[HN Gopher] Nanoplastics accumulate in land-plant tissues: study
___________________________________________________________________
Nanoplastics accumulate in land-plant tissues: study
Author : instance
Score : 200 points
Date : 2020-06-23 10:02 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sciencedaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sciencedaily.com)
| freeflight wrote:
| Relevant reading from April 2020: _" Atmospheric microplastics: A
| review on current status and perspectives"_
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001282521...
| instance wrote:
| Here is a post summarizing the paper:
| https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200622152542.h...
| dang wrote:
| We've changed to that from https://sci-
| hub.tw/10.1038/s41565-020-0707-4. For specialized papers it's
| generally better to submit the highest-quality third party
| description and link to the paper in the comments.
| instance wrote:
| Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.
| [deleted]
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Plants across the globe are thriving, with enhanced CO2
| fertilizing driving record growth, and yet we still get
| sensational arguments about nanoplastics.
| https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
| agumonkey wrote:
| How long until evolution yields a very potent plastic fed
| organism ?
| therein wrote:
| Longer than we can wait for, that's for sure. At the time
| scales relevant to evolution to work its magic here, we would
| be long gone.
| stevespang wrote:
| So, outlaw all polymers which do not biodegrade in a reasonable
| length of time ?
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Can't interpret these results, without knowing the concentrations
| resemble anything like what is found in agriculture today. I
| suspect, but cannot seem to find it mentioned, that very large
| concentrations were used to make any effect easily measurable.
| rini17 wrote:
| As I understood they put up to 1 gram of polystyrene per kg of
| growth medium. Which is easily achievable concentration when
| composting biomass contaminated with plastics, or near
| unregulated landfills.
| 14 wrote:
| I agree. I also have been wondering a lot lately about where
| does all the tires that wear away each year go? Street
| sweepers, the oceans? Millions of tires each year. It's
| frightening to think what that does.
| dahfizz wrote:
| Rubber is a naturally occurring compound. Vulcanizing it
| makes it a little tougher to break down, but it will still
| decompose in 50-100 years.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Tires are also filled with carbon black, which is fairly
| similar to soot/ash from fires, so I wouldn't say it's a
| completely unprecedented compound in nature, either.
| dcx wrote:
| Tires are made with nontrivial amounts of plastic as well
| - this [1] link says 24%
|
| [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/nature/tires-
| the-plast...
| peterwwillis wrote:
| Which then produces oils, heavy metals, and mineral
| toxins absorbed by plant material and aquatic systems. An
| additional danger before decomposition are uncontrollable
| toxic fires from large piles of disposed tires. Only 35%
| of tires get reused or recycled, as it's difficult to do
| so cost-effectively.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| So, no impact on agriculture. That's what I figured.
| goda90 wrote:
| Is 1 in 1000 an unbelievable concentration in topsoil?
| Microplastics in the atmosphere and in water supplies could
| result in an ever growing amount in the soil, and since the
| only way it leaves is by being washed away to contaminate
| someplace else, perhaps those concentrations will exist in
| a decade or so.
| sacred_numbers wrote:
| It kind of is an unbelievable concentration except in
| certain exceptional circumstances. A 0.1% concentration
| by weight for just the first 30 cm of topsoil would
| require about 5 tons of microplastics per hectare (or
| about 2 tons per acre). That's a lot of microplastics. It
| would be the equivalent of about 52 plastic water bottles
| per square meter. Unless the farm is on an extremely
| mismanaged landfill, I don't think that kind of
| concentration is likely.
|
| Edit: I'm not saying microplastics aren't a problem,
| they're just not likely much of a problem specifically
| for agricultural yields.
| rini17 wrote:
| Sadly, mismanaged landfills are probably more common than
| you think. Even if having diminished yields might not be
| an issue, microplastics concentrating in edible parts of
| crops might be.
| mtgp1000 wrote:
| Plastics are so enormously useful in modern life that I'm willing
| to accept the seeming low health costs associated with their
| pollution.
|
| Yes they may be associated with certain cancers or endocrine
| disruption but the effects seem to be rather tiny in comparison
| to the myriad of ways in which plastics improve our quality of
| life.
| justwalt wrote:
| I think the popular concern is that this problem is only going
| to get worse as more and more plastics are produced and old
| plastics continue to degrade into tinier pieces of plastic.
