India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports • Hacker News Board

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#141

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 10:04 AM UTC

Pristina wrote: post #130

DangitBobby wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And because it's often the only option. Here's a question for you, which one happened first? A) someone packaged a good in plastic or B) someone bought a good packaged in plastic?

It's the only option because it's the best option. Without plastic what would you package things with? Everything is shit by comparison.

It's a problem of scale, convenience, hygiene, etc. "back in the day" stuff like paper bags or waxed paper was a lot more common, but the volumes were also much lower, the availability of luxuries like idk, takeaway food and soda was much lower, etc.

Going back will mean going to the market, getting fresh vegetables and potatoes and shit, and put them in either paper bags or reused burlap sacks. I think an individual's biggest contribution would already be changing their food habits; stuff like keto, primal diets, vegetarianism / veganism are a step in the good direction. Assuming you cook your own food, instead of idk, grabbing a McD's salad (in a plastic container) or pre-packaged vegetables (plastic bags).

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#142

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 10:05 AM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #92

Nasrudith wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder about garbage and recycling why we don't see more sorted stockpiles in a "junkyard" ethos for "might be worth something in the future when resource extraction vs new costs" change. My best guess is that the sorting is too expensive.

Not just sorting, but contamination. Cardboard is recyclable. A pizza box soaked with grease ins't, and can contaminate other potential recyclables as well.

Isn't it? All reused cardboard gets soaked and cleaned first, I'm sure the recyclers can deal with oils and other such contaminants.

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#143

Post by mjevans » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 10:13 AM UTC

Single stream recycling is a really poor idea.

A better set of ideas that might actually help:

Reduce - as suggested elsewhere, eliminate parts of the packaging that aren't strictly required (outer seals, etc).

Reuse

  * Create a set of standardized, rugged, containers that seal around foods.
  * Actually use them to pack foods in standard containers.
  * Which are then returned for cleaning and reuse.

Recycle

  * Many bins, one for each type of allowed recyclable plastic.
  * Also a compost bin
  * Which would be different from a yard waste bin
  * Make sure the reusable containers are also easy to recycle.
  * Also, make an easy to read (human and machine) /large/ 'number' label.

Ban difficult to recycle things such as plastic fused to paper.

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#144

Post by majewsky » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 10:14 AM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #142

TylerE wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just sorting, but contamination. Cardboard is recyclable. A pizza box soaked with grease ins't, and can contaminate other potential recyclables as well.

Isn't it? All reused cardboard gets soaked and cleaned first, I'm sure the recyclers can deal with oils and other such contaminants.

Where I live (Germany), the recycling bins for paper and cardboard explicitly forbid fat-stained paper. (Not that anyone cares, though.)

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#145

Post by growlist » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 10:20 AM UTC

djsumdog wrote: post #84

quakeguy wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutly right. To others seeing this comment, i‘d recommend you watch the Documentary named „Plastic China“. It is on YT, but you support the makers here: https://www.plasticchina.org We need to stop plastic polluttion now, or im afraid the earths ecosystem will collapse sooner or later.

I feel like the debate on human induced climate change is a red haring. It's so abstract, it basically invites conflict and CO2 is absolutely nothing compared to issues of mass consumption. There are huge floating patches of plastic waste our oceans, being swallowed by sea life, killing fish and making its way into our food supply. There are massive lakes of sludge in Chinese and South Pacific factory cities used to…

> The end goal is much much more difficult: convincing the people who run Intel and Apple and Samsung that it is in the planet's best interest to not have higher sales each year

The people that run those companies are just functionaries. It's the owners that call the shots, and they are at this point apparently too far down the road of competitive wealth-hoarding to change.

