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>Nets are a great source of Microplastics

It seems to me the solution is to require (and subsidize) the use of cotton (or other natural fiber) based netting, which is biodegradable.



Cotton in particular is a bad crop choice because it uses a lot of water. Cotton cultivation is a contributing factor to the shrinking of the Aral Sea.


Is cotton cultivation that bad in areas that were not artificially made suitable for the crop by the Soviet Union?


To produce a kilo of cotton (roughly equivalent to a t-shirt and a pair of jeans) takes 20,000L of water. It’s just fundamentally an extremely thirsty crop.

Not to mention that cotton is notorious for depleting soil nutrients, so it is often grown with very large amounts of fertilizer, which also polluted waterways and their outlets into the oceans.


> artificially made suitable

Don’t know what you mean by that but the Soviet having made worse does not mean other countries approach is water-friendly. See https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/6843583/water_footprint_of_c...




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