[HN Gopher] U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nat...
___________________________________________________________________
U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report
finds (2020)
Author : DocFeind
Score : 319 points
Date : 2021-08-01 19:10 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| [deleted]
| fidesomnes wrote:
| I would support a progressive tax on single use items that are
| not biodegradable that simply becomes unaffordable to plastic
| within a few years.
| 3gg wrote:
| I imagine this has gotten worse with covid, people ordering food
| for take-away or shopping online. For what it's worth, I tried
| the idea of ordering from the restaurant online but then bringing
| my own (re-usable, washable) tupperware to pick up the food, and
| it certainly worked out. If you ask, you often get what you want.
| If the place is not willing to help you reduce your plastic
| footprint, then maybe it's one place to skip.
| vipermark7 wrote:
| When given an option between blaming the individual and blaming
| multinational corporations, I tend to blame the latter
| rsynnott wrote:
| In this case, it's the secret third option; the state. This
| problem can only be solved by regulation; no market force is
| going to make it go away.
| zz865 wrote:
| Yeah everyone does, which is why those big oil companies are
| causing global warming but not me.
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Well, you didn't wage a massive climate change denial /
| disinformation campaign for decades, did you?
|
| I don't have _any options_ with regard to how I get to and
| from work nor how I hear and cool my home.
|
| Is that _directly your fault_ , or am I right to place a fair
| chunk of the blame on the source of that denial?
| arodyginc wrote:
| You can't cause any real harm to nature without help from
| corps. But they can, by just setting up an oil drill leaking
| into the ocean.
| pb7 wrote:
| They would drill for oil nobody wants? I don't buy that.
| It's a two way transaction between supply and demand.
| gruez wrote:
| But they wouldn't be setting up oil drills if there wasn't
| consumer demand.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Consumers don't demand oil, they just need to get their
| kids to school. Capital has decided the most profitable
| way is with oil.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You're greatly underestimating what people can manage on
| their own. Even ancient peoples managed plenty of harm to
| nature. Deforested whole regions, wiped out species,
| damaged farmland with irrigation, etc.
|
| Now there are vastly more of us, and we have a lot better
| tools to do damage with.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| I also love the 'But you can 'vote' with your dollar!' crowd
|
| We have glass bottles, we have compostable plastic, a company
| is not incentivized to lose profit by switching to more
| expensive alternatives until it becomes illegal to not do so
| and they have more lobbying power than any of us.
| sethammons wrote:
| No single raindrop believes it is to be blamed for the flood
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| This analogy highlights where the problem lies.
|
| Floods are prevented, or mitigated, not by single raindrops,
| but by chaotic systems on a much larger scale, and / or
| infrastructure projects raindrops have little to no ability
| to action.
|
| Humans need leaders to rally behind, and what we've had for
| too long, and likely will have for longer still, is wet
| dishcloths masquerading as leaders.
| tmalsburg2 wrote:
| You're not given the option, though.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Idk, I don't think it matters who we blame. The problem isn't
| the multinational corporations that do this, it's the system
| that lets them. We need a better system.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Which is the system at fault here? Capitalism?
| beprogrammed wrote:
| "Economic system based on private ownership of the means of
| production and the creation of goods or services for
| profit" no not capitalism, governance.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Captialism (as implemented in many Western countries) can
| deal with these things, it just doesn't by default. We
| successfully solved ozone depletion, we made significant
| progress with acid rain, we got rid of leaded gasoline, our
| rivers are reasonably clean, ...
|
| Reasonable legislation that sets the right incentives
| works. But it's difficult to get passed when entrenched
| interests are against it. The problem isn't capitalism, the
| problem is the industry influence on politics that prevents
| reasonable legislation.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Capitalism is just an idea. The actually existing system is
| a complex self-contradicting hydra that is hard to
| describe. But yes as another commenter said it comes down
| to governance. How do we as people want to govern human
| action? I am way more in favor of decentralized governance.
| I'd say that a lot of our problems come from having a
| powerful centralized government that can be influenced by
| the wealthy. That's not "capitalism" in a libertarian sense
| at all. It's more like an oligarchy in practice. Tho many
| tend to refer to our system as capitalism, which can lead
| us down all manner of arguments over terminology. What I
| really care about is power and how it is distributed. I
| believe in more directly democratic systems. I think
| oligarchy tends to lead to problems like plastic waste
| because the wealthy rulers can basically insulate
| themselves from any problems they cause, while the rest of
| us have the choice of buying plastic trash or spending more
| resources to avoid plastic. The third option of zero waste
| grocery stores (food as one example) could lead to a life
| without extra burden on the more conscious consumers and
| without excess plastic trash. These are common in some
| other countries, but a country flooded by the plastic
| producers' public relations machine, US consumers are all
| to happy to buy more and more plastic trash. A big question
| on my mind lately is why we allow public relations to
| manipulate us in to believing these falsehoods. We've
| surrounded ourselves with megaphones of corporate endorsed
| pseudoscience, as happened with disposable plastics.
| Sociologists know public relations works, but we've allowed
| the public relations industry to convince us it's benign. I
| think we need to think hard about who that industry serves.
|
| By the way, Noam Chomsky uses the phrase "really existing
| capitalism today" to talk about the system we've ended up
| with.
|
| https://youtu.be/_uuYjUxf6Uk
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I don't think he intended for it to be named. It's just a
| system. E.g., The system that lets companies pump water out
| of aquifers from states in drought and sell it back to
| people marked up 1000x while seeding misinformation that
| all tap water is evil. That's the system that is at fault:
| the deliberate exploitation of both consumers and natural
| resources for extreme wealth.
| hereforphone wrote:
| This might be the case, I don't necessarily dispute it. But with
| this sort of thing always keep in mind that the US (and other
| Western countries) _tend_ to be more compliant with reporting
| actual facts than say.... China (who somehow is ranked 107 in the
| world for covid-19 cases, despite their huge population).
| gogopuppygogo wrote:
| Through democide Communism has killed more people than any
| other event/war/form of government in human history. They have
| murdered tens of millions through starvation. Why is it
| surprising that they would lie about Covid deaths?
| hereforphone wrote:
| Not arguing your point but I think a fair amount of that
| likely inaccuracy comes from lack of infrastructure / a large
| amount of rural communities. I'd guess there's some intention
| there (for misreporting) but I doubt that's the entirety of
| the issue
| beervirus wrote:
| China gets zero benefit of any doubt.
| rcstank wrote:
| Why is the truth being downvoted?
| Leary wrote:
| Nice copium. Who should I trust, my family and friends in China
| who never heard of anyone getting COVID? or the western press
| who can't cope with their own failure?
| [deleted]
| hereforphone wrote:
| Or the Chinese press who never reports anyone getting covid
| kortilla wrote:
| Why would you hear of people getting covid if the government
| is suppressing it? They would have just heard of people
| getting the flu or having allergies.
| trasz wrote:
| But of course, a conspiracy theory involving hundreds of
| thousands doctors makes perfect sense, right? :-D
| rsynnott wrote:
| > China (who somehow is ranked 107 in the world for covid-19
| cases, despite their huge population).
|
| I'm always a little surprised that people are so quick to jump
| to conspiracy here. China is an authoritarian country with
| recent prior experience of dealing with epidemics, which took
| extremely aggressive measures against covid, some of which
| would not fly in a democratic country. You'd _expect_ it to
| have a low rate.
|
| Would you also assume Australia's lying about this? Up until a
| month ago it followed a pretty similar pattern to China, based
| on somewhat less aggressive tactics.
| f0xytr0xy wrote:
| We're #1! We're #1!
| tremoloqui wrote:
| How about re-framing the problem?
|
| Considering:
|
| Reclamation and recycling technology will improve over time.
| Similarly the economics of processing recycled material are
| likely to make it more valuable.
|
| and:
|
| Supposing we can protect the surroundings, water table etc.
|
| further:
|
| Supposing, as other comments have pointed out, the availability
| of land is not really an issue.
|
| Then:
|
| Is it crazy to think that there is value to be found in safely
| storing this material until it is more feasible / valuable to
| process?
|
| At least it seems like a better plan than incinerating it.
