Hacker News Reader

Comment by ohwp | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the most underestimated problem today.

Some startup opportunities:

  Fish farms [1]
  Ocean surface cleaning [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

View on HN

I was thinking the same. Someone needs to collect and monetize the garbage. Sweden is already short of garbage for energy production, so there has to be a value in the garbage.

Not sure if there is still value in the garbage if extracting it from the ocean costs a lot.

It'd be cheaper to get garbage by mining old garbage dumps in other countries - say, India or China - and ship the garbage back than it would be to mine the ocean. The ocean garbage is really spread out thinly.

Much of the garbage mentioned in the article is only out there because of the tsunami and will presumably clean itself up over time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com