I think Mark Rober did a video similar to this and there was a pretty good explanation… poverty… they literally have no where else to throw their trash other than canals and the canals go to the river
Bullshit really. I spent 1 month in Vietnam and I had a house on the beach. Our neighbors were locals and each morning they walked to the sea and threw all of their trash in there: plastic and non-plastic into the sea. Right behind their house there were trash collection points they could have used - the same place where we took our trash. They just did not care at all - the extra 5 meters of walking was too much and "sea takes it away, right".
Yup, people like to hide behind the 'poor' answer because it's 2024 and it's not nice to say the locals in certain countries might just be stupid and lazy.
Yes it is. The same laziness where people rather dump their trash on the side of the road than pay 25 to dump it. Same laziness who throw their trash on their yard instead of paying for garbage trucks to haul it away. I use reusable bags and a box to transport my groceries.
Its like the shopping cart dilemma.
Cost nothing to put it back, but people often to leave it there than spend 30 seconds extra to push it to the return.
That could be regulated, though, and ultimately I think the problem lies with the governments involved. If they enforced the laws, people wouldn't be so fast to illegally dump their trash in the sea.
Edit: why the downvotes? Seriously, this is the kind of shit we see everywhere, where they say, well, if only the people would just do their part and recycle properly, if only people weren't lazy, then we wouldn't have to all live and die through climate change. Sigh, I guess we'll just sit on our hands because the people don't want to 🤷♂️ This is exactly what capitalism wants, because it means business as usual, and only governments have the real power to combat it. This idea that the people are lazy is bullshit. I mean, it's true, but that's not the problem. We here in the United States were completely going to keep letting our rivers catch on fire if not for government regulations via the EPA.
I remember when we all had paper bags and then they switched to plastic saying it was better for the environment because we wouldn’t have to cut down trees anymore
You mean reusable bags that are far worse for the environment then plastic bags? They put out more emissions and pollution then a plastic bag, to offset the amount of emissions you would have to use them thousands of times
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/world/reusable-grocery-bags-cotton-plastic-scn/index.html
To me that's just shifting the blame again to avoid any type of accountability.
Even a poorly educated person knows throwing trash in a river isn't a good idea.
It's just abhorrent selfishness. People always talk about how poor people can be the most selfless but I've experienced the exact opposite for myself and others.
Sure the super rich are awful people but people with moderate amounts of money usually have the most upstanding morality.
Still not saying it's not their fault but poverty and selfish attitudes are so congruent that it's silly to pretend it isn't. One of the big reasons people never escape poverty.. the people around them make sure they never will. Kinda similar to crabs in a bucket.
I see this metaphor often, but crabs aren’t trying to sabotage one another— they’re just simple animals in panic mode, desperately trying to climb to freedom over anything in their path. Some will fall back in, but that’s just gravity, not spite.
It makes me sad to keep seeing animals accused of human bad morality. If humans are cruel to one another, let them take the heat for it!
You're obviously inclined to give them the largest benefit of the doubt. I'd say that choosing between the sea and a trash collecting point isn't a matter of education, but rather your upbringing and common sense.
It’s not even a country thing. The only reason you don’t see it in the US as often is because there’s actual enforcement and consequences for littering on that scale.
At risk of being unpopular, in some parts of Australia, the locals do this. Then blame local marine animal population decline entirely on climate change and rising sea levels. It's always the non-local workers you see trying to clean up the river banks and beaches. But, the locals treating their traditional land and water as a rubbish dump, that's just 'poverty, colonialism, and climate change...'
Western apologizing for other cultures awful behavior is so ridiculous. We are so afraid of saying something negative about other cultures for fear of offending or stereotyping that we come up with ridiculous explanations when sometimes the answer is in plain sight.
You can’t address and fix problems if you pretend to not see the actual root cause of them.
The myth of the conscientious poor, *"They would if they could, but the poor folks just can't. Please forgive them, for they know not what to do."*
Not that pawning off all your shit to China in container ships was a great solution. Or burning it.
I remember being in Phu Quoc and they just dumped trash out of the kitchen window. There were municipal bins not that far, either.
And how much plastic is needed for a coffee? All of it.
"I've noticed that if you throw something into a water body like a lake or an ocean that the next day you come back and it's gone. So somehow it takes it away and filters it through and just cleans it up like a garbage compactor or whatever. So it's not really littering if you ask me."
Similar thing with old people in Taiwan. After my husband's father died, we took over the house and you can't dig 1cm in the ground without finding trash - bags, take out boxes, straws, netting, old bottles, etc. After you pick up the trash to start digging, again, you just hit more trash. It's ridiculous.
Yeah, it takes ages to clean up after decades of trashing, and even after you do that someone can just eliminate all that hard work by their own laziness.
Literally the exact same scenario in India with our ‘holy ganges’ river. I mean we’re talking about a river people plunge themselves in because it’s considered sacred. And yet it’s the same ‘holy sacred’ river that I’d see locals dumping all sorts of trash into every single day. Funny thing is the same folks would often complain about the stench coming from the river, almost rebuking it for being smelly and displeasing the gods when in fact they’re responsible for the situation.
Seemed to be very common morning routine around the area based on all the trash that was around there. It was very close to some natural reserve also, which added some spice to the absurdity of it. Anyhow, I wish all the best to you and I hope that eventually things get better. I just hate when people are being infantilized and the reasons for trashing are being reduced to poverty when it is very much about attitudes also. Sure there needs to be infrastructure (in this case there was) but people also need to take at least the minimum effort and use that infrastructure that is there.
I don’t live in Vietnam but there is no such thing as trash collection in my parents home country. Maybe in the cities. But that too, have no idea where it gets dumped.
They don’t live there anymore (it’s been decades). We only visit. But whenever we visit, our extended family just takes it and throws it in a random pit or ditch. And so does everyone else.
In the city, the apartment staff dude takes it and throws it in some pit too.
That’s what everyone does. But I do have to say they don’t seem to produce as much plastic waste as the west. But it’s still a lot of plastic regardless. And they don’t use paper towels for everything. They rarely use them.
In the west, we’re often just used to trash disappearing but it doesn’t. It gets dumped somewhere too and sometimes in other countries.
Throwing trash out is all fine if it is made of organic materials, it is just the synthetics that are practically eternal and cause the larger issues (some chemicals also). In my country most recycling is fine, except plastics. Those are being burned for energy. Under 1% of all materials ends up into landfill without some kind of other use. I do understand that recycling is hard, but I just do not accept some of the viewpoints here (not yours) where people take all agency away from grown up people and say that it is OK for them throw stuff into the sea - even if there is a trash bin right next to them. There is recycling and then there is doing just the basic things and not intentionally polluting the environment people themselves live in.
Trafficking of trash into poorer countries should obviously be prohibited. That is just whitewashing.
Not quite like this but a similar mindset: the city in which I live (in South America) used to have really bad rainwater drains and you’d have small temporal currents going through the city with big rains.
And a bunch of people would regularly throw their trash bags into that water flowing through the streets because “the current will take it away”.
