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Just Bury Your Trash

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Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#111

Post by mschild »

Reubachi wrote: post #69
_aavaa_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That conveniently ignores the drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to make "polyethylene resin". It also ignores the energy requirements to grow the cotton. This isn't the gotcha you think it is.

The energy requirements for growing cotton being largely the sun, and a resource which makes up most of the universe (yes, I know water is several steps from hydrogen). ((And the tangentials like the fertilizers, dieslel etc.)) Compared to the energy requirements of petroleum based products: Incredible density and pressure acting on sufficient organic matter(thousands of times greater than growing cotton), on milleni…

I think the main point is that this post is not a good faith attempt to convince people otherwise. It's a shoddly researched opinion piece that has little to no merit as it ignores the complexities of producing either item.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#112

Post by rtkwe »

Symmetry wrote: post #43
vel0city wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But the pollution problem from plastic bags is solved equally well if we bury them or recycle them We can't even reliably trust people to put the plastic bags in a bin and have that bin be cleanly collected and yet you're expecting people to bury them?? No, the solution is to massively reduce how often we use single-use plastic bags. It seems like every time I buy anything from any store its just assumed I want it…

It's the town or city that does the disposal whether that's burying, recycling, dumping at sea, or whatever. Again, this article isn't about whether we should produce plastic but how we should dispose of it once its collected.

That's only true if everyone in the area is good about throwing away their trash in proper receptacles. That's the alternative stream that's difficult to control directly because it's at the individual level instead of the municipality and some people and areas don't give a damn about littering so the problem of plastic bags can be more pronounced depending on local culture about the environment.

The bag doesn't magically get from the store to the waste stream it has to be properly disposed of by the customer to make it there.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#113

Post by collabs »

> By contrast, there is no danger of running out of paper. We can always grow more trees, and that is in fact a decent way of removing carbon from the atmosphere. The silicon used to make glass is one of the most abundant elements on Earth.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, not all sand is created equal. Desert sand, like in the Sahara Desert, is eroded by wind. The smooth, round, and tiny grains are practically useless for both construction concrete and high-grade glassmaking. We want something called silica sand. Moreover, while industrial sand may be abundant worldwide, the same localized shortages that we face with petroleum or cobalt (from the article) also apply to sand.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#114

Post by 201984 »

general_reveal wrote: post #37

In an apartment, I’ve learned not to even have a garbage bin. If I have garbage I make a small bag and throw it out, or keep it in the freezer until I go out. Frozen trash doesn’t smell and doesn’t attract anything :) Of course, this requires you to have less trash , which is very easy if you simply take a few seconds to go outside and throw your food out after lunch/dinner. Everything else is just dry scraps usually…

>Oh, you can also just freaking flush small things down the toilet.

People with this attitude are why the drains in my apartment keep backing up and my landlord sends emails threatening to evict whoever's flushing things they shouldn't.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#115

Post by cogman10 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #54
cogman10 wrote: post #31

> A returnable milk bottle takes much more energy to produce and much more fuel to transport than a plastic carton, and has to make around ten or more trips to use less energy than a bottle made from polyethylene plastic. This seems like the weakest of presented arguments. Just 10 trips and it's more environmentally friendly? Yeah, seems like reusable milk bottles wins over plastic. That's what, ~10 weeks for payback…

Returned bottles have a finite lifetime after what they have to be trashed. Glass bottles tend to be reused some (small) tens of times, plastic bottles certainly last a lot less.

Google AI is saying 25->30 on average with a high of 50.

That still ends up being translated to 1/2 to 1/3 (up to 1/5th) the energy of plastic.

Glass is also one of the few good cases for recycling.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#116

Post by zejn »

scotty79 wrote: post #80
trencedamp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point, to counter the " plastic bags are cheap, cotton is expensive" argument, is that most of the reusable bags are plastic too. They are way cheaper to produce than cotton bags, and earn their keep within about 5 to 10 uses as opposed to 100 or whatever the crazy figure was for cotton bags.

