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EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

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Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#161

Post by Mirioron »

jacobolus wrote: post #150
DoreenMichele wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep hearing that. It strikes me as a way to decide now to screw people over on this specific detail on the theory that, someday, there will be UBI and everything will work just fine. Someday never seems to come on such promises. I was openly homeless on Hacker News for 5.7 years. Plenty of people here are UBI proponents who argued that I of all people should also be a UBI proponent due to my poverty. Such people w…

Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic needs doesn’t necessarily imply a universal basic income policy. > If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come. I sometimes buy lunch for homeless people in my neighborhood, and have given people blankets and cash before, and donated t…

I think you're missing the point she's trying to make. She's saying that these types of bans have negative unintended consequences for the poorest people. These consequences get brushed aside "because we can just do X to really help them", but X is never actually done to the degree that it offsets the problem. Her mention of HN is that, this would be one of those places of high ideals where you would expect X to be done, but it isn't. So if it's not even done in a place like HN, then what's the chance that it will be done by the general public? And so X gets brushed aside and the negative unintended consequences pile up.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#162

Post by jacobolus »

Mirioron wrote: post #158
jacobolus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeless sanitation is not independently sufficient justification to support heaps of littered disposable plastic bags everywhere. There are many other possible ways to address this problem.

And yet none of those will be done, but we'll still continue with the ban. After all, it's the thought that counts.

Imagine that “free plastic bags” had never been a thing.

There are homeless people without adequate toilets. Would you suggest “let’s fill our world with heaps of littered plastic bags, because some homeless people might be able to use them as portable toilets” as a remedy?

No, that would be an absurd solution.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#163

Post by jacobolus »

Mirioron wrote: post #161
jacobolus wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cash transfers to the homeless enough to cover sanitation and other basic needs doesn’t necessarily imply a universal basic income policy. > If you aren't willing to open your wallet right here, right now and help out poor people you personally know, I am skeptical that "someday" will ever come. I sometimes buy lunch for homeless people in my neighborhood, and have given people blankets and cash before, and donated t…

I think you're missing the point she's trying to make. She's saying that these types of bans have negative unintended consequences for the poorest people. These consequences get brushed aside "because we can just do X to really help them", but X is never actually done to the degree that it offsets the problem. Her mention of HN is that, this would be one of those places of high ideals where you would expect X to be d…

So your argument is something like “if any system or policy incidentally helps the poorest people while also doing lots of unintended damage, then it is immoral to stop doing it, because replacing the incidental aid to the poor now cut off is politically intractable”?

This is precisely the same logic that says we need to continue to use coal power plants because otherwise the coal miners will lose their jobs, and it’s impossible to support them except by continuing to hire them to mine coal. When the people who want to eliminate coal power (e.g. Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016) suggest cash transfers, reeducation plans, other industrial investment, etc. to coal-mining regions to offset the loss of coal jobs, the supporters of coal mining reject the proposals as politically infeasible.

Instead of setting up advocates for the homeless and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#164

Post by Mirioron »

dashundchen wrote: post #58
amyjess wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what if you have motor control issues that makes it impossible to wash cutlery to any standard of cleanliness? I've said it before, and I've said it again: these anti-plastic laws are actively hostile to people with disabilities.

Which is easier to do? A) Figuring out how to deal with the external effects of single-use plastic for 500+ million people or B) Asking a very small fraction of those 500+ million people with motor control issues who also use single use plastic to use alternatives, of which there are many - including paper, bamboo, and regular cutlery

Here's what's going to happen: everyone ignores the issue and the disabled have to figure out a solution for their own drop in quality of life.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#165

Post by Mirioron »

jacobolus wrote: post #162
Mirioron wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet none of those will be done, but we'll still continue with the ban. After all, it's the thought that counts.

Imagine that “free plastic bags” had never been a thing. There are homeless people without adequate toilets. Would you suggest “let’s fill our world with heaps of littered plastic bags, because some homeless people might be able to use them as portable toilets” as a remedy? No, that would be an absurd solution.

