8/20/2026 at 2:32:23 PM
They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. I've seen firsthand how their solutions have been implemented and have had a positive impact on the environment. How often do we hear promises from NGOs or government entities claiming they will solve humanitarian issues such as housing shortages or hunger, only to fail miserably while spending billions of dollars in the process? Meanwhile, others grow rich from government tenders and contracts at the expense of the unfortunate beneficiaries.by nexawave-ai
8/20/2026 at 2:50:35 PM
The point of the article is that this intervention is actively harmful for exactly the same reasons raised by experts a long time ago.> In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all.
This attitude is wrong IMO. The issue with high-profile half-baked interventions is that they distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean.
This is self-evident from data on their own website! https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/ . River mouths/estuaries are also some of the most densely populated regions in the world. This bites in that it is easy for plastic to enter the ocean. But it's also a lot easier to run cleanup at the source, next to humans, rather than 3000km away in the middle of the ocean.
by kadal
8/20/2026 at 3:10:29 PM
> distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean.They pivoted to mostly river cleanup (interceptors) many years ago. And they clearly show that it is just one step back, not a full time solution. Ocean cleanup is last step, river grab is the step before that and having proper garbage collection would be best.
Which is literally written in TFA:
> Now they mostly intercept plastic when it first leaves rivers and enters the ocean instead of trying to scoop it out of the middle of the ocean, though the open ocean work is still mentioned on their website
by mnau
8/20/2026 at 5:12:52 PM
> having proper garbage collection would be bestSee, you've just shown how you have fallen for the very trap that is being discussed: you think garbage collection is the solution. Plastic recycling was never a valid solution to the problem of plastic trash in the environment.
Recycling was a non-solution the oil and plastics industries used to deflect criticism of their products. They knew would never be feasible because the polymer is no longer in a state that is suitable for re-use once it's been heated and formed, and that degradation gets even worse as it ages, is exposed to UV, etc. Anything made with it will be inferior. Weaker, not as dense, and so on.
They also knew that it would be impossible for any significant amount of plastic to be recycled, even if it was feasible to re-use it.
It also shifted the onus from the producers of a wildly harmful material to the consumers. "It's those litterbugs!"
The auto industry managed to shift public perception from "cars are insanely dangerous products" to "idiot leeches of society are throwing themselves in front of car drivers who are upstanding people who contribute to society!" Seriously - look at the cartoons from the early auto industry era. The "jaywalker" is portrayed as slovenly, poor, and stupid. The car owner is portrayed as well dressed, intelligent...
The plastics industry has turned things from "our products never, ever go away. They break down into tinier and tinier pieces, and the particles are so prolific that there literally isn't a single place on earth not contaminated by them, not a single creature that hasn't ingested them, and it's now in our brains"...
...to "silly irresponsible people are not responsibly disposing of their plastics so they can be recycled by us responsible plastic producers! Look, we sponsor beach trash cleanup groups! Look at this picture of our smiling employees spending a day in safety vests helping collect plastic from a couple hundred square feet of beach!"
Think about that. Plastic is in your brain. That's how thoroughly contaminated the entire planet and ecosystem is. And it's because the plastic and oil industry deflected "plastics are bad" with non-solutions and claims about recycling and pictures of neonatal babies inside plastic incubators with plastic tubes and plastic IV bags. Do YOU want to have that preemie die because the evil hippies want to take away your plastic, mnau?
by KennyBlanken
8/20/2026 at 6:56:21 PM
For a lot of applications plastic is also simply a really good material. It is cheap, easy to form, strong, can be made either rigid or flexible, and has a low CO2 footprint. When it comes to inherently single-use applications it is incredibly difficult to beat plastic, and even for multi-use applications it often doesn't look great for materials like metal or glass.And yes, littering is the main downside. I agree that recycling is mainly bullshit, but you can also burn it together with the rest of the trash, and get some free electricity from it!
Microplastics are indeed a serious problem, but it is almost entirely unrelated to day-to-day plastic items. The primary source of microplastics is car tires, with synthetic clothing being a large contributor as well. And there's of course the absolutely insane use of plastic particles in personal hygiene products. If you want to reduce our microplastics exposure, those are probably better places to start.
by crote
8/21/2026 at 6:21:52 AM
If you think about it, it's only a good material because we ignore the downsides. If we could put a price on that, the economics wouldn't add up.by mping
8/20/2026 at 5:31:16 PM
> It also shifted the onus from the producers of a wildly harmful material to the consumers. "It's those litterbugs!"It mostly is those litterbugs in Asia.
by peterfirefly
8/21/2026 at 9:54:17 AM
> Do YOU want to have that preemie die because the evil hippies want to take away your plastic, mnau?Honestly, you sound like you have problems. Personal attack, tangent from original theme "don't have plastic in the ocean" to multi paragraph rant about RRR. Have a nice day.