| It's particularly worrying because we've found pieces of
| plastic in extremely locations, so containment is out of the
| question.
| oneplane wrote:
| This makes me wonder if we could find out what else accumulates
| we might not have thought of. Perhaps certain carbon structures
| or metals that may not directly pollute but accumulate all the
| same to a point where it does become an issue; somewhat like the
| (iirc) mercury in some fish.
| idclip wrote:
| Oh wow ... :/
| exikyut wrote:
| OT/meta: It's really nice to see submissions linking directly to
| Sci-Hub :)
|
| (It isn't yet that popular:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sci-hub.tw)
| crazygringo wrote:
| The more popular it is, the more worried I am it'll be shut
| down... I have very strong mixed feelings about seeing Sci-Hub
| linked from here :/
| aloisdg wrote:
| If it is shutdown we will reupload it somewhere else.
| tombert wrote:
| It makes me wonder if, in 50-100 years, plastics will be the
| "lead paint" of my generation.
|
| Plastics are undeniably useful, but it does seem like the
| unforeseen consequences might be too large to ignore at this
| point. I just hope that it doesn't have neurological problems.
| leereeves wrote:
| Isn't any potential, as yet unknown, health risk vastly
| outweighed by the proven benefits in food safety and disease
| control?
| carapace wrote:
| Not yet.
|
| You have to integrate over a period of time that includes the
| future, so it's impossible to tell (without a reliable
| oracle.)
| istorical wrote:
| What if those benefits in food safety and disease control
| could be solved with less disastrous means in let's say a
| timeline of another 50 years, but the current dumping of
| microplastics into all soil and groundwater systems is near
| unfixable for thousands of years?
|
| the way I see it is it's much faster and easier to ruin
| something than to fix it.
| manux wrote:
| From the known risks, yes, but the unknown risks seem to
| possibly include biodiversity collapse and other terrible
| things. I think we can remain cautious either way, keep using
| plastic for food where it is necessary and reduce other
| plastics elsewhere.
| leereeves wrote:
| > the unknown risks seem to possibly include biodiversity
| collapse and other terrible things
|
| Can you expand on that? It's not the topic of the linked
| paper and DDG doesn't show much on a link between
| biodiversity collapse (a proven problem) and nanoplastics.
|
| And what other terrible things might they cause?
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| I believe this main comment thread, and GP in particular,
| is about plastics in general, and not limited to
| nanoplastics. Thus it involves (big) plastic ingestion
| and plastic islands blocking chunks of the ocean.
| leereeves wrote:
| Fair point. Then what's the link between plastics in
| general and biodiversity collapse and other terrible
| things?
| ezequiel-garzon wrote:
| That fact that animals end up with plastic in their
| digestive systems is quite uncontroversially a terrible
| thing, wouldn't you agree? I can't elaborate on the
| potential biodiversity collapse, as I didn't make that
| comment.
|
| Edit: Clearly I just gave the easiest example, not the
| most relevant one. A basic Google search points to [1],
| for instance, where you find observations such as
|
| _If algae and plankton communities are threatened, the
| entire food web may change. Animals that feed on algae
| and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less
| food. If populations of those animals decrease, there
| will be less food for apex predators such as tuna,
| sharks, and whales. Eventually, seafood becomes less
| available and more expensive for people.
|
| These dangers are compounded by the fact that plastics
| both leach out and absorb harmful pollutants. As plastics
| break down through photodegradation, they leach out
| colorants and chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that
| have been linked to environmental and health problems.
| Conversely, plastics can also absorb pollutants, such as
| PCBs, from the seawater. These chemicals can then enter
| the food chain when consumed by marine life._
|
| So, I frankly haven't carefully looked into the prospects
| of "biodiversity collapse", but even that stark term
| sounds justified. Surely another terrible thing, in any
| event.
|
| [1]
| https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-
| pacifi...
| ip26 wrote:
| Are there really that many tremendous public health benefits?
| Autoclaves, steel, cardboard, and wax paper did the job for
| decades.
| bluGill wrote:
| At what cost. Autoclaves use a lot of energy. I don't know
| how they compare, but I doubt you do either.
| [deleted]
| AftHurrahWinch wrote:
| > Isn't any potential, as yet unknown, health risk vastly
| outweighed by the proven benefits
|
| It's irrational to assert that "unknown" risks are outweighed
| by known/"proven" benefits.
