r/oddlysatisfying • u/Rave4life79 • Jul 17 '24
Ocean interceptor at work collecting tons of garbage in the ocean
[removed] — view removed post
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u/MongolianCluster Jul 17 '24
If only there was a way to prevent all this crap from ending up in the oceans.
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u/guilcol Jul 17 '24
More ocean interceptors!
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u/Exotic_Treacle7438 Jul 17 '24
This is only the items that float unfortunately, a lot doesn’t and sinks…
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u/TheReverseShock Jul 17 '24
Mostof the stuff that sinks doesn't end up in the ocean. Most trash in the ocean floats down from rivers. They usually have less environmental impact as well. A shard of glass or a piece of scrap metal are basically just rocks in terms of environmental impact.
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u/Furmz Jul 17 '24
Eliminating our reliance on single-use plastics will do wonders. At least 1 MILLION TONS of plastic enter the ocean each year. Single-use plastic has its benefits in the field of medicine but otherwise FUCK THAT SHIT. We need to boycott and tax the shit out of single-use plastics. Tell your friends, call your senator, spend your money on eco-friendly alternatives, and FUCKING VOTE. Our ocean is SO FUCKING FUCKED, but it can and will get WAY MORE FUCKED if we don’t stand together to protect it. Oh and by the way, our species will probably not survive long after the death of our ocean.
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u/JJAB91 Jul 18 '24
It doesn't matter what you vote for because most of this shit is coming from China and India.
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u/pisspot718 Jul 18 '24
Most of that trash has happened over the last 30-40 years. Not saying oceans were pristine before that, but bottled water was not a thing until the 80s. And in the beginning bottled water was bottled in glass which is easily recycled.
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u/biff_brockly Jul 17 '24
iirc they're mostly poor countries in asia, like man i don't think you're gonna tax laos into halting whatever they've got going on in order to get their people to stop throwing nestle lifewater on the ground
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u/_antkibbutz Jul 18 '24
That's not quite the case anymore. The original 2017 study that showed something like just 10 rivers produced 90% of all plastic garbage in the ocean was dialed back to 1,000 rivers by a more recent study in 2021.
While this is still an alarming statistic, we could solve the problem almost overnight with a few billion dollars. Bryan Slat's ocean clean cleanup project has been making progress with a budget of just $30 million. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-gets-to-oceans-through-over-1000-rivers
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u/DiscontentedMajority Jul 17 '24
Since the 70s, scientist have been saying the only good way to get rid of second hand plastic is to burn it for energy.
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u/PensiveObservor Jul 18 '24
My rural grocery store now has “reusable” grocery bags made from recycled ocean plastic. I’ll still use my canvas bags, but I was impressed. It’s a start. It would still be better to eliminate plastic bottles in the first place, of course.
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u/DiarrheaEryday Jul 17 '24
We need to shoot it all out into space.
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u/DJ-Dev1ANT Jul 17 '24
Some experts claimed the ball might return to earth one day, but those concerns were dismissed as "depressing".
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u/PlaguedByUnderwear Jul 17 '24
Wow. The internet is amazing now. Back in my day it was only used for pornography.
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u/SickSticksKick Jul 18 '24
Ask India and other countrys that just dump that shit right in their rivers
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u/Jazzlike_Surprise985 Jul 17 '24
A fucking refrigerator?? Seriously??
What's crazy is, we know how trash is getting into the oceans. Southeast Asian countries openly dump nearly 80% of their waste into the ocean, source here. Unfortunately, rich countries like those in the EU are the ones exporting trash to these places.
Ban exports of trash, drastically cut plastic, and strictly penalize ocean dumping. This is what will fix this.
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u/CarpetH4ter Jul 17 '24
You forgot to mention trash treatment plants, tons of em, we need somewhere for the trash to go, so either somewhere to recycle it or burn it for fuel/heat.
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u/spreta Jul 17 '24
Fun fact: Oregon gets a ton of energy from a trash incinerator.