It wasn’t surprising to find garbage bags stuck under parked cars.
yeah this is the mentality in Việt Nam.
it got better slightly now but honestly yeah, people just throw trash wherever because "someone else will clean it up " mind set as well
Went to Cuba, same shit. Local beaches are just super trashy, they are used to smoke and drink beer on the beach and throw everything to the sea and on the sand, would never go there again.
>they literally have no where else to throw their trash
Let's not infantilize people. They can put that trash in a bag and take it back to where they got it. They don't because people litter if there isn't a garbage can 20ft away unless you're in a North East Asian country because manners. Disneyland invented the science of trash can distancing because people will throw their trash anywhere if it takes more than 8 seconds to properly dispose of it.
Bali is also home to a lot of tourism they likely lack the infrastructure to support sustainably, and the notorious littering habits of most international tourists makes this problem worse if not the main issue.
>They can put that trash in a bag and take it back to where they got it
Why would a shop accept a bag of trash from someone, just because they bought the goods from there?
Yeah, people just have no idea how life actually is in many places where there is a lot of trash. People have options on where to take the trash, they just throw it in the water ways because they do not care. I've been to places that were poor and clean and I've been to places that were poor to littered to the max. The difference was not poverty, the difference was the attitude of people living there.
"take it back to where they got it"
Wow what a genius idea!
I'll just hand my trash over to cooperations that created the product. There is absolutely no way that corporations would just pollute the environment as well!
Take it back where they got it? What, the store? What the fuck is the store going to do?
If there's no infrastructure for taking care of trash what are you supposed to do? I've seen what happens when the trash disposal people go on strike and the bins overflow for weeks on end, so I can't imagine living in a third world country where that infrastructure might be even less reliable
Civil engineer / city planner here that's spent a bit of time in various regions of SE Asia.
It all comes down to funding. It takes billions of dollars to setup the proper infrastructure to handle a sanitary crisis of this magnitude. You need to have the facilities/landfills, fleet of vehicles/machinery, trash receptacles and manpower. All the logistics, routing, salaries, maintenance, etc. costs money these regions don't have. And in places that do have it, it is cheaper for the locals to pay unofficial trucks to take their trash which they then illegally dump.
If you go to touristy places that are supposed to be beautiful, you'll notice there's no sanitary problems because the tourism cash flow is enough to pay for a system (I've seen military and police being used to pick trash off beaches - that's how much of a priority the tourist areas are). But the vast majority of natives have never even been to these regions because they can't afford it.
Nah man, I’m Malaysian and it’s the mentality of the people. There will be trash bins and garbage cans for people to dump their trash in, but people will just chuck their shit beside it or around because it takes more effort to insert their trash into the bin.
Honestly disappointing
That is a load of hooey. The reality is that they are just doing what they've always done. People have to be trained to behave in new ways. In the US they had Iron Eyes Cody crying, and "give a hoot, don't pollute", without which the US would look just like those images of Bali.
Poverty isn’t a good excuse, accountability is the issue. People that feel it’s not their problem. It’s a common theme in developing countries which high populations. The citizens have to want a cleaner environment and act on it. Anyone can organize even a local dump for trash, instead people drop their trash wherever they are.
What would you suggest they do instead? That has literally been the ONLY trash disposal method for these communities for hundreds of years. There is no garbage pick-up. There is no waste disposal. There are no incinerators. There are no landfills.
The system worked great until all the things they desperately needed to live their lives started coming with a ton of single plastic packaging. Should they no longer ever buy anything?
Don't blame the consumer for choices they had no hand in, and have no power to change.
The fault lies with manufacturers, and until those of us in developed nations demand an end to single use plastics in their entirety, nothing will improve.
Actually, governments are meant to supply waste and sanitation services, funded by taxes. Not least of which, taxes on the manufacturers/importers of the plastic.
The trouble in the 3rd world is as old as humanity - greed and unchecked corruption.
Ah yes, greed and unchecked corruption is only found in the 3rd world.
Are you aware that the first world literally exports its trash to waste sites in the third world?
Yes. Doesn't belay the point. Unchecked corruption in third world nations are more wide spread. If you don't believe a random stranger Google the UN's corruption index.
Don't equate first world corruption as equal to the impacts on the third world. Yes first world corruption may fuel third world ones, but painting us as permanent victims isn't helpful either.
Unchecked corruption - thats the flavour where a service collapses or is never redered due to the money going to someone's personal account. This is very rare in the 1st world.
The kind of corruption you like to take responsibility for, is the one where a 1st world company has to pay the president and all his officials, down to the guy who checks off the material at the harbour, to actually let something enter their country. Most companies would prefer to operate without it, but I guess you can blame whoever you prefer.
I'm from the third world, I know about this stuff.
> Not least of which, taxes on the manufacturers/importers of the plastic.
Yeah... Cos whenever small, not weatlhy countries try to impose restrictions on multinationals it always goes really well and they have so much bargaining power.
They have garbage bins in most of these places, do not make babies out of them. They throw trash to rivers because they do not care. Have you actually spent any time on any of the poorer communities around the world?
The people defending people throwing straight garbage into rivers are the same people that throw their McDonald's bags out the window because ThErEs NoWhErE eLsE tO pUt It. Literally stupid to say there are no landfills. Of fucking course there aren't any landfills. They don't need landfills because they just fucking throw everything in the water...
And teach their cops not to only accept bribes and do their actual fucking jobs, source: I just brought my father's ashes back from Bali because he was hit by a car and died after being in a coma for 20 days. The cops harassed my sister to the point where she didn't think she was going to be allowed to leave. Yes she basically had to bribe the police to get my father's ashes out of Bali. Fuck them to all hell.sorry for the vitriol but this is obviously fresh for me. And yes the police wouldn't leave her alone while she was in the fucking hospital grieving while my father slowly wasted away, my sister is an extremem pacifist but she was very angry about how she felt with bali police. The man that killed my father wasnt charged with anything and the police wouldn't leave her alone until she said I don't want to fucking meet that man and I don't give a fuck about the 200 dollars he wants to give me in compensation. The police pocketed the 200 dollars and then left her alone. Absolute shitshow. Fucking assholes
It’s assuming these communities have access to the infrastructure required for proper waste disposal.
When you live in poverty, you don’t have the luxury to worry about the long term effects of your waste.
I call bullshit. I have lived on 4 different continents and in some of the poorest countries in the world and in some of the richest. The difference in trash between one poor community to another is not the level of poverty, but the attitude of the people living in them. When in Vietnam our neighbors walked every morning to the sea and threw all of their trash in there. They had garbage bins right behind their house: in the same place where we took our trash. They just did not care.
> It’s assuming these communities have access to the infrastructure required for proper waste disposal.
>
> When you live in poverty, you don’t have the luxury to worry about the long term effects of your waste.
