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Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

nytimes.com

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Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#131

Post by jbob2000 »

drak0n1c wrote: post #127
jbob2000 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we were to answer every use case every time we need to make a societal change, then nothing would get done. The scope of people you mention with that disability is very very small. And still, they could work around metal by using a piece of rubber on the tip. Hell, someone could invent a special straw just for disabled people (we could make it longer and more flexible, you might call it a tube!). Instead of rippin…

Any issue can be explained away by claiming it is "very very small" - including the matter of straws. I'm skeptical that use of plastic straws by developed countries will ultimately cause enough climate change to kill disabled people as your comment implies. Let's not confuse litter and climate change. That kind of hyperbole does not help. Environmentalism would be better served if environmentalists focused on deeper…

Totally fair, it was a hyperbolic comment. But environmentalism takes many small steps to achieve, it’s not done overnight in one fell swoop. If we fight all of these small steps, then it never moves forward. We need to “die on this hill” so that we don’t die on a bigger hill much later.

We need to think about a world without throw-away plastic. Banning plastic straws is an exploration in to that world. If it turns out that there is absolutely no way to live in a world without plastic straws, then I am sure the ban will be undone. But I think we can get ahead of this challenge, it’s not that big.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#132

Post by Alupis »

njarboe wrote: post #128
Alupis wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article references starch-based bioplastics - and the ocean is quite an environment, filled with micro-organisms and minerals which readily decompose other organic materials. I don't see a reason we cannot create something that works in that environment too - however, the overwhelming majority of our plastic waste isn't going into the ocean; rather, it's going into landfills where it will sit for thousands of yea…

Things sitting in landfills are not a problem for the environment. It is producing them in the first place that causes environmental damage. Imagine everything going into a landfill as a resource our ancestors can mine in the future.

> Things sitting in landfills are not a problem for the environment

That's not true either.

Toxins, leachate, and greanhouse gases are given off from landfills and leach into ground water, or pollute the land around landfills[1]. Plastics will stay there, be washed away into streams/rivers, or be unburied in the future, practically in the same condition they were originally - even hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

> Products that are not biodegradable or are slow to decompose, like plastic, can remain in landfill sites for centuries, often emitting gases that could be harmful to the environment.[2]

> Landfills and dumps buried over often become suburban home sites in later years, unbeknownst to people who may live on them. Landfills have a distinctive effect on air pollution, nature, land and humans. Soil in the area may be saturated with chemicals or hazardous substances[3]

[1] https://environmentvictoria.org.au/resource/problem-landfill...

[2] https://greenliving.lovetoknow.com/How_Does_Recycling_Affect...

[3] https://sciencing.com/effects-landfills-environment-8662463....

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#133

Post by jpindar »

zaroth wrote: post #121

Nice bit of auto playing video at the bottom of the article (picture worth a thousand words) or could have been an GIF. My first thought was it looks like a great problem for some robots — they need a small fleet of floating Rhombas.

There are devices for scooping trash out of rivers, I don't know how well they could be adapted for the ocean.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/mr-trash-wheels-...

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#134

Post by fein »

polskibus wrote: post #39
fein wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developing countries using ocean as a waste dump I thought this was common knowledge by this point. The most polluted rivers in the world are located in India, China, South America, Africa, and Indonesia.

Developed countries don't help by shipping their waste to developing countries and removing the problem from their sight. China recently stopped accepting garbage from California and now the problem is back in the USA.

The waste generated by countries that have over 1 billion inhabitants each will dwarf the amount of garbage we could ship them even if all garbage storage in the US was outsourced to them.

It's a simple numbers game. 300 million will never produce as much waste as 1 billion.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#135

Post by ekiru »

jbob2000 wrote: post #131
drak0n1c wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any issue can be explained away by claiming it is "very very small" - including the matter of straws. I'm skeptical that use of plastic straws by developed countries will ultimately cause enough climate change to kill disabled people as your comment implies. Let's not confuse litter and climate change. That kind of hyperbole does not help. Environmentalism would be better served if environmentalists focused on deeper…

Totally fair, it was a hyperbolic comment. But environmentalism takes many small steps to achieve, it’s not done overnight in one fell swoop. If we fight all of these small steps, then it never moves forward. We need to “die on this hill” so that we don’t die on a bigger hill much later. We need to think about a world without throw-away plastic. Banning plastic straws is an exploration in to that world. If it turns o…

A better approach compared to banning things currently needed by disabled people and then, once disabled people object, saying "well, we need to develop better alternatives for disabled people, but we can't let these issues get in the way" would be to first develop alternatives and then, once there are good alternatives that are actually usable and safe for disabled people, ensuring their availability as part of the same policies that reduce or eliminate the use of the environmentally problematic things.

