[HN Gopher] The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littere...
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The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered with failure
Author : laurex
Score : 231 points
Date : 2021-07-31 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| samstave wrote:
| And dont forget that California looted the CRV fund that was
| supposed to go to help pay for these programs and spent/stole the
| money for other things... NPR had a story on it a few years back.
|
| https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=npr+story+on+california+crv...
| mothsonasloth wrote:
| Renewlogy sounds like the Theranos of recycling.
| pessimizer wrote:
| No, Theranos's entire purpose was to attract huge amounts of
| investment. Renewology is filing for $250,000 grants and has
| garbage piled up behind an empty warehouse. Renewology is one
| of many excuses propped up by the oil industry as a reason for
| us to continue to produce disposable plastic (or to produce
| even more disposable plastic.)
| throwaway984393 wrote:
| I love this classic journalistic style. No editorializing, simply
| stating collected facts - and actually following up on
| information, and then reaching out to all parties for comment,
| and publishing it, whether it fits "the narrative" or not. I know
| pop journalism will never go back to this style, but I wish we
| could make it popular so that people don't lull themselves into
| seeking entertainment over information.
| aurizon wrote:
| On the face of it, this is like a bottle deposit - an incentive
| to return the glass bottles = clean, check and refill. This works
| well with beer/soda bottles made of glass. Enter plastic bottles.
| The soft nature of plastics make wash/test/inspect/re-use
| impractical with a high fail rate(unless you started with better
| bottles) makes recycled bottles cost more than new ones. The
| basic nature of packaging must be changed so the life-cycle cost
| is applied at the front end. So Coca-Cola sells a 1 liter of coke
| = they pay a recycle cost of - say 39 cents and that is collected
| by an account bot, which prints a unique ~48 bit unique ID on the
| bottle and which follows to the recycle end and which can be
| redeemed to grab and segregate the bottles into unique piles of
| pure plastic and the bot tallies and funds each stage = the
| motivation that replaces altruism to make it happen. Money works
| this way, if you throw away or lose money, people will 'recycle'
| it... I feel the only way to deal with the amount of trash we
| create is to interdict the production in the first place (if
| possible) and to adequately monetize the trapping and re-use of
| whatever waste we make. We are in a 'stern chase', so it will
| take years. The border is a good check point. Imports bar code
| and the fee charged at importation - no matter how they
| wiggle/squirm/lobby - they must pay the end case recycle/reuse
| fee up front. Same for all domestic manufacturers. It will take
| years to implement, but the crap in the ocean has taken years to
| build up = the build-down will take as long - but it must be
| done.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment of the article: Inter-state and global
| companies making cost-saving moves to plastic benefiting big
| plastic producers and passing the pollution blame to consumers /
| local governments is a move we've seen far too often.
|
| > The trouble, it said, was that Boise's waste was contaminated
| with other garbage at 10 times the level it was told to expect.
|
| > Boise spokesperson Colin Hickman said the city was not aware of
| any statements or assurances made to Renewlogy about specific
| levels of contamination.
|
| Classic. There's definitely contamination level agreements for
| recycling companies, which Renewlogy probably got, yet Hickman
| said he never made statements or assurances to Renewlogy. (Which
| is probably true -- they were communicated to the recycling
| pickup companies!).
|
| And hang on:
|
| > It's being trucked to a cement plant northeast of Salt Lake
| City that burns it for fuel.
|
| That's ... a win?
|
| > Most of those endeavors are agreements between small advanced
| recycling firms and big oil and chemicals companies or consumer
| brands, including ExxonMobil Corp, Royal Dutch Shell Plc and
| Procter & Gamble Co (P&G). All are still operating on a modest
| scale or have closed down, and more than half are years behind
| schedule on previously announced commercial plans, according to
| the Reuters review.
|
| Sounds like the ``perpetrators'' are funding possible solutions
| instead of shutting down entirely. Demonizing this is not going
| to help, you know.
| softwaredoug wrote:
| Honest question: isn't putting plastics in landfills the ultimate
| form of carbon capture? Or is there a version of doing this that
| is net negative carbon?
| dccoolgai wrote:
| I remember when the film "plastic China" came out and blew the
| lid off this whole "industry". Looking back, I think it's in the
| running for one of the most impactful works ever produced on
| film.
| antattack wrote:
| We need to disincentivize use of food containers that are hard to
| recycle.
|
| For example: Some yogurt containers are pure plastic with paper
| ring around that has text/graphic. After use paper ring is easy
| to take off and plastic easy to recycle and better quality.
|
| Also, I recently found that black plastic is not being recycled
| at all because it's impossible for current technology to sort it
| (because it's black).
| fmajid wrote:
| The EU is banning single-use plastic.
| antattack wrote:
| Are yogurt containers considered single-use? What would they
| use instead?
| dang wrote:
| Recycling threads, recycled:
|
| _Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454067 - Sept 2020 (232
| comments)
|
| _How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be
| Recycled_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24441979 - Sept
| 2020 (313 comments)
|
| _Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440516 - Sept 2020 (395
| comments)
|
| _Plastics pile up as coronavirus hits Asia recyclers_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23040674 - May 2020 (19
| comments)
|
| _' Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers
| nightmares_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22927072 -
| April 2020 (40 comments)
|
| _Industry spent millions selling recycling, to sell more
| plastic_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22741635 - March
| 2020 (105 comments)
|
| _Coke and Pepsi are getting sued for lying about recycling_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467015 - March 2020 (170
| comments)
|
| _Is Recycling a Waste of Time?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22318165 - Feb 2020 (94
| comments)
|
| _Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won't Take
| It_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837414 - Dec 2019
| (152 comments)
|
| _The Great Recycling Con [video]_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21742196 - Dec 2019 (77
| comments)
|
| _How Coca-Cola Undermines Plastic Recycling Efforts_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303618 - Oct 2019 (132
| comments)
|
| _All plastic waste could be recycled into new plastic:
| researchers_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297639 -
| Oct 2019 (150 comments)
|
| _We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21102560 - Sept 2019 (64
| comments)
|
| _Exposing the Myth of Plastic Recycling_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043986 - Sept 2019 (17
| comments)
|
| _Plastics: What 's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20762789 - Aug 2019 (215
| comments)
|
| _Smart plastic incineration posited as solution to global
| recycling crisis_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20728911
| - Aug 2019 (84 comments)
|
| _' Plastic recycling is a myth': what really happens to your
| rubbish_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726689 - Aug
| 2019 (63 comments)
|
| _Americans ' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20549804 - July 2019 (282
| comments)
|
| _Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851 - July 2019 (336
| comments)
|
| _I work in the environmental movement. I don't care if you
| recycle_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20134641 - June
| 2019 (15 comments)
|
| _Why Recycling Doesn 't Work_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365 - May 2019 (216
| comments)
|
| _Reycling Plastic from the Inside Out_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844551 - May 2019 (46
| comments)
|
| _Bikes, bowling balls, and the balancing act that is modern
| recycling (2015)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19799348
| - May 2019 (35 comments)
|
| _Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic
| could change that_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728391 - April 2019 (116
| comments)
|
| _America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn't Work_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19483074 - March 2019 (35
| comments)
|
| _The World 's Recycling Is in Chaos. Here's What Has to Happen_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543 - March 2019 (25
| comments)
|
| _What Happens Now That China Won 't Take U.S. Recycling_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342 - March 2019 (219
| comments)
|
| _The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252 - Jan 2019 (84
| comments)
|
| _Recycling in the United States is in serious trouble. How does
| it work?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584 - Aug
| 2018 (94 comments)
|
| _Trash piles up in US as China closes door to recycling_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698 - Aug 2018 (272
| comments)
|
| _Californians love to recycle, but it 's no longer doing any
| good_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495872 - July 2018
| (14 comments)
|
| _Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can 't solve_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152 - June 2018 (441
| comments)
|
| _An enzyme that digests plastic could boost recycling_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16856246 - April 2018 (122
| comments)
|
| _Plastics Pile Up as China Refuses to Take the West's Recycling_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719 - Jan 2018 (71
| comments)
|
| _Recycling Chaos in U.S. As China Bans 'Foreign Waste'_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827 - Dec 2017 (233
| comments)
|
| _China Bans Foreign Waste - What Will Happen to the World 's
| Recycling?_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15528740 - Oct
| 2017 (63 comments)
|
| _Is it time to rethink recycling?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083898 - Feb 2016 (147
| comments)
|
| _The Reign of Recycling_ - https://archive.is/o8LBm -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327585 - Oct 2015 (34
| comments)
|
| _Recycling is Garbage (1996)_ - https://archive.is/JKG7y -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757853 - June 2015 (55
| comments)
|
| _Is Recycling Worth It?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7778956 - May 2014 (13
| comments)
|
| _Recycling is Bullshit; Make Nov. 15 Zero Waste Day, not America
| Recycles Day_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186666 -
| March 2010 (18 comments)
|
| _The Recycling Myth_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937097 - Nov 2009 (36
| comments)
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > Pressure is also building for "polluter-pays" laws that would
| shift the cost of waste collection from taxpayers to the
| companies that make and use plastic. Earlier this month, Maine
| became the first U.S. state to pass such legislation... The
| American Chemistry Council (ACC), an industry group whose
| membership is dominated by plastics makers, says polluter-pays
| measures would hurt the economy.
|
| This is the kind of solution that seems to appeal to HN and
| appeals to me personally. It's a system-wide incentives problem.
| So just change the incentives and price in the externality,
| right? Same goes for carbon taxes. I hope these kinds of laws
| catch on.
| brisance wrote:
| The tone of this article feels like fear-mongering. There are
| bioplastics which are less harmful on the environment, are
| compostable and sourced from 100% renewable and sustainable
| sources. Some bioplastics like PLA are biocompatible; sutures and
| tea bags are made from it. We're still in the early stages of
| this technology and it seems premature to tar everything with
| such a broad brush.
| olivermarks wrote:
| The Chinese used to manually process imported western recycling,
| they stopped in 2017. https://youtu.be/jnNNnHTLjmg It's a
| complicated global issue far greater than the use of oil to run
| vehicles via petroleum/gasoline which is highly energy efficient.
|
| We are focusing on ending this instead of the use of oil to make
| tires (22 gallons per unit,Tire particulate pollution in cities
| is a huge issue for clean air) and plastics which produce a lot
| of pollution and waste and which vehicles are increasingly made
| out of. .
|
| There are bio product alternatives for many plastic packaging
| products but little pressure to evolve...
| legitster wrote:
| I don't understand the argument against plastics.
|
| - Extract oil from underground
|
| - Buy oil off the market, prevent it from being burned
|
| - Turn it into affordable and useful goods
|
| - Properly dispose of it by burying it underground again
|
| Obviously a bit simplistic, but it seems like plastics are a
| rudimentary carbon sequestration technology!
| ceejayoz wrote:
| If the goal is carbon sequestration, just skip... all of your
| steps, and leave the oil in the ground, where it is already-
| sequestered carbon.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| relax88 wrote:
| One thing I'm always curious about is why we are so concerned
| with plastic waste.
|
| My local grocery store recently switched to paper bags. So I got
| curious. Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for
| the energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags. This is
| impossible since they are made of paper. Aluminum and glass
| bottles require several hundred times more energy to produce as
| well (between 170-250x).
|
| Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the most
| part North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic
| you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.
|
| Plastic waste really isn't a big problem unless you're talking
| about developing nations. North America is responsible for about
| 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86%
| of it.
|
| Don't get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of
| plastic waste in the ocean.
|
| If we want to make a difference here we should be helping
| developing nations to better manage their plastic waste so that
| it doesn't end up in waterways.
|
| The Yangtze and Ganges are releasing plastic into the ocean at a
| rate far greater than all of North America combined, and our
| response is to expend huge amounts of energy produced by fossil
| fuels trying to recycle our plastic instead of burying it in a
| landfill where it is unlikely to pose a major ecological threat.
|
| Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we're more
| concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually
| solving the problem.
| titzer wrote:
| > Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the
| most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of
| plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a
| problem.
|
| Go to any waterway in the US and you will find it. Plastic
| bottles, bottle caps, chip bags, cpu lids, straws, milk jugs,
| food containers, chewing tobacco cans, lighters, ping pong
| balls, syringes, milk crates, fishing line, bobbers, clothes
| hangers, insulation, O-rings, tires, fishing nets, pens, pen
| caps, grocery bags, six pack rings, chew toys, fake flowers,
| buckets, handles, 55 gallon drums, soccer balls, the broken
| plastic housing of almost any consumer product you can imagine.
