Agreed, so cool! And good point. Here's to finding a way to keep micro-plastics out of the ocean altogether, for the sake of marine life, humanity and the planet.

Generally, there is not marine life in the drain line of a washing machine.

Amusing but I think aiphex was considering the possible reuse of this tech against the pacific gyre.

If we cut off the microplastics at the source then the gyre will eventually take care of itself. The problem right now is that we’re continually adding more and more pollution.

What do you mean "take care of itself"?

It'll make its way through the food chain and gradually clear up. Yes, it's going to harm a lot of ocean life in the mean time, but there's not much we can do about that. It's like trying to get red wine out of the white carpet and back into the bottle.

We should stop spilling the wine or at the very least drink it somewhere safer.

Or we can attack the issue at the source and the gyre...

Where in the FA does it talk about using it in the ocean?

washing machine waste water goes to rivers, rivers go to oceans

Please don't be a jerk on HN, no matter how right you are about an article.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The first sentence of the article mentions that the key problem is the microplastics that have reached the ocean. Cutting off one source is valuable, but that will still leave lots of microplastics in the ocean. I don't think aiphex is wrong to comment on the technology's limitations.

Why do you think that the inability to solve a related problem (microplastics in laundry wastewater vs in the ocean) with the same technique is too far off topic?