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Study: 8 Million Metric Tons of Plastic Dumped Into Oceans Annually
hypnosec writes: According to a new study (abstract) that tracked marine debris from its source, roughly 8 million metric tons of plastic gets dumped into the world's oceans annually. Plastic waste is a global problem, and until now, there wasn't a comprehensive study that highlighted how much plastic waste was making it into the oceans. "The research also lists the world's 20 worst plastic polluters, from China to the United States, based on such factors as size of coastal population and national plastic production. According to the estimate, China tops the list, producing as much as 3.5 million metric tons of marine debris each year. The United States, which generates as much as 110,000 metric tons of marine debris a year, came in at No. 20."
...go trolling for plastic, turn it into fuel or something else. We probably are reaching a point where oil exploration is going to remain diminished... a glut of current supply. With so much waste in our landfills and in the environment, we can just mine our waste for resources for a while.
I just looked it up, and the water in the ocean weights 1.5 Quintillion Tons (1.5 x 10 ^ 17 tons), which means we are dumping the equivalent of 0.000000005% of the mass of the ocean in plastic into the ocean. At those percentages, I wonder if the effects are really any different if we halved or quartered our pollution of the ocean. Really it would all be about the same to the ocean. Sure we should try to reduce how much we dump, but there's way bigger environmental problems to be working on.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Maybe retail stuff could be packaged in a simple cardboard box with biodegradable stuffing, instead of those stupid, stupid plastic clamshell containers that frustrate and then cut me when I try to get them open.
If people wanted trash-free oceans, the market would provide it. Since you currently can't buy trash-free oceans at any price, it's clear that nobody wants it. Government regulation is not the answer.
I think I've got the theory straight on this, but correct me if I'm wrong.
China tops the list, producing as much as 3.5 million metric tons of marine debris each year. The United States, which generates as much as 110,000 metric tons of marine debris a year, came in at No. 20.
See what happens when you go to the metric system?
No, you're quite right. All that really counts is money, so providing someone is making money by not dealing with plastic trash entering waterways, that's good. Aquatic life, future generations, they don't really make us that much money, so fuck them, each and every one.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Put a deposit on everything sold. The company gets an interest free loan for the life of the product and people are motivated to pick up trash. Yes I know its complicated but microdots or chemical signatures make even plastic bags traceable.
Wtf is a "metric" ton? A ton is and has always been metric. No need to specify.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
everything counts, in large amounts
We're never first anymore.
Except usually, it requires someone who ALREADY HAD a profit motive and was successful in some way, to be in the position to opt to do these "costly, but for the good of everyone" things.
And really, they do happen all the time. Most big businesses I can think of sponsor all sorts of things for their communities. The entire tax code is designed to encourage you to make charitable contributions.
The alternative to this is the classic "big government" advocate, who wishes government to act as forced charity, taking enough money from everyone else to spend it on various projects it believes benefit the whole. (As you might have guessed, I'm not exactly sold on that being the optimal way to handle it.)
Except you could do what retailers have done for eons.... Open ONE box and put a sample product on display next to all of the boxes, so you can see and even touch/handle the sample product to know what you're getting.
Let's make the companies who unnecessarily over-package their products with ridiculous amounts of plastic be responsible for their pollution.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
Okay, almost got it!
ton(UK) 2240lb
ton(US) 2000lb
Tonne or Metric ton 1000kg (2204.62lb)
dry tonne has the same mass value
But what is a, daytonna?
8 million metric tons of sea water would be a cubes 200 meters per side, or about 600 feet. A shallow pond of average depth of 10 feet and two thirds of a mile across has 8 million metric tons of water. This volume is enough fill hardly 3200 olympic swimming pools. I am surprised the estimate is this low. I thought we are throwing a lot more garbage into the seas.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
This entire study is a big guesstimate. More than likely they get it right with the top half-dozen polluters, but beyond that the margin of error makes it all guesswork.
“Of course we know these aren’t absolute numbers, but it gives us an idea of the magnitude, and where we might need to focus our efforts to affect the issue,”
The USA, at #20 in the list, is responsible for less than 1% of the global pollution of this kind, according to this study. The USA produces only 3% of the pollution China produces alone. Certainly the margin for error in this type of indirect approximation is no better than 5%, putting the USA on the list at all in just statistical noise.
Further, the major offenders that produce that vast majority of the pollution do so because their very infrastructure results in the trash entering the ocean. Whereas the USA, on the other hand, consists only of "litter" directly from individuals one way or another (probably washing down rivers when they flood, as opposed to actually be dumping straight into the ocean as the official method of industry to get rid of their trash):
The US and Europe are not mismanaging their collected waste, so the plastic trash coming from those countries is due to litter, researchers said.
So putting the USA on that list is one of those things like "You do very well considering your population, the fact that you are the largest consuming nation on the planet, and have extensive coastlines in two oceans, but we hold you to a much higher standard and we know you can do even better, even though reducing your total pollution by 100% will have less than a 1% affect on the pollution entering the oceans."
Better known as 318230.
"...size of coastal population and national plastic production. According to the estimate..."
Sounds like a pretty mickey mouse statistic to come up with an "estimate". More like a wild guess that is barely based on anything relevant...
Based on plastic production and coastal populations. Not on actually dumping plastic in the ocean.
I would have thought most of the plastic in China is shipped off to other countries. It would then be those other countries polluting.
Already container ships use the cheapest fuel on the market. It is basically sludge left over from the refining process. it is cheap, dirty, but energy dense. Their engines are robust and designed to burn that sort of fuel without a lot of problems.
Consider if they had some external combustion engines on the boat. Just something to augment the existing engines and they could scoop up any plastic just in the water and then dump that into the external combustion engine where it would be burned.
Here someone will say "toxic chemicals!"... if the fire burns hot enough then you'll just get CO2 and water vapor. Get it up to 4000 or so degrees and it won't be toxic.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
hey, how much snow did you get?
OVER 9000 METRIC TON!
So you take the Costco stamps approach. You carry the ridiculously-large-cardboard-covered-in-fancy-printing thingy to the cashier...and they give you a tiny roll of stamps. Ridiculously-large-cardboard-covered-in-fancy-printing thingy then gets reused by Costco.
I come here for the love
Won't work for the same reason that bussard ramscoops won't work. There isn't as much hydrogen out there as we thought/there isn't as much plastic out there as you think, and in both cases, the distribution is uneven and it isn't located where we want to go.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
One thousand Kilograms should be called a Megagram, not a Tonne .
My county (Maui) is looking at banning polystyrene food containers. We banned plastic shopping bags a few years ago and it's made a huge difference, I used to see plastic bags blowing around, caught in bushes by the side of the road, and in the ocean all the time, but no more.
The thing with the food containers is...most of them will be replaced with PLA. PLA is compostable, where it's in a commercial compost pile over X degrees and with other conditions that help break it down. But what about floating around in the ocean? Obviously it's going to take longer than paper to break down, but has anyone shown how long (or if) it takes to break down in the ocean? A simple google search doesn't reveal anything useful...
It's all that plastic pushing water up on our beaches. And I know that every female on a cruise ship uses tampons as those plastic insert tubes always wash up on our beaches. Another big item is cartons of cigarettes thrown out of the port holes on cruise ships as they are supplied as an advertising gimmick and people throw unopened cartons out the port holes which end up on Ft. Lauderdale Beach as the cruise ships exit Port Everglades. Maybe we could fuse all that plastic into a lump and create a new island off the coast of Florida. Instead of Tampa we could name it Tampon Island.