Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says • Hacker News Board

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#111

Post by detritus » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:46 PM UTC

viraptor wrote: post #60

detritus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smells like death to me.

Fresh fish has barely any smell. You won't smell fish in a reasonable quality sushi train place for example. It's only if you don't preserve it well for hours that it starts to stink.

I've lived near the sea most of my life and have always been exposed to very fresh fish.

To me (perhaps not you) it smells like death.

- ed

As an aside - I remember reading some thing a few years ago about 'supertasters' and there was a checklist that i went through that implied I had a particularly acute sense of smell. Probably bullshit, but perhaps it's something to do with that.

I really wish I could enjoy fish - as a meat it looks wonderful, but I simply cannot stand the stuff.

That has the peripheral benefit of allowing me to be smugly pious when it comes to the subject of over-fishing and depleted stocks, etc..

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#112

Post by brianwawok » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #92

varjag wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a huge shift to reducing plastic packaging. Even large TVs now come packaged without polystyrene padding.

> There's definitely a huge shift to reducing plastic packaging. On the consumer side. You now no longer see the packaging as it arrives to your house. Do an image search for Pallet Deliveries (I don't want to point fingers) and look at just how much plastic wrap comes on the "reduced waste" packaging, when it's delivered to your supermarket/department store. It's utterly astonishing.

Do you know how many pallets you can wrap with one roll of stretch wrap? I bet there is a teaspoon of oil in the stretch wrap for an entire pallet of goods. It’s like 6 miles down the plastic use chart.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#113

Post by vfc1 » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:47 PM UTC

rantwasp wrote: post #109

vfc1 wrote: post #100

I mean one thing does not take away from the other, it's necessary to stop wasting so many fish nets, AND reduce single-use plastics, AND fish less, etc. It's not OR it's AND. This leads to reasoning like "it's fishing nets the actual issue, I might as well continue throwing a full trash can full of packages every 3 days". It's not true, fishing nets is actually only 45%, the other 55% we can still work on that's a l…

agree that we have to work on multiple things, but the point was that a disproportionate amount of resources are placed behind getting rid of something that is a drop in the bucket. it's not "should we get rid of A or B?" We agree it's A and B, but we need to focus on the thing that has the bigger impact first.

> we need to focus on the thing that has the bigger impact first

Why is this, why wait to solve the fishing net problems before taking other measures?

I see this line of thought a lot here in Hacker News, especially in topics related to climate change for example.

These things can and should be tackled in parallel at the same time. We can all take responsibility personally, how about trying to use less single-use plastics, buy in local grocery shops more with reusable bags, and stop eating fish?

We can all do that, we don't need to wait for some international fishing committee to decide for years on what is the best way to change the rules on how nets can be made or handled.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#114

Post by rantwasp » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #72

mc32 wrote: post #3

Wonder if this will have an impact on plastic straw bans on land. It was always a feel-good hi-viz, low-impact measure given little evidence behind the measures.

I get the sentiment behind objecting to straw bans and the like. But I think we're at a point where reducing plastic waste is becoming critical. It's everywhere. Short lived single use plastics like straws, cutlery, packing and shipping materials have to go the way of their dinosaur derived chemical components.

if you only had limited time and resources to actually change something wouldn't you want to focus on the things with most impact? Also, before banning anything do we actually have an understanding of what the environmental impact is going to be? (e.g. if producing a paper straw consumes more electricity and generates more pollution than a plastic straw ending up to actually be worse for the environment than just keeping to use the plastic ones, wouldn't you want to know this before you ban the plastic straws and force the use of paper straws?)

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#115

Post by rantwasp » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC

MiroF wrote: post #91

mc32 wrote: post #3

Wonder if this will have an impact on plastic straw bans on land. It was always a feel-good hi-viz, low-impact measure given little evidence behind the measures.

Siri, what is marginal utility?

Siri, what percentage of you is plastic?

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#116

Post by mumblemumble » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

noselasd wrote: post #65

scottLobster wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it's similar to the grocery bag situation. Reusable cotton canvas bags keep plastic out of the environment, but their production emits thousands of times more CO2 per bag than disposable plastic bags. If you buy groceries once a week, you basically have to use the cotton canvas bags the rest of your life to even have a chance at breaking even, everything's a trade-off.

Aren't there better materials to make the resuable bags out of than cotton ? Also, you can reuse the plastic bags.

