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- Hacker News
- Ah right, so it would be far better if the Ocean Cleanup did not exist, technology were to not have been tested for cleaning up ocean plastic, and people would not have known about plastic in the ocean via the Ocean Cleanup's social media?
Right, trust the experts, who appear to be more interested in their own expertise than people at least trying to do something, trying to create better technology, and trying to educate the public on plastic ocean waste.
What's the point of this article again?
by 65 - After living in Vietnam / Cambodia / Laos for 4 years, I came to the conclusion that there is no hope to the problem.
It is literally in the local culture to just throw trash into the gutters. You can pick up as much as you want, but there will be 1000x more thrown into the rivers and flushed into the oceans. Changing the culture of people who are living moment-to-moment on absolutely nothing at all, isn't realistic either.
Depressing AF, but far better to spend our time focused on other things than just trying to clean it up.
by latchkey - Strangely negative piece.
They switched focus to collecting plastic at river mouths, as the article mentions near the end, around 2019. That is seven years ago. That strategy does not harm sea life and has been very successful collecting 40 million kilos of plastic so far.
Their only activity in the ocean is in the 'great pacific garbage patch' - what % of that surface dwelling sealife lives in this exact spot? The article doesn't actually go into the environmental impact.
by ricardobeat - "The river interceptor design was clearly based on existing solutions" like Mr. Trash Wheel, Dr. Richards says. "Rather than work with the organizations who had successfully been removing trash from rivers for years, they ‘reinvented’ a similar design, at a much higher cost, and claimed to be innovators."
This is a great summary of lots of flashy commercial and non-profit work. Proposal for a product: AI-assisted "Who is already doing this?" database. Extra credit for linking to audited annual reports.
by ckemere - > Every organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place
Okay so the article’s prime version costs $2/lb of trash removal. Looking at a random report from a couple of years ago they did 11 m pounds[0]/year
Let’s look at the next paragraph to see how the non-profit they’re comparing against did:
> As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings.
Okay, so the competitor is $0.6/lb. I mean that sounds great. The whole article is like a price comparison against a competitor where they say “the other guys are more efficient, cheaper and we cost 3 times as much”.
Honestly, this kind of Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science vs Seventh Day Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science stuff is always pitched as such high stakes and it’s always some aggrieved party upset because they “don’t want to live in a world where someone else saves the Earth better than [they] do”.
0: https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Spla...
by arjie - I'm not arrogant enough to think I know more about this than an expert who's devoted their life to ocean research, but the article itself comes across as a list of grievances against the Ocean Cleanup project rather than an objective review - mostly due to emotionally charged language like "apparently killing enormous numbers of marine organisms" and "out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day"
It took a bit of digging, but it looks like around 80% of the plastic the Ocean Cleanup has captured comes from rivers - while the article focuses mostly on criticizing the open ocean catch. It would be interesting to see what is the budget split between the two methods, but I couldn't easily find it.
It makes sense to me that removal requiring infrastructure will be more costly than unpaid volunteers on land. It is NOT clear to me if that means the infrastructure solution is not worth pursuing in parallel. It does seem the open ocean catch is ineffective compared to the river capture, and I can understand that argument. Not so clear to me if / why river capture should be scrapped in favor of the volunteer beach cleanup, as the article seems to imply. Intuitively, pursuing both would makes more sense. Again, this would be a very interesting analysis to see.
> Unfortunately, it also shows how some people can take certain ideas too closely to heart — and take it personally when those ideas are criticized. When experts started speaking out about the Ocean Cleanup several years ago, I witnessed several of them endure online harassment from supporters of the organization, often phrased as “At least they’re trying to do something to help, all you do is complain.”
To be honest, yes, this article seems to be getting the same response. Doesn't mean the criticism is invalid, but public communication is a skill in itself, separate from depth of expertise in a subject.
by alex_c - The title of the article is kind of technically correct but still misleading.
It is true that The Ocean Cleanup "we're going to trawl the ocean for plastic" approach isn't working terribly well.
But they did pivot to stopping trash from washing out of rivers and into the ocean which is working. Stopping the mess from growing is also a very good thing.
This seems like some combination of the enemy of good is perfect and also sour grapes that someone else is doing the thing.
by msandford - They may not have solved the problem, but at least they are doing something about it. In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all. I've seen firsthand how their solutions have been implemented and have had a positive impact on the environment. How often do we hear promises from NGOs or government entities claiming they will solve humanitarian issues such as housing shortages or hunger, only to fail miserably while spending billions of dollars in the process? Meanwhile, others grow rich from government tenders and contracts at the expense of the unfortunate beneficiaries.by nexawave-ai