|
| By definition, the risks are unknown.
| theptip wrote:
| Not quite; you can put an upper bound on the "badness" of
| unknown harms, because if it was bad enough, we'd have
| detected it already.
|
| For a reductio ad absurdum proof, imagine that
| microplastics kill you on contact. This would show up in
| the death statistics very quickly. So in practice we can
| say with confidence that the possible unknown harms don't
| include mortality effects above a certain level.
|
| There's definitely room for effects that we'd consider to
| be serious like "reduces male sperm counts by 50% over
| decades of exposure" or "increases cancer rates by 100%",
| but it's certainly possible (indeed, the correct and
| rational way of approaching this problem) to attempt to
| bound the upper limit of harm based on what we should be
| able to detect.
|
| Note, I'm not commenting on the object-level question of
| _whether_ the benefits outweigh the costs or whether this
| is known; I would like to see a citation for that as I've
| not seen such an analysis. I'm just addressing the meta-
| level question of if it's possible to know.
| riskable wrote:
| Depends on the type of plastic and what was used in its
| manufacture. Most plastics eventually degrade into water and
| carbon dioxide. However, until they are completely broken down
| they cause all sorts of problems not the least of which is
| mentioned in the article.
|
| Some plastics like PLA and PHA are highly unlikely to cause
| problems 50-100 years in the future because they don't last
| that long unless carefully preserved. California funded a study
| of how long it takes PLA and PHA to break down in the ocean and
| figured out that PHA is basically gone in six months while PLA
| will last about 3 years:
|
| https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/Publications/Download/1006?op...
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Most plastics _eventually_ degrade into water and carbon
| dioxide.
|
| Plastic straw decomposition:
|
| 200 years [0]
|
| Plastic bootle decomposition:
|
| 450 years [0]
|
| PLA is a fraction of the world's plastic pollution. Mixing in
| this marginal example is misleading. We shouldn't downplay
| the decomposition time of _most_ plastics. Plastics and
| fossil fuel emissions are the asbestos of our time.
|
| Single-use plastic, outside medical applications, should be
| banned worldwide.
|
| [0] https://www.wwf.org.au/news/blogs/the-lifecycle-of-
| plastics
| hristov wrote:
| By the way there is a solution to this plastic issue. Compostable
| plastics are a reality. See, for example, www.naturtec.com.
|
| We could have a world where all cheap plastics that are not
| expected to last (e.g., water bottles, cutlery, packaging, bags)
| are compostable, and the expensive high performance long lasting
| plastics (e.g., those that are part of cars, computers, etc.) are
| made of traditional plastics. The latter will not create waste
| because they are expensive and would not be discarded willy nilly
| in large quantities. Hopefully they will be thrown in a proper
| landfill. The former will simply decompose regardless of how they
| are discarded (although for purely aesthetic reasons it is
| preferable they be discarded in a designated compost bins).
|
| At this point the barrier is not technological, it is purely
| political. We just need to address the externality and force
| everyone to use compostable plastics for things that are expected
| to be discarded quickly.
| markdown wrote:
| Bio-degradable plastic is a scam.
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/04/biode...
|
| https://theconversation.com/when-biodegradable-plastic-is-no...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/23/biodegra...
| frazbin wrote:
| Here's the problem: Take a biodegradable bag and grind it up
| into dust, then sprinkle it on the ground-- no problem.
| Bacteria in the soil will eat it and turn it into biomass and
| gas. Do the same with a plastic bag, and the tiny bits of
| plastic will just stick around, and plants grown in that soil
| will be contaminated by plastic per the study.
|
| These bags aren't breaking down quickly simply because they
| are big. Decomposition is like any other kind of eating; you
| keep breaking the stuff down into smaller bits until it's gas
| and biomass. But with plastic, where biodegradation can't
| happen, the tiny bits (nanoplastics) accumulate.
|
| Fun fact about nanoplastics: we can't reliably measure them!
| We can make a reference solution and apply it to arabidopsis,
| but we can't count nanoplastic particles in wastewater. I'm
| told they can be as small as a protein molecule.
| Jimmc414 wrote:
| Is this possibly a good thing? If nanoplastics accumulate in
| plants, that means less of it in the water and air, right?
