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U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#241

Post by mahogany »

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #76
ardit33 wrote: post #22

Pre pandemic, I'd go often to trader joe, and they would give samples. It was maybe a small bite of a food (ice cream, salat, or whatever else), and use a plastic fork for it. Just one bite, and you had to throw it out. It was more plastic than food. Whole Foods was the same. I think it is a crime against environment and I started feeling bad about it, and stopped taking samples when there were plastic utensils. It t…

Just have the sample. Your refusal to not consume it isn't going to change them buying the plastic, because given the choice, people aren't going to stop sampling in the aggregate. And at that point you're just signaling to other people in a really silly way. If you really care, talk to your local representatives or write to Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Anything else is posturing. Not taking a sample which costs them…

> If you really care, talk to your local representatives or write to Trader Joes and Whole Foods. Anything else is posturing.

Or you can do both.

> Your refusal to not consume it isn't going to change them buying the plastic, because given the choice, people aren't going to stop sampling in the aggregate. And at that point you're just signaling to other people in a really silly way.

This is a strange viewpoint to me. Acting based on your principles in your day-to-day life isn't just about signaling to others. It's about how you live your life, and acting "in tune" with your beliefs can lead you to profound happiness. If you decide that single-use plastics are bad for the environment, and you like the environment, then you try to avoid them. It's pretty simple.

But I don't even think that signaling is silly. Some people are convinced more by actions than words. I've reduced the amount of waste I produce by bringing containers to get stuff from bulk foods sections, literally because I saw someone doing it and realized it was possible. Before that, I would've thought "oh man it sucks that you have to get granola in single-use plastic, but oh well, that's life." As strange as it sounds, I had never even considered bulk food sections, even though I know the mantra "plastic bad".

If you extend your arguments, they imply that acting based on your principles in day-to-day life is pointless (or merely "posturing") because we are all small and insignificant, and the only thing that matters is trying to change laws. But I think you have it partially backward. People acting on their strong beliefs and spreading those ideas to others is what eventually invigorates political changes in the first place.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#242

Post by hereforphone »

rsynnott wrote: post #219
hereforphone wrote: post #37

This might be the case, I don't necessarily dispute it. But with this sort of thing always keep in mind that the US (and other Western countries) tend to be more compliant with reporting actual facts than say.... China (who somehow is ranked 107 in the world for covid-19 cases, despite their huge population).

> China (who somehow is ranked 107 in the world for covid-19 cases, despite their huge population). I’m always a little surprised that people are so quick to jump to conspiracy here. China is an authoritarian country with recent prior experience of dealing with epidemics, which took extremely aggressive measures against covid, some of which would not fly in a democratic country. You’d _expect_ it to have a low rate.…

You might be right, I don't argue against your theory. Do you believe China is motivated to accurately keep and report numbers on cases and deaths?

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#243

Post by mint2 »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #92
eastendguy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There's plenty of data. For example, producing single-use plastic grocery bags uses such a trivial amount of energy and resources that it almost doesn't matter—thousands and thousands of times less than an equivalent cotton bag. The bigger problem is disposal. If single-use plastics can be safely sequestered in landfills, that's a mostly solved problem, but that isn't always the case.

But isn’t the way the disposable plastic bags are so cheap actually one of the sneaky ways they are bad? It’s definitely not good for the environment but is a hard to break out or local minima.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#244

Post by rsynnott »

hereforphone wrote: post #242
rsynnott wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China (who somehow is ranked 107 in the world for covid-19 cases, despite their huge population). I’m always a little surprised that people are so quick to jump to conspiracy here. China is an authoritarian country with recent prior experience of dealing with epidemics, which took extremely aggressive measures against covid, some of which would not fly in a democratic country. You’d _expect_ it to have a low rate.…

You might be right, I don't argue against your theory. Do you believe China is motivated to accurately keep and report numbers on cases and deaths?

About as much as any other country; that is, quite a bit, because there’s little obvious gain from downplaying it, and if it came out that they were downplaying it that could cause internal anxiety and strife. Like, no-one is handing out large cash prizes for “least covid-y country”; there just aren’t great incentives to lie.

And again, China has taken extremely aggressive, and very disruptive and expensive, measures on covid where it has shown up, some of which people wouldn’t put up with in democratic countries. It also has a respectable though not world-beating vaccination rate (a little higher than the US and the EU average), and encountered Delta pretty late (in the last week or so). You’d expect good performance based on this.

