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

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

#191

Post by jccooper » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

asdkhadsj wrote: post #156

jadell wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. They're made of corn starch, which is what puffy Cheetos are made of, and manufactured literally the same way, except without the cheese flavor powder mixed in. They taste like "nothing" (well, they probably taste like pure corn starch but I've never eaten that so I don't have a reference.) Source: a member of my immediate family worked at a company that manufactured them and brought home many samples. We'd fre…

Out of curiosity, do you risk rodent infestations using those? I would imagine rodents/bugs happily eat most human food, cheese puffs included, so if this is literally the same won't it suffer rodent risk?

I use these. While theoretically they can attract pests, I've never noticed any biological activity associated with them.

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

#192

Post by fredophile » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 5:24 PM UTC

black6 wrote: post #150

proaralyst wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are paper straws the wrong solution? Even if they take a little more energy to produce they at least don't leave long-term waste behind.

At least plastic straws are multi-use. It's rare that a paper straw makes it through a single drink.

When was the last time you saw someone re-use a plastic straw?

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

#193

Post by black6 » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

fredophile wrote: post #192

black6 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least plastic straws are multi-use. It's rare that a paper straw makes it through a single drink.

When was the last time you saw someone re-use a plastic straw?

Last night the waiter topped off my iced tea three times and I continued to use the same plastic straw, whereas a single paper straw would not have lasted. It's a wetted time and solubility problem. Paper is water soluble--plastic is not.

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

#194

Post by rabidrat » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

the_gastropod wrote: post #138

kgermino wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and straws are part of the debris I have to routinely clean up I assume this cleaning includes putting them in your trash and the city taking them to a landfill? It's obviously not the best path, but cities[0] (by necessity) generally do a good job cleaning up the trash that gets scattered around. Bigger issue is non-urbanized areas where there isn't the density/wealth to clean up litter. [0] The collection of peop…

Let's consider the biggest city in the U.S., NYC. Manhattan? An island of 1.8 million no more than 2 miles wide. Brooklyn and Queens are on a spit of land called "Long Island". Together they have 4.8 million residents. Staten Island is, you guessed it, an island. And the Bronx is necessarily very close to a lot of water. People litter. Cigarette butts, straws, plastic bottles, etc. all very regularly and easily wind…

I saw it in action firsthand in NYC. A garbage truck picked up an overflowing trash bin around midnight, and the dome of trash on top fell off and into the street, and the worker did not even break stride. Many well-meaning people took the time to carefully place their trash on the trash that was in a garbage bin, but they may as well have just dropped it on the street directly for all the good it did.

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

#195

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

kaibee wrote: post #64

MichaelApproved wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here you are creating a straw man argument. Reducing straws won’t “save the planet” on its own. We will improve the planet by doing multiple things. Reducing plastic use (less packaging, fewer straws, reusable shopping bags) all play a role in a much bigger effort.

The uncomfortable truth is that action costs political capital. Something highly public, like plastic straws, by its nature is far more expensive than the actual environmental benefit that is accrued.

[deleted]

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

#196

Post by excursionist » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

pureliquidhw wrote: post #189

soperj wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The warehouse I worked in had a rodent infestation, they didn't eat the edible packing peanuts as far as I could tell though. -- never saw any with bites out of them and they didn't noticeably disappear. As an aside, don't drink from beer/pop cans without washing the tops.

please elaborate on why not? I would think they'd have to be relatively sterile. Boxes are stacked flat, can tops must be in a pringles style stack until they're assembled into a can. Where are they contaminated?

I remember a story going around about people dying from rat urine on soda cans [1], but the veracity of the claim is questionable.

[1] https://www.hoax-slayer.net/leptospirosis-death-warning-rat-...

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

#197

Post by hombre_fatal » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

viscanti wrote: post #107

MichaelApproved wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And here you are creating a straw man argument. Reducing straws won’t “save the planet” on its own. We will improve the planet by doing multiple things. Reducing plastic use (less packaging, fewer straws, reusable shopping bags) all play a role in a much bigger effort.

> We will improve the planet by doing multiple things. The problem is that people don't have infinite time or attention. So if you raise awareness and guy buy-in for something like straws, you took away time and awareness from things that could have actually made a difference. To make things worse, people will eventually realize that getting rid of straws didn't have much impact and would be less likely to participat…

People supported the anti-straw movement because it has zero impact on their life. The only people who even ask for straws are some women wearing lipstick. It's an easy issue to support.

Now consider your ideas that would actually make a difference. I bet they actually change people's lifestyles which means those proposals are going to be political suicide unlike plastic straws/bags.

For example, look how angry and defensive people get when it comes to their meat consumption. People will openly brag about how little they care about the slaughter of factory-farmed animals because it tastes good, just in response to someone bringing up ethical concerns.

Though I do think plastic straw/bag movements are a gateway to larger ecological movements. You can't jump straight into massive changes unless society is advanced enough to not throw a shitfit if their drink doesn't come with a straw, something that we're still working on.

So, maybe it's plastic straws today, but tomorrow a politician will have a real shot with a platform against waste wrt TFA.

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

#198

Post by zamadatix » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #113

rantwasp wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pla…

Everyone everywhere could change thousands of things about their daily lives and things would be perfect. This has been true since the dawn of time. It's never happened and most don't think it's realistic for it to suddenly happen now. This is why people want to focus change on the things that matter the most first, they know not everything is going to change.

That being said if anyone is up for the challenge personally go for it! That's completely different than wondering why society as a whole focuses on impactful problems first.

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

#199

Post by therealdrag0 » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 6:02 PM UTC

vfc1 wrote: post #113

rantwasp wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pla…

Do you have the experience of triaging bugs/features at work? There's always more problems then we can solve at once. There is only so many man hours/money/attention available.

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

#200

Post by cwkoss » Wed, Oct 02, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

It is interesting that so much of the discussion of meat consumption and climate change has been centered around cows and other terrestrial animals. I'm curious if anyone knows of a good source that compares the greenhouse gas emissions from fishing vs land-based livestock.