| devalgo wrote:
| This along with antibiotic resistance, ocean acidification and
| others are silent civilization killers. Male fertility has been
| dropping for the past several decades and accumulation of
| microplastics has been suggested as a possible cause. Will the
| species become infertile because of this? Will we sterilize our
| oceans? Will we go back to the 1800s medically where invasive
| surgeries will be nearly impossible due to no working
| antibiotics? Few people are aware of these problems and even
| fewer are working on solutions.
| amedvednikov wrote:
| We used to survive without plastic just fine (milk in glass
| bottles, paper bags etc)
|
| Don't see why we can't just go back to that.
| bluGill wrote:
| Washing and returning glass bottles (even though the trips are
| made anyway) uses more energy than making virgin plastic so it
| isn't the win you might expect.
| ahoy wrote:
| Some amount of degrowth seems necessary. Would you quality of
| life suffer badly if you just bought a little bit less stuff?
| amedvednikov wrote:
| We have renewable energy. Better than having microplastics in
| the water and in the air.
| firethief wrote:
| The energy used to transport glass around is mostly not
| renewable
| amedvednikov wrote:
| That also has to change.
| minerjoe wrote:
| I can't imaging a just Mother Earth that would reward the massive
| destruction of the environment (r __* and pilliage some would
| say) with a result that does not end in poisoning of the
| organisms that "benefit" from said activity.
| acd wrote:
| Plastics is an example when market economy fails. Plastics is to
| cheap to buy and manufacture so it's found everywhere. Ie
| plastics is an example of tradegedy of the commons where to
| purchaser of plastics benefits but everyone else sees a loss of
| the environment.
|
| Trying to explain we need to develop an economic model better
| than market economy or else earth will become a big waste dump.
| Ie we need to prize the waste.
|
| Tragedy of the commons
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_common
|
| Environmental economics
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_economics
| swsieber wrote:
| If what we have today is a market econmy, then a market economy
| is perfectly acceptable way to address the issue: taxes of some
| sort.
| ahoy wrote:
| The very companies that cause that cause the negative
| externalities hire lobbyists and buy politicians to write the
| tax code.
| blueline wrote:
| taxes aren't a silver bullet. if the affected companies were
| to just pass the extra cost to consumers (why wouldn't
| they?), then you effectively have implemented a regressive
| tax that affects the poorest consumers the most.
|
| clearly there's more to it than that, but assuming that the
| market can address any negative externalities just with taxes
| is pretty naive IMO
| ip26 wrote:
| Affected Company A passes the 1% cost increase of the tax
| to the consumer.
|
| Affected Company B changes their packaging, e.g. to
| recycled paper, to avoid the tax at a 0.1% cost increase
| and passes it to the consumer.
|
| You tell me what happens next.
| bluGill wrote:
| Problem is company B increased their costs by 5% to avoid
| the tax. Plastics are so cheap compared to alternatives
| that this is a real situation.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| You set the price of the tax equal to the mitigation cost.
| In this way consumers pay to mitigate. If mitigation is
| coat prohibitive, consumers substitute products that are
| not harmful.
|
| Edit: W.r.t. regressive taxation... No one has the right to
| force their externalities on someone else. Just because you
| are poor doesn't mean you can dump your garbage on my lawn
| because it's cheaper than paying to haul it to the dump.
| dwiel wrote:
| I heard of this first with respect to a carbon tax, but one
| solution is to evenly redistribute the collected tax among
| all citizens. This way, the market can internalize the
| externality while keeping the average person no poorer.
| lend000 wrote:
| This is an externality, and the best role of government in a
| market economy is to tax externalities such that the tax
| imposed is enough to "fix" the externality. Fixing it would be
| extremely expensive, so it would make plastics only viable
| where they are needed most, and in applications where there is
| tracking and accountability in recycling and waste management.
|
| Also note two major flaws in your reasoning about trying to
| blame pollution as a "market economy" failure.
|
| 1. The US military is the biggest single polluter around [0],
| outside of perhaps some "non-market-economy" country's
| militaries like China and Russia. It's hard to know exactly how
| much damage they do and impossible to hold them accountable for
| it. The substances they leak into groundwater tend to be worse
| than plastics. Good luck finding a government model that
| doesn't have a military.
|
| 2. Most of the microplastics in the ocean are coming from third
| world countries, where there simply isn't enough wealth for
| there to be political willpower to reduce externalized
| pollution.
|
| The real solution we need is more futuristic waste management
| technologies that can break down harmful pollutants and turn
| them into usable material, and I expect they will come from the
| "market economy."
