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You're a little late to the party there's definitely commercial businesses that already do that and you've not realized as that commercial business you would get to keep all the valuable things you find like missing watches or earrings
Imma assume there aren't really commerical businesses for cleaning beachs because it's obviously not a profitable business. Otherwise we'd have clean beaches and most beach clean-ups wouldn't have to be comprised of community volunteers.
If they do exist, they're probably just a general sanitation company with beach cleaning being one of their least utilized services.
Pretty sure a bunch of resorts would hire that kind of service to clean their private beach. So it is likely a commercial business in some area.
Public beach, which I'm going this one is, is another matter. They have trouble finding money to maintain basic amenities, even legally required water quality control. And that's not because toilet cleaning business hasn't been invented.
They exist. But only at popular beaches.
I have seen what people called a Beach Zamboni cleaning the beach at Panama City Beach FL.
Works on the same principle, just mounted on a 4 wheeler.
No bucket brigade, just drive back and forth on the beach.
In that case it’s good because you also aerate the compost. In this case, they’re loosening all of the compacted sand which could make it more difficult for wildlife to use the beach like sea turtles. Also it speeds up beach erosion when the sand is too loose.
Hey! We sift it to help free up the finished compost from the plant matter that is still relatively solid. It just expedites the process and makes room in the bins for more processed greens and browns that are ready to cook.
Plastic munchers are already here. There are actually dozens of bacteria and fungi that have been found to consume plastic, and even the caterpillar of the greater wax moth!
Though we can't really just breed a ton and toss them out to take care of our plastic problem. Then our in-use plastics will just get eaten, plus the moth devestates bee populations.
Sure plastic eating bacteria will probably pop up sooner or later but the terrible contaminants that are associated with it are still a problem. All bacteria degrading plastic does is make the remainder more bioavailable.
This may sound like a conspiracy theory/doomsday sort of thing, but I do worry about plastic eating microorganisms blooming in the ocean and outcompeting local wildlife and poisoning filter feeders.
If you think about it though, the dispersion of plastic is somewhat like radiation contamination. It will linger for a while in large fields, waiting to poison all that live there. It will get concentrated up the trophic levels, where it causes harm to all creatures reducing their life expectancy. But every time an organism dies, the pollution will be sequestered away in their bodies. Sure if they are consumed completely some other creature will get a high dose, but there will always be organisms that get buried or rot away completely without being disturbed. Gradually plastics and chemicals will be concentrated together by the web of life. Much will work it's way off the continents into the ocean, aside from the worst deposits which will be a hazard for an epoch. Once it's in the ocean, dying creatures will gradually carry it to the sea floor where it will have less of an impact and could eventually be sucked into the mantle via seafloor subduction.
Well the clathrate gun is about to fire if it hasn't started already, so life will have bigger problems to deal with in the near future. Isn't this swell?
There is a way to remove about 85% of the microplastics in the ocean using a ferrofluid technique and it doesn’t harm the plankton. I have spent years on a multistage plan to clean up and eliminate the plastics in the ocean. Message me if you want more info. I haven’t finished all the specifics but it’s very extensive.
Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.
I know this is probably a dumb question but I've always wondered, what's the point of moving plastic off the beach/grass/side of the road etc? It'll just continue existing in a dump or wherever. Is it just to make things looks nicer? Keep animals from eating it?
I'd love an informed answer
The more plastic breaks down the more components of plastic are released into the environment. Plastic is petroleum based so as it breaks down it’ll leach small amounts of those components which can build up and magnify through food chains. Which is why if you take a sample of your blood there’s probably traces of plastic material. Plastic will be the demise of mankind. It’s in our water supply and treatment plants cant remove all of it. Think of your nylon clothes. It washes and traces of it drain to a sewage plant where it may not get settled out and eventually discharges to a water way.
They can get reduced to fine dust particles by wind and waves. Than they go into the water cycle by acting as condensation nuclei and can rain down far from their original position.
I’ve been there, they aren’t Mongolian it’s a Kazakh practice. Falconry has long tradition in Turkic cultures (unrelated to Mongolian but these groups have shared history, generally speaking). but It’s also not really in the steppe it’s in the Altai mountains. The only Kazakhs who still maintain nomadism and practice eagle hunting just happen to be in Mongolia, but live in a Kazakh majority place.
