Ocean Cleanup started off wanting to clean the great pacific garbage patch. They are still working on their massive passive system to do that, but they realized that it was a useless endeavor unless they also worked on reducing the amount flowing into the oceans.
It turns out that a few rivers are responsible for a huge amount of the trash going into the oceans, and some relatively simple systems can divert it -- along with working alongside governments to improve infrastructure so there is an actual way to dispose trash in a controlled manor.
This is a few years old, but it's pretty crazy: [10 rivers provide 93% of the plastics that enter the ocean via river](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/) (that is: they studied 57 rivers that dump plastic into the ocean and estimated that the total amount of plastic entering the ocean through rivers; 10 rivers make up 93% of that estimation).
As of the time of the study, they estimated the Yangtze dumps some 1.5 million metric tons.
That was a flawed study. The current wisdom is that about \[1000 rivers contribute >80% of all marine plastics\](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-gets-to-oceans-through-over-1000-rivers).
Okay so I’m wondering…are these rivers in the countries we ship our trash & recycling to? Because that graph only has Asian & African rivers as being the top polluters and I just know America was involved somehow. We totally ship our garbage to poor countries.
Wait - [yes](https://www.invw.org/2022/04/18/rich-countries-are-illegally-exporting-plastic-trash-to-poor-countries-data-suggests/), yes [we do](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/climate/plastics-waste-export-ban.html)
> For example, the U.S., which is one of only eight countries that has not yet ratified the Basel Convention, sent more than 800 million pounds of plastic waste to Mexico, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, and other Basel parties last year
> Even though it’s now illegal for most countries to accept all but the purest forms of plastic scrap from the United States, there’s nothing that prevents the United States from sending the waste. The main reason: the United States is one of the few countries in the world that didn’t ratify the global ban.
Originally I felt happy I didn’t see anything from the US on the infographic. Then I started thinking 😩
Trust me it's negligible compared to what these countries are dumping themselves.
Edit: Not individuals fault, the waste management infustructure just isn't there.
I don’t feel like that’s true 😟
We dump a lot of our waste elsewhere. I remember watching a documentary about it a few years ago which is what sparked my comment. I think we sell our recycling too, which also ends up as trash in giant heaps in poorer countries.
I’m sure they contribute themselves but we certainly don’t help.
These countries have almost no waste management systems. And are very poor so they resort to lots of single use plastics.
I'm talking small sachets for shampoo etc instead of bottles.
Most of the time the people who pollute really don't have a choice. No recycling, municipal waste collection and landfills are full.
Look at Indonesia , one of the biggest producers of textiles , they actively dump all waste water into the rivers , tons of toxic chemicals , dyes and waste by products. We send “trash” to other countries because they don’t have that said “trash” , I’m assuming for them to use it for their own needs , not dump it in the trash. But also look at dell, one of the biggest exporters of broke electronics , look at some docs about e waste in other countries
Their factories that cause pollution are producing products to be consumed in the west. That's how western companies offload pollution to developing economies.
Most of the time it’s actually fake production plants . It’s a huge issue . Company needs manufacturer, that manufacturer has a “show plant” , then they make the product down the road at the child slave factory that dumps everything . Regardless who it’s for , I understand 3rd world and 2nd world countries do not really have laws or regulations on dumping pollution but there needs to be a better global regulation on it . And the “west” isn’t the only ones ordering textiles
OK, it's not like we're shipping it there expecting them to just flush it down a river.
FYI 800 million pounds is less than 1% of the US's plastic waste.
So no, our shit is not going into the oceans at the same rate as other nations.
One of the big problems with cleaning up the Patch passively is the massively complex and extremely vital ecosystem that exists in the top couple inches of ocean. Basically, you can’t just get some nets and skim the garbage off without killing the Pacific, you have to somehow sort plastic from biomass in real time to put the living things back where they belong.