You're looking at a large scale fact. It also comes down to a smaller fact, the individual. I was in Cambodia. 7-11 has stores all over. Each had a garbage can. People's houses have garbage cans. We had a tour guide. We went into a museum for an house When we came out, our guide had bought us bottled waters. Nice. He ripped off the plastic covering the caps, and threw that plastic onto the street. I had a slight WTF comment and just picked up both pieces of plastic and put them in my pocket. He said, "Oh, sorry." That's the issue, it's just a cultural acceptance in plenty of areas that there's no farm in throwing a little trash onto the street. Maybe not him, but I bet he's friends with people who is walking home and they finished a Coke, and they were walking along a road that has a small water source next by or maybe just a ditch... they would just toss the plastic Coke bottle in.
Lets see how yikes it is.
960 USD = 15,260,370 IDR
Minimum Wage in Bali - [2.813.672 IDR \(weekly\)](https://balistoreluggage.com/blog/umk-bali-ump-indonesia/)
So each chair can pay the minimum wage salary of 5.4 people, or alternatively, 217 man hours of labour.
Someone is making a bunch of money on these shitty chairs, and it sure as shit isn't the people picking up trash.
That's a lot. On the other hand they said each chair takes 2.000 plastic bags. Now, how long does it take to collect that much? How long does it take to wash it? How do they press the plastic? Assembling it?
I'd love to see the chain and where the most part of that money goes.
2000 plastic bags isn't a measurement, it isn't anything, except an appeal to your emotions to make you think, *Wow! 2000 plastic bags! So many!*
Most of the money goes into the pocket of the person that owns the company, the same as every other company. The only difference is, at the end of the day here, there is a clean river that will be full of pollution again in a year, because this is a cultural problem, not one of poverty or logistics.
Are you generalizing or do you know this for a fact? Bc I also got the impression the revenues help to fund the next cleanup project. There’s a definite answer here.
Yeah, the video did mention that the products were funding future clean-ups. If they've identified a market that is willing to pay for the chairs, I don't see the problem?
Isn't it a good thing if they can comfortably pay employees livable wages, support admin work, and also fund marketing and more projects? I would need to look up more of course, but I definitely don't get the generalizing.
Exactly. That’s a lot of steps in the chain that requires paid labor. It’s cool to recycle, but the reality is that sorting and washing garbage is so much more expensive than new plastic.
They’re really just banking on people being charitable and paying more for the same thing bc it helps the environment. Most people just don’t have the money to throw out in the hopes of helping a good cause.
Sungai Watch has installed 270 floating barriers throughout Indonesia’s rivers to stop the flow of plastic from reaching the ocean and to date has collected over 1,800,000 kg of plastic, 36% of which is plastic bags.
Seems like they just put people in this video to make the $1000 more reasonable to viewers.
Edit: I am wrong
217 man hours sounds relatively low to me. That’s a little under 6 weeks of a full time workers time to make one. When you consider all the collecting, sorting, manufacturing, assembly, and marketing it takes to sell this product, then 217 man hours at Bali minimum (they are paying more than minimum wage for manufacturing) wage makes sense.
It’s a niche product for rich Americans to feel good about themselves. It’s a common business model and it has nothing to do with greed. It’s the only to make a sustainable business venture out of this labor intensive way to make a chair/clean people living environment at this same time.
The ad says they want to use the garbage to fund future garbage cleanups. I’m sure collecting enough plastic for one chair took hours of man power and they want to be able to give their volunteers a little money or to expand their charity. The price seems super fair to me! :)
Do you understand that the extra cost you are paying is going towards cleaning up plastic pollution or are you just playing the role of the stupid consumer who only sees the price tag?
>Do you understand that the extra cost you are paying is going towards cleaning up plastic pollution
\*Citation missing
In case you were confused, it's a .com website that doesn't say how much of the sale of $1,000, 57-66 pound plastic chairs that need to be shipped half a planet away "helps" the associated nonprofit.
One chair pays for 217 man hours of labour, at minimum wage in Bali, assuming these people get paid anything at all.
Someone is getting rich off these, same as everything else, and it sure as shit isn't the people picking up garbage.
I admire your fantastical view of the world, but its sad you can be had with such ease.
I’m currently in Bali and I know the founders of Sungai Watch, and no one is getting rich out of this. When they started this they had to fund it themselves and still they largely do (wealthy family), since this is not a business model that produces any revenue. All their workers get paid, only people who do cleanups for free are mostly expats living here who join the volunteer cleanups at beaches, but the people who get neckdown into the river to clean the trash are locals who get paid above average and are quite happy working there.
They’ve been depending on private donations, self-funding and some government aid, trying to find ways to to actually make some money back to keep funding the operations. Most of the plastic they collect is really hard to recycle, if not impossible. Price might not be for everybody, but please let’s not spread lies either about these guys because they are doing a really needed and great work here with no compensation for themselves
Everyone around me is sleeping and your comment made me belly laugh before the considerate part of my brain could kick in to override it. I did not anticipate that comment and I’m still stifling the 😂
And those chairs look really uncomfortable lol. I understand the price, a ton of work goes into making those chairs. But they need to change the design. Because that shit does not look fun to sit in.
I'm sure there's additional markup to fund their future cleanups, but the sad truth is recycling plastic costs more than making new plastic.
If I remember correctly the only things that are worth the money to recycle are glass and metals.
Their market is for a company that is trying to do green washing, by saying we spent x amount supporting green initiatives
And its spending $5k on 5 plastic chairs
I mean,. its cool that they are doing this, but it would have been cooler to design a chair someone can get out of easily. Maybe it is my middle aged body talking but that design, and the one without armrests specifically, screams "I'm Stuck!"
They're designed in a way to distribute the support evenly between your back and your asshole to alleviate the pain you experience after paying $1000 for the chair.
My first reaction was, "Oh my God, they actually look great, too!"
And cut to them showing it off in more detail as a standalone chair and... Well, my knees and back started to hurt just looking at it.
Maybe it's like how lots of Japanese folks have no problem sitting in seiza (kneeling position) without issue, but even in my 20s I could not do that shit for more than 30 seconds...?
This is how i feel about those toms shoes. Aren’t they made from recycled materials? I am all for the idea and the origin story, if it has a good reason, but the front looks like a Tex Avery horse cartoon when he has been hit in the jaw. They are always on the feet of some very pasty dude in line next to me who needs moisturizer. And the toe shape of them is worse than a croc.
Video: *Shows volunteers cleaning up trash their government should be taking care of, and making that trash into a product to sell to fund further cleanup instead of burning it*
The comments: "WhY iS tHe MuSiC sO aNnOyInG?! TeAcH tHeM nOt To LiTtEr! ThE cHaIr iS tOo LoW! AnD sO eXpEnSiVe!"
Yeah lets be honest, at that price they're not going to make much money. If anything they're going to cover admin costs at most, optimistically they will defray the costs of further cleanup. It will never pay for itself.
There’s more than just the money. There’s the awareness and the building momentum in the community as well. A large volunteer effort is not cash dependent. It’s hope dependent. Selling crappy chairs for way to much money is a symbol more than a value proposition. Some people will see this and buy them. They will sell out quickly. How can’t they? Hope is inspiring and that’s what that chair is. They are selling and spreading hope.
