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Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

latimes.com

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Re: Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

#81

Post by fleetingmoments »

pen2l wrote: post #6

This might be a dumb question, but: why don't we do glass-style bottles? I live in America now, but when I used to live in Pakistan 20 years ago, I remember that I would buy pepsi or coki in a glass bottle... and if I wanted to buy a second one, I would go back to the store and give them the old empty bottle, and they would compensate me a few pennies for it -- and the bottle then is presumably washed and reused. It'…

I'd like to see reusable silicone packaging. Bonus points if the containers are standardised like shipping containers and fit together in a way that maximises internal volume, like the cells of a honeycomb. Who wouldn't like a container that is hydrophobic, making it easy to get every last bit of yoghurt out.

Re: Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

#82

Post by s3krit »

anon_cow1111 wrote: post #22
devoply wrote: post #5

Replace with glass and aluminum, with what's left over burn it. That way it has no way of creating any other problems in the future. If you are efficient with burning it you could even capture the greenhouse gasses produced as a result and sequester those.

As someone who rides a bicycle and hikes, glass bottles are the bane of my existence.

In my country, you return glass bottles for re-use for about 15 euro cents. We don't see a lot of shattered glass bottles lying around...

Re: Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

#83

Post by tomxor »

cameronbrown wrote: post #75
protonfish wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you made a case that this would be better for the environment, which I have yet to see. Plastic waste is not toxic, nor does it use a lot of energy to produce.

Microplastics which are irremovable from the environment would beg to differ. Those are what need to be banned.

Microplastics are all plastics, since that's what it all turns into after getting ground up through environmental processes.

Re: Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

#84

Post by tomxor »

I'm fed up of sorting and "recycling" plastic, it's such bullshit, it's a feel good activity for individuals or a check box exercise for governments. If anything it's damaging to continue pretending to recycle plastics, it makes it seem ok to continue producing them.

One day in the future it will be banned at the source, packaging will be replaced with something non-hazardous and efficient to recycle or biodegrade, and our children will look back at us in disbelief - just like we look back and scoff at advertisements for healthy smoking, yet it will have longer lasting effects on the food chain.

Re: Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

#86

Post by nostrademons »

weberc2 wrote: post #76
cortesoft wrote: post #54

There is this strange belief that landfills are taking up a ton of space and we need to reduce landfill usage because of it. This is simply not true. Landfills don't take up much space, we have plenty.

This is pretty much what the environmentalists were preaching when I was growing up. Not sure why to be honest. In retrospect it certainly seems like "but the landfills!" is the lesser of all evils.

Probably a combination of NIMBYism and poor land-use planning. Back when many of these landfills were created, they were on the outskirts of urban areas, where "outskirts" = 15-20 miles away. After the wave of suburbanization in the 1950s-80s, suddenly those outskirts are right next to someone's home. Now it's a crisis.

Most people's conception of what land is available is limited to their local metropolitan area, and they have no idea just how abundant land is in the hinterlands. You could probably bury all the nation's garbage in the craters left inside the Nevada Proving Grounds, which is a radioactive wasteland anyway. And shipping contains of garbage 500 miles from LA, Vegas, and SF to Northern Nevada looks a lot more appealing when you've gotten used to shipping it 10,000 miles to China.

Re: Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

#87

Post by gtgtgthyhy »

The water from my well is not very good, but ever since I got a reverse-osmosis filtration system, I probably reduced our one-time-use plastic consumption by about 95% (mainly water bottles)... and this system will pay for itself in less then one year... but of course they need to fix the packaging of many items.

Re: Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste

#88

Post by siberianbear »

hexis wrote: post #58
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US was gearing up nicely to require deposit and reuse schemes in the 50s or 60s. Vermont was about to require drinks be in reusable bottles. Pepsi, Coke, Budweiser, Philip Morris and others got together, conceived the idea of, funded and launched "Keep America Beautiful". Vermont was lobbied and the deposit scheme died, consumers were blamed for the whole problem via campaigns on littering, and industry could do…

Bottle and can deposit has been going on in Massachusetts since at least the 80's (when I was growing up there) - https://www.mass.gov/deposit-bottle-can-recycling

I'm putting words in NeedsMoreTea's mouth here, but I think he was referring not to deposit schemes, but deposit and reuse schemes.

In the 70s and 80s, soft drinks (at least in California where I lived) were packaged in really heavy, thick glass bottles. You paid a deposit on purchase, and a refund on turning it back in, and then the bottles were cleaned and reused.

These schemes have seemingly all disappeared. Many or most states still have deposit programs, but the intent is to recycle the glass, not to reuse the original bottle.

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