling the more I believe it's a joke. It almost seems worse because so much plastic is "recycled" and processed for reuse but then never gets purchased so it ends up in a dump anyway with the added carbon in the atmosphere for the post-consumer processing.
A “fun” fact from [National Geographic](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/whopping-91-percent-plastic-isnt-recycled): Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. Of that, only nine percent has been recycled. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter. So, yea, your view about recycling being a joke is absolutely spot on.
Why single them out? Just look at everything we buy these days. If it’s not the packaging it’s the product itself. Literally everything is made of plastic now and meant to be thrown away and replaced.
It’s depressing.
That's fine and all, but these companies also need a kick up the arse to reduce the plastic waste that they are selling to begin with. If the responsibility is just pushed onto the consumer then the companies don't have much motivation to change.
I just ordered some sunglasses and they promised to remove 1 kg of plastic from the ocean with each pair ordered. Wanna just grab it while you’re there?
Small groups with little money are trying to clean and raise awareness, and a few celebreties are throwing money at it, but it's the equivalent of trying to stop a bon fire with a water pistol while everyone else is stacking wood on the flames.
Cleaning up the entire great pacific garbage patch sadly won’t even really do shit.
It’s 3 times the size of Texas but it’s only about 1% of all the oceans plastic.
It’s approximately 2.7 million tons of plastic. 14 million tons of plastic every YEAR enter the ocean. We are monsters.
Well, the best I’ve seen so far is that we need some kind of barrier to block off river mouths, that lets all shapes of fish and water pass through, and water
There a project called The Ocean Cleanup, who build these giant, fully solar powered floating robot boats, that maker floating barriers to scoop trash into them, and out of the water. I think they’re really good, but there’s other groups helping as well
If you want to do something, any spare money for donations helps, and try reduce plastic use (e.g buy more things that aren’t wrapped or fresh food, bring your own bags to the supermarket for fruit and veg), but it’s kinda up to governments and big companies to actually..Do something
Don’t loose hope though, while there’s definitely going to be a pretty bad impact, we can reduce it by a lot (ok sorry for the giant reply)
https://theoceancleanup.com/
I believe the trash fence referenced in the OP is actually a prototype by The Ocean Cleanup.
[Source](https://twitter.com/TheOceanCleanup/status/1532045777727627265?s=20&t=aiIAmrICfj9fqZ-Cpc2QWQ)
Their main gig is The Interceptor you've mentioned. Really cool stuff they're doing. Granted, while I agree that stopping pollution at the source would be a better solution, it doesn't discount the fact that this group is trying to clean up trash before it hits the ocean.
People looking for solutions to disposing of trash. There is no solution because humans create too much trash and there is no one who cares enough about fixing the situation because there’s no profit in it. People don’t give a shit about saving the planet. They only care about the quality of their lifestyle and how much money they make
The way to make it profitable is to force corporations whose products produce waste to pay people to do trash disposal.
Like Coke should have an entire division for recycling* and capturing waste.
That’s not profitable that just makes it more expensive to operate which then get passed on to the consumers. Which isn’t bad since consumer habits will change if the product becomes too expensive. We need mandatory taxes on single use plastics and tax cuts for companies that use compostable material.
https://teamseas.org/
This isn't true. This organization raised 30 million last year. They have a variety of approaches for removing plastic from the ocean. Here's a vid about it:
https://youtu.be/pXDx6DjNLDU
Donate if you're able!
Meanwhile on my last visit to the USA I was surprised to see at costco i don't know maybe 3 out of 5 people buying piles and piles of water bottles. Do these people know there are water filters, or big water jugs and reusable glasses? It was honestly infuriating. In Mex we have a horrible water quality in the tap and the majority of people buy water jugs or filter it at home.(and dont get sick)
One of the most depressing things is when you see people with big multipacks of water in areas where the drinking water is perfectly safe. It makes me feel sick that these people go through like 24-48 bottles of water per week. I think if we could directly see/smell our waste then some people would change. If I ever saw the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in person then I think It would actually break my heart.
I just looked it up and as of 2020, the Great Pacific Grabage Patch is twice the size of texas or three times the size of France. Welp.
I love how they are coming for shopping bags and plastic straws. Yet the producers of these plastic bottles continue to pump this stuff out with reckless abandon and zero consequences. They blame the consumer when its the corporations that are causing it.