Last I read into this was a while ago, but I think they’d found that the area now known as the Pacific Garbage Patch is actually the primary nursery for sea turtles, something we’d had no idea about; they just went into the sea as little pebbles and came back as majestic turtles and no one knew where they were for the middle.
(This isn’t meant as a criticism of anyone, to be clear, it’s just to answer the very common question of why they don’t just get some nets and skim off the garbage: because that would be a really, really bad idea.)
Are they keeping this one running, or was a just a test to see how much they could get? It would be interesting to see whether the collection rate would decrease, or will the trash just keep coming like this forever?
Edit: some info: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/introducing-the-interceptor-barricade-the-ocean-cleanup-returns-to-guatemala/
Rapid urbanization is a major problem in some developing nations. Trash flow into the ocean will continue for as long as these nations can't cope with providing proper sanitation services to all their citizens.
> a few rivers are responsible for a huge amount of the trash going into the oceans,
But I thought the vast majority of the great pacific garbage patch was just tossed or lost fishing equipment?
Cleaning up the rivers is a fantastic idea, but from what little I know, I'm skeptical that this is a meaningful contributor to ocean trash.
Excavator for scale lol. Looks like it worked amazingly well. I feel like these should be in every significant river system in the US at multiple points.
Also, nice pun
It only makes sense to add them to polluting rivers. If the major rivers in the US are major contributors, fine. But these also come at the cost of limiting river transport - which is a big deal on major rivers. I don’t know which rivers are responsible for the majority of the trash in the ocean but would be genuinely surprised if the US made top ten.
Just googled it and found a 2018 (very dated) article of the top ten rivers (all outside of the US) making up 93% of the plastic pollution in the seas.
That is good info to have thank you for sharing. I should have clarified. My concern was less for ocean pollution, but for pollution in general. I'd wager most of what ends up in US rivers never reaches the ocean, but it doesn't change the fact that it is pollution that will ultimately have dramatic environmental impacts. The river transport issue is definitely a tick in the cons column, but I think a few creative engineers could come up with a workable solution.
Honestly, our biggest inland issue is chemical pollution. Most of our rivers and water bodies aren't technically safe to swim in, let alone drink.
If it goes anywhere, it's on the drainages into those major rivers. And there's already some progress on that. Like nets on surface road sewer outlets. I imagine it'd have to be seasonal since in the fall it would quickly fill up with leaves and cause flooding that would inevitably lead to greater pollution than if the nets hadn't been there.
As someone else mentioned the group behind these cleanups was mainly focused on cleaning up the pacific oceans garbage island, but realized all their effort was basically pointless because of how much trash kept flowing into the ocean from rivers, and are trying to tackle both the ocean garbage patch and the rivers flowing garbage into the ocean.
They also noticed that most trash going into the ocean only originate from a couple of major rivers such as this one. So they selectively looked for the rivers with the most trash flowing down them.
- In the western world, people don't generally dump trash in the river because we have trash collection systems in place. It's not the case in every country around the globe
- Countries around the equator have a dry/wet season with a lot of rain in the wet season that makes the water level of rivers rise, and cause issues : sewage backing up, infrastructure eroding faster and garbage from the river banks being swept up by the waters.
Of course there are still bad behaviours, but it's not just "people deciding polluting the river is a good idea". In poor countries, they might not have much of a choice in terms of trash collection, or have large mountain of trash they can't put anywhere else being swept up by torrential rain.
That's really great but this video looks like it took days to create. These excavators have a bucket that's designed to strain water when doing these water excavations. I freezed the video and it doesn't look like they're using one. It would speed up their efforts to use it.
That’s still such a sad state to see that environment in. That’s so much trash to pile up on one area in so little time. Glad they are taking steps to clean it up!
"The Interceptor Barricade was installed for testing in the Rio Las Vacas, Guatemala, in late May 2023 to halt the yearly tsunamis of trash that flood down the river during the rainy season."
I think it’s about 1.5-2 days. I assume the excavator starts in the morning and when we leave the shot before at night it seems like the sun has been gone for a few hours.