|
| I have with my bare hands picked up over 500 bags of this shit
| off coastlines and waterways and highways on three different
| continents. Based on my experience, every single mile of ocean
| coastline and nearly every waterway is littered with plastic
| waste to a greater or lesser degree.
|
| The problem is so bad that unless you are in a national park a
| hundred miles from civilization, you cannot walk more than 100
| feet along a waterway without seeing some kind of garbage,
| unless someone has specifically detrashed there, thoroughly, in
| the past week. The water is full of our junk.
|
| > Don't get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of
| plastic waste in the ocean.
|
| The tone of this comment really raised my hackles. I'm not
| going to unload on you, but I am so tempted to right now. But
| holy shit, if you'd dragged 5 tons of shit out of the creek
| you'd not complain from behind your keyboard that they want to
| take your stupid straws away.
|
| I say ban all single-use plastic.
| lumost wrote:
| I'll be honest, I spend a lot of time outdoors in New
| England. Plastic waste is not nearly as endemic as you
| describe in North America. The only area that gets comparable
| to what you describe are waterways in major population
| centers such as the Charles river and Boston harbor.
|
| Banning single use plastic is still a great way to cut down
| on
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > Plastic waste is not nearly as endemic as you describe in
| North America
|
| Plastic waste isn't really endemic to North America. Surely
| there are some locations with plastic waste problems, but I
| do a lot of hiking and local travel and I can't remember
| the last time I saw huge swaths of plastic waste. People
| around here are generally good at picking up behind
| themselves and even picking up waste that others mistakenly
| leave behind.
|
| That said, I've been to some developing countries and been
| absolutely shocked at the quantities of plastic waste I
| encountered in certain locations. Unfortunately these are
| the same places least likely to switch to use degradable
| plastic bags if they're more expensive.
| titzer wrote:
| It's a sliding scale, which is why I mentioned the national
| parks. More people = more trash. Take a little plastic bag
| with you next time and pick up every piece of trash you
| see. Suddenly it will pop out of the woodwork. Waterways
| collect and concentrate it.
| greeneggs wrote:
| > I say ban all single-use plastic.
|
| The alternatives are worse. They use much more energy, and
| you can't go outside without seeing how bad global warming is
| now, and how devastating it soon will be.
|
| We need to forget plastics recycling entirely, and spend all
| that effort on redirecting trash to landfills.
| industriousthou wrote:
| If plastic that's "properly" disposed of still ends up in the
| environment, how do you dispose of all the trash you collect
| to ensure that it doesn't end up back in the environment?
| vesinisa wrote:
| > Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for the
| energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags.
|
| This sounds _way_ too high. And indeed, this BBC article cites
| paper bags being just four times as energy intensive as plastic
| bags: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47027792
|
| That's a difference of an _order of magnitude_. It would be
| very interesting to hear where you sourced that number from.
|
| As others have pointed out, the whole equation involves also
| recyclablility. Plastic bags - unlike paper bags - are very
| hard to recycle, as this article demonstrates. Therefore
| efforts to reduce the amount of waste generated in the first
| place are preferable.
|
| Before we can begin to solve plastic waste problem abroad we
| need to first develop lasting and scalable solutions at home.
| Caricaturizing the problem to encourage people to close their
| eyes of the issue might make you feel better but is entirely
| unhelpful.
| moooo99 wrote:
| > My local grocery store recently switched to paper bags. So I
| got curious. Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times
| for the energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags. This
| is impossible since they are made of paper.
|
| This is true, but thats just one side you of a tradeoff you
| have to make. The main concern with plastic waste is the
| duration it takes until it degrades. Also, microplastics are an
| issue too. And even the plastic waste that makes it to
| recycling facilities is often impossible to recycle due to the
| material composition, its often just burned instead, releasing
| Co2 in the air.
|
| > Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the
| most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of
| plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a
| problem.
|
| > Plastic waste really isn't a big problem unless you're
| talking about developing nations. North America is responsible
| for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa
| account for 86% of it.
|
| So are most parts of Europe, but properly disposing the waste
| is just one part of the equation. The other more challenging
| part is actually getting rid of the waste we produce. And an
| important cornerstone of the waste strategy is to export it. In
| January to June 2018 the US alone exported 150,000 metric tons
| of plastic waste to Malaysia, 90,000 to Thailand, and a
| considerable amount to other nations [1]. With the EU
| countries, its even more extreme with 362,000 tons plastic
| waste being exported to Malaysia in 2020 [2].
|
| So I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that a significant
| portion of the plastic waste that is sent to the ocean in
| developing countries is actually the export of developed
| nations.
|
| > Don't get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of
| plastic waste in the ocean.
|
| thats true, thats just virtue signaling.
|
| > If we want to make a difference here we should be helping
| developing nations to better manage their plastic waste so that
| it doesn't end up in waterways.
|
| The best way to go into the future is to just quit producing so
| much plastic waste. Plastic is a great material, its super
| durable while also being super cheap. That makes it useful for
| a lot of purposes, but also pretty unsuited for many others.
| Look at how much (unnecessary) product packaging is made of
| plastic. It's a material that can easily last decades and is
| instead used massively used to produce single use items just
| because of the low price.
|
| My best guess as to why plastic is so massively used:
|
| As the world moves towards renewable electricity sources and
| away from fossil fuels, plastic production is one of the
| biggest (growing) markets that will remain interested in oil.
| Stopping to use plastics that excessively would of course hurt
| that growth. [3],[4],[5]
|
| > Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we're more
| concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually
| solving the problem.
|
| Unfortunately, that is very often the case. I guess it's easier
| to make one feel better by sacrificing something like plastic
| straws instead of actually trying to change the own lifestyle
| to drive actual change.
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/892470/us-exports-
| plasti...
|
| [2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235938/annual-
| plastic-w...
|
| [3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-petrochemicals-iea-
| idUSKC...
|
| [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/664933/oil-demand-
| plasti...
|
| [5] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21419505/oil-
| gas-...
| yarky wrote:
| I'm not an expert, but a plastic bag takes longer to disappear
| naturally than a paper bag.
|
| Your energy accounting and waste source/destination issues are
| just the top of the iceberg. The elephant in the room is the
| plastic.
| skohan wrote:
| Yeah and haven't microplastics been found in basically every
| organism by now? I feel like this is something which we may
| look back on like lead in 30 years.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Radioactive particles from nuclear testing are in every
| organism too. Just because something exists doesn't mean
| it's a disaster. You'd need science to back up a feeling
| like yours otherwise you're probably just regurgitating
| what popular opinion has indoctrinated you with and that's
| whatever's widely emotionally satisfying to believe.
| skohan wrote:
| Oh sure, I'm just speculating. But if you always waited
| for concrete evidence to conclude that something might be
| a risk, you would have may have been wearing hats coated
| in mercury in the 19th century, and eating of uranium-
| infused plates in the early 20th century.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| > Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for the
| energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags
|
| But that's okay. Energy is not the issue with bags but the fact
| that they don't decompose. Using more energy to switch to
| something that decomposes is a good enough deal.
| relax88 wrote:
| A plastic bag in a landfill is less harmful to the
| environment than a paper bag that costs 43x more energy to
| produce.
|
| The former is trapped underground in a location engineered to
| prevent seepage and runoff, and will be sitting there for a
| thousand years where it only poses a threat to the bacteria
| and worms in the landfill.
|
| The latter required a tree to be cut down and used 43x more
| energy, and therefore it's waste is in the atmosphere warming
| our planet.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > A plastic bag ... is less harmful ... than a paper bag
| ...
|
| This is a strawman: you insist comparing two harmful
| options and ignoring others.
|
| For example, in many countries own reusable shopping bags
| made of cotton.
|
| They last a decade and are even more comfortable to carry.
| Zarel wrote:
| Most sources say that cotton is worse than plastic or
| paper.
|
| https://qz.com/1585027/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-
| cotto...
|
| Intuitively, this makes sense to me: cotton comes from a
| plant that can be harvested and replanted, just like
| paper. The main difference is that you use a lot more
| cotton to make a cotton bag.
| 8note wrote:
| Why limit your analysis to the cost of production, rather
| than a full lifecycle?
| mdorazio wrote:
| Multiple misconceptions here:
|
| 1) We don't cut down old growth trees to make paper
| products - we cut down fast-growth trees that are farmed
| for exactly this purpose. Cutting down these trees is not a
| problem, and in fact pulls some carbon _out_ of the
| atmosphere because the trees captured it and the paper
| product end of life is usually getting buried where the
| carbon is mostly trapped.
|
| 2) You're ignoring that renewable energy can be used for
| production.
|
| 3) You're also ignoring that common plastics start with
| oil, which isn't just used for making plastic products. If
| you see a bunch of plastic bottles, you should also be
| thinking about the other oil products associated with them
| that got burned and turned into GHG.
| relax88 wrote:
| The paper industry ranks #5 in carbon intensity and is
| responsible for something like 9% of global CO2
| emissions.
|
| Do you honestly think that industry uniformly manages
| their forestry in an environmentally friendly manner?
|
| You could use renewables but the fact is that most of the
| input energy into paper mills is natural gas co-
| generation because you need both heat and electricity.
|
| Petrochemicals are used in 90% of the regular every-day
| items we live our lives with. Clothing, furniture, our
| homes, cars, personal belongings... banning single use
| plastics isn't going to change that.
|
| I'd rather plastic waste in landfills than more CO2
| emissions.
| mdorazio wrote:
| You really need to provide sources for claims like that.
| Here's the EPA saying that land use and forestry is a net
| carbon sink in the US [1]. If you're talking about
| international then that's a completely different
| conversation entirely, especially since the US exports
| about as much paper product as it imports, and unlike
| plastic, paper is actually recycled really well [2]. If
| you want to talk about countries that don't give a shit
| about the environment... not giving a shit about the
| environment, then there's really no conversation to be
| had here.
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-
| gas-emis...
|
| [2] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-
| materials-waste-...
| [deleted]
| dheera wrote:
| Energy is only one issue. There is also that plastic is a
| petroleum product. Also even if "managed" well ultimately ends
| up in the landfills, and its resources don't get recycled by
| the environment for thousands of years. It also wreaks havoc on
| the environment if it ends up in the wrong place; paper largely
| doesn't.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Disposable plastic versus disposable paper is the wrong choice.
| Buy half a dozen reusable cloth bags and leave them in your
| car, and you don't need either.
|
| We're obsessed with finding the best disposable option,
| trusting our ingenuity to find a way to make our conveniences
| responsible, rather than starting with responsible stuff and
| trying to make it convenient. As the article covers, we're
| failing at that.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > Plastic waste really isn't a big problem unless you're
| talking about developing nations. North America is responsible
| for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa
| account for 86% of it.
|
| Because North America sends all its plastic to be recycled in
| Asia. See Canada-Philippine waste dispute:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada-Philippines_waste_dis...
| refurb wrote:
| Unless it's our plastic waste that's ending up in the ocean
| I'm not sure this matters.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Energy is one dimension of resource utilization. Plastic bags
| clog sewers, kill wildlife and generate a lot of rubbishy.
|
| Paper bags are reusable, made of a renewable material, and
| break down in weeks or months. They are a better solution.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| > North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic
| you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.
|
| Yeah, about that, North America ships garbage to China and to
| poor countries in Southeast Asia to be burned there, or to be
| dumped in a forest/farmland next to low-income rural
| communities.
|
| > we should be helping developing nations to better manage
| their plastic waste so that it doesn't end up in waterways
|
| I don't know why you say that like it's easy, but in the first
| place, maybe plastics just shouldn't be forced upon developing
| nations as conditions of trade if we already know that they
| don't have the infrastructure to manage it, in the first place?
|
| > The Yangtze and Ganges are releasing plastic into the ocean
| at a rate far greater than all of North America combined, and
| our response is to expend huge amounts of energy produced by
| fossil fuels trying to recycle our plastic instead of burying
| it in a landfill where it is unlikely to pose a major
| ecological threat.
|
| I never understood this line of reasoning, to be honest. So you
| have a ton of problems, some bigger than others. Why does the
| fact that you have bigger problems in your backlog negate
| working on the smaller, quicker wins first? Also you keep
| talking about "North America" as if it's a single, sovereign,
| unified country that has no conflicting interests.
|
| > Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we're more
| concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually
| solving the problem.
|
| Didn't we already make ourselves feel better by arguing
| ourselves into what is effectively indifference about the
| problem of pollution?
| kingdomcome50 wrote:
| > we should be helping developing nations to better manage
| their plastic waste so that it doesn't end up in waterways
|
| >>I don't know why you say that like it's easy
|
| Are they saying that like it's easy? How should it be said?
| Your tone is so defensive...