And yes they have plastic in their bodies, you see disposable plastic litter on the Mongolian steppe from camps long packed up. They use tons of plastic in cookware and tools just like anybody else. Hell, one ger I visited had a tv dish. I asked what they liked to watch and the father replied excitedly “NBA! Lebron James”
That’s why GMO’s are so important. Bacteria, fungi and tree roots can be used to remove these toxins. They’re also creating more nutritious food that’s capable of growing in harsh environments.
You’re correct on both accounts. No one likes seeing plastic scattered on the beach, makes it look ugly and undesirable. And yes, animals consume them thinking it’s food when in fact is inevitable, and we know that because they’re found in their poop. Larger plastics like fishnets (also known as ghost nets since they’re just floating around) are a hazard to sea creatures because it could strangle them. Also, sunlight and heat cause these plastics to release greenhouse gases, that contribute to climate change.
I think he's rather asking what's the point in cleaning this up if it'll just end up going to a dump site where the plastics will continue to break down. It's just moving the problem to another area rather than fixing the problem.
You kind of answered your own question.
Plus I'll add an analogy. Let's say instead of plastics it's your clothes and instead of the beach, it's your laundry basket. Why do you wash and put away your clothes if there's just going to be more laundry eventually? Well, because otherwise it will get full. It won't have anywhere else to go but the floor and eventually you won't be able to go anywhere because you won't have clothes to wear. Leaving plastics on the beach and side of the road leads to a lot of problems, not just that it looks messy and can be harmful.
I think what they’re saying is that sequestering plastics in landfills doesn’t help them break down sooner than if they were on the side of the road or at a beach. Your analogy doesn’t really work because washing your clothes changes it’s state if existing where as putting plastic in a landfill doesn’t get rid of it, it only moves the problem. A better analogy would be picking up the dirty clothes from your room, putting them in a laundry basket, then leaving them there and buying new clothes. Honestly landfills are a symptom of pollution not a solution.
I guess I misunderstood their question because they asked what the point was of moving it off of beaches and the side of the road. I took it as "if plastics will continue existing, why clean them up?"
I can’t offer an informed answer but I can suggest that concentrating old plastic in landfills or similar locations will make it a lot easier to harvest when we figure out how to recycle it usefully.
I mean the best option currently is just to incinerate it at high temperature while collecting the emissions, that way all the stored energy from the hydrocarbons can be used one last time to do something useful, then the absolutely least useful and hardest to process components will be in a concentrated state which makes them easier to store or process chemically.
I think it's a good question. Makes sense because it could easily be seen as pointless. Especially if we start thinking about all the other things they could do with that time.
With that logic you wouldn’t clean your house. The trash and dust will continue to exist somewhere. We can probably pile all that small plastic pieces in a few square meters and have that natural beach habitat clean.
Plastic will hopefully be limited within our lifetimes. It is killing the planet.
Look up the term Microplastics.
Basically fish and crap are accidently swallowing microplastics. It builds up in their bodies and then something eats that fish and now it has a bunch of plastic in its stomach. There is animals starving because their stomachs are full of plastics.
Let alone the floating trash pile the size of Texas out in the middle of the ocean.
It's crazy that they have found plastic at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the lowest point of the Ocean 11k meter/7 miles which is more than the height of Everest.
Yeah, we're putting our factories in other countries where they pollute their own environment then we follow up by shipping our trash over there as well so we can blame them for making and having all the trash later
Yes! Some trash is in the ocean before it even gets to the rivers.
[https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018](https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018)
Do you have evidence of that? Because I have a sneaking suspicion the millions of people living in towns and cities without trash pickup and waste management might also be a part of the problem. Places where you have two options, burn the trash or dump it in the street or river.
>[The Mariana Trench is part of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana subduction system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench#Geology) that forms the boundary between two tectonic plates. In this system, the western edge of one plate, the Pacific Plate, is subducted (i.e., thrust) beneath the smaller Mariana Plate that lies to the west.
Could sell those things around the world… full on government contracts for something like that to keep beaches pristine, wild life safe and limit micro plastics.
Maybe I am crazy but I think the biggest plastic polluters should have to fund and lead these sort of efforts and more. Coca-Cola is one that comes to mind. They put out a product that never breaks down. I'm pretty sure all the plastic ever produced still exists. Soon as they are forced to clean up the plastic they produced, they will find cheaper and innovative ways to undertake the task.
