Tax the plastic, and let the market sort out the restrictions.
Not only does it result in the most efficient way to "regulate", it results in tax revenue for the government, so they don't need to tax things like jobs.
Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
101–110 of 167 posts
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
As one of that number I was glad to see this: a single shot of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine is 80% effective in preventing infection (vs the ~90% of two shots): https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/29/cdc-study-shows-single-dose-...
I'm extremely skeptical of these numbers. I've seen reports as low as 27% effective for first shot of Pfiser and as high as 95%. I'm still getting my first one this weekend but I'm not gonna assume I'm really much safer than I was before.
I'm skeptical too, and I wouldn't gamble on a strategy that wasn't tested during the clinical trials.
Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't. It's a pretty risky move to try it out.
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not an expert in the oil sands but personally I think there are benefits from getting oil from a virtually uninhabited area in northern canada vs relying on other suppliers. I completely agree on the vaccine issue, Canada had failed miserably vs. comparator nations in this regard.
What comparator nations? Do you mean the ones with their own vaccine manufacturing, and the ones that put in place protectionist measures to prevent their trading partners and allies from buying vaccines from them? Canada is just lucky the EU doesn't behave like the US, and we have been able to source vaccines from Pfizer's EU manufacturing. When the chips were down, we couldn't rely on our friends to the south. Now…
> and the ones that put in place protectionist measures to prevent their trading partners and allies from buying vaccines from them?
Citation needed? There are no, as far as I'm aware of, any trade restrictions on vaccines being shipped to Canada from the United States. The Trump administration simply invested earlier in promising vaccines, and therefore secured the first deliveries. Canada decided not to do so, and invested later so it wasn't able to secure earlier deliveries. It also wasted time and money backing the SinoVac which failed to deliver anything.
> Canada is just lucky the EU doesn't behave like the US, and we have been able to source vaccines from Pfizer's EU manufacturing. When the chips were down, we couldn't rely on our friends to the south.
All Canada had to do was invest earlier. I fail to understand how the US are "letting Canada down" by simply... getting deliveries they paid for!
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#104There is a lot of misleading and false statements in this article. They claim plastic recycling doesn't work. It's true that most plastic isn't recycled, but that's because of lackluster government involvement, not some technological barrier. British Columbia has the most sophisticated recycling equipment in North America. Two plants there first use lasers to identify different types of plastic (PP, HDPE, PET, etc) i…
74% is still a far cry from a solved problem - what do they do with the quarter that can't be recycled? Aluminium is actually 100% recyclable with some countries approaching 98%. Plastic has symbols that tell you what kind of plastic a given piece of packaging is made of, and the consumers need to figure out which kind are recyclable in their particular state or local area. Then some plastics are thermosetting and th…
We should absolutely push for even higher rates of recycling. High 90s would be fantastic.
But even 74% is already much higher than we get with aluminum cans. You say aluminum cans are "100% recyclable", as if they are 100% recycled, but that's a sleight of hand. PET, PP, PE is also "100% recyclable" but the issue here is what actually gets recycled. For aluminum, the actual recycle rates are less than 50% in the US.
Aluminum is an interesting example because it is intensely GHG emitting. Because of how energy intensive smelting is, an aluminum can produces five times the GHG of plastic, and more than double paper. If you wanted to choose the worst technology possible (with respect to the climate) to make containers from, aluminum is king.
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Canadian vaccination rate is not 4%. It's as of today in Ontario at 60% of adults single dosed (49% of the population, and 58% of those 12+). The Canadian strategy is to get herd immunity on single doses before moving onto second doses. And judging from what I've seen happen in other countries, and from the emerging data about single-dose effectiveness, it's turning out to be the best strategy.
If Canada (Ontario in particular) has such a clever strategy, why are we living under a stay at home order where police have been deployed to prevent us from doing anything but grocery shop? I dont see how anyone living in Ontario could have anything good to say about what I would argue is our governments complete failure to serve its citizens in any way, whether protecting vulnerable people form covid, or even affor…
> why are we living under a stay at home order where police have been deployed to prevent us from doing anything but grocery shop?
Wait, that's a joke right? We're talking western nation here, not Cuba or Venezuela...
