The Core
Why We Are Here => Water Cooler => Topic started by: rcjordan on August 16, 2018, 11:31:07 PM
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http://gcaptain.com/maersk-supply-service-ahts-selected-to-deploy-worlds-first-large-scale-ocean-plastic-cleanup-system/
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That's awesome. I had heard of experimental devices, but didn't realize they were actively targeting 50% every 5 yearrs
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wow... thats needed. Great news. Good find. Thanks.
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This is good news.
Of course it would help if people stopped throwing plastic in rivers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PavA4rUypE
The world has all the plastic we will ever need. We just have to recycle it.
Earlier this year scientists announced that they have improved a naturally occurring enzyme, which will reduce plastic to its natural building blocks. There are many types of plastic and each type probably needs a different enzyme and needs to work on a large production scale. There is hope.
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Very cool. I'd seen the sea-bins but they only seem to be good for harbours and other coastal points.
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The Ocean Cleanup Technology
https://www.theoceancleanup.com/technology/
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Floating pipe set to start massive ocean cleanup process
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/15/tech/ocean-cleanup-project/index.html
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#Guatemala
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I always love the critics the media quotes: this one dosen't like it because it ignores X, another says it won't work, yet another hates it because it might endanger sealife (as if the massive plastic patch isn't already endangering sea life.)
If you listen to all the critcs nobody will ever try anything, ever. At least they are trying, it might fail, but by trying we will learn stuff.
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Agreed. People are often suggesting doing nothing because the suggested solution is not perfect. People, this (in this case, environmental degradation, but it could be 50 other big problems) is a crisis - the criterion needs to be "better" not "perfect"
I'm inspired that someone is actually *trying* to do anything about this, which seemed like an insoluble (pardon the pun) problem
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>somebody
Another one:
SodaStream launches ocean plastic cleanup effort in Honduras | The Times of Israel
https://www.timesofisrael.com/sodastream-launches-ocean-plastic-cleanup-effort-in-honduras/
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Ocean-Saving Device to Clean Up Great Pacific Garbage Patch Breaks, Will Return to Port
https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-01-04-ocean-saving-device-broke-great-pacific-garbage-patch
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*for repairs and upgrades.
I see this as a hopeful thing. It means Wilson was actually our there doing what it was suppose to do and that they are actively improving it's ability.
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Yeah, as the inventor said, you have to expect a few iterations with a new tech.
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>supposed to do
Wilson pretty much failed in its job even before it broke. It didn't drift fast enough to catch much of anything. The developers modded it some on-the-fly, but no joy. I'm hopeful that they have some mods in mind that will work.
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I think the one thing that would help clear up a lot of the plastic is to start trash collection/ recycling systems in poor countries. When I was in Peru, the river was "the thing that took the trash away."
People dumped EVERYTHING (raw sewage included) into the river to get rid of it.
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Ocean Cleanup attaches parachutes to trash-collecting barriers to maintain steady speeds
https://newatlas.com/ocean-cleanup-parachutes-plastic/61119/
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Ocean cleanup device successfully collects plastic for first time
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/03/ocean-cleanup-device-successfully-collects-plastic-for-first-time
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Good news.
I just bought something plastic and was surprised to see the ingredients say "Made from recycled ocean plastic." So in theory, you could make a market for it (obviously the vast majority is not recyclable and this will never pencil out on pure economics, but it could be some % of the solution to offset costs).
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This looks to be from 2016 (no date)
Adidas created the running shoe using a combination of 95% plastics recovered from the Indian Ocean near the Maldives and 5% recycled polyester.
Each pair of shoes recycles the equivalent of eleven plastic bottles and the shoe laces and lining are also produced using recycled materials.
Adidas has created 7,000 pairs and has plans in 2017 to create one million more, and in the process recycling at least eleven million plastic bottles into performance footwear.
https://blueocean.net/running-shoes-made-recycled-ocean-plastics/
Fast forward three years...
