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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

stubish wrote: post #56
gfo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw? It's a step forward, a small one at that, but it's progress. I don't understand those complaining - they usually fall back to people with disabilities, and yet establishments will still have straws on-hand for those folks.

Leptospirosis is the reason people are trained from childhood to require drinking straws in many parts of Asia. Rats piss on bottles and cans, and the bacteria their urine contains kept alive due to the ice used to keep them cold. So if you refuse the straw while on holiday, remember it is flu like symptoms with a high chance of death.

[deleted]

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#142

Post by aero- »

mc32 wrote: post #9
dsabanin wrote: post #4

I'm curious. Quotes from the article: -- “It happens pretty much all the time if there is a strong rainfall or a storm,” The phenomenon is not confined to the Dominican Republic, he said, and can be seen in many developing nations with a coastline. “Everybody uses the rivers and the beaches as dump sites.” -- So we're being told that ocean's plastic garbage patch is somehow made out of the contents of landfills aroun…

There was a recent study which has been circulating. Most (90%) of the plastics in the ocean that are not related to fishing equipment come from 8 rivers in Asia and then the Nile and Niger rivers in Africa. Mostly due to poor or unregulated waste disposal infrastructures.

The Scientific American article states that 25% of the plastic pours into the Ocean from 10 rivers. 8 of them in Asia.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#143

Post by njarboe »

Alupis wrote: post #132
njarboe wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

I guess I should have said, "Putting things into a recently (last 30is years) constructed landfill with methane capture is not a problem for the environment. The point is putting things into landfills is a great alternative to just releasing them into the environment. The major problem with stuff, from an environmental view, is not its disposal in well designed landfills, but surface dumping and the problems with how its made and transported.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#144

Post by nojvek »

nkrisc wrote: post #124
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 has involved treating bodies of water like magical devices that teleport waste away forever. For much of human history, bodies of water effectively did magically dispose of any waste. If you're a small family group or a small tribe, you can pretty much dump anything down a river with no ill consequences. It was only once extremely large populations gathered around bodies of water for many gene…

Well it’s also recently we’ve come up with indispodable items like plastic.

150 years ago, the entire human population could poop into the ocean and I’m sure the ocean would be able to handle it (given it’s not all in the same place)

The ocean is huuuuuuge. However plastic can survive for a looooooooong time.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#145

Post by dragonwriter »

njarboe wrote: post #143
Alupis wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

I guess I should have said, "Putting things into a recently (last 30is years) constructed landfill with methane capture is not a problem for the environment. The point is putting things into landfills is a great alternative to just releasing them into the environment. The major problem with stuff, from an environmental view, is not its disposal in well designed landfills, but surface dumping and the problems with how…

> I guess I should have said, "Putting things into a recently (last 30is years) constructed landfill with methane capture is not a problem for the environment.

Well, other than the problem that landfills will need to continue increase in size and consume the entire environment, and the environmental impact of converting land into landfills in the first place, that might be approximately correct.

> The point is putting things into landfills is a great alternative to just releasing them into the environment.

In the sense that being kicked in the genitals is a great alternative to having cigarettes put out on them, sure, but neither is good from an environmental point of view.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#146

Post by [deleted] »

ekiru wrote: post #135
jbob2000 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#147

Post by njarboe »

dragonwriter wrote: post #145
njarboe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I should have said, "Putting things into a recently (last 30is years) constructed landfill with methane capture is not a problem for the environment. The point is putting things into landfills is a great alternative to just releasing them into the environment. The major problem with stuff, from an environmental view, is not its disposal in well designed landfills, but surface dumping and the problems with how…

> I guess I should have said, "Putting things into a recently (last 30is years) constructed landfill with methane capture is not a problem for the environment. Well, other than the problem that landfills will need to continue increase in size and consume the entire environment, and the environmental impact of converting land into landfills in the first place, that might be approximately correct. > The point is puttin…

The total US garbage production in 2016 was 254 million tons[1]. If you assume that compacted garbage has about the density of water(hard to find good figures for this), then all of the garbage for the US for one year can be fit into a space of about 2.30E+08 cubic meters. This works out to a square mile, 300ft thick. A huge pile of trash and would be large to walk around it on a human scale, but geologically an almost infinitesimal amount of the Earth surface.

I would say that current US farmland is about as destructive to the natural environment as a properly designed covered landfill, give or take. With about 1.5 million square miles of farmland in the US, landfill use for a hundred years of US dumping is about 15,000 times less of a problem than farming for the environment. Garbage is very visible and a visceral expression of humans impact on the planet, but farming, ranching, and housing uses of land are the real destroyers of the natural environment, not how we dispose of all the crap we make (in the US at least).

[1] https://www.treehugger.com/environmental-policy/trash-number...

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#148

Post by marmadukester39 »

dsabanin wrote: post #27
endorphone wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that landfill claim a bit of a strawman (pardon the pun)? I've seen little to nothing about it being the result of landfills, and everything about it being a result of the culture of disposable plastics. We're all to blame for disposable plastics.

I'm not sure how popular that claim is, but I've heard it multiple times. Especially as part of the eco-protective initiatives. I was able to find this example[1]: "Even if you live hundreds of miles from the coast, the plastic you throw away could make its way into the sea. Once in the ocean, plastic decomposes very slowly, breaking down in to tiny pieces known as micro plastics that can be incredibly damaging to se…

I think it’s absurd that we look for biodegradeable plastics as a solution when we could simple legislate common containers and reuse them. How much must we sacrifice because brands want to differentiate on the shape of the bottle instead of on what’s inside it and on the label?

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#149

Post by SlowRobotAhead »

lisper wrote: post #50
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that on the Malaysian peninsula. Chinese fishing villages that still speak an old dialect of Cantonese. It's worse in what looks to be the dry season and low tide like you have there. The other issue is that it's not important to them to clean it up - as it was explained to me. I talked to a local while there and she explained that growing up she never saw it, but years away and she doesn't like it now but know…

> You DO NOT want to go down there. I don't actually know if this village had sewers or not (I suspect not) but we did see people swimming in the water.

That was more of a YOU don't want to go in there. They might be way more used to it in terms of built up resistance.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#150

Post by munificent »

unethical_ban wrote: post #86
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…

I thought federal regulations required the dumping of sewage 12-25 miles from coastline.

Yes, like oasisbob says, the "treated" in my sentence is significant. Federal regulations prohibit dumping untreated sewage, but allow dumping it if it's treated (chemically broken down, I think roughly similar to what you'd do in a septic tank). Call me crazy, but I'm still not super keen on eating oysters that have had treated sewage raining down on them either.
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