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Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

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Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#41

Post by hannob »

myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

I'm all for reducing plastics, but some of your ideas are quite naive.

Like replacing plastics with glas - I mean, you can do that, but glas isn't exactly an environmentally friendly material. Glas making uses a lot of fossil gas, the technology to make glas with renewable electricity does not exist at scale (it's been tried more than a decade ago and was a big failure), and it has emissions that cannot be easily avoided due to the use of carbonates.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#42

Post by CWJeff »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #31
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

One use that comes to my mind are trash bags. I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but what did people use for trash bags before plastic was invented? I've tried Googling this a few times with unsatisfying results. Trash bags by definition need to be disposable.

My neighbor is in his 80s and we live in what used to be a rural area before urbanization caught up. He told me there wasn't any garbage collection, they put rubish in a small bin and just dumped everything in a hole in the garden when the bin was full. They didn't use any plastic so everything would just decompose. When the hole was full they'd dig another one and that was it.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#43

Post by tchock23 »

pfdietz wrote: post #37

"Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the U.S. Much of the rest — millions of tons of it — ends up in the oceans each year, [...]" Calling bullshit on that second sentence.

Have another source we can check out if this one is ‘bullshit’ in your opinion?

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#44

Post by dmitriid »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #31
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

One use that comes to my mind are trash bags. I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but what did people use for trash bags before plastic was invented? I've tried Googling this a few times with unsatisfying results. Trash bags by definition need to be disposable.

You had a trash can/bin/bucket at home and you'd empty it into a dumpster or garbage chute.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#45

Post by tokai »

sdenton4 wrote: post #34
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One use that comes to my mind are trash bags. I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but what did people use for trash bags before plastic was invented? I've tried Googling this a few times with unsatisfying results. Trash bags by definition need to be disposable.

Trash burning is still pretty common in some parts of the world. It's incredibly bad when plastics and disposable batteries start getting burnt, as is inevitable when burning is the primary trash disposal strategy.

Thank God it is. Burning trash is much better than landfills. Modern incineration plants are not very dirty and they don't poison ground water and wreck nearby ecosystems.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#46

Post by jnsaff2 »

hannob wrote: post #41
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

I'm all for reducing plastics, but some of your ideas are quite naive. Like replacing plastics with glas - I mean, you can do that, but glas isn't exactly an environmentally friendly material. Glas making uses a lot of fossil gas, the technology to make glas with renewable electricity does not exist at scale (it's been tried more than a decade ago and was a big failure), and it has emissions that cannot be easily avo…

Glass bottles and jars are pretty much infinitely reusable.

Recycled glass saves about 40% of the original energy.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#47

Post by hammock »

rockostrich wrote: post #39
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

Sorry for the very kitchen focused comment but the kitchen is where I used the most plastic. Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen. To a lesser extent the same argument could be made for po…

>Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros")

Heavily impregnated with BPA. I would avoid putting anything warmer than room temp in there (yes I know they're in widespread use in restaurants)

>I can't imagine plastic wrap being replaced without some special lid (proofing a bread loaf that you want to proof out of the top of the container).

Cheese cloth tied around the lid with plenty of slack in the cloth in the middle

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#48

Post by amluto »

rockostrich wrote: post #39
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

Sorry for the very kitchen focused comment but the kitchen is where I used the most plastic. Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen. To a lesser extent the same argument could be made for po…

> Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen.

Cambro will happily sell you polypropylene bins, too. They even stack with the polycarbonate ones.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#49

Post by marginalia_nu »

myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

> - what have i forgot?

Electrical insulation is a pretty big use case. Both rubber and paper breaks down in some really unfortunate ways, ceramics are great but aren't really viable if you want to make a cable or wire. Laquer isn't really up for the job either.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#50

Post by pfdietz »

tchock23 wrote: post #43
pfdietz wrote: post #37

"Less than 6% of plastic is recycled in the U.S. Much of the rest — millions of tons of it — ends up in the oceans each year, [...]" Calling bullshit on that second sentence.

Have another source we can check out if this one is ‘bullshit’ in your opinion?

Let's google quickly.

https://www.voanews.com/a/science-health_us-among-top-contri...

"The U.S. generated a staggering 42 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2016 — more than any other country in the world, according to the analysis.

Up to 2.2 million metric tons of this waste ended up in the ocean."

So, 5.2%. Is that "much" of the stated 94% that isn't recycled?

Plastic directly released to the ocean in the US (as opposed to US plastic shipped overseas, then released to the ocean) is estimated at https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

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