Mumbai bans plastic bags, bottles, and single-use plastic containers • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by ryanianian » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 4:59 PM UTC

gianpaj wrote: post #244

ryanianian wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Ukraine, there is a big French supermarket chain called Ашан (auchan.ua), in which people can buy liquid cleaning products by the volume. For example, if you need a litre for dishwashing cleaning soap, you can go and pull a lever and fill an appropriate size plastic bottle. It's their own brand and it's very cheap. I'm not 100% sure if you can bring and use any plastic bottle, or you have first get it from them. T…

That's excellent. It's surprising even high-end specialty stores in the US (e.g. Whole Foods) don't do more of this.

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

#252

Post by buckminster » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:04 PM UTC

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?

But they are not disposed of responsibly. Fish sold for human consumption increasingly contain plastic microparticles, which bind toxins.

The oceans already contain a vast amount of macro plastic which is disintegrating into microparticles and will be basically impossibly to remove.

This is new, it's getting worse, and we don't know what effect it will have on human health.

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

#253

Post by hal9000xp » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:07 PM UTC

Rwanda seems to be first country which imposed complete ban on plastic bags. It looks they've been successful on that:

http://www.dw.com/en/ten-years-on-rwandas-plastic-ban/av-428...

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

#254

Post by dd36 » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:10 PM UTC

riantogo wrote: post #203

athenot wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anim…

Based on jdietrich's input, it is then a waste processing problem and not a plastic problem. Tackling the symptom in this case seems net more harmful.

By his logic, we should plastic wrap every vegetable and fruit. That is nonsensical.

Humans don't dispose of things properly. That's a fact. Creating more plastic waste will create more plastic pollution.

It's far easier to not create the waste in the first place. And there are ways to reduce CO2 that don't involve creating exponentially more plastic waste.

Again, producers don't plastic wrap cucumbers to save CO2. The entire premise is ridiculous.

Charge producers for the waste their products create. That will incentivize less waste. Charge them for the CO2 they emit. That will incentivize a reduction in CO2. You can accomplish both with market signals.

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

#255

Post by snambi » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

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…

What an awesome logic... Plastic is better than organic stuff.

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

#256

Post by hw » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:11 PM UTC

mekazu wrote: post #120

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…

Plastic is sometimes useful to preserve fresh food to some degree. Without plastic many goods wouldn’t be viable. Would be nice though if at least the necessary plastic was highly recycleable, as well as cost efficient etc.

There are grocery stores (like Sprouts in my area) that sell fresh food like produce that aren't packed in plastic. They're all loose items that you just pick up and put into your own bag (which hopefully is either plastic that you reuse, or just a cloth bag). Then there are some grocery stores that pack most of their produce like vegetables all in plastic. If no plastic works for one, I don't see how it's necessary for the other.

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

#257

Post by dd36 » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #204

athenot wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 anim…

Plastic packaging doesn't spontaneously release itself into the ecosystem, it's put there by someone irresponsibly managing waste. Norway and the Netherlands are both trialling waste-to-energy incineration with carbon capture. Failing that, there's nothing particularly wrong with well-managed landfill. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187661021... http://www.vivis.de/phocadownload/Download/2017_eaa/…

You're confusing waste that is properly disposed of with waste that is not. The problem is waste that is improperly disposed of and neither of those are solutions to that problem.

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

#258

Post by hw » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:13 PM UTC

beauzero wrote: post #211

mrfusion wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly. How will they sell ground meat, mayonase, salad dressing?

Go to a butcher and get it in paper. Make your own mayo...it's an egg, veg oil, and a little salt and pepper...store in glass. Salad dressing...store in glass. Metal tops. Pretty much the packaging up until the 70's.

+1. The prices of meat at the butcher section is usually the same as the one in the pre-packaged meat section.

As for mayo, maybe just eat less of it as it isn't exactly healthy. Or get the ones in glass bottles. Same goes with salad dressing.

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

#259

Post by shripadk » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:24 PM UTC

okmokmz wrote: post #208

shripadk wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with trust. One terror attack and the employees and their families would be getting back at the management for lax security and having made the big mistake of trusting their lives with the company. Workplace violence is a thing and it's better for everyone to go through security checks than risk liability. You never know how, when or why someone snaps (however mentally stable s/he was during re…

I really hope this is sarcasm... You think it's appropriate for every employee to be searched before entering a facility because there might be a "terror attack"? How many IT workers are there in the country, how many attacks have occurred in IT offices, and how many attacks have been prevented by searching employees bags? Giving up personal liberties and freedoms out of unsubstantiated fears based on a few fringe ca…

How do you prevent employees from leaving with company data if one copies all the sensitive data onto a pen drive? Does security check the pen drives too? It's actually ridiculous to cast aspersion on the security when their job is to prevent threats.

> You think it's appropriate for every employee to be searched before entering a facility because there might be a "terror attack"? How many IT workers are there in the country, how many attacks have occurred in IT offices, and how many attacks have been prevented by searching employees bags?

It just takes one attack to lose a loved one and put a family in complete disarray. In India there have been multiple terror threats to software companies in the past decade alone. You forget that the agencies work 24/7 preventing terror plots and if even one of them slips through it would be disaster for everyone involved. Multi layered security is the only way to thwart terror plots. Here are few examples:

1. http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-terror-plot-against-inf...

2. http://www.rediff.com/news/2007/jan/05blore.htm

3. https://www.indiatoday.in/latest-headlines/story/infosys-wip...

You can use logic and statistics to argue about probability of terror threats but none of your statistics takes into account the mental health or the radical motivation of an individual/group.

> I really hope this is sarcasm... You think it's appropriate for every employee to be searched before entering a facility because there might be a "terror attack"?

EDIT: I am not being sarcastic. I am being a realist. In an ideal world I wouldn't want any sort of security. But we don't live in an ideal world.

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

#260

Post by dahart » Tue, Jun 26, 2018, 5:25 PM UTC

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.

> Things take much more energy to PRODUCE than to dispose of.

Right. Plastic takes a lot more energy to produce than cucumbers (and today a large portion of plastic production is non-renewable energy, compared to the solar that grows cucumbers). Plastic production also results in much more c02 byproduct than the production of cucumbers.

The 'evidence' against cucumbers above was to count the c02 byproduct of transporting the cucumbers, not how much c02 they give off while growing. The same applies to all the plastics in the grocery store too, they also have to be transported, so that argument is completely moot. If you want to reduce c02, it's irrelevant to pit veggies against plastic, we simply need to make vehicles more efficient. BTW, I'm not arguing against the paper; if you read the paper's abstract, that exactly the conclusion they come to as well. It seems like @jdietrich is either confused about what it's saying, or is trying to spin or cloud the issue.

If you remove the argument of transportation from the equation, plants are a net negative in c02 emissions. Plants absorb more c02 than they produce. The more plants we grow, the more c02 we save. Not so for plastic, which produces 3-6 kg of c02 per kg of plastic in the production of plastic alone, not counting the transportation.

> Agriculture is incredibly energy, land, and water intensive.

Right. So what? This sentence seems to completely misunderstand that using energy (the sun), land, and water to grow food is environmentally friendly because it's renewable. All the energy and land and water we use to grow plants we get to keep using over and over again with positive environmental benefits.

It's our man-made processes, especially the ones that burn fossil fuels, that are causing almost all the problems we have; cars, machines, plastic production, etc.. c02-wise, farm equipment is a small portion of that, transportation is a much large piece of the pie.