I wonder about the river barriers. I buy that the ocean buoys aren’t effective, but it seems like plastic would be a lot more concentrated in the rivers that feed it into the ocean, and the rivers themselves are a lot shallower. I would be interested in reading an expert opinion on whether those make sense.
Also, the criticism I’ve read runs along the lines “they can’t clean up a huge proportion of ocean plastic,” but the engineer in me can’t help but feel that that’s the wrong angle—it seems like the question should be “how does it compare to other methods on $/(kg plastic removed)”? Of course that question is currently unanswerable because what the critics propose is research, whose results are by definition undefined, but I guess I wish it was the focus of the conversation.
> I wonder about the river barriers. I buy that the ocean buoys aren’t effective, but it seems like plastic would be a lot more concentrated in the rivers that feed it into the ocean, and the rivers themselves are a lot shallower. I would be interested in reading an expert opinion on whether those make sense.
What is it that you're wondering about exactly? The article mentions and explains the progress of the "plastics in rivers blocking" that they're doing, in the "PREVENTING PLASTIC AT ITS SOURCE" section.
> Our mission goes beyond cleaning the oceans; we also work to stop plastic from entering waterways in the first place.
I think the river barriers are certainly the most effective in terms of waste reduction per dollar, it’s just a question of optics— to Joe Public, the idea of only working on slowing the flow of new waste sounds too much like we’re declaring bankruptcy on what is already in the open ocean.
Also, the criticism I’ve read runs along the lines “they can’t clean up a huge proportion of ocean plastic,” but the engineer in me can’t help but feel that that’s the wrong angle—it seems like the question should be “how does it compare to other methods on $/(kg plastic removed)”? Of course that question is currently unanswerable because what the critics propose is research, whose results are by definition undefined, but I guess I wish it was the focus of the conversation.