For a long time I thought that while the problem was big, it would be more readily addressable than some of the other pollution issues that are threatening human and other life on the planet. If much of the plastic tends to collect in certain areas on the surface of the ocean, then that will be somewhat helpful to cleanup. Also it does not take a great intellectual feat to imagine devices that can be deployed, even on a global scale to help clean up larger pieces of plastic. Even the difficult feat of changing our politico-economic system better to address the tragedy of the commons I think is something that we'll eventually have to face and do.

I was not sure it would be "easy" ... just relatively do-able (compared to scouring the entire planetary ecosystem for excess CO2 and and putting that genie back in the bottle, along with addressing other excessive greenhouse gas amounts).

one example of tech for this:
[theoceancleanup.com]

not sure if this is the thing, but recent news:
[fastcompany.com]
04.20.18WORLD CHANGING IDEAS
The Revolutionary Giant Ocean Cleanup Machine Is About To Set Sail
Boyan Slat dropped out of school to work on his design for a device that could collect the trillions of pieces of plastic floating in the ocean. After years of work, it’s ready to take its first voyage.

However, when reading reports both of microplastics (which I'm assuming cannot as readily be collected by basic ocean-surface-scouring-machinery), and chemicals that have made it to seafood, I am somewhat less optimistic.

It's sad.

I've seen ''water villages'' in Malaysia which are so CHOKED with trash that I don't know how they get boats through it. And, as much as I love India...the trash situation there (land and sea) is abominable! When nations don't have money for infrastructure to deal with this detrius, people don't have much choice, other than just dumping it. We're a nasty species and we've essentially covered our beautiful planet with FECES. (Not the word I'm thinking of...but, you get the picture.)

Wow... We really do suck don't we. Shared on FB.

It chokes me too, big time ???

I just can't believe how bad it is!