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Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

theguardian.com

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Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#191

Post by azinman2 »

Lunatic666 wrote: post #173
EGreg wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Arent there eco friendly alternatives already?

I remember that in Germany you can buy bags made from corn starch, but they're very thin and very fragile. You need to be really lucky to bring home your shopping bags safely and you definitely cannot reuse them. But you can put them on the compost, which is really cool! If they work on making it a little more robust, bags like that would be my first choice

What’s wrong with paper? They’re strong, biodegradable, and can use tree types that can be quickly grown.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#192

Post by [deleted] »

dd36 wrote: post #182
jdietrich wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

Cucumbers are more harmful than plastic?!? I stopped reading right there. One timely biodegrades, the other doesn’t. That’s the whole problem.

[deleted]

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#193

Post by willio58 »

vishaltelangre wrote: post #105

Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. I agree that "we", the people need to…

Why instead? Why not in addition?

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#194

Post by athenot »

jdietrich wrote: post #154
vishaltelangre wrote: post #105

Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. I agree that "we", the people need to…

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

While CO₂ emission is important, this is not primary reason for banning plastic bags. It's plastic in various states of (un)decomposition all over the ecosystem.

A cucumber is 100% biodegradable with no solid residue. The plastic that wraps it will take a long time to decompose and is likely to be found clogging up some piece of nature—whether in the soil, affecting plants or obstructing some body function of an animal.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#195

Post by trothamel »

nmcfarl wrote: post #181
jdietrich wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

So that last 'graph got me wondering, and knowing that there are basically no plastics recycled where I live, I looked up if cling film, or polystyrene (a typical steak wrapping) could be recycled in Seatlle, and the answer is no. In fact it looks like the answer is no most everywhere. And while cling film does degrade after decades, while polystyrene might take multiple 100,000s of years. Which means the problem mig…

What's irresponsible about just landfilling it after it has served its purpose? You're taking a small amount of oil that started off underground, and then isolating it back under ground.

The main problem appears to be with people who litter, and in areas that don't have a sanitation system to carry away and isolate garbage like this.

Recycling plastic is nice, but the point of GP's post is that even without it, it has the potential to massively reduce waste.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#196

Post by scotchmi_st »

jdietrich wrote: post #154
vishaltelangre wrote: post #105

Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. I agree that "we", the people need to…

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

This is a really great point that deserves to be it's own comment, rather than a reply to another. The two greatest challenges facing us in the next few years are climate change and water usage. Plastic is an issue, but it's not a life-or-death-for-the-species problem. We can figure plastic out later. We already are discovering bacteria and other organisms that can digest plastics.

It seems to me we have a kind of liberal guilt when it comes to plastic production. As if we're defiling this green and pleasant land with something alien to the universe. We're almost certainly not producing anything that hasn't already existed. We should stop acting like we are. (The same goes for nuclear waste.) As long as plastics are disposed responsibly in ways that don't damage plants and animals, what's the issue?

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#197

Post by state_less »

TylerE wrote: post #189
dd36 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cucumbers are more harmful than plastic?!? I stopped reading right there. One timely biodegrades, the other doesn’t. That’s the whole problem.

This is exactly the kind of tunnel vision that annoys me. Things take much more energy to PRODUCE than to dispose of. Agriculture is incredibly energy, land, and water intensive.

We can and should do better. What if we had a robot that would drive through the fields, detecting weeds and crushing or cutting them out instead of chemical solutions? Couldn't we deliver the water more directly as well?

Shouldn't transportation use battery powered vehicles instead of fossil fuel based vehicles?

Can't we steam wash with renewable energy?

Maybe it costs more to do some of these things now, but I think folks could use some good goals to work toward.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#198

Post by riffraff »

EGreg wrote: post #139
vishaltelangre wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imposing a ban on "public" and practically making sure that it is followed by the huge population of India is really difficult. We have seen such bans imposed on public before, and none of them were successful till the date. On the other hand, keeping an eye on the handful of (big) companies to restrict them from supplying plastic to people is comparatively an easy task and requires less (man, money and infrastructur…

Arent there eco friendly alternatives already?

for some things sure e.g. Italy has had mandatory biodegradable shopping bags for a few years, but for other things, like coke bottles, it seems harder.

I mean, you can enforce glass bottles but that does not seem like a major improvement.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#199

Post by state_less »

scotchmi_st wrote: post #196
jdietrich wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

This is a really great point that deserves to be it's own comment, rather than a reply to another. The two greatest challenges facing us in the next few years are climate change and water usage. Plastic is an issue, but it's not a life-or-death-for-the-species problem. We can figure plastic out later. We already are discovering bacteria and other organisms that can digest plastics. It seems to me we have a kind of li…

> As long as plastics are disposed responsibly in ways that don't damage plants and animals, what's the issue?

Please don't discount one of the biggest issues though. I've told folks their plastic bottle is about to blow away (overlooking lands end, right over the ocean). The person picks it up, walks a bit further up the trail and throw it in the bushes. I've had folks throw their cigarette butt on the side of the road on Independence pass. I asked them to pick it up, and they noodled around at the ground with their foot as if to find it, then hop in their car and take off.

We should design for some irresponsibility and more so in places where there isn't much environmental consciousness.

Re: Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers

#200

Post by jdietrich »

dd36 wrote: post #182
jdietrich wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Instead, government could've imposed ban on the consumer products which are wrapped using plastic material. Almost 50% plastic come directly from such consumer products sold by all FMCG companies. Such plastic material which is used as a wrapper (e.g. mineral bottles, wrappers of chocolates, biscuits, wafers, tobacco, etc.) is often useless and people tend to throw it right away. Broadly speaking, that would be a te…

Cucumbers are more harmful than plastic?!? I stopped reading right there. One timely biodegrades, the other doesn’t. That’s the whole problem.

Cucumbers do not spontaneously emerge from the ground in an untouched rural idyll and teleport themselves to your supermarket. Putting a cucumber on the shelf of your local supermarket produces about 1kg of CO2 emissions. Atmospheric CO2 isn't biodegradable.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146290110...

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