The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit organization, has projected that the blight on the world's largest ocean could be removed within a decade and for around $7.5 billion.

After three years extracting plastic waste from the notorious Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an environmental nonprofit says it can finish the job within a decade, with a price tag of several billion dollars.

Twice the size of Texas, the mass of about 79,000 metric tons of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii is growing at an exponential pace, according to researchers.

  • Zaktor@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    211·
    2 months ago

    There’s no reason to take this guy or his organization at face value when they make claims. It’s been hype and hopium for a decade now, fueled by TED Talks and wunderkind-loving media.

    Cleaning up the garbage patch isn’t just a matter of collecting nicely floating big pieces of plastic. Doing that is good, but it’s not actually something that can ever get it to “clean”, it’s just something that helps slow the accumulation over time. You get the big stuff (relatively) easily, then it gets progressively harder, and eventually impossible.

    Which is progress. It’s just not the lofty result they keep promising. If all it took was a big net and a relatively modest (by government standards) budget, this wouldn’t be a problem.

    • saroh@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      2 months ago

      Yeah the article doesn’t contain a lot of information. However if the garbage patch is “growing at an exponential pace” and "In their three years at sea, the Ocean Cleanup vessels have removed more than a million pounds of trash, representing 0.5% of the total accumulation. ", then I’d say a little more effort would be required :(