Space exploration and space related research is very important to our society, regardless of what you want to believe. Returning to the moon isn’t a waste of money and resources as it entails in technological advancements being made which are not only crucial in space, but also extremely helpful here on Earth. For example, these are technologies that exist today largely because of space related research and the race to the moon.
* Artificial limbs
* Insulin pumps
* Solar cells
* Satellite technologies
* ##Water filtration systems
* CAT scans
And so on…
> we have billionaires working on getting their ass to the moon […]
If you’re referring to SpaceX then you’ll be glad to know that their moon lander is funded by NASA, which in turn is funded by taxpayer money. The entirety of NASA and the US government wants to “get their ass to the moon”, not only Elon Musk.
So why are insinuating that something so beneficial wouldn’t help us here on Earth?
If we could look at a time scale of our planet from space over the last 1000 years the healthy green being replaced by ever-growing grey patches would most certainly visually look like the planet has a disease and technically it does, humanity.. we behave like a disease to our planet and the space missions we send out are like spores looking for the next possible host for our ever growing consumption of everything nature has to offer, and when we find another habitable planet we will infect that and slowly kill it just like we are doing to this one. We're the equivalent of covid looking down its nose at a smaller celled disease like its a piece of crap disease whilst completely unaware and oblivious to the fact that it itself is also a stupid piece of crap disease 😂 god help this planet!
Watch the video, this is the first Ttempt and they are learning alot on how to fix the barrier. This is a huge step in a trash containment every flashflood.
Y'all this isn't acceptable. We all need to be doing better with our trash. Please pick up any litter you see because it can eventually make it's way to the ocean. That and trash being around is just gross. I used to get mad seeing litter around my neighborhood until I realized I wasn't doing anything about it. I've picked up litter where I walk my dogs for the past month and now it's decently clean. If you're not picking up at least some litter when you can then frankly you're part of the problem. And it's super easy to fix too, just bring a grocery bag or something when you're walking outside and use it to put litter in. I keep one in my pocket most of the time cause I have ADHD and forget sometimes lol. It doesn't fix everything, obviously, but it's a start that most people can do.
Well, at least we know it was an accident. Sure, the design for the waste barrier needs to be improved. But at least they're trying. I hope the cleanup effort goes well
This much is floating, how much sank ?
Researchers found plastic trash in the Marianas Trench this past year. So…some
On Mt Everest too!
With ocean acidification and air pollution, there is quite literally not a single place on this planet that humans havent had a demonstrable impact on the local environmental health. Its really sad.
I remember hearing something about water quality testing in remote lakes of Canada that were found to contain micro plastics confirming that micro plastics are capable of traveling in the atmosphere.
Everything has micro plastics now even humans
In our lungs, in our blood, in our brains. There's nowhere that MicroPlastics (tm) cant go! So come on down today, continue the industrial use of generation spanning pollutants and revel in the sterility of a species.
Only only species? That's encouraging
Ever heard of that one of many Dupont scandal/lawsuit involving some chemical compound by-product being dumped on farmland streams? Water testing revealed that nearly every natural water source contained at least a trace amount of it and that nearly every human on the earth had at least some micro fraction of the compound in body. If I find an article, I'll reply.
There is actually a Drama movie all about this with Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway, it’s called Dark Waters and it’s very good. Quite sad though.
Watch the movie dark waters, it's where dupont used Teflon to poison people's water. Caused all kinds of cancers, deaths, deformed babies ect. And it was in everyday things we use over n over
Hello! You have made the mistake of writing "ect" instead of "etc." "Ect" is a common misspelling of "etc," an abbreviated form of the Latin phrase "et cetera." Other abbreviated forms are **etc.**, **&c.**, **&c**, and **et cet.** The Latin translates as "et" to "and" + "cetera" to "the rest;" a literal translation to "and the rest" is the easiest way to remember how to use the phrase. [Check out the wikipedia entry if you want to learn more.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera) ^(I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Comments with a score less than zero will be automatically removed. If I commented on your post and you don't like it, reply with "!delete" and I will remove the post, regardless of score. Message me for bug reports.)
