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Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

motherjones.com

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Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#141

Post by redisman »

sangnoir wrote: post #95

I believe plastic may be human civilizations "Great Filter" - I'm only half-joking. In less than a century, we managed to put plastic everywhere on the planet, and microplastics everywhere inside our food sources and our bodies, including in placenta(!). Our reach exceeds our grasp, we do not yet know what dangers microplastics pose, and we do not have the technology to remediate it. Our reach exceeds our grasp. I do…

It’s also possible once it saturates the ocean enough, it’ll get ingested by plankton which won’t survive much of it and then it’s game over for most life

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#143

Post by dehrmann »

mediaman wrote: post #91

There 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…

I'm not all that concerned with plastic recycling rates; I'm more worried about how much gets into the environment. Bringing recycling into the debate feels like misdirection, and I'm not sure why.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#144

Post by ornornor »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #131
motohagiography wrote: post #86

Even as someone who doesn't think highly of this admin or mo'jones, plastics are the crack cocaine of manufacturing, and of all the empty gestures this government has made, this is probably the most useful thing they could do. It's regressive in the sense that it will cause a hedonic hit to people who buy cheap things for comfort, but the majority of plastics begin and end their lives as disposable garbage. Let's jus…

The problem with these kinds of things from this particular gov't is that they are spoken about and press releases are issued.... but they never actually happen. Electoral reform, indigenous reconciliation (or even just clean water for reserves), CO2 reductions, you name it... Ok, we did get cannabis legalization.

> cannabis legalization.

Because there was so. much. money. in it. Both from tax revenue and from reduction in policing costs.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#145

Post by perl4ever »

redisman wrote: post #140
perl4ever wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if tiny bits of solidified glue (plus paper, wood fibers, etc) in the environment are much better than tiny bits of plastic?

Yes. Nature has evolved ways to dispose of those (unless it’s a synthetic glue that doesn’t decompose)

What characterizes a "synthetic" glue, chemically?

Don't glues generally involve polymers, like plastics?

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#146

Post by DoingIsLearning »

WalterBright wrote: post #101

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.

I would go beyond that.

On top of taxing plastic, we should also create a 'new' plastic quota.

Petro-chemical industry makes profit only on new plastic not recycled plastic. They will forever fight this transition away from plastic.

If you introduze a plastic 'from oil' quota, the Nestlé's and Unilever's of the world would have to bid for a share of new plastic in a "new plastic market", making plastic from oil more expensive.

This would incentivize manufacturers to either create plastic return deposit schemes, or to recycle more plastic, or just straight move to glass/aluminium/paper.

Edit: the point of this is that it would desincentivize manufacturers away from plastic while increasing the "per tonne" profit of petro-chemicals (who would be manufacturing a lot less).

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#147

Post by atom_arranger »

redisman wrote: post #133
kibwen wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Environmental action can be taken relatively quickly when nation-state-level corporate interests aren't funding campaigns to oppose it. The premier example is the banning of CFCs in the 1980s in defense of the ozone layer: "The discovery of the hole [over Antarctica] was evidence that the magnitude of the problem was far greater than scientists had originally predicted. International alarm at the ozone layer’s thinni…

Plastic is a magically useful and durable material with many orders of magnitude more uses than CFC. I hope you’re right but looking around the world, there are very few objects that aren’t at least partially made out of some polymer. Another question is what to do with all the existing plastic. From what I understand there’s not really anything other than high temperature burning that will safely get rid of it witho…

We could bury it in a giant pit somewhere without a lot of water running through it (prevent leeching).

The actual amount of waste there is isn’t actually that high if you were to store it in a giant cube somewhere, the problem is the logistics of that, and the fact that right now it’s everywhere.

I can’t find a source right now but I remember something like, if you were to take all the garbage produced by the world and put it in one place it would be a kilometer cubed, or something like that.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#148

Post by ricardobayes »

dataflow wrote: post #13

It's such a pleasant surprise to me how effectively and quickly people have become concerned about this issue. The recent WWF report came out less than 2 years ago [1]. Microplastics were obviously known for a long time, but that's when conversations about microplastics re-ignited. And now we can see an entire country declaring plastics toxic and restricting them. If you'd asked me an hour ago, I'd have predicted it'…

This is amazing, it literally made my day!

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#149

Post by ArkanExplorer »

bpodgursky wrote: post #21
karaterobot wrote: post #9

If there are restrictions, I hope they target major microplastic sources like tires and textiles, rather than easily scapegoated but very minor sources, like plastic bags and drinking straws. Based on precedent, I am not holding my breath, but I hope so.

I'm personally hoping they revisit all the endocrine-disrupting crap added to fire-retarding fabrics and food container lining.

The entire class of fluorine-based waterproofers should be banned, since they don't degrade.

Next ban polyester, since the fibers are a major source of microplastics, and since they are flammable (made of plastic after all) they are coated in toxic and endocrine-disrupting flame retardants.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#150

Post by ArkanExplorer »

hateful wrote: post #72
_qwfv wrote: post #6

Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue. There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient. It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.

The fact that there isn't a standard form factor for phones is a big part of the problem IMO.

Phones are re-sold and re-used. They would account for a minor fraction of plastic use. It would be completely unreasonable to set a standard form factor and disrupt the market for an evolving product category.

What could use a standard form factor would be packaging, especially for glass jars and bottles which could be endlessly re-cycled.

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