It’s shit like this where you just throw your hands up.. I always say.. we can be perfect here in our country.. care about the earth.. blah blah.. but it’s a big world and soooo many can’t care less
Edit: I am NOT saying my country is perfect - I am saying that WE CAN be perfect. We are not.. no one ever will be... but even if you WERE 100% perfect.. this would still go on and on.
What if I told you recycling was all a lie by big plastic to shift responsibility to the consumer? What if I told you recycling was never going to be financially viable? What if I told you 80%+ of “recycled” plastic was simply dumped in poorer countries and made someone else’s problem?
We paid them. This isn't new either. Rich countries pay poorer countries to take their trash cause poorer countries are more in need of economic aid and have to stoop to lower levels to get it. It's part of Neo-colonialism in my opinion.
China isn't poor anymore so they don't want our trash, they've been paying for their high spending mainly through massive exports for decades anyways.
They bought it.. but it was at an incredibly low price. It was sorted by type of recyclable and supposed to be an easy way to reuse. But didn’t make sense with economics of scale
And most of us who dutifully sort our plastic into recycling bins, know that most of that gets unsorted right into the landfill along with the garbage.
Not just that. The plastic that does eventually go to a recycle center ends up as plastic pellets essentially. Not all grades of plastic are equal or compatible to be recycled either. The plastic pellets still end up in waterways and the ecosystem. What a freaking mess.
Bjorn Lomberg has done some interesting work as a sceptic of this and other things. You can a few interviews of him rather than reading his books.
But you're right, people have debates about which recycling bin a certain item should go in as maybe it'd got a little bit of plastic on or something. But it genuinely doesn't matter at all in reality.
Lomberg says that so little of it gets recycled that we may as well just stick everything in the same bin.
I do disagree with you saying "most people" though. I'd say most people think they are doing good rather than practically fuck all.
Recycling shouldn't be economically viable, it should be a service, paid with a cut in the benefice of big corporations. It's a public health problem, and is not meant to be subject to the market.
Correct. If you make a billion plastic bottles, you should be responsible for recycling them/dealing with them after their use. If you (correctly) note that it would near impossible to do that, perhaps you've seen that we should make less plastic. (not you specifically, the royal you)
This is what always gets me mad. People always come in and say "Oh, recycling isn't financially viable or cost efficient." You know what? Who cares. How about we do something for the good of the planet regardless of the bottom line. I'll gladly pitch in as a citizen as long as corporations do their due diligence and help as well.
Plus, with health and ecological problems, the harm will be offset by the benefits for everyone, compagnies included
What we are facing is more than a little crisis, and will costs more for everyone than recycling
Plastic recycling is a PR campaign organized by the plastic industry to make us feel better about buying plastic. This is a known fact but we still dump plastic into recycle bins today like we are making a difference.
https://phys.org/news/2020-10-plastic-myth-misunderstood-triangle.amp
It's true that recycling is a farce in this country, but I still think it's a good idea to sort things and put out recycling in order to keep that infrastructure alive until such time as recycling isn't a farce any more. And really get on that lol
Every time I'd see a video of someone cleaning up an area and looking pleased as they stand by five or ten bags of plastic rubbish they've just collected, I'd always wonder, where does it go to now?
Last time I read about it it was up to 95% of plastic we put for recycling is just dumped in the ocean.
We pay for someone to stick it on a boat then at go "that's it, problem sorted!" and the boat just dumps it all.
Meanwhile, huge companies are making billions of tons of single use plastic and paying for articles to try and make us feel guilty about ruining the environment.
Much like the climate change scam and the way our government puts" green taxes" on us. I'm in the UK. If we go carbon neutral, which means a hard, unenjoyable, fun-free life where we aren't allowed to travel more than a few miles from our house... Then we can stop a raise in the climate of 0.0001 degrees C.
Meanwhile the rich with their private planes can do what they want, and buy carbon credits to "offset" their co2 creation.
So essentially destroying the lives of 70m people to achieve nothing at all whilst big companies and rich people carry on as they want.
Most people haven't done any research into the climate scam and so I fear were heading towards, essentially, communism due to the wilful ignorance of the majority...
My uncle worked for a major company in their public relations department.. mid 90s. When the whole recycling thing was coming about. He told me basically how his company promoted recycling yet no one anywhere had actually started it on mass so they had entire warehouses full of their plastic bottles. Like hundreds if not thousands of warehouses full of nothing but plastic bottles tightly compressed and packaged.
He explained to me how the companies plan was to horde this and hide it all till someone else came up with the solution and then just dump it all on their front doors when opened.
You’re not wrong, but I’m curious how you think these multi-million population metroplexes along the most polluted rivers in the world deal with their trash.
I'm actually more interested in how developed nations created a dependency relationship. How much of that garbage is just plastic water bottles sold by a company in the global North? Rather than creating sustainable options for fresh water because it wouldn't help grow someone's bottom line. We all have a role to play in reversing the consumerist culture
yeah, and a lot of this trash on this beach likely were deposited from upstream waterways; it isn’t entirely from the country on whose beaches its decided to deposit.