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| Buddy, that wasn't even a comment on his tone.
| gurkendoktor wrote:
| > Why does the fact that you have bigger problems in your
| backlog negate working on the smaller, quicker wins first?
|
| One should pick the tasks with the best cost/benefit ratio
| first. It seems intuitive enough to me that the same amount
| of $ will go much, much further around the Ganges than in an
| effort to ban plastic straws in developed countries, or
| whatever else I see political capital being burnt on.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| Is it just the cost/benefit ratio that you have to
| consider? How about the quality of being realistic? Tell
| me, and in the context of the previous responses--how
| realistic is it that North America will be able to carry
| out and enforce its agenda in the Ganges?
| relax88 wrote:
| Agree on your first two points. That's what I mean about
| helping developing nations. We shouldn't be exporting
| billions of pounds of plastic waste to places that cannot
| ensure proper disposal.
|
| By focusing resources on waste management and international
| cooperation we would be focusing on 90% of the ocean plastics
| problem instead of directing our resources at well managed
| waste streams that do little environmental damage by
| comparison.
|
| Being pragmatic is very different than being indifferent. At
| the end of the day a plastic bag in a landfill is a way
| better outcome than a plastic bag in a waterway, and also
| arguably better than spending 43-250x more energy mostly from
| fossil fuels producing paper/glass/aluminum instead.
|
| When there are no perfect solutions, you must choose the
| least harmful.
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| good
| goodpoint wrote:
| No, there is no such thing as "proper disposal" of plastic.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| And the least harmful is not to dump plastic in a landfill,
| but to not produce plastics at all. :) Similarly, we can
| put more money into research on how to produce
| paper/glass/aluminum/others with less energy, and also
| redesign consumerism and normalize bringing refillable
| containers to the grocery down to the household level.
| There's a lot that can be done that doesn't involve
| polluting the environment.
| goodpoint wrote:
| > redesign consumerism
|
| Better: eliminate consumerism
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| Absolutely, I just made the wording a little bit
| """moderate""" to avoid debates I'm not in the mood to
| have, but I agree.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _And the least harmful is not to dump plastic in a
| landfill, but to not produce plastics at all._
|
| And all of the human advancements in sanitation, food
| safety, and transportation energy afforded by plastics?
| You'd significantly increase CO2 output of transportation
| if every plastic item was replaced by something heavier.
| Stopping all plastic production would be _very_ harmful.
|
| As for people bringing reusable containers to the store,
| this was stopped because it's a health hazard.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| OK, we need to be specific that most of the plastic that
| end up in oceans and landfills are those called "single-
| use", mostly used in food packaging.
|
| > all of the human advancements in sanitation, food
| safety, and transportation energy afforded by plastics
|
| The pollution negates the health benefits of sanitation
| and food safety though, especially in the places where
| they are dumped, which are in rural communities in
| developing countries, whose people are somehow expected
| to make a living out of it for themselves and for their
| children.
|
| Besides, there are so many uses of plastic in food
| packaging that aren't even necessary to begin with, and
| which shouldn't exist. How much of single-use plastics
| are just bags of unhealthy junk food and candy wrappers
| and carbonated soda? Is it even necessary to have such a
| large economy based on unhealthy food sources?
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| I agree.
| NohatCoder wrote:
| Could you provide a credible source for those 43x and 170-250x
| numbers?
|
| Trying to find some numbers for CO2 in paper production,
| numbers vary a lot depending on source, and I assume that they
| also vary a great deal between different paper products and
| manufacturers. In any case, this paper
| https://www.transitionpathwayinitiative.org/publications/49....
| would suggest an average of around 0.7 tons of CO2 per ton
| paper produced.
|
| Meanwhile polyethylene might be cheaper and less energy
| intensive to manufacture (depending on how much of the refinery
| process you include), but it emits 3.14 tons of CO2 per ton
| plastic when decomposed.
|
| A paper grocery bag might need to be a bit heavier than a
| plastic bag to have equal utility, so in total I guess they are
| not wildly different.
| itronitron wrote:
| This is why I like glass deposit bottles.
| tonmoy wrote:
| I personally think you are spot on. I am yet to find any major
| environmental issue with landfill plastics or any health issues
| with micro plastics - especially compared to the harm caused by
| GHG. If using paper bag produces significantly more GHG
| compared to plastic then using our green political resources to
| reduced plastic use not only detracts us from focusing our
| resources into something more useful, but it may be more
| harmful by producing more GHG in the long run.
| xenocyon wrote:
| You're leading with energy use but that's really not the point.
|
| The point is that plastic takes many centuries to degrade, and
| we go through a lot of single-use plastic. For example, a
| disposable diaper takes >500 years to biodegrade.
|
| It's nice to imagine all this plastic going into walled-off
| landfills that protect the rest of the earth and water from
| being contaminated, but in practice this is a myth. US
| localities are seeing an unsustainably growing amount of
| plastic contamination in local waterways and beaches, some of
| it visible, some of it not.
|
| Incidentally, this doesn't mean you need to use a single-use
| paper bag instead of a single-use plastic bag. Instead, use a
| durable bag made out of any material you like. The phrase is
| "reduce -> reuse -> recycle". Recycling was never meant to be
| the foremost part of our sustainability efforts.
| exporectomy wrote:
| You seem to be directly contradicting your parent commenter
| about US releasing plastic into the sea. Even if it's
| growing, do you still agree that it's insignificant compared
| to less developed countries?
|
| A lot of the arguments against plastic miss this anyway. They
| say "don't put it in the landfill" but the landfill is
| exactly where it's walled-off and safe. If it was about
| getting into waterways, it'd be "Put your plastic in the
| landfill instead of the street".
|
| Why does it matter how long it takes to break down? As long
| as it's secure, it'll just sit there doing no harm. Is there
| any evidence that landfills will one-day release their
| contents on a large scale and cause an environmental problem?
| Presumably that will happen in some post-apocalyptic world
| where people no longer bother to maintain things and the
| apocalypse will be tolerable but not the plastic?
| biasedbrain wrote:
| Still, it is mostly a cosmetic problem, while we are supposed
| to believe that global warming will kill us all in a short
| amount of time. So the priorities should be clear.
| lurquer wrote:
| > The point is that plastic takes many centuries to degrade
|
| So? Is there a shortage of centuries? Do you really think--
| 300 years from now--they'll be using plastic?
| southeastern wrote:
| There have been numerous cases of finding plastic waste in
| some fish, and because it doesn't decay organically it can
| form blockages in their digestive tracts. Whatever they're
| using in 300 years, they'll still be finding plastic in
| oceans and rivers(absent a massive clean up program)
| lurquer wrote:
| Bits of plastic can form blockages? Says who? I seriously
| doubt it.
|
| A bit of plastic -- to a fish gut - is no different than
| a pebble, chunk of coral, bit of bone, etc.
|
| Littering is bad.
|
| And litter that doesn't naturally decompose is annoying.
|
| But, it's an aesthetics problem. Plastic is harmless
| (despite the occasional picture of a turtle with a straw
| in its nose...)
|
| Over time, whether is decomposes or not, it will be
| covered with sediment and gone from the ecosystem.
| nicoffeine wrote:
| Don't worry, the only people saying that are the
| scientists who are studying it.
|
| "When Browne experimented with blue mussels back in 2008,
| many researchers thought animals would just excrete any
| microplastics they ate, like "unnatural fiber," as Browne
| called it--but he wasn't so sure. He tested the idea by
| placing mussels in water tanks spiked with fluorescent-
| tagged microplastic particles smaller than a human red
| blood cell, then moved them into clean water. For six
| weeks he harvested the shellfish to see if they had
| cleared the microplastics. "We actually ran out of
| mussels," Browne says. The particles "were still in them
| at the end of those trials."
|
| The mere presence of microplastics in fish, earthworms
| and other species is unsettling, but the real harm is
| done if microplastics linger--especially if they move out
| of the gut and into the bloodstream and other organs.
| Scientists including Browne have observed signs of
| physical damage, such as inflammation, caused by
| particles jabbing and rubbing against organ walls.
| Researchers have also found signs ingested microplastics
| can leach hazardous chemicals, both those added to
| polymers during production and environmental pollutants
| like pesticides that are attracted to the surface of
| plastic, leading to health effects such as liver damage.
| Marco Vighi, an ecotoxicologist at the IMDEA Water
| Institute in Spain, is one of several researchers running
| tests to see what types of pollutants different polymers
| pick up and whether they are released into the freshwater
| and terrestrial animals that eat them. The amount of
| microplastics in lakes and soils could rival the more
| than 15 trillion tons of particles thought to be floating
| in the ocean's surface alone."
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-
| huma...
| lurquer wrote:
| Ha.
|
| Let me know when the ocean has .5grams of nano-sized
| plastic particles per Liter.
|
| That would be around 300000000000000 Tons of plastic, all
| in the form of nano-sized particles.
|
| Then -- and only then -- would you begin to see an effect
| on Mussels.
|
| But, of course, long before that, the world would have
| ended.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > A bit of plastic -- to a fish gut - is no different
| than a pebble, chunk of coral, bit of bone, etc.
|
| There's reasonable empirical evidence that plastic
| accumulation in fish causes them to reproduce less than
| they otherwise would[1]. The prevailing theory is that
| most plastics leach at least some of their chemicals in
| seawater.
|
| [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-
| fish-to-huma...
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| > You're leading with energy use but that's really not the
| point.
|
| Isn't that _the_ critical point? Of all our environmental
| problems, atmospheric CO2 is the biggest one, right? My
| assumption is that the energy used in industrial
| manufacturing is almost always non-renewable. If we 're
| advocating for using paper bags over plastic bags, that means
| we're advocating for way more CO2 in the atmosphere. So what
| we should actually be advocating for is mandating that people
| reuse bags, bottles, and containers of all kind.
|
| It's been a long time since I've been involved in chemistry,
| but my understanding is that extruded polymers like plastic
| bags, wraps and containers are almost always synthesized from
| waste products of fossil fuel refinement. If it wasn't for
| products like plastic wraps and bags, these "waste" gasses
| that are polymerized into plastics would be released into the
| atmosphere (especially in places without environment
| regulation or enforcement). The production of plastics at
| least traps those gasses into some solid state that we can
| then hope to maybe possibly bury in a landfill. I know it's
| ugly and pretty horrible, but from a climate perspective I'd
| go so far as to say that I'd prefer the plastic in a body of
| water than in the atmosphere.
| robocat wrote:
| > So what we should actually be advocating for is mandating
| that people reuse bags
|
| Except that many reusable bags are likely a waste of
| resources:
|
| Danish study: "polypropylene bags (most of the [] reusable
| bags found at supermarkets) should be used 37 times paper
| bags should be used 43 times, cotton bags should be used
| 7,100 times."
|
| UK study: "paper bags should be used three times low-
| density polyethylene bags (the thicker plastic bags
| commonly used in supermarkets) should be used four times,
| non-woven polypropylene bags should be used 11 times,
| cotton bags should be used 131 times."
|
| https://phys.org/news/2018-08-reuse-bags.html
|
| A simple approximation for environmental damage is the cost
| in $. If a plastic bag costs 1c, and a jute bag costs $2,
| then you can guess crossover point is 200 usages (weekly
| shopping for 4 years to reach _breakeven_ also presuming
| you value your extra time and hassle at _zero_ ).
|
| Reusable bags are a huge waste IMHO.
|
| I dropped a bottle of wine the other day because I didn't
| have a plastic carry bag - cost equivalent of 1000 plastic
| bags... Arrrrghhh!
| dheera wrote:
| > Isn't that the critical point? Of all our environmental
| problems, atmospheric CO2 is the biggest one, right?
|
| Energy is important, but the energy consumption of a
| grocery bag is small compared to the energy consumption of
| most of the things _in_ the grocery bag, and if you drive a
| car to the grocery store, the energy consumption of the car
| for the roundtrip (~0.3 kWh per mile).
|
| I'd say for grocery packaging the ecological impact should
| be the bigger concern.
|
| Honestly the solution is easy, change the $0.10 grocery bag
| surcharge to $1.00 and people will stop using single-use
| grocery bags tomorrow. $0.10 is not enough for people to
| care.