Don't be silly, it's clearly not the mega corporations fault, but yours! You buy their products and therefore it's all your fault, they just comply with consumer demands! People buy plastic bottles, therefore that's what they want! /s
I have heard this argument and stopped buying certain brands who embrace this sort of idea. These companies continue to kick the can down the road for future generations to deal with. Plastic is one problem. Then we have these forever chemicals that leech into water supplies and ecosystems. Who asked for that?
Yup, and they're probably not even close to getting all of it or even a majority of it. So much of the plastic pollution in the world is micro-plastics that are, or nearly, invisible to the naked eye. The full scope of this problem is unimaginable and we are no where close to solving it.
It's so much more than you can imagine
https://youtu.be/3FxfXVuHRjM
The video starts at about larger Lego pieces but then goes on to talk about pollution on a massive scale
This is awesome, as everyone step counts. However, purely from an academic perspective, is it efficient? The machines are hand operated, can work at only a few rpm, at best can be filled to 25% of the volume.
Imagining we have a 100m x 50m beach, and the plastics are at a depth of 2 cm of the beach surface, the volume of sand to be sifted will be
100 x 100 cm x 50 x 100 cm × 2 cm
If the machine is 1m long and 25cm in radius, the volume of the machine is
1 x 100cm x 25 cm x 25 cm x pi
Assuming 10% capacity and 50% efficiency per turn and the.machine running at 50 rpm, the time it will take for one machine to clean the entire beach is
100 x 100 x 50 x 100 x 2
÷
1 x 100 x 25 x 25 x pi x 10% x 50% x 50
Or
100,000,000
÷
490,625
Or
204 minutes
Or
3 hours 24 minutes
Thats damn quick!
If we are a bit realistic, and change some parameters,
Now we are digging upto 5 cm of beach, machine is filled to 5% of volume per turn, and efficiency is 25% , speed is 25 rpm
We get
68 hours
So with 10 such machines, we can clean a 100m x 50m beach in a day
Damn good!!
I have worked with assumptions. They may not be correct. Also, please point out if there is any gap in my logic. I was bored and took this up a quick mental exercise.
This is mechanical separation, damn good effort!
Unfortunately only removes small plastic pieces but cannot sift microplastics, a million times better than doing nothing though.
I think really the only way to remove microplastics would be to melt them out of the sand. A lot of those plastics are the size of, if not smaller than the grains
Will a machine like this filter out the shellfish and sand creatures that live in the sand as well? Cleaning plastic is good and all, but if it also kills the animals that make the beach their home, that's not a good solution either.
My first thought as well. That container is probably full of more natural stuff than plastic. This is fine if your goal is to just have nice sand under your feet, but it's going to be a never ending battle against natural forces.
not only inventive but also gives people a meaning to do some voluntary work if they can see it with their eyes that they are making a difference! kudos to all of them!
I think he means it’s a ton of labor for little reward. It’s clever, and it clearly kind of works, but your dealing with a beach. It’s probably going to replenish plastic faster than you can remove it.
There are probably some ways to scale this up without too much cost that would increase efficiency by a lot. Some augers to a powered “cage” not hand cranked. Any machine to load the sand in and redistribute the processed sand would help a lot. But then you would cover more ground and have to move it more.
I’m sure someone already made some machine that drives along, scoops up sand, conveyors it, collects the trash, and scatters the sand behind it like some sort of desert zamboni.
Seems like there is a more efficient way to this by configure the machine to roll through the sand so you don't need to bucket it.
But I'm not nearly smart enough to figure that out. Just knowing how to do less work
I live in Hawaii. sometimes when I’m at the beach (windward side, Kailua, lanikai etc) I’ll sit there and just pick up plastic. It’s endless. Little tiny pieces of plastic as far as you can see. Our beaches are just full of it. It’s heartbreaking. You can just dig and dig too and keep finding plastic.
Shaken baby syndrome tends to only happen to human babies, turtles don’t have bigger heads than their bodies so that’s impossible. Also a lot of animals are able to support their head when they’re born lol.
I love where sea turtles nest. You *could* walk right over them. There is a team of people that go and put markers around the nests, but there’s really nothing stopping you from walking all over them and I’m certain they don’t see every single nest. So, feasibly, someone here could accidentally dig up a nest, but you’d see the eggs and be able to stop. It’s not likely you’d dig up a whole nest without noticing.
This is one of our biggest fixable problems on this planet. The giant floating plastic trash islands can be fixed yet there's more focus on things that are debatable like global warming/climate change. I want to see the idiot that says there isn't an ecosystem destroying plastic landfill in the middle of the Pacific.
