EU Plans to Pay Fishermen to Catch Plastic

In an attempt to reduce pressure on disappearing fish stocks, the EU's fisheries chief has proposed paying fisherman to catch floating plastic instead of fish. In a trial run, select Mediterranean fishermen will be given nets for scooping up the trash and will be paid for the amount of plastic that gets recycled. From the article: "...in future the scheme could turn into a self-sustaining profitable enterprise, as fleets cash in on the increasing value of recycled plastics. Cleaning up the rubbish will also improve the prospects for fish, seabirds and other marine species, which frequently choke or suffer internal damage from ingesting small pieces of non-biodegradable packaging." I look forward to the day that landfill mining becomes profitable.

Landfill mining is already profitable.

[RockDoctor]

If what you're extracting is valuable enough (e.g., cardboard, cloth), and your labour force is cheap enough.

landfill mining

[samjam]

Landfill mining won't be profitable if we stop filling.

Fraud?

[durnurd]

And if they decide to just go to a landfill, "catch" a bunch of plastic, then turn it in for profit?

Re:

[nwf]

That's what I was thinking. This actually places incentives to dump trash into the ocean, rewarding the behavior that caused the problem they are trying to clean up. I can see that when the economy turns bad, people will be encouraging everyone to dump more plastic to "create" jobs.

Re:

[hoboroadie]

Ocean littering is punishable by huge old fines, and they enforce the hell out of it- zero tolerance and everything. I think they're going after all the crap that washes/blows out from idiots on land.

Rider

[hoboroadie]

This looks like a small part of a much more important piece of legislation, now that I actually RTFA.