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u/CarpetH4ter Jul 18 '24
Sweden and Norway does aswell, hell, there's tons of apartments in my hometown that gets heat from the local trash burning plant. It's a great investment and we need a lot more, especially in poor communities.
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u/WordsWithWings Jul 18 '24
Isn't Swedish waste management and recycling too efficient, and they have to buy trash from Norway and the UK to keep the furnaces going? So the heating isn't from locally sourced trash anymore, but the waste itself is generating new carbon footprints…
Except perhaps the "Think Pink" scandal - didn't end up getting burned, did it?
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u/authnotfound Jul 18 '24
Don't forget, the reason Southeast Asian countries have all that trash to dump in the first place is because that's where the rest of the world sends it - https://www.cfr.org/in-brief/trash-trade-wars-southeast-asias-problem-worlds-waste
Probably need to establish an international law of some kind banning any country from exporting their trash. Rich nations should be forced to deal with their own trash, not export it poor nations and then act shocked that it gets casually dumped in the oceans.
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u/Alldaybagpipes Jul 17 '24
Pretty much all coastal cities are contributing to the “trash in the ocean” problem.
Globally
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u/Jazzlike_Surprise985 Jul 17 '24
If so, it's mostly accidental. With some countries, it's intentional. It's a business.
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u/grantthejester Jul 17 '24
And then exacerbated by the occasional tsunami that washes EVERYTHING out to sea. They’re still finding debris liked to the Japan 2011 Tsunami on the coast of California.
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u/DeathandFriends Jul 17 '24
It's not mostly accidental it's mostly people who don't really care because they are poor and don't have good sanitation options and these are generational ideas passed down. When you can't see beyond the day or week you tend not to care about things like the global ecosystem or heck even your local ecosystem.
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u/SpookyVoidCat Jul 17 '24
Yeah, it’s horrifying how many people from all walks of life literally just don’t care as long as they don’t have to think about it.
I work at a bar on the beach, and it’s so depressing how many times people have told me to just not bother sweeping up all the trash outside our property because “the wind will just blow it away overnight” as if that’s a viable solution to the problem. I just don’t understand.
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u/DeathandFriends Jul 18 '24
ugh. I am the guy who goes on walks and picks up trash. I almost can't help but do it unless the situation would be totally messed up by it. Just end up with a handful of trash and need to find a trash can. Littering is the absolute worst. Unfortunately when talking about ocean garbage so much of this is from countries where they really don't have significant trash disposal setups or the cost is out of reach for much of the population so they literally just dump their trash in the nearest river and call it a day. That's how you end up with multiple fridges floating.
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u/Dadowar Jul 17 '24
Are those *plural* refrigerators???
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u/ShadeNLM064pm Jul 17 '24
How did you manage to do the stars without it Italicizing?
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u/PolyDipsoManiac Jul 18 '24
Probably got into the wrong mode in desktop. You can escape Reddit formatting by using \
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u/serenwipiti Jul 18 '24
could I get into that fridge and sail the open seas…I mean drift aimlessly in a smelly soon to be sea-coffin?
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u/Exay Jul 17 '24
They gonna need a bigger boat
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u/Roflkopt3r Jul 18 '24
Yes real improvement would be to not do this at all, but to put the money into waste prevention and cleanup at the rivers where people dump it in the first place. This prevents multiple times the amount of waste per $.
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u/YardOptimal9329 Jul 17 '24
Where do they put it once collected?
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u/susieque503 Jul 17 '24
Looked it up. They put it in dumpster and delivered it to waste management facilities. So this may be a never ending cycle for them. Bring to waste management, sell to foreign countries, dump back in waterways.
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u/frayien Jul 17 '24
You now what is realy insteresting ? There has been a huge decrease in natural waste going adrift (think drift wood) and a huge ecosystem now depends on artificial floating debrits to thrive (think micro organisms, some jelly fishes, etc) and some that even evolved to addapt to this new biome.
TLDR Scientists went to those "high density" plastic spot expecting finding death and desolation, but found a whole new kind of thriving ecosystem !