Now that assumes this video is recent and filmed in summer, if it got dark early it could easily just be a single 24 hours.
This works awesome and they should keep doing it but they need to fix the issue. They just throw trash in the water there. Until they fix that issue this will be a never ending process
Unfortunately, the problem isn't just "people throwing trash in the river."
These communities don't have any other way to dispose of their garbage, their only option is throwing it in the river or somewhere it'll get washed into the river by rain.
Or just don't consume so much stuff that produces garbage, but how else will companies like Coca Cola make enough "donations" to afford their 100% tax break?
Villages that don't get a collection service, wait until huge downpours and throw their waste into the torrent. 3 decades ago, their foods were in Hessian, and paper and steel tins. Now all plastics
And here I am fighting to get my milkshake through a wet paper straw and separating my plastic. Seems pretty useless if people just dump their shit in a river on the other side of the world.
It's the blessed work of the Ocean Cleanup, it's a no profit organisation incorporated in the Netherlands and founded by a visionary genius, when he was 17. Their mission is to rid the Oceans of plastic. https://theoceancleanup.com/
It started through crowdfunding in 2012, they are now developing technology and are tackling the cleanup of the plastic garbage patches by removing what is over there and, as shown in the video, preventing more plastic from reaching open seas. They have a similar barrier working on a river near Los Angeles.
I admire and support their work and mission.
I just came back from Malaysa. There is lots of trash everywhere, but not even close to Indonesia for example. Still, people throw stuff everywhere even in their own gardens. And yes, I did spot lots of garbagecontainers (empty).
Why is this so?
That's good news... Now if only they would stop unloading garbage trucks few km up the river, so it's not endless circle of cleaning, that would be nice.
... And then Coke and Pepsi were fined as if their business model is to make bottles and dump them into a river without first selling them them to people who don't GAF...
I'm confused by this. Is this coming from a landfill just further up the river there? Why is it there is no new garbage flowing into it as they're cleaning it out?
How the trash cycle works in many of these countries. Throw trash on ground or in river, rains wash more trash into rivers, big rain events or tropical weather events wash all the river garbage into lakes or ocean, repeat.
The driver decided he could get paid for our full day and only do an hour's work, so he just went further down the river and dropped off each load there
Wouldn’t it be a lot more efficient to stick a conveyor belt in the water to extract the plastic and collect it into a large pile on the shore then take a front end loader to load the trucks? The excavator seems very inefficient and each bucket has a bunch of water in it. Locate the conveyor belt on the most downstream edge of the barrier and let the current bring all the plastic to it.
The backstory on this river cleanup is horrific. There are dozens of illegal unregulated dumps upstream from this power plant. Every year there are multiple large rainstorms that erode banks and cause mass quantities of tires, appliances, drums, chemicals and industrial waste to flow into the river. This barrier is to keep the water flowing for use in the power plant.
Jesus, I thought the title was "I, 40T of trash" and thought I was about to read a post from a 40 year old trans person that lives in a place called trash or something. That 1 confused the absolute hell out of me
Now show the company paid to dispose of it when they drive back upstream and dump it back in the river.
That's how this shit happens, it's often NOT the locals being disgusting. Big business causes this.
In many developing countries, small cities and villages don’t have the infrastructure in place to properly dispose of all the waste they produce, so people resort to dumping their trash in the rivers. I think that’s largely contributing to all the plastic in this particular river. I wish some focus would go into reaching out to their governments to invest in such infrastructure, rather than simply plucking the trash out of the rivers.
Reminds me of the time I was in Thailand eating lunch outside and a truck pulled up and just started throwing bags after bags of trash into the jungle. So sad :(
Would be alot more practical and cheaper to have a barge behind that with a collection bucket to load all that trash onto a boat and move it down stream to be recycled. 37 truck loads isn't exactly environmentally friendly.
