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- Hacker News
- > That criticism and feedback haven’t dissuaded The Ocean Cleanup
[One paragraph later]
> the team pivoted in 2019 toward a new model that was first suggested by critics and skeptics as an alternative in 2015.
So.... It did dissuade them away from their original vision and towards something suggested by critics and experts.
I hate it when people cite someone changing their mind about something as a gotcha or a fault. So they switched towards a better direction seven years ago! But the rest of the article is still about how terrible the old idea was, and how it proves that people have an "only I can fix it mentality," when it actually proves the exact opposite!
> their picture shows HUNDREDS of floating animals trapped with the plastic.
I'm curious to know how many animals die from the plastic. This article seems to think that any deaths caused by cleanup are reason to stop. Just like people who point to dead birds as reasons to ban wind turbines, despite far more wildlife being at risk from a warming planet.
It's quite possible that ocean cleanup efforts do more damage, I don't know, but the article doesn't even try to grapple with quantifying it. It's just a fear-mongering screed.
by SamBam - The plastic devouring bacteria breeding program is going very well. Typing this on a phone that dissolves as we speak. As if a million million-sided dice are thrown in unison, always landing on the six-up - a thousand times in a row to get through a labyrinth.by 21asdffdsa12
- Yeah it'll be great when plastic starts to rot like wood. Thank god we haven't spent the last 60 years using plastic as a water proof electrical insulator.
- Sources of ocean plastic https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-emissions-of-plas...by greenavocado
- Curiously maps to the places where they are doing river cleanup, who would have figured!? https://theoceancleanup.com/rivers/by ricardobeat
- Sympathetic to other strategies but that writeup is wholly unconvincing. It comes across as astroturf.by jonahbenton
- 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 - And extra extra credit for NGOs (and startups) that openly advertise "competitors".by ckemere
- Reminds me of the endless "12 year old wins $25k young innovator award for inventing a solar panel that can go on the roof of an EV to charge while you drive!" type proclamationsby WarmWash
- > 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 - Read again? Negative is the enemy of good, and this project was a net negative. As PR it went well, if you didn't examine it too closely. It was a misnomer from the start - it was 'harbor cleanup' or 'river cleanup' really. Where the big obvious plastic objects are. I don't believe they proposed any method for actually cleaning up the 'garbage patch' which consists of pepper-sized particles of plastic that requires a sieve to see. And which has been colonized by many marine creatures, so 'cleaning it up' would have the side effect of mass sterilization.
Issues are hard. PR is easy, especially if you hand-wave over the hard stuff.
by JoeAltmaier - 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
- the only thing that will be effective is if governments start taxing the production of plastic to the point it's not a cheap alternative anymore. these types of projects are too make people feel better while pissing in the windby cpill
- Spot on. Another thing these experts fail to mention is that a lot of the data on the Pacific Garbage patch actually comes from the Ocean Cleanup, since, you know, they actually went out there to look.by hencq
- Did you read actually read the article and if so, did you read until the end? Let me just respond by quoting the article:
> 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.” (Note that this was being said to people who devoted their lives and careers to evidence-based solutions to cleaning up the ocean).
by dajonker - I'm curious, what have firsthand experience have you seen of solutions implemented by The Ocean Cleanup?
There will always be misallocation of resources in the private and public sector, I think the main point of this article is "trusting the experts in complex situations", which in my opinion is valid and needs to be said more emphatically in the current political climate.
“There was this spirit at the time that a few well-meaning young people with a lot of passion would find solutions, but for complex problems like this one, the teenage geniuses and their billionaire backers aren’t going to save us, and they’re going to take us on a wild and expensive ride along the way,” Helm says.
- Perfect is the enemy of good.
I think the Ocean Cleanup has been one of the most effective (non- political/commercial) PR campaigns of the last decade.
by ortusdux - >> 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.
The alternative is not "doing nothing at all." It's spending the money effectively and in ways that don't kill marine life. TFA gives an example near the end:
"So if we can’t scoop all the plastic trash out of the ocean without killing large numbers of marine animals, what can we do instead?
One effective (and cost-effective) solution is the Ocean Conservancy’s International Coastal Cleanup. This amazing program has removed more than 400 million pounds of trash from beaches, where it’s much easier to access than in the middle of the ocean, before it gets swept back to sea. They do this at incredibly low cost, because more than 19 million people around the world have volunteered to help.
“Our total annual budget for all our plastics advocacy work, which includes cleanup, science and policy efforts, is about $6 million,” says Jordana Lewis, director of communications for the Ocean Conservancy Director of Communications. “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.”
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.
Meanwhile Dr. Richards points out that in 2024 Ocean Cleanup’s System 002 “was out there spewing diesel fumes from a ship that cost $100,000 a day, picking up less plastic than a bunch of volunteers on beaches.” (A representative for the Ocean Cleanup told me via email that they are working on improving the cost efficiency of their operations.)"
- The point of the article is that this intervention is actively harmful for exactly the same reasons raised by experts a long time ago.
> In my opinion, that's better than doing nothing at all.
This attitude is wrong IMO. The issue with high-profile half-baked interventions is that they distract from real unsexy solutions like grab the plastic in rivers BEFORE they make it to the ocean.
This is self-evident from data on their own website! https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/ . River mouths/estuaries are also some of the most densely populated regions in the world. This bites in that it is easy for plastic to enter the ocean. But it's also a lot easier to run cleanup at the source, next to humans, rather than 3000km away in the middle of the ocean.
by kadal