101–110 of 272 posts
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There are more species than humans who need to reproduce.
That is a good point, maybe something like one-child policy better serve this need. Or possibly we must consider which is worse for animals, damage from climate change or damage from endocrine disruptor.
Over my cold dead body [and I won't go without a fight.].
The real problem with plastics is that they are really cheap.
What price do you put in the extinction of a species? Millions of years of evolution flushed down the toilet so one person can have their disposable water bottle.
As always, scale matters. Plastic will be superior to all the alternatives as long as it's a cheap waste by-product of oil refinement. Make alternatives economically competitive to basically free oil refinement by-products, and we're talking. EVs might help here, it seems.
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The answer is neither. Human energy use that causes climate harms can be replaced with renewables. Fuel can be replaced with batteries. In the longer term, the sun is absolutely pouring out energy, which largely goes to waste, and a Dyson swarm capturing a small fraction of that would satisfy the energy needs of a much larger population.
These are not solving land impact of human. We must have fewer human or live in smal space like in Tokyo and others city like it. Most human no have desire to do this. Batery take resources like lithium more than we have. Maybe Dyson swarm eating star energy output cause climate change of its own, fewer energy reaching earth surface. There is always impacts that human create. We only can for truly mitigate climate ch…
Then you should welcome pandemic, genocide and war.
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A lot of that plastic is shipped in from USA/EU.
Why would they buy plastic and throw it in the river? The US has plenty of landfill space, we aren't paying to ship plastic to Asia.
Countries that recycle plastic have people pick out the good bits cheaply in hellish facilities, profit off selling the high grade recycling, the rest is "waste waste" to be gotten rid of somehow. Dumping it in the ocean is quite cheap.
The sorted plastic used to be a thing that you could mix with virgin plastic to get a cheaper product.
Since China's waste import bans, I believe it's actually more expensive than virgin plastic, partly because it costs more to produce now and partly because demand is driven by manufacturers who want to have a certain % recycled plastic in their product for marketing reasons.
The higher price incentivises other countries to import and process mixed plastic waste instead. They of course will also have to find a way to get rid of the not-useful portions of mixed plastic waste.
>plant-based What they're based from isn't the problem, it's chemicals added to the base, such as chlorine compounds, that is the problem.
Please say more. My efforts to buy least processed cotton and wood pulp products have been largely unsuccessful. I don't need my toilet paper or t-shirts to be white.
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Why would they buy plastic and throw it in the river? The US has plenty of landfill space, we aren't paying to ship plastic to Asia.
Bulk shipping to asia in particular is very cheap due to the volume of empty containers going in that direction. Not sure about other places. Countries that recycle plastic have people pick out the good bits cheaply in hellish facilities, profit off selling the high grade recycling, the rest is "waste waste" to be gotten rid of somehow. Dumping it in the ocean is quite cheap. The sorted plastic used to be a thing tha…
(This addresses your second paragraph; if they are selling the high grade and putting the rest in the landfill...)
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If by sent back you mean crushed then yeah sure bottles are reused. Oregon for example breaks the bottles when you return them to prevent fraud.
That's horrible, if true. Do you have a source for that? A quick Google search didn't get me anywhere. At least here in Austria the glass bottles are actually cleaned and re-used.
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I remember a time when everything was paper bags. Groceries and retailers went with plastic because it was cheaper. But with plastic there was a hidden cost. Now we're told we must pay a premium for recyclable plastic. Personally I'd rather pay a premium for paper because it's made from a renewable resource. Plus paper will decompose within two months in nature. The only drawback I can find is that paper bags take mo…
Also not everything can be paper. A coffee cup can never be fully paper, it needs a plastic lining and can thus never be recyclable. Not without it being extremely crappy. No food item can be enclosed in a fully paper enclosure and expected to have a shelf life. And for all the Portlanders saving a plastic bag there's a Texan buying all their drinking water as pallets of disposable single use plastic bottles. I think…
There are bioplatic liners for paper coffee cups that allow them to be fully compostable, though. I have sitting next to me one made from the World Centric brand that uses the "Ingeo PLA" for the liner, and I compost these cups in my backyard. I only use them when it's inconvenient to not use a regular mug.
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That is a good point, maybe something like one-child policy better serve this need. Or possibly we must consider which is worse for animals, damage from climate change or damage from endocrine disruptor.
> one-child policy better serve this need Over my cold dead body [and I won't go without a fight.].