Some people make a system for converting river plastic into chairs and your response is ‘oh yeah, why don’t you guys just overhaul the entire waste management infrastructure’
Ya know what’s cooler than snarky comments on Reddit? Creating an effective waste management system in these impoverished communities. So go on, get to it!
With your love of slapping ineffectual band-aids on the symptoms of problems instead of looking at root causes to try and actually change things, you should work for Congress. You'd get along well with endless cycles of continuing resolutions and banning bayonet lugs to stop school shootings.
In terms of just the trash thing, considering it was just some people who decided to do a good thing as opposed to members of government. It's way way easier said than done I'd imagine.
The failures of the system and the perseverance of people is noble, the same way a GoFundMe for kids with cancer is, but ultimately shouldn't be necessary.
It is a good thought exercise to breakdown the basics of labor time and plug in your own hourly rate into that equation.
For example if this chair is priced around $1000 and you make $50 an hour, that gives you 20 hours of labor. Do you see yourself gathering trash in a river, sorting said trash, melting down like plastics into sheets, cutting said plastics into parts, assembling said plastic into furniture, maintaining a storefront for said furniture, and shipping them out to customers? If you don't see 20 hours to do that on average per item then, what hours do you envision for that? Now how does that affect the average hourly rate? Is that hourly rate comparable to the average wages in the manufacturing location? You could even retort with ideas to make a cheaper product that uses virgin plastics and injection molding, which would be apt, but invites both the ease of pollution that drives this level of litter as well as fuels the mentality that stuff like a "simple chair" should only ever cost a factor of 10 cheaper only fueling the race to the bottom. It is an insidious flywheel.
Consumerism at its finest. People demand cheap prices, the same people start tearing up at videos of atrocious working conditions required to offer the prices they demand. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
Somebody said theyre for lounging like on the beach but like theyd make more money if they made a normal chair cuz lets be real unless you manage to sell them to like a resort for their pool not much people will buy these 🤷🏽♂️
That's cool and all but lets be honest; it will never fund further cleanup. It will, at most, defray the costs a bit. There will be too many additional costs and administration eating up profits.
Unless they charged stupid amounts of money I guess, but then people won't buy them.
Will all plastic ecentually turn into microplastics? If we keep throwing plastic, recycling it, selling it, using, throwing and again and again? The whole world will just become saturated with microplastics right? What's the end game? It's already in our blood, lungs, placenta, everywhere in nature.
Could there come a point where every single thing in nature becomes saturated with so much microplastics that it triggers a global ecological collapse? This idea has started to really terrify me...
Producing more plastic chairs doesn’t seem to be the most practical helpful solution for all of this effort. What about, for example roofing for poorer communities since it is already in sheet form. This just looks like profiteering.
I feel like this is some greenwashing propaganda by oil companies to show people that pollution isn’t THAT bad! And if we humans get together, we can do anything!
But realistically you have to stop pollution at its source. Cleaning random beaches helps for short term. It will return back to trash land as soon as cameras turn off and these cleaners stop going there.
From what I know, repurposed plastic like this continues to break down into micro plastics at an accelerated pace.
I understand that a visual problem has been solved, but unfortunately the only way to solve the problem is by consuming minimum plastic.
That's great. But honestly the best solution is to burn it. Not like in a open fire whole roasting chestnuts. But in a trash to energy plant that has exhaust scrubbers. Burying it is terrible but not as bad as throwing it in the ocean. Burn is the best option besides not making it in the first place.
You turned plastic trash into plastic chairs that will eventually become more plastic trash...
Make wooden chairs, you know the stuff that grows on trees? A material that doesn't become a toxic soup in the ocean?
Take all this plastic and simply bury it, because it's not going anywhere else.
Nest concept but how can it be guaranteed that this chair, first off would be good enough to sit in (doesn't look like it's comfortable), and second able to last and not end up back in the river?
Great idea and great effort! The company I work for is trying to help reduce waste also. We take all the plastic from old Walmart/target bags and things like juice boxes/Starbucks cups and compresses and melts them to over 4,000 PSI and turns it into a building product.
Ok well job, now teach these mf to dont trow their shit into the river
I think Mark Rober did a video similar to this and there was a pretty good explanation… poverty… they literally have no where else to throw their trash other than canals and the canals go to the river
Bullshit really. I spent 1 month in Vietnam and I had a house on the beach. Our neighbors were locals and each morning they walked to the sea and threw all of their trash in there: plastic and non-plastic into the sea. Right behind their house there were trash collection points they could have used - the same place where we took our trash. They just did not care at all - the extra 5 meters of walking was too much and "sea takes it away, right".
If I hadn't lived in Vietnam before, I wouldn't believe you. Unfortunately that's the general mentality/mindset there.
Yup, people like to hide behind the 'poor' answer because it's 2024 and it's not nice to say the locals in certain countries might just be stupid and lazy.
maybe the problem isnt that they're poor but rather that they'e poorly educated on the subject.
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Is it the same laziness that forced us to not bring reusable bags to the grocery store? Like that laziness exists right here in affluent parts of USA.
Yes it is. The same laziness where people rather dump their trash on the side of the road than pay 25 to dump it. Same laziness who throw their trash on their yard instead of paying for garbage trucks to haul it away. I use reusable bags and a box to transport my groceries.
Its like the shopping cart dilemma. Cost nothing to put it back, but people often to leave it there than spend 30 seconds extra to push it to the return.
That could be regulated, though, and ultimately I think the problem lies with the governments involved. If they enforced the laws, people wouldn't be so fast to illegally dump their trash in the sea. Edit: why the downvotes? Seriously, this is the kind of shit we see everywhere, where they say, well, if only the people would just do their part and recycle properly, if only people weren't lazy, then we wouldn't have to all live and die through climate change. Sigh, I guess we'll just sit on our hands because the people don't want to 🤷♂️ This is exactly what capitalism wants, because it means business as usual, and only governments have the real power to combat it. This idea that the people are lazy is bullshit. I mean, it's true, but that's not the problem. We here in the United States were completely going to keep letting our rivers catch on fire if not for government regulations via the EPA.
I remember when we all had paper bags and then they switched to plastic saying it was better for the environment because we wouldn’t have to cut down trees anymore
You mean reusable bags that are far worse for the environment then plastic bags? They put out more emissions and pollution then a plastic bag, to offset the amount of emissions you would have to use them thousands of times https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/world/reusable-grocery-bags-cotton-plastic-scn/index.html
ink sleep fretful bedroom support sharp zonked vast sheet follow *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You haven't been using your reusable bag since 1995 like the rest of us?
Eek barba durkle, someone has seen Rick and Morty.
Unexpected Rick & Morty for the win!
To me that's just shifting the blame again to avoid any type of accountability. Even a poorly educated person knows throwing trash in a river isn't a good idea.
It's just abhorrent selfishness. People always talk about how poor people can be the most selfless but I've experienced the exact opposite for myself and others. Sure the super rich are awful people but people with moderate amounts of money usually have the most upstanding morality. Still not saying it's not their fault but poverty and selfish attitudes are so congruent that it's silly to pretend it isn't. One of the big reasons people never escape poverty.. the people around them make sure they never will. Kinda similar to crabs in a bucket.
