Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

sierraclub.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 148 posts

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#101

Post by actionfromafar »

mkl wrote: post #53

Good, but an unavoidably biased method. They could identify about half the waste plastic items, and 11% of those were identified as coming from Coca Cola, which has some of the most distinctive bottle shapes, so is probably more easily identified.

There's a marketing lesson in here somewhere...

that should put an ever so slight pressure on Coca Cola Company to clean up their act.

Maybe we could tax companies based on how much of their litter can be identified on randomly selected areas for sampling.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#102

Post by Ekaros »

throwaway03312 wrote: post #95
JoshTriplett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inconvenience is also very high, compared to "throw it in a recycling bin".

Several countries add a deposit to each bottle, so you would actually throw money away. It's not a big inconvenience to throw the bottles in a small bag and bring it with you to the machine at the grocery store, when you are going there anyway. 9 of 10 bottles are returned in Norway, so the system works.

Or huge sack and then use the newer models of machines that will automatically process whole sack of mixed pet and cans in a couple minutes.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#103

Post by esperent »

lupusreal wrote: post #86
esperent wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Surely the consumers fault. Finding fault is not the same thing as finding a solution. Does it get us in any way closer to a solution if we blame the company, the consumers, or both, or neither? I don't think so.

Littering is a solvable problem though; it's a cultural practice and can therefore be addressed. For instance, in Japan there are very few public trash cans (ever since a terrorist attack which used them) and yet almost nobody there litters. If Japanese people can hold onto their trash until they find a trash can, everybody else can to. We need to greenlight the kind of social pressures which create this sort of cons…

> If Japanese people can hold onto their trash until they find a trash can, everybody else can to.

Perhaps you're right, but, living in a south east Asian country where trash is a major problem that goes far beyond simple littering, I think that will take several decades to change and we should look for something quicker.

There was a storm here yesterday and literally several tons of trash washed up onto the beach, as it does most days during the stormy season. This can't be classed as littering, it's a problem far far bigger than asking people to put things into bins.

Much of the trash on the beach probably was thrown into a bin at some point. The problem is what happens after that. Western countries ship their "recycling" off to developing countries, and when it ends up in the sea they get to say it wasn't their fault, while developing countries just don't bother with the plausible deniability step.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#104

Post by actionfromafar »

Iulioh wrote: post #72
eek04_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day, my father worked as a researcher for a large, old dairy company. He was tasked with finding out what was environmentally friendly for packaging milk; whether they should start offering milk in washable glass bottles instead of their current cartons, for environmental reasons. He found that the environmental impact created by the washing of the glass bottles was worse than the impact of the entire pro…

The only problem with plastic is when it does end up in the environment. Burn it and the problem ia solved, at the end of the day it's still oil.

There's the problem of plastic being literally poison, too.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#105

Post by maeil »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #44
gadders wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Companies like plastic because it means thicker margins for them Consumers like plastic because it is better than the alternatives.

Nonsense. There are no alternatives consumers can buy. Try it and you'll find it's virtually impossible. A globalized economy has effectively destroyed the idea of voting with your wallet to reduce waste and production of trash.

For some products, sure. For many products, there's a brilliant alternative - buying second hand. Regardless of the material, this is by far the best way to reduce waste and production of waste, period.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#106

Post by CaptainFever »

strogonoff wrote: post #82
paganel wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the thing, plastic is not an "indulgence", is part of everyday life now, more than any other material.

I described the state of affairs that would follow a hypothetical taxation of plastic, not that plastic today is an indulgence. Today plastic is a necessity to buy a drink or even clean water in many places. That’s the problem.

Can't you buy canned drinks?

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#107

Post by throwaway03312 »

XorNot wrote: post #41

I don't actually care at all about plastic waste anymore. Landfill it and we're good: it started off as oil in the ground, it can end up as oil in the ground. Plastic not going into stable landfill is the real issue : so actually consumer plastic is kind of bad like that, whereas industrial plastic basically fine (i.e. infrastructure plastics like pipes).

I'm not an engineer, so I may be wrong, but is it actually possible to build a stable landfill?

Wouldn't the micro plastics risk leaking into the ground when it is broken down eventually? When it rains, the water has to go somewhere and unless you invest in expensive filtration systems, this does not seem economically viable. The micro plastics may even leak into the ground water and spread far beyond the land fill.

Even if we do find an economic way to build a stable landfill that lasts a few decades, it will probably just postpone the pollution to a later generation when it is no longer maintained.

But at least it is better than just dumping it in the nature as many do today.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#108

Post by Iulioh »

actionfromafar wrote: post #104
Iulioh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem with plastic is when it does end up in the environment. Burn it and the problem ia solved, at the end of the day it's still oil.

There's the problem of plastic being literally poison, too.

My counterpoint is: Everything is poison.

Maybe we should just eat gold

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#109

Post by strogonoff »

actionfromafar wrote: post #104
Iulioh wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only problem with plastic is when it does end up in the environment. Burn it and the problem ia solved, at the end of the day it's still oil.

There's the problem of plastic being literally poison, too.

I think that may be an exaggeration. Xenoestrogens like BPA are shown to be hormonal disruptors, there were some studies allegedly showing that people with IBD have more microplastic in their poop, etc., but it is difficult to exactly assess the impact from it accumulating in bodies.

Some plastics do meet the definition of literal poison, but those used in bottles do not seem to, and BPA is at worst supposedly to be classified as “substance of very high concern”. Can’t believe that I would write the above as good news, but there we go.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#110

Post by Gare »

strogonoff wrote: post #45
advael wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A major reason why petrochemicals are such an economical solution in so many places in the supply chain is that petrol companies are drastically subsidized by governments. Merely ceasing those subsidies might go a long way to help

It is easy to forget that plastic is made from oil. Most people just do not have that association in their mind. The oil industry may be looking down the barrel of renewables eating at a good chunk of their profit and subsidy money. I expect them to do all they can to keep plastic attractive in the eyes of the public.

On the other hand, plastic industry consumes only around 6% of oil and gas production globally. Not really something they can count on to continue business-as-usual.
Post reply on HN