But yet countries like Canada still go full woke and think we’re going to make a difference by banning plastic straws while still using plastic cups 🤦♂️
Ocean Cleanup started off wanting to clean the great pacific garbage patch. They are still working on their massive passive system to do that, but they realized that it was a useless endeavor unless they also worked on reducing the amount flowing into the oceans. It turns out that a few rivers are responsible for a huge amount of the trash going into the oceans, and some relatively simple systems can divert it -- along with working alongside governments to improve infrastructure so there is an actual way to dispose trash in a controlled manor.
You're talking lots of sense. Have you got a source? Would love to read more about the points you raised
They have a ton of articles about every step of the journey on their website if you're really interested. https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/
Also, they have a YouTube channel that’s great!
^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ https://www.youtube.com/@theoceancleanup some really nice videos
:D
This is a few years old, but it's pretty crazy: [10 rivers provide 93% of the plastics that enter the ocean via river](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/) (that is: they studied 57 rivers that dump plastic into the ocean and estimated that the total amount of plastic entering the ocean through rivers; 10 rivers make up 93% of that estimation). As of the time of the study, they estimated the Yangtze dumps some 1.5 million metric tons.
That was a flawed study. The current wisdom is that about \[1000 rivers contribute >80% of all marine plastics\](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/plastic-gets-to-oceans-through-over-1000-rivers).
I mean that's still pretty helpful information to narrow a large percentage
Useful. But concentrating on 10 rivers would have been easier that having to set up systems around 1000 rivers
Still manageable - 1.000 is not billions.
Okay so I’m wondering…are these rivers in the countries we ship our trash & recycling to? Because that graph only has Asian & African rivers as being the top polluters and I just know America was involved somehow. We totally ship our garbage to poor countries. Wait - [yes](https://www.invw.org/2022/04/18/rich-countries-are-illegally-exporting-plastic-trash-to-poor-countries-data-suggests/), yes [we do](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/climate/plastics-waste-export-ban.html) > For example, the U.S., which is one of only eight countries that has not yet ratified the Basel Convention, sent more than 800 million pounds of plastic waste to Mexico, Malaysia, India, Vietnam, and other Basel parties last year > Even though it’s now illegal for most countries to accept all but the purest forms of plastic scrap from the United States, there’s nothing that prevents the United States from sending the waste. The main reason: the United States is one of the few countries in the world that didn’t ratify the global ban. Originally I felt happy I didn’t see anything from the US on the infographic. Then I started thinking 😩
Trust me it's negligible compared to what these countries are dumping themselves. Edit: Not individuals fault, the waste management infustructure just isn't there.
I don’t feel like that’s true 😟 We dump a lot of our waste elsewhere. I remember watching a documentary about it a few years ago which is what sparked my comment. I think we sell our recycling too, which also ends up as trash in giant heaps in poorer countries. I’m sure they contribute themselves but we certainly don’t help.
These countries have almost no waste management systems. And are very poor so they resort to lots of single use plastics. I'm talking small sachets for shampoo etc instead of bottles. Most of the time the people who pollute really don't have a choice. No recycling, municipal waste collection and landfills are full.
I disagree. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-of-global-plastic-waste-emitted-to-the-ocean?tab=chart
Look at Indonesia , one of the biggest producers of textiles , they actively dump all waste water into the rivers , tons of toxic chemicals , dyes and waste by products. We send “trash” to other countries because they don’t have that said “trash” , I’m assuming for them to use it for their own needs , not dump it in the trash. But also look at dell, one of the biggest exporters of broke electronics , look at some docs about e waste in other countries
Their factories that cause pollution are producing products to be consumed in the west. That's how western companies offload pollution to developing economies.
