Is it making a difference?

March 1, 2023 8:04 PM

For the last six months or so, my wife has been watching a lot of YouTube videos on recycling and Earth cleaning efforts.

It started with Post 10. Then BDR in Indonesia. Along the way, lawn clean teams like AP/Clean The City and Al Bladez. A guy in Australia, another guy in Missouri. And, she's been following the work of Ocean Cleanup that deploys big plastic catchers, and Big Gizmo, that looks at different recycling approaches from sorting cardboard to turning glass back into beach sand.

She says this is a reaction to COVID, and the uncertainty in world politics. Like her, I watch these efforts around to world to know people are actually doing something or at least trying, esp. in the environmental arenas, to combat the pollution people keep putting into the world. This, even though the world seems to pollute a lot faster than efforts to clean it up.

My bottom-line question is, ... are they making a difference? In real numbers and as it specifically related to trash cleanup, is there anything like, the X metric tons of plastic ended up in the Pacific Ocean and ocean cleanup removed .X metric tons of it, or something similar? Or if not that, is there anything that shows people's attitudes worldwide are changing such that they also look for these kind of mitigation efforts they can support or start their own in their own communities or countries? Are there numbers that compare the damage we're doing to the mitigation that is being attempted?

I know it's a kind of wobbly question, but there is so much bad being done on one side and so much good being attempted on the other, I want to know is there someplace that compares them? Sort of like, plants put X tonnes of pollution in the air, but plants equipped with scrubbers take out .X tonnes in comparison. That, but with trash, plastic, cardboard, etc.

posted by CollectiveMind to Technology (8 answers total)

While the cleaning in itself is unlikely to do much in an environment of ongoing polluting activity, it's a first step toward policy change.

For example, a group in Australia (in Queensland iirc) gathers beach/ocean plastic and litter and then they sort and itemize and count it all. This work provides data that is then used to lobby for change at the producer level.

Here in New South Wales people/groups gathering plastic from the beach and then sorting, counting and reporting have successfully lobbied and some of these items are now banned in the state: plastic straws, cutlery, cotton buds, takeaway containers for starters.

Here's a similar story.

Like anything, awareness is an important step.
posted by lulu68 at 9:29 PM on March 1, 2023 [8 favorites]

This is the type of question that "effective altruism" tries to address. You might use that phrase in your Google searches to see if anything interesting comes up.
posted by alex1965 at 6:36 AM on March 2, 2023

Ocean Cleanup's river work is has been somewhat helpful (most trash in the ocean flows from heavily polluted rivers in places like Indonesia). It's much easier to remove the trash from rivers than from the ocean. Maybe it's obvious, but the much more important solution here is policy that reduces single use plastic and puts recycling infrastructure in place, especially in countries where plastic pollution in rivers is far more extreme than you'd see in a place like the US. Ocean Cleanup has published some numbers about how much they're removed from rivers, but I can't find most of them right now (here's one example in LA). It looks like they're redesigning some of the barriers now. The scale of removal is infinitesimally small compared to the problem. e.g. 14 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year, and each of these systems is removing something like tens of thousands of pounds.
posted by pinochiette at 8:15 AM on March 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

While it’s not a video, I have read about half of my friend’s copy of The Climate Almanac while they were recovering from surgery and it was good to hear from scientists about the progress is being made, but it’s really all of us, communicating with our lifestyle and purchasing decisions, communicating with companies as well as our elected officials on the we-can-do-better of it all. This includes understanding privilege and human economic limitations. (I was tempted to say person…but in the US, a corporation can legally be considered a person.)
posted by childofTethys at 8:43 AM on March 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

The fact that these efforts exist is a sign of social backing for their goals. It doesn’t take everyone to be on board, just enough people to drive policy.

Private efforts can only go so far, but they are a backdrop to larger scale actions. The EPA’s progress on air pollution in the U.S. is an excellent example of where environmental activism can lead.

So whether these individual efforts are helping or not can be hard to say, but the fact that they are getting funded and supported (funding and support that every politician wants a piece of) is driving things the right direction.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 8:45 AM on March 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

but there is so much bad being done on one side and so much good being attempted on the other, I want to know is there someplace that compares them?

I can empathize with your impulse here, but something that has helped me is hearing one climate scientist say something along the lines of - "Every degree the earth's temperature rises, [very large and scary number] of people will die, whether directly or indirectly (i.e. famine). So even reducing the rise of a tiny fraction of a degree, will save a large number of people and other animal life."

Also, if everyone did little things - like trash pick up on their walks, doing stream cleanings, etc. - it would add up. And visibly doing things to make your community cleaner can inspire others to help out, magnifying the change.

Also, the Citizens' Climate Lobby has chapters all over the country, they organize drives to put pressure on politicians (at the local, state, and federal level) for a range of policies to reduce climate change.
posted by coffeecat at 10:17 AM on March 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I have a slightly different spin on it.

We've had a municipal recycling and composting system for a long time - over 20 years if memory serves correctly. My kids have grown up with it. So every day they sort their own garbage into recycling, green bin, garbage. They have rinsed out containers, brought back lunch waste (the school sends it all back home), etc. their own lives.

My kids consistently bring water containers with them wherever they go - even when my son heads out to hang out at the mall. They refuse cutlery at takeout if they know we're bringing it home or to the beach (we carry cutlery kits in the car). We all bring bags to the store most of the time and soon it will be all the time, since single-use plastic bags are being banned in Canada and stores are not converting to paper, they're just - making you buy reuseable bags (sadly those will become a scourge but hopefully everyone adjusts faster.) We pack muffins we made instead of granola bars that come in a box and a wrapper.

Not always of course. But on those weeks we fail as a family and we get the lettuce in the ridiculous plastic tub or a fruit tray or whatever, then when we put that in recycling we all kind of sigh and try to cut up our own fruit the next time. It's very visible because we've had to sort it out, and put it in either a bin (that has limits) or a clear bag where all our neighbours can judge us. So we talk about waste before we make purchase decisions.

If we're playing the long game, I think these things are making a difference, just because I think differently about trash and waste than my Boomer parents, and my kids are another leap from me.
posted by warriorqueen at 10:56 AM on March 2, 2023 [1 favorite]

I cannot emphasize enough how much actual marine scientists think Ocean Cleanup is dangerous greenwashing bullshit.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:10 PM on March 2, 2023