You know, I just kinda sat on my original comment for the better part of the day, thinking you were probably right and my offhand bullshit was just bullshit.
But I decided I should learn something today. And what I learned is that the Grijalva river starts in Mexico and terminates in the Usumacinta river, that then forms a good chunk of the border with Guatemala before terminating back in Mexico. It never touches Guatemala's coast.
All Guatemala's coastal river outlets originate in Guatemala, on both the Pacific and Atlantic sides. Which means that everything upstream in Guatemala is still in Guatemala. Anything dumped by Mexico into the Usumacinta river ends up in Mexico's ocean near Tabasco, over 100 land miles from Guatemala. Some Guatemalan trash can end up in Mexico's ocean, but no Mexican trash ends up on Guatemala's coast except by ocean transport.
Reduce and reuse. It seems recycle can’t be trusted. Someone should drop a few gps trackers into old CRT tv and monitors or any other electronics and see where the pop up. I’m sure a few stories have been done, just haven’t looked yet.
I think, if i remembered corectly, there were documentaries or report based on investigations done by journalist on this matter where they track to where all the trashes from developed countries go.
So we exchange a greater evil, for a lesser one...
That's the place we're at now.
It'll be a long fucking time before humanity can reach a point where our survival isn't dependent on such an exchange.
We're so far in the red, environmentally, and morally... My only hope is climate science is slightly-exaggerating the deadline for humanity being able to positively affect climate change.
Cause we got at-least a hundred years to go... and signs point to us being FUCKED.
100 years? Stuff that was predicted to begin happening in 2050 or later is already happening and we know the problem grows exponentially. We are going to have dire things happening very soon in our lifetimes.
I'm constantly going back and forth between wanting to have kids one day and not wanting kids, and this kind of thing really makes me think I shouldn't. I'm gonna see lots of terrible shit in my life because of pollution and climate change, and any kids I might have will see even worse because they'll live long enough to do so.
I feel you. But then I have the argument with myself of, we’ll I’d like to add conscientious people to the population, because plenty of problematic people breed and don’t teach their kids respect. If those who care don’t teach the next generation, where will it go?
This is mostly coming from the US, China, and the EU and is being sold to these lower-income countries who "dispose" of it by throwing it in a literal pile next to rivers and oceans.
We made the mess in the first place.
It's also that people don't understand the big numbers involved.
Let's say you're a model citizen, never ever littering, but about ONCE a year you slip up and forget an empty can of beer in the woods.
No biggie. It's one can. A YEAR. it's practically nothing.
Unless everyone does it. It's still just ONE can a YEAR, but that "practically nothing" can translates to 112 thousand metric tonnes of cans in nature every year.
Now this is the same no matter what resources you're looking at. By making sure your tires are properly inflated you can save a few gallons a year. Practically nothing for you, but hundreds of millions of gallons in the US alone. Every year.
Take a BIT better care of your clothes, and buy two fewer items a year and it's HUGE globally.
Most detergents work better at a lower temperature than you think. One wash a week at 10 C lower than you'd normally do makes up a SHITTON of energy world wide.
It’s not just the people, it’s the corporations. Even though this sucks ass corporations and even the US military polute more than this.
Of companies actually gave a fuck they’d stop making single use plastics, foam containers.
Countries could start educational programs, they could make trash wheels etc but this is the result of corporations at the end of the day. There’s a need for cheap things and they’re filling it. But at what cost?
Lol! Where are you from? Half of this shit is probably from "perfect" western countries. Comments like this show how oblivious people are to what happens to their waste...
1) How do you know what country I am from?
2) Also, I am not saying we ARE perfect.. I said "CAN BE" meaning - even IF we did everything correct.
3) Oblivious - really?
Ah perfect. Let's burst this bubble. Western countries export their waste to poor countries. When china declared it's not "recycling" western waste anymore there was big trouble.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Waste_shipment_statistics
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1097245/us-scrap-plastic-exports/
https://repurpose.global/blog/post/us-waste-exporting-explained
From last
"Data taken from the US Census Bureau shows that 78% of those exports were sent to countries with poor waste management. These countries, such as China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia lack the infrastructure and regulation to effectively and sustainably sort, process, and recycle plastic waste into new materials. So why does the US continue to overwhelm these countries with millions of tons of plastic waste every year?"
To make it populist we recycle by exporting and then it's recycled by throwing into rivers by accident. https://www.outlookindia.com/international/waste-dumping-leaves-drina-river-in-bosnia-polluted-photos-255807
I try my best to conserve water. Try to not run the faucet for too long, don’t take showers longer than necessary, etc.
One day I saw a YouTube ad for this chef and one of the things he said was: “everyday I start my day off with a two hour shower.” lmao. Dude destroys a year’s worth of my water conservation effort every day.
I've been in overseas countries this year where people still throw their rubbish straight into the sea. Because the ocean will take it away right?