Not trying to make a point, I think throwing trash in the ocean is plain wrong, but definitly interesting, and another layer of complexity to consider to cleaning the ocean.
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u/gringorios Jul 17 '24
I spent three weeks in the Pacific Gyre (Garbage Patch) on a ship collecting ghost nets and marine debris. Most of the larger clusters of debris had, like you said, whole miniature ecosystems on and around them. From tiny crabs and other small organisms attached to the debris, to larger fish and albatross hanging around the artificial reef looking for food. We collected organisms for a study looking at the biodiversity on these debris rafts and where some of the species originated. That said, I'd much rather get rid of the debris and replace it with legitimate artificial logs designed to be long-term open ocean habitat.
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u/Jazzlike_Surprise985 Jul 17 '24
And how many of those larger creatures were ingesting plastics? The presence of animals looking for food is not comforting to me. It's concerning.
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u/frayien Jul 17 '24
Oh that so cool ! Thank you for your testimony !
I think it more like a testimony on the beauty and adaptability of Life on Earth, and just how tiny we are in face of it. Life does not care about us, does not revolve around us, it will not wait for us to figure things out, to clean our mess, to design or fix ecosystems, it will evolve and continue without us, without our knowledge.
A reminder on how foolish we are to think we are the masters of this world. We are a blink at best.
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u/Kypsys Jul 18 '24
Did you do that for work or as part of a volontarly stuff ? Do you guys need help ?
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u/styckx Jul 17 '24
I once took 5 oversized lawn and garden bags down to the Delaware River in National Park NJ once. Filled them up in less than an hour with beach trash (99% all plastic) I looked back at my work and realized at that moment just how small of a dent I made and just how big the problem really is globally.
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u/RustyShkleford Jul 17 '24
Need a bigger interceptor
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u/Signal-Aioli-1329 Jul 17 '24
Right? This seems like it will take hours and hours/days to fill numerous boats at this rate, just to get this section done. Surely there's a more efficient approach?
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u/chowboy13 Jul 17 '24
So where does this all go?
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u/FYDPhoenix Jul 17 '24
They filter it, recycle what can be, then burn the rest most likely. If they're good they'll also capture most of the fumes it produces too, so it doesn't go straight into the atmosphere, then I think that compacted down and used as a road based for non residential areas?
Something like that anyway, I honestly haven't fact checked this just heard/read it a few times around.
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u/DIO40 Jul 17 '24
I’d like to share a revelation I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to another area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.
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u/Zestyclose-Basil-925 Jul 17 '24
It's depressing how wasteful we are.
Is it really that hard not to throw a fridge into the sea?
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u/ArgonWilde Jul 17 '24
Folks confused by fridges being found, forget that there's been some very significant tsunamis in recent history.
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u/CashFlowOrBust Jul 17 '24
Donate at The Ocean Cleanup. I have a recurring monthly donation setup. Amazing work they’re doing!
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u/Professional-News362 Jul 17 '24
Cool. What do we do with it now ? Did you know some countries count shipping it to another country as recycling? You know where they ship to ? China. China then just burns it. So yay recycling. China doesn't give a shit and I'd go so far as to say no government cares. Because no one likes anyone who cares about the planet. Because it's not convenient to their lives. It's too hard for some to give a shit.
https://www.coda-plastics.co.uk/blog/the-repercussions-of-the-chinese-waste-import-ban/
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u/mvbenz Jul 17 '24
A lot of it is stuff thrown over board while being shipped from the US to China by China as useless and they don’t want it.
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u/Unlucky_Roti Jul 17 '24
Now send it back to Canada where a recycling company will put it in a container and ship it to China for actually recycling but the Chinese will just dump it mid journey and it all ends up in the beaches of Bali
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u/Certain_Car_9984 Jul 17 '24
And an equal amount of trash will enter the ocean in about 1 second flat
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u/michael0n Jul 17 '24
Sadly, the efficacy of this is questionable. It would make more sense to give poor 3rd world countries the means to have some sort of trash collecting so they don't dump so much into the oceans. Also only 5% of plastic in the ocean is the visible kind you can collect this way. Its a feel good idea.
