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Comment on Why the Ocean Cleanup hasn't solved the plastic pollution crisis

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Every organization contributing to the International Coastal Cleanup does things a little differently, but for every $2 invested Ocean Conservancy can remove a pound of trash from the environment and invest in scientific research and upstream policy solutions to prevent plastics from being produced and/or entering our ocean in the first place

Okay so the article’s prime version costs $2/lb of trash removal. Looking at a random report from a couple of years ago they did 11 m pounds[0]/year

Let’s look at the next paragraph to see how the non-profit they’re comparing against did:

As of this writing, The Ocean Cleanup reports it has removed 117.3 million pounds of waste from the ocean and (mostly) rivers. The nonprofit spent more than $72 million across its 2022-2024 fiscal years, according to tax filings.

Okay, so the competitor is $0.6/lb. I mean that sounds great. The whole article is like a price comparison against a competitor where they say “the other guys are more efficient, cheaper and we cost 3 times as much”.

Honestly, this kind of Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science vs Seventh Day Fundamentalist Church of Environmental Science stuff is always pitched as such high stakes and it’s always some aggrieved party upset because they “don’t want to live in a world where someone else saves the Earth better than [they] do”.

0: https://oceanconservancy.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/Spla...

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