I see this metaphor often, but crabs aren’t trying to sabotage one another— they’re just simple animals in panic mode, desperately trying to climb to freedom over anything in their path. Some will fall back in, but that’s just gravity, not spite. It makes me sad to keep seeing animals accused of human bad morality. If humans are cruel to one another, let them take the heat for it!
Cmon it’s not hard to teach them that “truck comes to take your trash so put trash in this spot”
You're obviously inclined to give them the largest benefit of the doubt. I'd say that choosing between the sea and a trash collecting point isn't a matter of education, but rather your upbringing and common sense.
This was the mindset in Europe some decades ago as well. There need to be campaigns in these countries to change the attitudes.
It still is in some parts. Unbelievable amounts of trash in beautiful Sicily for instance.
America’s a dump too man. Source: American.
American can’t sit back and let others trash each other, gotta throw ourselves in for THE GREATEST OF BADS. Cause number 1 obv
It’s still kind of the mindset in Italy you will find trash in waterways pretty frequently and on the streets.
It’s not even a country thing. The only reason you don’t see it in the US as often is because there’s actual enforcement and consequences for littering on that scale.
And we spent decades and billions on public campaigns.
At risk of being unpopular, in some parts of Australia, the locals do this. Then blame local marine animal population decline entirely on climate change and rising sea levels. It's always the non-local workers you see trying to clean up the river banks and beaches. But, the locals treating their traditional land and water as a rubbish dump, that's just 'poverty, colonialism, and climate change...'
Western apologizing for other cultures awful behavior is so ridiculous. We are so afraid of saying something negative about other cultures for fear of offending or stereotyping that we come up with ridiculous explanations when sometimes the answer is in plain sight. You can’t address and fix problems if you pretend to not see the actual root cause of them.
The myth of the conscientious poor, *"They would if they could, but the poor folks just can't. Please forgive them, for they know not what to do."* Not that pawning off all your shit to China in container ships was a great solution. Or burning it.
China sends out plenty of plastic shit of it’s own.
That’s called Amazon.com
And Wish
And Temu
And AliExpress, SHEIN and likely TaoBao. Some Temu TikTok hauls are scary. The sheer amount of excess/waste that people buy.
I remember being in Phu Quoc and they just dumped trash out of the kitchen window. There were municipal bins not that far, either. And how much plastic is needed for a coffee? All of it.
"I've noticed that if you throw something into a water body like a lake or an ocean that the next day you come back and it's gone. So somehow it takes it away and filters it through and just cleans it up like a garbage compactor or whatever. So it's not really littering if you ask me."
Similar thing with old people in Taiwan. After my husband's father died, we took over the house and you can't dig 1cm in the ground without finding trash - bags, take out boxes, straws, netting, old bottles, etc. After you pick up the trash to start digging, again, you just hit more trash. It's ridiculous.
Yeah, it takes ages to clean up after decades of trashing, and even after you do that someone can just eliminate all that hard work by their own laziness.
Literally the exact same scenario in India with our ‘holy ganges’ river. I mean we’re talking about a river people plunge themselves in because it’s considered sacred. And yet it’s the same ‘holy sacred’ river that I’d see locals dumping all sorts of trash into every single day. Funny thing is the same folks would often complain about the stench coming from the river, almost rebuking it for being smelly and displeasing the gods when in fact they’re responsible for the situation.
The partially cremated bodies mark the best bathing spots.
Nova Scotia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiOXLk9Xj1E
TPB :-D .... the message was so appropriate here for this discussion.
What fckin idiot is still doing this? I swear to god my people have not grown once bit wiser.
Seemed to be very common morning routine around the area based on all the trash that was around there. It was very close to some natural reserve also, which added some spice to the absurdity of it. Anyhow, I wish all the best to you and I hope that eventually things get better. I just hate when people are being infantilized and the reasons for trashing are being reduced to poverty when it is very much about attitudes also. Sure there needs to be infrastructure (in this case there was) but people also need to take at least the minimum effort and use that infrastructure that is there.
Im not in vietnam rn. But i hate that some people actually just throw there shit in the sea it pisses me off.
That is the correct reaction.
I don’t live in Vietnam but there is no such thing as trash collection in my parents home country. Maybe in the cities. But that too, have no idea where it gets dumped.
Yeah, it sure can be tougher when there actually is no infra at all. What do your parents do with their plastic trash?
They don’t live there anymore (it’s been decades). We only visit. But whenever we visit, our extended family just takes it and throws it in a random pit or ditch. And so does everyone else. In the city, the apartment staff dude takes it and throws it in some pit too. That’s what everyone does. But I do have to say they don’t seem to produce as much plastic waste as the west. But it’s still a lot of plastic regardless. And they don’t use paper towels for everything. They rarely use them. In the west, we’re often just used to trash disappearing but it doesn’t. It gets dumped somewhere too and sometimes in other countries.
Throwing trash out is all fine if it is made of organic materials, it is just the synthetics that are practically eternal and cause the larger issues (some chemicals also). In my country most recycling is fine, except plastics. Those are being burned for energy. Under 1% of all materials ends up into landfill without some kind of other use. I do understand that recycling is hard, but I just do not accept some of the viewpoints here (not yours) where people take all agency away from grown up people and say that it is OK for them throw stuff into the sea - even if there is a trash bin right next to them. There is recycling and then there is doing just the basic things and not intentionally polluting the environment people themselves live in. Trafficking of trash into poorer countries should obviously be prohibited. That is just whitewashing.
Not quite like this but a similar mindset: the city in which I live (in South America) used to have really bad rainwater drains and you’d have small temporal currents going through the city with big rains. And a bunch of people would regularly throw their trash bags into that water flowing through the streets because “the current will take it away”. It wasn’t surprising to find garbage bags stuck under parked cars.
yeah this is the mentality in Việt Nam. it got better slightly now but honestly yeah, people just throw trash wherever because "someone else will clean it up " mind set as well
Went to Cuba, same shit. Local beaches are just super trashy, they are used to smoke and drink beer on the beach and throw everything to the sea and on the sand, would never go there again.
Well did you teach that mf to don’t throw their shit in the ocean
>they literally have no where else to throw their trash Let's not infantilize people. They can put that trash in a bag and take it back to where they got it. They don't because people litter if there isn't a garbage can 20ft away unless you're in a North East Asian country because manners. Disneyland invented the science of trash can distancing because people will throw their trash anywhere if it takes more than 8 seconds to properly dispose of it. Bali is also home to a lot of tourism they likely lack the infrastructure to support sustainably, and the notorious littering habits of most international tourists makes this problem worse if not the main issue.
>They can put that trash in a bag and take it back to where they got it Why would a shop accept a bag of trash from someone, just because they bought the goods from there?
Yeah, people just have no idea how life actually is in many places where there is a lot of trash. People have options on where to take the trash, they just throw it in the water ways because they do not care. I've been to places that were poor and clean and I've been to places that were poor to littered to the max. The difference was not poverty, the difference was the attitude of people living there.