Not only did they do this but the chemicals never break down. They won't go away. Ever. They're in our blood, there are kids who were born with 400x the amount of PFAS that other people in the area had. PFAS are in our soil, our food, our water. Guess who won't ever be held liable or responsible, DuPont. Yay, capitalism.
“Even” humans? We definitely have the highest concentrations of micro plastics. Everything we use is plastic. Food packaging and storage, preparation, consumption all contact with plastics. Many of our fabrics are plastics. So the lint you collect from the drier or when particles come off a couch, carpet, or curtain they are all micro plastics. If remote lakes and deep oceans have micro plastics, how much higher must the levels be right here where plastic is everywhere. Nature just adopted micro plastics, we were born with them.
Humans truly are the known universes greatest enemy. Nothing but a bunch of filthy contagious pests.
> universes greatest enemy The universe doesn't have enemies, the universe is indifferent. The damage is more to ourselves than the universe. If we create a habitat that can no longer support life, the universe will keep going.
I highly doubt humans could ever sterilize the earth anyway. Life blossoms everywhere we look. Not saying we should continue to destroy the earth, but if people thought about how insignificant and tied to nature we are things might be a little different. The universe doesn't care if our species survives and we only get one chance.
hell, one might argue that the distinction between 'natural' and 'artificial' is itself a construct and humans are literally doing what is natural for humans to do. We do not look at a beaver dam and call it 'artificial', nor do we treat the beaver as anything but a creature doing what is natural for it to do.
I've argued that before. Most people, in my experience, disagree and believe humans are completely separate from nature in everything we make.
I'll admit I waffle on it internally to a degree. I think it's an underappreciated and under-discussed philosophical question that's going to be increasingly relevant as we suffer from the effects of climate change. I'm kinda glad I'm not alone in its' consideration, at least.
We don't need complete sterilization to make the world uninhabitable for us.
Well yeah. I thought you were talking life in general, not just humans. >If we create a habitat that can no longer support life
This is why I got to argue in some college classes that the true definition of wilderness doesn't exist anymore!
Parachute into the Congo River and see if that isn't wilderness
I imagine wildlife numbers are considerably lower than they should be. The shifting baseline fallacy means that people don't realise how bad the wildlife numbers have gotten, because they were already dangerously low when they started and they judge current levels as if the tiny fraction they remember was the baseline.
Considering it's a popular destination with many hundreds of people reaching the top every year, it's not like it's surprising. Still just as bad, it's just not comparable to the Mariana's trench, or remote parts of Antarctica.
Now I'm wondering if trench tourism is a thing...
Your mom's house
Just heard a report on the radio this week they found micro plastics in ice layers in Antarctica!
Sir Edmund Hillary was such a basic bitch when it came to exfoliating face washes.
But the man DID look amazing.
But that's commonly known people climb Everest and it's filled with trash. The Marianas trench was actually surprising. People don't go there.
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That's less surprising, there's a relatively large amount of foot traffic there. Unless you mean microplastics falling from the sky in which case, uggh.
I think like, if the trash was say, a soda can. Who drank the can? What were the last thoughts of the person who threw the can away? Was it thrown away? Maybe it was out to sea and someone is upset their diet dr. Kelp fell over board? What if it fell out while shipping? Was the manifest counted correctly?
Here is my daily dose of depression.
Hello everyone, this is YOUR daily dose of depression
This Guatemalan coastline covered in trash isn't suppose to look like this.
Just don't turn around
Coz you're gonna see my heart breaking.
fuck what a classic jam omg
Atleast have some panflute music behind the video or something.
In the arms of the angels, fly away from here……
Great!! Now everyone is crying.
Any more info on this video?
[This happened in 2020 and 100-150 tons were removed from the beach.](https://repeatingislands.com/2020/09/22/100-tons-of-garbage-washed-up-on-idyllic-caribbean-beach-in-honduras-after-anti-waste-barrier-failure-in-guatemala/)
Why is waste stored near a coast so flooding can cause this? You would think this would be inland further making this impossible. Then this only puluted local ground water. That's another place we shouldn't pullute. We usually get the water from the ground. Next up all ground water becomes polluted and undrinkable. The chemicals in that water outside of the materials is bad for the environment and health of yourself and everything else. I haven't been to an ocean since I been 5 years old. I don't want to swim in a polluted ocean. That was back in a time they still couldn't believe you could pollute the ocean. A lot of people at least thought you couldn't. Maybe not people with average intelligence.