| olivermarks wrote:
| A lot of plastic packaging waste on US products originates in
| China where the products are manufactured (display bubble packs
| etc). Import legislation would help a lot to reduce this
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Can I read this without entering my email address?
| dqv wrote:
| No.*
|
| * Some exceptions apply. See https://archive.is/zBbNG
| ALittleLight wrote:
| "The pioneering 2015 study of marine plastic didn't include
| illegal dumping and export of plastic waste. In the new analysis,
| the team considered those actions, but only for the U.S. They say
| data for other nations were inconsistent or didn't exist."
|
| Doesn't this seem like it's saying illegal + legal plastic waste
| in the US is greater than legal plastic waste in other countries?
| That seems like a much different claim to me.
| morpheos137 wrote:
| Despite the hysteria most commonly used plastics are harmless.
| The only things I can think of that may be harmful in some
| plastics are harmful on their own, for example lead which can be
| used as a plasticiser to soften PVC. Lead is toxic whether or not
| it is in plastic. Fortunately your PET soda bottle or PE
| grocciery bag does not contain lead for obvious reasons.
|
| Some other compounds like phthlates may have negative endocrine
| effects but I believe this is far from resolved.
|
| "Microplastics" to the extent they exist in meaningful
| concentrations are not anything like asbestos fibers (this is
| known) which cause mechanical damage to cell structures by their
| needle like shapes. Rather microplastics are akin to small sand
| particles. Inert dust. The very reason that plastics do not
| decompose makes most of them safe to life unless absurdly high
| concentrations of very small particles are present in which case
| sand or silt dust would be comparable.
|
| The mass hysteria about "plastics" in just shows how easily human
| emotions can be manipulated.
|
| Sure, plastic bags floating in the ocean may look like jelly fish
| sea turtles. This is why we shouldn't throw plastic bags in the
| ocean. Maybe bags should be made more dense than sea water so if
| they do end up in the ocean they sink.
|
| Otherwise the solution to the plastics "problem" is really
| simple: burn it, recycle it or bury it in the ground.
|
| The last option has the added benefit of potentially serving as a
| long term carbon sink.
|
| I could envision a world where solar power or bioengineered
| plants perhaps are used to pull CO2 from the atmosphere and lock
| it up in something useful and stable like polyethylene, which
| could be used or just burried in shallow pits removing CO2 from
| circulation for centuries or thousands of years.
| youeseh wrote:
| From a consumer's point of view, what choice do we have? All it
| takes is a trip to Costco. Everything is wrapped in plastic. Yet,
| they have the cheapest prices.
| temp0826 wrote:
| Another gold! USA!
| runj__ wrote:
| In other news: water still wet! P = NP still unresolved!
| HPsquared wrote:
| Plastic waste should just be landfilled if it can't be safely
| recycled. Who cares if some additional feedstock is required to
| make fresh plastic?
| cgb223 wrote:
| Does anyone know what it would look like for the US to stop using
| single use plastics?
|
| Always thought it would be a cool thing for us to try, but can't
| quite figure out how practical that really is
| handrous wrote:
| Everything would get a little more expensive, basically. It's
| used because it saves money, same as everything else.
|
| Similar to cheap but non-repairable or non-reusable stuff in
| general. How do we get rid of it? The answers amount to making
| stuff more expensive, or making labor cheaper, or some
| combination of the two.
| stormbrew wrote:
| In practice we don't really have replacements for a lot of
| things "single use plastic" is used for. Sterilized medical
| equipment, storage and distribution of prepared food products
| for people with disabilities, and probably a myriad of other
| minor uses that don't get a lot of attention just don't have
| practical alternatives without making life untenable for a lot
| of people.
|
| So I don't think there's a world in which we just stop using
| them cold turkey. At least not a compassionate one. A lot of
| research and effort needs to go into finding alternatives for
| these things, but the structure of our society doesn't really
| incentivize that.
| Swizec wrote:
| That argument feels a little disingenuous. Like when people
| drive a big truck every day because once per summer they haul
| a boat.
|
| We can eliminate or at least improve a lot of single use
| plastics outside medicine and people with special needs.
|
| At my local farmer's market, for example, all prepared food
| from food trucks and stands comes in unlined cardboard
| containers. When you're done, you throw it in compost because
| cardboard is compostable. Works great and disadvantages
| nobody.
|
| You still get plastic cutlery but it says to be made of
| compostable plastic. I don't know how well compostable
| plastic works but I sure hope it does.
| handrous wrote:
| > That argument feels a little disingenuous. Like when
| people drive a big truck every day because once per summer
| they haul a boat.
|
| Eh, they also choose big trucks so they'll win in a crash.
| Remember, safety ratings/requirements for cars are based on
| collisions with _similar cars_. If you 're in a Fit or Golf
| or Mini and the other guy's in an F-150 or Tahoe, you're in
| big trouble.
|
| The solution's probably some form of graduated weight-based
| tax. Makes sense both on a safety-externalities basis and
| on a damage-to-the-road basis (which doesn't scale linearly
| with weight, so the first ton is way less damaging than the
| second ton, and so on).
| Swizec wrote:
| > Eh, they also choose big trucks so they'll win in a
| crash
|
| Eh this is where it gets really complicated. I used to be
| a car crash enthusiast as a kid (crash science, not
| crashing myself). The main thing I learned is that big
| cars are ridiculously unsafe. Especially american big
| cars.
|
| Long stopping distance, lots of inertia, bad on the moose
| test, ridiculous amounts of energy to dissipate/absorb in
| a crash. Terrible.
|
| Give me a Fiat 500 any day.
|
| Anyway, the best thing you can do for crash survivability
| is to ensure you're never driving a car that's more than
| 5 years old. The engineering advances fast and a modern
| small car colliding with a 10 year old big car will
| absolutely destroy the big car. Use it as a crumple zone.
| handrous wrote:
| Oh, agreed on small cars being much more nimble and so
| maybe more safe _in practice_. I am 100% sure that a lot
| of SUV and truck buyers are doing so because they
| perceive them as "winners" in crashes, though. Some
| also, and relatedly, like the better visibility (but
| what's that doing to everyone else's visibility? Oh well,
| who cares).
|
| Source: they'll just tell you, it's not a secret.
|
| (yes, of course, some people actually use trucks enough
| for real truck-things that it makes some sense for them
| to own one, I'm not denying that such folks exist, and
| there are even quite a few of them--there are also plenty
| of Suburban Commandos, though, and lots of them are women
| who, again, will tell you that one reason they want a
| giant car is for perceived safety, so not _just_ your
| usual "compensating for something" sorts)
| Swizec wrote:
| Ah if your argument was about what they say not what's
| real, then yes I agree. My girlfriend says the same thing
| and refuses to believe me when I present engineering
| evidence.
|
| Luckily we don't need a car so it's merely a theoretical
| debate.
| handrous wrote:
| Yeah, "will 'win' if a crash occurs" is very different
| from "likelihood of death or serious injury while driving
| this vehicle", though the former is (AFAIK) a lot easier
| to get stats on. I definitely _feel_ safer, as in less
| likely to get into a wreck, in a smaller, more nimble
| car, personally.
|
| Desire to be the crusher rather than the crushee is
| definitely a reason I've been _repeatedly_ given by
| people--men and women alike--for why they prefer huge
| vehicles, though. Enough times that I 'd stand by that
| being a significant motivation for people actually buying
| them, as far as (partially, but significantly) explaining
| the level of huge-vehicle sales, whether or not it's
| rational (I really don't know for sure).
| Swizec wrote:
| This is known as active and passive safety in car
| engineering.
|
| Active safety talks about how (un)likely the car is to
| get into a crash. Visibility, brakes, grip, driver
| assists play a major role.
|
| Passive safety talks about thr survivability of a crash
| once it happens. Passenger cell, crumple zones, seat
| belts, airbags, etc.
|
| Most crashes (iirc) are single-vehicle incidents. Amount
| of energy involved is the biggest factor here.
|
| You're more likely to survive crashing a small car into a
| tree than a big car ... with some fudginess around a
| bigger car having more ability to absorb the energy. I
| think it usually about cancels out.
|
| Most deadly crashes between cars are t-bones in an
| intersection because of people chasing yellow lights. You
| are more likely to die in a big car because of rollovers.
