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Plastics are poisoning us

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Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#461

Post by tfourb »

luxuryballs wrote: post #434
tfourb wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man made (hint hint) climate change was first described more than 50 years ago and while the window of cheap opportunity arguably has closed by now, it could easily have been addressed without too much cost up until about the year 2000 or so and somewhat cheaply until about 2010. Most countries are now making concerted efforts to address it but now it costs a huge amount of money and we will experience some severe co…

if there really was such a clear and obvious and dire threat that could have been mitigated it likely would have been, but this theory has been repeatedly debunked by climate scientists, it’s just that many of us only hear one side of the story because our media (hint hint) has been captured by political interests that want convenient black/white fear mongering they can use to manipulate the flow of money and regulat…

So you got climate science denial, a global media conspiracy, and shadowy political/business interests directing the fate of the world. Very original. I've worked in media. If there ever was a profession incapable of being part of a successful conspiracy with a world-wide coordinated agenda its journalists.

Also: on the one hand you believe in a worldwide conspiracy to suppress "the truth" but on the other hand you argue that climate change (the addressing of which is a threat to entrenched business interests) is not real because if it were, it would have been solved by now? I mean, do you realize how wacky you sound?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#462

Post by shortcake27 »

literalAardvark wrote: post #242
shortcake27 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve had a lot of water bottles over the years. This is quite an unpopular take, but I believe PET to be lesser of all evils. I’ve spent a lot of money on numerous steel and plastic water bottles. They all break and good luck recycling them. Most likely they end up in landfill. PET bottles use less raw resources, are cheap, lightweight, extremely durable, and when they reach end of life they’re easier to “recycle” (d…

Steel is mostly recycled. Pet is very much not. Pet does leach (as microplastic). No point in buying plastic bottles unless they're pla. Just reuse a water/soda bottle you bought on a whim.

Steel is not recycled by consumers. You cannot put steel in a recycling bin.

You _ may_ be able to take steel to a resource recovery centre. However if the travel uses oil or electricity that comes from coal, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up being worse for the environment than a PET bottle.

With regards to leaching, the FDA has declared PET bottles safe for repeated use.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#463

Post by BlueTemplar »

reaperman wrote: post #457
BlueTemplar wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of pizza, how bad cardboard can be though ?? It's not as light as styrofoam, but then also almost non-toxic, and almost entirely recyclable ?

Right now pretty much any paper product that comes in contact with food is also made of plastics / hydrocarbons. https://civileats.com/2014/11/06/meet-the-chemicals-lurking-...

That's a decade ago, "right now" things have changed, at least partially :

https://chemtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/PFAS-UK-food-packag...

A rule of thumb seems to be that oil drop test : PFAS make fibers grease-repelling.

Of course it could also just be from a very thin (and much less toxic I assume ?) layer of polyethylene that those non-recyclable "paper" cups seem to use ?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#464

Post by aziaziazi »

aio2 wrote: post #405
iso1631 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I drop my plastic water bottle I pick it up and carry on. If I drop my glass bottle...

... then it cracks and water spills everywhere.

If I'd have to choose between water or microplastics to spills everywhere, well...

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#465

Post by midoridensha »

tfourb wrote: post #292
midoridensha wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there some reasonable way to make leather soles grippy, it would have been done ages ago I think. Instead, back in the old days, leather shoes that needed grip were probably made with rubber soles. >Most plastic-based shoes are worn out much quicker than quality leather shoes would be. True, but there's tradeoffs here. For hiking boots, for instance, some people swear by "sturdy" hand-made leather boots, but the p…

The "good old way" of making leather soles grippy is nails, just to give one example. Even using synthetic materials instead of hobnails would reduce plastic consumption quite a bit for these use cases. I've hiked quite a bit in various types of boots and yes, It's nice to have lighter shoes, but for most people most of the time a kg more or less won't make the damndest bit of difference. Only a fraction of all hiker…

I guess you're a slow or easy hiker or something, because most people can immediately tell the difference between boots with a 1kg per-boot difference between them. I'm not even some kind of super-serious hiker, but I'm not going to choose boots that weigh double. Even walking around town that much weight would be annoying and tiring.