With consumers clamoring for these environmentally-friendly sneakers, Adidas is prepared to ramp up production in 2019. “With Adidas products made from recycled plastic, we offer our consumers real added value beyond the look, functionality, and quality of the product, because every shoe is a small contribution to the preservation of our oceans,” said Eric Liedtke, Adidas Executive Board Member. “After one million pairs of shoes produced in 2017, five million in 2018, we plan to produce eleven million pairs of shoes containing recycled ocean plastic in 2019.”
That's not the product I bought... but I can't remember what it was.
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https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/
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Great idea. Should be easier than open waters. That said, IIRC, the majority if the ocean plastic seems to be debris & flotsam from the ocean? fishing industry, so the impact might not be much. On the flip side, though, all of us have seen pix of those Asian rivers overflowing with plastic bottles. So it'd definitely help there.
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The project lead claims that most plastic flows from roads to creeks to rivers, then to the oceans.
Here's his presentation (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyZArQMFhQ4)
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I suspect he's being disingenuous.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Bigger and Mostly Made of Fishing Gear
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/03/great-pacific-garbage-patch-plastics-environment/
"At least half of [...ocean plastic waste] is not consumer plastics, which are central to much of the current debate, but fishing gear.”
George Leonard, chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy.
https://www.seashepherdglobal.org/latest-news/marine-debris-plastic-fishing-gear/
"Approximately 46% of the 79 thousand tons of ocean plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of fishing nets, some as large as football fields, according to the study published in March 2018 in Scientific Reports, which shocked the researchers themselves who expected the percentage to be closer to 20%.Aug 22, 2019"
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the majority if the ocean plastic seems to be debris & flotsam from the ocean? fishing industry, so the impact might not be much. On the flip side, though, all of us have seen pix of those Asian rivers overflowing with plastic bottles. So it'd definitely help there.
I believe most of the current flotsam is from "recycling" that was sent from the the US and Europe to Asia for processing. China's National Sword may help, but one of the biggest recycling facilities in Vietnam is on a river delta.
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The Ocean Cleanup device returns with plastic
https://www.fastcompany.com/90441278/the-ocean-cleanup-device-has-returned-from-the-pacific-garbage-patch-with-its-first-load-of-plastic
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If this photo isn't staged, the haul from the river dredge is looking impressive/depressive.
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/fbvhh9/dutch_boy_genius_who_has_been_cleaning_up_pacific/
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Kids these days... ;-)
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>fishing gear
Yup, appears to be the case.
https://i.imgur.com/lbF3rA2.gifv
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I keep seeing assertions completely across the board on what the sources of plastic pollution in the ocean are.
I'm settling in on the 70-80% is land-based, 20-30% is ocean-based and almost all of the ocean-based plastic (up to 90% "in some areas" but globally probably around half) is from commercial fishing. So roughly speaking, fishing accounts for about 10% of the total.
This seems to be a pretty balanced look:
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#how-much-of-ocean-plastics-come-from-land-and-marine-sources
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Ocean Cleanup's biggest system sweeps into Great Pacific Garbage Patch
https://newatlas.com/environment/ocean-cleanup-pacific-garbage-patch-jenny-active-propulsion/
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The world's attention has been so fixed on Covid and climate change that we've been ignoring plastic pollution. We really need to set hard phaseout dates for fast food container plastics (those being most likely to end up in waterways) for the entire US. We also need to start a plastic tax on manufacturers for their retail product packaging.
In my limited fast food research, I am noticing less use of plastic containers at least from McD's and BK, but there is a long way to go.
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Honestly, I would support a law that 100% phased out single use plastics.
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Question: is a washable stainless steel straw actually better than a single-use plastics straw?
We just had a discussion in my climate group on plastics, recycling, and reusable alternatives.
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>Question: is a washable stainless steel straw actually better than a single-use plastics straw?