|
| Sideways crumple zones are very small in all car sizes.
|
| I haven't kept up with the science the past 10 to 15
| years but this stuff was a big interest of mine for about
| a decade. Can nerd out for days :)
|
| tldr: please don't chase yellow lights. It's among the
| deadliest common behaviors.
|
| Bonus funfact: Large vehicles are safer for pedestrians
| because they spread the load across more of the human
| body when you hit them. That's why all modern cars have
| tall flat noses.
| stormbrew wrote:
| My understanding is that most things marketed as
| "compostable plastic" are only really compostable under
| extremely specific circumstances and that it's mostly a
| marketing stunt. And that can be done at the farmer's
| market because things don't need to be in those containers
| for very long. Scaling isn't just a thing for computers,
| it's also a thing for distribution chains.
|
| Anyways the difference between these two arguments is that
| people use these things to increase the odds of their
| survival. No one (approximately) hauls a boat for their
| survival.
|
| And the really sad frustrating truth is that literally the
| only way to make a lot of these things that do _genuinely_
| help people survive economically worthwhile is to make them
| useful to everyone else too. That 's why, as an oft-cited
| example, pre-cut veggies at your grocery store are
| simultaneously essential for some people and incredibly
| wasteful for others.
|
| This is the faustian bargain capitalism forces us to make.
| titzer wrote:
| > Sterilized medical equipment, storage and distribution of
| prepared food products for people with disabilities, and
| probably a myriad of other minor uses
|
| You're right, there's not single-use material that compares.
| However, there are plenty of reusable sterilizable materials,
| like steel, aluminum, rubber, and glass.
|
| We just need to stop being so ready to throw things in the
| trash and actually think about the backend logistics of
| bringing containers back and reusing them.
|
| This isn't a materials problem. It's a efficiency/cost
| problem.
|
| Just look at the Pfand system for glass bottles in Germany. 2
| basic beer bottles, different labels. Reused dozens of times.
| Deposit system.
| kozikow wrote:
| So just add a significant tax for plastic usage, reflecting
| an actual damage to environment? All use cases where it's
| still necessary will still be able to do so, while price-
| cutters will switch to alternatives.
| 238475235243 wrote:
| Yes but we don't just throw it in a river like many asian
| countries.
| sa1 wrote:
| Just export it to an Asian country.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| Right, but while raw generated plastic trash is meaningful on a
| long-term scale, what's far more relevant is how much is getting
| washed into the ocean or environment, and the US does not lead
| there by a long shot.
|
| Plastic securely sequestered in a landfill isn't a medium-term
| concern and I'm optimistic that future recycling or sequestration
| technologies will help obviate that problem before it becomes
| acute.
| wcerfgba wrote:
| The original article, not linked from NG, appears to be "The
| United States' contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean",
| available at
| https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabd0288
| INTPenis wrote:
| I believe it.
|
| But that doesn't mean we're innocent in the rest of the western
| world.
|
| One really cool improvement here in Sweden recently, besides
| "banning" plastic bags at supermarkets, was one store called ICA
| started selling their burger pattys in cardboard packaging. So
| the only plastic is a top foil that you peel off to open the
| package, the rest is cardboard. Pretty cool! That's one area
| where we're all guilty, namely fresh meat and dairy packaging.
|
| Speaking of dairy and meat I tend to buy from the butcher's
| section instead of the pre-packaged stuff, just because they wrap
| it in paper instead of plastic. It's the little things you can
| do.
|
| And to store it in your fridge, don't wrap it in cellofane, use
| glass tubs with plastic lids instead. Yeah the lids are plastic
| but they're amazing at keeping stuff fresh and re-usable.
| elric wrote:
| Not to rain on your parade, but all these "little things" add
| up to ... a little thing.
|
| Cling film and aluminium foil are both incredibly useful at
| ridiculously tiny thickness/weight levels. One roll of 30m of
| either easily lasts a year or two in my kitchen. A glass tub
| probably has way more embodied energy, I'd need more of them,
| etc. The full life cycle analysis might not be as clear cut as
| we'd like.
|
| Those "cardboard" foot containers are usually lined/sealed with
| stuff containing PFAS and goodness knows what else.
|
| In days of yore, butchers (etc) would use wax paper for
| wrapping food. Which is ... paper ... and paraffin wax. A
| hydrocarbon usually derived from, you guessed it, petroleum.
|
| This war on useful food packaging is silly and maybe even
| counter productive. A box of individually wrapped chocolates is
| pretty stupid. But a pallet full of those boxes is often
| wrapped with more plastic than all the other packaging
| combined, and then some!
| dmm wrote:
| > ICA started selling their burger pattys in cardboard
| packaging.
|
| Fast food paper/cardboard packaging has a layer of PFAS
| containing compounds to make them grease-proof. And consumption
| of fast food is correlated with PFAS blood concentrations so it
| probably contaminates the food. Hopefully the packaging you're
| describing isn't, but...
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/06/health/toxic-food-wrappers-pf...
| alkonaut wrote:
| I think for plastic it's important to note what the usage is. A
| plastic straw is _much_ more likely than a meat package to end
| up in the wrong place. Because a meat pack is unpacked in a
| kitchen so probably 99.99% will end up in a garbage can. If
| just 1 straw of 100 ends up in a river that 's much worse.
|
| (This is assuming the problem with plastic is direct pollution
| and not CO2)
| nostromo wrote:
| A lot of cardboard packaging incorporates plastic layers in
| them -- something people seem not to know.
|
| For example, your Starbucks cup is covered in plastic film and
| is generally not recyclable. It actually contains more plastic
| than straws do, which are now being banned in many cities. The
| same is true for things like milk cartons or juice boxes.
|
| Even your aluminum soda can has plastic in it.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Either the EU or just Germany just outlawed Styropors for food
| packaging. Granted, I had seen it rarely, and the larger chains
| like McDonald's had abolished it a decade+ ago. But on the
| occasions where I got stuff delivered with it, I felt kinda
| dirty.
|
| There are quite a few schemes for reusable packaging for food
| delivery currently getting started. It's a concept that needs a
| certain amount of market penetration and concentration to work,
| but has the potential to make a significant contribution for
| private sector/household trash and energy use.
| pomian wrote:
| Everything tastes better wrapped in paper, or real wax paper.
| Like at a butcher shop. The worst is the stiff plastic boxes
| used for pastries in a bakery. Visual, tactile, taste, aural,
| all is worse than a classical piece of paper or cardboard box.
| (Then there is the modern paper stations that a very thin
| veneer of plastic coating that is horrible too, but pretends to
| be good.)
| the-dude wrote:
| Isn't the cardboard 'lined' ?
|
| And how much does it actually differ, plastic vs cardboard?
|
| For the cardboard, the basic ingredient also has to be
| harvested, or won another way. Then it needs to be transformed
| into cardboard.
| grenoire wrote:
| Cardboard dissolves in nature, plastic doesn't. It disposes
| of itself, for the most part.
| nikisweeting wrote:
| Not most of the fluorinated cardboard used for food
| packaging. It takes a really long time to break down and
| releases a bunch of nasty stuff in the process.
|
| https://thecounter.org/pfas-forever-chemicals-sweetgreen-
| chi...
| [deleted]
| kortilla wrote:
| > they wrap it in paper instead of plastic. It's the little
| things you can do.
|
| Yet you still eat meat. It's fucking appalling how easy it is
| to placate ourselves by rearranging the deck chairs on the
| Titanic.
| lmilcin wrote:
| The biggest issue for me is I can't really buy anything without
| buying a ton of plastic with it. Want to buy anything on the
| Internet? It is most likely going to be wrapped in a ton of foil,
| bubble wrap and that additional to its own packaging.
| dehrmann wrote:
| As long as we can keep plastic waste out of the environment, does
| it really matter?
| 8note wrote:
| Is that a sensible phrase? The environment is everywhere.
| CheezeIt wrote:
| Landfills aren't everywhere.
| nikisweeting wrote:
| Why not not focus on building more and better landfills
| then? Seems like a better solution that shipping trash long
| distances to other countries only to have it end up in the
| ocean.
| jonas21 wrote:
| Yes, as long as the plastic ends up in a proper landfill, it
| won't cause harm to the environment. In places with good
| waste management practices, like the U.S., nearly all plastic
| trash ends up in a landfill. As a result, the U.S. is
| responsible for only ~0.25% of plastic in the ocean [1].
|
| To put this in perspective, if you got the Philippines to
| reduce the amount of plastic it sends to the ocean by just
| 1%, it would have a larger impact on ocean plastic than
| completely eliminating plastic in the U.S.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics
| nikisweeting wrote:
| To add to this, landfills have a bad reputation but are
| actually a pretty good solution to trash when operated
| well. By concentrating waste in a single place and sealing
| it in hermetically (with constant nearby environmental
| monitoring), it doesn't end up strewn everywhere.
|
| Also when it becomes economical to recycle parts it in the
| future, we don't have to go hunting around for it, we can
| just dig it up and process it in-place or nearby.
|
| https://medium.com/@robertwiblin/what-you-think-about-
| landfi...