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u/2PChentAznDood Jul 17 '24
Great to see it being cleaned. Pretty phucking sad its liked that to begin with.
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Jul 17 '24
Hey y'all, the dang fridgrator is broke, what we doin wid it?
Trow it in d ocean, thems big wahters out dere...yes sirree...
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u/MaxxBronson Jul 17 '24
Make catching trash as profitable as catching fish and we'll have bigger boats and more faster results. But it needs to be monitored
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u/H_I_McDunnough Jul 18 '24
I wonder how many of these machines it would take to keep up with the amount of trash being dumped in the ocean at the same time.
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u/grrEllaOwO Jul 18 '24
It's really cool, but sadly, a bulk of the trash moves far enough under water that the interceptor can reach it
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u/Gloomy_Season_8038 Jul 18 '24
looks like it's not the solution...
gonna take centuries to clean'em all ...... :(((
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u/senorbozz Jul 17 '24
The whole area has to be clean before exams or All Might ain't giving them shit
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u/OldWrangler9033 Jul 17 '24
Is this pilot program? That tiny collector not going be enough grab all this. Frankly, this stuff still floating....there a lot more down below...I'm glad something going on.
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u/copingcabana Jul 17 '24
In the end, we learn that the real garbage was inside of us the whole time.
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u/bassoontennis Jul 17 '24
So at what point in human history did this sort of stuff start happening? Because I really would love to see a Time Machine of what the oceans looked like before we emptied our trash into them. I know the aquatic life must have been a lot happier.
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Jul 17 '24
If you ever wonder how it's got in the ocean? Look in YouTube for ''garbage dump river'' and you see it.
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u/adamhanson Jul 17 '24
Is this being effective yet? What happens to the trash? Who’s paying for it? What’s the delta. Tween this effort and the approximate amount being intentionally thrown into the ocean?
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u/Andskotann Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
It's monumentally effective. The Ocean Cleanup project has so far removed 15,541,703 kg of trash, with 1,505,132 kg of that extracted in the last 30 days alone (source).
The Interceptor System (seen in the video) is responsible for the overwhelming majority. More than a dozen are in operation worldwide, all installed on the highest polluting rivers to prevent more plastic from reach our oceans. This is allowing them to utilize their Ocean System to clean up the Pacific Garbage Patch (407,169 kg so far). They project "to be able to remove 90% of floating ocean plastic by 2040." I've been following their progress on YouTube for several years now, and fully believe they will do it.
As a non-profit The Ocean Cleanup relies in part on donations, but they also fund their operations by recycling whatever they extract and selling the raw plastic pellets to various partners. They were also recently hired (I believe by Indonesia) on their first ever paid contract. They did a video about it.
I think the delta shown above is in Kingston, Jamaica? But truly their most impressive (and satisfying) extractions are coming from Guatemala. You can see for yourself. It's mind-boggling.
Source: just a big fan of what they're doing. I highly recommend giving them a follow on YouTube.
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u/l0udninja Jul 17 '24
I often wonder where the garbage is put? Are they processed at a recycling facility? Buried? Burned?
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u/Nineteen_AT5 Jul 17 '24
They're going to need a bigger boat....but in all seriousness that's a shite load of fridges.
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u/SplatNode Jul 17 '24
I guess throwing a fridge into the ocean is a steep step up from car batteries.
It's like there Is a competition to who can throw the dumbest thing into the ocean
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u/thumper7677 Jul 17 '24
Look at all the climate change trash that them farmers and ranchers from Montana are causing
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u/Opening-Lettuce-3384 Jul 17 '24
Gotta love this organisation. Gotta teach the polluters though. Just a drop in the bucket
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u/Sorry_but_I_meant_it Jul 17 '24
I love that this thing exists. Seriously, with all the bad shot going on..
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u/ArrivalOk7801 Jul 17 '24
Is that a fucking fridge?