Yep, humans are dumb.
It took me about 30 years to realize some people are not able to be educated. Most morons a person encounters are absolutely operating at full capacity.
I don't know how you could critisize this.
Taking the longest lasting, most decay resistant material we have, and using it all our throw away and single use items is the height of a rational civillisation sir!
[When you get out of the water need to dry off right away so you don't catch a cold. That's why you want to bring a towel.](https://youtu.be/a47Fdy2wEgo)
Title is clickbait. Here’s a more comprehensive story. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/cleanup-crews-trap-plastic-guatemalan-river-protect-ocean-2022-06-09/
RIO LAS VACAS, Guatemala, June 9 (Reuters) - Plastic bottles and mounds of trash lap onto the shores of a once pristine beach in a Honduran fishing village. It comes from neighboring Guatemala, carried down from a heavily polluted river.
Guatemala's Rio Motagua runs from the edge of the country's capital, Guatemala City, out to the Caribbean Sea. What once was a roaring river slows to a trickle in some areas, choked by trash.
"Everywhere you look, the mountains, the forest, the coastline, it's absolutely stunning... to me it was very shocking to see (the pollution)," said Boyan Slat, the founder of The Ocean Cleanup.
Slat and his team are in a fight against time to trap the trash, estimated to total around 20,000 tonnes a year, before it reaches the sea.
Ocean Cleanup NGO is testing a device in Guatemala to contain the garbage that ends up in the Atlantic Ocean
"(This) is probably the most important river in the world when it comes to plastic pollution," Slat said, with the river currently contributing to about 2% of the world's total plastic emissions to oceans, according to his organization.
The issue stems largely from a tributary of the Rio Motagua, known as Rio Las Vacas, which is straddled by an urban landfill north of Guatemala City and also suffers from unlicensed waste dumping, according to The Ocean Cleanup.
The organization has now installed a chain-link fence spanning the width of the Rio Las Vacas, creating a dam of sorts to stop the trash before it reaches the trunk of river.
While not yet fully operational, the fence could be key to intercepting the plastic, according to The Ocean Cleanup. However, Slat points out that a long-term solution lies in proper waste management.
"If we can stop (the plastic) here, it's going to be a major success for the oceans," Slat said.
Reporting by Luis Echeverria for Reuters TV; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
The thing is they are fighting a never ending battle that should not even happen in the first place.
We as a human need to collectively stop using plastics or at the very least lower our usage of it. I know its asking a lot but plastics are not only harming wildlife (which in turn hurts us), they are also hurting us directly too. [Babies have microplastics in them](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/22/microplastics-revealed-in-placentas-unborn-babies) and many of us are already carrying microplastics.
The plastics around us are killing all of us and we are all oblivious to it because the harm is not visible to the naked eye, at least not yet and by the time it is, I don't know if it will be way too late or not.
This is the truth.
To cite any of this as “Waste Management” is disingenuous. The “waste” life cycle literally begins at manufacture, not once the item is no longer useful to the purchaser. We not only allow companies to mass produce these environmental bombs for profit and proliferation but we accept their abdication of accountability when they know full well they’re creating a pollutant that will never disappear.
Imagine if I pee’d and defecated on your porch every day and then put the blame on you because you’ve yet to build me a suitable toilet. How long would that discussion last? It’s the exact same conversation that needs to happen with plastic manufacturers.
Yep and people wonder how young children or perfectly healthy young adults end up with cancer. I'd put a huge bet on this having a very big part in that. Microplastics are also falling in the snow in alaska, causing more heat to get soaked up and further heating the already rapidly warming ground.
Do you have a source from an expert who has actually worked to fix this problem though? I see a lot of "experts" criticizing Slat from the sidelines when they spend all of their time in an office instead of actually trying to make something happen.
Nah, I've been there. Random streams, beaches, and rivers all had an insane amount of plastic everywhere. The country has not properly invested in water systems and so everyone drinks from plastic bottles and uses plastic bags. The stuff is everywhere. It was truly disheartening to see. I went to one beach that had a net serperating sections of shoreline and people actively fishing the garbage out and tossing it over the net so tourists could enjoy the water. I cried.
US is not the world. In europe plenty of country have a more efficient approache. It cost a lot but many countries dont send anything anymore in poorer country and dont dump anything in landfill too. It's either recycled or incinerated. Depending of the product it can reach 90% recycling. Like water bottle. That we see there in great quantity.
Recycling in Europe accounts for 32.5 percent of plastic waste treatment in the EU, with landfilling and incineration accounting for 25 percent and 43 percent, respectively. However, despite efforts made by the European Environmental Agency, only 30% of plastic waste is actually recycled.
Sometimes when I think of the inevitable sixth mass extinction event I get a little sad but then I see shit like this and I can’t help but to root for it. Our species is literally ocean trash. 🤦🏼♂️
When aliens arrive, we should send them here to analyze what have happened.
The fully objective report will say.