|
| [0] https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-
| than...
| chapium wrote:
| The market seems like any system really. It can be stable, but
| this is only common with a diverse array of variables.
| Otherwise it gets into positive or negative feedback loops.
| Human behavior acts as a dampener or an amplifier.
| [deleted]
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Economists solved this problem a long time ago; Pigouvian
| taxes. No need to dump markets. You just make them pay for
| their externalities.
| jaekash wrote:
| No, this is not an example of the tragedy of the commons. It is
| simply a negative externality:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality#Negative
|
| And I guess it is an example of market failure in the technical
| sense but I don't think I would phrase that as "when a market
| economy fails" as it is not clear whether you are talking
| colloquially or technically.
|
| EDIT: Just to clarify why it is critical to be specific,
| positive externalities are also market failures. Caring about a
| technical market failures is a bit abstract, I would not lose
| sleep over it, they happen.
|
| Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for them
| to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable and
| not something I think anybody really disagrees with on paper.
|
| You will have more practical disagreements though because it is
| unlikely that microplastics being used in say Denmark has the
| same environmental impact as microplastics being used in say
| Asia or Africa: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-
| plastic-polluti... and applying a tax to people in Denmark
| won't result in the externality being internalized in Nigeria.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for
| them to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable
| and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on
| paper.
|
| Nobody would let you write it down on paper. But a lot of
| corporations put a lot of money and effort into preventing
| this from happening. I believe almost all of our economic
| woes could be fixed with an economic approach that treated
| negative externalities as an expected and common case in a
| free market and actively pursued policies to mitigate them
| (as opposed to idolising the free part of "free markets" and
| treating regulation to fix externalities as a last resort).
| jaekash wrote:
| > I believe almost all of our economic woes could be fixed
| with an economic approach that treated negative
| externalities as an expected and common case in a free
| market and actively pursued policies to mitigate them (as
| opposed to idolising the free part of "free markets" and
| treating regulation to fix externalities as a last resort).
|
| I don't really know of anyone that is surprised that
| negative externalities exists but maybe I'm just sheltered.
| I think the general view is they exist and occur in
| economies in the real world.
|
| Further, if we take the definition of externality as "a
| cost or benefit that affects a third party who did not
| choose to incur that cost or benefit." then there is
| nothing that would limit externalities to only occurring in
| market economies, which generally speaking refers to
| regulated free markets (almost exclusively actually).
| IanCal wrote:
| > Nobody would let you write it down on paper.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this, it's a regularly
| advocated for position at all levels.
| nicoburns wrote:
| > it's a regularly advocated for position at all levels.
|
| The position that we _shouldn 't_ internalise negative
| externalities? Who is openly advocating for this?
| user234683 wrote:
| > applying a tax to people in Denmark won't result in the
| externality being internalized in Nigeria
|
| What if Denmark imposes a tariff equal to the tax on imported
| plastic goods from any countries not implementing such a tax?
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Nigeria doesn't export much plastic to Denmark, or to
| anywhere, really, so it has very little impact either way.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > it is unlikely that microplastics being used in say Denmark
| has the same environmental impact as microplastics being used
| in say Asia or Africa
|
| Did you ever wonder why Asia and Africa are responsible for
| so much pollution ? I'm asking that because any amount of
| research will show you that first world countries are sending
| hundreds of tons of appliances, computers, smartphones, &c.
| per day over there for them to be "recycled", and by
| "recycled" I meant burned/melted in open air dumps. (And also
| because they're manufacturing all our shitty ultra short
| lived gadgets, cloths, &c.)
|
| It's literally like throwing your shit on the neighbours lawn
| and blaming them. Actually it's even worse now that China
| told us to fuck off with our trash.
|
| > Until recently, half of the collected plastic - especially
| low-grade plastic - was exported to China, but China has
| completely stopped its [used plastic] imports. Therefore the
| majority of plastic will likely end up burnt while just 15
| percent will be recycled"
|
| Are we talking about the future of Humanity or about "it's
| not my problem it didn't happen in the country I was born in"
| .... we're doomed. The world is a closed eco system so of
| fucking course the European plastic and the African plastic
| will eventually end up in your plate (especially if the
| Europen plastic is sent to Africa for "recycling")
|
| https://www.thelocal.dk/20180910/danes-are-sorting-more-
| plas...
| primroot wrote:
| >> ... over there for them to be "recycled", and by
| "recycled" I meant burned/melted in open air dumps.
|
| I thought the Basel convention covered this in some way.
| Larry Summers had (has?) a rather infamous opinion on this
| [0].