by mnau
8/20/2026 at 5:22:21 PM
When I was in school we were taught the 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.I haven't heard about Reduce and Reuse since.
by AlienRobot
8/20/2026 at 10:20:27 PM
Quite. And quite the opposite - I hear a lot of messaging encouraging us to consume more. To the point that most Westerners (and no doubt others) have a strong sense of entitlement when it comes to consumption. If you ever bring this sort of thing up with people the entitlement becomes obvious. We feel entitled to be transported thousands of miles in a matter of hours for 'a break'. We feel entitled to some of the most inconsiderate vehicles ever produced because "how else am I going to tow my boat/horse float?" As if a lifestyle that involves moving massive things around is a god-given right. And all of this within a matter of two or three generations. We truly live in the most entitled times.Our personal morality has been corrupted by convenience and commerce. Too many people think that if something is legal, possible, and affordable, then why not? No room for consideration of others. Quite simply (and please excuse the strong language) we have become a bunch of selfish fucks. But because it's now the norm to be a selfish fuck then that makes it okay, right?
I've always admired the approach of my grandparents. Practical, economical, and able to enjoy doing the simple things that are actually necessary for living a good life. Sadly, that generation is passing. What are our grandchildren going to think of us?
by tmnvix
8/21/2026 at 6:35:21 AM
> Quite. And quite the opposite - I hear a lot of messaging encouraging us to consume more. To the point that most Westerners (and no doubt others) have a strong sense of entitlement when it comes to consumption. If you ever bring this sort of thing up with people the entitlement becomes obvious. We feel entitled to be transported thousands of miles in a matter of hours for 'a break'. We feel entitled to some of the most inconsiderate vehicles ever produced because "how else am I going to tow my boat/horse float?" As if a lifestyle that involves moving massive things around is a god-given right. And all of this within a matter of two or three generations. We truly live in the most entitled times.Where do the people who understand this congregate?
> (and no doubt others)
While the top 30 on this entitlement ranking will contain a lot of Western countries, I can unfortunately confirm that they're far from alone, and in fact none of them will even take the top spot.
by deaux
8/20/2026 at 3:04:08 PM
My read of the article is that they’ve also pivoted to the methods experts suggest as well. The article actually phrases that in a negative way weirdly. I agree with the original comment, at least they’re trying and iterating. You get conflicting feedback from experts in all cases. At some point you have to commit and try.by hklgny
8/20/2026 at 3:18:45 PM
Alternatively, creating incentives for plastics to never be deposited in rivers to begin with..."The results, published last November in Environmental Science & Technology, show that rivers collectively dump anywhere from 0.47 million to 2.75 million metric tons of plastic into the seas every year, depending on the data used in the models. The 10 rivers that carry 93 percent of that trash are the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus and Ganges Delta in Asia, and the Niger and Nile in Africa. The Yangtze alone dumps up to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of plastic waste into the Yellow Sea."
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...
by testfoobar
8/20/2026 at 3:26:12 PM
[dead]by ashter_ilands
8/20/2026 at 4:15:11 PM
How about regulate plastic so it doesn't end up in the river in the first place?Worrying about cleanup without worrying about why we have to clean it up in the first place is a losing approach. It reads as just 'recycle better' without wondering why consumers have that burden in the first place.
by drunner
8/20/2026 at 5:15:32 PM
There are many countries involved, who may be unable or unwilling to pass or enforce the kinds of necessary laws. And people who donate want to see outcomes like "removed X tons of garbage", not "continued to lobby government to pass law".by jerlam
8/20/2026 at 5:11:25 PM
Regulate it how? They tried to put an extra tax on plastic in my country and guess what consumers will just pay it.by TitaRusell
8/20/2026 at 5:46:43 PM
Also wild guess consumers in your country aren’t dumping their trash in the river because you have a function garbage system. It is mainly an issue with poor people in developing countries with no access (or cost prohibitive access) to garbage collection. Not sure if taxing the very poorest on earth is great.by victorbjorklund
8/20/2026 at 4:29:22 PM
Yes they might catch a lot of animals, but I didn't read how harmfull this really is.When you drive at night you kill a huge amount of insects. But we don't consider this harmful.
So the real question is: do they save more animals by removing the plastic.
By the way: there are a lot of scientists involved in the Ocean Cleanup team. So I don't think they overlook the fact that they catch animals.
by bdhdhduuyd
8/20/2026 at 4:06:28 PM
> The issue with high-profile half-baked interventions is that they distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean.You mean they distract from doing… exactly what they are doing?