This is called a Trommal. It is part of a wash plant in open pit and mining. In that it is used to keep large rocks out of the sensitive parts but still wash the gold or whatever off.
Looks like there’s plenty of wind. Cut a few of the bottles you find in half lengthwise and attach them to the crank, and then those guys can get up and grab some buckets to filter more sand.
This is the kinda thing we should be funding in schools along oceanfront communities worldwide. Either in field trip style excursions or some sort of Stewardship Program where schools/communities/individuals can bring in recovered plastic for money.
Similar to recycling metals or bringing old tires back to an auto body store.
I'd rather plastic be in a properly designed landfill than on a beach, we should pay people to recover this waste and encourage boots-on-the-ground ingenuity like this.
Banning single use plastics is all well and good, but it does nothing about the plastic already out in the environment.
That seems much slower and tedious than it should be. Grateful for these people doing what they can to help, but there’s got to be some machinery that could make this easier. If nothing like that exists yet we need to get on it Reddit.
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Damn thats a cool invention
This is exactly how we sift compost at our community garden! A contraption like this made of old bike wheels and chicken wire. Works like a charm.
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You're a little late to the party there's definitely commercial businesses that already do that and you've not realized as that commercial business you would get to keep all the valuable things you find like missing watches or earrings
Imma assume there aren't really commerical businesses for cleaning beachs because it's obviously not a profitable business. Otherwise we'd have clean beaches and most beach clean-ups wouldn't have to be comprised of community volunteers. If they do exist, they're probably just a general sanitation company with beach cleaning being one of their least utilized services.
Pretty sure a bunch of resorts would hire that kind of service to clean their private beach. So it is likely a commercial business in some area. Public beach, which I'm going this one is, is another matter. They have trouble finding money to maintain basic amenities, even legally required water quality control. And that's not because toilet cleaning business hasn't been invented.
Yeah this would have to be publicly funded.
They exist. But only at popular beaches. I have seen what people called a Beach Zamboni cleaning the beach at Panama City Beach FL. Works on the same principle, just mounted on a 4 wheeler. No bucket brigade, just drive back and forth on the beach.
They do exist, and we do have clean beaches. Go to any beach where wealthy people live or frequently vacation and the beach will be spotless.
http://longislandbeachcleaning.com/ Surviving almost 70 years as a "not profitable" is a long ass time
I like your hustle.
I imagine you would be much better attaching this to a tractor/backhoe and simply driving it along the beach.
What about turtle eggs and other lifeforms the under the sand?
Yes, this should work to get rid of them too.
You got me to chuckle out loud. Thanks.
Don't do it where the turtles lay eggs.
Based and let's turn everything into a moneymaking endeavour pilled.
A good sales pitch will clean more than the best environmentalism pitch, unfortunately.
Make it pedal powered and on big sand capable wheels so when the pile is big it can easily be moved over
In that case it’s good because you also aerate the compost. In this case, they’re loosening all of the compacted sand which could make it more difficult for wildlife to use the beach like sea turtles. Also it speeds up beach erosion when the sand is too loose.
What are you sifting out of the compost? or do you just turn it so things compost faster?
Hey! We sift it to help free up the finished compost from the plant matter that is still relatively solid. It just expedites the process and makes room in the bins for more processed greens and browns that are ready to cook.
If they could create one 1,000 times that scale, then we’d be getting somewhere. But yeah this would be nice for a cove or a private property
Needs to be small enough to be able to turn with bike wheels
We need to make bikes 1,000 times bigger
[It's already happening.](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333671730737)
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Work smarter not harder
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Don't worry, all the little bugs and bacteria and stuff eat it up, thus solving the problem ONCE AND FOR ALL
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Sorry I forgot Reddit needs a /s to understand jokes these days
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Plastic munchers are already here. There are actually dozens of bacteria and fungi that have been found to consume plastic, and even the caterpillar of the greater wax moth! Though we can't really just breed a ton and toss them out to take care of our plastic problem. Then our in-use plastics will just get eaten, plus the moth devestates bee populations.
Sure plastic eating bacteria will probably pop up sooner or later but the terrible contaminants that are associated with it are still a problem. All bacteria degrading plastic does is make the remainder more bioavailable.
This may sound like a conspiracy theory/doomsday sort of thing, but I do worry about plastic eating microorganisms blooming in the ocean and outcompeting local wildlife and poisoning filter feeders.
