I don't have a link but I recall reading that they can take a sample of ocean water from anywhere on earth, put it under a microscope, and find microscopic pieces of plastic. It truly is everywhere.
Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
81–90 of 318 posts
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. There should be a mitigation cost associated with all plastics. Nothing more frustrating than buying a container for some food that will last for millennia meanwhile the food was consumed in a couple minutes... More generally, I hope more will push for taxes on all things we want to discourage as means of weening off. Oil, coal, plastic, high impact animal products. All of them have huge external costs, none…
If we began taxing externalities to reflect actual total cost to society, consumer behavior would change real quick. My only concern is that we are too far down to rabbit hole with cheap, ubiquitous, damaging materials that if the true cost was reflected in the price no one could afford anything.
That's my fear as well but that is no excuse at all for not trying though. Because such reason would still never make the no-action option preferable to the action option.
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#83Plastics should be taxed.
Couple of points: Taxes don't work to work to change behavior, or people would have stopped speeding a long time ago, sugary drinks wouldn't sell in Seattle, and people would stop buying coffee in California. They are an unfortunate excuse used by politicians to fool the public into "hey I'm doing something!". Instead, innovation is needed around providing biodegradable solutions that can outcompete their plastic cou…
Taxes don't work to change behavior, prices do. To the extent that a tax changes a price, it will change behavior.
> People will naturally switch to something healthier for the environment when it's more convenient and it saves them money.
Right, and one way to make the desired thing save consumers money is to apply tax policy.
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#84The real tragedy here is the lack of the Oxford comma in the headline.
The bigger tragedy is that there isn't even a good reason to argue over whether or not Oxford commas should be used. People think there is a good reason, namely that there are some lists that are ambiguous with the comma that are made non-ambiguous by removing it. However, as far as I've been able to tell, in all such lists the ambiguity is there because there are commas in the sentence serving to mark appositive phr…
Isn't there a good reason in this case:
Beer, Drinking Water and Fish
Beer, Drinking Water, and Fish
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO, the contamination of the food supply with rancid vegetable oil is a more important factor in the diabetes epidemic. Almost all of the vegetable oils at grocery stores are refined so customers don't realize they're using rancid oils. Vegetable oil is useful as biodiesel, and for making paints and stains. A drying oil is an oil that hardens to a tough, solid film after a period of exposure to air. The oil hardens…
This process sounds similar to seasoning a cast iron pan. Does that mean using a seasoned cast iron pan can play a factor in diabetes, since you're in taking more rancid fats?
That is exactly what pan seasoning is. It's why the oil you use matters. The patina on a seasoned pan is a crosslinked polymer.
The chemicals that make rancid oils taste and smell bad are generally the smaller bits that come off the molecule when its double bonds are attacked by oxygen: the aldehydes and ketones, and the short saturated fatty acids like butyric acid.
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#86Re: microfibers making it into water systems: This is a con to synthetic fibers that I hadn't been considering before. Recently I learned that cotton has a pretty high environmental footprint (land use, highest pesticide use of any crop, high water consumption) [1], and thus started moving some of my clothing purchases toward polyester-blends (trades the cons of cotton for petrochemical and energy use). Does anyone h…
Have you examined organic cotton?
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most so-called "vegetable oils" were traditionally used as drying oils. This was before the paint industry figured out how to use petroleum distillates in their products in the mid-20th century. Linseed oil was renamed "flaxseed oil" when the market for stain made with linseed oil dried up. Containers of vegetable oils typically develop a sticky film on them, due to the drying oil effect.
Maybe I'm not viewing this with the proper historical context, but I don't understand why you are saying the market for linseed oil has "dried up" for non-food uses. Boiled linseed oil, which contains linseed oil, is probably the most common oil based finish for woodworking. I also looked at this website about "Linseed oil market analysis" [1], which shows that Paints & Varnishes is still the largest user of linseed…
... strictly speaking you’re certainly correct that there is still a significant non-food use for linseed and the other vegetable oils. But there were only limited food uses for polyunsaturated oils before deodorization and hydrogenation techniques were figured out in the early-mid 20th century. People might [have] measured out a tablespoon for their cooking pan, whereas today people use these oils prolifically.
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#88Plastics should be taxed.
Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers. Given the higher cost of other materials, changing consumer behavior (which is not easy, but it's happening right now, and achievable through further exposure and education) may be the only way to change producers' behavior. While a tax seems like an easy fix, it may also cause the government to come to…
>Because plastic is so cheap, producers will pay the tax, continue using plastic, and pass the costs onto consumers.
This is not how it works. To what degree the tax gets "passed on to consumers" is based on relative elasticity of supply and demand in that market, not on the price of the good. You can read about it in absolutely any introductory microeconomics textbook.
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
"within about 50-100 years" That's how bottlenecks work, but not evolution. No species is going to evolve in the next century which will be able to suddenly break down plastic and turn it into energy/nutrients. The ones that do, mostly bacertium and fungi, were pre-disposed to doing so, and didn't suddenly X-men their way into consuming plastic. As for organisms such as the Chinese mealworm that "eats" plastic bags,…
> No species is going to evolve in the next century which will be able to suddenly break down plastic and turn it into energy/nutrients. Such a species already exists: https://www.sciencealert.com/new-plastic-munching-bacteria-c... There are also bacteria that can break down nylon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria I don't understand why people are so dismissive of ideas that are a simple google sea…
The plastics that are broken down by bacteria have side groups or chains that make it feasible to attack them chemically.
Now the question is if something can break down PTFE.
Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere
#90Re: microfibers making it into water systems: This is a con to synthetic fibers that I hadn't been considering before. Recently I learned that cotton has a pretty high environmental footprint (land use, highest pesticide use of any crop, high water consumption) [1], and thus started moving some of my clothing purchases toward polyester-blends (trades the cons of cotton for petrochemical and energy use). Does anyone h…
There's this same argument with recycling, reuse, etc. I.E how many times do I have to use my cloth bag before the resources it took is less than that of a normal paper bag. Recycling is the same way, IIRC, aluminum is the only thing that's cheaper to recycle, energy wise.
I really wish more studies would look into the Energy per Ton for creating our consumer products.