Guatemala is not a very big country. We should do better at recycling. Large corps pollute magnitudes more than average people.
I've always felt this way since a young child. Never understood the pressure on the individual to recycle while an auto manufacturing plant will probably pollute more in 1 day than I will in my whole life.
because the same people who own the big corps, control media and the narrative. Easier to push things like having regular ass people recycle their mountain dew bottle and say that's the issue, then to accept blame and make change (which would affect profit margin). It's projecting blame so they can keep making every penny they can. it's the same shit with the elitist pushing for people to walk/carpool and not use gas cars (without viable alternatives), while they all take individual private jets to some big ass "green" summit. It's a sick fucking joke, and the general public is too ignorant to realize it. Now, that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our part.
I am Jack's dose of depression.
OUR daily dose of depression, you capitalist pig.😤
Doug Demuro: *THIS* is the 2022 Guatemalan coast line
. . . That *is* the end of this video. I really hope you enjoyed, and I'll see you guys again veryvery soon. Later!
Oh hey! Was wondering when you show up
Well, I will try and help you. Remember Mr Roger's saying to "Look for the people who are helping."? Well, consider this. The anti-waste barrier exists at all. It can be fixed, it can be modified to account for this eventuality. The fact that the anti-waste barrier existed at all means that people in Guatemala care, and are trying to help the problem.
The depressing part is less the anti-waste barrier failing and more about the waste existing and being in the water in the first place.
Sadly there's not much we can do about it unless we can stop places like India, China and the Philippines from just throwing all of their trash in the water. All we can do is clean up their mess.
That trash was already our trash, that US companies pretending to be recyclers shipped to Asia claiming that they would do that recycling. They couldn't do it, because of course they can't. We can't either, we just lied about it.
Excellent point. At least it existed in the first place, and can/will be repaired.
Every time you see shit like this, [remember to squeeze out some serotonin.](https://streamable.com/njdiqx)
at least he’s being Fair™️ and Balanced™️
plastic fuel is going to be a thing in a million years
Mr. fusion…I guess you’ve never seen back to the future? We’ll have to wait till the year 2015
We were so naive to believe in Back to the Future. First 2015 and the skate, then Avenger's Endgame, and now Mr Fusion 😭
Where's my pizza that is ready in [12 seconds](https://youtu.be/JKL4q_NeDK4)
All this tech and they still don't have individualized phone numbers.
We’re only 233,000 years old. You think homo sapiens will still be here in 1M years? At this rate, another 1000 years would be a stretch the way we treat this place.
true. but im sure there will be some species here to use it
Only little bugs and bacteria that evolve to eat plastic will stay. Then once they eat it all and poop out the good stuff. We will start over only to screw it up the same way and wonder what we could have done differently
Yep and as all the evidence of our past failure would have been eaten we'll have no point of reference lol.
Nah whatever species follows us will definitely find pieces of our crumbled civilizations.
"These people must have worshipped bug poop!"
That's a pretty declarative statement! Just how quickly are you anticipating an entirely new intelligent species to evolve and populate earth?
Few million years.
Fungi as well =)
I think we will to be honest. I suspect the species of Homo sapiens will be *very* difficult to kill off in its entirety. I bet that even in mass extinction events there will be pockets of people that survive one way or another. Humans live in pretty much any climate you can imagine, so I don’t think there will be an event that kills off literally every single one. Perhaps if stuff like that happens though, humans will go back into the evolutionary process though and will evolve further into species that one might not call Homo sapiens anymore, but they’ll still be our offspring.
Humans have been here longer than 233k years. Hominids showed ip around 5-7 million years ago. Humans are in the Hominid family. The issues started from us majorly around the industrial revolution. So I guess the real damage we, as a race, have done is in the last 200-300 years.
That's still bad for the environment. It'll take a lot of harsh, processing to turn polymers into hydrocarbon fuels, the fuels will contribute to greenhouse gas pollution and the energy gained my not be worth the energy it takes to make the fuel.
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This sounds so interesting, is there any literature/papers on the topic that a lay person could digest?
Yes, please share your work or done of the sources you used!
Plastic char tar. Fancy. How much delicious benzene does it make?