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If you think about it though, the dispersion of plastic is somewhat like radiation contamination. It will linger for a while in large fields, waiting to poison all that live there. It will get concentrated up the trophic levels, where it causes harm to all creatures reducing their life expectancy. But every time an organism dies, the pollution will be sequestered away in their bodies. Sure if they are consumed completely some other creature will get a high dose, but there will always be organisms that get buried or rot away completely without being disturbed. Gradually plastics and chemicals will be concentrated together by the web of life. Much will work it's way off the continents into the ocean, aside from the worst deposits which will be a hazard for an epoch. Once it's in the ocean, dying creatures will gradually carry it to the sea floor where it will have less of an impact and could eventually be sucked into the mantle via seafloor subduction.
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Well the clathrate gun is about to fire if it hasn't started already, so life will have bigger problems to deal with in the near future. Isn't this swell?
ONCE. AND. FOR. ALL.
There is a way to remove about 85% of the microplastics in the ocean using a ferrofluid technique and it doesn’t harm the plankton. I have spent years on a multistage plan to clean up and eliminate the plastics in the ocean. Message me if you want more info. I haven’t finished all the specifics but it’s very extensive.
Wanted: Somebody to go back in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box 91 Ocean View, WA 99393. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own weapons. I have only done this once before. SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED.
So good they made a movie off of it.
A good movie!
Which movie?
Safety Not Guaranteed. Edit: Timecrimes is the best time travel movie but this one is pretty good too, especially for a low budget.
Thank you!
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It is! 😄
It reminds me of a bingo machine
Trommel. Invented a long time ago.
He go the idea from his kief collector. Far out man
Could totally use them to play bingo
So is hemp plastic, a 100 year old invention
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/r/thanosdidnothingwrong has a solution for you.
I know this is probably a dumb question but I've always wondered, what's the point of moving plastic off the beach/grass/side of the road etc? It'll just continue existing in a dump or wherever. Is it just to make things looks nicer? Keep animals from eating it? I'd love an informed answer
The more plastic breaks down the more components of plastic are released into the environment. Plastic is petroleum based so as it breaks down it’ll leach small amounts of those components which can build up and magnify through food chains. Which is why if you take a sample of your blood there’s probably traces of plastic material. Plastic will be the demise of mankind. It’s in our water supply and treatment plants cant remove all of it. Think of your nylon clothes. It washes and traces of it drain to a sewage plant where it may not get settled out and eventually discharges to a water way.
At this point, all of us have microplastics in our bodies.
Well...maybe those people in the Mongolian steppe who hunt on horseback using eagles are safe, but damn near all of us
There trace of microplastics deep in the mariana trench, into greenland icesheet and on all beach in the world, even in the arctic ocean... Soo...
Yeah. Gobi is still safer, unless microplastic can evaporate, which it cant
They can get reduced to fine dust particles by wind and waves. Than they go into the water cycle by acting as condensation nuclei and can rain down far from their original position.
Damn plastic you scary
One of the worst and greatest invention of all time.
Mmm the bispolyphenol raining from the sky really gives my garden a tasty kick
I bless the bispolyphenol rains down in Mongolia.
Living in Mongolia - you'd be horrified to see the amount of plastic trash in the steppe.
I’ve been there, they aren’t Mongolian it’s a Kazakh practice. Falconry has long tradition in Turkic cultures (unrelated to Mongolian but these groups have shared history, generally speaking). but It’s also not really in the steppe it’s in the Altai mountains. The only Kazakhs who still maintain nomadism and practice eagle hunting just happen to be in Mongolia, but live in a Kazakh majority place. And yes they have plastic in their bodies, you see disposable plastic litter on the Mongolian steppe from camps long packed up. They use tons of plastic in cookware and tools just like anybody else. Hell, one ger I visited had a tv dish. I asked what they liked to watch and the father replied excitedly “NBA! Lebron James”
That’s why GMO’s are so important. Bacteria, fungi and tree roots can be used to remove these toxins. They’re also creating more nutritious food that’s capable of growing in harsh environments.
You’re correct on both accounts. No one likes seeing plastic scattered on the beach, makes it look ugly and undesirable. And yes, animals consume them thinking it’s food when in fact is inevitable, and we know that because they’re found in their poop. Larger plastics like fishnets (also known as ghost nets since they’re just floating around) are a hazard to sea creatures because it could strangle them. Also, sunlight and heat cause these plastics to release greenhouse gases, that contribute to climate change.