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > In places with good waste management practices, like the
| U.S., nearly all plastic trash ends up in a landfill.
|
| This is not true, see [1].
|
| > As a result, the U.S. is responsible for only ~0.25% of
| plastic in the ocean.
|
| This is also not true, and your link does not say that. The
| link is saying that the rivers in the USA are carrying
| 0.25% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean, the U.S.
| (as in, the people living in the US) are responsible for
| much, much more.
|
| Recycling plastic is a mess, so instead of dealing with it,
| countries like the U.S. or Canada have decided to ship it
| across the world to countries like the Philippines to be
| "recycled" over there (see [2]). So now, of course, if you
| look at where the plastic enters the ocean, you will see
| that almost all of it happens in Asian countries, that's
| not because they use more plastic, that's just because
| that's where all the plastic of the world ends up.
|
| Taking into account the origin of the platic, the U.S. is
| among the worst offenders:
|
| > "the United States generated the largest amount of
| plastic waste of any country in the world (42.0 Mt).
| Between 0.14 and 0.41 Mt of this waste was illegally dumped
| in the United States, and 0.15 to 0.99 Mt was inadequately
| managed in countries that imported materials collected in
| the United States for recycling." [1]
|
| [1]: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabd0288
|
| [2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Philippine
| s_was....
| INTPenis wrote:
| But the giant pacific garbage patch, and any island beach not
| maintained regularly will clearly tell you plastics end up in
| the ocean regardless.
|
| I think the only solution is global legislation forcing
| consumers and businesses to use alternatives.
| logifail wrote:
| > the giant pacific garbage patch
|
| Q: Do we know where the plastics in the pacific garbage patch
| actually come from?
| handrous wrote:
| Last I heard, the overwhelming majority of the plastic in
| the ocean comes from three or four rivers, none of which
| flow through OECD states.
|
| [EDIT] which is not to say that the plastic was not _used
| and discarded_ in an OECD state, then shipped elsewhere for
| "disposal" (LOL).
| [deleted]
| sethammons wrote:
| My wife and I were just talking about this this morning. There is
| just so much "disposable" plastic. I'm willing to pay more for
| non-disposable containers, but a great many people prefer the
| lower point of sale price, and so market forces move towards
| "cheaper" plastics. Education coupled with legislation is the
| only way that I can imagine this getting any better
| Kharvok wrote:
| The U.S problems with single use plastics aren't on the consumer.
|
| The river systems in Asia responsible for the vast majority of
| marine trash more so are.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Plastic is probably also the reason for our decline in
| birthrates. Before you say societal changes are responsible for
| it; we've accounted for it and even without those changes, we'd
| still have birthdate declines.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| Didn't I just read a top comment on HN yesterday that China and
| India did more than us?
| philwelch wrote:
| The US also has a higher GDP than any other nation. I don't think
| this is a coincidence.
| ransom1538 wrote:
| I am also interested in which country pours most plastic trash
| into the ocean. I am sure no one is working on this.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Pre pandemic, I'd go often to trader joe, and they would give
| samples. It was maybe a small bite of a food (ice cream, salat,
| or whatever else), and use a plastic fork for it.
|
| Just one bite, and you had to throw it out. It was more plastic
| than food. Whole Foods was the same. I think it is a crime
| against environment and I started feeling bad about it, and
| stopped taking samples when there were plastic utensils.
|
| It think behaviour like this should be legislated out. For
| something like a sample, just a small wooden spoon, or anything
| else renewable, should be enough.
|
| The externalities of that plastic, is something that neither
| Trader Joe or Whole Foods pays, but we all do in some way.
| cpuguy83 wrote:
| Never mind how _everything_ in Trader Joe 's is packaged in
| plastic.
| edoceo wrote:
| Plastic wrapped fruit. I can't believe it. Fruit comes with
| its own already biodegradable container!
|
| F Trader Joe's fruit and veg.
| vinay427 wrote:
| While it's more excessive in the US, or at least Trader
| Joe's in my experience, various fruits and vegetables are
| regularly found in plastic in the European country I live
| in and others I've visited. Grapes, packs of apples or
| peaches, various peppers, etc. I find it unnecessary in
| some of these cases as well, unfortunately. It seemed
| better in local stalls that are especially plentiful in
| certain larger cities.
| kibwen wrote:
| Is this a regional thing? Ours just has fruit and veggies
| for the taking, like any other supermarket.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Most American consumers who find themselves at the local TJs or
| Whole Foods should probably feel way, way worse about driving
| to the store than about little plastic spoons.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I'm not bicycling in 20 degrees Fahrenheit to shop for a
| family of 4, bags strapped to a bike. And there's no public
| transportation. I think I'ma pretty regular American
| consumer. So I should feel guilty about this according to
| you?
| abdupattoh wrote:
| I typically shop on a bike for my family of six at -15 to
| -25 C in Finland. But I live close to a large store and
| bike roads are excellent and usually cleared if snow.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| You're a better person than me. Sorry, I'm not doing
| that. For the record, I'm roughly 6.5 km from a market. I
| wouldn't even know how to strap 20 bags to a bicycle. How
| do you?
| jeffbee wrote:
| This thread has verged into "30-50 feral hogs" territory.
| I have never, even once, seen a person with 20 bags of
| groceries.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| I suspect that for most people, when they are choosing
| where to live, environmental effects are way down the list.
| More important are: Will my kids go to a good school? Are
| the poor people (and associated social problems) far away
| from me?
|
| Which is to say that if you choose to live someplace where
| you can't walk or ride a bike or have mass transit access
| to daily needs, you made that decision. I'm not going to
| tell you that you are wrong, though.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Understood, and you are right. I'm just not going to feel
| blame or guilt that I drive to buy food because our
| priorities are different.
| alkonaut wrote:
| You mean even in 2018-2019 they hadn't switched plastic
| forks/spoons for wood? Come on
| nostromo wrote:
| Are you sure they're not biodegradable "plastic" forks?
|
| That's what my Trader Joe's uses. I believe they're made out of
| cornstarch.
| MichaelApproved wrote:
| biodegradable plastics are deceiving because the landfill
| they go into must be specifically tailored to biodegrade the
| plastics. Otherwise they stay there forever, just like
| regular plastic.
| InvertedRhodium wrote:
| > biodegradable plastic
|
| This is a distinction without a difference - all forks are
| biodegradable, the question is over what time-frame.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Just have the sample. Your refusal to not consume it isn't
| going to change them buying the plastic, because given the
| choice, people aren't going to stop sampling in the aggregate.
| And at that point you're just signaling to other people in a
| really silly way.
|
| If you really care, talk to your local representatives or write
| to Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Anything else is posturing. Not
| taking a sample which costs them a few cents on the dollar is
| not taking action.
|
| I'm not going to stop, personally. They can give it to me in
| paper wrapping instead if they want to make a difference, and
| in fact, with their cups, they already do. Let someone invest
| in paper sampling spoons.
| pessimizer wrote:
| There's no ethical consumption under capitalism, which is why
| I'm going to keep my slaves but vote really hard against
| slavery.
| goatlover wrote:
| Is there ethical consumption under any system?
| yaitsyaboi wrote:
| Even setting aside the importance of principles, every spoon
| OP doesn't use is a spoon that doesn't end up in a landfill.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| And my point is that it's like saying I didn't fill up my
| tank with gas today: it didn't stop oil refineries from
| producing gasoline.