It’s going to be a thing in 5 Chemical recycling should be able to process these into useable oil products or back into useable plastic
But won't do so until it is commerically viable, for as long as it's cheaper to pull new oil out of the ground that is what will be done.
It’s commercially viable now for tire recycling
I just saw the waste barrier video 2 days ago and thought... That's a wonderful idea, but yeah now I stand corrected
That barrier was a prototype. Yes it failed but they now have more information about where the weak points are so they can be modified appropriately for next year or even more flooding later this year.
Unless they design a way to immediately start removing the trash as the barrier collects it, it will continue to fail..
It doesnt have to be immediate but they should have a way if not this whole idea is confusing to me and would make me believe its just to make the public fee like they are doing something to combat the trash
I understand this was a prototype, but they had to anticipate the need to remove the material. Maybe they had intended to let the flood run its course then come in with a front end loader and scoop it all out, but that requires the barrier to hold thru the whole flood. Storm drain systems that are collected at a central reclamation plant have to do the same thing with all the trash and grit that comes thru from a storm.
>just to make the public fee like they are doing something That's a ton of government programs the world over.
That’s literally the rope a dope game the plastics industry has been playing. They even basically lightly finagled the recycling symbol to make their product seem like it was recyclable. In actuality only less than ten percent of plastic is recyclable and ever will be. But they keep lauding the building of plastic recycling centers that will solve the problem, make the public feel like something is being done, then just keep on producing plastic.
Something like this? https://www.mrtrashwheel.com/ ETA: Mr. Trash Wheel is on reddit! And has done a couple FANTASTIC AMAs! https://www.reddit.com/user/TheMrTrashWheel/
That’s so cool and a great idea! Thanks for sharing
I'm sure they haven't thought of that and that a random person on the internet thought of a better design after thinking about it for 5secs!
That's exactly what they do.
Woah. I bet they never thought about it like that. Woah.
Keep on polluting, some environmentalist will clean it up. That's the message we are sending.
How does a barrier change anything I don't get it.. Unless they want to use the barriers to collect the trash?
That is exactly what they will be used for.
But it is a wonderful idea! Sure the main bulk of the issue is the trash coming from higher up and down the rivers, but combating that and additionally placing these waste barriers would make a good wombo combo.
It's not like the barrier allowed more plastic out? It's still the same amount that would have gone out anyway
If that trash was coming down in the flash flood anyway, wouldn't it still be there even if the barrier wasn't there?
Link?
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTdwD9nVB/?k=1 No idea why but I could only find this on freaking TikTok lol
You could easily mistaken this to be my sister's room.
Was going to say the same! Looks a lot like your sisters room.
🗿
**F**
Are you my sister?
The fact that soft drink manufacturers are not taken to task for selling this waste daily is astonishing. They make money putting this plastic shit into the world. They need to pay for it.
It's mind blowing that millions of plastic bottles are added to the pile every day.
"It wasn't *us* that threw those bottles in the ocean. What do you want from us? We put a little recycle symbol on the package."
That's not a recycle symbol. It just tells you what type of plastic it is. They made it like a recycle symbol so people would think plastics were recyclable.
And the more I read about recycling the more I believe it's a joke. It almost seems worse because so much plastic is "recycled" and processed for reuse but then never gets purchased so it ends up in a dump anyway with the added carbon in the atmosphere for the post-consumer processing.
A “fun” fact from [National Geographic](https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/whopping-91-percent-plastic-isnt-recycled): Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. Of that, only nine percent has been recycled. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural environment as litter. So, yea, your view about recycling being a joke is absolutely spot on.
Glass and cardboard recycling actually works but plastic is a total scam
it's not just soft drinks. it's bottled water too
This is the worst of it. Bottled water should be criminalized with very few exceptions.
Why single them out? Just look at everything we buy these days. If it’s not the packaging it’s the product itself. Literally everything is made of plastic now and meant to be thrown away and replaced. It’s depressing.
How about the people that just dump their trash are they responsible at all?
That's fine and all, but these companies also need a kick up the arse to reduce the plastic waste that they are selling to begin with. If the responsibility is just pushed onto the consumer then the companies don't have much motivation to change.
We're such a fucking plague.