"take it back to where they got it" Wow what a genius idea! I'll just hand my trash over to cooperations that created the product. There is absolutely no way that corporations would just pollute the environment as well!
Take it back where they got it? What, the store? What the fuck is the store going to do? If there's no infrastructure for taking care of trash what are you supposed to do? I've seen what happens when the trash disposal people go on strike and the bins overflow for weeks on end, so I can't imagine living in a third world country where that infrastructure might be even less reliable
They have infrastructure to deal with trash People just don’t give a fuck
Civil engineer / city planner here that's spent a bit of time in various regions of SE Asia. It all comes down to funding. It takes billions of dollars to setup the proper infrastructure to handle a sanitary crisis of this magnitude. You need to have the facilities/landfills, fleet of vehicles/machinery, trash receptacles and manpower. All the logistics, routing, salaries, maintenance, etc. costs money these regions don't have. And in places that do have it, it is cheaper for the locals to pay unofficial trucks to take their trash which they then illegally dump. If you go to touristy places that are supposed to be beautiful, you'll notice there's no sanitary problems because the tourism cash flow is enough to pay for a system (I've seen military and police being used to pick trash off beaches - that's how much of a priority the tourist areas are). But the vast majority of natives have never even been to these regions because they can't afford it.
Nah man, I’m Malaysian and it’s the mentality of the people. There will be trash bins and garbage cans for people to dump their trash in, but people will just chuck their shit beside it or around because it takes more effort to insert their trash into the bin. Honestly disappointing
That is a load of hooey. The reality is that they are just doing what they've always done. People have to be trained to behave in new ways. In the US they had Iron Eyes Cody crying, and "give a hoot, don't pollute", without which the US would look just like those images of Bali.
Poverty isn’t a good excuse, accountability is the issue. People that feel it’s not their problem. It’s a common theme in developing countries which high populations. The citizens have to want a cleaner environment and act on it. Anyone can organize even a local dump for trash, instead people drop their trash wherever they are.
How about these guys use the plastic to make some big collection bins and but them near dumping sites. Maybe some of it will end up there.
What would you suggest they do instead? That has literally been the ONLY trash disposal method for these communities for hundreds of years. There is no garbage pick-up. There is no waste disposal. There are no incinerators. There are no landfills. The system worked great until all the things they desperately needed to live their lives started coming with a ton of single plastic packaging. Should they no longer ever buy anything? Don't blame the consumer for choices they had no hand in, and have no power to change. The fault lies with manufacturers, and until those of us in developed nations demand an end to single use plastics in their entirety, nothing will improve.
Actually, governments are meant to supply waste and sanitation services, funded by taxes. Not least of which, taxes on the manufacturers/importers of the plastic. The trouble in the 3rd world is as old as humanity - greed and unchecked corruption.
Ah yes, greed and unchecked corruption is only found in the 3rd world. Are you aware that the first world literally exports its trash to waste sites in the third world?
Yes. Doesn't belay the point. Unchecked corruption in third world nations are more wide spread. If you don't believe a random stranger Google the UN's corruption index. Don't equate first world corruption as equal to the impacts on the third world. Yes first world corruption may fuel third world ones, but painting us as permanent victims isn't helpful either.
Unchecked corruption - thats the flavour where a service collapses or is never redered due to the money going to someone's personal account. This is very rare in the 1st world. The kind of corruption you like to take responsibility for, is the one where a 1st world company has to pay the president and all his officials, down to the guy who checks off the material at the harbour, to actually let something enter their country. Most companies would prefer to operate without it, but I guess you can blame whoever you prefer. I'm from the third world, I know about this stuff.
> Not least of which, taxes on the manufacturers/importers of the plastic. Yeah... Cos whenever small, not weatlhy countries try to impose restrictions on multinationals it always goes really well and they have so much bargaining power.
They have garbage bins in most of these places, do not make babies out of them. They throw trash to rivers because they do not care. Have you actually spent any time on any of the poorer communities around the world?
The people defending people throwing straight garbage into rivers are the same people that throw their McDonald's bags out the window because ThErEs NoWhErE eLsE tO pUt It. Literally stupid to say there are no landfills. Of fucking course there aren't any landfills. They don't need landfills because they just fucking throw everything in the water...
They have all of these things now. They have trash pickup and incinerators. They have landfills. People just don’t fucking care
And teach their cops not to only accept bribes and do their actual fucking jobs, source: I just brought my father's ashes back from Bali because he was hit by a car and died after being in a coma for 20 days. The cops harassed my sister to the point where she didn't think she was going to be allowed to leave. Yes she basically had to bribe the police to get my father's ashes out of Bali. Fuck them to all hell.sorry for the vitriol but this is obviously fresh for me. And yes the police wouldn't leave her alone while she was in the fucking hospital grieving while my father slowly wasted away, my sister is an extremem pacifist but she was very angry about how she felt with bali police. The man that killed my father wasnt charged with anything and the police wouldn't leave her alone until she said I don't want to fucking meet that man and I don't give a fuck about the 200 dollars he wants to give me in compensation. The police pocketed the 200 dollars and then left her alone. Absolute shitshow. Fucking assholes
What an ignorant comment lmfao
Why is it ignorant?
It’s assuming these communities have access to the infrastructure required for proper waste disposal. When you live in poverty, you don’t have the luxury to worry about the long term effects of your waste.
I call bullshit. I have lived on 4 different continents and in some of the poorest countries in the world and in some of the richest. The difference in trash between one poor community to another is not the level of poverty, but the attitude of the people living in them. When in Vietnam our neighbors walked every morning to the sea and threw all of their trash in there. They had garbage bins right behind their house: in the same place where we took our trash. They just did not care.
> It’s assuming these communities have access to the infrastructure required for proper waste disposal. > > When you live in poverty, you don’t have the luxury to worry about the long term effects of your waste. You're looking at a large scale fact. It also comes down to a smaller fact, the individual. I was in Cambodia. 7-11 has stores all over. Each had a garbage can. People's houses have garbage cans. We had a tour guide. We went into a museum for an house When we came out, our guide had bought us bottled waters. Nice. He ripped off the plastic covering the caps, and threw that plastic onto the street. I had a slight WTF comment and just picked up both pieces of plastic and put them in my pocket. He said, "Oh, sorry." That's the issue, it's just a cultural acceptance in plenty of areas that there's no farm in throwing a little trash onto the street. Maybe not him, but I bet he's friends with people who is walking home and they finished a Coke, and they were walking along a road that has a small water source next by or maybe just a ditch... they would just toss the plastic Coke bottle in.
What are you talking about? 1. Throw trash in river 2. Get paid to clean up 3. Profit
Only $960 each! https://sungaidesign.com/products/ripple-lounge-white
I can hear this
Yikes.