| soperj wrote:
| If enough people do it, it adds up. If you continuously
| tried to push it at least a couple more days before using
| your car, over a year that would add up to a couple less
| tanks of gas. In a nation of 280 million cars, that uses
| about 340 million gallons of gasoline a day, you could
| easily carve off a couple of weeks there. Might not seem
| like a lot, but that's 56 million tons of CO2 not
| released into the atmosphere.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Yeah; back in the day it used to be wooden toothpicks to spear
| stuff, and small wooden spoons for things that couldn't be
| speared. I can only assume things moved to plastic because of
| cost, which is nauseating.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| I think we'll have to give up particular niceties about how we
| package things in the western world if we're to generate less
| trash, but it would come at the cost of removing illusions from
| the way we market products.
|
| Have you been to less developed countries? They just simply do
| not package some products. It removes a lot of the allure of
| buying particular things, but also generates less trash.
|
| Here's a simple example: utensils. In some countries, you just
| buy the utensil. In America, you buy a box with utensils in them,
| sometimes with a plastic shell, sometimes with paper wrapping
| inside of the box. But without the box, it feels like you're
| buying them from the dollar store no matter how nice the actual
| spoons and knives are, which commands less of a price mark up.
| immortaljoe wrote:
| Totally agree, i moved from a developing country (India) to a
| developed country (Germany) and the amount of waste me and my
| partner generate in the latter is around 10x.
|
| In India, we would buy produce without any packaging, you would
| pay by weight. Whereas in Germany, fruits, vegetables and even
| fresh leaves come pre packed in plastic. I know Germany has
| better recycling but the amount of plastic is crazy. Quite the
| shock for us.
| felixfbecker wrote:
| I'm sorry but which German grocery store (I'm already
| assuming it's not the farmer's market) do you go to that has
| vegetables wrapped in plastics?
| f1refly wrote:
| Except it doesnt? Neary all stores in the country (Edeka
| group + Aldi Nord and Sud) have the option to just grab fresh
| produce from some kind of box, weight it and pay for the
| specific amount at checkout. If you're only buying packaged
| stuff thats because you find it more convenient, not because
| unpackaged isnt availabe.
| [deleted]
| season2episode3 wrote:
| Counterpoint: in Thailand, I was surprised to see the sheer
| amount of single use plastic. Tiny plastic bags put inside
| larger plastic bags. Individually wrapped candies put inside
| larger bags. And of course the usual plastic sleeves around
| all utensils.
| NonContro wrote:
| The developing world has cheap communal kitchens, and so
| cooking at home is optional.
|
| In my country (Ukraine) its cheaper to go to a restaurant for
| 'business lunch' which is soup, potatoes+vegetables+meat, and
| juice, for $3.35.
|
| As a single guy I can't cook that cheaply at home, which is not
| surprising when I am buying small portions with a huge amount
| of packaging around them.
|
| Its really a shame that this concept is not more broadly
| applied in the West, and that restaurant food has sales tax
| attached to it whilst grocery food usually doesn't. We could
| reduce food and packaging waste if we taxed communal kitchens
| at 0% and shifted more people to eating inside them.
| bbarn wrote:
| Moved from the US to Iceland. I thought plastic waste was bad
| before I got here, until I went to the meat and produce
| sections of the grocery store here.
| dynm wrote:
| > The U.S. also ranks as high as third among coastal nations for
| contributing litter, illegally dumped trash and other mismanaged
| waste to its shorelines.
|
| I can't access the paper, but can anyone verify: Do I understand
| correctly that this means the US might be as high as third in
| terms of contributing trash that ends up on the US's coastline?
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| I think you misread it. I believe they mean that among the
| coastal nations, the US ranks 3rd in terms of polluting _its
| own_ coastline. I also don't have access to the paper, but the
| number 2 coastal nation then pollutes _its own_ coastline worse
| than the US.
| sschueller wrote:
| I see this as a bigger issue than the use of plastic as a
| whole. If you properly dispose of it (modern trash burning
| facility and recycling) , it wouldn't be such a huge
| environmental issue. Open landfills are a disaster.
|
| The government should focus on proper disposal laws. Banning
| plastic bags at the grocery store is a bandaid on a blood
| gushing wound.
| beervirus wrote:
| What's the problem? Throwing plastic away = carbon sequestration!
|
| /s
| jedberg wrote:
| This problem won't get fixed without legislation. Single use
| plastic is cheaper, so of course companies will use that if they
| can. Most people don't have the income to support "voting with
| their wallet", and even those who do don't always have the
| option. IF the best solution out there happens to use single use
| plastic, you're not going to opt for a worse solution just
| because it doesn't.
|
| And even if one company cares enough to do something, they will
| change their tune when they have to start charing more.
|
| The only way this will get better is if the external costs of
| single use plastic are borne by the companies that make them and
| consumers are subsidized to absorb the extra cost.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Most people don't have the income to support "voting with
| their wallet", and even those who do don't always have the
| option.
|
| I am old enough to remember when there was practically no
| plastic in food packaging. Twinkies and its ilk were more or
| less the exception (and fine examples they were of that
| exception!).
|
| No doubt many remember glass ketchup bottles, glass mustard
| jars, glass peanut butter jars, glass mayonnaise jars... I
| swore to continue to buy only glass condiment jars but they no
| longer exist. I think the exception now is jams and jellies
| still come in glass jars. Honey too if you look for it.
|
| Cereal? No plastic bag liner, it was wax paper or that weird
| paper foil stuff that Super Sugar Crisp came in.
|
| I'd love to go back to glass, wax paper, but there just isn't
| any options any longer.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Is it more ecological to use glass instead of plastic?
|
| With plastic there is trash to deal with, but glass is
| heavier thus will take more energy to deal with logistically.
| Recycling is not energy free either, and there is plenty of
| loss to deal with there. Plastic is very cheap to manufacture
| partly because its manufacture is so easy.
|
| And right now it seems like energy consumption is a far
| larger worry than trash at the ecological level.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| I don't have the studies at hand, but the answer is a big
| "it depends"
|
| If you have local production and re-use of glass it can be
| more energy efficient to use the more heavy glass. The
| further the transport, the worse it becomes.
|
| But there is a second factor to it, besides energy use:
| microplastics are a problem and most plastics can only be
| used for "energetic usage" - being burned in a power plant,
| which causes probelmatic gases needing filtering and then
| disposal of those filters ... re-use of broken glass is
| elementary in glass production and even if not recycled
| less of a problem for the environment.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Good point. But I suspect we used to produce these things
| more "locally". And when they were transported we relied on
| trains, not trucks and highways.
|
| But I'm just guessing.
| jhgb wrote:
| > With plastic there is trash to deal with, but glass is
| heavier thus will take more energy to deal with
| logistically.
|
| My family has been using the same set of glasses for
| canning for decades.
| scrollaway wrote:
| Right but is your family an outlier or an average?
| Anecdotes are not evidence, and what matters is how
| everything would pan out in the real world.
|
| When we were using glass jars for everything, it's not
| like glass jars were not actively being produced. I don't
| think these are unanswerable questions but i highly doubt
| it's as simple as "replace plastic with glass". Aluminum
| may be a better solution, one that doesn't use up a lot
| of sand, for example.
| Causality1 wrote:
| You also have to think in terms of actual harm. Considering the
| US has an absurd amount of junk land it can use for landfills,
| a single use plastic object that has 1/1000 the carbon
| emissions of the reusable alternative may be the best
| environmental choice.
| alkonaut wrote:
| I'm surprised every time I hear the concept of "land fill" in
| conjunction with trash. As if the natural thing to do with
| waste is... put it in a hole in the ground? It feels like
| some 50's conception of environment policy to me. Shouldn't
| things be either recycled as much as possible, and the rest
| incinerated for energy?
| GuB-42 wrote:
| That's how nature have dealt with trash for as long as
| earth has existed.
|
| Landfills are "holes in the ground", I won't deny it. But a
| lot is happening in these holes, will all sorts of
| microorganisms breaking down stuff. Well managed landfills
| try to minimise impact to the environment with that
| knowledge.
