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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

#211

Post by lunchables »

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'…

My guess is the cost in transport/logistics to reuse, cleaning and other potential liabilities outweigh the cost of simply manufacturing lots and lots of very cheap plastic bottles. Glass is heavy and dangerous. Plastic is incredibly cheap and lightweight.

This is based on nothing other than gut intuition and someone will probably come along and correct me.

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

#212

Post by Aenyn »

codedokode wrote: post #198
jlmorton wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landfills are three dimensional and the Earth is astonishingly large. On millennia timescales, we will never run out of places to put them. At a depth of 400 feet, the entire US annual trash output is approximately 1,000 acre [1]. There are 37 billion acres on earth. And indeed, much of that is not very habitable land. And importantly, landfill space is not permanently lost. There are many beautiful parks around the…

The waste in the landfill produces toxic gases. Also it can burn and produce even more toxic gases. Even if the landfill is several kilometers away from homes, it is still dangerous. Also, the waste can pollute underground waters, and if there are many rivers in the region, the water will be contaminated in a large area around.

So the problem isn't that it takes space then.

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

#213

Post by lorenzhs »

philliphaydon wrote: post #166
SomeOldThrow wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was more implying things like paper, but I see your confusion.

Paper cups for coffee and paper containers for food are lined which makes them difficult to recycle. Despite having a recycle logo on them they are often not recyclable.

You could also drink your coffee out of a cup that can be washed and reused. Avoiding waste production in the first place is always the best option.

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

#214

Post by protonfish »

dflock wrote: post #131
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.

> Plastic waste is not toxic It absolutely is. It breaks down into micro-plastics, which are sub-celluar sized plastic particles. These have a large surface area and are easily absorbed into tissues and cells. They then leech out whatever additives are in that particular piece of plastic - plasticizers, colourings, etc... Some of these are directly toxic/harmful when released into tissues and cells - and lots of them…

That's why you should dispose of them in a landfill and not the ocean. Problem solved.

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

#215

Post by kaybe »

athenot wrote: post #50
netfire wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with glass is that it isn’t biodegradable. If it gets broken, it can cause a hazard for humans and wildlife. If it gets thrown away, it’s not going to break down. Glass is good for the ideal case, but not great for the other use cases. For milk and juice, it’s seems like thick paper might be a better option, since it’s biodegradable and recyclable.

Glass is essentially sand. Sure it may be sharp when it just broke, but it gets dull pretty fast in nature. Of all the things that got dumped onto this beach at Ft Bragg, glass was the least problematic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_Beach_(Fort_Bragg,_Calif...

Interesting, there is a community for sea glass..

https://seaglassassociation.org/

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

#216

Post by rchaud »

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'…

In Ontario, you pay a small deposit ($0.10) for each glass bottle of beer. You can bring the bottles back to the store and get refunded the deposit.

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

#217

Post by kaybe »

jjar wrote: post #19
wil421 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic is cheaper and doesn’t shatter. Some states in the US still have the refund thing for bottles. I’ve seen a vending machine in NYC for bottle refunds and one in Munich, Germany. When I was in Central America they wouldn’t let you leave the store with the bottle. They would provide a plastic bag where you could sip the coke out with a straw.

Germany is interesting - they have a nationwide bottle return system. Every supermarket over a certain size is required to have a bottle return system in place, and compensate you accordingly. It's called the "pfand" (deposit) system.

It's a way to make some money for poorer people too - collecting the bottles from the bins and public areas of the city can be quite lucrative. One plastic bottle gives you 25 cents, one beer bottle 8-15 cents.

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

#218

Post by eric-hu »

nosianu wrote: post #207
taneq wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything I've read recently indicates that "recycled" glass is generally just crushed and used as road base instead of being melted down and re-used as containers etc.

I grew up in the GDR (East Germany). We only had a few kinds of bottle designs, standardized across the whole country. I worked in a brewery over the summer, in the filling section. The whole day trucks would arrive full of empty bottles collected from various stations. They would go through a large washer, with a visual inspection afterwards (the most boring job there was, that was before that could be reliably auto…

> The main point was the standardization.

That sounds reasonable. America can queue that up after they standardize on the metric system.

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

#219

Post by juhanima »

taneq wrote: post #182
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass is another (the other?) material which is worthwhile to recycle. Like plastic, glass never decomposes. Unlike plastic and unlike paper/cardboard, it can be endlessly remelted and remade into new products without a loss in quality. It's a huge savings in material and energy cost to use recycled glass in the manufacture of new glass. If you have a recycling bin labeled "glass", absolutely do throw (place) glass b…

Everything I've read recently indicates that "recycled" glass is generally just crushed and used as road base instead of being melted down and re-used as containers etc.

According to Wikipedia, in Finland a 1/3L beer bottle is recycled, washed and refilled the average of 33 times before it goes out of circulation.

https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palpa

Although these days an aluminium can is the more popular container, and they are indeed used only once. Proper bottles are getting rare, which I hate, since the bottle is much more pleasant to drink from in a hot sauna. Doesn't burn your lips.

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

#220

Post by radford-neal »

codedokode wrote: post #198
jlmorton wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landfills are three dimensional and the Earth is astonishingly large. On millennia timescales, we will never run out of places to put them. At a depth of 400 feet, the entire US annual trash output is approximately 1,000 acre [1]. There are 37 billion acres on earth. And indeed, much of that is not very habitable land. And importantly, landfill space is not permanently lost. There are many beautiful parks around the…

The waste in the landfill produces toxic gases. Also it can burn and produce even more toxic gases. Even if the landfill is several kilometers away from homes, it is still dangerous. Also, the waste can pollute underground waters, and if there are many rivers in the region, the water will be contaminated in a large area around.

Yeah. Some toxic/flammable gasses can be produced from landfills. But that toxic gas is not produced by plastic. So reducing the amount of plastic in the landfill isn't going to reduce the amount of toxic stuff. Similarly, the plastic in a landfill is not going to end up in underground water, or in rivers. So what's your point?
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