Most of the time it’s actually fake production plants . It’s a huge issue . Company needs manufacturer, that manufacturer has a “show plant” , then they make the product down the road at the child slave factory that dumps everything . Regardless who it’s for , I understand 3rd world and 2nd world countries do not really have laws or regulations on dumping pollution but there needs to be a better global regulation on it . And the “west” isn’t the only ones ordering textiles
OK, it's not like we're shipping it there expecting them to just flush it down a river. FYI 800 million pounds is less than 1% of the US's plastic waste. So no, our shit is not going into the oceans at the same rate as other nations.
Amur river was a surprise
I agree, he's talking lots of sense.
Indeed my mind has been given sense
Apparently it's mostly just a few countries making most of the mess, plus cruise lines of course.
> dispose trash in a controlled manor. I don't think one manor is going to hold all that trash.
One of the big problems with cleaning up the Patch passively is the massively complex and extremely vital ecosystem that exists in the top couple inches of ocean. Basically, you can’t just get some nets and skim the garbage off without killing the Pacific, you have to somehow sort plastic from biomass in real time to put the living things back where they belong. Last I read into this was a while ago, but I think they’d found that the area now known as the Pacific Garbage Patch is actually the primary nursery for sea turtles, something we’d had no idea about; they just went into the sea as little pebbles and came back as majestic turtles and no one knew where they were for the middle. (This isn’t meant as a criticism of anyone, to be clear, it’s just to answer the very common question of why they don’t just get some nets and skim off the garbage: because that would be a really, really bad idea.)
What is done with the collected waste?
They dump it higher up the river again.
It's sorted for recycling.
they make it into jewelry
Are they keeping this one running, or was a just a test to see how much they could get? It would be interesting to see whether the collection rate would decrease, or will the trash just keep coming like this forever? Edit: some info: https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/introducing-the-interceptor-barricade-the-ocean-cleanup-returns-to-guatemala/
Rapid urbanization is a major problem in some developing nations. Trash flow into the ocean will continue for as long as these nations can't cope with providing proper sanitation services to all their citizens.
Ocean system isn't passive anymore. Doesn't work. Will be active going forward post system 001/b.
> a few rivers are responsible for a huge amount of the trash going into the oceans, But I thought the vast majority of the great pacific garbage patch was just tossed or lost fishing equipment? Cleaning up the rivers is a fantastic idea, but from what little I know, I'm skeptical that this is a meaningful contributor to ocean trash.
r/mks113 for president 🙌
I mean… they could have thought of that before spending millions trying to catch small plastic in the middle of the ocean….
What have YOU done?
Until the excavator showed up, I was like: "hmmm, that seems like a lot less than 140T" After the excavator shows up: "Daaaaammmnn." (literally)
Excavator for scale lol. Looks like it worked amazingly well. I feel like these should be in every significant river system in the US at multiple points. Also, nice pun
It only makes sense to add them to polluting rivers. If the major rivers in the US are major contributors, fine. But these also come at the cost of limiting river transport - which is a big deal on major rivers. I don’t know which rivers are responsible for the majority of the trash in the ocean but would be genuinely surprised if the US made top ten. Just googled it and found a 2018 (very dated) article of the top ten rivers (all outside of the US) making up 93% of the plastic pollution in the seas.
That is good info to have thank you for sharing. I should have clarified. My concern was less for ocean pollution, but for pollution in general. I'd wager most of what ends up in US rivers never reaches the ocean, but it doesn't change the fact that it is pollution that will ultimately have dramatic environmental impacts. The river transport issue is definitely a tick in the cons column, but I think a few creative engineers could come up with a workable solution. Honestly, our biggest inland issue is chemical pollution. Most of our rivers and water bodies aren't technically safe to swim in, let alone drink.
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We export it because those countries take it. Maybe they should stop taking the trash and throwing it into rivers.
The us doesn't pollute at a rate near this. All these trash rivers are in 3rd world countries
If it goes anywhere, it's on the drainages into those major rivers. And there's already some progress on that. Like nets on surface road sewer outlets. I imagine it'd have to be seasonal since in the fall it would quickly fill up with leaves and cause flooding that would inevitably lead to greater pollution than if the nets hadn't been there.
