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The Pasig River in Manila doesn't seem to look nearly as bad as the author claims: https://www.google.com/maps/@14.5674227,121.0375559,3a,90y,7...
[1]: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-5806619/Manila...
The Pasig River in Manila doesn't seem to look nearly as bad as the author claims: https://www.google.com/maps/@14.5674227,121.0375559,3a,90y,7...
That particular river was cleaned up in 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_the_Pasig_Ri... There are plenty of (older?) pictures of it covered in plastic online. I don't think there's any reason to doubt the author's picture.
I agree with the message, but some states, the type that ban plastic straws, have made recycling a requirement. A message not touched on is reducing the amount of plastic that we produce and consume should be a goal, but with attention paid to the secondary effects. For example, if you don’t wrap those peppers in plastic they’ll spoil and that may be worse for the planet than shrink wrap. But what if you cover them i…
> But what if you cover them in edible wax instead? Whats the footprint of each decision? "states that ban plastic straws" generally use something biodegradable instead. The policy, IMO, is pretty simple to figure out. The reason plastic is used everywhere is because plastic is uber cheap. Those peppers are wrapped in plastic because it adds less than a penny per unit and gives them a much better shelf life. So, the…
No, please don't go that fundamentalist route. The "all or nothing" approach won't lead us anywhere. Steady meaningful steps is the key. Build awareness, tackle one problem at a time, improve one aspect at a time, and you'll be able to bring people with you, allow them to adjust, business to be created, etc.
You can't be perfect over night. If you try, it won't happen, not today, not tomorrow, and not 10 or 30 years from now. If you do it steadily step-by-step, you'll at least have a chance.
That's just not true. All plastic eventually ends up in the ocean. The "it's all decomposed in 50 years" is a myth.
There was a pretty convincing article about all of that here on HN a while back.
If you want to save the oceans, ban plastic fishing equipment, as nets and other gear is the biggest plastic polluter in the oceans: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
If you want to save the oceans, ban plastic fishing equipment, as nets and other gear is the biggest plastic polluter in the oceans: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
> Lost and abandoned fishing gear which is deadly to marine life makes up the majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans
This is one of those statistics that shouldn't even pass the sniff test. Think about all of the millions of ways that humans use plastic across every single industry, job, and area of life. And yet somehow ghost gear is supposed to be greater than all of that put together?! Are fisheries just dumping a hundred nets in the ocean for every one they use or something? The number makes no sense.
And, indeed, the report in question says no such thing. What it does say is:
"12 million tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean every year" and "640,000 tonnes of ghost gear enters the ocean every year". So that means ghost gear is only around 5% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean per year. In fact the report itself states that "Ghost gear is estimated to make up 10% of the plastic waste in our oceans".
Of course, that's not alarming enough, so it also goes on to state that "[ghost gear] represents a much higher proportion of large plastics found floating at the surface" and "over 85% of the rubbish on the seafloor on seamounts and ocean ridges, and in the Great Pacific Gyre."
That sounds bad but... it should come as no surprise. Most plastic that ends up in the ocean is trash. Land-based trash plastic that is large or heavy enough to sink is less likely to flow down rivers and end up in the middle of the ocean. It will get broken up by trash processing, sink to the bottom of rivers, or otherwise not make it all the way to the ocean intact. So of course you'll see a disproportionate amount of ghost gear when you look on the seafloor or at large items—ghost gear is large plastic that is deliberately designed to sink in seawater and then is deliberately dragged out into the middle of the ocean and thrown overboard.
If your primary goal is to save animals, then Greenpeace's focus on ghost gear makes sense. But if your goal is to reduce the overall amount of plastic ending up in the ocean (which also saves animals), then ghost gear is only a relatively small fraction of the problem.
If you want to save the oceans, ban plastic fishing equipment, as nets and other gear is the biggest plastic polluter in the oceans: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-f...
What material would you recommend instead?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But what if you cover them in edible wax instead? Whats the footprint of each decision? "states that ban plastic straws" generally use something biodegradable instead. The policy, IMO, is pretty simple to figure out. The reason plastic is used everywhere is because plastic is uber cheap. Those peppers are wrapped in plastic because it adds less than a penny per unit and gives them a much better shelf life. So, the…
> Unfortunately, I think anything else is just posturing that will fall short. No, please don't go that fundamentalist route. The "all or nothing" approach won't lead us anywhere. Steady meaningful steps is the key. Build awareness, tackle one problem at a time, improve one aspect at a time, and you'll be able to bring people with you, allow them to adjust, business to be created, etc. You can't be perfect over night…
Meaningless things are things like banning plastic straws, awareness things, or even to a large extent funding day long excursions to the beach to pick up trash. Those are things more similar to urinating into a hurricane.
It's not a fundamentalist thing. Rather, it's an Amdahl's law thing. The politically and socially popular actions have almost no real effect on climate change or waste production. The problem is we are mad at the wrong people. We blame individuals for waste when the amount of waste an individual produces is a TINY fraction of the waste generated by corporations. Further, a lot of that waste for a citizen is unavoidable. I can't help the fact that every item of food I eat has been wrapped in plastic, bundled in plastic, and then is shipped from halfway across the global only for the grocery store or restaurant to unceremoniously throw away that plastic garbage.
Frankly, we won't reduce our climate impact through good feeling programs and broken corporate promises. We NEED laws that impose monetary losses on businesses for waste production to change anything.
What would this look like? I'm guessing it's more than just giving them a fleet of trucks and landfill equipment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That particular river was cleaned up in 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rehabilitation_of_the_Pasig_Ri... There are plenty of (older?) pictures of it covered in plastic online. I don't think there's any reason to doubt the author's picture.
You can also see it on Google Street view as it has some imagery from 2014.