241–250 of 294 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Landfills were demonized for a long time because they were easy targets.
It's usually just disguised NIMBY-ism :)
DeepMind's AlphaFold capabilities to model protein-folding is going to accelerate this kind of discovery at a quantum leap order of magnitude. The featured article notes a custom CNN was used here - but AlphaFold is a game changer in synthetic biology in general even though the first goals were human medical application focused. BBC Science in Action [1] interviewed Prof John McGeehan of the Centre for Enzyme Innovat…
What does that mean?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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I haven’t heard this before. What kinds of toxic waste are you talking about?
Radioactive, dangerous chemical, ... And the thing is that these are actually harming the people who are near the area where they are disposed, so the harm is more direct. CO2 is more like a global problem, so not as worrisome for the local population.
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It's usually just disguised NIMBY-ism :)
The thing about nimbyism in this case is that confortable commentators on hackernews are vanishingly unlikely ever to have to live near one. This is a poor people problem.
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/3/19/18273029/milpitas-odor-studi...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Someone will have to mandate the price of something. That sounds an awful lot like a "regulation", doesn't it ? Also, ironically, if you start regulating it (bannings plastics straws, disposable packaging, etc...) you'll get trashed on twitter _by_ the most ardent environmentalist, (and mocked by comedians) because it is "obviously not on the scale of the problem and just green washing that is not going to help anyth…
Is everyone making fun of us, or is it just the americans? The ban on free plastic bags in stores had widespread support and worked out quite well. The only not strictly positive thing I've heard about the proposed plastic tax is that we need to use that money to actually do something like fund cleaning of the environment or developing sustainable materials, which is a fair and obvious point and as far as I know, that is the plan.
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…
It's easy to reduce problems down to an exclusive-or choice, but in reality we need to use all our cards at the same time to look after our planet. 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…
Now the funny thing is that you get to see other families' trash bags once a week on their front door and there are big differences. My family has a tiny yellow bag every week and a blue one every other week whereas many others (with comparable family sizes) have 2 yellows at least and 1 blue every single week.
My guess is that they eat a lot of food coming from the supermarket: lots of wrapping, lots of cans, etc. It's an informed guess because the blue bags are transparent :-)
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…
Absolutely this.
Watching the video in the article above was a bit worrying when it gets to the end. It’s really not clear to me if the researchers have created a plastic removing enzyme or inadvertently created a tool to increase micro-plastic pollution a trillion fold.
Hoping someone can come along to tell me how stupid what I just said above is, because it’s really not my field and I’ve no idea.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Companies will just pass the cost to the consumer, blame regulation, and keep using plastic because it's easier and there's nothing we can do to stop them.
If your only competitive advantage is being cheaper than the rest and now everyone is raising prices, doing the same will not only hurt your appearance as the "reliable value brand", but you'll be wasting a huge opportunity to grab a big new chunk of the market (customers tend to looks for alternatives when prices increase). These are the companies that will use alternative materials, even if they are inferior (e.g. paper straws and cups), because it's the cheaper option.