My favorites are made of nylon. It's a much lighter material than what most stores are selling as reusable bags. Enough so that you can easily keep 1 or 2 with you all the time if you're the kind of person to carry a purse or courier bag. Meaning that, unlike those canvas bags or the ones made out of that big heavy stiff plastic material, they're convenient enough to actually get used regularly.

I found one study that suggested, though, that the lowest environmental load came from the regular disposable bags as long as you reuse them until they wear out. The main reason I don't do that is that I've discovered that supermarket employees seem to really hate that, in a way they don't with the bags that are made for reuse.

I'm also inclined to guess that it's still bikeshedding. The shopping bag is really visible, but it's maybe a small amount of waste compared to all the unnecessary packaging for the products it's being used to carry home.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#117

Post by zaroth » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:52 PM UTC

intarga wrote: post #88

fulvous wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Approximately 1 billion people people are dependent on fish as the principal source of animal protein" http://www.suds-en-ligne.ird.fr/ecosys/ang_ecosys/intro1.htm

Is there something in particular necessary about animal protein, that it gets a distinct category from just protein in general? It also stands to reason that if that many people really are dependent on fish, it will be devastating to them when overfishing and pollution destroy fish stocks. All the more reason to reduce fishing and build alternatives now.

What do you mean “gets a distinct category”? Nutritionally it’s certainly possible to survive without eating fish, but a very large number of people do eat fish to survive.

Statisticians will collect and analyze data at many levels of granularity. Obviously it’s nice to know the types of food billions of people eat more generally than “fat”, “protein”, and “carbs”.

It stands to reason that fishing should be done sustainably, just like anything should be done sustainably, lest it become unsustainable. In other words, this says essentially nothing, right?

Only in the context of what the substitute is, how readily available it is, how comparable in cost, how comparable in nutrition, how much is it preferred or disliked compared to the status quo, and what negative externalities might exist in scaling up the alternative, only in that context can a useful discussion be had.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#118

Post by jajag » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

MiroF wrote: post #108

jajag wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, the right has been in outright denial of the facts, but the left has also been in denial about the contribution its policies have to the problem - they after all have been the cheerleaders for globalisation. No one is going to come out of this smelling of roses.

The "Left" (not the democrats) was not a cheerleader for globalization. I also don't buy that if everyone was producing at smaller scales at home, this problem would be at all better. This is a consumption problem, not a "globalization" problem.

Ok, what counts as the "left" in the US and most European countries promoted globalization - the unreconstituted hard left, sure, not so much.

I agree with you that this is a consumption problem, but globalization is what has driven consumption for the past 30 years.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#119

Post by elif » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:55 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #85

lonelappde wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your proposal is what, New York City should somehow ban ocean fishing, instead of controlling plastic waste in it's jurisdiction?

Why not? Ban fish from unsustainable and environmentally unfriendly sources. 10 million New Yorkers represent enough buying power to marginally change the economic incentives for fishing companies worldwide.

Considering for cities like NY and SF the majority of seafood served is not what is advertised, despite existing legislation to the contrary, I think enforcement is the problem.

I imagine the only substantial course of action would be to ban ocean fishing vessels from the entire coast.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#120

Post by Robotbeat » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

rantwasp wrote: post #73

lonelappde wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your proposal is what, New York City should somehow ban ocean fishing, instead of controlling plastic waste in it's jurisdiction?

i think banning ocean fishing would be a disaster actually. what we need is responsible fishing with proper management of the fishing nets (i.e. huge penalties for mismanaging/dumping/abandoning the fishing nets) also the elephant in the room is that an individual in the US has little to no control over huge sources of pollution apart from feel good activism (look at this! i'm using a paper straw! I saved 2 turtles t…

Plastic straws are such a red herring for climate change. If you want to make an impact on your individual contribution, then you can get an EV (at very least a plug-in hybrid) and (if you own a home) get a solar roof or a heat pump instead of gas (everyone has pretty much replaced their incandescents, which is the cheapest thing to do). The marginal costs of these things are relatively low to neutral (and sometimes can save you money), and all of them have several orders of magnitude bigger impact on climate change than straws.

And it's contagious. Several of my peers (who aren't ultra-green types) bought electric cars or installed solar roofs after I talked about my EVs, and even some of their peers bought electric cars after talking to them. Individual action builds consensus on the importance of political action, too, as it is tangible proof that a transition to a low-carbon economy isn't just possible but attractive.

As far as plastic waste:

We can just replace drink straws with biodegradable plastic of the same performance. Techno solutions work. It's how we fixed ozone depletion.