I have no idea. I usually don't like paper straws that much, but the other day I used a paper one that was quite good -- it didn't get soggy like some of them do. I've seen compostable plastic alternatives that are made out of things like potato starch. The plastic ones are reusable if you get a little pipe cleaner type brush and wash them out.
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Just read this the other day. I didn't know the much-touted corn-based alternatives require special composting tech;
“By and large restaurants are using PLA which is often corn-based and that will not break down in your home compost pile”
The Problem With Honolulu's Single-Use Plastic Ban At Restaurants - Honolulu Civil Beat
https://www.civilbeat.org/2021/07/the-problem-with-honolulus-single-use-plastic-ban-at-restaurants/
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>straw
Been watching this develop;
I Only Drank Water Out of a Pasta Straw for a Week
https://www.insider.com/i-drank-out-of-a-pasta-straw-for-a-week-2019-10
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>>I have no idea.
Yeah... that's the problem. I don't either. How can we as individuals be expected to make decisions about every blessed package in the store?
Still, I think my question was not the right one. I think maybe a better one would be: Is a single-use plastic container worse than a single-use glass container? I'm pretty sure the answer there is "no," but it would perhaps depend on what you mean by "better."
In the case of the straw, the lifetime carbon footprint of reusable straws is generally much higher than using single-use straws, but part of that depends on whether or not you wash it. If I recall from the article, if you wash it in hot water, the carbon footprint of your steel straw loses ground against the single-use plastic one every time you use it. They don't say what happens if you rarely wash it (which, unless I was drinking a milkshake, I rarely would). Don't quote me on any of that - I can try to dig out the article for the specifics if you're curious.
That said, we could do a lot better. The last renter left an insulated box from some salmon company. Usually these are styrofoam. This one was cardboard with foam inside that could be composted or dissolved in water. I put the foam under the dogwood tree and watered the tree. The insulation is now invisible and I guess in a few years it will be part of the dogwood.
I would like to see more things like that, but then I ask whether or not products that make me feel good about buying all manner of crap are really that helpful. The reusable straw thing is a bit of a flashpoint, because a young woman I know proudly showed me her collection of reusable stainless steel straws with fancy carrying cases. She was young and I didn't want to discourage her, so I bit my tongue.
Similarly, for a while, every time I went to a conference or volunteer event, I got an "eco-friendly" steel bottle. I have a crate full of them and, since they all have dates and logos, they can't carry them over to the next year's conference. Is that really eco-friendly? My guess is no, but I would have to travel with a full-time environmental economist to know.
I find it very confusing and frustrating. The sad thing is that sometimes I feel so frustrated that I more or less give up.
The more I look into it, the more confusing it feels except the simple takeaway: "reduce, reuse, recycle" starts with "reduce" because it is far and away the most effective and the easiest to analyze (but even that can be complicated if I'm trading out a new high-efficiency washer for a perfectly functional old washer, for example).
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reduce
and the biggy there is reducing the number of babies born..... but is that a right that would be taken away? And then who would look after the "too many" oldies.
I look at my car, by bike, my cycles (S yes several) and also feel bemused. I live in the country. If I move to be without a car, someone else will move in
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Great discussion.
I read somewhere that 50% of the plastic waste in US waterways and ultimately in the ocean comes from fast food waste so that is the low hanging fruit. Paper straws must have gotten better since the ones from the 1950's and 60's that I remember. Are there alternate renewable materials like hemp fiber that we can make straws from besides plastics?
Carrying around an unwashed stainless straw grosses me out.
> Is a single-use plastic container worse than a single-use glass container?
Yes if we are defining better as which screws up the oceans more. Disposable beverage cans started out as steel decades ago. They seemed to work okay for soft drinks but people preferred glass bottles for beer because the steel imparted a taste. So beverage cans moved to aluminum. I do remember buying 16 oz. non-returnable bottles of pop when I was a kid. Steel, glass paper, pasta, waxed paper, paper made from things other than wood, we should at least try these things to reduce ocean plastics which are alarming and never really breakdown in the environment. As we find the limitations (problems) with these alternatives to plastics, we will either find solutions or change our habits.
