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What I learned about a plastic-free life

npr.org

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Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#51

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

constantcrying wrote: post #49
eesmith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are being obtuse. One of the arguments for slavery is the correct observation that even the abolitionists "probably owed their entire existence to slavery", and the correct observation that abolition would collapse society. As such, any argument along similar lines, like "you owe your existence to [single-use] plastics" and "society would collapse" should they disappear, is inherently incomplete and untrustwo…

The argument is incorrect for slavery and correct for plastic. That is what you don't get. Slavery is wrong whether or not it benefits people, because it is immoral as such. Plastic use is not immoral and therefore you need to weigh the benefits of plastics against the issues with it. The comparison is just idiotic. Also, plastics are far more widely used, far more useful and far more beneficial than slavery ever was…

>Plastic use is not immoral

Given that plastics manufactured today will exist for thousands of years and microplastics have found their way into everyone's blood, you could definitely make the argument that frivolous plastic use is absolutely immoral.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#52

Post by vidarh »

numpad0 wrote: post #48
vidarh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with deposit schemes for recycling of plastic as well , the industry prefers plastic as it's cheaper to recycle than reuse of glass bottles. So you still need to dictate or tax plastic use extra. There are also environmental tradeoffs until renewable use for transport and industrial use are at sufficient levels.

Glass bottles weigh as much as its content. Aluminums and plastics are more like few percent. Tripling energy expended for transport of liquids don't make sense. That's one of reasons why glass bottles are on a long phaseout.

It doesn't make sense when your energy is dirty enough. When your energy sources get clean enough you eventually reach an inflection point where glass bottles are less environmentally harmful.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#53

Post by vidarh »

strogonoff wrote: post #34
kvark wrote: post #4

It’s a bit ridiculous that we’ve built a system to motivate change by distributing money, and that system fails flat when it comes to plastic use. In a healthy society, avoiding plastic would be both cheaper and more convenient.

I have been wondering why do some governments ban single-use utensils, straws, shopping bags, but not plastic bottles. They are perfectly replaced by superior (fully recyclable, etc.) glass, and yet not only are they not banned but, in fact, water or drinks in glass are so difficult to find in supermarkets. There can be an argument that banning avoidable use of plastic would mean more expensive packaging, and unless…

Glass is inconvenient, and only becomes better once a sufficient proportion of your energy comes from clean sources.

It's a discussion worth having again as renewables rates increases, but it's not a straightforward tradeoff.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#54

Post by FredPret »

shiroiushi wrote: post #18
FredPret wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling is hard because different plastic molecules don’t always play nice together - and the same goes for metal. So you need to sort everything carefully. This is hard, slow, and way too imperfect. I wonder if a better approach could one day be to burn it and then use some future catalyst or reaction to convert the smoke into something useful, or to chop the raw plastic up and feed it to a vat ful of special bact…

Yeah, that's why I said we should develop better recycling technology, because what we have today isn't that good. The bacteria idea is a good one I think. We already have microorganisms that can eat plastic, so it seems like it should be possible to genetically-engineer better plastic-eating bacteria for this purpose.

Just don’t let them loose!

We have lots of buried plastic pipes and cables.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#55

Post by numpad0 »

vidarh wrote: post #52
numpad0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass bottles weigh as much as its content. Aluminums and plastics are more like few percent. Tripling energy expended for transport of liquids don't make sense. That's one of reasons why glass bottles are on a long phaseout.

It doesn't make sense when your energy is dirty enough. When your energy sources get clean enough you eventually reach an inflection point where glass bottles are less environmentally harmful.

Tire dusts are also a factor, for example. Plastics aren't always non-renewable either, some like PLA can be made from sugar cane wastes.

No way it's ever going to be environmentally good thing to source extra 2 gallon-water worth of energy per 1 gallons of water just to move the bottles around. Burning shredded corn meal bottles using some sort of smart home electric kiln is going to make a lot more sense.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#56

Post by eesmith »

constantcrying wrote: post #49
eesmith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are being obtuse. One of the arguments for slavery is the correct observation that even the abolitionists "probably owed their entire existence to slavery", and the correct observation that abolition would collapse society. As such, any argument along similar lines, like "you owe your existence to [single-use] plastics" and "society would collapse" should they disappear, is inherently incomplete and untrustwo…

The argument is incorrect for slavery and correct for plastic. That is what you don't get. Slavery is wrong whether or not it benefits people, because it is immoral as such. Plastic use is not immoral and therefore you need to weigh the benefits of plastics against the issues with it. The comparison is just idiotic. Also, plastics are far more widely used, far more useful and far more beneficial than slavery ever was…

This is not the argument you think it is.

