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Guardian wrote:The vast patch of garbage floating in the Pacific Ocean is far worse than previously thought, with an aerial survey finding a much larger mass of fishing nets, plastic containers and other discarded items than imagined.

A reconnaissance flight taken in a modified C-130 Hercules aircraft found a vast clump of mainly plastic waste at the northern edge of what is known as the “great Pacific garbage patch”, located between Hawaii and California.

The density of rubbish was several times higher than the Ocean Cleanup, a foundation part-funded by the Dutch government to rid the oceans of plastics, expected to find even at the heart of the patch, where most of the waste is concentrated.

“Normally when you do an aerial survey of dolphins or whales, you make a sighting and record it,” said Boyan Slat, the founder of the Ocean Cleanup.

“That was the plan for this survey. But then we opened the door and we saw the debris everywhere. Every half second you see something. So we had to take snapshots – it was impossible to record everything. It was bizarre to see that much garbage in what should be pristine ocean.”

Boyan Slat, founder of the Ocean Cleanup.
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Boyan Slat, founder of the Ocean Cleanup. Photograph: The Ocean Cleanup
The heart of the garbage patch is thought to be around 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles), with the periphery spanning a further 3.5m sq km (1,351,000 sq miles). The dimensions of this morass of waste are continually morphing, caught in one of the ocean’s huge rotating currents. The north Pacific gyre has accumulated a soup of plastic waste, including large items and smaller broken-down micro plastics that can be eaten by fish and enter the food chain.

According to the UN environmental programme, the great Pacific garbage patch is growing so fast that it, like the Great Wall of China, is becoming visible from space.

Last year, the Ocean Cleanup sent 30 vessels to cross the patch to scoop up micro plastics in fine nets to estimate the extent of the problem. However, the new reconnaissance flights from California have found that large items of more than half a meter in size have been “heavily underestimated”.

Slat said: “Most of the debris was large stuff. It’s a ticking time bomb because the big stuff will crumble down to micro plastics over the next few decades if we don’t act.”

Following a further aerial survey through the heart of the patch on Sunday, the Ocean Cleanup aims to tackle the problem through a gigantic V-shaped boom, which would use sea currents to funnel floating rubbish into a cone. A prototype of the vulcanized rubber barrier will be tested next year, with a full-sized 100km (62-mile) barrier deployed by 2020 if trials go well.

The boom will not be able to suck up all of the strewn rubbish, however, with Slat warning that plastic is “quite persistent. We need to clean it up, but we also need to prevent so much entering the oceans. Better recycling, better product design and some legislation is all part of that. We need a combination of things.”

The full scale of plastic pollution was revealed in 2014, when a study found there were more than 5tn pieces of plastic floating in our oceans. In 2014, 311m tonnes of plastic were produced around the world, a 20-fold increase since 1964. It is expected to quadruple again by mid-century.

A report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation earlier this year predicted there would be more plastic than fish in the oceans by 2050 unless urgent action was taken.

Broomstick wrote:Given that we know the Japan Tsunami of 2011 swept a LOT of debris into the ocean, some of which have been washing up on the west coast of North America for a couple years now, is it possible that the sudden increase in the size of the Pacific Garbage Patch is due at least in part to debris from the 2011 earthquake/tsunami combination?

K. A. Pital wrote:However, if the introduction of plastics was not a matter of economic survival as it happens to be, it is at least theoretically feasible that it would happen slower (or, in the best case, would be tightly controlled as it happened, in the end, with such materials as asbestos). Then such severe consequences could have been prevented.

Tribble wrote:

Broomstick wrote:Given that we know the Japan Tsunami of 2011 swept a LOT of debris into the ocean, some of which have been washing up on the west coast of North America for a couple years now, is it possible that the sudden increase in the size of the Pacific Garbage Patch is due at least in part to debris from the 2011 earthquake/tsunami combination?

Even if true, the only reason why all that material exists in the first place is because Japan is capitalist and produced said goods for capitalist consumption.

Simon_Jester wrote:Can you provide examples of socialist countries which refrained from early adoption of plastics in order to avoid environmental consequences like the Pacific garbage patch?

Simon_Jester wrote:The overall environmental records of socialist countries even in their own territory hasn't been that good; I see no reason to assume socialist governments are better at dealing with global problems than they are at the problems in their own back yard.

Simon_Jester wrote:The fact of the matter is that the Pacific garbage patch is a problem not because of plastic, but because people are dumping non-biodegradable waste in the ocean. That is a specific practice which is NOT directly caused by capitalism or by socialism or by anything else, and which used to be fairly common.

Simon_Jester wrote:It is now less widely approved of, but as the world develops the sheer volume of trash to be discarded has spiraled out of control, which would have happened under any possible economic order unless it involved dropping back to pre-industrial standards of living.

Simon_Jester wrote:Moreover, plastics are often replacements for other products such as paper or metal, the production of which presents its own environmental difficulties such as deforestation and pollution by mine tailings.

Simon_Jester wrote:If Japan were a comparably successful socialist country, Japanese people would still have broadly comparable amounts of stuff, and the giant tidal wave would still sweep it out into the ocean.

K. A. Pital wrote:The overall record of socialist nations is one thing; unique products that only make sense in a globalized capitalist production network and end up in the ocean are another:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_p ... _pollution
Nurdles, for example, or plastic water bottles hardly make much sense outside the current global order.