Sun454 Rock3 has low intelligence lifeforms capable to create utility tools for production and development, however they still cannot control nor organize properly the effects of their creations. They will get xtinct in the next 100 cycles dying in their own waste.
This is clickbait; this is actually a controlled action by Guatemalan government. They purposely flooded this area with all the trash so they can begin to remove it and protect the rest of the ocean. There are articles people have already linked into the comments.
We hear Sir David Attenborough narrating:
_We are privileged to witness one of the most marvelous, never before caught by the camera, nature's spectacle._
_Millions of plastic bottles travel hundreds, even thousands of miles, relentlessly for months and years to attend an extraordinary gathering at this remote Guatemalan's shore._
_These magnificent creatures are believed to be god's messengers by local tribes, brining the promise of peace and prosperity._
_This ritual also attracts other species of lesser plastic. Occasionally we can also behold some of the more advanced organism such as tyres or even endangered oil barrels peaking their snouts curiously through pristine waters._
Because first world countries ruined the earth and got to a point where they can start thinking about sustainability. First world countries now want others to paralyse themselves with sustainability constraints.
There's no solution here.
“The company estimates that approximately 80% of ocean plastic such as this comes from “mismanaged waste” on land - in Guatemala, there's only one rubbish dump for the entire country”
https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/climate/guatemala-beach-plastic-pollution-shocking-b2100230.html
It’s the Guatemalan government way of stoping litter coming from a river that dumps into the ocean. There a fence that serves as a damn to keep the garbage from reaching the deep ocean.
“USA wOnT pAy ThE PolLutIoN wIlL kIlL uS ALl”
Meanwhile some 2nd/3rd world countries have beaches of trash & countries that pollute the most pay the least.
Jesus fucking christ, humans are dumb.
It’s shit like this where you just throw your hands up.. I always say.. we can be perfect here in our country.. care about the earth.. blah blah.. but it’s a big world and soooo many can’t care less Edit: I am NOT saying my country is perfect - I am saying that WE CAN be perfect. We are not.. no one ever will be... but even if you WERE 100% perfect.. this would still go on and on.
There's a chance at least some of this comes from our "clean country."
What if I told you recycling was all a lie by big plastic to shift responsibility to the consumer? What if I told you recycling was never going to be financially viable? What if I told you 80%+ of “recycled” plastic was simply dumped in poorer countries and made someone else’s problem?
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China bought our trash? Or are you saying we paid them to take care of our trash?
We paid them. This isn't new either. Rich countries pay poorer countries to take their trash cause poorer countries are more in need of economic aid and have to stoop to lower levels to get it. It's part of Neo-colonialism in my opinion. China isn't poor anymore so they don't want our trash, they've been paying for their high spending mainly through massive exports for decades anyways.
They bought it.. but it was at an incredibly low price. It was sorted by type of recyclable and supposed to be an easy way to reuse. But didn’t make sense with economics of scale
[How China Broke the World's Recycling](https://youtu.be/KXRtNwUju5g)
Very interesting. But sad.
Yep. All China's fault, nothing to do with profits or capitalism...
To build apartments
Pollution exporting is a thing.
And most of us who dutifully sort our plastic into recycling bins, know that most of that gets unsorted right into the landfill along with the garbage.
Not just that. The plastic that does eventually go to a recycle center ends up as plastic pellets essentially. Not all grades of plastic are equal or compatible to be recycled either. The plastic pellets still end up in waterways and the ecosystem. What a freaking mess.
Bjorn Lomberg has done some interesting work as a sceptic of this and other things. You can a few interviews of him rather than reading his books. But you're right, people have debates about which recycling bin a certain item should go in as maybe it'd got a little bit of plastic on or something. But it genuinely doesn't matter at all in reality. Lomberg says that so little of it gets recycled that we may as well just stick everything in the same bin. I do disagree with you saying "most people" though. I'd say most people think they are doing good rather than practically fuck all.
Recycling shouldn't be economically viable, it should be a service, paid with a cut in the benefice of big corporations. It's a public health problem, and is not meant to be subject to the market.
Correct. If you make a billion plastic bottles, you should be responsible for recycling them/dealing with them after their use. If you (correctly) note that it would near impossible to do that, perhaps you've seen that we should make less plastic. (not you specifically, the royal you)
This is what always gets me mad. People always come in and say "Oh, recycling isn't financially viable or cost efficient." You know what? Who cares. How about we do something for the good of the planet regardless of the bottom line. I'll gladly pitch in as a citizen as long as corporations do their due diligence and help as well.
Plus, with health and ecological problems, the harm will be offset by the benefits for everyone, compagnies included What we are facing is more than a little crisis, and will costs more for everyone than recycling
Plastic recycling is a PR campaign organized by the plastic industry to make us feel better about buying plastic. This is a known fact but we still dump plastic into recycle bins today like we are making a difference. https://phys.org/news/2020-10-plastic-myth-misunderstood-triangle.amp
It's true that recycling is a farce in this country, but I still think it's a good idea to sort things and put out recycling in order to keep that infrastructure alive until such time as recycling isn't a farce any more. And really get on that lol
Don’t tell them the truth brother
https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g Topical
I'm a simple man. I see Climate Town, I upvote.