Anyway, I do agree about using synthetic material for the soles, and leather construction doesn't necessarily have to be super-heavy.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#466

Post by angelbar »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #454
abathur wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't cook enough (and never steak) for you to assign me much weight, but FWIW I've had a (lighter, spun) cast iron skillet for 8ish years. I followed a seasoning procedure available online that involves (IIRC) 3 rounds of applying thin coats of flaxseed oil and leaving it in an oven at a fairly high temp. This process went fine, but I always had to baby the pan (had to be very careful cleaning it with said chainma…

Yeah, when my cast iron skillet starts to act up I'll just lightly scrub it with dish soap and a brillo pad, dry it, then add a very light coating of oil and heat it up on the stove until it smokes. You want some ventilation of course. Then, it's restored to easy fried egg condition.

No oven needed... only some ventilation in kitchen if you cant take it...

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#468

Post by friend_and_foe »

mailund wrote: post #99
friend_and_foe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its all still greenwashing. "You can save the world without even getting up from your chouch!" is the sales pitch of the day. I'm far from what you'd consider an environmentalist in the sense of the current vernacular and I have a ridiculously low carbon footprint (my electric bill 9 months out of the year is $2 a month to give you an idea) and very low rate of disposal of plastics. All it takes is a handful of lifes…

I'd be super interested to hear what steps you are taking to have such an electricity bill!

In the winter, spring and fall I use no air conditioning and basically my electric bill is my laptop, phone charging, lighting and a little $200 fridge from home depot. In the summer for the hottest 3 months of the year I will use air conditioning, not central but a small low space unit and that runs me about 40 bucks a month. In the winter I run a couple of little space heaters and that usually runs me about 20 bucks. If I use gas instead of those it runs me about 40 bucks a month average in gas.

I use no solar or anything like that, but I do intend to, if I want to continue living light like this I would be able to do it all on modest solar.

It doesn't hurt that I live near the ocean, and in a pretty small space (albeit not well insulated at all; I prefer to spend my time outdoors so the space is for sleeping and showering and cooking and what not) so summers are not as extreme and winters too, but it does get hot/cold enough that I need something for the extreme parts of the year.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#469

Post by friend_and_foe »

bzzzt wrote: post #134
nnf wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have similarly low electric bills for much of the year by way of solar panels and Powerwalls. The solar power is enough to power the whole house (with all electric HVAC & appliances, and no natural gas), charge the batteries, charge the car, and export the excess to the grid. Most nights the batteries supply enough power to make it through the night, even with the A/C or heat running intermittently. Only when the b…

So your 'easy step' is to live in a place where this is possible? Is the entire world welcome to live next to you?

Not who youre responding to (but probably who you thought you were responding to) but where I live is not Hawaii or the pacific northwest, it's not all roses. It gets hot and it gets cold, not Montana cold and not Arizona hot but still a bit extreme. And very, very humid.

There's always a reason to say you can't do it, but I do what I can and if it's important to you you can too. It's a change in habit and lifestyle, that's all. Live lighter and don't rely on comfort like you'll die without it.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#470

Post by friend_and_foe »

mangodrunk wrote: post #269
friend_and_foe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its all still greenwashing. "You can save the world without even getting up from your chouch!" is the sales pitch of the day. I'm far from what you'd consider an environmentalist in the sense of the current vernacular and I have a ridiculously low carbon footprint (my electric bill 9 months out of the year is $2 a month to give you an idea) and very low rate of disposal of plastics. All it takes is a handful of lifes…

> All it takes is a handful of lifestyle changes. Please share these handful of lifestyle changes.

Don't buy bottled water, don't use disposable grocery bags, buy things in glass over plastic containers, and cook your own food. Those small changes alone will reduce your plastic disposal by like 90%.
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