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summers_memo
| jaekash wrote:
| Pretty sure the majority of that plastic waste from those
| rivers is not those countries accepting plastic waste and
| then rerouting it to their rivers but if you have evidence
| to support the claim that it is please share.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > Did you ever wonder why Asia and Africa are responsible
| for so much pollution
|
| I hate to parse words but the nuance is important. They are
| not responsible. Yes, they generate it. But the
| responsibility belongs to the source (i.e., countries up
| the economic / development food chain.)
|
| This is why it persists: out of sight, out of mind. Nearly
| all the consumers in the source countries are oblivious to
| their contributions. Enlightening them would throttle the
| consumption-based economy. That's not good for profits.
| vbezhenar wrote:
| That's because humans act on a country-scale. We need
| planetary scale to act reasonably on matters like that.
| Until then it's always cheaper to exploit poor countries
| rather than building proper waste recycling. And for some
| strange reason world government is not happening.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Well Asia and Africia also often lack proper garbage
| infastructures in many areas (they are kind of big
| continents) in addition to being poor enough to wind up
| regularly taking external trash.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Caring about a negative externalities and advocating for
| them to be internalized is a lot more concrete and actionable
|
| It's less concrete and actionable than you'd think, because
| measuring (and therefore identifying and internalizing)
| externalities requires utility assessments, and experienced
| utility is subjective and immeasurable and it's very, very
| easy for ones preferred outcome to influence one's choice of
| utility estimator. (And even easier for it to lead you to
| find an excuse to dismiss someone else's.)
|
| > and not something I think anybody really disagrees with on
| paper.
|
| I think the general opinion of both the Chicago and Austrian
| schools is that efforts to internalize externalities are
| generally a bad idea, and in the Austrian case specifically
| wrong on principal.
|
| Public figures adhering to those viewpoints are likely to
| couch them in circumlocution outside of addresses to selected
| audiences because they are very large groups with which they
| are dealbreaker positions, but they aren't exactly obscure
| positions.
| jaekash wrote:
| > I think the general opinion of both the Chicago and
| Austrian schools is that efforts to internalize
| externalities are generally a bad idea, and in the Austrian
| case specifically wrong on principal.
|
| Would be news to me, feel free to cite.
| ajuc wrote:
| > I think the general opinion of both the Chicago and
| Austrian schools is that efforts to internalize
| externalities are generally a bad idea, and in the Austrian
| case specifically wrong on principal.
|
| Why?
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Nigeria can easily make the same argument for Denmark then
| nothing ever changes.
| jaekash wrote:
| Well I mean they could but they would have to provide
| actual data (similar to what I cited) to back it up. Just
| because people can make absurd claims is not a good reason
| to entertain them.
| mac01021 wrote:
| Why is it not a tragedy of the commons?
|
| "The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-
| resource system where individual users, acting independently
| according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the
| common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared
| resource through their collective action."
|
| In this case, given that everyone else is going to use
| plastics, it is in my interest to use them too. But I would
| be better off (maybe) if noone used them. Does that not fit
| the definition?
| edjrage wrote:
| The important bit is "by depleting or spoiling the shared
| resource".
|
| Plastic is not a "shared resource". It's not at risk of
| depletion or "spoilage". It's obviously the opposite
| problem.
|
| I think the example with the sheep makes it perfectly clear
| what the concept is and isn't.
| mac01021 wrote:
| Soil and oceans are shared resources, which we're
| (probably) spoiling by permeating them with countless
| minuscule bits of plastic.
|
| Or maybe I don't properly understand what "spoil" means.
| graeme wrote:
| What is the distinction between negative externality and
| tragedy of the commons. I had always figured the latter was
| an example of the former.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Tragedy of the commons is exhaustion of a shared renewable
| resource as everyone has the incentive to take now when
| they can and none to steward its growth. Negative
| externalities are a cost bared by people external to the
| activity. A common example would be pollution of air or
| water.