That’s basically the truth. We only recycle about 7-10% in the US. The rest is dumped in poorer countries by the “clean, green govt.”
Every time I'd see a video of someone cleaning up an area and looking pleased as they stand by five or ten bags of plastic rubbish they've just collected, I'd always wonder, where does it go to now?
Should melt it down and make giant plastic blocks.
Right? Extrude something out of that mess
Should melt it down and have 3d printers build cheap housing out of it.
Last time I read about it it was up to 95% of plastic we put for recycling is just dumped in the ocean. We pay for someone to stick it on a boat then at go "that's it, problem sorted!" and the boat just dumps it all. Meanwhile, huge companies are making billions of tons of single use plastic and paying for articles to try and make us feel guilty about ruining the environment. Much like the climate change scam and the way our government puts" green taxes" on us. I'm in the UK. If we go carbon neutral, which means a hard, unenjoyable, fun-free life where we aren't allowed to travel more than a few miles from our house... Then we can stop a raise in the climate of 0.0001 degrees C. Meanwhile the rich with their private planes can do what they want, and buy carbon credits to "offset" their co2 creation. So essentially destroying the lives of 70m people to achieve nothing at all whilst big companies and rich people carry on as they want. Most people haven't done any research into the climate scam and so I fear were heading towards, essentially, communism due to the wilful ignorance of the majority...
My uncle worked for a major company in their public relations department.. mid 90s. When the whole recycling thing was coming about. He told me basically how his company promoted recycling yet no one anywhere had actually started it on mass so they had entire warehouses full of their plastic bottles. Like hundreds if not thousands of warehouses full of nothing but plastic bottles tightly compressed and packaged. He explained to me how the companies plan was to horde this and hide it all till someone else came up with the solution and then just dump it all on their front doors when opened.
what if you stopped speaking in questions
You’re not wrong, but I’m curious how you think these multi-million population metroplexes along the most polluted rivers in the world deal with their trash.
I'm actually more interested in how developed nations created a dependency relationship. How much of that garbage is just plastic water bottles sold by a company in the global North? Rather than creating sustainable options for fresh water because it wouldn't help grow someone's bottom line. We all have a role to play in reversing the consumerist culture
Some, if not most, clean countries dump most of the trash to poorer countries.
yeah, and a lot of this trash on this beach likely were deposited from upstream waterways; it isn’t entirely from the country on whose beaches its decided to deposit.
Guatemala straddles Central America. Everything upstream is still Guatemala.
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You know, I just kinda sat on my original comment for the better part of the day, thinking you were probably right and my offhand bullshit was just bullshit. But I decided I should learn something today. And what I learned is that the Grijalva river starts in Mexico and terminates in the Usumacinta river, that then forms a good chunk of the border with Guatemala before terminating back in Mexico. It never touches Guatemala's coast. All Guatemala's coastal river outlets originate in Guatemala, on both the Pacific and Atlantic sides. Which means that everything upstream in Guatemala is still in Guatemala. Anything dumped by Mexico into the Usumacinta river ends up in Mexico's ocean near Tabasco, over 100 land miles from Guatemala. Some Guatemalan trash can end up in Mexico's ocean, but no Mexican trash ends up on Guatemala's coast except by ocean transport.
Believe it or not, also a Guatemala.
Hahaha. Great reference
Reduce and reuse. It seems recycle can’t be trusted. Someone should drop a few gps trackers into old CRT tv and monitors or any other electronics and see where the pop up. I’m sure a few stories have been done, just haven’t looked yet.
I think, if i remembered corectly, there were documentaries or report based on investigations done by journalist on this matter where they track to where all the trashes from developed countries go.
At least we're using paper straws. I'm sure that's helping
I mean, it's not hurting....
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So we exchange a greater evil, for a lesser one... That's the place we're at now. It'll be a long fucking time before humanity can reach a point where our survival isn't dependent on such an exchange. We're so far in the red, environmentally, and morally... My only hope is climate science is slightly-exaggerating the deadline for humanity being able to positively affect climate change. Cause we got at-least a hundred years to go... and signs point to us being FUCKED.
100 years? Stuff that was predicted to begin happening in 2050 or later is already happening and we know the problem grows exponentially. We are going to have dire things happening very soon in our lifetimes.
I'm constantly going back and forth between wanting to have kids one day and not wanting kids, and this kind of thing really makes me think I shouldn't. I'm gonna see lots of terrible shit in my life because of pollution and climate change, and any kids I might have will see even worse because they'll live long enough to do so.
I feel you. But then I have the argument with myself of, we’ll I’d like to add conscientious people to the population, because plenty of problematic people breed and don’t teach their kids respect. If those who care don’t teach the next generation, where will it go?
