Cautiously optimistic here. I’m still sceptical about whether or not this is technically going to work, despite their feasibility report (which they wrote themselves. They would be the last people on earth to conclude that it wouldn’t work).
The argument that this project is bad because it makes people think they can just keep throwing their plastics away like that is nonsense IMO. Besides, even if no more plastic ends up in the ocean, you still got all the waste that’s already in there to deal with.
Although I like the idea of crowdsourcing, I honestly believe, that in this case it would be much more efficient and fair to seek the funding from large plastic-producing companies. But then again I like the idea of the project very much and I think it would be quite important to fund it in order to really see if the project can live up to it’s expectations.
As we are the consumers of the plastic I feel we have a responsibility to.
In my opinion when the project has proven workable, then it’s time to seek funding from large plastic-producing companies.
Haven’t even thought about this possibility, but it does make sense. Plus, it would also gather those companies a good deal of positive publicity to support a project like this. (I doubt a large company would support it without gaining something in return)
However, personally, I think the responsibility of cleaning up does not just lie with those companies. While I don’t have proof I would guess it mostly is the end user that is disposing of his/her waste by simply throwing it into the water. So a funding split of both public and plastic-producing companies would seem a pretty good (fair) idea to me.
Guess @Lidwien was faster than me and able to express the same sentiment with fewer words