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EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

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Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#51

Post by avar »

sandworm101 wrote: post #47
avar wrote: post #24

> Curbing the use of plastic cups for beverages I wonder what this will mean for events & festivals. E.g. Amsterdam has made it a policy that big events (including normal bars when the event is going on) must issue plastic cups to curb broken class everywhere. Will we have to go back to glass, or drink our beer out of paper cups? > as well as plastic food containers, such as the ones used for take-away. I'm open to t…

I consider myself to be an environmentalist and normally wouldn't think twice about taxing producers of plastic for its cleanup, but this doesn't get to the real issue. Most oceanic plastic comes from only a handful of sources: a few rivers in Asia. The plastic cups at a London Starbucks aren't killing sea turtles. What we need is a cultural change in places like china. They need to stop dumping plastic waste into ri…

You're conflating two unrelated issues. The visible plastic garbage scattered around European streets, parks and beaches isn't coming from rivers in Asia, it's garbage that's locally thrown away.

Reducing the total amount of plastics disposed into the oceans is a worthy but orthogonal goal, by the time it makes it to European shores it's mostly pulverized by ocean activity.

The EU also stands to impact world production by its choices. A factory in Asia that's making plastic cups now for the domestic market and for exports might switch entirely to making paper cups if the EU only buys paper cups.

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#52

Post by avar »

dragonwriter wrote: post #46
avar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think in some countries if you don't want to get your money back you leave the bottles and cans near the garbage bin or other places and a kid or a poor person will return it and make some money. Indeed. Personally I do this because it's not worth it for me to recycle it on my own, but I still care about the environment and my fellow man. But what I'm pointing out is that it's an economically irrational decision…

> Personally I do this because it's not worth it for me to recycle it on my own, but I still care about the environment and my fellow man. > But what I'm pointing out is that it's an economically irrational decision on my part, It's not economically irrational; as obviously the condition of “the environment and your fellow man” play into your personal utility function.

By this strange definition my desire to live as a beggar in Thailand for 10 years to meditate find my inner self even though I might hypothetically make $1M/yr now working in an office iseconomically rational.

When people (including myself) say that something is economically rational it's commonly understood to mean that any given person wouldn't make the same choice if given the choice, not that you can't find an example of someone who'll do otherwise.

In other words talking about something being "economically rational" is the other side of there being an "economic incentive".

In this case the economic incentives of not just throwing away plastics aren't aligned with the desired effect. This is a classic example of an externality coupled with the tragedy of the commons.

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#53

Post by avar »

pmontra wrote: post #45
avar wrote: post #24

> Curbing the use of plastic cups for beverages I wonder what this will mean for events & festivals. E.g. Amsterdam has made it a policy that big events (including normal bars when the event is going on) must issue plastic cups to curb broken class everywhere. Will we have to go back to glass, or drink our beer out of paper cups? > as well as plastic food containers, such as the ones used for take-away. I'm open to t…

> Amsterdam has made it a policy that big events (including normal bars when the event is going on) must issue plastic cups to curb broken class everywhere. Will we have to go back to glass, or drink our beer out of paper cups? A quick search for recyclable cups and plates returned plenty of results. And are paper cups bad for beer?

I suppose if I wanted to try my luck at getting spat on I could offer a French person some red wine in a brown paper coffee cup.

More seriously there needs to be some compromise between the ecological impact of the container and undoing some of the cultural value associated with it, in this case a red wine glass or a beer glass.

With a plastic beer or wine glass you can at least propose some sort of toast and hear some sort of "clink" when you bring the glasses together, the same's not true of paper. People are going to resent the EU if bureaucrats are seen to take away the simple pleasures of life.

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#54

Post by rypskar »

simion314 wrote: post #39
api wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poor and especially the middle class account for the vast majority of consumption and pollution in aggregate. Per capita the rich consume more, but not as much more as you might think. The typical multi-millionaire or even billionaire does not personally consume 1000X or 1000000X more than your typical member of the middle class. Maybe 10X more at most. Beyond a certain point this is "paper wealth." Diminishing m…

The point was about the poor, middle class should be able to afford the recycling costs. From all the products that were listed the only ones I think could affect poor people would be the car tires, if the prices for this tires would increase, but plastic straws or sticks for baloons costing more won't affect the poor that much.

