3M to end 'forever chemicals' output • Hacker News Board

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#271

Post by Reason077 » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #216

Reason077 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it doesn’t just go into the ground. It ends up getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean where it pollutes beaches, and gets ground down into micro-plastic particles which poison sea life. Still more gets incinerated, creating local air pollution and contributing to carbon emissions.

If you're putting single use plastic in a non-recycling bin in the developed world its pretty much guaranteed to go to landfill, not the sea. More so than putting it in a recycling bin where they might transport it on a ship to China.

In many (most?) European cities the non-recycling bin will go to an incinerator, not landfill.

China banned the import of waste in 2018. But other countries do still import it.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#272

Post by dublin » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

guelo wrote: post #236

citrin_ru wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing wrong unless it is used to store food or water and contains some BPA-like compound (AFAIK it includes most plastic produces nowadays even so called BPA-free).

The BPA replacements are probably just as toxic as BPA but it will take 20 years of science to prove it conclusively enough to get them banned.

^^^^THIS!^^^^ There is early evidence that most BPA and pthlalate replacements may be considerably worse for you than the things they are replacing. (At least, worse in the sense that they are possibly more dangerous as endocrine disruptors and hormone mimics, and also possibly harder to remove from the body...)

Best choice is to insist on glass packaging wherever you can. It's inert and infinitely recyclable.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#273

Post by woodruffw » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

cj wrote: post #252

elevaet wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in the range of 10x the CO2 an average human will produce in their lifetime. If you could find a way to get 20 people to cut their emissions in half, or 200 people to reduce it by 5%, or 1000 people by 1%, you could balance out your CO2 ledger :) Or, if you still work in the industry and can find a way to make the shipping routes more efficient, or prevent future mistakes like that, you could make it into the…

(Controversial comment warning) one way to save more than your lifetime’s worth of CO2 is to not have children. By not having children, you’re not just saving the CO2 output of the child itself, but the entire lineage that could have resulted from that single child. Obviously this advice is not good advice for anyone who wants to have children :)

I don’t necessarily disagree with you per se, but I do think these “EV-lite” type analyses are too broad: environmentally conscious people may be more likely to have children who are environmentally conscious, work on climate engineering, &c.

That’s not to say that we should encourage them specifically to have children either; just that children represent potential in a way that the number of bunker-fuel cargo ships does not.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#274

Post by Reason077 » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:45 PM UTC

teaearlgraycold wrote: post #257

cj wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Controversial comment warning) one way to save more than your lifetime’s worth of CO2 is to not have children. By not having children, you’re not just saving the CO2 output of the child itself, but the entire lineage that could have resulted from that single child. Obviously this advice is not good advice for anyone who wants to have children :)

I’ve thought about this. I think it really depends on whether we need more climate-minded voters in the future. If we do then those susceptible to this message are exactly the wrong ones to hear it.

We need climate-minded voters now, not years in the future. In fact, even now is too late really: we needed them 40 or 50 years ago!

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#275

Post by dublin » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

Mistletoe wrote: post #211

jraby3 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc. This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some days but will wait till I get home or to work to drink filtered water out of the tap. I went to Las Vegas about a year ago on a work trip and realized that the hotel I stayed at uses more plastic bottles in an hour than I would use in my lifetime with no though…

You really shouldn’t do this. You are risking your health by becoming dehydrated. I’m not sure your avoidance of plastic at all costs even makes sense on any level.

Funny how Europeans and others aren't constantly "hydrating" (in fact, they tell me they think Americans are silly for carrying water bottles around), yet they never suffer any effects of dehydration. (Most European meals are served with only single-digit ounces of liquid.) You really don't need to drink very much, and in fact drinking large quantities can produce some bad effects by demineralizing the body (magnesium in particular, but many others too), especially over the long term...

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#276

Post by brohee » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #270

brohee wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can plant 8500 trees. Various entities do it for as little as $1 per tree (e.g. https://onetreeplanted.org/ ). If that stops you sleeping that's possibly affordable.

Which would be dead or a worthless monoculture that killed a healthy ecosystem in a few years, right?

Quite a few of them got at it intelligently, and actually restore healthy ecosystems destroyed by the burning and grazing that was once practiced.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#277

Post by amluto » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

atombender wrote: post #206

bushbaba wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of the metal water bottles come with a plastic liner to avoid the metallic taste

Some also come with a non-stick (Teflon-type) coating. Zojirushi makes incredibly nice vacuum-insulated bottle [1] that unfortunately has a non-stick liner. The inside of the bottle is super easy to clean, but the chemicals used in the manufacturing are awful. [1] https://www.zojirushi.com.hk/enproductsview.php?oid=6&tid=17...

Zojirushi also makes them without the liner. It’s a choose-your-poison situation: the lined ones seem to perform much better with green tea.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#278

Post by DocTomoe » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

concordDance wrote: post #216

Reason077 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of it doesn’t just go into the ground. It ends up getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean where it pollutes beaches, and gets ground down into micro-plastic particles which poison sea life. Still more gets incinerated, creating local air pollution and contributing to carbon emissions.

If you're putting single use plastic in a non-recycling bin in the developed world its pretty much guaranteed to go to landfill, not the sea. More so than putting it in a recycling bin where they might transport it on a ship to China.

Welcome to the developed world (in my case: Germany), where recycling is enforced by ordinances and/or contracts with your waste removal organisation, which will check if you did so properly, and refuse to take your refuse away if they think you have not recycled properly enough.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#279

Post by starkd » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #3

Ideally, before mass producing alternatives, they "close the loop" on replacements life cycles. Otherwise we'll just be reading a new variant of this article in 20 years.

Corp.'s make good money by engineering replacements. For established profits, revenue increases are only marginal improvements. If they can get governments to go a long with a mandate to replace something with an alternative, the profit increases are much greater. It's like a substitute for coming up with a new product. Not saying it's not beneficial, but I've seen this corporate grift too many times. They did this in the late 1980s with the need to replace CFC's with HCFC's to protect the hole in the ozone layer. Then they discovered HCFC emitted thousands of times more carbon. The cycle just keeps repeating.

Again, I'm not saying these aren't necessary, but there's little in the way of cost/benefit analysis. Harmful effects are in some sense inevitable, but they should be weighed relative to the benefits added.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant#Phasing_out_of_CFC...

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#280

Post by atombender » Wed, Dec 21, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

amluto wrote: post #277

atombender wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some also come with a non-stick (Teflon-type) coating. Zojirushi makes incredibly nice vacuum-insulated bottle [1] that unfortunately has a non-stick liner. The inside of the bottle is super easy to clean, but the chemicals used in the manufacturing are awful. [1] https://www.zojirushi.com.hk/enproductsview.php?oid=6&tid=17...

Zojirushi also makes them without the liner. It’s a choose-your-poison situation: the lined ones seem to perform much better with green tea.

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. What do you mean by "perform" here?