from Hacker News

Ten Rivers Contribute Most of the Plastic in the Oceans (2018)

by ForFreedom on 5/14/19, 9:36 AM with 119 comments

  • by sambeau on 5/14/19, 12:50 PM

    While reading this I think it's worth taking into account that not all the plastic waste originates in these countries, some of it is western trash sent there for recycling. At one point China was importing more than half of the World's plastic waste.

    https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/environment-and-conserv...

    And though China has now stopped accepting the West's waste it still house mountains to deal with plus the problem has just shifted to Southeast Asia instead

    https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/china...

  • by api on 5/14/19, 3:14 PM

    Unfortunately I find myself agreeing with the critics/cynics here on this one: people are contorting their brains to let China off the hook for what (if this study is to be believed) is a mostly Chinese problem. I don't think the point about China taking US recycling waste is relevant. They're being paid to take the waste and recycle it, not throw it in the ocean.

    I don't think anyone would be doing the same if the Hudson River or the Port of Long Beach were the source of most of the plastic in the ocean.

    China is also the world's #1 greenhouse gas emitter on a per GDP basis:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_...

    Sort by GDP per emissions and China is quite exceptional compared to other large economies and even among developing nations. China just clearly doesn't care at all about the environment, or if the leadership does care they're doing a really poor job of enforcing anything.

    It's bizarre to me to hear Western liberals give a free pass to China with its massive and still growing CO2 emissions, internment camps for ethnic minorities, rivers of plastic, and dystopian total surveillance state. I suspect it comes from a knee jerk desire to take the opposite position from Trump and his supporters, but I personally find that to be kind of mindless. Pushing on China is one of the very very few things I agree with them about.

  • by x38iq84n on 5/14/19, 1:32 PM

    So why are western countries punishing themselves by putting a ban on certain plastic items such as straws, single-use bags or creating deposit schemes for bottles etc? Sure it would be more effective to call up poor Asian countries and offer to help them clean up that mess. The effect on environment, per dollar spent, will be orders of magnitudes larger than engineering any kind of change in the said western countries.

  • by ricardobeat on 5/14/19, 4:08 PM

    This means cleaning up, or at least putting a stop to the problem, could be a lot easier than complex ocean trash collection endeavors. Capturing debris from a river stream should be simpler, cheaper and more effective?

  • by swarnie_ on 5/14/19, 2:00 PM

    HN engineers and detail orientated people. Is there any workable option to add a "trash capture" device/system to the river outlet?

  • by drinane on 5/14/19, 2:28 PM

    Is this right? Seems like a pretty fixable problem...

  • by weeksie on 5/14/19, 4:28 PM

    The vast majority of the waste is fishing nets so blaming this on trash export is silly.

  • by OliverJones on 5/14/19, 4:03 PM

  • by luckylion on 5/14/19, 2:06 PM

    The headline is click bait. It's not "most of the plastic in the ocean", it's "most of the plastic in the ocean that comes from rivers". And that long rivers from more densely populated areas would contribute more is hardly surprising.

    Iirc, most of the plastic isn't even from rivers. It's from the fishing industry, illegal trash dumping and the wear on car tires.

    Hi Downvoters, please explain what is factually wrong about my comment. Thanks.

  • by thegranderson on 5/14/19, 4:46 PM

    This focuses on just one source of plastic pollution, of which there are many. I found this resource helpful to understand more about the broader scope of the problem:

    https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

  • by ZeroGravitas on 5/14/19, 9:22 PM

    What percentage of the world's population live alongside these rivers?

  • by nroets on 5/14/19, 2:58 PM

    I've cycled 5,000 km this year in China and what I saw is at odds with this report:

    There are cleaners in all public areas. What they collect must surely go to landfills.

    Although I've seen some garbage dumps on the sides of lakes and rivers, I'm sure the authorities don't condone it. I also saw many signs saying "Water Source Protection Area" and fences keeping the public away.

    Plastic sheeting is used extensively in agriculture, but surely they will dispose of used sheets properly...