| njarboe wrote:
| Even better solution. Charge $100 to go into the grocery
| store and that will greatly reduce people driving to
| stores, shopping and using single-use bags.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| > Of all our environmental problems, atmospheric CO2 is the
| biggest one, right?
|
| We honestly don't know how bad micro-plastic is. Our
| experience with asbestos, another fibre that can penetrate
| cells, suggests "very bad" is on the list of potentials. We
| do know that it's in literally everything from dirt to
| water to air, and that it has circled the globe and got to
| places no human sets foot.
|
| Like soil depletion and loss of insects, it's on the list
| of problems which aren't trendy to focus on right now, but
| might end up being really serious.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Yeah microplastics might indeed be worse. I didn't know
| microplastics potentially had so much in common with
| asbestos.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| >Yeah microplastics might indeed be worse.
|
| Doubtful, not saying it's harmless but microplastics are
| everywhere, asbestos is not. We should research it but
| should not jump to the conclusion that it might be worse
| than a known horrible material.
|
| Asbestos had clear links to various kinds of horrible
| conditions known all the way back to the early 1900s.
| Microplastics might increase some kinds of cancer and
| screw with some hormone signalling but we haven't seen
| such clear links yet to the same kinds of conditions.
| Symmetry wrote:
| Microplastics are a good reason to make sure your plastic
| makes it to a landfill instead of the ocean more than a
| reason to give up plastic entirely. Of course, not every
| country has government provided waste disposal so to the
| extent that our rich world preferences get foisted onto
| developing countries by default I guess that is a valid
| reason to want to reduce plastic use.
|
| But on the third hand locking up hydrocarbons in plastics
| while we're dealing with global warming seems like a
| positive good.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Also landfill becomes like a nuclear waste site, a burden
| on the future. You can't let it puncture, or be dug up
| (by humans or animals), or landslip, or flood. You have
| to cosset the damn thing in perpetuity, or until someone
| invents plastic-eating fungi (which dump it into the
| carbon cycle instead).
| cronix wrote:
| From what I understand, most microplastics in the
| environment are from washing clothing made of synthetic
| fibers[1] instead of natural products like cotton. It's
| rare to find something made from 100% cotton - it's
| usually a blend of mostly synthetic and sometimes natural
| fibers. Every time you wash them millions of microfiber
| plastics are released into the sewer system and there is
| no filter system capable of removing them so they end up
| permanently in the water cycle. They even end up in rain
| and snowfall[2], and have been found in organs of the
| human body[3] and of course wildlife.
|
| > Microplastic pollution caused by washing processes of
| synthetic textiles has recently been assessed as the main
| source of primary microplastics in the oceans.
|
| [1]https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-43023-x
|
| [2]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article
| /micro...
|
| [3]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/17/mi
| cropla...
| techbio wrote:
| Unfortunately there is no winner take all solution for
| environmental impacts, it is a many-fronted theater.
|
| So better plastics solidified and made useful than released
| as fumes, but your decisive line of argument omits the
| carbon sequestration possible with large-scale paper for
| one thing (just not the kind that spills outflow directly
| into waterways), and the general degradation of the living
| oceans.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| If you factor in cleaning into the reuse process you might
| end up with more waste:
|
| - cleaning products (with plastic containers
|
| - water (warmed by burning gas)
|
| - spending time which could be used in any other way
|
| - who knows what else
| justnotworthit wrote:
| Jokes on you: I never wash anything!
| rakshazi wrote:
| > If we're advocating for using paper bags over plastic
| bags, that means we're advocating for way more CO2 in the
| atmosphere.
|
| Not exactly. The point is not to use paper bag, but to use
| durable/persistent bag from any material (even plastic) as
| long as you can.
|
| For example, I almost never use one-time plastic bags,
| because I have backpack, so when I go to a grocery store,
| all the things placed into the backpack.
|
| In such case (from energy perspective) it's easier to
| peoduce 1 backpack (32l) for several years of daily use
| instead of paper/plastic/etc ONE-TIME bag.
|
| Unfortunately, that approach doesn't work with other
| things. For example, it's impossible to buy yogurt not in
| one-time plastic package and we didn't find a "mass market"
| solution to that problem. Same goes for any other ONE-TIME
| package
| phreeza wrote:
| > For example, it's impossible to buy yogurt not in one-
| time plastic package and we didn't find a "mass market"
| solution to that problem. Same goes for any other ONE-
| TIME package
|
| Actually there are completely package-free supermarkets
| in Europe (and probably the US, too) now, where you bring
| your own container and pay by weight. It's very niche now
| but I can imagine it increasing in popularity.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Can you please name them? This is my dream. I would like
| to learn more.
| penteract wrote:
| https://scoopwholefoods.com has stores in Australia,
| Singapore, and the UK, although I'm not sure if it has
| yogurt.
| Forbo wrote:
| SciShow did a great episode on this very issue:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| Thanks a lot, will check this out.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| > The point is not to use paper bag, but to use
| durable/persistent bag from any material (even plastic)
| as long as you can.
|
| Of course. I was referring/responding to the parent
| comment.
| 08-15 wrote:
| > extruded polymers like plastic bags, wraps and containers
| are almost always synthesized from waste products of fossil
| fuel refinement
|
| That's almost completely false.
|
| It obviously depends on the kind of plastic. PE and PP are
| made from ethene and propene, which are indeed byproducts
| of fuel refining. But demand far outstrips supply now, so
| these are now made on purpose. PS is made from styrene,
| which is not a byproduct. It is made from low-value
| chemicals, so it's upgraded waste. PET is made from
| terepthalic acid, which is very much not a waste product of
| any process.
|
| Even if there were any waste products from fuel refining,
| they would certainly not be vented. They'd be burned as
| fuel. Which is also a sensible thing to do with waste
| plastics. (Someone is going to object that this releases
| CO2. It does. Burning fuel releases CO2. We can come back
| to this point once we longer burn coal or methane for
| energy.)
| bobiny wrote:
| Wiki and some other sources say that PE is made from
| crude oil byproducts https://extension.psu.edu/how-
| plastic-is-made-from-natural-g...
| atonse wrote:
| Yes I keep preaching this to anyone that will listen. It was
| THREE Items that form the phrase. And we just don't reduce or
| reuse given how easy it is to buy more stuff.
|
| At my house, we have a whole "fixin' stuff box" full of items
| that broke but not seriously enough that maybe we can figure
| out how to fix them. I started this to teach my kids that we
| can repair stuff rather than throw it. I still have really
| fond memories of fixing things around the house in India in
| the 1980s with my grandpa. Although those days most fixes
| involved either adding oil, or taking things apart and
| cleaning the dust.
|
| What does make me happy is now, sometimes when I say let's
| throw something my 7 year old son says "come on let's at
| least try to fix it first". We have fixed his headphones
| twice by taking it apart and re-soldering wires that came
| loose. And it feels so satisfying to know you can bring
| something back to life.
|
| It's had mixed results. The biggest pushback even with me is
| time. Do I have the time to fix that broken pencil sharpener
| or can I solve this in 2 mins on Amazon because I have 50
| other things to do.
|
| And more often than not the 2 mins wins.
|
| I think if fixing things was more socially present (you saw
| more people around you doing it), more people would do it.
| laurex wrote:
| This becomes a reinforcing problem as we purchase cheap
| solutions in the quick fix option, ones that are more
| likely to break, be more difficult to repair, and more
| likely to let us to another quick fix.
| MereInterest wrote:
| And it is nigh impossible to know ahead of time how
| repairable a device is.
| colechristensen wrote:
| You can just burn plastic though, lots of places do for
| energy.
|
| And if you put it in context, you're already "burning" the
| carbon in the food you eat and plastic just adds a little bit
| of overhead to that.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Uh that just releases more carbon dioxide faster, how is
| that a solution to anything other than maybe landfill
| issues? I would personally say that's worse as it is
| contributing to our biggest problem of all which is climate
| change. At least if it's buried it takes centuries to break
| down
| atonse wrote:
| Depending on the technology used by whichever
| incinerator, they do go through multiple passes and
| filtration steps but I am not actually sure what that
| does about CO2 emissions.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The extra processing done is to clean up incomplete
| combustion and particulate. CO2 is the end of the line.
| The CO2 molecule is very similar in size to N2 and O2.
|
| It can be separated and captured in various ways, but
| they are quite energy intensive (though occasionally
| power plant output will be used as input for industrial
| CO2 "manufacture" where they separate, liquefy or freeze
| it, and then sell it for whatever purpose.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Well we already burn the same fossil fuels for power...
| instead of an oil fired plant you add an extra step and
| turn that oil into packaging for a while before burning
| it. As long as some of your power comes from fossil fuels
| it would really seem to be carbon neutral because a
| similar amount of carbon was going to be burned anyway.
|
| And the amount of plastic actually burned is quite small
| when you compare it to everything else.
| Zababa wrote:
| > The phrase is "reduce -> reuse -> recycle". Recycling was
| never meant to be the foremost part of our sustainability
| efforts.
|
| The thing is, "recycle" is the only one that preserves the
| economy, so that's what everyone jumped on.
| seventytwo wrote:
| But reduce and reuse are bad for bottom lines!!
| eloff wrote:
| We have no shortage of space for landfills. As the OP
| mentioned, we manage or garbage well in North America and
| most of it is disposed properly. I would argue the opposite
| of you, the energy consumption of production and shipping is
| more important than if it's biodegradable quickly or not.
| croes wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microplastics
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Of course, to make plastic you need oil and that either means
| dirty fraking or sending cash to some particularly horrendous
| regimes.
|
| I'm not sure how we compare human rights to polluted land to
| dead fish or trees to Co2E, so I won't say you're wrong. I
| think the lack of a single measure is why we make so little
| progress. I wish I had an answer...
| jdasdf wrote:
| > One thing I'm always curious about is why we are so concerned
| with plastic waste.
|
| Because of virtue signaling.
|
| That's literally it, it doesn't matter how effective or
| ineffective something is, what matters is that politicians (and
| companies) are seen to be taking a stance against pollution
| (regardless of how sincere or effective that stance may be)
| jdavis703 wrote:
| I live in the US on the coast. The top waste I see in the
| brackish waters are plastics and car tires.
|
| People (everyone from consumers to scavengers) tend to recycle
| glass and metal because they're valuable. And paper seems to
| break down quickly.
|
| Paper may be bad for energy usage. But energy consumption is
| not the only environmental issue to be concerned about.
| noxer wrote:
| Its the same reason as allays, some kind of subsidies. Created
| by politicians who are fooled/bribed by lobbyists. Same reason
| the US replaces certain % of fuel with bio-fuel. It does make
| any sense. It pollutes more to create the bio-fuel than if you
| would use normal fuel. Its also not carbon neutral and it
| destroys incredible amount of land and the soil and even fossil
| water is used up sometimes.
|
| Obligatory PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT S02EP05 Recycling
| https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/
| trainsplanes wrote:
| Have you gone to a beach lately?
|
| I don't live in the US but it's certainly not a developing
| country. Beaches are absolutely covered in plastic waste and
| it's noticeably worse each time I go. Forests are steadily
| becoming filled with plastic that either gets tossed there or
| blown there. Animals eat garbage and die. It's horrible.
| Assuming I live a very long life and die in 70 years, that
| plastic will still be there. New plastic will be there as well.
|
| America and the EU "manage" their plastic waste by literally
| shipping it to other countries, then blaming them for
| mismanaging it. Most was sent to China, then it was banned by
| China.[1] Now the EU and US ship it to other countries, claim
| they manage their plastic, and blame new countries. The US and
| EU have yet to manage their plastic, though. They're just
| dumping it on their neighbor's property.
|
| My worry about paper bags is that, corporations doing what they
| do and going for the lowest bidder, they'll be made with clear-
| cut rainforest wood from Indonesia and Malaysia instead of
| sustainable sources. I'm sure a lot are.
|
| I just reuse bags and never use paper or anything unless it's
| forced upon me. I bought some durable bags 5 years ago. I keep
| a couple in my vehicle, a few at home, and others in other
| places so I almost always have a bag with me.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Forests are steadily becoming filled with plastic that
| either gets tossed there or blown there
|
| The forests would be a lot nicer if we spent more time raking
| and cleaning them, like in Finland.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The US had problems with littering that were mostly quashed
| with some public efforts in the middle to later periods of
| the last century. Our beaches are mostly clean and our
| forests and wild places are too. Not pristine and littering
| still happens but so do efforts to cleaning it up like "adopt
| a highway".
