21–30 of 213 posts
Easy to enforce? I dunno - why not require country of origin for packaging?
But assuming that won't happen - sounds like an opportunity for US jobs.
Plastic might make decent bricks for building.
We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…
Despite that, there's an effort to address the low-hanging fruit of plastics that end up in the oceans and waterways, specifically single-use plastics: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/plastic_waste.htm
More like there was a huge trash problem and they don't want it anymore... how is them handing the world a problem when the root cause of the problem is unsustainable packaging and recyclables?
I think it should serve as a wake up call for the rest of the world. Sweden has had incredible success with recycling in recent years, most notably touting the fact that they import other countries' trash to use in their recycling plants [1]. How can we recreate Sweden’s model in the US and have our own solution to the trash problem instead of giving it to China? [1] https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/sweden-s…
That line is more false than true. For the most part they are not recycling their trash, they are incinerating it.
Additionally Sweden is tiny. Trash there is brought to local recycling centers with 6 to 8 or more different bins, and people are expected to sort their trash.
How would you do that in the US? Trucks with 8 compartments? Where would you even keep that many different trash cans? The US is very large, you can't expect people to transport their recycling.
That's hilariously ironic because China is the biggest exporter of plastics. 1.) China: $17.9B (24.7% of exported plastic items) 2.) Germany $9B (12.4%) http://www.worldstopexports.com/plastic-item-exports-country... plastics are now drowning the ocean, choking fishes (which the Chinese fisherman has a habit of overfishing, even going out to other countries' sea to fish). not to mention coral diseases, as well as mic…
Virtually all of that comes from just a small number of nations that dump trash in rivers, and the rest from lost fishing gear.
The ocean plastic is not from household plastic use/trash in places that might recycle it. So instead of working on recycling, maybe we should work on getting those countries proper trash service.
We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…
I predict it won't be long before using non-biodegradeable plastic in any packaging or short-lived product will be banned. It's outrageous that everything is packaged in material that will almost certainly not be properly recycled, and end up in landfill or the ocean.
- Tons of cardboard - Tons of batteries - Tons of partially working devices - etc etc
The thing is, 'you' buy the packaging most of the time. People are stupid, they just follow the stream of 'nice' from nice looking store, to nice looking brand name, to nice looking package. I'm sure if you made everything in thin cardboard with minimal markings, they'd be angry.
(Yes, I’m optimistic about this one)
We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…
Problem is, plastics are entirely a byproduct of the hugely dominant petrochemical industrial complex (sibling of Big Oil). Bioplastics exist, but the reason we use so much plastic instead of glass/paper is because it's cheap because it's actually a waste product of oil refinement. Realistically, yes, it's poisonous (so are the superfund-sites-to-be we call gas stations, not to mention the offshore rigs, refinery sit…
We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…
The trouble seems to be we don't really respect the environment enough, so we use it in terrible ways, like single use products. We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due respect to the long term consequences. So we use things like plastic containers, forks, cups, bottles and spoons.
What are some alternatives? Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags?
Seems like Northern Africa would be a pretty logical place for disposing waste. Lots of unused desert land very close to the sea for easy access by barge.