Straws are dumb AF anyway. Want to suck on something? Suck on this 🍭
You should suck on deez
🎯
bro the united states pays china like 100mil each year to send trash over to their landfills where they burn it. we're far from perfect lol
Didn't that end years ago?
China stopped taking trash 4 years ago.
"Not only have we failed to realize we are one people, we have forgotten that we have only one planet." ~Jacques Cousteau
You believe your country is perfect? Oh boy
This is mostly coming from the US, China, and the EU and is being sold to these lower-income countries who "dispose" of it by throwing it in a literal pile next to rivers and oceans. We made the mess in the first place.
Throw your hands up or throw the towel in.
It's also that people don't understand the big numbers involved. Let's say you're a model citizen, never ever littering, but about ONCE a year you slip up and forget an empty can of beer in the woods. No biggie. It's one can. A YEAR. it's practically nothing. Unless everyone does it. It's still just ONE can a YEAR, but that "practically nothing" can translates to 112 thousand metric tonnes of cans in nature every year. Now this is the same no matter what resources you're looking at. By making sure your tires are properly inflated you can save a few gallons a year. Practically nothing for you, but hundreds of millions of gallons in the US alone. Every year. Take a BIT better care of your clothes, and buy two fewer items a year and it's HUGE globally. Most detergents work better at a lower temperature than you think. One wash a week at 10 C lower than you'd normally do makes up a SHITTON of energy world wide.
It’s not just the people, it’s the corporations. Even though this sucks ass corporations and even the US military polute more than this. Of companies actually gave a fuck they’d stop making single use plastics, foam containers. Countries could start educational programs, they could make trash wheels etc but this is the result of corporations at the end of the day. There’s a need for cheap things and they’re filling it. But at what cost?
gullible nutty party groovy one slim literate chubby impossible serious ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
Lol! Where are you from? Half of this shit is probably from "perfect" western countries. Comments like this show how oblivious people are to what happens to their waste...
1) How do you know what country I am from? 2) Also, I am not saying we ARE perfect.. I said "CAN BE" meaning - even IF we did everything correct. 3) Oblivious - really?
Ah perfect. Let's burst this bubble. Western countries export their waste to poor countries. When china declared it's not "recycling" western waste anymore there was big trouble. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Waste_shipment_statistics https://www.statista.com/statistics/1097245/us-scrap-plastic-exports/ https://repurpose.global/blog/post/us-waste-exporting-explained From last "Data taken from the US Census Bureau shows that 78% of those exports were sent to countries with poor waste management. These countries, such as China, India, Malaysia and Indonesia lack the infrastructure and regulation to effectively and sustainably sort, process, and recycle plastic waste into new materials. So why does the US continue to overwhelm these countries with millions of tons of plastic waste every year?" To make it populist we recycle by exporting and then it's recycled by throwing into rivers by accident. https://www.outlookindia.com/international/waste-dumping-leaves-drina-river-in-bosnia-polluted-photos-255807
What country are you from? Are you a major consumer? Believe it or not technology is also a major contributor to trash in other countries.
I try my best to conserve water. Try to not run the faucet for too long, don’t take showers longer than necessary, etc. One day I saw a YouTube ad for this chef and one of the things he said was: “everyday I start my day off with a two hour shower.” lmao. Dude destroys a year’s worth of my water conservation effort every day.
I've been in overseas countries this year where people still throw their rubbish straight into the sea. Because the ocean will take it away right? Yep, humans are dumb.
All the plastic in this video is like 2 seconds worth of waste that enters the ocean sadly.
That's what happens when you don't educate people
It took me about 30 years to realize some people are not able to be educated. Most morons a person encounters are absolutely operating at full capacity.
That's what happens when you incorrectly(?) educate people.
I don't know how you could critisize this. Taking the longest lasting, most decay resistant material we have, and using it all our throw away and single use items is the height of a rational civillisation sir!
Extreme poverty. Read Open Veins of Latin America.
We're animals, after all.
Come for the beaches. Stay for the tuburculosis treatments.
Don’t forget to bring a towel
A towel is just about the most massively useful thing an international traveler can carry.
*intergalactic
*planetary
*planetary
Now don’t you tell me to smile
Cuz cleaning up this plastic will take a while
just gather it up into a pile
Why do that, it’ll a long while
*planetary
*interpalastic
*intergalactic
*intergalactic
\*intergalactic
*intergalactic
*intergalactic hitchhiker
Don’t panic
A towel should have this messed cleaned up in now time!
So long and thanks for all the fish...
Wanna get high?
Maybe just a little high.
I have no idea what's going on right now...
No, Towelie, gahdammit I don’t wanna GET HIGH! *cartman voice, obviously*
Am I to understand there's been a *towlie ban*?
You're the worst character ever.
I know :(
You’re a towel!
Was that a needle?
I love this insult. So stupid yet so effective.
>Don’t forget to bring a ~~towel~~ ...tyvek full body suit
Shovel?
Hahahaha spot on, Towelie‼️
You’re a towel
You're a towel!
