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Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

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

#271

Post by 8bitsrule »

specialist wrote: post #190
paulgerhardt wrote: post #121

I spend a day or two every year cleaning up a beach on a island off the coast of China. Its location relative to local sea currents makes it a natural garbage trap. It has been a radicalizing experience but maybe not in the way you would think. Anecdotally about a third of the trash I pick up is fishing related - some nets, some buoys, but mostly thousands of small plastic sardine sized fishing net floats. About a th…

Paper is an amazing technology. Were I king, I'd massively fund R&D to bring new sources of fiber to market. Make them competitive with wood pulp. Hemp, bamboo, sugar cane, feed corn. Maybe even invasive (noxious) weeds like kudzu. Two birds, one stone. Extra credit for non till harvesting techniques. Just mow those hemp fields. Then do it all again in three months.

Wood-pulping can also be a filthy technology. Growing up in a paper-mill town meant smelling and breathing the particulate and gaseous effluents of the cooking process. In the spring, the remnants of this deluge covered all the melting snow-piles in a black sheet. (And lungs?) Much of what didn't come out of the stacks flowed out under the river's surface through a secret pipe. Downstream, the shores were matted and bubbling with discarded wastes.

As for the hundreds of men who 'harvested' the trees ... laboring in the gulag wilderness, far from the cities where the paper for fiduciary reports, magazines, academic wisdom and signage is consumed ... most lived marginalized lives of quiet desperation. Even if they managed to make it to retirement with whole bodies.

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

#272

Post by brok3nmachine »

cpeterso wrote: post #253
paulgerhardt wrote: post #121

I spend a day or two every year cleaning up a beach on a island off the coast of China. Its location relative to local sea currents makes it a natural garbage trap. It has been a radicalizing experience but maybe not in the way you would think. Anecdotally about a third of the trash I pick up is fishing related - some nets, some buoys, but mostly thousands of small plastic sardine sized fishing net floats. About a th…

My local recycling center (in the SF Bay Area) accepts styrofoam blocks (though the machine is down right now). Unfortunately, storing and transporting bulky styrofoam is cumbersome for individuals, so it's not very scalable. https://www.el-cerrito.org/952/Drop-Off-Materials-Accepted

"Fees apply for customers from outside El Cerrito"

I wonder why? Sounds like it's impractical to recycle.

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

#273

Post by rsj_hn »

undersuit wrote: post #268
afiori wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, with enough dedication we can remove our reliance on anything. Coffee, tv, internet, phones, straws, bananas... Still doesn't mean it is a good idea or that it will solve anything. More in specific, we can remove straws from our life (you can also claim that all the noise about it raised public awareness), but when Starbucks solution is to use even more plastic in their lids, McDonald's solution are paper stra…

Single use lids are next. We're destroying the environment because we can't be assed to take a break to have a drink.

We are not "destroying the environment" and you are not going to "save the environment".

This is childish. Nations which don't have good sanitation systems are dumping garbage into the oceans, as are ships. Your attempt to self-flagellate, or more accurately flagellate others by abstaining from straws does not help or hurt the environment. It does annoy people and cause resentment and blowback that might stop useful engineering solutions, though. It's a type of modern religious ritual meant to absolve yourself of invented sins because you think you have something to do with plastic in the oceans when the real culprits are thousands of miles away.

If you want to clean up the oceans, try to find a way to provide asian and african nations with secure sanitation systems, and to improve the sanitation handling on ships. Container ships are quite dirty also because of the sulfur being burned. Lots of potential solutions that don't have anything to do with personal abnegation -- it may not feel as good, but for that you should go to church or synagogue rather than trying to invent your own eco-shamanism. The environment is improved by engineering solutions and development in the third world, not by acts of personal purity in the wealthy west.

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

#274

Post by foobarian »

undersuit wrote: post #230
barbs wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seem to remember working for a pharmacy years ago and disposing of packing peanuts by putting them in the sink and dissolving them with hot water. Is that not a thing anymore?

