231–240 of 362 posts
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> reuseable bioplastic bottles That's not any better if they still don't degrade, no?
Bioplastic (PLA) is biodegradable in a commercial facility, unlike petroleum-based bottle plastic (PET)
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>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…
The decision to use glass as the de-facto re-usable container medium has always driven me nuts. I think the "marketing" is that it's slightly "harder" (mentally) to throw away a nice glass bottle than it is a plastic container because we've been so conditioned to throw out the plastic ones. I've long wondered why retailers don't offer a "refill" option for items like milk and liquid cleaning products. The bottles for…
It's not widespread by any means, but it is happening.
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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.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
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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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People like cocaine too; enjoyment of something isn't grounds to keep it legal. Smoking (and alcohol) just can't be made illegal now; the US tried that for a couple of years, and all it managed to do was give rise to organized crime and illegal (and dangerous) manufacture of alcohol. In my country, smoking and alcohol are more passively discouraged; high taxes, a ban on advertising, strict age checks, and (for smokin…
Cocaine should made legal too, with all the measures which you listed. If people like something, they will try anything to get it, if its illegal is just goes underground.
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…
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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.
EDIT: And, yes, I have tunnel vision on solving the problem presented in the article not some other problem. There is no price for carbon that is inducing agricultural producers to minimize it.
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Why would that help? Let's take going to a salad bar or buffet. Many health rules say that only clean plates may be used. For example, from http://EzineArticles.com/1402314 : > There must be clean plates and other tableware at or adjacent to the buffet or salad bar and customers should be reminded, or notified if need be, that only clean tableware is to be used when returning to the buffet. Most restaurants are "set…
With enough pressure I could see a reusable-dishes-as-a-service type company. A restaurant could pay this service $x per month and the service would come daily to drop off clean containers and pick up used containers for cleaning and sterilization. Restaurants could have a deposit upon getting a meal, say $3. When you bring your containers back you get your $3 back (or $3 towards your next meal there?). If multiple r…
I think you've switched it to takeaway containers for take-out? That's a rather different topic. Certainly we know that recycled glass containers worked for decades.
But the main issue is non-biodegradable objects. Why would we worry about returnable-reusable boxes to replace, say, cardboard pizza boxes?
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> It's a net win, because the environmental impact of wasted cucumbers is far greater than the environmental impact of a gram or two of polyethylene wrapping. Will need citation for that.
Producing a cucumber results in CO2 emissions of about 1kg (3.3kg CO2 per kg product, avg weight ~300g). Shrink-wrapping a cucumber increases the average shelf life from 9 days to 15 days in refrigerated conditions and from 2 days to 5 days in ambient conditions. Producing a kilogram of polyethylene film packaging emits about 2.7kg of CO2. The wrapping on an average-sized cucumber weighs about 2g, producing an additi…
It is not just about viewing unsightly plastic, but also ingestion of plastic and chemicals associated with plastic such as phthalates and endocrine disruptors. While spoilage is in issue, so are the various health problems associated with plastic. While there are too many unstudied plastic associated chemicals to quantify the impact, a number of them are clearly associated with cancer, obesity and infertility.
This month's issue of National Geographic is devoted to the problem of plastic in the ocean and is worth a look.
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You're referring to anecdotes. Maybe the sort of behaviour is widespread, but even if it is, you then need to prove it's having much of an impact on the environment, and even then it's a drop in the ocean compared with the damage done via climate change and water consumption. We need to get out of our parochial ideas about waste. Plastics are aesthetically bad, but other forces are quantitatively way worse.
> Plastics are aesthetically bad, but other forces are quantitatively way worse. I don't agree with this line of reasoning. We have room for more than one priority, and solving the waste pipeline is ultimately one of logistics and political will, as well as elbow grease and the pluck to get out there and pick up some garbage. I've seen whole gaggles of people walk past a bottle lying on the ground next to a trash can…
Don't let a few assholes be a surrogate for justifiable outrage that comes from a completely different source on an incomprehensibly massive scale.