231–240 of 294 posts
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Sperm counts have been dropping for a long time (50%-60% over the past 50 years) without stopping, and plasticizers are the suspected culprit. It's incredible how many people need to do IVF now. I would argue that might be the most imminent threat but nobody seems to care.
People should have fewer kids anyway, I see this as an absolute win.
Been hearing these news for some years now, what's still blocking it from going mainstream?
We're also still waiting for graphene to solve all of our problems. Oh, and why are we still waiting on this: https://phys.org/news/2010-02-spray-on-liquid-glass-revoluti...
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My understanding is that incinerators don't just release the output. The exhaust is pumped back into the system and dealt with somehow. The extent to which the release is "dealt with" is the tricky part.
I'm going to guess that large amounts of CO2 is a byproduct and is vented.
The US sends millions of tons of trash to China, India, and other places. Perhaps it would be better for places to implement local sorting (glass, plastic, paper, etc.) and composting- as many other nations do as opposed to disposing of all trash in the same containers and shipping the problem off for someone else to deal with. But even better would be to generate less trash in the first place or at least have an att…
Of course we should be reducing plastic waste, and at least where I live, I've seen a big push for the reduction of of single use plastics, both through legislation, savvy consumers and responsible supermarkets.
While the biologists work on plastic-eating enzymes, product engineers can work on sustainable packaging, logistics specialists can work on low carbon distribution and politicians can work on ensuring economic motives align with a positive future for our planet.
There is hope.
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yeah this seems like something on a scale that's worth regulating, if we stopped now we'd probably still be mitigating the effects 50 years from now
Make a disposable plastic container cost an extra dollar paid at time of manufacture. Double the cost every year. We will be 100% migrated by the end of 2023.
Similar to banning plastic bags, we could replace all our disposable water bottles with higher quality *non* disposable plastic bottles. It would be slightly more expensive for companies to produce, but drastically cheaper than paying the proposed tax. Consumers may or may not treat them as disposable anyway, and there's huge health concerns over reusing plastic bottles, especially after exposure to heat.
A simple manufacturing tax wouldn't work though since we'd just start importing bottles from neighboring countries instead
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yeah this seems like something on a scale that's worth regulating, if we stopped now we'd probably still be mitigating the effects 50 years from now
Make a disposable plastic container cost an extra dollar paid at time of manufacture. Double the cost every year. We will be 100% migrated by the end of 2023.
After it kills plastic, how do we kill it
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Is there a way to mitigate this, or make use of the waste gasses?
Mitigated in Japan. After dioxin gate, any incinerator must be run at high temperature. https://www.japan.go.jp/tomodachi/2015/winter2015/advanced_w...
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See also: Sweden also incinerates waste for heat and electricity, and a few years ago there was a story about how they ran out of trash and had to buy more trash from their neighbors.