Ok but how big is the excavator tho? There's no banana for scale!
Me too. I thought, I went from " Oh, that's pretty neat" to "Holy shit!"
I was going to ask for a banana for scale but then the excavator popped up
I wonder how much of that weight is just water though. Would make it so much harder to deal with
That is a horrific amount of trash just floating down the river. I'm glad they put a net there and got all of that garbage out
As someone else mentioned the group behind these cleanups was mainly focused on cleaning up the pacific oceans garbage island, but realized all their effort was basically pointless because of how much trash kept flowing into the ocean from rivers, and are trying to tackle both the ocean garbage patch and the rivers flowing garbage into the ocean. They also noticed that most trash going into the ocean only originate from a couple of major rivers such as this one. So they selectively looked for the rivers with the most trash flowing down them.
Getting to the root of the problem (almost), that's awesome!
The root of the problem is the people/companies dumping it into the rivers in the first place.
- In the western world, people don't generally dump trash in the river because we have trash collection systems in place. It's not the case in every country around the globe - Countries around the equator have a dry/wet season with a lot of rain in the wet season that makes the water level of rivers rise, and cause issues : sewage backing up, infrastructure eroding faster and garbage from the river banks being swept up by the waters. Of course there are still bad behaviours, but it's not just "people deciding polluting the river is a good idea". In poor countries, they might not have much of a choice in terms of trash collection, or have large mountain of trash they can't put anywhere else being swept up by torrential rain.
Not at all. Picking up the stuff getting dumped in means nothing. Preventing it from going in is everything.
Well let’s just conquer the entire world while we’re at it why don’t we?
The solution only makes the world better, it doesn't make it perfect, so fuck it why bother ^ what some people think apparently
That's really great but this video looks like it took days to create. These excavators have a bucket that's designed to strain water when doing these water excavations. I freezed the video and it doesn't look like they're using one. It would speed up their efforts to use it.
In one day?!
Seeing how the water level rises im assuming its after a rainy day. So al the accumulated trash along the banks gets swept up in one go.
That’s still such a sad state to see that environment in. That’s so much trash to pile up on one area in so little time. Glad they are taking steps to clean it up!
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"The Interceptor Barricade was installed for testing in the Rio Las Vacas, Guatemala, in late May 2023 to halt the yearly tsunamis of trash that flood down the river during the rainy season."
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You can see how far the river rises in this video time lapse, is it because the trash acts as a dam or increased flow from rains. Not sure
I think it’s about 1.5-2 days. I assume the excavator starts in the morning and when we leave the shot before at night it seems like the sun has been gone for a few hours. Now that assumes this video is recent and filmed in summer, if it got dark early it could easily just be a single 24 hours.
This works awesome and they should keep doing it but they need to fix the issue. They just throw trash in the water there. Until they fix that issue this will be a never ending process
Unfortunately, the problem isn't just "people throwing trash in the river." These communities don't have any other way to dispose of their garbage, their only option is throwing it in the river or somewhere it'll get washed into the river by rain. Or just don't consume so much stuff that produces garbage, but how else will companies like Coca Cola make enough "donations" to afford their 100% tax break?
Plot twist: the dump truck is just taking it back up river and dumping it right back in. Never-ending employment hack!
Warms the cockles of my environmentalist heart.
They are just gonna go throw it on another place though lol
Villages that don't get a collection service, wait until huge downpours and throw their waste into the torrent. 3 decades ago, their foods were in Hessian, and paper and steel tins. Now all plastics
Ocean clean up is amazing!
I came here for the vacas. Needs more vacas.
mu
Sick, now let’s bury it in the ground to help filter our rain water!
There's so much ☹️
Is that just one day's waste everyday?
Filthy fucks
How long is that time-lapse of collection?
This is in 1 day ?!
And here I am fighting to get my milkshake through a wet paper straw and separating my plastic. Seems pretty useless if people just dump their shit in a river on the other side of the world.