That said, it may not last; it does look like the Delta cat is now out of the bag, and experience elsewhere has been that suppression measures that are good enough for Alpha aren’t good enough for Delta (see Australia).

I wouldn’t in general trust China’s government much, but the incentives to lie here just don’t seem like they’re there, and their approach to managing covid seems like it should work, on paper.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#245

Post by klyrs »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #236
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I disagree with both of those statements entirely. Do you have any sources? I do, but not googling at the moment. EDIT: quick Google search has many sources listing paper degrading in 2-6 weeks in landfills. Plastic in the ocean… I think you need to b by broaden your horizons if you think that doesn’t happen

You think plastics should end up in the ocean? Why? It definitely should not, and if waste is managed correctly, it doesn't. And I'm not saying decomposition doesn't happen at all in landfills; it very clearly does, but the sort of decomposition that takes place is incomplete and slow, because landfills aren't ideal places for decomposition to occur. But that doesn't matter. Once it's buried, who cares if it takes 30…

> You think plastics should end up in the ocean? Why? It definitely should not, and if waste is managed correctly, it doesn't.

I think that enough people don't give a shit about where their waste goes, that any coastal community will lose a fraction of its waste to the drink. That isn't where most of the plastic in the ocean comes from, but the difference between "should" and "inevitably won't" is vast.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#246

Post by mint2 »

mike_d wrote: post #119
eastendguy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

But there’s basically no reasonable way to say that single use plastic is good for the environment. They are clearly a local minima that has seemed tricky for the market to break out of. Unless they make a case that that single use bags are actually the global minima or the global minima is just not worth it, the reason foundation is being rather myoptic when presenting why people attempts to get out of the local minima are bad.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#247

Post by jhgb »

scrollaway wrote: post #229
jhgb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With plastic there is trash to deal with, but glass is heavier thus will take more energy to deal with logistically. My family has been using the same set of glasses for canning for decades.

Right but is your family an outlier or an average? Anecdotes are not evidence, and what matters is how everything would pan out in the real world. When we were using glass jars for everything, it's not like glass jars were not actively being produced. I don't think these are unanswerable questions but i highly doubt it's as simple as "replace plastic with glass". Aluminum may be a better solution, one that doesn't us…

> is your family an outlier or an average?

Well, I lived in a socialist country; as a consequence, DIY was the default for obtaining stuff. So quite average I guess.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#248

Post by im_down_w_otp »

kortilla wrote: post #113
im_down_w_otp wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single use stuff seems easy enough to fix. What seems less obvious to me is what I experienced when shopping for a potty chair for our youngest there were dozens of options at just a single store for a big hunk of plastic that's only useful for a period of months. We ended up not buying one at all. I had a similar experience the last time I was at CES and was deep into the "South Hall" where there's kiosk after displ…

> it's also completely existentially debasing to the people involved. Wow, the privilege wrapped up in that statement. Do you think it’s existentially fulfilling to clean public toilets? To drive a bus? To bottle alcohol?

I absolutely do not. But unlike driving a bus or cleaning a public toilet are at least socially useful, and those people should be cherished in society for the work they do and the service they provide. Being a "rep" for a pile of completely forgettable plastic pre-garbage is both debasing and utterly pointless.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#249

Post by sokoloff »

ashtonkem wrote: post #222
TeMPOraL wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> need to wash food containers out before recycling (...) used greasy pizza boxes with cheese stuck to the bottom are not recyclable yet a heck of a lot of people toss them in the cardboard recycle bin. People are not being informed about it clearly enough. Not that it would change much, except discouraging most people from sorting trash. Beyond being a significant burden, having individuals washing their trash is ju…

I’m less in the “people need to be informed” camp and more in the “products need to be designed for easy recycling” camp. If we want to recycle pizza boxes as a society, there needs to be a grease absorbing layer that’s clearly marked for the trash, and a recyclable layer with clear instructions. A great example of this is Siggi’s single serving yogurt cups. The paper label is easily separated from the plastic body,…

Exactly. I’m not likely to see spending hot water, soap, and time cleaning my trash as a sensible use of resources. If plastics need to be clean for recycling, they’re not realistically recycled.

Re: U.S. generates more plastic trash than any other nation, report finds (2020)

#250

Post by cwkoss »

Are all plastics equal harm?

I wonder if we just legislated taxes on plastics that local recycling centers can't utilize, if we could get the majority of the benefit of banning plastics with few of the downsides?

To what extent would greater standardization of plastics mitigate this issue (and make recycling more profitable)?

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