this might be the only good environmental news i’ve read since we got rid of cfcs
Use Ecosia.com for web searches, they plant trees.
Ecosia.org is what it redirects to, but yeah I’ve been using them for a couple of years now and it is nice to see some positive work being done!
This is very good news! Please don’t forget that even if the great pacific garbage patch doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that the ocean is clean. There are still lots of garbage in the ocean!
However everybody needs to work where the problem originates.
There’s only four left to clean after this one.
In 2014, there were five areas across all the oceans where the majority of plastic concentrated. Researchers collected a total of 3070 samples across the world to identify hot spots of surface level plastic pollution. The pattern of distribution closely mirrored models of oceanic currents with the North Pacific Gyre, or Great Pacific Garbage Patch, being the highest density of plastic accumulation. The other four garbage patches include the North Atlantic garbage patch between the North America and Africa, the South Atlantic garbage patch located between eastern South America and the tip of Africa, the South Pacific garbage patch located west of South America, and the Indian Ocean garbage patch found east of South Africa.
Aight but one of them is gonna take another decade to clear.
I wish them well. It feels good to be reminded that yes, there are still people out there trying to make things better. ❤️
Yes, but it’s a war, and they are losing to people making things much, much worse.
If it can get the necessary funds, that is. In a press release, the organization claimed that eliminating the patch once and for all would cost a whopping $7.5 billion
If you give me 7.5 billion i’ll do my very best to clean up the ocean too
This is /c/upliftingnews. I’ll take what I can get ☺️
That’s like 0.8% of the US military budget for 2025. That’s basically a rounding error
Yup. It’s also 0.042% of China’s GDP, and I’ll bet they never get it.
China’s GDP is going to keeping a billion people housed and fed, and producing more solar panels than the rest of the world combined. The US military budget is going to blowing up brown people.
Those dastardly brown people. How dare they exist, usually without hurting anyone else??
Awesome way to say you don’t care about the planet by making excuses for China not picking lint out of its pocket to clean the ocean—and then somehow turning this into an ICE problem.
Nobody said anything about ICE, we’re talking about the military known for bombing weddings in multiple middle eastern countries and then bombing ambulances when they respond.
If you have the money to commit atrocities in a dozen countries at once, you have money to spare.
If you have money to commit genocide against the Uyghurs you have money to spare.
About 1.5% of Musk’s net worth when it was at it’s height when he was US President.
I think it’s actually higher now. It’s a whopping $480 billion now
Better that than it going to Tesla or whatever.
That’s not possible unless you ban fishing nets
True, but let’s not the baby out with the bathwater.
98% or 90% or even a verifiable 50% reduction is insanely amazing news
So far, the nonprofit claims it has fished out a million pounds of trash from the patch, a mere 0.5 percent of its total. But within a decade, it says, it could ramp up its operations to get rid of it in its entirety.
:-/
They’re asking for $75B for the full project and currently relying on start up capital with a tiny fraction of that. Apple’s “committed” $7.5B tentative to Ocean Cleanup Project raising the rest on short notice.
This isn’t “on track”. It’s a pilot project that’s in the middle of a Series B funding round.
Also - most critically - it’s not clear in the article what they’re doing with the waste they recover. Simply moving it around doesn’t eliminate the garbage. And the project does not appear to include a budget for recycling or otherwise repurposing what they recover.
I understand the cynicism, but I’m not going to let it distract me from the good that is being done.
You can hold space for both, and both can be true at the same time and not invalidate each other. Optimism is a hugely important quality, it’s focusing on moving forward and seeing the glass half full, and it keeps the darkness out. Pointing out problems is just troubleshooting, and finding ways to be better, that might seem like focusing on the glass half empty, but what if it’s just focusing on achieving a better half full, glass. The important thing is to hold onto what keeps you afloat, especially right now. This is awesome news, whether it needs more work or not.
Isn’t the majority if plastic in the ocean caused by fishing?
It’s the largest individual source, by far. Whether or not it accounts for the majority depends on the exact stats you’re looking at
What stats are at choice besides fraction of total mass?
It’s more about which study or source you’re looking at than what measure is used. It’s tough to estimate stuff like this so different people get different answers.
I still got microplastics in my balls.
Microplastics are stored in the balls
Finally able to cum silly strings
To cum like a 3D printer (same nozzle temperature too).