I pointed out that userbinator's perplexity in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41135861 used a reasoning that is not trustworthy, given how slave-holders used similar arguments to express perplexity about abolitionists.

Yes, of course there's a cost-benefit analysis for plastic, which doesn't apply to slavery. But that's a different topic than perplexity.

userbinator then pointed out that there are reasons why single-use plastic was chosen over other methods, and optimism that the future would figure things out. I do not believe that is a valid cost-benefit analysis.

I replied that the historical switch to single-use plastics used a cost model which we now consider incorrect, similar to how most uses of Freon and leaded gas have been made illegal after we learned about their negatives. I also pointed out that long-term optimism should also be used to consider the cost to switching to alternatives.

The linked-to NPR piece specifically deals with single-use plastics ("for seven days, I challenged myself to avoid buying any new single-use plastics") and my comments all included the qualifier "single-use".

That does not mean "abolishing plastics as a whole", as you seem to think my comments concern.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#57

Post by constantcrying »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #51
constantcrying wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is incorrect for slavery and correct for plastic. That is what you don't get. Slavery is wrong whether or not it benefits people, because it is immoral as such. Plastic use is not immoral and therefore you need to weigh the benefits of plastics against the issues with it. The comparison is just idiotic. Also, plastics are far more widely used, far more useful and far more beneficial than slavery ever was…

>Plastic use is not immoral Given that plastics manufactured today will exist for thousands of years and microplastics have found their way into everyone's blood, you could definitely make the argument that frivolous plastic use is absolutely immoral.

Are you stupid? This is a specific consequence of the overuse of plastics. Not inherent to plastic itself.

If you can not make that distinction please shit up.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#58

Post by constantcrying »

eesmith wrote: post #56
constantcrying wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument is incorrect for slavery and correct for plastic. That is what you don't get. Slavery is wrong whether or not it benefits people, because it is immoral as such. Plastic use is not immoral and therefore you need to weigh the benefits of plastics against the issues with it. The comparison is just idiotic. Also, plastics are far more widely used, far more useful and far more beneficial than slavery ever was…

This is not the argument you think it is. I pointed out that userbinator's perplexity in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41135861 used a reasoning that is not trustworthy, given how slave-holders used similar arguments to express perplexity about abolitionists. Yes, of course there's a cost-benefit analysis for plastic, which doesn't apply to slavery. But that's a different topic than perplexity. userbinator the…

>Yes, of course there's a cost-benefit analysis for plastic, which doesn't apply to slavery.

Which totally invalidates your analogy. Slavery wasn't wrong because the cost benefit analysis came out against it, even if the cost benefit analysis was positive it would have still been wrong.

That is why the argument that you need a cost benefit analysis is valid for plastic, but not for slavery. The analogy totally falls apart at that point.

>That does not mean "abolishing plastics as a whole", as you seem to think my comments concern.

If your analogy had gelt any water it would have. If plastic use was inherently immoral global plastic abolition would be the only moral choice, as has happened with slavery, which is now near universally condemned and outright ceased to exist on much of the globe.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#59

Post by throaway728 »

constantcrying wrote: post #57
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Plastic use is not immoral Given that plastics manufactured today will exist for thousands of years and microplastics have found their way into everyone's blood, you could definitely make the argument that frivolous plastic use is absolutely immoral.

Are you stupid? This is a specific consequence of the overuse of plastics. Not inherent to plastic itself. If you can not make that distinction please shit up.

We have a moral need to stop using plastic the way we do. Plus, you are very rude.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#60

Post by BadHumans »

userbinator wrote: post #26
BadHumans wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all speculative. You hope everything will get recycled and you hope that people in the future will find a way to use what's in landfills. I hold the opposing view. Most of what is produced today is not recyclable and I have no faith in people to find ways to empty landfills.

As long as society doesn't regress and collapse due to this radical environmentalism, we will find a way. Several hundred years ago, we did not know what to do with the dark oily substance oozing out of the ground. ;-)

We didn't invent oil and could've left it in the ground. This is a man made problem that is only going to get worse.
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