That's a short term gain long term loss. While cutting down waste anywhere is good, only cutting waste in specific areas is trivial. Pollution, no matter where it is emitted, eventually spreads throughout the entire earth evenly. It's not something that stays in the area where it was emitted. Just like smoke eventually clears, it's not that it goes away, it's just that the particles that make up the smoke spread out, and then are invisible to the naked eye. Really the best way to lower pollution isn't to stop driving cars or reduce your carbon footprint, but rather to support lobbyists/government officials that work to reduce pollution in the corporate world. Right now 98 % of the world's pollution is emitted via large corporations. there isn't one corporation to blame either. So basically it doesn't matter where or who is polluting, the pollution is still spreading throughout the entire world. Another thing to understand is that the earth goes through climate cycles. Global warming isn't bad, it's natural. what's bad about the current situation is that people and our pollution is speeding up the process and will probably warm the earth more than it would naturally. But to answer the original question, reducing waste near the ocean is just as good as reducing waste in factories that are not even close to our oceans.

Too late. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89099470 This is scary stuff.