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posted by Fnord666 on Friday November 10 2017, @09:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the a-river-runs-through-it dept.

Submitted via IRC for Sulla

A recent study paints a sobering picture about the state of our oceans.

According to the paper, published last month in Environmental Science and Technology, rivers deposit up to 4 million metric tonnes of plastic into the sea -- and about 95 per cent of that comes from just 10 waterways.

Previous studies suggested about 67 per cent of plastic in the oceans came from 20 rivers. For this study, researchers out of the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research and the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Science used a larger data set to reach their findings, sampling from 79 sites along 57 rivers around the world.

Eight of the 10 rivers are in Asia. [...]

  • Yangtze River, Yellow Sea, Asia
  • Indus River, Arabian Sea, Asia
  • Yellow River (Huang He), Yellow Sea, Asia
  • Hai River, Yellow Sea, Asia
  • Nile, Mediterranean Sea, Africa
  • Meghna/Bramaputra/Ganges, Bay of Bengal, Asia
  • Pearl River (Zhujiang), South China Sea, Asia
  • Amur River (Heilong Jiang), Sea of Okhotsk, Asia
  • Niger River, Gulf of Guinea, Africa
  • Mekong River, South China Sea, Asia

Source: https://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/ninety-five-percent-of-plastic-in-sea-comes-from-just-ten-rivers/89034/


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  • (Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday November 11 2017, @01:21PM (2 children)

    by requerdanos (5997) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 11 2017, @01:21PM (#595570) Journal

    Eight of the 10 rivers are in Asia.

    Well, perhaps. But what significance has that?

    There are discussions here on why Asian practices lead to such pollution, and I think that's perhaps not the point...

    According to World Population Review [worldpopulationreview.com], Asia has over 60% of the world's population. That's a pretty hefty figure--Asia alone has more people than the rest of the world combined. It might simply follow that the overwhelming majority of polluting rivers flow from the overwhelming majority of the population.

    Of course, practices within the countries contributing can make a difference plus or minus, and all of us as humans have the responsibility to conserve (and not excessively pollute) our environment*.

    -----
    *this does not mean we should be tree hugging anti-development nutjobs. Trees grow back. That's literally the dumbest aspect of "environmental conservation" to embrace.

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  • (Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday November 11 2017, @02:09PM

    by Nuke (3162) on Saturday November 11 2017, @02:09PM (#595580)

    Trees grow back

    Not if the place they grew is concreted over for humans to live on. Even if it is not, trees can be, and are, chopped down far qucker than they can grow.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @12:46AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 12 2017, @12:46AM (#595800)

    95% of the worlds wealth is held by the top 1% of the worlds population. That does not make it right.

    60% of the world is generating 95% of the pollution they are finding means there is a problem. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that it is a very small number of people doing it too (way less than the 60%). You are making sweeping generalizations. The rest of the world took its nasty practices and outsourced them, to china. China is just starting to wake up to that fact. That fact is 'dont shit where you eat'.