You can use single use plastic bag 50 times or more before it deteriorates, not the thinnest kind, but the average one. They are incredibly strong. The dedicated mult-use ones are insanely strong, but also few times thicker and more unwieldy. Like with single use shaving razor. They don't need to be literally single use. It depends on the user. You can use it as long as it serves you. The best thing limiting access t…

Just a note: Razors are single use for health reasons - not reusing razor significantly reduces chances of inflammation.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#117

Post by mrob »

SamBorick wrote: post #103
SamBorick wrote: post #58

"Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture." Yeah, let's stop doing the fairly well established recycling programs that have knock on benefits like reducing pollution, and instead start scaling an entirely unproven and expensive mitigation program. These are some prominent Effect Altruism guys so I know "cause prior…

ALSO, what is the obsession with embodied energy? Like lets think about plastic bags from an object use standpoint. Given you have a collection of stuff to carry would you prefer: A) A reasonably sturdy bag that can be styled to your preference (like with art or whatever) that you have to remember to bring with you when you need. B) The literal minimum possible material to be considered a bag. Even money whatever you…

As somebody who cycles as a primary form of transport, I prefer plastic. It weighs less, it's more compact, and it's waterproof (important when it's raining). If I had to use cotton that would incentivize using a car instead. It's not a huge difference, but it doesn't take many marginal cyclists switching to cars to wipe out all the theoretical environmental benefits of cotton.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#118

Post by throwaway2037 »

I have a hot take that rarely gets mentioned when people talk about recycling: It creates jobs. For rich countries, I think we can do a fair trade of a bit less landfilling in favour of more recycling to create some long-term, reliable jobs. I'm not saying that recycling will be cheaper, rather it is an expense that we can afford.

For those unaware, amoung rich countries, the US has incredibly low rates of garbage incineration: ~12%. (Shockingly, Canada is even lower: ~5%!) When I was growing up in the US, we were always (incorrectly) taught that garbage incineration is terrible for the environment and creates a lot of air pollution. When I got older and was fortunate enough to visit other countries, I learned that many rich countries do with their garbage: (1) recycle what they can, (2) bury a tiny fraction that cannot be burned, and (3) burn the rest. Modern flue gas treatment techniques can remove the vast majority of air pollution (except CO2) from garbage incineraters exhaust stacks. Again: The tech isn't cheap, but it is necessary if you want to have clean air.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#119

Post by throwaway2037 »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #46
lolcatzlulz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember a debate in Texas politics a few years ago because livestock were dying from consumption of littered plastic bags. The state government response was to ban the ban of plastic bags.

CA did the wrong thing for like 12 years. We just finally went back to paper bags for everything. If it ends up on a road, it won't kill animals, it will eventually break apart and turn into particulates. It's what we did before plastic bags rained from the sky into all grocery stores. And the best part: if you have permanent bags you can still use them.

    > CA did the wrong thing for like 12 years.
This seems very specific. Can you explain more? I don't follow.

Re: Just Bury Your Trash

#120

Post by duggan »

broken-kebab wrote: post #91
duggan wrote: post #7

I don't remember energy use being the problem with plastic bags? It was plastic bags being absolutely everywhere in the environment. Streets, parks, trees. Wrapped around anything sticking out of the ground. On your face on a windy day. Pollution is the problem with plastic. Probably health, too, now that microplastics are being recognized as an issue.

It's a conspicuous part. But energy use is still a problem. Like, maybe high-kicking people throwing trash everywhere would be cheaper solution then letting them do it, but with paper instead of PET. If we won't calculate we can't be sure

Personally I think this problem is being solved the right way from a systems perspective.

Energy production is centralized, so the benefits of it becoming cleaner is spread as soon as it arrives, whereas single-use plastic pollution is diffuse, with compounding damage.

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