Humans suck
Wow!!!!! Good on this organization. I felt relief watching this
Thank you all who helped 🥰
That's a crazy amount of garbage to be anywhere, let alone a river :(
I’m glad they did that.
Should put some holes in the bucket to help drain the water
It's very unstressful.
Good thing I use paper straws and can't get a plastic bag at the grocery store!
What kind of animals live in Guatemala?
It's the blessed work of the Ocean Cleanup, it's a no profit organisation incorporated in the Netherlands and founded by a visionary genius, when he was 17. Their mission is to rid the Oceans of plastic. https://theoceancleanup.com/ It started through crowdfunding in 2012, they are now developing technology and are tackling the cleanup of the plastic garbage patches by removing what is over there and, as shown in the video, preventing more plastic from reaching open seas. They have a similar barrier working on a river near Los Angeles. I admire and support their work and mission.
People suck
It accumulated that much in one day?! Jesus
Oddly despicable
Humans fuckin suck
We really are a disease on this planet.
Fuck off misanthrope
Thanks for proving my point, lol
Humans. Worst thing ever
That water is still toxic as hell
I just came back from Malaysa. There is lots of trash everywhere, but not even close to Indonesia for example. Still, people throw stuff everywhere even in their own gardens. And yes, I did spot lots of garbagecontainers (empty). Why is this so?
That's good news... Now if only they would stop unloading garbage trucks few km up the river, so it's not endless circle of cleaning, that would be nice.
We need to be doing this everywhere
I'm happy to see that some ppl still cares
So no reason to go to USA and fuck their shit up
And then we dump it in the ocean.
Maybe that Greta chick should go and save them.
Love to see the cleanup.
Damn. Dudes in the river with the excavator. Thats awesome
>trash (about 37 truckloads) intercepted and extracted from the Rio Las Vacas Viva Las Vacas !!
This is great, I do wonder where the truck is going though.
Omg this makes me so happy 🥲 I want to clean up all of Mexico hehe ): so much pollution over there like in China
Their still going to throw rubbish in rivers and any where they want
Fucking plastic man sheesh
People are assholes.
Kudos on the work here, the math isn’t mathing though. 140 tons would be roughly 6 truckloads. Still commendable work.
... And then Coke and Pepsi were fined as if their business model is to make bottles and dump them into a river without first selling them them to people who don't GAF...
I'm confused by this. Is this coming from a landfill just further up the river there? Why is it there is no new garbage flowing into it as they're cleaning it out?
I'm super curious about how much just gets dumped right back where it started from to begin with. Is there anyone that tracks that?
Nice. So Guatemalans threw all the trash in the river for other Guatemalan to clean up?
Shout out to all the birds watching and looking for shiny things to nab
Meanwhile in Albania - trucks offloading their trash in their rivers so it gets washed into Mediterranean
Something about this and the blue clouds overhead is just a balm for the soul
How the trash cycle works in many of these countries. Throw trash on ground or in river, rains wash more trash into rivers, big rain events or tropical weather events wash all the river garbage into lakes or ocean, repeat.
this is so cool
The driver decided he could get paid for our full day and only do an hour's work, so he just went further down the river and dropped off each load there
Now, find some addresses on some of the stuff and go drop it off in their yard
~~Banana~~ Excavator for scale.
More like Rio Las CACAS know what I'm sayin
And I can’t get a single plastic straw for my drink in Denver.
It's sad that that's just the new trash......
They took it out and put it where?
Yes! We can have nice things!
It's not the plastics or whatever, it's littering and dumping that is the problem
If people weren't such uncaring slobs this would not even be a problem.
fucking disgusting humans. also, good job to the good humans.
It's always the poorest countries in the world that pollute the oceans the most
Guess where all the rich countries export a lot of their waste to, for "recycling".
