The Ocean Cleanup is bad. I have yet to meet a single credentialed ocean plastic pollution expert who thinks "drag a giant net through the ocean and scoop out the plastic" is a good idea, and I've been asking for a decade.
Stop supporting feel-good-but-harmful pseudoscientific nonsense.
Let's be wildly optimistic and try to nip some bad behaviors from the last site in the bud:
Before jumping into a decade-long discussion with the first thought that pops into your head that's already been widely debunked many times, see if it's addressed in the article. It probably is.
Ok, I am perfectly willing to grant the ocean-cleanup thing… But why then are they using a photo of a device (Mr. Trashwheel) that operates in a freshwater city harbor? Is that really the same scenari, if the time between dumping and cleanup is shorter?
Yes, lead the article with ocean cleanup machines are killing our oceans, use a picture of Mr. Trashwheel in the headline and 14 paragraphs down say, oh by the way, Mr. Trashwheel is good.
I considered it, and still wanted to know why a photo of a successful program was being used to headline an article about the high-profile failing ones.
This is disappointing. I live where the Ocean Cleanup often comes between excursions (Victoria, BC) and used to feel sort of warm and fuzzy when I saw their vessels.
Sigh.
Didn't they make some huge press release when they scooped up like 20,000lbs of plastic? Which is like, maybe one trailer full (depending on how tightly it's packed).
Oh my bad, it was 10 cargo trailers in one year. Literally a drop in a bucket
" In 2023, the Ocean Cleanup’s operations captured more than 335,000 pounds (152,397 kilograms) of plastic."
My handwavy feeling on plastic pollution is that it's only a matter of time before some bacteria or fungus starts eating it in earnest and then we'll have horrible bacterial blooms everywhere and plastic will lose its utility
I’m not going to defend OC but as a layman, it’s the only solution that has really been presented in a large scale way to the public. Fingers crossed for some other options/solutions from experts.
I actually think about this problem a lot. Just the scale of the problem is way beyond what we can do. Personally, we should be spending less on getting to mars and more on trying to make the environment here a little better for everyone.