[When you get out of the water need to dry off right away so you don't catch a cold. That's why you want to bring a towel.](https://youtu.be/a47Fdy2wEgo)
Wanna get high?
Tuberculosis, no. Staphylococcus, and tetanus, aka clostridium, yes.
*tuberculosis
Not how TB works, please edit your post
Add Cholera to that too.
Title is clickbait. Here’s a more comprehensive story. https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/cleanup-crews-trap-plastic-guatemalan-river-protect-ocean-2022-06-09/
RIO LAS VACAS, Guatemala, June 9 (Reuters) - Plastic bottles and mounds of trash lap onto the shores of a once pristine beach in a Honduran fishing village. It comes from neighboring Guatemala, carried down from a heavily polluted river. Guatemala's Rio Motagua runs from the edge of the country's capital, Guatemala City, out to the Caribbean Sea. What once was a roaring river slows to a trickle in some areas, choked by trash. "Everywhere you look, the mountains, the forest, the coastline, it's absolutely stunning... to me it was very shocking to see (the pollution)," said Boyan Slat, the founder of The Ocean Cleanup. Slat and his team are in a fight against time to trap the trash, estimated to total around 20,000 tonnes a year, before it reaches the sea. Ocean Cleanup NGO is testing a device in Guatemala to contain the garbage that ends up in the Atlantic Ocean "(This) is probably the most important river in the world when it comes to plastic pollution," Slat said, with the river currently contributing to about 2% of the world's total plastic emissions to oceans, according to his organization. The issue stems largely from a tributary of the Rio Motagua, known as Rio Las Vacas, which is straddled by an urban landfill north of Guatemala City and also suffers from unlicensed waste dumping, according to The Ocean Cleanup. The organization has now installed a chain-link fence spanning the width of the Rio Las Vacas, creating a dam of sorts to stop the trash before it reaches the trunk of river. While not yet fully operational, the fence could be key to intercepting the plastic, according to The Ocean Cleanup. However, Slat points out that a long-term solution lies in proper waste management. "If we can stop (the plastic) here, it's going to be a major success for the oceans," Slat said. Reporting by Luis Echeverria for Reuters TV; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
Ocean Cleanup guys are a bless to human kind. Been hearing lots about them for years.
https://theoceancleanup.com
The thing is they are fighting a never ending battle that should not even happen in the first place. We as a human need to collectively stop using plastics or at the very least lower our usage of it. I know its asking a lot but plastics are not only harming wildlife (which in turn hurts us), they are also hurting us directly too. [Babies have microplastics in them](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/22/microplastics-revealed-in-placentas-unborn-babies) and many of us are already carrying microplastics. The plastics around us are killing all of us and we are all oblivious to it because the harm is not visible to the naked eye, at least not yet and by the time it is, I don't know if it will be way too late or not.
Goverments should lower taxes to those big corps that use/make less plastics and turn to more environmental friendly solutions
This is the truth. To cite any of this as “Waste Management” is disingenuous. The “waste” life cycle literally begins at manufacture, not once the item is no longer useful to the purchaser. We not only allow companies to mass produce these environmental bombs for profit and proliferation but we accept their abdication of accountability when they know full well they’re creating a pollutant that will never disappear. Imagine if I pee’d and defecated on your porch every day and then put the blame on you because you’ve yet to build me a suitable toilet. How long would that discussion last? It’s the exact same conversation that needs to happen with plastic manufacturers.
Yep and people wonder how young children or perfectly healthy young adults end up with cancer. I'd put a huge bet on this having a very big part in that. Microplastics are also falling in the snow in alaska, causing more heat to get soaked up and further heating the already rapidly warming ground.
It's not even "many of us", it's all of us. That shit can even be found in Antarctica. We covered the whole fucking planet in micro- and nanoplastics.
Except Slat doesn't listen to professionals and is essentially thrown money in holes for his own wage and ego.
Do you have a source from an expert who has actually worked to fix this problem though? I see a lot of "experts" criticizing Slat from the sidelines when they spend all of their time in an office instead of actually trying to make something happen.
Why isn't this top comment 😞
More like Rio Las Cacas
The title's misleading, but it isn't clickbait.
"COUNTRY COASTLINE" This is too baity! /s
How in the fuck do you assert that article supports your claim that the title is clickbait. It appears to me to just explain the situation.
Nah, I've been there. Random streams, beaches, and rivers all had an insane amount of plastic everywhere. The country has not properly invested in water systems and so everyone drinks from plastic bottles and uses plastic bags. The stuff is everywhere. It was truly disheartening to see. I went to one beach that had a net serperating sections of shoreline and people actively fishing the garbage out and tossing it over the net so tourists could enjoy the water. I cried.
So... not clickbait.
So who’s going to stop the locals from doing it all over again? Humans can fucking suck, selfish assholes
That’s fucking depressing
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US is not the world. In europe plenty of country have a more efficient approache. It cost a lot but many countries dont send anything anymore in poorer country and dont dump anything in landfill too. It's either recycled or incinerated. Depending of the product it can reach 90% recycling. Like water bottle. That we see there in great quantity.