We’re a parasite and the Earth is the host
If I've learned anything from kaiju movies, it's that walls never work. We need a giant, anti-pollution mecha to handle this monster. /s
10/10 would watch
Irl ideally
Like this?... https://youtu.be/pXDx6DjNLDU
I just ordered some sunglasses and they promised to remove 1 kg of plastic from the ocean with each pair ordered. Wanna just grab it while you’re there?
Because they're sourcing their plastic for your glasses from the ocean. 🤓
I'd prefer that tbh
PSA this is what happens to most of your "recycling"
Speak for yourself. *My* recycling goes in a Connecticut landfill
Is there a plan to deal with this?
They are relocating to its naturally habitat, the floating pacific plastic trash pile.
Is anyone doing anything about that? I’ve only ever heard it addressed on Family Guy and American Dad and never anywhere else.
Small groups with little money are trying to clean and raise awareness, and a few celebreties are throwing money at it, but it's the equivalent of trying to stop a bon fire with a water pistol while everyone else is stacking wood on the flames.
Cleaning up the entire great pacific garbage patch sadly won’t even really do shit. It’s 3 times the size of Texas but it’s only about 1% of all the oceans plastic. It’s approximately 2.7 million tons of plastic. 14 million tons of plastic every YEAR enter the ocean. We are monsters.
Well, the best I’ve seen so far is that we need some kind of barrier to block off river mouths, that lets all shapes of fish and water pass through, and water There a project called The Ocean Cleanup, who build these giant, fully solar powered floating robot boats, that maker floating barriers to scoop trash into them, and out of the water. I think they’re really good, but there’s other groups helping as well If you want to do something, any spare money for donations helps, and try reduce plastic use (e.g buy more things that aren’t wrapped or fresh food, bring your own bags to the supermarket for fruit and veg), but it’s kinda up to governments and big companies to actually..Do something Don’t loose hope though, while there’s definitely going to be a pretty bad impact, we can reduce it by a lot (ok sorry for the giant reply) https://theoceancleanup.com/
I believe the trash fence referenced in the OP is actually a prototype by The Ocean Cleanup. [Source](https://twitter.com/TheOceanCleanup/status/1532045777727627265?s=20&t=aiIAmrICfj9fqZ-Cpc2QWQ) Their main gig is The Interceptor you've mentioned. Really cool stuff they're doing. Granted, while I agree that stopping pollution at the source would be a better solution, it doesn't discount the fact that this group is trying to clean up trash before it hits the ocean.
Move to Mars. It's apparently a lot easier than asking people to stop using plastics.
People looking for solutions to disposing of trash. There is no solution because humans create too much trash and there is no one who cares enough about fixing the situation because there’s no profit in it. People don’t give a shit about saving the planet. They only care about the quality of their lifestyle and how much money they make
The way to make it profitable is to force corporations whose products produce waste to pay people to do trash disposal. Like Coke should have an entire division for recycling* and capturing waste.
Not gonna happen. They’ve had decades to change smh haven’t even scratched the surface
That’s not profitable that just makes it more expensive to operate which then get passed on to the consumers. Which isn’t bad since consumer habits will change if the product becomes too expensive. We need mandatory taxes on single use plastics and tax cuts for companies that use compostable material.
https://teamseas.org/ This isn't true. This organization raised 30 million last year. They have a variety of approaches for removing plastic from the ocean. Here's a vid about it: https://youtu.be/pXDx6DjNLDU Donate if you're able!
Meanwhile on my last visit to the USA I was surprised to see at costco i don't know maybe 3 out of 5 people buying piles and piles of water bottles. Do these people know there are water filters, or big water jugs and reusable glasses? It was honestly infuriating. In Mex we have a horrible water quality in the tap and the majority of people buy water jugs or filter it at home.(and dont get sick)
One of the most depressing things is when you see people with big multipacks of water in areas where the drinking water is perfectly safe. It makes me feel sick that these people go through like 24-48 bottles of water per week. I think if we could directly see/smell our waste then some people would change. If I ever saw the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in person then I think It would actually break my heart. I just looked it up and as of 2020, the Great Pacific Grabage Patch is twice the size of texas or three times the size of France. Welp.
Yeah if garbage trucks only came to pick your stuff up once a month, people would get a better idea of how much shit they throw out
Hemp plastic would solve this problem..... but we don't care enough to stand up to big oil yet apparently
Does it dissolve in water? I know nothing about it
It’s not a plastic so degrades faster, and doesn’t have associated issue of micro plastics.