Starch-based packing peanuts are will break down in water, unlike their polystyrene equivalents.

Some packing peanuts are apparently made of puffed up rice. It's a fun trick to pull on coworkers who don't know this and eat a bunch when you get a package.

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

#275

Post by jxramos »

Are there actual photos of the great pacific garbage patch? I've heard about it for sometime now but it seems a lot of the photos on image search depict small scale stuff, garbage visibly close to shore, or illustrations.

I was disappointed to find Wikipedia didn't have any direct birds eye view of the patch in any photos. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

I see a lot of illustrations depicting the scale of the patch but is the reason there are no actual photos because the flotsam density is too low to be picked up by a camera at the necessary height to capture a large area of it? What's the deal?

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

#276

Post by zamfi »

chillwaves wrote: post #270
zamfi wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? It’s the right in almost every country that has promoted globalization. Labor parties around the world, and the democrats in the US up until Bill Clinton, were staunchly opposed.

> democrats in the US up until Bill Clinton, were staunchly opposed. That's a hell of a caveat.

Shrug, parties change. The democrats ceased to be a party of the left by any measure from 1992-2016. That’s just about a quarter century. Clinton took the party hard right.

The “right” in the US is now staunchly in favor of trade wars instead of free trade. Not what you’d expect given their history.

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

#277

Post by rantwasp »

MisterTea wrote: post #175
rantwasp wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kee…

I did not advocate paper straws. I would much rather a change in the way we consume things. Do we need straws at all? Do we need or want a life that moves so fast that you can't stop and remove the lid to your beverage to consume it? Plastic waste reduction needs to think bigger. This isn't about straws. It's about a wasteful throw away culture that has to adapt to a less wasteful way of life. And that will involve m…

i understand that you were not advocating for paper straws. that was just an example

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

#278

Post by pembrook »

chillwaves wrote: post #266
pembrook wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe reduction would certainly solve the problem. I just don't think it's possible to make happen (I elaborated on this further in the comment below). Is it possible the reason humans in the past didn't consume as much, was simply because they lacked the technology to allow them to? If you gave a human from 10,000 B.C. a private jet, while also telling him that jet is bad for the environment, that human would st…

How would reducing consumption affect infant mortality rates?

It wouldn't. I didn't say that.

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

#279

Post by Cogito »

benj111 wrote: post #147
rantwasp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's anecdotal evidence. how may of the straws used in your city end up in a front yard?

On the other hand all the straws have to go somewhere. If you're picking up one straw a day from your garden, you'd expect each household in the city to generate at least one improperly disposed of straw per day. How do you think they generate statistics for this kind of thing? They don't count everything, they take samples and infer from that.

If I'm picking up one straw a day from my garden, and assume everyone in my city has a straw in their garden every day, I would be making a Hasty Generalisation [0]

It's far more likely that I live in a stray straw accumulation zone than straws are uniformly distributed over the entire city's gardens by some method.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_ge...

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

#280

Post by krrrh »

rsj_hn wrote: post #233
undersuit wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Straws are a very small part of that and a weird thing to fixate on relative to all the other one time use food waste we generate. Straws are completely superfluous. If you take away my straw I can continue drinking the beverage. Chips need a container, sure I'd prefer more bulk bins and recycled containers, but if we banned plastic containers for chips you interfere mightily in someone enjoying their product. ANYWA…

Most people's teeth are sensitive to cold. They like to use straws to be able skip the teeth while ingesting a cold beverage. This is why the straw was invented -- to make it easy to consume icy cold drinks. Very strange that this must be explained to people who think straws are completely superfluous. If they were superfluous, people wouldn't be using them. This is a great example of Chesterton's Fence. https://en.w…

> L.A. will prohibit all restaurants and vendors from handing out plastic straws unless requested effective Oct. 1. Councilman Mitch O’Farrell says people don’t even need a straw to drink a smoothie. “Just have them blend it a little thinner.”

https://twitter.com/webdevMason/status/1178911679846871045?s...

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