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>glass
I had a friend (now deceased, probably covid) who was a long-term county commissioner. He and I discussed the county's "recycling" centers' operation on occasion --particularly since China quit taking our trash. I knew that cardboard might be earning a few dollars but I was surprised when he told me that they were breaking even on glass. They break it up and use it as aggregate in concrete instead of buying gravel.
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After posting the long thing above, I went for a bike ride and in the middle of it, realized what I was trying to express and how to do it much more succinctly.
My worry about a 100% ban on anything is that it often leads to unforeseen side effects. My questions about straws and jars were attempts to ask what side effects might end up worse than the cure.
Again, I don't know.
Are there alternate renewable materials like hemp fiber that we can make straws from besides plastics?
Yes, but are the better? I dug out the article from the discussion with the local climate action group that I mentioned. This is what they had to say:
For example, reusable bamboo drinking straws and two reusable sandwich storage options—beeswax wrap and silicone bags—never reached the break-even point in any of the three environmental impact categories assessed in the study: energy use, global warming potential, and water consumption.
https://www.futurity.org/sustainabilty-reusable-products-2591682-2/
That helps me understand my initial uneasiness even better and to restate what I said above as "If you optimize against any given single metric (renewable in this case) you necessarily make compromises on other metrics that may be more important (carbon footprint)."
> Is a single-use plastic container worse than a single-use glass container?
Yes if we are defining better as which screws up the oceans more.
And there's the same problem. It begs the question for me of whether or not that's the right metric.
Let's look at both of those.
1. Renewable.
Well, we now know that we simply cannot afford to burn all our fossil fuels in vehicles. So the fact that it is not renewable is not really a problem, is it? If we convert our crude oil into hyrdrocarbon polymers and bury them in the ground, is that not a form of carbon sequestration?
That thought, which would have seemed heretical and immoral to me not long ago, has been growing in my mind. I don't know the answer to my question, but more and more it seems to me to be a reasonable question (whereas five years ago I would have thought of it as a ridiculous question).
Meanwhile, wood is a renewable, but only over relatively long time spans. So should we pull carbon out of the ground, use it, then put it back in the ground or should we make our materials with renewables that involve cutting down a tree that is actively sequestering carbon?
That is a ridiculous choice. One of my brother's dictums is "Anytime you have to choose between two options, you probably haven't thought about your options long enough." And so clearly there should be a better option, but as a thought experiment, in that case I would choose the single-use product over the renewable.
2. Ocean plastic.
Most of the ocean plastic from the US in the last couple of decades (i.e. since we stopped sending garbage scows out into the ocean to dump it) is the result of us shipping our plastics to "recycling" facilities in China and, more recently, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia (or Turkey and Kenya if you're in the UK). Paradoxically, if we had simply been throwing all our plastic away in quality landfills far from the ocean, we actually would have less plastic in the ocean.
So from that perspective, for places like the UK and US, proper sequestration of plastic waste is not that hard, whereas getting to carbon neutral is very hard. If the plastic has a much lower carbon footprint than glass and we have quality landfill practices, perhaps that's better.
3. Energy.
One other factor is that as energy becomes more carbon neutral, a lot of equations change. Then we stop caring if glass takes a huge amount of electricity to run high-termperature foundries and we stop caring if it takes a huge amount of energy to collect it and clean it. At a certain point, if the energy inputs are carbon neutral, then all that matters really is whether the materials are common, inert, renewable.
Since I was a kid, I always wondered whether some day we would mine our landfills. It seems like with cheap energy and good robotics, that could become a reality. The challenge then will be the chemistry of separating out the basic elements into usable materials.
