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Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

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Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#151

Post by jillesvangurp »

The attitude to recycling needs to change. Right now it is something you have to do or something that makes you feel good about yourself. But it is fundamentally still an optional thing and an afterthought. It's nice that that iphone is packaged nicely but that wasn't the reason you bought it.

It needs to stop being optional and it needs to be something that is part of the product design process. Companies are not currently doing more than the bare minimum here because it is not their problem and mostly they do it to look good and there are a lot of companies for whom looking good is not much of a priority or for whom it is more about the looks than the reality. That needs to change. It needs to be their problem.

Sustainable production processes are not sustainable unless they consider the whole product cycle from production to discarding. And the simple truth is that everything gets discarded eventually. Forcing companies to think about the post sales life of their products changes how they build their products. Planned obsolescence is a lot less lucrative if you have to clean up the obsolete mess you helped create. If they are forced to think about efficiently recycling used products they produced, the economics change. Durability becomes a topic. Repairability as well and facilitating recycling by using materials that are easy to recover and products that are easy to disassemble.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#152

Post by dgarceran »

klyrs wrote: post #150
dgarceran wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then stop eating fish and meat, you can be healthy taking care of your environment and without killing any animal. Everything you are saying are still environmentally unfriendly options.

Industrial farming is not remotely environmentally friendly. Local food production has scaling issues. It's not just meat... we're simply overpopulated.

I really disagree with that simplification. Look at this: https://news.cornell.edu/stories/1997/08/us-could-feed-800-m...

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#153

Post by dgarceran »

isolli wrote: post #85
cageface wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.

I was vegetarian for 20 years, vegan for 7, yet I started eating meat and fish about a year ago. Here are my thoughts: - I started eating animal products again for health reason; I believe many people can thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but I couldn't. It makes me unhappy, but there I am. - Similarly vegetarian and vegan for a long time, my wife started craving animal products the minute she got pregnant. And a…

Your solutions sounds pretty good to me (I'm vegetarian), because you are already aware of all the bad things about that industry, but you probably also know that most of the people don't know that and aren't capable of eating meat or fish from sustainably and healthy sources. In my personal experience, there's a lack of culture that makes easier for everybody to become vegetarian or vegan rather than learning how to find that kind of products that you mentioned...

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#154

Post by cageface »

z3t4 wrote: post #107
cageface wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.

You also have to account the supplements needed for a pure vegan diet. The best option is probably to buy the fish fresh from your local fisherman.

The only supplement needed on a vegan diet is minimal amounts of b12, and that’s only necessary because sanitation kills the bacteria that produce it.

The environmental footprint of a vegan diet is way lower than even that of a pescavore.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#155

Post by astura »

Yajirobe wrote: post #109
cageface wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not. The American Dietetics Association states as its official position that a vegan diet is healthful and adequate for all stages of life: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19562864 There's currently quite a bit of debate over whether or not plant-based diets are better than other diets, but not over whether or not they are healthy.

> for all stages of life Even for babies?

The 2016 position says

>[Vegetarian and vegan] diets are appropriate for all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, adolescence, older adulthood, and for athletes.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#156

Post by xioxox »

isolli wrote: post #85
cageface wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.

I was vegetarian for 20 years, vegan for 7, yet I started eating meat and fish about a year ago. Here are my thoughts: - I started eating animal products again for health reason; I believe many people can thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but I couldn't. It makes me unhappy, but there I am. - Similarly vegetarian and vegan for a long time, my wife started craving animal products the minute she got pregnant. And a…

I think there's a role for consumption of meat and animal products. There's also a lot of land which cannot be used to directly generate human food in any sensible way, e.g. in the uplands. Furthermore, animals have an important role in maintaining soil quality, which is vital to ensure good crop yields.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#157

Post by belorn »

cageface wrote: post #35

These stories rarely mention this for some reason but the bulk of the plastic junk in the ocean is discarded fishing nets, not consumer waste. Reducing the plastic waste you personally generate is still a good idea, of course, but if you really want to have an impact then stop eating fish. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/ocean-plastic-made-disca... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-ga...

The survey linked is what they found in the great pacific garbage patch, but the numbers are a bit fishy if we use them generally. The yearly amount of fishing net sold world-wide is as far as I can see is significant less than the amount of plastic dumped into the ocean each year.

That said, there are two large areas that contribute to ghost fishing. The fishing industry is getting centralized into fewer entities, and those might find it cheaper to discard nets rather than use costly manual labor to repair them or pay the cost of proper disposal. The second area is theft. A fishing net is basically an unguarded month of wages marked out with a bright buoy. I know fishermen that once they have a net stolen they will start removing the buoy for a while and simply drag for the net, which naturally increase the risk of loosing the net. If they can't find the net they don't even know if it is because they can't locate it or if it is because of more theft.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#158

Post by scotty79 »

isolli wrote: post #85
cageface wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.

I was vegetarian for 20 years, vegan for 7, yet I started eating meat and fish about a year ago. Here are my thoughts: - I started eating animal products again for health reason; I believe many people can thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but I couldn't. It makes me unhappy, but there I am. - Similarly vegetarian and vegan for a long time, my wife started craving animal products the minute she got pregnant. And a…

I don't mind vegetarian. I rarely eat meat and never crave for it. However vegan just sounds horrible. Eggs and cheeses are incredible, milk, fish, prawns. Cutting them out feels like cutting half of the nutrients out of my diet. I wouldn't risk it unless I had very extensive knowledge and dedication to human dietary requirements and what which plants can provide, which I don't have and won't have.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#159

Post by notacoward »

toofy wrote: post #71
notacoward wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "random idiot" here meant another consumer. It meant an idiot at the recycling company, though it might not be idiocy. The stuff you put out on the curb doesn't just magically vanish the moment the big green truck pulls away. They have to put it somewhere. As one article I read recently put it, most of us (in the US) haven't really been recycling for years. We've just been shipping our carefully sorted…

Is this fake recycling happening on any kind of scale? This seems like something which could be pretty easily mitigated against by citizens following up with their local cities to verify that things are actually ending up at recycling plants. I'd be furious, considering what I pay for these services if I were to find out they aren't actually recycling. I guess I'll have to look into my local situation. This is a frus…

> Is this fake recycling happening on any kind of scale?

Unfortunately yes. Here's the article I was thinking about.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-worlds-recycling-is-in-chaos...

If you look for "recycling crisis" or similar on Google News you'll find many more. I kind of knew that recycling wasn't as eco-efficient as it should be, but I had no idea just how bad it has been and it's getting worse. :(

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#160

Post by notacoward »

belorn wrote: post #157
cageface wrote: post #35

These stories rarely mention this for some reason but the bulk of the plastic junk in the ocean is discarded fishing nets, not consumer waste. Reducing the plastic waste you personally generate is still a good idea, of course, but if you really want to have an impact then stop eating fish. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/ocean-plastic-made-disca... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-ga...

The survey linked is what they found in the great pacific garbage patch, but the numbers are a bit fishy if we use them generally. The yearly amount of fishing net sold world-wide is as far as I can see is significant less than the amount of plastic dumped into the ocean each year. That said, there are two large areas that contribute to ghost fishing. The fishing industry is getting centralized into fewer entities, a…

> the numbers are a bit fishy

Good one. :)

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