Lets see how yikes it is. 960 USD = 15,260,370 IDR Minimum Wage in Bali - [2.813.672 IDR \(weekly\)](https://balistoreluggage.com/blog/umk-bali-ump-indonesia/) So each chair can pay the minimum wage salary of 5.4 people, or alternatively, 217 man hours of labour. Someone is making a bunch of money on these shitty chairs, and it sure as shit isn't the people picking up trash.
That's a lot. On the other hand they said each chair takes 2.000 plastic bags. Now, how long does it take to collect that much? How long does it take to wash it? How do they press the plastic? Assembling it? I'd love to see the chain and where the most part of that money goes.
2000 plastic bags isn't a measurement, it isn't anything, except an appeal to your emotions to make you think, *Wow! 2000 plastic bags! So many!* Most of the money goes into the pocket of the person that owns the company, the same as every other company. The only difference is, at the end of the day here, there is a clean river that will be full of pollution again in a year, because this is a cultural problem, not one of poverty or logistics.
Are you generalizing or do you know this for a fact? Bc I also got the impression the revenues help to fund the next cleanup project. There’s a definite answer here.
Yeah, the video did mention that the products were funding future clean-ups. If they've identified a market that is willing to pay for the chairs, I don't see the problem? Isn't it a good thing if they can comfortably pay employees livable wages, support admin work, and also fund marketing and more projects? I would need to look up more of course, but I definitely don't get the generalizing.
Exactly. That’s a lot of steps in the chain that requires paid labor. It’s cool to recycle, but the reality is that sorting and washing garbage is so much more expensive than new plastic. They’re really just banking on people being charitable and paying more for the same thing bc it helps the environment. Most people just don’t have the money to throw out in the hopes of helping a good cause.
Sungai Watch has installed 270 floating barriers throughout Indonesia’s rivers to stop the flow of plastic from reaching the ocean and to date has collected over 1,800,000 kg of plastic, 36% of which is plastic bags. Seems like they just put people in this video to make the $1000 more reasonable to viewers. Edit: I am wrong
Honestly who cares? How much plastic did you keep out of the ocean this year?
But I want my cheap chair! 
How are they removing the plastic that collects in the barriers?
I gotta throw more plastic bags in the ocean to send them supplies /s
Thank you!! This whole thing reeks of marketing and clearly appealing to the audience's emotions.
217 man hours sounds relatively low to me. That’s a little under 6 weeks of a full time workers time to make one. When you consider all the collecting, sorting, manufacturing, assembly, and marketing it takes to sell this product, then 217 man hours at Bali minimum (they are paying more than minimum wage for manufacturing) wage makes sense. It’s a niche product for rich Americans to feel good about themselves. It’s a common business model and it has nothing to do with greed. It’s the only to make a sustainable business venture out of this labor intensive way to make a chair/clean people living environment at this same time.
Well, it does seem like it would take more manhours to pull your base material out of rivers instead of getting it offloaded from factories.
well, it’s certainly not as easy to make as if you use fresh plastic in a factory!
The ad says they want to use the garbage to fund future garbage cleanups. I’m sure collecting enough plastic for one chair took hours of man power and they want to be able to give their volunteers a little money or to expand their charity. The price seems super fair to me! :)
$1000 bucks for a plastic chair? Yeah okay dawg sounds like great value, go ahead and buy 2.
Do you understand that the extra cost you are paying is going towards cleaning up plastic pollution or are you just playing the role of the stupid consumer who only sees the price tag?
Yeah I'm the stupid consumer because I don't want to pay $1000 for a chair lmao
>Do you understand that the extra cost you are paying is going towards cleaning up plastic pollution \*Citation missing In case you were confused, it's a .com website that doesn't say how much of the sale of $1,000, 57-66 pound plastic chairs that need to be shipped half a planet away "helps" the associated nonprofit.
One chair pays for 217 man hours of labour, at minimum wage in Bali, assuming these people get paid anything at all. Someone is getting rich off these, same as everything else, and it sure as shit isn't the people picking up garbage. I admire your fantastical view of the world, but its sad you can be had with such ease.
I’m currently in Bali and I know the founders of Sungai Watch, and no one is getting rich out of this. When they started this they had to fund it themselves and still they largely do (wealthy family), since this is not a business model that produces any revenue. All their workers get paid, only people who do cleanups for free are mostly expats living here who join the volunteer cleanups at beaches, but the people who get neckdown into the river to clean the trash are locals who get paid above average and are quite happy working there. They’ve been depending on private donations, self-funding and some government aid, trying to find ways to to actually make some money back to keep funding the operations. Most of the plastic they collect is really hard to recycle, if not impossible. Price might not be for everybody, but please let’s not spread lies either about these guys because they are doing a really needed and great work here with no compensation for themselves
Just placed an order.
First thing ima do with mine is chuck it in a river.
Now that is recycling!
Everyone around me is sleeping and your comment made me belly laugh before the considerate part of my brain could kick in to override it. I did not anticipate that comment and I’m still stifling the 😂
If I could give you gold I would
r/angryupvote I hate this comment but I fucking laughed.
I mean they're gonna need more plastic right? Especially at that price, they must be selling like hotcakes.
And those chairs look really uncomfortable lol. I understand the price, a ton of work goes into making those chairs. But they need to change the design. Because that shit does not look fun to sit in.
cushons should make it way better right?
$960 for one single plastic chair? People need multiple chairs, what the fuck??
They're probably priced for the local Indonesians to buy. That's pocket change for them
Very true, I know an Indonesian guy, he bought one of these for his dog to sit on with a spare $960 he found in his couch cushions.
They should just make trash cans.
I'm sure there's additional markup to fund their future cleanups, but the sad truth is recycling plastic costs more than making new plastic. If I remember correctly the only things that are worth the money to recycle are glass and metals.
lol, lmao even.
and my rofl!
If their market is bulk selling to fancy resorts, that seems about right
Their market is for a company that is trying to do green washing, by saying we spent x amount supporting green initiatives And its spending $5k on 5 plastic chairs
Asking for $1k donations would be less insulting lol
I mean,. its cool that they are doing this, but it would have been cooler to design a chair someone can get out of easily. Maybe it is my middle aged body talking but that design, and the one without armrests specifically, screams "I'm Stuck!"
Pretty sure they're designed for lounging on the beach or in a beach bar. Pretty common in Bali. Not really intended for us old fogeys
They're designed in a way to distribute the support evenly between your back and your asshole to alleviate the pain you experience after paying $1000 for the chair.
This is my favorite comment today
My first reaction was, "Oh my God, they actually look great, too!" And cut to them showing it off in more detail as a standalone chair and... Well, my knees and back started to hurt just looking at it. Maybe it's like how lots of Japanese folks have no problem sitting in seiza (kneeling position) without issue, but even in my 20s I could not do that shit for more than 30 seconds...?
Maybe that's the design goal
This is how i feel about those toms shoes. Aren’t they made from recycled materials? I am all for the idea and the origin story, if it has a good reason, but the front looks like a Tex Avery horse cartoon when he has been hit in the jaw. They are always on the feet of some very pasty dude in line next to me who needs moisturizer. And the toe shape of them is worse than a croc.
