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What I learned about a plastic-free life

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Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#61

Post by constantcrying »

throaway728 wrote: post #59
constantcrying wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I am rude. Because talking to a person who doesn't understand the difference between something being wrong as such and something which has negative consequences.

Eliminating plastic use is impossible 100% of industrial processes depend on it. In fact eliminating plastic use is immoral.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#62

Post by vidarh »

numpad0 wrote: post #55
vidarh wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The question will be what leaves more undestroyed plastic waste, not whether or not it is non-renewable, but if we can get to a point where using biodegradable plastics works for bottles, then that would change things significantly. Burning is insufficient, because people will keep dropping bottles outside the home; it needs to biodegrade fully without that kind of heat.

EDIT: There are potential hazards of bioplastics even when they are degradable. Not saying it might not become a solution, but it's not yet clear.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230601160216.h...

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#63

Post by ttyprintk »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #13
johnklos wrote: post #2

It's practically impossible to avoid plastic without great effort. I think even if we collectively don't do much towards that goal, each of us should think about it while we go about our daily lives. For instance, there are times where the choice is wholly ours. Eggs, for instance, often come in plastic or cardboard, so aside from taking a few extra seconds to consider the kind of eggs we want, that's easy. If we wan…

Cardboard and glass packaging used to be a lot more common. The key to reducing to use of plastic is fiddling with the economics. It's cheap for companies to use plastic as long as they don't have to worry about cleanup or recycling. As soon as you start charging them for the privilege of mass polluting our world with their cost savings, they can adapt pretty rapidly. In the Netherlands, there are some discussions ab…

In USA, I hope we can talk about:

The amount of plastic in junk mail. Maybe instead of stamps, we sell envelopes without a window.

The concentration of plastics in receipts. Maybe we replace those printers with photographable screens, and have a separate lane for people desiring print. Receipts expose you to far more plastic than more-emotionally-attentive items like shampoo.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#64

Post by eesmith »

constantcrying wrote: post #58
eesmith wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Why do you think userbinator was perplexed?

Instead of the slavery example, consider how a white man in the 1950s could be perplexed that another white man would want to share civil rights equally with women and blacks. After all, both white men were brought up in a system which benefited them over others - why change?

Or how a native born citizen could want to allow more immigration, when another native born citizen could be perplexed about how that can reduce the opportunities for native born citizens (eg, "they will take our jobs").

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#65

Post by eesmith »

constantcrying wrote: post #61
throaway728 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, I am rude. Because talking to a person who doesn't understand the difference between something being wrong as such and something which has negative consequences. Eliminating plastic use is impossible 100% of industrial processes depend on it. In fact eliminating plastic use is immoral.

Which is why no one here, not even me, is calling for eliminating plastic use.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#66

Post by TiredOfLife »

MVissers wrote: post #6
userbinator wrote: post #5

tl;dr: live like the (early) 19th century. It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article. Everything will get recycled eventually, and the majority of plastics are inert --- wh…

Thing is- We’re only now starting to realize how bad plastics really are, because we only recently acquired the tech to measure this. Unexplained fertility decline in the last 40 years? Probably plastic. They found that humans had 3x higher concentration of plastics in their testicles than their pet dogs, and that pet-dogs have a dose-dependent reduction in viable sperm count inversely correlated with the plastic con…

>Unexplained fertility decline in the last 40 years?

That's why human population has nearly doubled in last 40 years?

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#67

Post by _heimdall »

johnklos wrote: post #2

It's practically impossible to avoid plastic without great effort. I think even if we collectively don't do much towards that goal, each of us should think about it while we go about our daily lives. For instance, there are times where the choice is wholly ours. Eggs, for instance, often come in plastic or cardboard, so aside from taking a few extra seconds to consider the kind of eggs we want, that's easy. If we wan…

Eggs are such an interesting example to me. I'll speak mostly to the US here, but a good chunk of the population could absolutely raise their own chickens for eggs I'd they really were interested in an easy way to reduce impact. A flock of 6-8 hens don't require too much space, and ideally you can use them as bug control and fertilizer replacement in their lawn.

I live in an area with quite a few commercial chicken houses. Its an absolutely disgusting industry today, from how the animals are treated to the nasty conditions workers have to deal with. Getting rid of plastic and styrofoam packaging would be a nice win, getting rid of at least a portion of the market for industrial bird operations would be the real win in my book.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#68

Post by constantcrying »

eesmith wrote: post #64
constantcrying wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Why do you think userbinator was perplexed? Instead of the slavery example, consider how a white man in the 1950s could be perplexed that another white man would want to share civil rights equally with women and blacks. After all, both white men were brought up in a system which benefited them over others - why change? Or how a native born citizen could want to allow more immigration, when another native born citizen…

No idea. I am still perplexed why you don't seem to understand that your argument is totally invalid, since the comparison does not make sense.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#69

Post by NateEag »

userbinator wrote: post #5

tl;dr: live like the (early) 19th century. It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article. Everything will get recycled eventually, and the majority of plastics are inert --- wh…

> It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article.

That's quite a large straw man you have there.

I expect there are some people who want to eliminate all plastics. I think they're a small minority.

Speaking for myself, I understand that there are many important jobs that can't be done without plastic.

That doesn't stop me from trying to reduce my use of non-essential plastics.

I'll choose the cardboard egg carton over the plastic almost every time, and it has no negative impacts on me.

Ditto with making my own sandwich bread - I keep it in plastic containers so it stays fresh, but those containers last way longer than the single-use bags at the store.

The list goes on and on.

Yeah, we need plastics until materials science produces usable semi-stable alternatives, and maybe we'll never get rid of them entirely, but we can absolutely use fewer of them.

Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life

#70

Post by ProfessorLayton »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #50
strogonoff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 massively inferior. It is much heavier, broken glass is a mess to clean up and it does not just magically come into existence. Instead it is very energy intensive to produce and transport, much more so than plastic.

Glass can be reused. In various countries customers pay a deposit for the bottle, and only pay for the drink itself onwards. The bottles are washed and reused at the bottling plant. Much greener than plastic.

A few milk brands still reuse their bottles in the US. Here in SF high-end organic milk brands have a $4 deposit for the bottle, which is exchanged or returned at the grocery store.

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