Simon_Jester wrote:The fact of the matter is that the Pacific garbage patch is a problem not because of plastic, but because people are dumping non-biodegradable waste in the ocean. That is a specific practice which is NOT directly caused by capitalism or by socialism or by anything else, and which used to be fairly common.

Until the creation of plastic, this practice in and of itself, was a cause for concern, but now it is a much greater cause for concern because unlike other types of waste, the volume of plastic is huge and it breaks down and enters the food chain.

See above. Not using plastic bottles and nurdles would have already decreased this volume of waste massively. But apparently it is too hard for capitalist nations to ban such products.

Simon_Jester wrote:If Japan were a comparably successful socialist country, Japanese people would still have broadly comparable amounts of stuff, and the giant tidal wave would still sweep it out into the ocean.

If Japan would be like the USSR around early 90s, the stuff would quite likely at least not contain nurdles, plastic bottles, and plastic bags. It would most likely mean a poorer country, yes.

His Divine Shadow wrote:Since the damage is done and is being done all the time. What's the most realistic cure? Something in the back of my head says bio-engineered bacteria that eat plastics.

K. A. Pital wrote:Nurdles near the sea (which is how they get into the ocean) make sense in a globalized economy where semi-finished goods are routinely transported in this type of packaging in large containers. It does not make much sense in autarkic economies and it hardly makes any if semi-finished consumer goods are not transported en masse overseas. This is a unique feature of the current globalized economy. The nurdle threat could even be lessened if maritime trade took a big hit and nations utilized more localized manufacturing.

K. A. Pital wrote:Nurdles near the sea (which is how they get into the ocean) make sense in a globalized economy where semi-finished goods are routinely transported in this type of packaging in large containers. It does not make much sense in autarkic economies and it hardly makes any if semi-finished consumer goods are not transported en masse overseas. This is a unique feature of the current globalized economy. The nurdle threat could even be lessened if maritime trade took a big hit and nations utilized more localized manufacturing.

Plastic bottles can be replaced with glass bottles, which are a lot less threatening to the environment and are reusable. And plastic bags are... plastic bags.

Even removing a fraction of the nurdles would do a lot, as I think those account for 10% of the pollution alone.

Convenience of plastic is likewise a feature of capitalism. Here, materials are chosen out of convenience for production and sales purposes. Other considerations are inapplicable. Industrial socialism cannot hep much here, because it mostly takes the same methods of production as the capitalists. But it is undeniable that the original logic behind the introduction of every harmful consumer good or production technology is the fault of the capitalists or the market in general.

"Needs and demands of the people"? Did people demand a switch from glass bottles to plastic? Or nurdles? Once the technology arrived and happened to be efficient in terms of improving companies' production or sales, there was no way to stop it. And people would buy what's offered on the market even if it kills them. Proven by asbestos.

There is quite a bit of evidence suggesting that countries which lean towards the left would implement such regulations faster. The European nations have plastic bag levies, or outright bans. A ban on microplastics in cosmetics could be underway. In the US there is no levy on plastic bags and no ban. You could, of course, say that this is a product of "regulation-heavy environment", but that is the point. Socialism is the extreme form of regulation-heavy environment where products are trivially easy to ban. Whether this could be implemented or not hinges on the success of green movements in power (if democracy, then via elections; if authoritarian, then the success of environmental ministries).

The comment about Japan and USSR was related to the fact that it is a false dilemma: either absolute capitalistic paradise with unchecked use of industrial plastics and other technology, or extreme poverty. I have demonstrated that one could have a society which was not under severe poverty, and yet did not produce vast amounts of plastic waste. This means it is possible for industrial societies to avoid vast volumes of plastic waste.

The fundamental problem with capitalism is that it operates in an incredibly short-sighted mode, and the future of Earth and mankind itself could be sacrificed for minor conveniences today.

K. A. Pital wrote:What kind of products are created from these nurdles?

K. A. Pital wrote:Comparing the rise of plastics to hurricane is... weird. Hurricane is a natural event. Industrial production chains are not natural. They depend on human decisions and human action.

From the point of view of the user glass bottles and reusable bags may very well be less convenient. You cannot throw them away and glass shatters, and is heavy. But by the same logic, the original users of asbestos, the construction companies, used it with good reason as it was cheap, a good construction material and other options carried greater costs, at least at the time.

That is exactly the problem. Under socialism, the planners decide and may, if environmentally conscious, ban products, but their decisions are not related only to the market value of a product, or at least they should not be. Under capitalism, products enter the market and are rarely banned post facto when the harm is already done. There is rarelt prior evaluation of consequences and if a product sells well, it is likely that it will displace safer, but more expensive or inconvenient alternatives.

Simon_Jester wrote:The way society is organized is blameless in cases where the nature of the problem does not become known in a timely fashion.

Simon_Jester wrote:But at the same time, many of China's collective economic decisions about the goods they do and do not produce and consume are driven by China's ties to the global market.

K. A. Pital wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:The way society is organized is blameless in cases where the nature of the problem does not become known in a timely fashion.

Sorry, I simply don't see it that way. That's all I can say.

Simon_Jester wrote:But at the same time, many of China's collective economic decisions about the goods they do and do not produce and consume are driven by China's ties to the global market.

Same applies to all industrial socialist nations. Because they are locked in economic competition with the capitalist ones, they inevitably have to take their production techniques. This makes production look identical. In theory, without ruthless competition, people might pause for a second before doing something. But that's only theory.