Maybe give a team that has been working on this problem for 10+ years enough credit to check what they are doing before dismissing them.
by sailingparrot
8/20/2026 at 5:49:00 PM
The difference is you can start processing plastic in the middle of the ocean NOW with very little oversight. Capturing river plastic requires collaboration of local authorities and people. This turns a purely technical solution into a human solution which is messy and slow and different everywhere. Even though it's the better thing to do to have a chance at stopping the damage.by speed_spread
8/20/2026 at 3:01:51 PM
What evidence is there that people would start funding river clean up if they stopped funding in-ocean initiatives?by IncreasePosts
8/20/2026 at 3:06:51 PM
Well, when I talk about fixing the core issues with JavaScript, these days people say "why bother, just paper it over at the TS layer..."by andai
8/20/2026 at 3:11:27 PM
[dead]by natebc
8/20/2026 at 5:20:53 PM
> This attitude is wrong IMO. The issue with high-profile half-baked interventions is that they distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean.This system change nonsense is why no progress has been made on climate change for the past 2 decades.
Could have been well on the way either way solar and wind if a pile of other issues weren’t bundled into the conversation.
by MattGaiser
8/20/2026 at 8:30:23 PM
I've seen a ton of half baked ideas try to get implemented, which ones are we missing?by wredcoll
8/20/2026 at 4:18:26 PM
I read the first linked article where these experts in ocean plastic and ocean engineering supposedly give their great insights, back in 2015. It lists "6 Reasons That Floating Ocean Plastic Cleanup Gizmo is a Horrible Idea" (what a headline!). But the six reasons are either unhelpful, unconstructive, arguments in bad faith, silly, or exactly the sort of stop energy that activists specialize in. They were:1. Ocean plastic doesn't behave the way the project's backers say it does.
Ocean Cleanup said the amount of plastic drops off exponentially fast after three meters of depth. The rebuttal of the expert oceanographers is that they stopped looking after five meters (as you'd expect if it drops off sharply after three), and that plastic can also be found at 100m of depth. This is presented as mistake by Ocean Cleanup but obviously isn't. Neither fact is incompatible with nearly all the plastic being in shallow depths.
Then they ding it because the machine as designed can't capture pieces of plastic smaller than 2cm, although lots of plastic has degraded to tiny particles. This is the nirvana fallacy in action: you aren't planning a perfect solution to the problem, therefore you're misleading people when you say you're going to tackle it. Only childish people think like this. Engineers know no solution is ever perfect.
2. The collectors will break really quickly
In 2004 the booms in the feasibility study weren't specced to a level that could survive large storms. It was designed to raise money and see if any plastic could be collected at all, so this is expected. Then it says Boyan Slat planned to do the 2015 test in the "relatively protected waters of the Korean Strait" i.e. somewhere large storms wouldn't necessarily be a problem. This isn't a critique.
3. The project will harm wildlife
By wildlife they mean plankton. This is a ridiculous and bad faith argument, the sort of critique that could apply to literally any object in the ocean including sperm whales.
4. Recyclers don't want the plastic
So? It can be landfilled. The goal is to get it out of the ocean, not create new Coke bottles. This critique makes no sense.
5. There's a far more effective way
They mean getting volunteers to pick trash off beaches. Very NGO mindset: why mechanize when you can hold a splashy single-day event and make everyone feel good about themselves. It was obvious why that doesn't work. The link they give to find the next event is a 404 and the NGO website containing it no longer mentions any beach cleanup events. Instead the "Take Action Against Plastics" section of their site now asks people to lobby Congress.
6. It's better to not put plastic in the ocean in the first place
Obviously. But people do, which is why the project exists. This is not a reason why trying to remove plastic from the ocean is a "horrible idea".
So: six arguments, of which the best is that the initial PoC wasn't built to production specifications - the sort of argument only people who have never built anything make. I don't see any reason to side against Slat here.
by mike_hearn
8/20/2026 at 3:10:51 PM
[dead]by natebc
8/20/2026 at 3:21:24 PM
Perfect is the enemy of good.I think the Ocean Cleanup has been one of the most effective (non- political/commercial) PR campaigns of the last decade.
by ortusdux
8/20/2026 at 7:00:17 PM
Sure, it was an excellent PR campaign, but did it actually achieve something as well or could the same money have gotten a better outcome if it had been applied more effectively?by crote
8/20/2026 at 8:31:34 PM
Is there meaningfully less plastic waste in the oceans now?by wredcoll
8/20/2026 at 6:00:49 PM
Did you read actually read the article and if so, did you read until the end? Let me just respond by quoting the article:> When experts started speaking out about the Ocean Cleanup several years ago, I witnessed several of them endure online harassment from supporters of the organization, often phrased as “At least they’re trying to do something to help, all you do is complain.” (Note that this was being said to people who devoted their lives and careers to evidence-based solutions to cleaning up the ocean).
by dajonker
8/20/2026 at 3:53:29 PM
I'm curious, what have firsthand experience have you seen of solutions implemented by The Ocean Cleanup?There will always be misallocation of resources in the private and public sector, I think the main point of this article is "trusting the experts in complex situations", which in my opinion is valid and needs to be said more emphatically in the current political climate.