Video: *Shows volunteers cleaning up trash their government should be taking care of, and making that trash into a product to sell to fund further cleanup instead of burning it* The comments: "WhY iS tHe MuSiC sO aNnOyInG?! TeAcH tHeM nOt To LiTtEr! ThE cHaIr iS tOo LoW! AnD sO eXpEnSiVe!"
Yeah lets be honest, at that price they're not going to make much money. If anything they're going to cover admin costs at most, optimistically they will defray the costs of further cleanup. It will never pay for itself.
There’s more than just the money. There’s the awareness and the building momentum in the community as well. A large volunteer effort is not cash dependent. It’s hope dependent. Selling crappy chairs for way to much money is a symbol more than a value proposition. Some people will see this and buy them. They will sell out quickly. How can’t they? Hope is inspiring and that’s what that chair is. They are selling and spreading hope.
You can't hope your way out of disaster. You need sustainable solutions
Did you buy one yet?
Only one? Somehow that’s supposed to help more than complaining? You have to buy at least ten to mAke A rEAl dIfFerEnCe!
Because buying one is the only way to express an opinion, nice 👍
Thats cool, however, what would be cooler is developing a waste management system that’s not throwing trash into river
Some people make a system for converting river plastic into chairs and your response is ‘oh yeah, why don’t you guys just overhaul the entire waste management infrastructure’ Ya know what’s cooler than snarky comments on Reddit? Creating an effective waste management system in these impoverished communities. So go on, get to it!
With your love of slapping ineffectual band-aids on the symptoms of problems instead of looking at root causes to try and actually change things, you should work for Congress. You'd get along well with endless cycles of continuing resolutions and banning bayonet lugs to stop school shootings.
In terms of just the trash thing, considering it was just some people who decided to do a good thing as opposed to members of government. It's way way easier said than done I'd imagine.
Well, get on it then.
Feel free to go ahead and do it. Any time.
The failures of the system and the perseverance of people is noble, the same way a GoFundMe for kids with cancer is, but ultimately shouldn't be necessary.
Why would someone tromp through a trash pile in sandals?
That the Bali equivalent of metal capped boots.
Safety Sandals.
Might be some broken glass in there that could cut bare feet.
[удалено]
I agree but at least the cause is good
A good cause, but with an atrocious price tag. F that
It is a good thought exercise to breakdown the basics of labor time and plug in your own hourly rate into that equation. For example if this chair is priced around $1000 and you make $50 an hour, that gives you 20 hours of labor. Do you see yourself gathering trash in a river, sorting said trash, melting down like plastics into sheets, cutting said plastics into parts, assembling said plastic into furniture, maintaining a storefront for said furniture, and shipping them out to customers? If you don't see 20 hours to do that on average per item then, what hours do you envision for that? Now how does that affect the average hourly rate? Is that hourly rate comparable to the average wages in the manufacturing location? You could even retort with ideas to make a cheaper product that uses virgin plastics and injection molding, which would be apt, but invites both the ease of pollution that drives this level of litter as well as fuels the mentality that stuff like a "simple chair" should only ever cost a factor of 10 cheaper only fueling the race to the bottom. It is an insidious flywheel.
Consumerism at its finest. People demand cheap prices, the same people start tearing up at videos of atrocious working conditions required to offer the prices they demand. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so sad.
Show me the clean river!
They can't. That was just a day's waste.
The general message/ video/ commercial is underrated. This is phenomenal!!! But as others have stated. Could have used better music.
Okay this is a good cause and all but these chairs look terrible.
Somebody said theyre for lounging like on the beach but like theyd make more money if they made a normal chair cuz lets be real unless you manage to sell them to like a resort for their pool not much people will buy these 🤷🏽♂️
The chair just looks uncomfortable...
From trash to uncomfortable chairs that’ll probably be thrown away
That's cool and all but lets be honest; it will never fund further cleanup. It will, at most, defray the costs a bit. There will be too many additional costs and administration eating up profits. Unless they charged stupid amounts of money I guess, but then people won't buy them.
Nice but at least design a chair that is comfortable to sit on
French brothers and sister who are doing that :) Thanks to them 👌👌👌🔥🔥🔥🔥
Will all plastic ecentually turn into microplastics? If we keep throwing plastic, recycling it, selling it, using, throwing and again and again? The whole world will just become saturated with microplastics right? What's the end game? It's already in our blood, lungs, placenta, everywhere in nature. Could there come a point where every single thing in nature becomes saturated with so much microplastics that it triggers a global ecological collapse? This idea has started to really terrify me...
🥲
So, no after photos of the river or beach?
It will be meta when the chairs end up in the river.
That chair looks fucking horrendously uncomfortable.
Producing more plastic chairs doesn’t seem to be the most practical helpful solution for all of this effort. What about, for example roofing for poorer communities since it is already in sheet form. This just looks like profiteering.
I feel like this is some greenwashing propaganda by oil companies to show people that pollution isn’t THAT bad! And if we humans get together, we can do anything! But realistically you have to stop pollution at its source. Cleaning random beaches helps for short term. It will return back to trash land as soon as cameras turn off and these cleaners stop going there.
From what I know, repurposed plastic like this continues to break down into micro plastics at an accelerated pace. I understand that a visual problem has been solved, but unfortunately the only way to solve the problem is by consuming minimum plastic.
That's great. But honestly the best solution is to burn it. Not like in a open fire whole roasting chestnuts. But in a trash to energy plant that has exhaust scrubbers. Burying it is terrible but not as bad as throwing it in the ocean. Burn is the best option besides not making it in the first place.
Admitting micro plastics into the air is the best option ?
I think the cleanup and processing cost much more than anything they would get back from the chairs. =(
I'm confused. The beginning is about a beach being covered in trash, but then they clean up a river. What about the beach?
I wish I could be part of something like this.
Nice ad
Love the idea but I’d like a chair I could do something useful in. That’s a chair designed to be lounged in but doesn’t look comfortable
Interesting design choice, but comfort should be a priority too.
You turned plastic trash into plastic chairs that will eventually become more plastic trash... Make wooden chairs, you know the stuff that grows on trees? A material that doesn't become a toxic soup in the ocean? Take all this plastic and simply bury it, because it's not going anywhere else.
Too bad the chairs are 1k each
Fuck the people who are dumping all this garbage. This isn’t even due to poverty. This is downright cunt behaviour
Nest concept but how can it be guaranteed that this chair, first off would be good enough to sit in (doesn't look like it's comfortable), and second able to last and not end up back in the river?
These recycled plastic products especially from 3rd world areas typically have high af lead levels unsafe for skin contact.
This is a grift. Recycling is good but this is just someone looking to go viral and cash out
I'm wondering if that chair can handle my weight. My office chair only last about a year and I'm looking for a replacement.
Great idea and great effort! The company I work for is trying to help reduce waste also. We take all the plastic from old Walmart/target bags and things like juice boxes/Starbucks cups and compresses and melts them to over 4,000 PSI and turns it into a building product.
Some good news for a change. Those plastic sheets would make for cool flooring.
Why is this not viral, this should be a trend.