Anyway, as is my wont, I've probably gone on too long, but these are issues that I have been rolling over and over in my head without satisfying asnwers. It's much on my mind, but without good conclusions. And ultimately, I would like to make rational decisions, but there is also an emotional component - it feels wrong to throw something away when there's a reusable option even if an analysis by an academic team tells me the reusable option is less good. It still feels bad.
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For instance....
Touted as clean, ‘blue’ hydrogen may be worse than gas, coal.
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/925237
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Or one case I read about was a UK supermarket chain that banned all plastic wrap on produce and saw food waste go up 50%, so the overall carbon footprint of the food went way up.
Plastic is a problem, but one problem among many.
There are some prominent environmentalists (most notably Stewart Brand) who now think we made a mistake by not building more nuclear electric facilities.
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> recycling (plastic)
By and large, I think recycling plastics is a myth. One that we should quit chasing, especially if it means shipping our plastic waste overseas. Either recycle it here or bury it. I'm skeptical that all the transport of junk plastic for recycling creates less carbon than just landfilling it.
Not all one use plastics are equal. Some, like the bag our frozen fruit comes in, is probably a good use of plastic: it protects the fruit and generally gets placed in a waste stream that ends up in a landfill rather than an ocean.
Honestly, everything is a tradeoff. I remember reading some lengthy Amazon reviews during my search for an eco-friendly laundry detergent. Crickey. The debates went on forever: mineral based vs. renewables, how quickly the detergent breaks down vs. premanufacture carbon and other environmental footprints, "fake" industry certifications on sources of palm oil, packaging, making your own laundry soap, washing your clothes less often, everyone had some objection for every product or ingredient and no clear answers about anything. Reading all that stuff left me twisted and no closer to a good solution.
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>>eco-friendly laundry detergent
Malcolm Gladwell just had a Revisionist History episode on this. I find Gladwell to typically be overly glib, but I think the contours of his analysis are correct. He came down to deciding that the most eco-friendly detergent is Tide. Why? Because Tide is engineered to work much better in cold water than the "eco-friendly" detergents, and if you switch from warm to cold, you reduce the overall footprint of a load of laundry including all inputs (detergent, energy, water), but 70%. If you go from hot to cold, you reduce the footprint by 90%.
https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/laundry-done-right/
So if an "eco-friendly" detergent requires you to use hot water to get your clothes clean, it is in fact eco-hostile. Again, if we make a transition to renewable energy, that calculus changes.
There's a similar calculus with the plastic coffee pods. My brother used to work there and they submit everything a life-cycle environmental analysis. The K-cups were something like 1-2% of the environmental impact. The vast majority of the environmental impact from coffee comes from roasting and transit. So Green Mountain bought roasting plants around the country to reduce the transit component. Another big component is heating the water and point of use.
By order of the local health department, we stopped leaving bulk coffee in our rental when we were allowed to reopen in June 2020 and, against my inclination, switched to K-Cups. But since, I've noticed a few things. When people use a drip coffee maker they use more coffee than they need for the number of cups they make, and they make more cups than they drink. So people
- use a lot of coffee
- heat a lot of hot water
So now as I look at it, I'm thinking that K-Cups might in fact be the eco-friendly option. Again, that assumes that you landfill the cups rather than trying to recycle and that energy for transit, roasting and heating water have a carbon footprint.
That said, I've recently learned that you can get compostable K-Cups, so I'll switch to those when I need to resupply. To Littleman's original point, couldn't we simply mandate that K-Cups be compostable?
Anyway, once again I come down the opinion that we consumers should not have to do this level of research for every damn thing we buy. Most people won't. Those of us who try are probably wrong half the time and so forth.
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fits in this discussion;
Least credible ad of the week: "Beefing Up Sustainability" - Food Politics
https://www.foodpolitics.com/2021/08/least-credible-ad-of-the-week-beefing-up-sustainability/
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England to ban single use plastics cutlery.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/government-to-ban-single-use-plastic-cutlery/ar-AANPkqZ
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>cutlery
F*ck cutlery, it is the plastic drink bottles that I see everywhere. Let me know when a gov -any gov- quits sucking the lobbyists' t##s and bans those.