|
| In an oversimplified way, our landfills are putting oil
| back where it came from. Recycling and incineration are
| good too, but so are well managed landfills. It all depends
| on the situation/materials/...
| bserge wrote:
| Surprisingly, no - just dumping shit in a big hole is the
| most environmentally friendly thing to do - least energy
| used, least pollution created.
|
| The problem is having the space in some place where neither
| flora nor fauna will be affected.
| megablast wrote:
| The best thing is not to use something at all. Find a way
| to avoid buying useless stuff. Such as specialised tools.
| Especially in the kitchen.
| edoceo wrote:
| Where is the "junk land"? Almost everywhere has animals that
| likely don't enjoy plastic.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| "Do animals prefer plastic or no plastic" is a false
| choice. The real choice is "do animals prefer plastic or
| rapid global warming".
| l33t2328 wrote:
| How important are those animals?
| smarx007 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosystem
| tehlike wrote:
| Landfill? Somewhere buried?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Anywhere outside of a city centre, according to many. I
| live in a rural area. People drive out here from the city
| to dump their old appliances in the forests of this "junk
| land". Almost every road corner has a pile of refrigerators
| and washing machines next to it. My current refrigerator
| was rescued from one of these impromptu landfills. Nothing
| at all wrong with it, just five years old, so it's trash.
|
| Just because you can't see it, just because it doesn't have
| value to property developers, does not make it junk.
|
| I mean, by this logic, we should just dump our trash in the
| "junk water" which covers much of the planet.
| Causality1 wrote:
| You could restrict yourself to dry lake beds that don't
| flood in winter, which are nearly as lifeless as Mars, and
| still have enough landfill area for centuries of waste.
|
| The average American produces 3.5 pounds of trash per day
| at an average one third of a gram per cubic centimeter.
| Assuming that holds steady, and we use a normal landfill
| depth of 400 feet, and the US population doubles over the
| next century, we need a landfill area of 250 square miles
| to cover us for the next hundred years.
|
| Compared to available land that's tiny.
| edoceo wrote:
| Using standard units:
|
| - 1589g of trash per day!
|
| - 4767 cm3 to store it (3cm3/gram)
|
| - 130 m3 per lifetime (75yr)
|
| - 300,000,000 lifetimes.
|
| - 78,347,140 km3 storage allocated
|
| - 39 km3 required
|
| ~~We're gonna need a bigger boat.~~
|
| Neat!
| [deleted]
| yesenadam wrote:
| I think something went very wrong there!
|
| 4767 x 75 x 365 = I get 130,500,000 cm3/person/lifetime.
| You got 130,000,000,000,000,000.
|
| There are 1015 cubic centimetres in a cubic kilometre,
| not 106. I think all your numbers are for m3, not km3, a
| factor of a billion out, so your final figure should be
| 39 km3.
| edoceo wrote:
| Thanks, I've edited (working from mobile, some copy paste
| issues with long numbers). I think it's right now?
| kortilla wrote:
| Much of Nevada is a lifeless desert. There is a reason it
| was chosen for nuclear bomb testing.
| edoceo wrote:
| It's not lifeless. You can look it up but it's more fun
| to go out and see it for yourself. The desert out there
| is quite beautiful and there are loads of critters.
| abakker wrote:
| Nevada. Just fill in old mines?
| edoceo wrote:
| Bringing jobs back to Goldfield and Tonopah! And we needs
| more hands down Yellowjacket Mine
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Omg, travel the USA more. So. Much. Land.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Does the US still operate landfills? Some or all EU countries
| have completely abandoned the practice. So that's just not a
| harm that matters, unlike some other ones.
|
| In any case, it'd be compounding the problem here, and rather
| bad economics at the same time. Plastics aren't that hard to
| collect/separate, especially if it's ok to be mixed with
| paper. They burn readily and, given high temperatures,
| cleanly, allowing the recuperation of a significant fraction
| of its energy content.
|
| Then, there's recycling, of course. Not always possible, but
| not entirely impossible, either.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Is incineration of plastic really better for the
| environment than a landfill? And would the ash not go to a
| landfill of sorts?
| gambiting wrote:
| It's "just" carbohydrates - in theory it's no worse than
| burning oil or gas for heating/electricity, if you make
| sure everything burns at high enough temperature to burn
| cleanly and have filters at the exhaust to catch anything
| that survived the processes.
|
| I'd say it's a positive, we use oil to produce plastics,
| if that oil is used to produce energy after its plastic
| form is no longer needed....that's a plus in my book. But
| maybe on the other hand it's better if it stays in the
| landfill instead of being burnt and releasing the bound
| carbon into the atmosphere.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| From a C02 perspective, if it's burned cleanly and the
| energy released is used to generate electricity or heat
| homes, it's really not much different than a natural gas
| plant. But I agree with your point.
| patall wrote:
| I cannot put a source to it but I remeber to have heard
| the ash landfills (that are hermetically sealed) are
| designed to be resource deposites once they are full. It
| does not make sense to recycle the involved metals etc.
| while its almost empty but should be worthwile once a
| large deposite is established.
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| A modern plant turns plastic into CO_2, electricity, and,
| often, residential heat. So, yes, that's preferable.
| Among the sheer ugliness and wastefulness of landfills,
| burning at high temperature avoids the toxic
| intermediates plastics give off when degrading in nature,
| which landfills struggle to contain.
|
| Ash is, by definition, inert. It is the remaining mass
| that does not chemically react even under extreme heat.
| It therefore also does not interact with, for example,
| the human body. Plastics are all
| carbon/hydrogen/nitrogen/oxygen, and, to a first
| approximation, do not leave any ash. In reality they do,
| but it's extremely little and harmless.
|
| (Physical harms can survive an incinerator, such as
| material giving off radiation, but those should never be
| in the trash)
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Some or all EU countries have completely abandoned the
| practice.
|
| Absolutely not true, glad you maybe live in a country where
| landfills are disappearing, but they will always exist in
| some form - even with burning where do you think the slag
| goes to? That's right, a normal landfill. Not everything
| can be burnt, and not everything can be recycled.
|
| And definitely not "all" EU countries - Poland has normal
| landfills that take everything still, very few operational
| waste incenerators, and recycling is still unknown to a lot
| of people.
| Retric wrote:
| Yes, the US still has landfills as does Europe.
|
| "In 2018, 24% of all municipal waste generated in the EU
| was landfilled." That said, incineration is a similar
| option that drastically lowers volume of waste, but still
| produced ash that ends up buried and vast amounts of CO2.
| Hokusai wrote:
| Source: https://ec.europa.eu/environment/topics/waste-
| and-recycling/...
|
| The goal in the EU is to reduce it to 10% in 15 years.
|
| The USA landfill was of 50% in 2018. Some more
| legislation is needed. https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-
| figures-about-materials-waste-...
| IfOnlyYouKnew wrote:
| Yeah, the news I remembered were about Germany,
| specifically. it, and a few others, are at <=1% landfill:
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/
| 201...
| Retric wrote:
| That's extremely misleading Germany simply uses
| incinerators before dumping the ash in landfills.
|
| "One nation now grappling with the legacy of its long
| embrace of incineration is Denmark. The country, one of
| Europe's biggest waste producers, built so many
| incinerators that by 2018 it was importing a million tons
| of trash."
|
| https://e360.yale.edu/features/in-europe-a-backlash-is-
| growi...
| [deleted]
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Sorry, but given the "half life" of a single use plastic item
| with respect to its usability, isn't it's environment cost
| essentially infinite?
| CameronNemo wrote:
| The only sustainable way to dispose of plastic is
| incineration.
|
| Otherwise you poison the land and water that flows through
| the land.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Is turning plastic into CO2 in an incinerator really the
| best solution for the planet this century?
|
| I'm down for recycling or burial in landfills, but CO2
| seems like something we need to minimize this century.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| If it's 1000 times less than paper/wood then hell yeah
| eastendguy wrote:
| > a single use plastic object that has 1/1000 the carbon
| emissions of the reusable alternative may be the best
| environmental choice.
|
| Is there any data that single use stuff (of any kind) creates
| less carbon emissions? I would expect it to be the other way
| around, except for some edge cases.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Yes, mostly because of the energy used in their creation.
| For example you have to reuse a cotton grocery bag 7100
| times before you break even with plastic bags for carbon
| footprint.