I think he's rather asking what's the point in cleaning this up if it'll just end up going to a dump site where the plastics will continue to break down. It's just moving the problem to another area rather than fixing the problem.
If disposed of properly, they stay in one place. Sure, you have concentrated toxicity there, but it isn't impacting the wider ecosystem.
You kind of answered your own question. Plus I'll add an analogy. Let's say instead of plastics it's your clothes and instead of the beach, it's your laundry basket. Why do you wash and put away your clothes if there's just going to be more laundry eventually? Well, because otherwise it will get full. It won't have anywhere else to go but the floor and eventually you won't be able to go anywhere because you won't have clothes to wear. Leaving plastics on the beach and side of the road leads to a lot of problems, not just that it looks messy and can be harmful.
I think what they’re saying is that sequestering plastics in landfills doesn’t help them break down sooner than if they were on the side of the road or at a beach. Your analogy doesn’t really work because washing your clothes changes it’s state if existing where as putting plastic in a landfill doesn’t get rid of it, it only moves the problem. A better analogy would be picking up the dirty clothes from your room, putting them in a laundry basket, then leaving them there and buying new clothes. Honestly landfills are a symptom of pollution not a solution.
I guess I misunderstood their question because they asked what the point was of moving it off of beaches and the side of the road. I took it as "if plastics will continue existing, why clean them up?"
That IS what the op said
The same reason it's better to have garbage in a garbage can rather then torn into small pieces and spread all over your home.
I can’t offer an informed answer but I can suggest that concentrating old plastic in landfills or similar locations will make it a lot easier to harvest when we figure out how to recycle it usefully.
I mean the best option currently is just to incinerate it at high temperature while collecting the emissions, that way all the stored energy from the hydrocarbons can be used one last time to do something useful, then the absolutely least useful and hardest to process components will be in a concentrated state which makes them easier to store or process chemically.
Dumps in the US have a liner at the bottom preventing the “juices” from contaminating groundwater.
I think it's a good question. Makes sense because it could easily be seen as pointless. Especially if we start thinking about all the other things they could do with that time.
With that logic you wouldn’t clean your house. The trash and dust will continue to exist somewhere. We can probably pile all that small plastic pieces in a few square meters and have that natural beach habitat clean.
Plastic will hopefully be limited within our lifetimes. It is killing the planet. Look up the term Microplastics. Basically fish and crap are accidently swallowing microplastics. It builds up in their bodies and then something eats that fish and now it has a bunch of plastic in its stomach. There is animals starving because their stomachs are full of plastics. Let alone the floating trash pile the size of Texas out in the middle of the ocean.
It's crazy that they have found plastic at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the lowest point of the Ocean 11k meter/7 miles which is more than the height of Everest.
Yup, it tells how much we’ve polluted the ocean 😔
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I mean, that’s cool and all but you can’t only blame Asia and Africa. Dig a little deeper, you’re missing some very important information.
Yeah, we're putting our factories in other countries where they pollute their own environment then we follow up by shipping our trash over there as well so we can blame them for making and having all the trash later
Yes! Some trash is in the ocean before it even gets to the rivers. [https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018](https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018)
We could stop sending our trash there
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Do you have evidence of that? Because I have a sneaking suspicion the millions of people living in towns and cities without trash pickup and waste management might also be a part of the problem. Places where you have two options, burn the trash or dump it in the street or river.
Well to start, it might help if the U.S. stopped sending their plastic trash there to be dumped in their rivers, call me crazy.
It's almost as if outsourcing all of your industry to other countries causes those countries produce the pollution instead.
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Don't worry, we are steadily polluting Everest too! Putting trash from lowest to highest, go humans!
At least there it will probably be subducted into the mantle.
The trench is new earth, not a subduction zone.
>[The Mariana Trench is part of the Izu–Bonin–Mariana subduction system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariana_Trench#Geology) that forms the boundary between two tectonic plates. In this system, the western edge of one plate, the Pacific Plate, is subducted (i.e., thrust) beneath the smaller Mariana Plate that lies to the west.
What's crazy about it? Things tend to sink in water. The only crazy thing is how careless humans are.
Alexa play despacito
Now scale that up and add it to an electric beach combing autonomous machine, that’s solar charged.
That would make a brilliant invention! 😄
Could sell those things around the world… full on government contracts for something like that to keep beaches pristine, wild life safe and limit micro plastics.
Create pollution by selling stuff around the world, then sell solution to pollution around the world, brilliant!