There's no reason why the needs of disabled people must conflict with taking care of the environment. The apparent conflict in this situation was introduced because people developed their environmental policy proposals without any awareness of or care for the interests and needs of disabled people: if we do not account for the effects of policies on disabled people when deciding which policies to prioritize and how to implement them, some policies will look artificially more appealing because of our inattention to some of their costs and the policies we do choose to pursue will end up implemented in needlessly harmful ways simply because we weren't paying attention to whether we ended up causing harm to some people.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#136

Post by i_am_nomad »

ransom1538 wrote: post #111
munificent wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the US. Most of the houseboats on Lake Washington and Lake Union dumped their sewage straight into the lakes until the late 60s. It was only this year that we passed an ordinance prohibiting dumping treated sewage from boats into Puget Sound and the lakes. That's a shudder-inducing thought when you consider that many of the delicious oysters we have here are dire…

Nope. I don’t eat oysters and if I see someone eat one I excuse myself before I vomit. Thanks dumpers.

But is there some inherent and real quality of biowaste that remains with the oysters after they filter-feed on it?

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#137

Post by nitwit005 »

polskibus wrote: post #39
fein wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developing countries using ocean as a waste dump I thought this was common knowledge by this point. The most polluted rivers in the world are located in India, China, South America, Africa, and Indonesia.

Developed countries don't help by shipping their waste to developing countries and removing the problem from their sight. China recently stopped accepting garbage from California and now the problem is back in the USA.

> China recently stopped accepting garbage

You mean, they stopped buying recyclables? That's fairly different than just accepting raw waste: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-b...

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#138

Post by mattdmrs »

omegaworks wrote: post #83
munificent wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the US. Most of the houseboats on Lake Washington and Lake Union dumped their sewage straight into the lakes until the late 60s. It was only this year that we passed an ordinance prohibiting dumping treated sewage from boats into Puget Sound and the lakes. That's a shudder-inducing thought when you consider that many of the delicious oysters we have here are dire…

> Most of human history Most of life, really. It's only recently (the last century) that we've hit upon such economies of scale, population and production capacity that our natural renewal processes can no longer handle the load.

That, and plastic material making up much of that load. Dumping large quantities of wood =/= dumping large quantities of styrofoam.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#139

Post by sumedh »

fein wrote: post #134
polskibus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developed countries don't help by shipping their waste to developing countries and removing the problem from their sight. China recently stopped accepting garbage from California and now the problem is back in the USA.

The waste generated by countries that have over 1 billion inhabitants each will dwarf the amount of garbage we could ship them even if all garbage storage in the US was outsourced to them. It's a simple numbers game. 300 million will never produce as much waste as 1 billion.

> 300 million will never produce as much waste as 1 billion.

I dont have the numbers but Americans do produce more trash compared to majority of those billion. Its hard to compete with Americans when you live on $2 per day.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#140

Post by fein »

sumedh wrote: post #139
fein wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The waste generated by countries that have over 1 billion inhabitants each will dwarf the amount of garbage we could ship them even if all garbage storage in the US was outsourced to them. It's a simple numbers game. 300 million will never produce as much waste as 1 billion.

> 300 million will never produce as much waste as 1 billion. I dont have the numbers but Americans do produce more trash compared to majority of those billion. Its hard to compete with Americans when you live on $2 per day.

Note that I wrote shipped, not produced. That being said:

Sure, but that doesn't bode well for the future when that population of 1 billion starts elevating more of its people to the middle class.

Yes, poverty means less waste, but the global goal seems to be getting people out of poverty, which increases net pollution.

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