|
| https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614
| -...
|
| You're probably not going to do that.
| Shacklz wrote:
| Aren't the plastic bags mainly a problem because they
| tend to end up in places where they don't belong at all,
| like oceans etc.? They can't really decompose or anything
| like that, they just shred to tiny little pieces that
| mess with animals (and ultimately also our) digestion,
| no?
| jounker wrote:
| Yup. There are places where plastic bags accumulate. Once
| it was my doorstep. Every morning there were piles of
| plastic bags that were delivered to my house.
|
| Just take a trip along any river or stream near a town
| and you'll find them swimming by like lifeless jellyfish
| muskox2 wrote:
| And microplastics don't just mess with digestion, they're
| also theorized to be part of the reason fertility is
| dropping in humans over time.
| patall wrote:
| You have not read the document that you link. Else, you
| would have noticed that it states that a not-organic
| cotton bag has to be reused 52 times for the same
| relative impact on climate change. The 7100 is impact on
| ozone depletion:
|
| p. 18: 'Conversely, for composite and cotton the very
| high number of reuse times is given by the ozone
| depletion impact alone. Without considering ozone
| depletion, the number of reuse times ranges from 50 to
| 1400 for conventional cotton, from 150 to 3800 for
| organic cotton, and from 0 to 740 for the composite
| material bag. The highest number is due to the use of
| water resource, but also to freshwater and terrestrial
| eutrophication'.
|
| And as I have commented elsewhere: I have cotton bags
| that I have easily used 500 times. If I had used an old
| T-shirt for the bag or later use the old bag for cleaning
| purposes, the 7,100 becomes very relative.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| There's plenty of data. For example, producing single-use
| plastic grocery bags uses such a trivial amount of energy
| and resources that it almost doesn't matter--thousands and
| thousands of times less than an equivalent cotton bag. The
| bigger problem is disposal. If single-use plastics can be
| safely sequestered in landfills, that's a mostly solved
| problem, but that isn't always the case.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| What about paper bags?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I seem to remember that paper bags are close to single-
| use plastic bags, but still use more energy to produce
| and also require wood pulp. Paper bags can easily be
| recycled, but "single-use" plastic bags can easily be re-
| used as household trash bags, or otherwise. So it's a
| toss-up.
| kaybe wrote:
| I've seen some grass cardboard pop up in the few
| deliveries we get. The wood pulp is probably negotiable
| and increasingly more so.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > re-used as household trash bags
|
| But that's a one-time reuse for something that's not
| going to biodegrade when it ends up in the ocean or
| landfill
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| It should never end up in the ocean, and nothing really
| biodegrades in landfill, especially not paper.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I mean, I disagree with both of those statements
| entirely. Do you have any sources? I do, but not googling
| at the moment.
|
| EDIT: quick Google search has many sources listing paper
| degrading in 2-6 weeks in landfills. Plastic in the
| ocean... I think you need to b by broaden your horizons
| if you think that doesn't happen
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Paper degrades if it is near the surface, mixed with
| loose dirt, and still getting oxygen. If it's packed down
| under feet of compacted soil and other trash it degrades
| much more slowly.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| I thought the heat deep within landfills is intense from
| all sorts of things degrading.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I think a benefit of paper bags would be encouraging
| planting trees to make more bags
| katbyte wrote:
| > re-used as household trash bags
|
| this is what i do, and if they were banned i'd be using
| some sort of bag and then purchasing trash bags
| separately using maybe twice the resources?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| This is exactly what I've been doing since moving to
| Austin.
|
| I get paper bags at the grocery and throw them out
| immediately after a single use, and now I have to also
| buy plastic garbage bags for under the sink, which I
| never used to do.
| mike_d wrote:
| The Reason Foundation (which is slightly right leaning of
| center, but makes its case using actual studies and facts)
| has a great explainer on how plastic bag bans for example
| hurt the environment more than help and cost consumers
| (including low income individuals) an extra $1b/yr:
| https://reason.org/wp-
| content/uploads/files/california_plast...
| pharmakom wrote:
| Does anywhere have an actual plastic bag _ban_? Usually
| it's just a minimum price to discourage people from
| grabbing a new bag on every visit
| mike_d wrote:
| Yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-
| out_of_lightweight_plast...
| [deleted]
| wk_end wrote:
| Reason is a libertarian think tank. Describing them as
| "slightly right leaning of center" is really sugarcoating
| things - their whole raison d'etre is coming up with
| arguments to oppose virtually any and all government
| regulations. That doesn't make them wrong _necessarily_ ,
| but let's call a spade a spade.
| dheera wrote:
| Also, we really, really need legislation to stop the
| ridiculousness of over-packaging. The other day I bought some
| case screws for my PC and they came in a goddamn "nice" foam-
| padded plastic case. That plastic case was then inside plastic
| wrap, then some plastic bubble wrap, and then a plastic Amazon
| mailer. That was completely unnecessary. The screws could have
| been in a recycled paper packet and thrown into a simple tiny
| cardboard box and it would have been fine.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/WQYtcsF.jpg
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This is a thing that only legislation can change.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| What is needed is single use items, not necessarily made out of
| plastic.
| api wrote:
| What if single use uses less energy in many cases? Washing uses
| a lot of power and glass is heavy, using more fuel in transit.
| Paper is renewable and can often replace plastic, but not
| always.
| im_down_w_otp wrote:
| Single use stuff seems easy enough to fix. What seems less
| obvious to me is what I experienced when shopping for a potty
| chair for our youngest there were dozens of options at just a
| single store for a big hunk of plastic that's only useful for a
| period of months. We ended up not buying one at all.
|
| I had a similar experience the last time I was at CES and was
| deep into the "South Hall" where there's kiosk after display
| booth after kiosk of just completely pointless crap of every
| shape and size. Thousands of practically identical cheap cell
| phone cases. Thousands of cheap bags and backpacks adorned with
| battery packs and/or Bluetooth speakers. Each and every booth
| staffed with multiple people who have to stand there and try to
| convince you that their big mountain of garbage is somehow
| special. At the same time as it's astonishingly wasteful and
| kind of insane when you think about it, it's also completely
| existentially debasing to the people involved.
|
| If we have a global addiction to anything that seems like it
| needs fixing, it seems like we're addicted to producing stuff
| we don't need for problems we don't have just for the sake of
| doing something.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| A handful of items are difficult to get second-hand
| commercially for either safety or hygiene reasons. But we
| both bought and sold tons of stuff through local consignment
| stores.
| carstenhag wrote:
| The way most people in Germany would solve this (we need a
| potty for some months) is buying it 2nd/3rd/4th hand. Is that
| not common where you live (I guess USA)?
| pharmakom wrote:
| The problem with 2nd hand is convenience. Maybe I can save
| a few bucks browsing eBay etc. but it's not worth the time
| spent compared to ordering new. I hate doing it though.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| If you just happen to need a potty now, then browsing is
| a lot of work.
|
| If you know "oh, we will need larger cloths and a potty
| and some toys soon and that bed will be to small in a
| bit" you can monitor relevant sites on the side and see
| when the opportunity comes up.
|
| Not to mention the social circle with parents a bit older
| and a bit younger. "Hey, we don't need this anymore. Do
| you?" - "oh it's a bit early, but I take it already
| thanks!"
| HalcyonicStorm wrote:
| I want to plug my company, GoodBuyGear, which is trying
| to solve this very problem
| lisper wrote:
| Try nextdoor. I have found that people are often so eager
| to get rid of things that I need that I can get them for
| free.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I was working with a guy from Israel and he asked why the
| cuffs of my jeans were turned up. I said because I bought
| them used and they were a little long. He was aghast that I
| would wear someone else's pants. I was like, "Dude, they're
| 1/3rd the price of new jeans and they're already worn in,
| and they are washed!"
|
| I have another friend that would never buy a used car. He's
| convinced all used cars were totaled and are a scam,
| despite the fact it is all I've ever owned and they've been
| fine.
|
| Something about being "used" really freaks some people out.
| It's this weird purity thing, I dunno.
| mike_d wrote:
| There is a vibrant 2nd hand resale market in the US, mostly
| fueled by Facebook marketplace and a handful of specialized
| apps.