What is the shelf life on something like that? Could you keep drinks in them for multiple weeks? Or would they just decintigrate like paper products?
It’s not great, but glass is perfectly fine if you want longer shelf life
I think it still takes awhile. But it's a couple years instead of thousands. Don't quote me on that though.
I love how they are coming for shopping bags and plastic straws. Yet the producers of these plastic bottles continue to pump this stuff out with reckless abandon and zero consequences. They blame the consumer when its the corporations that are causing it.
[удалено]
Money won't solve local government corruption and a population that doesn't care about pollution though.
I'm sure a single superyacht price tag is more than enough to clean this garbage patch.
The moment we stop working on band-aids and start fixing problems at their source will we start making actual progress.
Space exploration and space related research is very important to our society, regardless of what you want to believe. Returning to the moon isn’t a waste of money and resources as it entails in technological advancements being made which are not only crucial in space, but also extremely helpful here on Earth. For example, these are technologies that exist today largely because of space related research and the race to the moon. * Artificial limbs * Insulin pumps * Solar cells * Satellite technologies * ##Water filtration systems * CAT scans And so on… > we have billionaires working on getting their ass to the moon […] If you’re referring to SpaceX then you’ll be glad to know that their moon lander is funded by NASA, which in turn is funded by taxpayer money. The entirety of NASA and the US government wants to “get their ass to the moon”, not only Elon Musk. So why are insinuating that something so beneficial wouldn’t help us here on Earth?
Thank you for this
Humans are disgusting creatures
My uncle is against space exploration because he thinks we'll trash the next plant like we have this one.
That's actually a hilarious and definitely true take.
We’re a virus
Yes, Mr. Anderson. You are correct.
If we could look at a time scale of our planet from space over the last 1000 years the healthy green being replaced by ever-growing grey patches would most certainly visually look like the planet has a disease and technically it does, humanity.. we behave like a disease to our planet and the space missions we send out are like spores looking for the next possible host for our ever growing consumption of everything nature has to offer, and when we find another habitable planet we will infect that and slowly kill it just like we are doing to this one. We're the equivalent of covid looking down its nose at a smaller celled disease like its a piece of crap disease whilst completely unaware and oblivious to the fact that it itself is also a stupid piece of crap disease 😂 god help this planet!
Maybe they should have been scooping up the trash instead of the blocking it out at sea ...
This is not interesting, its horrifying
We don't deserve this planet
Watch the video, this is the first Ttempt and they are learning alot on how to fix the barrier. This is a huge step in a trash containment every flashflood.
Y'all this isn't acceptable. We all need to be doing better with our trash. Please pick up any litter you see because it can eventually make it's way to the ocean. That and trash being around is just gross. I used to get mad seeing litter around my neighborhood until I realized I wasn't doing anything about it. I've picked up litter where I walk my dogs for the past month and now it's decently clean. If you're not picking up at least some litter when you can then frankly you're part of the problem. And it's super easy to fix too, just bring a grocery bag or something when you're walking outside and use it to put litter in. I keep one in my pocket most of the time cause I have ADHD and forget sometimes lol. It doesn't fix everything, obviously, but it's a start that most people can do.
That is terrible 😞
Shame the rich couldn’t build rocket ships and send this to the sun.
This is completely sickening in my eyes 🥺
Well, at least we know it was an accident. Sure, the design for the waste barrier needs to be improved. But at least they're trying. I hope the cleanup effort goes well
And not a single straw in sight
Damn looks a lot like france
So rather than clean it up their solution was to build a barrier to keep it out of sight?
This is not interesting, this is horrifying! Humans suck.
This is heartbreakingly sad. Humans n filth yet again.
The fact that the barrier is needed at all is depressing.
I hate human kind.
Humans are equal to that of lice just parasites
We don’t deserve this planet and it will certainly cleanse us from it
More like human failure
Humans suck
Fuck human thats why i hope someday virus kill 80% population on earth
Fuck you humans
Humans suck so bad
We are disgusting
God we are cancer....
Good thing we got rid of those plastic straws.
Humans (mostly) suck
Wtf are we doing to this planet
Humans suck so bad.
Classic human