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
What comparator nations? Do you mean the ones with their own vaccine manufacturing, and the ones that put in place protectionist measures to prevent their trading partners and allies from buying vaccines from them? Canada is just lucky the EU doesn't behave like the US, and we have been able to source vaccines from Pfizer's EU manufacturing. When the chips were down, we couldn't rely on our friends to the south. Now…
> and the ones that put in place protectionist measures to prevent their trading partners and allies from buying vaccines from them? Citation needed? There are no, as far as I'm aware of, any trade restrictions on vaccines being shipped to Canada from the United States. The Trump administration simply invested earlier in promising vaccines, and therefore secured the first deliveries. Canada decided not to do so, and…
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/biden-uses-trumps-ame...
Trump enacted controls (used the US Defense Production Act) which prevented manufacturers from exporting until all domestic orders were fulfilled. It was questionable whether it was enforceable, but manufacturers have followed it. Biden has continued this policy. Even to the point of hoarding vaccines not yet approved in the US (AstraZeneca) though they did eventually relent and give a smattering of expiring doses to Mexico and Canada.
In addition there's recent controversy about US export controls on medical supplies & materials which would be used for administration or production of vaccines as well:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/24/world/covid-vaccine-...
Canada did invest early. With Pfizer's Belgium plant. But so did everyone else.
"There are no, as far as I'm aware of, any trade restrictions on vaccines being shipped to Canada from the United States" -- You're just plain wrong.
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
If Canada (Ontario in particular) has such a clever strategy, why are we living under a stay at home order where police have been deployed to prevent us from doing anything but grocery shop? I dont see how anyone living in Ontario could have anything good to say about what I would argue is our governments complete failure to serve its citizens in any way, whether protecting vulnerable people form covid, or even affor…
> why are we living under a stay at home order where police have been deployed to prevent us from doing anything but grocery shop? Wait, that's a joke right? We're talking western nation here, not Cuba or Venezuela...
It's a ridiculous exageration. The police have not been deployed. The provincial gov't made noises, and the police basically told them to bugger off.
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#108There is a lot of misleading and false statements in this article. They claim plastic recycling doesn't work. It's true that most plastic isn't recycled, but that's because of lackluster government involvement, not some technological barrier. British Columbia has the most sophisticated recycling equipment in North America. Two plants there first use lasers to identify different types of plastic (PP, HDPE, PET, etc) i…
"There is a lot of misleading and false statements in this article"? > The result is that 74% of plastic beverage containers in Canada are recycled "Canadians dispose of about 3.3M tonnes of plastic each year [...] almost 50% of which is packaging. Well over 75% currently goes to landfills, a small proportion is incinerated and about 1% ends up directly in the environment. Only 9% — or 305,000 tonnes — is recycled, t…
The 74% recovery rate was in reference to BC only, not all of Canada - I updated my comment which mistakenly referred to all of CA for that recovery rate.
The reason to focus on BC is because they are the only province to have passed EPR that allowed these facilities to be built. The point is that EPR, taxing plastic packaging, and investing in recycling works, and BC versus the rest of Canada is the prime example of that.
Also, the study from the National Observer cited national data from 2016, which was only two years after BC passed the EPR bill. So it's old data and mostly covered provinces with no EPR policies.
As for BC, yes, beverage containers are the highest rate at 74%. But all rigid plastic still achieved a total recovery rate of over 55% in 2019, and the rates are increasing.
Should it be higher? Absolutely! And it's getting higher. But I'm mystified by so-called environmentalists who look at this success and cognitive-dissonance themselves into emitting more carbon and accelerating climate catastrophe because "plastic is bad", instead of asking how we can push for legislation to replicate BC's success everywhere.
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#109And on marches the steps of technology backwards. I guess the next thing is we'll be using tin cans again and diecast metal for most components?
Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions
#110I don't understand why a bunch of comments here are showing as downvoted. Is this a controversial topic by any means? Honest question.
HN can be a bit of a hive for libertarian-minded engineers. Regulation = bad, to hell with the nuance, etc.
There's not much nuance when a governmental agency puts "Plastic manufactured items" on the same list as "Asbestos", "Lead", and "Mercury".