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| True, and educating all people in a country to not leave
| their trash where it does not belong is a part of managing
| our trash as well, which is very neglected.
|
| It is just assumed, that everyone knows what to do with
| plastic bags and stuff, but the reality is, that many people
| do not have any sense of responsibility and throw stuff
| everywhere. Every week I see new heaps of trash in forests,
| which were definitely not there the week before. We need to
| start educating dumb/lazy/irresponsible people not to throw
| their trash everywhere, if needed by leveling up punishments
| and rewards.
|
| If anyone is caught throwing trash into the forest, there
| should be hefty fines for that. If anyone takes time, for
| example on their weekends, to clean the forest, there should
| be rewards.
| D13Fd wrote:
| I'm posting this from an east coast (U.S) beach. I've walked
| up and down multiple beaches in the last two days, and I
| haven't seen any plastic trash at all, although I did see
| someone find an old rusty fish hook today.
| Retric wrote:
| The vast majority of plastic doesn't last that long when
| exposed to the elements. Micro plastics are a significant
| concern but their extreme surface area to volume ratio is
| associated with a short individual lifespan. What's going on
| is new plastics are introduced from littering and fishing
| nets which continuously replaces the plastic which is
| breaking down.
| southeastern wrote:
| >Micro plastics are a significant concern but their extreme
| surface area to volume ratio is associated with a short
| individual lifespan
|
| Isn't the whole issue that they DON'T break down? Yes they
| can wear into smaller pieces of plastic, but chemically
| they're still plastic. And when they get to a certain size,
| they become small enough to easily absorb into the body.
| Retric wrote:
| More that the don't break down fast enough. Most
| individual plastic molecules on their own doesn't last
| that long. Polyethylene the most common plastic is simply
| a very long chain of carbon and hydrogen it's a ready
| food sources for many different kinds of bacteria and is
| broken down by sunlight etc.
|
| There are of course more and less chemically stable
| plastics, but they all last much longer in a landfill
| than the vastly more harsh aquatic environment.
| carbine wrote:
| I just learned that depending on what reusable bags are made
| of, they can be many orders of magnitude worse than plastic.
| Cotton bags need to be reused thousands of times to make up
| for the additional environmental impact it takes to produce
| them. Organic cotton, even moreso.
| https://qz.com/1585027/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-
| cotto...
|
| This last bit is not directed at you but re: the issue in
| general: I get really frustrated with how distorted the
| notions of "right" and "wrong" behaviours are among many
| environmentalists -- rather than being rooted in fact,
| they're all about virtue signalling.
|
| My local grocers are all eliminating plastic and switching
| everything to paper, and I highly doubt that decision was
| informed by a thoughtful analysis of potential environmental
| impact.
| burlesona wrote:
| As an American, one of the things that shocked me the most in
| visits to Europe was how much litter there is. I lived in
| Italy, and it was astonishing how there was just trash
| everywhere, even though Italy is a wealthy nation. I've
| traveled all over Western Europe and the only part that felt
| relatively "clean" to me was London - clean as in comparable
| to NYC or other major US urban centers in terms of litter
| level.
|
| By comparison, I've lived and traveled all over the US,
| cities and rural areas, beaches, forests, etc. Litter is
| rare. Where you will find it are freeway underpasses,
| neglected urban or near-urban waterways and railways: places
| where people aren't really "supposed" to go, and are
| therefore loitered in and rarely cleaned.
|
| There are many areas where the US lags Europe, but in my
| experience when it comes to litter, we have far less of it.
| Swizec wrote:
| You must be going to different parts of Europe than I have.
| American cities (not suburbs, the actual cities) are
| absolutely filthy with trash and litter. European cities
| feel squeaky clean in comparison.
|
| And what's with all that trash on freeways? I've seen a
| whole couch casually waiting to biodegrade by the side of
| the freeway. Discarded bumpers and tyres aren't even worth
| mentioning anymore there's so many everywhere. Large debris
| like that gets cleaned up immediately in Europe because
| it's a hazard.
| edflsafoiewq wrote:
| Don't know what you're talking about. You can walk down any
| highway I've ever seen in America and pick up trash for
| miles and miles.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's better than it used to be. The anti-littering
| "crying Indian" and "Give a Hoot" ad campaigns in the
| 1970s actually worked.
|
| Perhaps things are trending the other way lately. I do
| seem to notice more litter now than I did when I was
| younger. But there are more people now also.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I live in NYC, we actually have tons of beaches here in the
| metropolitan area, and they're certainly _not_ covered in
| plastic waste. Nor are our forests -- the hiking trails
| around here are great. And I 'm talking about the single most
| populated metropolitan area in the US.
|
| Sure there are a few strewn candy wrappers or something, but
| there really isn't any big problem. It's all quite nice.
|
| What country do you live in that your beaches are so bad?
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Not GP but Maybe Somalia? Yeah the hysteria about
| environmental degradation in the USA is among some online
| people who don't even bother to go outside is absurd.
| Within 50 miles of NYC are pristine woods, mature second
| growth trees, deer and black bear. And yeah near the road
| side you may see a plastic bottle every couple hundred
| feet. The sky is not falling.
| msdrigg wrote:
| Im on the east coast and Ive never seen more than a plastic
| bag or two on any beach. Even less in forests. Any plastic
| waste Ive seen outside of a city area is an isolated
| incident.
| protoax wrote:
| You also live in one of the richest cities in the US, so I
| think your experience may be slightly skewed.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| "By 2025, the ocean will contain around one ton of plastic
| for every three tons of fish. By 2050, there will be more
| plastic than fish"
|
| It washes up on beaches. Uninhabited islands thousands of
| miles from the nearest settlement are covered in plastic:
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/henderso
| n...
| trainsplanes wrote:
| NYC probably has people actively cleaning trails and
| beaches.
|
| Japanese beaches that aren't ultra popular tourist
| destinations are currently flooded with trash. Going
| through Shizuoka, Aichi, and islands of Kagoshima, they're
| increasingly looking like dumps. Some are completely
| covered in pieces of trash, and most of it isn't Chinese.
| It's washed up laundry detergent bottles and toys and stuff
| all from here. Some places like Okinawa and Kamakura beach
| are generally cleaned, but having visited Kamakura 4 years
| ago and again a year ago, it's noticeably filthier.
|
| Major beaches are maintained and cleaned daily. Walk a few
| hundred meters beyond the crowds and there's a good chance
| you'll see trash everywhere. Two weeks ago I visited a
| beach I last went to a couple years back, and it was
| depressing seeing the state of it. The beach used to have
| crabs and isopods roaming the sands and crawling around the
| rocks. Now it's covered in shards of plastic and washed up
| tires and other things. Not a crab to be seen.
| titzer wrote:
| > NYC probably has people actively cleaning trails and
| beaches.
|
| > Japanese beaches that aren't ultra popular tourist
| destinations are currently flooded with trash.
|
| This is exactly my experience as well. Every place that I
| have been, if it is a remote site that no one is actively
| cleaning up, then it has weeks, months, years, or even
| decades of accumulated garbage. Popular destinations,
| like beaches around resorts, well-maintained hiking
| trails, private beaches; these all have people regularly
| picking up garbage.
|
| Some of the most "pristine" beaches I've seen were on
| outer islands of Fiji. But they were pristine because
| they had resorts on them, or near them. Kayak over the
| other side of the island, where no one picks up, and it's
| trash city. The global ocean system deposits garbage
| everywhere, on every beach. Depending on where you are in
| the various gyres, that beach gets more or less washup.
| I've been to beaches in New Zealand, Australia, Japan,
| Hawaii, Fiji, Africa, Europe, and both coasts of the US.
| The primary discriminating factor on how much garbage you
| see is how regular and thorough the pickup is.
| Retric wrote:
| The outer banks of North Carolina has miles of beaches
| linked to nature reserves that don't get cleaned or
| accumulate such trash. Japan is surrounded by a sea of
| trash due to the countries surrounding it.
|
| Litter ends up in streams, rivers, and eventually the
| ocean. You can argue it's an issue with plastics, but
| it's equally an issue with trash.
| titzer wrote:
| I was in North Carolina in 2019, in the outer banks. I
| did see plastic bags and such washing up on the shore,
| like I've seen everywhere else. They weren't "covered" in
| garbage, but it's there. It's a sliding scale, a
| spectrum, which has a lot to do with ocean currents. But
| yes, there are regular cleanup efforts for these beaches
| run by the parks service. They'd look much worse if it
| were not so.
| Retric wrote:
| Sitting at the bottom end of that scale you're mostly
| seeing litter from tourists. North of Corolla is a long
| stretch of beach that lacks road access, it's shockingly
| pristine and doesn't see regular cleanup efforts.
| titzer wrote:
| Ok, I haven't been to those specific spots. But I bet
| you'll find small plastic debris (1-3cm in size) at the
| high tide line on beaches. They're everywhere in all
| oceans.
| Retric wrote:
| That's possible. I never specifically went looking for it
| and could easily mistake something that small for bits of
| shell etc.
| titzer wrote:
| This is the unfortunate thing about giving a beach a deep
| clean. Now you start to see it everywhere.
|
| It can also be _under_ the sand.
|
| I once spent a morning cleaning ~50 plastic bags in the
| wet sand of the beach at low tide. They were empty
| shopping bags, but had opened up and filled with sand, so
| they were basketball-sized and really deep; they required
| _digging_ every single one to get them out. Next day, 50
| more were there. There was no way that many washed up in
| one night. So I did a little digging with a spade, as
| deep as I could go in the sand, all the way down to my
| armpit. And I brought up piece after piece of plastic
| from the depths, punching through bags on the way down; I
| don't know how many layers deep. Then I realized these
| "new" 50 bags had just been there under the surface. The
| layer of sand made free by yesterday's cleanup was now
| washed away by the tide to reveal them. That was just the
| worst feeling, knowing that that beach was basically a
| 1km-long landfill, riddled with garbage at least a meter
| deep. An extreme example, but it kind of broke me.
| trainsplanes wrote:
| >Japan is surrounded by a sea of trash due to the
| countries surrounding it.
|
| I'm seeing mainly trash from Japanese companies that are
| Japanese products with Japanese labels. It's easy to
| recognize. Externalizing blame isn't the solution because
| it's not the problem.
|
| Currents likely help carry trash away from certain
| regions. Japan's east coast isn't really being affected
| by trash that would be coming from, say, China, because
| currents don't carry most of it to our beaches. It's
| stuff being washed out locally and brought back by waves
| here. Much more is likely being passed out into the
| middle of the ocean.
| nitrogen wrote:
| The problem seems to be that the trash is getting into
| the water. Who is dumping laundry detergent bottles into
| rivers and oceans? Solve that problem. If the bottles
| switch to some other material, whoever is dumping them
| now will keep dumping them. Get trash into landfills and
| the water will be fine.
| Retric wrote:
| Ok, a little digging shows Japan has a much larger
| littering problem than I thought it did.
|
| That said, Asia really does have a much larger issue here
| than the rest of the world. 90% of plastic pollution
| comes from "Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He;
| Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa - the Nile
| and the Niger."
|
| https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-
| polluti...
| trainsplanes wrote:
| The link in the very first post I made was about the US
| and EU literally shipping their plastic to other
| countries as part of their "waste management" program.
|
| > Upon implementation of the policy in 2017, plastic
| imports to China plummeted by 99%.[9] This led to waste
| stream backlogs across Europe and North America.[9] When
| they could find buyers, most European plastic was
| diverted to Indonesia, Turkey, India, Malaysia, and
| Vietnam.[9]
|
| Western governments are sending trash to these places
| _knowing_ it 's finding its way into rivers just so they
| don't have to spend money processing it themselves. These
| impoverished countries are overwhelmed with trash that
| isn't theirs. It's a problem because Western countries
| are selling trash that they claim is recyclable and a
| valuable resource, but is literally useless trash. The
| moment one country bans the system (such as China), the
| EU and US find another place to dump it instead of
| processing it on their own.
| Retric wrote:
| The import bit was: "When they could find _buyers"_
|
| The US and EU have plenty of landfills, their exporting
| plastic which was actively separated from the waste
| stream for recycling which can be profitable. If nobody
| wants to pay for it then the default is to burn it
| domestically for energy.
| trainsplanes wrote:
| The link mentioned that a lot of it was "contaminated"
| recyclables.
