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Plastics are poisoning us

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Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#101

Post by tfourb »

mrob wrote: post #71
midoridensha wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Even just finding a realistic replacement for plastic in shoes is not being productized seriously. We can just go back to the material we used to use for shoes: leather. If there isn't enough cow skin for shoes for 8 billion people, we can just vastly increase the amount of cow farming we do. Oh wait...

Leather shoe soles have worse grip than plastic ones. Switching will increase the number of deaths and serious injuries from people slipping and falling on hard surfaces. Leather soles also wear out much faster.

Are you kidding me? Even if that were true there are probably 500 ways of making leather soles equally grippy to plastic soles that would either eliminate or drastically reduce the use of these materials. There are also other biodegradable alternatives to plastic that could be used. Most plastic-based shoes are worn out much quicker than quality leather shoes would be. These are cheap excuses that are quite transparent in the attempt to justify simply changing nothing.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#102

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

yetihehe wrote: post #95
NovaDudely wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my two pieces of luxury technology I use are my laptop and by Fridge. Being able to preserve food without 'preservation techniques' is just so dang handy!

Some of those preservation techniques are also considered unhealthy.

Including refrigeration?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#103

Post by stef25 »

rkagerer wrote: post #37

The study found that, to have a lower environmental impact than a plastic bag, a paper bag would have to be used forty-three times and a cotton tote would have to be used an astonishing seventy-one hundred times. “How many of those bags will last that long?” Franklin-Wallis asks. Walker-Franklin and Jambeck also note that exchanging plastic for other materials may involve “tradeoffs,” including “energy and water use…

The best solution is then probably re-using your plastic bag. Where I am you don't give free plastic bags anymore. Instead they'll sell heavy duty ones that can carry something like 20lbs and I've never seen break. And of course they have the shop's logo all over it.

Most people here now use these all the time.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#104

Post by tfourb »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #7
tfourb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how the "it's to late to do anything about it" is supposed to contribute to this debate. It's also factually wrong. The production of new plastics could be drastically reduced through regulation of both the production itself and its use cases. Most food and drink containers could be made from non-plastic materials. I've built a house that uses maybe 5% of the plastic that is common in construction where I li…

> The government could mandate that producers of plastics must offer a convenient and financially attractive way to hand in old plastics. We already have this. It's called trash can. How would letting the producers handle this instead would change anything? The plastic was still produced and will end up in a landfill or the ocean.

Why not pay people per kg to return plastics. We have a scheme in Germany where you get something like 30 cents per glass bottle that you return. Even people who don't care about this small sum leave their beer bottles in a convenient place for others to pick up as a result. Mandating a non-trivial payment per kg of plastics would create the incentives for people to not only throw stuff in the bin if they find it convenient, but also for others to collect plastic trash that nobody else feels responsible for.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#105

Post by pvaldes »

smellyshaft1 wrote: post #87
pvaldes wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 -> copper is toxic. People with some genetic traits will suffer cirrhosis and shouldn't use it for water storage. Cooking on copper pots specially should be avoided. Iron and Aluminum are safer.

Aluminum is not safer than copper

I assume that the list from less toxic to more toxic is:

silica -> iron -> aluminum -> copper

With a logarithmic scale unit between each step or so. We ingest and tolerate much more aluminum than copper in our daily journey and we could drink water with much more iron oxide dissolved on it than aluminum oxide without suffering permanent problems

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#106

Post by c00lio »

myshpa wrote: post #96
realshadow wrote: post #11

I became a minimist to save the planet as much as i could. Its easier than any one could think you know. Here is what i have been doing for a decade and would receommend 1. Reusing plastic bags (i love cotton bags but not ideal). Fold and keep one or two in your pocket before you leave home 2. Support and use light software so you dont need to upgrade your gadgets (12y laptop i use) 3. Prepare and eat home cooked mea…

Good points. Minimalists saving the planet should add one more: 10. Eat plants. Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding... If the world adopted a plant-based diet we would reduce global agricultural land use from 4 to 1 billion hectares (and free an area as big as Africa for wildlife/reforesting) https://ourworldindata…

11. No pets.

Your pet is more harmful to the environment than your car.

12. Less or no children.

All of the above, combined.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#107

Post by tfourb »

swalling wrote: post #9
tfourb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how the "it's to late to do anything about it" is supposed to contribute to this debate. It's also factually wrong. The production of new plastics could be drastically reduced through regulation of both the production itself and its use cases. Most food and drink containers could be made from non-plastic materials. I've built a house that uses maybe 5% of the plastic that is common in construction where I li…

Most people have microplastics in their body, and even babies in the womb are being exposed ( https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... ). The most remote, otherwise pristine environments have microplastics due to atmospheric transport ( https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/ ). It is too late.

Even if it is "too late" for this generation or the next generation or the next 5 generations that is not a reason to simply don't care and continue to make the problem worse. That is the kind of attitude that kept us from doing anything against climate change when it still was cheap to do so (just 15 years ago). I really wish people would start seeing these problems as a positive challenge that can help transform society for the better instead of just another opportunity to spread fatalism.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#108

Post by c00lio »

voxelghost wrote: post #67
morsch wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't it also kill you if you put something acidic in the bottle? Like water with a spritz of lemon? That's why copper pots have a lining, anyway. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verdigris

Yup, and although correct about coppers antimicrobial effect it only kills bacteria on contact. So I suspect a majority of any bacterial contamination in the water, will never come in close enough contact with the copper walls for it to have any real effect.

Water bottles, if not cleaned properly with a soap and brush on the inside, will be coated with a bacterial "lawn". Copper prevents that. Lots of bacteria need such a lawn to propagate, only some can multiply without a substrate. So even if the "free" water part won't be desinfected, copper has an overall positive effect on the bacterial content of your drinking water.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#109

Post by abwizz »

Brotkrumen wrote: post #38
abwizz wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i like to walk barefeet, so i worry about glass pollution all the time

"we can't require eco-friendly alternatives to plastics because people litter" was not on my bingo sheet for today...

thoughts and prayers for your bingo, but i consider myself part of the environment and thus object to suffering from more externalities of a technology that i consider partyly inferior (glass bottles are a lot heavier).

the argument that glass is better in terms of decomposition when littered stands, but does not tell the whole story. (not unlike guns are good for self defense but the externalities paint a totally different picture)

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#110

Post by whyoh »

GuB-42 wrote: post #89

Considering how ubiquitous plastics are, they look rather harmless to me. We are wasting hundreds of millions of tons per year, we eat it, drink it, we have been doing that for decades and we are still discussing statistical signifiance. Sure, not completely harmless, but few things are. And considering the tremendous value plastics have brought to society, I'd say the downsides are comparatively small. What worries…

>we eat it, drink it, we have been doing that for decades ...

Not at this rate. And we're probably still many years away from peak microplastics in our food and water.

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