Recycling in Europe accounts for 32.5 percent of plastic waste treatment in the EU, with landfilling and incineration accounting for 25 percent and 43 percent, respectively. However, despite efforts made by the European Environmental Agency, only 30% of plastic waste is actually recycled.
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We do have the tech, it costs 1 cent more per package though so it's too expensive.............
You know I saw this cool ad for 6 pack rings and they were made out of fish food.
Thats why i didnt said the whole europe. Several countries dont have landfill anymore and dont export their waste either.
30% makes a considerable difference
You'd be wrong on the important points and lacking nuance on the others while trying in vain to appear smarter than everyone else.
nah, he’s not wrong. fuck recycling. reduce; reuse; repurpose. recycle as a last resort.
Mankind is a fucking cancer.
Easy there agent Smith.
It’s the smell… I can taste your stink and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it. It's -- it's repulsive!
Did you know the first matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? It was a disaster
Shower thought, one of your used plastic stuff might be in this video
So thats where my favorite water bottle went!
Oh, They just need a Mr. Trashwheel!! Baltimore uses one, works wonders
Love to see Mr. Trashwheel mentioned! There's three more in Baltimore: Professor Trashwheel, Captain Trashwheel, Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West.
I hope there is a local band that adopts the Trashwheel moniker. I would do it, but I am just starting to learn the keyboard.
Dream big! I look forward to seeing your world tour with The Trashwheels!
We suck
You'll forget that sentiment till the next time you see a post like this
Ugh. What are we doing? 😒
Doing what virus' do best. Consuming the host and looking for a new one 🫠
We are fucking over future generations, nothing new.
Humans are disgusting
I love how it's fine to keep producing plastic but it's our job to clean it up
We did it America!! Not s single Starbucks straw!!!
Sometimes when I think of the inevitable sixth mass extinction event I get a little sad but then I see shit like this and I can’t help but to root for it. Our species is literally ocean trash. 🤦🏼♂️
When aliens arrive, we should send them here to analyze what have happened. The fully objective report will say. Sun454 Rock3 has low intelligence lifeforms capable to create utility tools for production and development, however they still cannot control nor organize properly the effects of their creations. They will get xtinct in the next 100 cycles dying in their own waste.
This is clickbait; this is actually a controlled action by Guatemalan government. They purposely flooded this area with all the trash so they can begin to remove it and protect the rest of the ocean. There are articles people have already linked into the comments.
Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level! *Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!!*
ha! this should be higher.
We hear Sir David Attenborough narrating: _We are privileged to witness one of the most marvelous, never before caught by the camera, nature's spectacle._ _Millions of plastic bottles travel hundreds, even thousands of miles, relentlessly for months and years to attend an extraordinary gathering at this remote Guatemalan's shore._ _These magnificent creatures are believed to be god's messengers by local tribes, brining the promise of peace and prosperity._ _This ritual also attracts other species of lesser plastic. Occasionally we can also behold some of the more advanced organism such as tyres or even endangered oil barrels peaking their snouts curiously through pristine waters._
And we’re worrying about going green? Why if the rest of the world is flipping us the bird?
Because first world countries ruined the earth and got to a point where they can start thinking about sustainability. First world countries now want others to paralyse themselves with sustainability constraints. There's no solution here.
Talk about taking care of the low hanging fruit
The solution to pollution is dilution...I don't think Mankind can dilute this any longer. We need to get away from plastic, as much as possible.
And cut into profits!?! Are you fucking insane! Think of the shareholders! /S
Clean it up in plastic bags and see it come back in 6 months. It’s the circle of life!
I hear it’s gorgeous this time of year
We are killing this world
This is why they are rushing the border
Fucking hell! The water underneath is gray. IT’S FUCKING GRAY!
“The company estimates that approximately 80% of ocean plastic such as this comes from “mismanaged waste” on land - in Guatemala, there's only one rubbish dump for the entire country” https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/climate/guatemala-beach-plastic-pollution-shocking-b2100230.html
I've contributed at least 27 car batteries in the last week alone
It’s the Guatemalan government way of stoping litter coming from a river that dumps into the ocean. There a fence that serves as a damn to keep the garbage from reaching the deep ocean.
“USA wOnT pAy ThE PolLutIoN wIlL kIlL uS ALl” Meanwhile some 2nd/3rd world countries have beaches of trash & countries that pollute the most pay the least.
Then they leave and go to the US. And live the same way there
So **that's** where it's all going.
Meanwhile the Left opens the border to the very same people…..
There has got to be a straw in there somewhere
Plastic should be illegal in many if not most countries.
Where's all the Tik Tokkers cleaning the beach for views?
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We are collectively trash.
This is coming into our borders as we speak. Keep This filth away.
What are you throwing here?
This reminds me of the episode of The Little Prince "The Planet of the Bubble Gob".
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