|
| Contaminated recyclables are just garbage. Countries are
| getting fed up with the EU and US sending supposedly
| separated recyclables because it's pure garbage falsely
| labeled as usable plastic. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-48444874
| Retric wrote:
| Contaminated recyclables isn't the equivalent of garbage.
|
| The issue is the degree of contamination. Different
| municipal waste streams all have their own internal
| systems a 98% plastic stream and a 99.9% plastic stream
| are very different economically.
|
| Completely separate from that it's a political issue as
| nobody wants their country to be thought of as a dumping
| ground. "Malaysia says up to 3,000 tonnes of rubbish will
| soon be returned to the UK, US, Japan, China, Canada,
| Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Saudi Arabia,
| Singapore, Bangladesh, Norway and France." what's not
| mentioned is this represents 1% of plastic sent to the
| country. The don't want to ban the process because the
| other 99% is quite valuable domestically.
| crazygringo wrote:
| No, this is a sadly common misconception.
|
| Trash in rivers in Asia is from _local_ littering, pure
| and simple.
|
| Trash that Western countries send over is simply buried
| or burned. It's _not_ the source of plastic pollution in
| rivers. There 's real concern with it being a source of
| _air_ pollution when burned... but it 's simply _not_
| turning into litter.
| qiqitori wrote:
| Yes, agreed. I lived in Matsue a couple years ago and
| found a couple nice spots that were covered in ocean
| trash. Loads of plastic bottles both from Japan and other
| countries (there was a milk carton from Australia),
| styrofoam, polyester apparel, some random other stuff.
|
| Pic: https://blog.qiqitori.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2017/08/DSC0249...
|
| Boring blog entry:
| https://blog.qiqitori.com/2017/08/beach-cleaning-in-
| matsue-j...
| latchkey wrote:
| Vietnam. Cambodia. Laos. I spent 4 years living and
| traveling all over those countries by motorbike.
|
| Not just the beaches, but every single waterway, alley,
| forest, jungle. Literally everywhere.
|
| I have pictures of the waterways in Saigon at low tide and
| the ground is covered in plastic. At high tide, there are
| government run boats that go up and down some of the
| waterways to collect a fraction of the trash that people
| just dump in there.
|
| Every single little town/commune/village has a spot on the
| way in/out of town with mounds of trash (mostly plastic).
| Usually partially burning, smelly and covered in bugs.
|
| It is tragic.
| 4r4r4r wrote:
| Hong Kong. Beaches are littered with plastic garbage
| including bottles, bags, and wrappers for about 5 meters
| off shore. After that its microplastics. This is across the
| street from the Ferrari showroom.
| acituan wrote:
| > Beaches are absolutely covered in plastic waste and it's
| noticeably worse each time I go.
|
| No disrespect but I don't think anyone can uniformly sample
| all the beaches. There might as well be prevailing currents
| that fill certain places disproportionately more, and leave
| others disproportionately pristine.
|
| This "making a global inference based on the beaches we've
| personally been to" is going to be deceptive in either
| direction of the argument.
| titzer wrote:
| > This "making a global inference based on the beaches
| we've personally been to" is going to be deceptive in
| either direction of the argument.
|
| I've been to beaches on four continents and every. single.
| one. The only place you _do not see_ [1] trash is where
| someone has specifically picked up there, recently. That
| tends to be places around resorts and people's homes.
| Unless someone does it out of their own goodwill or is paid
| to, the trash just floats up and accumulates.
|
| There's a place for healthy skepticism, but not denial.
|
| [1] You don't see it, but microplastics are _thoroughly_
| distributed through the ocean by this point. There is
| literally no way of cleaning up microplastic pollution at
| this point. We can only improve the optics at our scale.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| There is a huge difference between seeing a piece of
| "trash" like a soda bottle or two every couple acres of
| sand and a beach "covered" in trash. In my life I have
| only seen one "beach" "covered" in trash in person and
| that was Race Point at Fishers Island New York. It is
| where much of the water exchange with the open ocean and
| the eastern end of long island sound occurs so it stands
| to reason that stuff would collect there. A mile away
| there is a pristine sand beach. At race point there was
| also a lot of drift wood when I visited including whole
| tree trunks that had washed up. Much of the human created
| waste was old, including metal debries like very old very
| rusted rifle bullet casings presumeably from soliders at
| the now abandoned pre world war two fort behind the
| beach. Who knows the beach may have been the fort's dump.
| acituan wrote:
| > There's a place for healthy skepticism, but not denial.
|
| I'm not saying I'm necessarily denying your premise, at
| least not wholesale, but what is the point of skepticism
| if it doesn't include the possibility of rejecting a
| premise?
|
| It's like saying "I'll allow you to ask questions but
| ultimately you have to come my conclusion"
|
| We can be passionate _and_ rational at the same time.
| titzer wrote:
| We're in the middle of a discussion about plastic waste,
| and some people add to the discussion by posting their
| personal experiences as counter to people who have
| clearly no personal experiences, and some other people
| push back which what sounds like rational skepticism but
| is really just shifting the burden of proof to an absurd
| level, like they are going to dedicate years of their
| life to visit a representative sample of beaches to even
| post a comment.
|
| There's a point where skepticism becomes more than just
| irritating, but entirely subtractive from the discussion.
| It's hard to know what your intentions are from that
| pushback, but it was borderline IMHO, and it certainly
| muddies the waters.
|
| I'll be completely open about my intentions. I want
| people to stop fucking up my river and, damn it, it's not
| China or India's fault. OP is a complete distraction from
| a real problem that exists _where I live_. I 'd like to
| dump a few bags of garbage I picked up from the river on
| their lawn and see what they think about some vague plan
| to clean up the Ganges.
| acituan wrote:
| I'll try to be as clear as I can.
|
| There were several weaknesses with your argument that I
| was hoping you to strengthen;
|
| - you were making yourself prone to availability bias;
| I've been to beaches recently and none of those have the
| problems you mention. That doesn't mean the problem
| doesn't exist, it means we don't get to make sweeping
| generalization from the partial reality we contact. Your
| original rebuttal to the OP was "have you ever been to a
| beach lately"
|
| - appeal to emotions; I'm personally sorry to hear your
| local beach is in heartbreaking condition, but that alone
| _does not_ amplify the strength of your claim that
| "beaches are covered with litter". In fact it makes it
| more easy to refute for anyone who doesn't readily
| sympathize with your story, and that would harm what I
| assume to be your ultimate goal which is a reduced
| pollution.
|
| - overgeneralization: you're perfectly entitled to talk
| about your personal experience, but when you assert that
| as a method of establishing the global truth, that is the
| motion that brings the burden of proof on you, not me
| pointing that out. Maybe keep the strength of your
| assertion in proportion to the data you personally have.
|
| It might look like waters are muddied for you, but I
| think you might be the only one in confusion probably
| because you seem to be very emotional about this topic.
| Which is OK, like I said being passionate is OK, but the
| weaknesses in your argumentation will only hurt your
| cause.
| titzer wrote:
| This exactly the kind of snooty academic dialogue that is
| subtractive. A personal attack couched as some kind of
| psychological diagnosis. "You're being emotional." Please
| deal with the substance of arguments, and don't make the
| person the subject of discussion. That's textbook
| distraction and is a logical fallacy.
|
| I'll be getting back to my representative sampling of the
| world's beaches. And you made a mistake in that I didn't
| claim that "all beaches are littered". Someone else
| posted that. I wrote, "I've been to beaches on four
| continents and every. single. one." That's about my
| experiences.
|
| > appeal to emotions; I'm personally sorry to hear your
| local beach is in heartbreaking condition
|
| You also misattributed this as an appeal to emotions. I
| have a local problem. People are arguing about problems
| in other countries as excuse to block action here. Stop
| doing that.
|
| > overgeneralization:
|
| Again, I didn't. I pointed out the scale of the problem
| is at least as big as my personal experience. It is, in
| fact, larger than that.
|
| This side turn is subtractive from the discussion and I
| hope you would consider not replying again with how wrong
| I am and how my arguments are so bad.
| acituan wrote:
| > This exactly the kind of snooty academic dialogue that
| is subtractive.
|
| It might feel like it is subtracting from your sense of
| being right, which I am not saying you're definitely not,
| but I think some readers might find it valuable in terms
| of reaching to more well-thought-out conclusions.
|
| > A personal attack couched as some kind of psychological
| diagnosis. "You're being emotional."
|
| I'm sorry you felt attacked, that wasn't my intention.
| Having emotions is a human condition, not a psychological
| diagnosis, and I thought I made it clear that I didn't
| find anything demeaning about it. You just can't base
| your arguments mainly on it though.
|
| > Please deal with the substance of arguments, and don't
| make the person the subject of discussion
|
| It so happens you made your _personal experience_ and
| your feeling about it the grounding of your argument;
| making rebuttals on that basis is not making it personal,
| it is actually an argument _against_ making things
| personal. And at no point I invalidated your experience
| or emotions or your personhood.
|
| > You also misattributed this as an appeal to emotions. I
| have a local problem. People are arguing about problems
| in other countries as excuse to block action here. Stop
| doing that.
|
| Maybe the readers were mislead when you talked about 4
| continents, especially after an opener of "have you been
| to any beaches recently". It wasn't clear, at least to
| me, you were interested in talking about the local
| phenomena. But thanks for clarifying that.
|
| Let's get one thing clear though, since we can't read
| people's minds, it is equally undesirable ascribing
| intentions of blocking action and other negative
| predictions salient _to you_ in your mind, to others. So
| I 'll kindly ask you to refrain from that first.
|
| > I hope you would consider not replying again with how
| wrong I am and how my arguments are so bad.
|
| I've considered and still I think it would be to the
| benefit of the community to remove the confusion between
| the local-global, personal-general, emotional-rational.
| If you are upset about receiving responses, you always
| have the option of removing yourself from the discussion
| first. Asking others to stop talking is a bit censor-y.
| titzer wrote:
| > especially after an opener of "have you been to any
| beaches recently"
|
| I didn't write that, please check the thread. That was
| someone else.
|
| > > don't make the person the subject of discussion
|
| Each time I replied I brought the discussion back on
| topic and strengthened my arguments but your entire reply
| is about me again, and there is precious little that
| steer it back to a good resolution.
|
| > you always have the option of removing yourself from
| the discussion first. Asking others to stop talking is a
| bit censor-y.
|
| There is a different, meta-level dialog embedded in our
| dialog, but this terribly ironic juxtaposition is exactly
| the kind of distracting, subtractive, thing I meant. I
| regret this exchange terribly at this point. I'll go back
| to picking up garbage, since in my experience, that is
| the only activity that reliably has impact.
| acituan wrote:
| > > especially after an opener of "have you been to any
| beaches recently" I didn't write that, please check the
| thread. That was someone else.
|
| Sorry I was confused about this, but the context to which
| you seemed showed up in defense of; namely a personal
| "observable"ism as a sufficient means to define the
| nature of a global phenomena, makes the point stand.
|
| > There is a different, meta-level dialog embedded in our
| dialog, but this terribly ironic juxtaposition is exactly
| the kind of distracting, subtractive, thing I meant.
|
| I've been following that meta dialogue very closely and
| here's what I wish we can agree on. Distraction and
| subtraction hinges on our _personal_ formulation to solve
| the problem at hand.
|
| My formulation strongly presupposes that rational
| argumentation can scale through time and people better
| than an emotional and personal appeal, at least in forums
| similar to this. Your formulation seems to presuppose
| that concentrating on the emotionality of your personal
| experience and impressing the audience to action through
| that is a better way to get results. You seem to feel any
| poking holes in the logic is a disservice because it
| takes away from that concentration of emotions and
| impressions.
|
| To the extent these approaches are at odds (and I don't
| think they necessarily are) any one could accuse the
| opponent formulation of being subtractive, distracting,
| action stopping etc.
|
| My plea is for you to see that you're willfully asserting
| a supremacy of your particular formulation in this meta-
| dialogue, without clear evidence that it is the case, and
| with a desire to evacuate alternative formulations out of
| an open forum.
|
| > I'll go back to picking up garbage, since in my
| experience, that is the only activity that reliably has
| impact.
|
| Since you've shared this, it is fair game to ask about
| it, and I know it might piss you off but bear with me
| because it has a point; is it an impact to the
| environment or impact to your conscience? One could cut
| their arm to feed the hungry, but how far could that go
| for making a change?
