International 414 million pieces of plastic found on remote Australian island

[Jorge Luis Borges]

think for a moment about how many people you probably personally know that dont recycle, then consider how skewed the entire perception of "recycling" is to begin with....a good portion of which ends up in the garbage anyway....

Anecdotes aren't particularly useful when talking about such things. I was looking at this and another report I have since lost track of when I gave the less than one percent figure: https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

burying a bunch of toxic crap in the ground is not being environmentally wise....its not an out of sight out of mind, we win ... game...

It works really well, and is a shit ton better than simply hurling our garbage into the sea, which is what East Asia does and thus causing things like this environmental disaster we are discussing where hundreds of millions of pieces of plastic are found on an island.

you want to talk about making reasonable efforts ecologically......then the only discussion is to stop producing plastic with the toxic methods that they use as opposed to the non toxic that they could be using if only everyone's goal wasnt to save as many pennies as possible

This is a different topic. The current topic, too many plastics in our oceans, is a very concrete and current problem. But no one wants to talk about what is actually causing it and what could cure it. The fact is, Europeans and especially Americans have very little guilt in the matter. Our countries do not allow throwing garbage into the sea.

the problem is entirely the plastics themselves

No. The problem is that the plastics are being dumped directly into the ocean.

all that said, its rare I find myself with a completely opposing view to yours....and I dont want this all to sound like some kind of personal attack

Thanks for the compliment. Hopefully my views will be more agreeable to you in the future.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

yes, it's exactly what we'd do. Except it would be the poorer rural states that suffer while the cities benefit.

Do you remember what America was like in the 80's?

I do remember what America was like in the 80s, garbage barge and all. And in the 90s the market responded well and landfill space increased and better landfill methods were devised that helped more waste actually break down. You are correct of course that rural states are better situated for trash disposal or processing than cities, but the cities pay. Right now many cities send their waste overseas because it is cheaper.

The problem holding up the shit train was small town politics. But yes, NYC paid an Alabama waste facility to handle their waste. Win-win.

 

[MaxMMA]

A lot of the world's population are not properly educated on waste management.

As a reasonably rational person, one would assume that not wanting your home/neighborhood to be a shit tier ghetto would be motivation enough to dispose of your garbage responsibility.

That's not the case apparently.

 

[Ruprecht]

Unsurprising. Indonesia's rivers of plastic became such an issue they had to mobilise the military to deal with it.

 

[weed]

there are shit tons of videos on IG of people exacting efforts tirelessly cleaning the oceans etc. it's fucking disturbing the large amounts of trash they've removed but you know for damn sure they've hardly even made a dent.

 

[squeezewax]

I've heard on programmes a number of times that China is responsible for around a third of all the plastic in the ocean, i have no idea if this is true or not of course.

 

[Rational Poster]

Fake news Australia isn't real

 

[Deleted member 499399]

People becoming extinct is about the only hope Earth has, I’m praying..

Is that you Travis?

 

[jefferz]

People becoming extinct is about the only hope Earth has, I’m praying..

Serious question. If you’re praying that humans go extinct, why don’t you off yourself?

 

[usmctanker242]

In 2001-2002 I was on a Navy ship in the Arabian Sea and I was fucking shocked at how the boat disposed of trash. We took it to the "drop off" area which was basically a large trash compactor. The compactor made what was essentially "garbage discs" and then they bagged them in thick plastic. We would then have a 300+ person chain where we threw all that trash straight into the water. Granted we broke records for amount of time at sea without a port call, but even back then I was just really shocked at how much we were polluting the water with no regard at all.

 

[genecop]

Serious question. If you’re praying that humans go extinct, why don’t you off yourself?

Because I want to be here to experience the event..

 

[K-Bag]

In before north Americans try to blame China.

It's China.

 

[D 1 Wrestler]

I highly doubt they counted 44,000,000 of anything. Thats a lot of hours of counting for a very large group of people.

Really loved this part "Much of the rubbish was single-use consumer items such as bottle caps, straws, shoes and sandals" They list 4 items. 2 of them not what they claim they are. How useless is the media that they make a statement like most of it being single use items and then get half of what its in their list wrong...

They probably randomly plotted a certain number of areas then extrapolated

 

[Ruprecht]

I highly doubt they counted 44,000,000 of anything. Thats a lot of hours of counting for a very large group of people.

Really loved this part "Much of the rubbish was single-use consumer items such as bottle caps, straws, shoes and sandals" They list 4 items. 2 of them not what they claim they are. How useless is the media that they make a statement like most of it being single use items and then get half of what its in their list wrong...

It's typical of American media summaries of foreign media reports. "Digital reporting".
Not sure why they felt the need to paraphrase half the quote:
"Our estimate of 414 million pieces weighing 238 tonnes on Cocos (Keeling) is conservative, as we only sampled down to a depth of 10 centimetres and couldn't access some beaches that are known debris 'hotspots'.
"Unlike Henderson Island, where most identifiable debris was fishing-related, the plastic on Cocos (Keeling) was largely single-use consumer items such as bottle caps and straws, as well as a large number of shoes and thongs," Dr Lavers said.

They probably randomly plotted a certain number of areas then extrapolated

They said as much even in the CNN article.

 

[EradiatedHaggis]

They probably randomly plotted a certain number of areas then extrapolated

That is what I hinted at. They made up numbers and the media took it further by trying to...trump...it up even more.