The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit organization, has projected that the blight on the world's largest ocean could be removed within a decade and for around $7.5 billion.

After three years extracting plastic waste from the notorious Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an environmental nonprofit says it can finish the job within a decade, with a price tag of several billion dollars.

Twice the size of Texas, the mass of about 79,000 metric tons of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii is growing at an exponential pace, according to researchers.

  • @AA5BEnglish
    4•7 days ago

    There seems to be a basic math problem here - if it’s still growing at an exponential pace, any effort to clean it up will fail

    Why don’t we focus on scaling those trash interceptors to every major river and harbor, to see if we can fix that math?

    • @GoofSchmooferEnglish
      2•7 days ago

      I think this company has few different teams that work on the problem from different angles

      Some are on the boats in the Pacific some are building interceptors in rivers in countries that are the largest producers of waste that makes it to the ocean. Of course they can’t fix the problem just slow it down. The fix comes from these countries changing how they allow garbage to be collected and stored.

    • @FrozengyroEnglish
      3•7 days ago

      Most of the garbage comes from commercial fishing. So that won’t help.

      • @andxzEnglish
        1•7 days ago

        At least that’ll correct itself when all the fish are dead, right?

        …right?