|
| I'm bringing this up because it ties back to my original
| point of taking time to _make sure we have the right
| formulation_. The observable, the immediate, the
| emotional is super-salient to us but that doesn 't
| automatically mean more true, more effective and
| ultimately the best thing to follow.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| But the question was about _why_ there was such an
| obsession with plastic waste. If a lot of it was
| accumulating at your beach, that would be all the sample
| size you need to form an opinion.
| 8note wrote:
| Has north america stopped shipping it's plastic waste to Asia
| now?
|
| Otherwise, that properly disposed of American waste likely
| counts in Asia and Africa's mismanaged waste. Tacking somebody
| else's name on the problem doesn't put you in the clear
| Chris2048 wrote:
| It also ignores having to double-bag stuff, or losing produce
| when the bags get wet and split.
| [deleted]
| delfinom wrote:
| >Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the
| most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of
| plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a
| problem.
|
| You have read FAR too much into propaganda my friend.
|
| We ship our plastic waste to the third world you are saying
| mismanages it.
|
| You are a degenerate like the rest of Americans.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Added to what you said is the fact that the most commonly used
| plastics like polyethylene are biological inert. Thus most
| plastic is about as harmful as sand which only really harms
| life in a mechanical way if at all.
|
| I think it is a mass hysteria fueled by social media. Plastics
| are not bad for the environment in of themselves and certainly
| not worse than chopping down trees to make paper or burning
| coal to make glass.
|
| Solar produced polyethylene could be a terrific carbon sink if
| there was not a mass hysteria about "plastics."
|
| It is so fascinating how the general public can demonise
| something they don't even understand.
|
| "Plastic" in general is harmless to the environment. That is
| because it is chemically inert. Plastics are used every day in
| medical proceedures and medical devices. Plastics provide
| habitats for small organisms. Ever find a discarded plastic
| bottle that has been sitting in the woods for years? Usually it
| is teeming with life, from algae to spiders, to worms and other
| invertabraes.
| GordonS wrote:
| I don't disagree with everything you're saying here, but some
| plastic products (especially bags, polystyrene boxes and
| small pieces of plastic) are definitely harmful to some
| animals, who of course form part of the environment.
| seventytwo wrote:
| If you want to view this from an entropy perspective, then
| fossil fuels are basically cheating because their use can't be
| used as part of a closed system (closed with respect to the
| sun's lifetime) unless we factor in the energy and time
| required to convert sunlight into crude oil or natural gas.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > for the most part North America is quite good at properly
| disposing of plastic
|
| Shipping trash to piss poor Asian and African countries is
| _not_ adequate disposal
| capybara_2020 wrote:
| Just a quick search shows how even though it might be just 3%.
| 3% is a huge number with the US being the biggest plastic waste
| generator. 3% = 1.25 million metric tons.
|
| And in 2016, more than half of all the plastic collected in the
| US was shipped abroad. To places that supposedly "mismanage"
| plastic waste.
|
| I have personally seen the impact when China banned all this
| waste from landing. It moved to places like Malaysia and
| Indonesia. I got more than a few calls to try and see if they
| could move that plastic from Malaysia and Indonesia to other
| countries. It is still a massive ongoing problem.
|
| Basically the US and a lot of western countries have outsourced
| pollution and then blame developing countries. This happens
| when discussions about CO2 emissions also comes up. When most
| of that pollution is generated production cheap goods for the
| west.
|
| Source:
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/us-pl...
| vimy wrote:
| > This happens when discussions about CO2 emissions also
| comes up. When most of that pollution is generated production
| cheap goods for the west.
|
| 87% of Chinese emissions are attributable to domestic
| consumption. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-
| largest-co2-import...
| jka wrote:
| > Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we're more
| concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually
| solving the problem.
|
| Either way, instead of reifying the relevant facts and
| statistics and iterating on them (or upturning them when
| invalidated), we tend to debate them repeatedly, even over
| decades as manufacturing methods and trends in society change.
|
| (this is me pining for a system like arguman[1] with the
| critical mass of wikipedia to help forge these debates into
| more reliable, long-term results)
|
| [1] - https://github.com/arguman/arguman.org
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Mostly because it is clearly visible and enduring pollution I
| think.
| [deleted]
| superflit wrote:
| Because the US is not the problem.
|
| The lobby is So strong against US that even if we take photos,
| investigate where is the problem people will come and say:
|
| "The evil US made they do it."
|
| Because maybe the US Pay and ship a fraction to be recycled
| outside US. But still US is blame for other countries
| corruption too.
|
| It really does not matter.
|
| "Green" will became a hidden tax on middle class to power
| elite.
| ssivark wrote:
| While the point about the energy consumption of paper -vs-
| plastic is certainly worth considering seriously, you might
| need to take a more careful look at your assumptions about
| plastic disposal.
|
| Mismanaged plastic waste in Asia/Africa and really clean
| numbers for North America are two sides of the same coin --
| flawed accounting. _The developing world certainly does not
| consume, or generate anywhere close to the same amount of
| waste, (per capita) as North America._
|
| Part of the reason North America appears to have such clean
| numbers for "properly disposing of[f] plastic" is that garbage
| is _exported_ to poorer countries, either for "recycling" or
| more likely burning/landfills (thereby externalizing the
| accounting, and also most of the damage).
|
| Eg, see: https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/30/21542109/plastic-
| waste-u... and
| https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/7025017...
| beached_whale wrote:
| A large chunk of the recycled materials in Canada and the US is
| not recycled domestically and a majority of that is sent to
| countries with inadequate controls. So the culpability starts
| with the users/manufacturers.
| vimy wrote:
| I often see this claim but never any evidence for it. How do
| we know it's Western plastic being dumped in rivers instead
| of their own thrash?
| beached_whale wrote:
| That doesn't matter.
|
| Until the countries have processes and infrastructure in
| place to properly handle it, it should not be sent there as
| that is relying on inadequate laws to reduce costs. And
| here we are.
|
| But here is an article that talks to some of it, single
| source so grain of salt. https://www.plasticpollutioncoalit
| ion.org/blog/2019/3/6/1570...
| Trex_Egg wrote:
| The Plastics from the North America is being shipped to south
| and southeast Asia, probably. So what good it does to them.
| sjg007 wrote:
| Ummm... the USA exports a lot of plastic recycling.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/12/climate/plastics-waste-ex...
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I think like a lot of this stuff it is virtue signaling by
| stores and local governments. To be fair it does cut down a bit
| on them flying around the neighborhood though. The plastic bags
| in grocery stores aren't the real problem. The real problem is
| plastic recycling is a joke and that we need to get people more
| involved in reusing like we used to with glass or just using
| your own containers. The fact is that Asia is the one dumping
| 80% of the plastics into the ocean. Obviously Asia has a lot
| more people than North America so the amount per capita might
| not be all that different. We all need to adjust our ideas of
| consumption.
| [deleted]
| jvanderbot wrote:
| OK, the greenhouse-gas argument is correct, but misses the
| point of plastic recycling. The point is not oil use, it is
| plastic use and plastic pollution. If you've ever been to a
| beach in some countries that's completely covered in plastic
| bags, you'll instantly feel differently about disposable
| plastic, which just seems to blow in the wind and float up to
| the beaches. If oil were free and environmentally friendly, I'd
| ask them to burn more of it to give me a solution to plastic --
| not more plastic.
|
| Glass is sand -- throw it in the deep ocean or pile it up I
| don't care. Aluminum is recycled because it is cheaper than
| mining new aluminum. That's a win.
|
| Still, your comment is spot on. Many, many environmental
| initiatives have feel-good effect (Straws!?) and many, many
| legislation efforts are not based on sound math.
|
| However, _trying_ to recycle plastic is noble enough,
| especially if we're trying some fairly advanced methods. A
| sound recycling method that produces usable fuel would go a
| long way for those third world countries. I can think of no
| greater incentive for recycling than a little cash in the
| pocket of those who collect and return. Hell, every Tuesday
| some poor soul comes and steals all the aluminum cans out of
| our recycling bins for precisely this reason. Imagine if
| plastic were equally reimbursed.
| relax88 wrote:
| The beaches covered in plastic bags are exactly my point. The
| problem is plastic waste being mismanaged.
|
| Recycling is not a solution to mismanaged waste streams, and
| yet for some reason everyone loves talking about recycling
| plastics and nobody talks about ensuring that the other 80%
| of plastics that aren't recycles or burned are properly
| disposed of in landfills.
|
| The entire reason glass and aluminum are reimbursed is that
| they are orders of magnitude more energy intensive to
| produce.
|
| If the current recycling technology can't make a profit
| recycling plastic bags then the solution is making sure each
| and every piece of that plastic is properly disposed of in an
| engineered landfill.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I'm actually not disagreeing with you ("Still, your comment
| is spot on."), just clarifying the motivation to remove
| plastic and trying to show how recycling efforts do make
| sense.
|
| > The beaches covered in plastic bags are exactly my point.
| The problem is plastic waste being mismanaged.
|
| Yes, I agree.
|
| > Recycling is not a solution to mismanaged waste streams,
|
| Well, it can be. Incentivized collection (e.g., aluminum
| and glass) motivates consumers better than providing
| passive options that don't work well (like expecting
| perfectly non-contaminated and sorted plastic from everyday
| consumers).
|
| > If the current recycling technology can't make a profit
| recycling plastic bags then the solution is making sure
| each and every piece of that plastic is properly disposed
| of in an engineered landfill.
|
| One solution is doing that. Another solution is not using
| plastic or using less. A third is fixing current recycling
| technology with (4th option) perhaps involving the plastic
| producers and making plastic easier to recycle.
|
| You made an excellent point about waste management being a
| very good cost effective solution to reducing plastic
| pollution. You're fundamentally right, but absolutism based
| on assumptions about people you disagree with doesn't help.
| We can fix waste management, improve recycling, and reduce
| supply all at once which _also_ reduces oil use at the same
| time.
| 3grdlurker wrote:
| > everyone loves talking about recycling plastics
|
| Who's everyone? I've read more about economists and
| environmental scientists outright calling out recycling,
| and then proposing a complete abandonment of plastic
| altogether.
| noxer wrote:
| The aluminum cans are stolen because they actually have a
| intrinsic value. The plastic bag does not and there is no way
| to artificially add value to it so people collect and return
| them.
|
| >Glass is sand -- throw it in the deep ocean or pile it up I
| don't care.
|
| But who gonna do that? And why would someone do that but not
| do it for plastic?
|
| The reason we dont have a floating patch of glass in the
| ocean is not because humans piled it up on land its because
| its sinks and rather fast reaches a destination where it
| stays for hundreds of years. Unlike plastic which falls apart
| floats around get eaten by animals etc. etc.
|
| The oceans must be full of human made glass its just not
| visible and has no known severe effects. But replacing all
| plastic with glass/aluminum just for the small fraction that
| will ends up in the ocean makes no sense. The extra pollution
| cased by not using plastic is far far grater. Instead we
| should focus on the moment plastic turn to pollution. Ive
| used thousands of plastic bags in my life and none of them
| ended up in the ocean. This is true for most people so where
| do the bags actually "leak" into the environment. I would
| assume there are places where rivers are used as garbage
| trucks to move the trash away. This is the real problem. Not
| people who actually use the plastic bags. Its people who
| intentionally "dispose" trash in the environment.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Given how prevalent and light they are, I suspect some of
| "your" bags have actually ended up as pollution (blowing
| out of trucks, being mis-managed in waste processing, or
| otherwise escaping the system that you dutifully turned
| them over to).
|
| It's not like all the trash out in the ocean was dropped
| off a boat by the original users.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| >"Ive used thousands of plastic bags in my life and none of
| them ended up in the ocean."
|
| 99% chance this is wrong, just because you placed it into
| garbage big does not mean it wasn't shipped off to china to
| a poorly managed facility and didn't end up in the ocean
|
| >"But replacing all plastic with glass/aluminum just for
| the small fraction that will ends up in the ocean makes no
| sense."
|
| Do you remember when milk was delivered to your door, and
| you returned the bottles, and they were reused? Reused
| glass products make perfect sence.
|
| We now use inefficient, plastic laden and polluting
| processes because we are lazy. Most people don't have a
| real coffee machine, they buy shitty overpriced plastic
| pods filled with second rate coffee that then pollute the
| environment for 'convenience'
| skripp wrote:
| >The aluminum cans are stolen because they actually have a
| intrinsic value. The plastic bag does not and there is no
| way to artificially add value to it so people collect and
| return them.
|
| Sure there is. When you buy a bag have it cost $1. If you
| return the bag you get that back, or maybe $.90 to cover
| the cost. Not sure about the US, but this is done with
| glass and plastic bottles in a lot of countries.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| > It's being trucked to a cement plant northeast of Salt Lake
| City that burns it for fuel.
|
| That seems way _worse_ than putting it in a landfill?
| thrower123 wrote:
| With modern emissions controls in an incinerator, you take a
| tractor trailer load of waste and turn it into a coffee can of
| ash that needs to go in the landfill.
|
| And you get a megawatt/hour of electricity out.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| A landfill is a far more sensible place for the waste to end
| up than the atmosphere.
| crisdux wrote:
| Not necessarily. In countries like Japan and Sweden, they
| claim that their waste to energy (trash burning) operations
| reduce greenhouse gases when all factors are considered. So
| much so that Sweden imports trash to burn. Landfills arent
| the best place either. For example, organic waste
| decomposing in landfills produces methane gas, which is way
| more potent than carbon dioxide. There is an argument to be
| made that burning organic waste is better than burying it.
|
| Trash incinerations are too controversial in the US to
| expand much. I think because of a ill-informed public.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Volatile organic waste yes, but most plastic waste
| doesn't decay into methane in significant quantities.
| crisdux wrote:
| But still, America has a large untapped opportunity to
| curb greenhouse gas emissions through more use of trash
| burning power plants. What's required is the right
| controls, technology and public education. That included
| mixed trash with plastics. Our efforts to reduce
| emissions need to be multi pronged.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| On which metric? For global warming it's worse, but it's
| probably better in terms of water and soil pollution.
| Forge36 wrote:
| Is burning the waste to CO2 worse than the methane from decay
| in a landfill?
