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Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

nytimes.com

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Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#131

Post by DINKDINK »

lozenge wrote: post #126
DINKDINK wrote: post #112

Will the production of plastic waste reduce when the outlawing of thin plastics is replaced by thicker plastics? Your politician who benefits from passing feel-good legislation says yes. Reality might surprise you: "In particular, my results showed that bag bans caused sales of small (4 gallon), medium (8 gallon) and large (13 gallon) trash bags to increase by 120 percent, 64 percent and 6 percent respectively." http…

And the bottom line - "30 percent of the plastic eliminated by the ban was coming back in the form of trash bags". So, the policy was 70 percent successful. Why then all the hand-wringing?

30% by mass not by pollution. The speculative aim of the legislation is to decrease pollution. It's a bit like saying alcohol abuse will go down if we ban alcohol (when the opposite happened, hardcore liquor prevalence and potency increased which increased alcohol abuse).

Coase theorem shows that increasing transaction costs increases externality costs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coase_theorem

If you ban the giving out of thin-plastic bags because they feel bad, and then the market moves towards giving everyone a thick (more environmentally taxing and ecologically costly) 'reusable' bag, you've made the environment worse not better (despite it feeling better). Case in point: the number of times a bag needs to be reused before it was less ecologically costly far exceeds the life of the bag.

Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#132

Post by soperj »

zcid wrote: post #76
uhhhhhhh wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's true maybe when it comes to atmospheric pollution, but not with plastic waste in rivers and the ocean. A large amount of that is waste exported to those third world countries, especially plastics for recycling.

I've seen this tossed around a lot the last few months, but I've yet to see any evidence of its truth. Do you have a link to a study or some other source for this?

The US was a major destination for Toronto waste. Don't know where it ends up afterwards.

Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#133

Post by darkpuma »

amyjess wrote: post #81
ccozan wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IKEA sells in Germany straws from paper. Kids love them. Very light.

...and they'll also get soggy and dissolve in your drinks.

They just need more wax then. Cups made from paper work perfectly well; so should straws.

Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#134

Post by Gibbon1 »

O_H_E wrote: post #77
ridicter wrote: post #25

I see comments pointing out that the majority of plastic pollution in oceans come from Asia/Africa. This is true, but there are two points worth considering: 1) Whenever you pay cheaply for anything made in any third world country, you're externalizing the societal cost of pollution to that country (and if it gets into the oceans, to everyone). In other words, you're not paying the true cost of that item--economicall…

I would also like to assert that non-western countries are very influenced by trends in North America and Europe. (Source: I am from such country in Africa, and am living in another in Asia) Once the west establishes plastics as something for the uneducated and poor -- that they[the west] got away from, people will rush to use their fancy not-so-cheap bags. Same with fossil fuels, recycling, carbon-related policies,…

Opinion of mine is it takes a while for people to come to a consensus that something is bad and come up with rules to mitigate it.

Three things I think of.

One is a guy talking about visiting really poor part of South American. Used to be 'clean' because people were too desperately poor to throw away anything. And later as they became less poor there was garbage everywhere. And still later and better off, less garbage.

When I was kid in the 1960's in the US there was trash everywhere. People would throw trash out car windows, leave their trash behind at parks. Toss trash in the street and dump refuse in vacant lots. Now that is both illegal and considered boorish.

Another friend mentioned riding the bus in a country in South America. 40 years ago people just tossed trash out the window. 30 years ago they'd wait till the bus was a mile outside of town. 20 years ago the bus had a trash can and people would hold onto trash till the next stop.

I think societies are slow to come to grips with and deal with negative externalities that industrial culture makes possible. The whole thing is a process.

Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#135

Post by greglindahl »

jayess wrote: post #66
asark wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the landfill topic, I found this Slate Star Codex post very interesting: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e... I'd been idly wondering about the topic for years—specifically, WTF happened to all those environmental things schools & kids' nature magazines & cartoons had all the students worked up about back in the 90s? Are they fine now? Did it all go poorly so they gave up? You know, save…

In my school days the main scare problem was acid rain.

And now you celebrate it as a success story?

Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#136

Post by ghettoCoder »

mabbo wrote: post #3

It's an election year. Trudeau wants a second term. But he's turned off much of his traditional centrist base (corruption allegations, many of us realizing he's actually not very smart, etc). He's got new leaders on both the Conservative party (the right) and the NDP (the left) who are trying to squeeze the votes out of middle. He knows he's got little chance of winning back anyone right of center- the Conservatives…

How are they worse? If he's stuck in a cycle of corruption allegations, appearing unintelligent or poorly prepared like you claim, and is openly and blatantly buying votes I can only imagine the alternatives must be incredibly poor for you to consider voting for him again. Somehow I doubt the alternatives that bad or even that different from. It's like religion, the more two religions are the same the more they hate the other.

Or have you bought into the negativity that every party sows against their opponents in the hopes of securing peoples votes against their better judgement.

Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#138

Post by jkaplowitz »

refurb wrote: post #137

I’m assuming this is not ALL single use plastic? Replacing sterile plastic packages for medical devices (for example) would be incredibly challenging.

No, they're still investigating what the exceptions should be but they are aware that there should be some.

Re: Canada Plans to Ban Single-Use Plastics, Joining Growing Global Movement

#139

Post by [deleted] »

asark wrote: post #47
baron816 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My theory (no evidence) is that the whole recycling movement has been completely counter productive since most of that material has been shipping abroad to countries that are poorly regulated. Had we just stuffed it into landfill (we have no shortage of space to take care of it, despite what the media says), we would be fine.

On the landfill topic, I found this Slate Star Codex post very interesting: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e... I'd been idly wondering about the topic for years—specifically, WTF happened to all those environmental things schools & kids' nature magazines & cartoons had all the students worked up about back in the 90s? Are they fine now? Did it all go poorly so they gave up? You know, save…

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