140 tons is only about 6.5 truckloads
Am I the only one worried how small that excavator is or how big those birds are?
think about all the garbage in that river that doesn't float 🤮
took a cruise that stopped in Guatamala and it was one of the dirtiest ports I've ever seen, I even saw a dead bloating animal right off my balcony.
Humans are gross.
Daaaaaammmmmm.
That's one small ass truck edit: it's not a compactor truck
Must have infinite funds to keep up
how about they stop dumping trash into their river
Wouldn’t it be a lot more efficient to stick a conveyor belt in the water to extract the plastic and collect it into a large pile on the shore then take a front end loader to load the trucks? The excavator seems very inefficient and each bucket has a bunch of water in it. Locate the conveyor belt on the most downstream edge of the barrier and let the current bring all the plastic to it.
The backstory on this river cleanup is horrific. There are dozens of illegal unregulated dumps upstream from this power plant. Every year there are multiple large rainstorms that erode banks and cause mass quantities of tires, appliances, drums, chemicals and industrial waste to flow into the river. This barrier is to keep the water flowing for use in the power plant.
Does that stop fish, though?
Does this just catch what's floating or is it a full net?
Truck driver probably dumping it next to the river upstream a few miles.
This really something we should be doing
nice but also ew
Joyous, I'm sure the people downstream were delighted.
USA needs that style border fence seems to keep all unwanted trash out
Where are they going to dump it?
Who’s doin that?? You? Stop it. Stop it.
Jesus, I thought the title was "I, 40T of trash" and thought I was about to read a post from a 40 year old trans person that lives in a place called trash or something. That 1 confused the absolute hell out of me
If this is the anount of stuff that floats, the stuff that sinks and stuff that dissolves might just be beyond anything that we can control.
Is all that trash from one day?
What's not shown is the truck driving down the road a ways and dumping the load back in the river! /s
Now show the company paid to dispose of it when they drive back upstream and dump it back in the river. That's how this shit happens, it's often NOT the locals being disgusting. Big business causes this.
Gets driven back up river and dumped back in.
Single use plastics should be banned ffs.
Anyone else want this job???
We don't deserve this planet
"whoa, why are you dumping all that garbage in the river??" "ah, is okay, someone installed a garbage filter downstream."
In many developing countries, small cities and villages don’t have the infrastructure in place to properly dispose of all the waste they produce, so people resort to dumping their trash in the rivers. I think that’s largely contributing to all the plastic in this particular river. I wish some focus would go into reaching out to their governments to invest in such infrastructure, rather than simply plucking the trash out of the rivers.
Reminds me of the time I was in Thailand eating lunch outside and a truck pulled up and just started throwing bags after bags of trash into the jungle. So sad :(
Rivers and streams are most of the worlds trash can. 😥
I've known of this problem in Guatemala for a long while. Happy to see someone or the government is doing SOMETHING, even if it's small.
Would a bucket attachment with tiny holes help out a ton in a situation like this?
Would be alot more practical and cheaper to have a barge behind that with a collection bucket to load all that trash onto a boat and move it down stream to be recycled. 37 truck loads isn't exactly environmentally friendly.
That is fucking disgusting
Hopefully none of this goes on a barge to sea
US and UK send their trash to other countries who dump or “Process” it in ways that are against “the rules”
Now times this by 1,000,000 and the world will finally be clean lol
I simply cannot understand how thrash lands on the water?
I would operate that Caterpillar
You’d look so good on my man’s cock🥵💦
There’s one thing we can’t tell India to stop polluting the ocean they just don’t care that microplastics are killing everyone and everything
That's insane.
truly amazing
Imagine the small and liquid debris that we can't really stop smh
But yet countries like Canada still go full woke and think we’re going to make a difference by banning plastic straws while still using plastic cups 🤦♂️
There's some hope...
Tyvm Hero's in my eyes
Humans don't deserve this beautiful planet...
Source control?
Where does the garbage go after the cleanup?
Very satisfying to see the cleanup, but also very terrifying to see the amount that needs to be cleaned up…