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Plastics don't decay into methane in significant
| quantities.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| The water and soil pollution from a landfill is predominantly
| caused by biodegradable waste. Hard plastics aren't a big
| contributor _because_ they 're stable for a hundred years.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| "This is future humanity's problem, if there ever is one"
| is not a great argument though. Eventually it destabilized,
| and 400 years from now all the plastic we've put in the
| grounds in the last few decades will "suddenly" all create
| a whole new problem.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| Yes, but climate change is definitely going to cause
| problems in far less than 400 years, and landfill soil
| pollution is highly regional problem, not a global
| problem.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Well, I'd presume it's releasing a lot of chemicals into the
| air.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jul/21/bpa-
| exp...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I skimmed, but I don't see anything in that article about
| burning. Given that BPA begins to decompose at a measly
| 227C, I doubt a lot of it would escape a proper
| incinerator.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Cement is a cornucopia of nasty stuff anyway.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It also releases CO2 at roughly a 1:1 ratio too. One ton
| of cement is roughly one ton of CO2.
| ju-st wrote:
| It's better for global warming when the plastic is replacing
| oil/gas in the cement plant.
| toast0 wrote:
| Burning waste for fuel is generally a good thing, if done with
| reasonable emissions controls.
|
| Less waste to store in a landfill. Less new fossil fuel
| extracted to run the cement plant. Less fuel used to transport
| the fuel.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| It makes no difference to the atmosphere whether you're
| burning oil or plastics made out of oil. It's better to not
| burn oil at all!
| nostromo wrote:
| The cement plant was using coal and would continue to do so
| without the recycled plastic.
|
| Saying, "just don't make cement" isn't a serious answer.
| 8note wrote:
| Make significantly less cement could be an answer though.
|
| If we design structures to last much longer, we don't
| need to keep replacing them
| samstave wrote:
| I've always wondered how a better filter could be for
| factory emissions, specifically, if you could pipe the
| emissions to come out of the bottom of a giant pond, filled
| with water that will capture a lot of the particulate as it
| aerates up through the water? and then treat the water the
| same way you would normally
|
| Like if the bottom of the pond was filled with layers of
| activated charcoal, aerogel pellets (aerogel is known to
| collect heavy metals pretty efficiently... and then sand.
|
| A reverse water filter basically.
| escape_goat wrote:
| This is a somewhat blinkered perspective. It's true in a
| sense, but the emissions can be offset by not burning some
| oil that's in the ground not causing any problems. In the
| meantime, it is an optimal way of getting rid of huge
| categories of toxic or otherwise intransigent waste that
| will have harmful effects if they are not removed from the
| biosphere.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| But carbon in the atmosphere has a _much_ worse effect on
| the biosphere than plastics in a landfill.
| escape_goat wrote:
| This is a false assertion. There is always carbon in the
| atmosphere and there should always be carbon in the
| atmosphere. The only thing that has a negative impact is
| when the total amount of carbon is excessive. "Plastics
| in a landfill" are poorly and temporarily sequestered and
| are a potential source of future groundwater
| contamination.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| It's very well established that the current amount of
| carbon is the atmosphere is excessive.
| escape_goat wrote:
| Yes. That was not what you claimed and it does not imply
| that your argument is correct, for reasons that I feel
| I've spelt out fairly patiently. You are welcome to
| remain opposed to the incineration of plastic waste, but
| I feel that your reasoning suffers from tunnel vision.
| speeder wrote:
| I was thinking these days, that when I was a kid some 20 years
| ago, people were all the rage against paper, because you had to
| cut trees and whatnot, everything was switching to plastic so you
| could "save the trees"
|
| I still wonder what that was about, all it did was screw the
| paper companies that had their own private forests, and cause the
| stupid plastic patch on the pacific ocean, and now everyone has
| to switch BACK to paper.
| samstave wrote:
| Could have been a PR campaign from Big Oil to sell more
| plastics only.
| nitrogen wrote:
| If previous environmental outcries were driven by PR, what's
| driving the current plastics outcry? Why should one believe
| that "this time is different?"
| [deleted]
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Maybe the overarching moral of the story is that single-use
| "disposable" products aren't a good environmental option
| regardless of what material they're made of.
| jolux wrote:
| This is true but the incentives are currently not calibrated
| to ensure that more durable products are used. Making
| disposable bags more expensive, or similar to, reusable bags
| would go a long way here, I think.
|
| And there are some cases where disposables are important for
| hygiene and safety, like medical usage. But it would be best
| to reduce production to those things that have a strong
| reason to be disposable.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I have a little bit of a different take here.
|
| Paper products represent carbon sequestration. Single use
| paper products are great in that they are capturing and
| locking atmospheric carbon.
|
| Trees are renewable resources that can be farmed. I never
| understood the "save the trees" argument. From what? Most
| modern lumber harvesting not only cuts down trees, but plants
| new trees for later harvest. Same way we plant other
| consumables. Where's the "save the potato!" movement?
| alkonaut wrote:
| Fwiw I never heard the "save the trees" only "save the
| rainforest" (which still makes sense). I grew up with 10k
| trees per capita though and now it's probably more because
| farmland is abandoned.
| 8note wrote:
| Sequestration only works if the carbon stays locked up.
|
| If you dispose of the bag, and it decomposes to methane in
| the landfill and is then burned, you've barely done any
| sequestration
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Well, the slogan should be something like "Save diverse
| fauna, flora and funghi which goes through a natural life
| cycle inside of a vast forest with trees of varying species
| and ages", but that doesn't fit on a t-shirt :).
|
| Edit: Apparently _all_ living organisms are collectively
| called "biota", cool.
| refurb wrote:
| But that's rarely been highlighted. Plastic bags in grocery
| stores are banned but I've always reused them multiple times.
| Now I just buy bags to replace the ones I don't get now.
|
| If the message is "be diligent and minimize use of materials"
| that's a pretty agreeable statement to most.
| kaybe wrote:
| I wish the plastic packaging of the toilet paper was even
| better suited as a liner for the bathroom bin. It's just
| good enough as it is, but the producers don't even seem to
| be aware of this fantastic secondary function.
| ip26 wrote:
| 30-40 years ago logging was running at an unsustainable clip,
| so it was probably a fair criticism at the time.
| tobias3 wrote:
| Then you had a different experience from me. Some teachers in
| e.g. elementary school forbade binding our loaned books with
| plastic and had us use paper instead even though that broke
| much too fast and we had to redo it all the time. This was in
| Germany.
| gotoeleven wrote:
| I mean I guess it's nice that a mainstream press outlet is
| finally admitting what has been known for 20+ years--that
| recycling, with few exceptions like aluminum, is a big waste of
| energy and wealth and is a net negative for the environment
| overall--but only when they can somehow blame it on "big oil."
| Maybe we can end the idiotic ritual of sorting our garbage like
| hobos now?
|
| The focus should be on reducing plastic usage overall and using
| paper-based materials except where absolutely necessary. The
| recycling catechism telling us the answer to waste is recycling
| has probably done more harm than good because it has prevented us
| from thinking properly about the problem.
| stewbrew wrote:
| Again? This is getting tiresome.
| fmajid wrote:
| Plastic recycling is a scam designed to lull people's conscience
| with the illusion that it will be taken care of, when the reality
| is it ends up in landfill or worse.
|
| I think we should phase out plastic for aluminum instead. It's
| estimated 75% of all the aluminum ever produced is still in use
| because of recycling. Instead of wasting time and effort in
| trying to make material that is inherently hard and unprofitable
| to recycle recyclable, use one that has a proven track record of
| being profitably recycled.
| ggcdn wrote:
| We've been misled for so long into thinking this is a consumer
| problem that needs downstream solutions. Actually I think it's a
| regulatory problem that needs upstream regulation
| samstave wrote:
| I agree, I have always thought that these biggest CPG (Consumer
| packaged goods) companies, oil and plastics companies should be
| required to have a larger % of their packaging as glass, paper,
| mycelium, etc. and they should be required to accept any and
| all used products containers and recycle them themselves.
|
| We think of milk men and the reusable coke bottle programs as
| archaic in the day of instant gratification from something that
| you then just throw away after single use.
|
| Milk companies, and the coke cleaning recycling program (in the
| Philippines) for example are good examples of a more closed
| loop packaging solution.
| lou1306 wrote:
| Somewhat related: John Oliver recently did a segment [0] on
| plastics and how we recycle it (spoiler: mostly we can't).
|
| It seems regulations are sorely needed: differentiating domestic
| plastic waste will not get us very far. Still, research on waste
| reuse must continue: I'm afraid we won't put effort into really
| cleaning up our mess unless it becomes a somewhat profitable
| business.
|
| [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E
| delfinom wrote:
| Not to worry, people want to recycle it by turning into roads!
|
| Completely ignoring the microplastics disaster it will
| accelerate
| 8note wrote:
| Let alone that blacktop is the big win of reuse and recycling
| already, and these plastic additives likely make it less
| reusable
| golemiprague wrote:
| Japan burns most of its plastic for energy in a pretty clean way,
| why not copy it to other places? Maybe not ideal but pretty
| decent solution
| ezconnect wrote:
| As much as we hate plastic waste it made our food distribution
| safer and cleaner.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Plenty of paper bags don't really break down either. From the
| 'inks' which are actually a plastic coating, to the plastic based
| glue, to the paper itself which seems to rot far far slower than
| wood fibers, presumably because of some additive.
|
| Try it today - put a grocery store paper bag in your compost, and
| watch it still be there in a decade.
| beckman466 wrote:
| From the top comment and others like it, it seems many of us are
| looking at this from a non-systemic viewpoint. Example:
|
| > Plastic waste really isn't a big problem unless you're talking
| about developing nations. North America is responsible for about
| 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86%
| of it.
|
| Except when you look at the logos that are on the waste, you see
| that they are all products made by Global North/Western companies
| (Coca Cola bottles, etc.). So is it really fair to blame workers
| who buy things in unsustainable packaging that is produced by a
| big company?
|
| I love the short movie 'The Story of Stuff'. It does a great job
| of illustrating that we should focus on the point of production
| (and the pollution caused there by big companies), instead of
| looking at the point where we meet the products for the first
| time (on a shelf in a store).
|
| The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GorqroigqM
| Meandering wrote:
| Thanks for linking "The Story of Stuff". I remembered the
| content but forgot the title. I would look at how gasification
| is evolving for waste disposal.
|
| So, who is responsible for improper disposal of waste? I would
| say that the end consumer has a responsibility to dispose waste
| correctly. However, it seems the ability to do so has been
| tainted by a horrible waste management system.
|
| Plastic Wars: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-
| wars/
|
| Plastic is a cheap and versatile material. It is a by-product
| of an independently lucrative business; oil. I would love to
| see alternatives but, the development of sustainable packaging
| is hiding behind a research market barrier and the economic
| cost difference between the cheap "waste" product of oil. I
| hope consumer choice leads use to a better system... where
| those choices are informed and have influence.
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