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Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

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Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#191

Post by jmcgough »

kingkawn wrote: post #107

Personal anecdote; just got back from a trip to Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized and smaller visible plastic particles. Presumably there’s exponentially more smaller ones that I couldn’t as easily see. Some of the beaches had plastic floating in the water. Locals said it wasn’t island dumped garbage, it was brought in from currents from the ocean. Horrific to see.

Experienced something similar in Phi Phi last year. I was snorkeling in an emerald green lagoon, when a pile of plastic garbage floated into me :(

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#192

Post by schiffern »

nostromo wrote: post #109

A small number of countries are responsible for the majority of plastic in the ocean. China is far and away the worst offender: https://infographic.statista.com/normal/chartoftheday_12211_... https://www.iswa.org/fileadmin/user_upload/Calendar_2011_03_...

> China is far and away the worst offender

Those data are from 2011, and at the time China was importing huge quantities of plastic from the entire world. This was documented in Plastic China[1], a censored[2] short film which rumor has it was instrumental in getting China to cut down on their mixed plastic imports.[3] I'd be curious how the situation has changed since then.

It's an important distinction. The plastic is coming from Chinese rivers, but that doesn't mean it originated from Chinese consumers. It just means China wasn't rich enough to box it up and ship it across the border (like was done to them).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/28/world/asia/chinas-environ...

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1767769x8

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#193

Post by amanaplanacanal »

dcbadacd wrote: post #113
NotQuantum wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's this same argument with recycling, reuse, etc. I.E how many times do I have to use my cloth bag before the resources it took is less than that of a normal paper bag. Recycling is the same way, IIRC, aluminum is the only thing that's cheaper to recycle, energy wise. I really wish more studies would look into the Energy per Ton for creating our consumer products.

That's one thing to consider, but it's ignoring a major aspect - biodegradability. Yes, a plastic bag is in some ways more efficient per ton than a cloth bag but doesn't decompose safely and fast, cloth usually does.

On the bright side, because it doesn't easily biodegrade, it is a form of carbon capture. If you ignore all of its other bad effects.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#194

Post by amanaplanacanal »

allover wrote: post #159
subcosmos wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The treadmill is the endless debate over whether or not fats vs carbs are more obesogenic. This debate continues ad-nauseum and distracts from more nuanced explanations. High fat consumption raises inflammatory profiles through mechanisms that are poorly understood. Carbohydrates seem to cause similar inflammation, but this is largely do to advanced gylcation end-products created from fructose, specifically. Overeati…

> Overeating is not interesting. The reason people do overeat is very interesting What if it's not. What if people just overeat because life is boring, and food tastes good, and we all have differing levels of willpower & education on nutrition? > if you hit the literature you find that this is largely driven by damage to the hypothalamus by environmental exposure. Sounds like nonsense, can you elaborate?

> What if it's not. What if people just overeat because life is boring, and food tastes good, and we all have differing levels of willpower & education on nutrition?

Then we need to explain why this suddenly became a problem in the 1970s. Life is more boring now? We all lost our willpower? People understood nutrition better before that? Something has changed, either in humanity or the environment. My bet is the environment.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#195

Post by searealist »

kingkawn wrote: post #107

Personal anecdote; just got back from a trip to Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized and smaller visible plastic particles. Presumably there’s exponentially more smaller ones that I couldn’t as easily see. Some of the beaches had plastic floating in the water. Locals said it wasn’t island dumped garbage, it was brought in from currents from the ocean. Horrific to see.

How would locals know where the garbage came from?

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#196

Post by flattone »

kingkawn wrote: post #107

Personal anecdote; just got back from a trip to Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized and smaller visible plastic particles. Presumably there’s exponentially more smaller ones that I couldn’t as easily see. Some of the beaches had plastic floating in the water. Locals said it wasn’t island dumped garbage, it was brought in from currents from the ocean. Horrific to see.

4 months ago took a car to beaches up and down the west and east sides of a Oahu. No hotel / high traffic beaches considered here: bits of plastic across all beaches. A specific light blue tube plastic material never longer than a couple inches was spoted many times on both sides of the island, felt very like vacationing a sand trap for the world's trash.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#197

Post by bdamm »

searealist wrote: post #195
kingkawn wrote: post #107

Personal anecdote; just got back from a trip to Hawaii. Many of the beaches there had significant deposits of pebble sized and smaller visible plastic particles. Presumably there’s exponentially more smaller ones that I couldn’t as easily see. Some of the beaches had plastic floating in the water. Locals said it wasn’t island dumped garbage, it was brought in from currents from the ocean. Horrific to see.

How would locals know where the garbage came from?

Garbage can sometimes be identified. Think floating bottles with intact labels, yoghurt containers with a specific language, etc. anything so tiny that it can’t be identified is almost by definition part of the global flow because it takes time for plastic to break down.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#198

Post by rattray »

tylerhou wrote: post #146
kingkawn wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not adding eternally polluting particles to the environment seems like it must have smaller footprint

Organic != pollutes less. For example, some organic farms use more than an order of magnitude more (~20x) organic pesticides than regular farms use regular pesticides (by weight). Many of these organic pesticides have the potential for serious health risks. One organic pesticide, Rotenone, which was banned in the US in 2005 but reapproved in 2010, causes "Parkinson's Disease-like symptoms in rats, and has the potenti…

> I don't know anything about cotton specifically, though.

According to this article[0] which quotes a cotton industry group, organic cotton takes >2x more water to grow, which is in line with what I'd heard anecdotally.

[0] https://qz.com/990178/your-organic-cotton-t-shirt-might-be-w...

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#199

Post by bacon_waffle »

asteli wrote: post #79

Re: microfibers making it into water systems: This is a con to synthetic fibers that I hadn't been considering before. Recently I learned that cotton has a pretty high environmental footprint (land use, highest pesticide use of any crop, high water consumption) [1], and thus started moving some of my clothing purchases toward polyester-blends (trades the cons of cotton for petrochemical and energy use). Does anyone h…

Wool is a great material to consider as well.

Re: Tiny Plastic Is Everywhere

#200

Post by fouc »

It should be possible to design floating trash collecting buoys in swimming areas that would gather trash due to wave action, no power or active mechanisms needed.

Perhaps someone would go by and empty them every morning.

Hotels and resorts on beaches would love to have something like this.

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