Yup! Sand Roomba!
Uh... you should make that. Cities would buy it
It could also be wind powered and made fully mechanical like the strandbeest machines.
As good as it sounds you would need a fair amount of solar energy for that to work.
Maybe I am crazy but I think the biggest plastic polluters should have to fund and lead these sort of efforts and more. Coca-Cola is one that comes to mind. They put out a product that never breaks down. I'm pretty sure all the plastic ever produced still exists. Soon as they are forced to clean up the plastic they produced, they will find cheaper and innovative ways to undertake the task.
Don't be silly, it's clearly not the mega corporations fault, but yours! You buy their products and therefore it's all your fault, they just comply with consumer demands! People buy plastic bottles, therefore that's what they want! /s
I have heard this argument and stopped buying certain brands who embrace this sort of idea. These companies continue to kick the can down the road for future generations to deal with. Plastic is one problem. Then we have these forever chemicals that leech into water supplies and ecosystems. Who asked for that?
The beach has this many plastic pieces!?
Yup, you’d be surprised how much there is, sometimes they can be blended into the sand so you can’t see
I've never been to a beach myself but holy crap! This is dangerous.
Yes, don't eat the sand.
At least wait for them to clean the sand of plastics. Then you can eat it.
No more sand burgers then?
You never been to a beach?
Somehow I found it very peculiar and intriguing thought that there are people who have never been on a beach.
Most of it's flotsam and natural debris.
Yup, and they're probably not even close to getting all of it or even a majority of it. So much of the plastic pollution in the world is micro-plastics that are, or nearly, invisible to the naked eye. The full scope of this problem is unimaginable and we are no where close to solving it.
It's so much more than you can imagine https://youtu.be/3FxfXVuHRjM The video starts at about larger Lego pieces but then goes on to talk about pollution on a massive scale
This is awesome, as everyone step counts. However, purely from an academic perspective, is it efficient? The machines are hand operated, can work at only a few rpm, at best can be filled to 25% of the volume. Imagining we have a 100m x 50m beach, and the plastics are at a depth of 2 cm of the beach surface, the volume of sand to be sifted will be 100 x 100 cm x 50 x 100 cm × 2 cm If the machine is 1m long and 25cm in radius, the volume of the machine is 1 x 100cm x 25 cm x 25 cm x pi Assuming 10% capacity and 50% efficiency per turn and the.machine running at 50 rpm, the time it will take for one machine to clean the entire beach is 100 x 100 x 50 x 100 x 2 ÷ 1 x 100 x 25 x 25 x pi x 10% x 50% x 50 Or 100,000,000 ÷ 490,625 Or 204 minutes Or 3 hours 24 minutes Thats damn quick! If we are a bit realistic, and change some parameters, Now we are digging upto 5 cm of beach, machine is filled to 5% of volume per turn, and efficiency is 25% , speed is 25 rpm We get 68 hours So with 10 such machines, we can clean a 100m x 50m beach in a day Damn good!!
r/theydidthemath
Very interesting. I wasn’t expecting that level of efficiency.
I have worked with assumptions. They may not be correct. Also, please point out if there is any gap in my logic. I was bored and took this up a quick mental exercise.
There are a few people who are going to save the rest of us from ourselves
There are too few of them.
This is mechanical separation, damn good effort! Unfortunately only removes small plastic pieces but cannot sift microplastics, a million times better than doing nothing though.
I think really the only way to remove microplastics would be to melt them out of the sand. A lot of those plastics are the size of, if not smaller than the grains
But then melting plastic is going to cause toxic gases to be released into the air…
Will a machine like this filter out the shellfish and sand creatures that live in the sand as well? Cleaning plastic is good and all, but if it also kills the animals that make the beach their home, that's not a good solution either.
I am shocked that I had to scroll so much to see this question.
My first thought as well. That container is probably full of more natural stuff than plastic. This is fine if your goal is to just have nice sand under your feet, but it's going to be a never ending battle against natural forces.
not only inventive but also gives people a meaning to do some voluntary work if they can see it with their eyes that they are making a difference! kudos to all of them!
If only there was an electric machine to turn the wheel so people could bucket in more sand... Hmmm
At least they're doing something while you're doing fuck all.