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#146

Post by titzer » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 10:23 AM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #143

Single stream recycling is a really poor idea. A better set of ideas that might actually help: Reduce - as suggested elsewhere, eliminate parts of the packaging that aren't strictly required (outer seals, etc). Reuse * Create a set of standardized, rugged, containers that seal around foods. * Actually use them to pack foods in standard containers. * Which are then returned for cleaning and reuse. Recycle * Many bins,…

> * Create a set of standardized, rugged, containers that seal around foods.

We used to actually have this: it was wooden/plastic crates and boxes, pallets, burlap bags, and glass milk/juice/beer bottles.

We're moving backwards, and it's all due to economics. Reuse of those materials back then was motivated by the cost and difficulty of producing those containers. It simply was not economically feasible to produce a single-use crate or glass bottle--too expensive. Economics and the wonder-engine of capitalistic progress has now given us the ability to manufacture trillions of single-use containers for literally less than a penny a piece. It's just far cheaper and less of a headache to just produce, wrap, and then toss the waste. No one wants to deal with all the niggling details of carting bottles back and forth, washing, them, filling them. Just too much of a pain in the ass. So we get what we have now. Clean, no fuss, no mess. Just toss it.

In many ways, our older economies--full of poor working saps who had to lug bottles back and forth--was far more sustainable than today's system. But today we're rich and lazy and awash in our own trash. Progress!

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#147

Post by scatters » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 10:54 AM UTC

growlist wrote: post #145

djsumdog wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like the debate on human induced climate change is a red haring. It's so abstract, it basically invites conflict and CO2 is absolutely nothing compared to issues of mass consumption. There are huge floating patches of plastic waste our oceans, being swallowed by sea life, killing fish and making its way into our food supply. There are massive lakes of sludge in Chinese and South Pacific factory cities used to…

> The end goal is much much more difficult: convincing the people who run Intel and Apple and Samsung that it is in the planet's best interest to not have higher sales each year The people that run those companies are just functionaries. It's the owners that call the shots, and they are at this point apparently too far down the road of competitive wealth-hoarding to change.

How is investing in one's pension or retirement fund "competitive wealth-hoarding"?

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#148

Post by hutzlibu » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #74

hutzlibu wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We need reducing, not recycling." Why not more of both?

Reducing and reusing do not rely on external factors. You can do that yourself right now and it’s completely within your control.

Yes, but did I say anything else?

I let my nephews tear down broken old laptops for parts reuse, for example ... quite fun and useful.

And since I am in germany, I can also add more to the recycling part. We sort old glas by colors - they do get recycled. Old paper - same.

And even plastic to some extent, even though I know that most of that gets burned. But some of it actually does get recycled.

Our ordinary trash bin is quite small.

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#149

Post by stuaxo » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 11:13 AM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #122

noufalibrahim wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A low hanging fruit in the attempt to reduce consumption (which is the only real solution) is to stop single-use items. e.g. paper napkins, straws, carry bags from the local grocery shops etc. Just assuming that it's biodegradable or being recycled doesn't take into account the amount of energy and materials that went into production which are just wasted since the items are not reused.

While being low-hanging fruit, these things are also fully irrelevant. If the entire world stopped using them tomorrow, it would barely be a blip on any climate model or ocean pollution model.

Getting people to do something means we start to solve these problems. Plastic in the ocean and food chain is not nothing.

Same for climate change, start fixing small things build awareness and move onto bigger things.

Alternately tell people to stop doing anything.

Re: India Imposes Complete Ban on Solid Plastic Waste Imports

#150

Post by stuaxo » Mon, Mar 11, 2019, 11:14 AM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #140

noufalibrahim wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A low hanging fruit in the attempt to reduce consumption (which is the only real solution) is to stop single-use items. e.g. paper napkins, straws, carry bags from the local grocery shops etc. Just assuming that it's biodegradable or being recycled doesn't take into account the amount of energy and materials that went into production which are just wasted since the items are not reused.

Getting rid of a lot of single-use items would OTOH conflict with hygiene rules though. That's probably why straws come in little plastic wrappers nowadays in some places.

Rules are made by people and can adapt.