They have already started to look for alternatives to plastic and rubber in car tires. http://www.continentaltire.com/news/continental-constructing...

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#55

Post by simion314 »

rypskar wrote: post #54
simion314 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point was about the poor, middle class should be able to afford the recycling costs. From all the products that were listed the only ones I think could affect poor people would be the car tires, if the prices for this tires would increase, but plastic straws or sticks for baloons costing more won't affect the poor that much.

They have already started to look for alternatives to plastic and rubber in car tires. http://www.continentaltire.com/news/continental-constructing...

Cool, I hope we will have good ,safe and cheap tires. If the law does not put a bit of pressure we never get this new technology.

I was also thinking that it would be good if we got brakes like the racing cars have, those strong breaks could save some lives, I know there is a log of G force but it would be better then an almost instant stop in a wall.

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#56

Post by dragonwriter »

avar wrote: post #52
dragonwriter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally I do this because it's not worth it for me to recycle it on my own, but I still care about the environment and my fellow man. > But what I'm pointing out is that it's an economically irrational decision on my part, It's not economically irrational; as obviously the condition of “the environment and your fellow man” play into your personal utility function.

By this strange definition my desire to live as a beggar in Thailand for 10 years to meditate find my inner self even though I might hypothetically make $1M/yr now working in an office iseconomically rational. When people (including myself) say that something is economically rational it's commonly understood to mean that any given person wouldn't make the same choice if given the choice, not that you can't find an ex…

> By this strange definition

It's the standard definition underlying rational actor theory, and exactly what rationality means in economics.

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#57

Post by seszett »

ldjb wrote: post #22

It's important to consider that people with some disabilities rely on plastic straws to be able to drink: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-derbyshire-43879489... Plastic straws and polystyrene plates are also common materials for arts and crafts. Whilst pollution is certainly an issue that must be tackled, banning disposable plastic products does have its drawbacks. I'm not saying a ban should not occur, but…

Well, it is easy to imagine some plastic straws being allowed as medical devices really.

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#58

Post by ralfn »

hartator wrote: post #2

It’s worth noting that I’ve seen poor families in France reusing plastic forks and knives. Like always, this kind of policy hurts the poor a lot more.

For somebody from Holland it's hard to understand how any family being that poor in a country like France with all it's socialism and union rights can be a thing.

We count as quite capitalistic compared to France but just for having children alone you get a compensation that already puts you out of that territory. (Of course we don't take this compensation away for working parents -- everybody always gets its. And from the age of 16 it's actually deposited in the account of the child itself)

And that's not even our (dressed down) welfare system: this is just making sure kids in school grow up in a somewhat egalitarian way.

This has to be an exaggeration. Nobody is that poor in France, right?

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#59

Post by jbob2000 »

ganzuul wrote: post #11

I want to put 2D barcodes on trash-to-be. Then when you find it in nature you should be able to trace it to when and where it was purchased. If this is one of those 10% of users causing 90% of the problems - type situations this would be an effective strategy to hold trashy people accountable.

You don’t even need to go that far, somebody has already studied where the garbage comes from: https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/blogs...

Summary: China and India.

We can and should curb our plastic use in the West, but there are 2 billion+ people on the other side of the world that don’t give a flying fuck. (Yeah yeah, we polluted when we were developing too. But we barely had 100 million people when that was happening. And no plastics)

Re: EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste

#60

Post by DmenshunlAnlsis »

api wrote: post #26
DmenshunlAnlsis wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmental collapse also disproportionately hurts the poor. When a drought strikes, they’re the first to starve. At least the pain inflicted by regulations can be mitigated, while collapse leads to something like Libya.

I was not arguing otherwise. Whenever I bring up issues like this I get a lot of "shoot the messenger." My point was not that environmental concerns are wrong but that they do tend to decrease the economic well being of poor and middle class people more right now vs. the status quo. That in turn tends to anger these classes of people right now , causing them to vote for people like Donald Trump. Trump, a super-hard-r…

Try some grinding poverty and come back and tell me how much you care about what happens in 100 years. Now try some grinding poverty with children. Tell me how much you care about the great Pacific garbage patch after you watch your kids suffer a bit.

That’s a strong argument for ignoring the desperately poor where long term survival is concerned, is that really the argument you meant to make?

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