So that’s how babby is formed
They can take away our Pacific garbage patch, but they can never take our ball micro plastics!
A thin film of plastic is all that protects our block and tackle from the 5g woke mind virus. Why else do you think we call it our “Junk”?
And give up free 5g? Are you insane?
This comment is a pretty solid example of the normal UpliftingNews comments.
Seems easier picking up trash by hand than taxing the rich for the project
So far, the nonprofit claims it has fished out a million pounds of trash from the patch, a mere 0.5 percent of its total. But within a decade, it says, it could ramp up its operations to get rid of it in its entirety.
Next year, the company will focus its efforts on establishing a “hotspot” map of areas in the ocean with “intense plastic accumulation.”
While $7.5 billion may sound like a lot, it’s less than one month’s worth of Apple’s profits last year, or a sixth of the bonus Tesla shareholders awarded to CEO Elon Musk.
or a sixth of the bonus Tesla shareholders awarded to CEO Elon Musk.
Disgusting. He tanked Tesla, and he gets a bonus?
They’re mostly thinking 10 years, but:
Better yet, if the nonprofit’s latest technological ideas come to fruition, Slat suggests we could even clear the patch in just five years at a cost of just $4 billion.
Ultimately though it comes down to funding, and I’m not sure this is the administration with the stomach to fund these types of projects.
Finally someone attempts to remove the UK ❤️
They’re going to be so embarrassed when they realize the garbage patch isn’t even in the Pacific.
It was moved following brexit
angry bri’ish noises
tutting intensifies
finally, i don’t have to think even a second about my individually plastic wrapped candies
Glass. Always has been.
These individually glass wrapped candies make my mouth hurt.
What’s going to stop the polluters doing it again?
And sue for costs, from the manufacturers, if plastic is too expensive, they’ll stop using it, if they had to pay the environmental costs, it would become too expensive.
They are. Now.
Bio degradable plastics
This article is just over a year old…
Thank you for saying something! Can’t believe I didn’t check myself.
It also lead to me finding this: https://theoceancleanup.com/dashboard/
If I understand correctly, system 3 is the one most relevant to the great garbage patch. It’s currently at port, and has been for nearly a year. Not sure what to make of this.
I wasn’t even paying attention, my bad. I just saw it in my feed a decided to crosspost it here.
And the article says “we can totally do this! All need is loads of money! Please donate!”
Been following them for years. They do great work, but often seem a little overly optimistic in their messaging. What they are doing is a hard challenge and they seem to be slowly getting better and better. I wonder if they also are lacking a bit in funding to be able to efficiently move forward.
i can’t seem to find a futurism on lemmy. does it exist?
I found a few futurology comms, not sure if that’s the same thing as futurism.
Some comms also have different names but when I search futurism or futurology they are in the results so perhaps the comm description is included in the results.
Also I don’t know if the method of searching I’m using in Voyager is limited to the comms that users on the instance my account is on are subscribed to.
!futurology_pocasts@futurology.today
it’s not on lemmy, it’s an external link
I think they were looking for a sub for them
I love this, it’s great, but it doesn’t address the root cause unfortunately
i dont know why you would say this unless youre just replying to headlines… most of the plastic comes from just a handfull of rivers and they’re catching the plastic at the source with their river collection programs (lots of interesting solutions they’re using including bubble curtains)
Absolutely and that is great, but by root cause I mean how much plastic is on every fucking thing we buy, the source is not the rivers feeding into the ocean, it’s our usage, and disregard for the environment
No. Much plastic comes from fishermen in the ocean.
Once it’s cleaned up we should replace all the garbage with cum, so the fish can eat the cum.
I feel like there’s a story behind that comment that I’m unaware of.
Fish love cum
Well, I guess now I know.
Why do you think the oceans are so salty?
. . . w h a t
ONCE IT’S CLEANED UP WE SHOULD REPLACE ALL OF THE GARBAGE WITH C U M SO THE FISH CAN EAT THE C U M
could you spell that?
Yes, very uplifting.
I love news like this.
Btw, I assume this is referring to garbage that is floating. What about the garbage that has sunk? I mean, I don’t even know whether it’s a big problem, especially in the middle of the ocean, but I am still curious what’s up with that.