Yeah, instead we would have no solution at all and would just consider the higher amount of disease to be just a part of life. Homelessness isn't a new problem, it's simply one we don't do anything about. So these ideas of "we could do X to fix it" don't matter. We're not going to do them.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#166

Post by DoreenMichele »

jacobolus wrote: post #163
Mirioron wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point she's trying to make. She's saying that these types of bans have negative unintended consequences for the poorest people. These consequences get brushed aside "because we can just do X to really help them", but X is never actually done to the degree that it offsets the problem. Her mention of HN is that, this would be one of those places of high ideals where you would expect X to be d…

So your argument is something like “if any system or policy incidentally helps the poorest people while also doing lots of unintended damage, then it is immoral to stop doing it, because replacing the incidental aid to the poor now cut off is politically intractable”? This is precisely the same logic that says we need to continue to use coal power plants because otherwise the coal miners will lose their jobs, and it’…

So your argument

They are not making an argument. They are trying to translate my words in hopes of bridging some communication gap.

Instead of setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies, it would be more productive to find mutually acceptable solutions.

I'm an environmental studies major who gave up my car well before I became homeless, in part for environmental reasons. (In the US, this is routinely interpreted as "Obviously, you are just one of the useless and incompetent poor, not qualified to do any well paid work" rather than "Obviously, you are an extremist nutcase environmental enthusiast willing to walk the walk -- literally! -- not just talk the talk." Cuz: logic (by which I mean prejudice and classism).)

So, I don't know why on earth you think I personally am setting up homeless activists and environmentalists as enemies. I see myself as qualifying for both labels.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#167

Post by apacheCamel »

jwr wrote: post #120

Reading these comments makes me sad, but I am also beginning to understand the opposition to limiting carbon emissions. Introduce an initiative that is "obviously good". I mean, none of the commenters here will be disadvantaged by single-use plastic being banned. It is obviously better for the environment. Whichever way you look at it, it is an improvement on the current state of affairs. And yet, people will moan an…

I can't agree with this more. Seems like so many people would rather bicker and moan about the "real issue" behind climate change than actually get out there and try something new. I am glad Europe is trying to fight this battle. They are trying to fix it, it may not be the end all solution but it is a step towards one.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#168

Post by kazinator »

vimy wrote: post #134
jwr wrote: post #120

Reading these comments makes me sad, but I am also beginning to understand the opposition to limiting carbon emissions. Introduce an initiative that is "obviously good". I mean, none of the commenters here will be disadvantaged by single-use plastic being banned. It is obviously better for the environment. Whichever way you look at it, it is an improvement on the current state of affairs. And yet, people will moan an…

>It is obviously better for the environment. Except it isn't and plastic is for many uses the best material. Take glass for example. Cons of Glass: It breaks It costs more to ship It is more expensive to recycle Glass takes twice as much energy to produce More pollution is created in the manufacturing, shipping and recycling of glass Glass creates more than 6 times the global warming gases than plastic --------------…

Glass is a mineral; the earth's crust is full of practically the same thing.

Glass can be reused; sterilizing and re-filling milk bottles is a thing, for instance.

Plastic doesn't really recycle; it downcycles. Plastic from higher grade products usually can't be used for the same grade, only for lower-grade stuff.

Downcycling is less of a problem for glass.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#169

Post by throwaway5752 »

Mirioron wrote: post #156
throwaway5752 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, comments like yours is how nothing ever gets done. Second, you use citation-free statistics that are misleading. How much plastic waste from Asia is from "recycled" US and European ("first world", to use your dog whistle) plastics? edit: to repeat myself, How much plastic waste from Asia is from "recycled" US and European ("first world", to use your dog whistle) plastics? - the research that 90% of the plastic…

> The EU's research on the topic says about 150,000 tonnes of plastic are tossed into European waters every year. > That is only a small contributor to the global problem, with an estimated eight million tonnes of plastic entering the world's oceans annually. And once there, plastic can travel great distances on ocean currents. That's 1.875%. Furthermore, single use plastics make up slightly less than half of that am…

I'm going to assume good faith and spell this out plainly:

1. People in the US, Europe, Australia, et al. "recycle" plastic.

2. The recycling companies in these regions export commingled and low quality plastics to reprocessors in China

3. The commingled low quality recycled plastic can't be reprocessed economically, and ends up in a river.

At any rate, the EU number you cited as well as NA numbers are about to rise, because China cut the world off from dumping it's garbage there: https://e360.yale.edu/features/piling-up-how-chinas-ban-on-i...

That is probably the reason for this plastic disposables ban, and more that are to come.

Re: EU to ban plastic plates, cups, and cutlery by 2021

#170

Post by wtdata »

Sincerely, the point is not of is actually going to reduce plastic in a big enough scale to make a difference, the point is that it will make business come up with alternatives and progress us towards a solution to plastic use that can then be applied in a more extensive way.

The EU, although not bring perfect, is usually the place where these kind of measures start, and I am grateful for it.

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