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> plastic drink bottles
I think I see 3 water bottles for every beverage bottle. Everybody walks around with a water bottle, most filled with glorified tap water, to stay hydrated. We have to be the most hydrated people on the planet. But the water bottle thing can be solved by habit change. Get people to carry a reusable water bottle instead of some Nestle water brand, single use bottle. I think this is already slowly happening just from observation.
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F*ck cutlery, it is the plastic drink bottles that I see everywhere. Let me know when a gov -any gov- quits sucking the lobbyists' t##s and bans those.
Brilliant, say it how it is RC. :)
I agree, and fewer Children. Remember when the Chinese had a one child per couple law? I was horrified at the time. I can see that coming to the rest of the world. something has to stop us consuming the planet.
That would help fix it.
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>3 water bottles for every beverage bottle
I think you're being charitable ...more like 5-6. I was using "drink bottle" as all-encompassing, but water bottles were top of mind.
>children
It appears that Western culture is working on that for various reasons, despite all the hand-wringing about "What about the economy??!!" But the 3rd world looks like a continuing problem, I'm guessing because of the children-as-safety-net more than the lack of birth control.
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Ocean Cleanup's supersized system proves its worth with "massive" haul
https://newatlas.com/environment/ocean-cleanup-supersized-system-002-test/
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Thanks. It's nice to have some hopeful news. That "catch" is both exciting and horrifying!
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It is really nice that they learned from their mistakes with the early design and improved their method of collecting the plastics.
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Oops, cleaning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was probably a bad idea
https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/22949475/ocean-plastic-pollution-cleanup
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First 100,000 KG Removed From the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/first-100000-kg-removed-from-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/
Debbie wonders how much diesel they used?
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Ocean Cleanup study states Pacific Garbage Patch is mostly fishing gear
https://newatlas.com/environment/ocean-cleanup-project-great-pacific-garbage-fishing-gear/
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I started to put this in the Robots Incoming thread.
Cleaning rivers in Hungary using an automated solar-powered boat | Euronews
https://www.euronews.com/2022/12/13/cleaning-rivers-in-hungary-using-an-automated-solar-powered-boat
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Turns out bacteria are already doing it for us.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/bacteria-eating-plastic-dumped-ocean-134329509.html
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Coke to stop using plastic six=pack rings. Fiber replacement
The dangers of plastic rings have long been a topic of concern among conservationists and marine biologists.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/lifestyle-buzz/coca-cola-bottler-makes-major-change-to-aluminum-can-packaging-first-of-its-kind/ar-AA12fQ01
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Related…
Tire dust makes up majority of ocean plastics… and other bad news about tires and brakes
https://www.thedrive.com/news/tire-dust-makes-up-the-majority-of-ocean-microplastics-study-finds
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While on the topic of micro plastics….
People who show high levels of plastic in their carotid artery’s plaque are much more likely to have a cardiovascular event.
https://www.numenor.health/blog/new-alarming-study-on-microplastics-the-threat-is-real
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I find it hard to envision a world without tires and breaks. Perhaps there are safer compounds that could be used? Modern tires are really amazing in how long they last and their performance. Even if tires ended up being lesser quality, they'd still likely be much better than they were 50 years ago. That said, single use plastic packaging seems like something we could collectively do something about if we had the will. If laws were passed that made the producers economically responsible for the damage they are causing we'd have wide adoptions of alternatives quickly. I suppose the same could be said for the tire industry.
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It’s a hard problem. It’s not like tailpipe emissions that have multiple possible solutions. Short of biodegradable tires, I don’t see how to fix it.
I also question the numbers. It defies credulity that 78% of ocean plastics are from tires. I suspect the orignal study authors are much more cautious in how they present that.