“There was this spirit at the time that a few well-meaning young people with a lot of passion would find solutions, but for complex problems like this one, the teenage geniuses and their billionaire backers aren’t going to save us, and they’re going to take us on a wild and expensive ride along the way,” Helm says.
by thinkthatover
8/20/2026 at 3:13:15 PM
>> They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all.The alternative is not "doing nothing at all." It's spending the money effectively and in ways that don't kill marine life. TFA gives an example near the end:
"So if we can’t scoop all the plastic trash out of the ocean without killing large numbers of marine animals, what can we do instead?
One effective (and cost-effective) solution is the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. This amazing program has removed more than 400 million pounds of trash from beaches, where it’s much easier to access than in the middle of the ocean, before it gets swept back to sea. They do this at incredibly low cost, because more than 19 million people around the world have volunteered to help.
“Our total annual budget for all our plastics advocacy work, which includes cleanup, science and policy efforts, is about $6 million,” says Jordana Lewis, director of communications for the Ocean Conservancy Director of Communications. “Every organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place.”
As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings.
Meanwhile Dr. Richards points out that in 2024 Ocean Cleanup’s System 002 “was out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day, picking up less plastic than a bunch of volunteers on beaches.” (A representative for the Ocean Cleanup told me via email that they are working on improving the cost efficiency of their operations.)"
by enraged_camel
8/20/2026 at 3:52:26 PM
> for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place.” As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filingsThat math doesn't show what the author might want it to - The Ocean Cleanup removed ~118Mlbs of waste for $72m, while it would take $246M to do the same with the "incredibly low cost" methods of the Ocean Conservancy?
by happyopossum
8/20/2026 at 7:05:27 PM
Not by definition. Some of that money will have gone to the "upstream policy solutions" part, which is arguably the most important part. No point burning a ton of money cleaning up trash when people are adding new trash faster than you can ever clean it up, after all.by crote
8/20/2026 at 3:12:42 PM
Spot on. Another thing these experts fail to mention is that a lot of the data on the Pacific Garbage patch actually comes from the Ocean Cleanup, since, you know, they actually went out there to look.by hencq
8/20/2026 at 5:55:17 PM
There is the Marine Debris program at NOAA as well as satellite based tracking methods:https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/discover-marine-debris/garbage...
by ortusdux
8/20/2026 at 6:32:48 PM
the only thing that will be effective is if governments start taxing the production of plastic to the point it's not a cheap alternative anymore. these types of projects are too make people feel better while pissing in the windby cpill
8/21/2026 at 1:12:31 AM
[dead]by aaron695
8/20/2026 at 2:49:33 PM
> They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all.TY for saying this. I am having an especially hard time right now because this is my attitude as well and it seems; even here on HN that its now cool to literally just not try. Complain, call everything AI-slop and just concede defeat to Altman, Dario and Zuck. I literally had someone tell me its stupid and pointless to try and build efficiencies into systems like Medicare etc... and we should just wait on "mind-control". At a time when the barrier to entry and the cost of just fucking trying has never been lower it seems like there are more people than ever just waiting to tear everything down and recruit you into their cult of apathetic misery.
by arionhardison
8/20/2026 at 7:15:42 PM
Not everything is worth trying.If we want to stop the melting of the Antarctic ice sheets, and someone says "Hey, perhaps the penguins are the problem. We should murder all the penguins!", should we go all-in on that? If it inevitably doesn't end up working, should we just shrug and say "Well, at least we tried..."?
Personally I believe it is probably better to listen to the scientists who keep yelling that it isn't going to work and that we should focus on this "climate change" thing instead, but that's just me.
Doing something can be worse than doing nothing, and you don't get a participation trophy for a failed obviously-ludicrous moonshot - all you've done is leech money away from the people working on real solutions.
by crote
8/21/2026 at 12:48:58 AM
This genuinely made me laugh. Fuck the penguin's LOL; but I actually do see your point here. There is a big diff in the online and offline world in terms of cost/resources spent and I did not consider that so I digress.Thankfully Elon/Trump shaved a cool 2 trillion off the budget so maybe we have some room to fudge a bit. #MoonShot
Sometimes, I think my bias is more with the "who" gets a chance at a moonshot vs what it is and thats obviously problematic. I will do better.
by arionhardison
8/20/2026 at 4:05:00 PM
On a much smaller scale, a pool of water recently required renovation with a bill of $16 million. Failed miserably. I think it’s a great example of your point nonetheless.by SlightlyLeftPad
8/20/2026 at 2:59:43 PM
NGOs don't "fail miserably" - their actual goal is laundering tax money, and they very much do succeed!by SergeyKa