|
| However, Americans in general just don't take good care of
| stuff. Combined with products being designed from the
| cheapest possible materials, the quality of second hand
| goods isn't great. People avoid it if they can afford to
| buy new.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| For something like that, definitely not common.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| In the middle class and upward, it's not common, outside of
| folks who are particularly frugal. The post-WWII American
| culture is extremely consumerist / materialistic.
| gnicholas wrote:
| My experience is different. Almost everyone we know gets
| most of their baby stuff secondhand. They get a bunch of
| stuff when the baby is born, from older friends with
| kids. Then they get specific items off
| NextDoor/Facebook/Craigslist.
|
| I don't know that we'd get a potty used, but we did get
| used infant bathtubs, which is about the same from a
| hygienic perspective.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's also that it's just easier to go to Walmart or
| Target (or Amazon) and buy one and be done with it, than
| to spend the time hunting around garage sales or thrift
| stores for something they might not have. Unless you
| _really_ need to save $10, time is way more valuable than
| money.
| vages wrote:
| According to Norwegian consumer research, people who save
| those ten dollars usually spend them on something else
| (like a travel or another product), so the environmental
| gain from buying used stuff is not a lot.
|
| Unless people are willing to earn a little less, buttons
| used is not a solution for an individual's environmental
| footprint.
| goatlover wrote:
| The 1920s one wasn't?
| jedberg wrote:
| I've gone through three potties and never bought or sold
| any (we got them for free and then gave them away).
|
| Most of our baby stuff comes (and goes) that way. We rarely
| bought baby stuff at all except for consumables (and even
| those we gave away when we didn't use them all up, like
| diapers).
|
| The big issue is that it requires a social circle of people
| also having kids that are slightly older and younger, and
| for a lot of people in bigger cities, it's hard for them to
| build those circles.
|
| There are online forums that help (non-sarcistic Thanks
| Facebook!) but it's a lot easier if you have a wide social
| circle already.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I love how in NZ each town have "play centers" -
| basically hybrid between daycare and playground where
| parents join and maintain. You are always there to be
| with your child, tho I'm sure someone would take care for
| them if you need to run errand for 1 hour. This forms
| very healthy community of people and friends and trades
| like above happen. Toys, clothes, car seats - we got it
| all free...
|
| We do have some friends who were asking "is this newish?"
| when gifting some item, so not everyone is on zero waste
| bandwagon.
|
| And by the way, govs should promote zero waste movement
| way more. Probably starting adopting it themselves.
| alienth wrote:
| I'm in the US and tried donating our child's potty chair.
| The donation spots I tried refused it because they weren't
| allowed to take anything which a child has to sit in or on
| for safety reasons. I even tried Value Village, which is a
| private second-hand store, and got the same response.
|
| Into the garbage it went, sadly.
| zabatuvajdka wrote:
| Couldn't you chop it up and put in recycling bin?
| amalcon wrote:
| Technically yes, but this would not cause it to be
| recycled.
| aurizon wrote:
| Think!. To recycle plastic it must be as clean as new
| plastic and of the same type of plastic. It then needs to
| be processed into granular pills of the same.This may
| mean mixing and melting and adding color to a standard
| color - usually tending towards brownish = used for
| hidden or structural parts where color does not matter.
| You can not have any fiber or fiberglass reinforced
| plastic in the mix - a little ruins the batch. All this
| costs $$, usually more cost than new material. The only
| way to drive this is to add an input cost(refundable
| deposit or tax) to plastic when made or imported - to pay
| for the sorting and recycling. It makes sense - works
| with glass beer bottles, but plastics beer soda bottles
| etc usually have too much grunge to economically clean to
| the needs of recyclers. We may have to throw away the
| false economy of plastic by adding a realistic
| tax/deposit... This has eliminated much recycling.
| cronix wrote:
| A lot of plastics that we "recycle" end up in landfills
| anyway. They are not recyclable because they are
| contaminated with food (need to wash food containers out
| before recycling) or they are labeled as "recyclable" but
| really are not, or are not at every recycling center in
| the nation. The same is true for cardboard like used
| greasy pizza boxes with cheese stuck to the bottom are
| not recyclable yet a heck of a lot of people toss them in
| the cardboard recycle bin.
|
| > The findings confirm the results of a Guardian
| investigation last year, which revealed that numerous
| types of plastics are being sent straight to landfill in
| the wake of China's crackdown on US recycling exports.
| Greenpeace's findings also suggest that numerous products
| labeled as recyclable in fact have virtually no market as
| new products.
|
| > She emphasized that bottles and jugs are indeed worth
| recycling, but said "our findings show that many items
| commonly found in beach cleanups - cups, bags, trays,
| plates and cutlery - are not recyclable. In America's
| municipal recycling system, they are contaminants."
|
| > The US recycling economy was upended in 2018 when China
| enacted bans on imports of most US recycling, leaving
| recycling companies at a loose end. The report chronicled
| how dozens of cities - stretching from Erie,
| Pennsylvania, to San Carlos, California, - have either
| stopped taking mixed plastics or are sending them to
| landfill.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/18/americas-
| rec...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _need to wash food containers out before recycling
| (...) used greasy pizza boxes with cheese stuck to the
| bottom are not recyclable yet a heck of a lot of people
| toss them in the cardboard recycle bin._
|
| People are not being informed about it clearly enough.
| Not that it would change much, except discouraging most
| people from sorting trash.
|
| Beyond being a significant burden, having individuals
| washing their trash is just ridiculously inefficient and
| wasteful in terms of water and energy use, plus it would
| more than double the amount of detergent unloaded into
| the return leg of water supply loop. It kind of already
| defeats the point of recycling.
|
| And that's without even getting to the whole "recycling
| things other than metal and maybe glass is a scam" thing.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I'm less in the "people need to be informed" camp and
| more in the "products need to be designed for easy
| recycling" camp.
|
| If we want to recycle pizza boxes as a society, there
| needs to be a grease absorbing layer that's clearly
| marked for the trash, and a recyclable layer with clear
| instructions. A great example of this is Siggi's single
| serving yogurt cups. The paper label is easily separated
| from the plastic body, with clear instructions that
| they're meant to be separated for recycling into separate
| streams. In my case my municipality doesn't recycle the
| plastic they use (#5 IIRC), but at least the paper and
| metal foil get recycled.
|
| Expecting end consumers to stay up to date on this stuff
| is just a way for companies to avoid the responsibility
| of making better packaging.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Even if that would be effective, it is not practical to
| ask people to "chop up" their heavy plastic items just to
| throw them away. That requires tools, light skill, and
| time, that not everyone is able or willing to commit to
| the cause.
| JoBrad wrote:
| We bought ours second hand at a consignment sale.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| Same; Craigslist, Nextdoor, and Facebook marketplace too.
| novok wrote:
| American safety helicopter parenting culture, ruining yet
| another thing again.
| neutronicus wrote:
| We've gotten a lot of stuff like this free through Facebook
| groups
|
| Everybody's got aged-out baby crap taking up space in their
| house, if you can get them before they get off their ass to
| throw it out they're usually overjoyed for it to disappear
| kortilla wrote:
| > it's also completely existentially debasing to the people
| involved.
|
| Wow, the privilege wrapped up in that statement. Do you think
| it's existentially fulfilling to clean public toilets? To
| drive a bus? To bottle alcohol?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The things you mentioned, clean toilets, bus rides, alcohol
| are actually things people want. Trying to push something
| that no one wants or needs is kind of debasing. I agree
| with OP that we seem to have created a consumer mentality,
| "shopping therapy", that is sad to be a part of -- either
| as the consumer or the producer. Never mind what it does to
| the planet as well.
| etrautmann wrote:
| Huh?
| pessimizer wrote:
| Yes, criticizing any profession is actually violence.
| nate_meurer wrote:
| What's wrong with driving a bus?
| microsimulacro wrote:
| It's not just for the sake of doing something, it's to have
| profits growing constantly and wages been paid.
| unnouinceput wrote:
| You mean the no. 1 economy of the world generates the most
| plastic? <insert Picard surprise face meme here>
|
| What's next breaking news? That China, the 2nd economy of the
| world, is 2nd place in plastic generating as well? Color me
| shocked. /s
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