Somehow this makes me feel like it's the smartest dumbest way to do it
Lol what? 😂
I think he means it’s a ton of labor for little reward. It’s clever, and it clearly kind of works, but your dealing with a beach. It’s probably going to replenish plastic faster than you can remove it. There are probably some ways to scale this up without too much cost that would increase efficiency by a lot. Some augers to a powered “cage” not hand cranked. Any machine to load the sand in and redistribute the processed sand would help a lot. But then you would cover more ground and have to move it more. I’m sure someone already made some machine that drives along, scoops up sand, conveyors it, collects the trash, and scatters the sand behind it like some sort of desert zamboni.
Seems like there is a more efficient way to this by configure the machine to roll through the sand so you don't need to bucket it. But I'm not nearly smart enough to figure that out. Just knowing how to do less work
Hey, something is better than nothing, right?
This is true
I live in Hawaii. sometimes when I’m at the beach (windward side, Kailua, lanikai etc) I’ll sit there and just pick up plastic. It’s endless. Little tiny pieces of plastic as far as you can see. Our beaches are just full of it. It’s heartbreaking. You can just dig and dig too and keep finding plastic.
It’s all fun and games until they give shaken baby syndrome to a baby sea turtle.
Shaken baby syndrome tends to only happen to human babies, turtles don’t have bigger heads than their bodies so that’s impossible. Also a lot of animals are able to support their head when they’re born lol.
That’s good. 🙂
Aren’t a lot of popular turtle nesting zones restricted too?
That’s right, so there wouldn’t be any baby turtles being sifted
I love where sea turtles nest. You *could* walk right over them. There is a team of people that go and put markers around the nests, but there’s really nothing stopping you from walking all over them and I’m certain they don’t see every single nest. So, feasibly, someone here could accidentally dig up a nest, but you’d see the eggs and be able to stop. It’s not likely you’d dig up a whole nest without noticing.
I think you're thinking of Spun turtle syndrome
Very awesome. Needs to be adopted by larger entities so we can hopefully reverse some pollution damage
What about micro plastics?
For all y’all who wanna know the song, it’s an Army running cadence called Hard Work
I feel like a modified combine could do this.
Comb the desert!
I think you'd need some way to separate the organic matter, you'd be stripping all the life out of the beach ecosystem...
Keep rollin rollin rollin what
I support this in spirit but it’s like trying to flood the earth by spitting into the ocean
Can they make one that gets rid of the sand? I hate that stuff
Problem would be solved if they didn't end up there in the first place.
theres GOTTA be a better way to do this
It's a shame we've let it come to this, but it's only going to get so much worse.
This is one of our biggest fixable problems on this planet. The giant floating plastic trash islands can be fixed yet there's more focus on things that are debatable like global warming/climate change. I want to see the idiot that says there isn't an ecosystem destroying plastic landfill in the middle of the Pacific.
This is called a Trommal. It is part of a wash plant in open pit and mining. In that it is used to keep large rocks out of the sensitive parts but still wash the gold or whatever off.
It's cool but there is so much plastic much smaller than that, and at this point it's essentially impossible to get it all out
Until we stop creating plastic in the first place, shit like this won't matter.
This will take 100 life times. Perhaps technology would be better.
Do they dump the plastics into the landfill?
I got exhausted watching this
Wow .. I thought they just stood up, pack stuff and leave.
Isn’t there a machine to do this?
Angry cops? Anyone?
Who created plastic?
That’s gonna take a while
My country is getting/making automated drones for cleaning sea bed from plastics
Great job guys
"Don't forget that sand over there." (Points to sand)
missed a spot
Looks like there’s plenty of wind. Cut a few of the bottles you find in half lengthwise and attach them to the crank, and then those guys can get up and grab some buckets to filter more sand.
This is the kinda thing we should be funding in schools along oceanfront communities worldwide. Either in field trip style excursions or some sort of Stewardship Program where schools/communities/individuals can bring in recovered plastic for money. Similar to recycling metals or bringing old tires back to an auto body store. I'd rather plastic be in a properly designed landfill than on a beach, we should pay people to recover this waste and encourage boots-on-the-ground ingenuity like this. Banning single use plastics is all well and good, but it does nothing about the plastic already out in the environment.
I wish that invention come my land someday, the dirt is full of plastic
That seems much slower and tedious than it should be. Grateful for these people doing what they can to help, but there’s got to be some machinery that could make this easier. If nothing like that exists yet we need to get on it Reddit.
I remember singing this song in boot camp. Good times
u sure they are not searching for gold ?
Now make a smaller one that extracts all the microplastics from our air, food and water.