171–180 of 291 posts
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Yes, the US still has landfills as does Europe. “In 2018, 24% of all municipal waste generated in the EU was landfilled.” That said, incineration is a similar option that drastically lowers volume of waste, but still produced ash that ends up buried and vast amounts of CO2.
Yeah, the news I remembered were about Germany, specifically. it, and a few others, are at https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/society/201...
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> a single use plastic object that has 1/1000 the carbon emissions of the reusable alternative may be the best environmental choice. Is there any data that single use stuff (of any kind) creates less carbon emissions? I would expect it to be the other way around, except for some edge cases.
The Reason Foundation (which is slightly right leaning of center, but makes its case using actual studies and facts) has a great explainer on how plastic bag bans for example hurt the environment more than help and cost consumers (including low income individuals) an extra $1b/yr: https://reason.org/wp-content/uploads/files/california_plast...
What's next breaking news? That China, the 2nd economy of the world, is 2nd place in plastic generating as well? Color me shocked. /s
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Where is the "junk land"? Almost everywhere has animals that likely don't enjoy plastic.
You could restrict yourself to dry lake beds that don't flood in winter, which are nearly as lifeless as Mars, and still have enough landfill area for centuries of waste. The average American produces 3.5 pounds of trash per day at an average one third of a gram per cubic centimeter. Assuming that holds steady, and we use a normal landfill depth of 400 feet, and the US population doubles over the next century, we nee…
- 1589g of trash per day!
- 4767 cm3 to store it (3cm3/gram)
- 130 m3 per lifetime (75yr)
- 300,000,000 lifetimes.
- 78 km3 storage allocated
- 39 km3 required
~~We're gonna need a bigger boat.~~
Neat!
This problem won't get fixed without legislation. Single use plastic is cheaper, so of course companies will use that if they can. Most people don't have the income to support "voting with their wallet", and even those who do don't always have the option. IF the best solution out there happens to use single use plastic, you're not going to opt for a worse solution just because it doesn't. And even if one company care…
I am old enough to remember when there was practically no plastic in food packaging. Twinkies and its ilk were more or less the exception (and fine examples they were of that exception!).
No doubt many remember glass ketchup bottles, glass mustard jars, glass peanut butter jars, glass mayonnaise jars... I swore to continue to buy only glass condiment jars but they no longer exist. I think the exception now is jams and jellies still come in glass jars. Honey too if you look for it.
Cereal? No plastic bag liner, it was wax paper or that weird paper foil stuff that Super Sugar Crisp came in.
I'd love to go back to glass, wax paper, but there just isn't any options any longer.
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Yes, mostly because of the energy used in their creation. For example you have to reuse a cotton grocery bag 7100 times before you break even with plastic bags for carbon footprint. https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-... You're probably not going to do that.
Aren't the plastic bags mainly a problem because they tend to end up in places where they don't belong at all, like oceans etc.? They can't really decompose or anything like that, they just shred to tiny little pieces that mess with animals (and ultimately also our) digestion, no?
Just take a trip along any river or stream near a town and you’ll find them swimming by like lifeless jellyfish
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Yes, mostly because of the energy used in their creation. For example you have to reuse a cotton grocery bag 7100 times before you break even with plastic bags for carbon footprint. https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-... You're probably not going to do that.
Aren't the plastic bags mainly a problem because they tend to end up in places where they don't belong at all, like oceans etc.? They can't really decompose or anything like that, they just shred to tiny little pieces that mess with animals (and ultimately also our) digestion, no?
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Idk, I don’t think it matters who we blame. The problem isn’t the multinational corporations that do this, it’s the system that lets them. We need a better system.
Which is the system at fault here? Capitalism?
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Where is the "junk land"? Almost everywhere has animals that likely don't enjoy plastic.
Much of Nevada is a lifeless desert. There is a reason it was chosen for nuclear bomb testing.
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What about paper bags?
I seem to remember that paper bags are close to single-use plastic bags, but still use more energy to produce and also require wood pulp. Paper bags can easily be recycled, but "single-use" plastic bags can easily be re-used as household trash bags, or otherwise. So it's a toss-up.