| graeme wrote:
| In that view, the air and water are on their way to
| exhaustion, but not exhausted. So perhaps tragedy of the
| commons could be viewed as an endpoint on the same
| process. It's certainly caused by externalities. (Grazing
| has costs to others, who lose the ability to graze)
| peterwwillis wrote:
| Whenever there is a faulty complex system (economic, civic
| government, other) people insist we need an entirely new
| system. But if you design a car with faulty brakes, you don't
| invent a brand new car. You fix the brakes.
|
| It doesn't seem immediately obvious how we could change a
| market economy to resist negative externalities, but I think
| it's the best solution (especially when the system is well
| studied).
| edjrage wrote:
| > if you design a car with faulty brakes, you don't invent a
| brand new car. You fix the brakes.
|
| Funny, this immediately came to mind:
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/car-
| manufacturers/volks...
|
| > "The Kombi was designed 60 years ago so it would not be
| possible now to put an airbag and ABS into the car. That's
| why we now have to stop production," said Jochen Funk,
| director of sales for VW Brazil.
|
| So yeah, maybe we've been driving a (now 70)-year old Kombi
| and trying to convince ourselves one day we'll be able to
| just bolt ABS brakes on it.
| amarte wrote:
| The world's first synthetic plastic was invented in 1907, and
| the field has since expanded to include a wide range of variant
| materials that have permeated nearly every aspect of our lives.
| I think it's hard to understand the net quality of life
| benefits that plastics in general have brought to humanity
| because most of us alive today were born into a world where
| these great technical achievements have already suffused daily
| life, so it's easy to take them for granted, while we are only
| now beginning to discover some of their negative consequences.
| For example, single use plastics: largely unnecessary in most
| cases, although not all -- think medical applications. Non-
| renewable sourcing: the production of many of these materials
| is contributing to a carbon debt that we're only now beginning
| to understand the magnitude of. Etc etc... But don't "throw the
| baby out with the bathwater." I don't think the market economy
| failed with plastics. The scale of their production and myriad
| applications was and continues to be an incredible success with
| both positive and negative externalities. The market needs to
| adjust given society's new understanding that we've gone too
| far in some areas, and not far enough in others. As people
| become aware of the environmental persistence of materials like
| polystyrene (tradename Styrofoam) for example, and are offered
| biodegradable, price-competitive offsets, they'll stop buying
| polystyrene. Closed-loop recycling, carbon capture, renewable
| sourcing etc are all examples of course corrections that will
| hopefully gain steam in the market and point us in the right
| direction.
| stx wrote:
| I wish we would use less plastic and packaging in general.
| Its depressing when you buy a product and it has layers and
| layers of packaging. When I visited a poor part of Mexico in
| 2000 they still had a system where you purchased a soda in a
| glass bottle and then returned it for a small refund from the
| place you purchased it. If a poor city in Mexico does this
| why cant we do so in the USA? Please do understand that in
| almost all other ways though this city in Mexico had garbage
| ever-where.
| svrtknst wrote:
| Glass bottles are being removed more and more in Sweden,
| and it would be interesting to see the microplastic waste
| created by recycled plastics, and the comparative energy
| requirements to produce and ship a glass bottle vs. a
| plastic bottle - Esp. plastic made from plants or sugar
| cane.
|
| All soda/beer bottles and cans sold give you a small
| refund, and pretty much all waste is recycleable in some
| way. Slightly dependent on infrastructure in your vicinity,
| but most municipalities ought to be able to recycle food
| waste, cardboard, plastic, glass, and metal easily.
| basicplus2 wrote:
| "the net quality of life benefits that plastics in general
| have brought to humanity"
|
| The plastics production before the late 60's had virtually no
| impact compared to what followed. Quality of life when i was
| a child was just fine.
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > Quality of life when i was a child was just fine.
|
| I bet you grew up in the West or Japan. Otherwise across
| Africa, China, India, quality of life for the average
| person is massively better now than in the 60's.
| basicplus2 wrote:
| Yes but their improvment of quality of life as absolutely
| nothing to do with them using plastic, which is what the
| subject of the conversation is about.
| heratyian wrote:
| https://biggreen.company We're working on this specific problem.
| Our mission is to eliminate all single use plastic bags.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| Every Sunday, I'm riding and collecting plastic trash along a
| bike lane. coke/beer cans and all sort of plastic and paper
| wrappings (+masks/gloves/gel bottles since covid19), in all sort
| of state (it's annoying when they start fragmenting)
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