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Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

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Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#281

Post by stuaxo »

s_y_n_t_a_x wrote: post #243
undersuit wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You roll your lower lip over your bottom front teeth, bring the container to your mouth, and pour the liquid into your mouth while gently resting the lip of the container on your lip.

Girls need straws for lipstick, guys need straws for beards, elderly need straws for health concerns. They aren't "completely superfluous".

Most people don't need them.

Some people are switching to metal straws, while some restaurants are using dry pasta straws (the pasta doesn't go soft as the drinks are cold).

There are alternatives for those that need them.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#282

Post by baud147258 »

brok3nmachine wrote: post #272
cpeterso wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local recycling center (in the SF Bay Area) accepts styrofoam blocks (though the machine is down right now). Unfortunately, storing and transporting bulky styrofoam is cumbersome for individuals, so it's not very scalable. https://www.el-cerrito.org/952/Drop-Off-Materials-Accepted

"Fees apply for customers from outside El Cerrito" I wonder why? Sounds like it's impractical to recycle.

"Fees apply for customers from outside El Cerrito"

Maybe it's funded by the city, so it would be free for people there, since they've already paid for with their taxes?

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#283

Post by benj111 »

Cogito wrote: post #279
benj111 wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand all the straws have to go somewhere. If you're picking up one straw a day from your garden, you'd expect each household in the city to generate at least one improperly disposed of straw per day. How do you think they generate statistics for this kind of thing? They don't count everything, they take samples and infer from that.

If I'm picking up one straw a day from my garden, and assume everyone in my city has a straw in their garden every day, I would be making a Hasty Generalisation [0] It's far more likely that I live in a stray straw accumulation zone than straws are uniformly distributed over the entire city's gardens by some method. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_ge...

I think its only as hasty as assuming that it's a straw accumulation zone.

Considering that a lot of land in a city isnt your garden/house (shops, offices, parks), I would suggest that that would tend to balance out the risk of this being a SAZ.

I take your point that this is a data point of one. But if I found one straw in my garden, it is astoundingly unlikely that is the only wild straw in my city. I wouldn't start putting a figure on it from that, but it does suggest the lower bound is much higher than one.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#284

Post by isthis1984 »

foobarian wrote: post #274
undersuit wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starch-based packing peanuts are will break down in water, unlike their polystyrene equivalents.

Some packing peanuts are apparently made of puffed up rice. It's a fun trick to pull on coworkers who don't know this and eat a bunch when you get a package.

as long as they're not imported and have been sprayed with pesticide.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#285

Post by Cogito »

benj111 wrote: post #283
Cogito wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I'm picking up one straw a day from my garden, and assume everyone in my city has a straw in their garden every day, I would be making a Hasty Generalisation [0] It's far more likely that I live in a stray straw accumulation zone than straws are uniformly distributed over the entire city's gardens by some method. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulty_generalization#Hasty_ge...

I think its only as hasty as assuming that it's a straw accumulation zone. Considering that a lot of land in a city isnt your garden/house (shops, offices, parks), I would suggest that that would tend to balance out the risk of this being a SAZ. I take your point that this is a data point of one. But if I found one straw in my garden, it is astoundingly unlikely that is the only wild straw in my city. I wouldn't star…

I agree, trying to generalise anything based on 1 data point is going to be fraught with danger of hastiness.

Having never found a straw in my garden my intuition is that (not finding straws in every garden) is more likely than (finding straws in every garden) but obviously I have no valid basis to put a number of any kind on that.

Now while I think the original post is an example of Hasty Generalisation, I think the bigger issue is the generalisation combined with a sample bias. Self reported data points tend to be interesting because otherwise they wouldn't be reported. My thesis is that regularly finding a straw in your garden is interesting because it is unusual.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#286

Post by TheGallopedHigh »

forgotmypw3 wrote: post #216
Tomminn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fishing gets me. I used to fish from the shoreline a lot, but when I went snorkeling in a couple of beautiful places in the world all the lost tackle and line just made me angry at my past self. It's very hard to fish from the shoreline without leaving trash everywhere. It's hard to think that every dollar I spent on tackle was a dollar I spent polluting the shoreline. It was out of sight, so it was out of mind.…

It's thinking like this that led me down the path of rejecting money/currency for the most part. Every dollar I spent is a vote for producing more of whatever I'm buying, directly correlated with habitat loss (for humans included) and animal deaths. And each transaction is like a curtain from behind which the finished product appears, handed to you with no information about its origin.

What does this even mean? By ones existence one precludes other life. Where does one draw the line on what one can eat/use?

I sometimes feel these statements are made without much critical thinking. I’m open to be proved wrong.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#287

Post by raducu »

bamboozled wrote: post #254
Tomminn wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fishing gets me. I used to fish from the shoreline a lot, but when I went snorkeling in a couple of beautiful places in the world all the lost tackle and line just made me angry at my past self. It's very hard to fish from the shoreline without leaving trash everywhere. It's hard to think that every dollar I spent on tackle was a dollar I spent polluting the shoreline. It was out of sight, so it was out of mind.…

This is why I prefer spear fishing (free diving style especially), yes it’s harder work, yes there are dangers; But it’s not only visually attractive but you can be much more selective about the fish you take and there is almost never anything left behind, unless you had to drop a weight belt in an emergency or something, which I’ve never actually needed to do though it happens. Often I actually take tack home I find…

I've always wanted to try spearfishing, it seems like a real sport, unfortunately it's banned in my country.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#288

Post by specialist »

8bitsrule wrote: post #271
specialist wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paper is an amazing technology. Were I king, I'd massively fund R&D to bring new sources of fiber to market. Make them competitive with wood pulp. Hemp, bamboo, sugar cane, feed corn. Maybe even invasive (noxious) weeds like kudzu. Two birds, one stone. Extra credit for non till harvesting techniques. Just mow those hemp fields. Then do it all again in three months.

Wood-pulping can also be a filthy technology. Growing up in a paper-mill town meant smelling and breathing the particulate and gaseous effluents of the cooking process. In the spring, the remnants of this deluge covered all the melting snow-piles in a black sheet. (And lungs?) Much of what didn't come out of the stacks flowed out under the river's surface through a secret pipe. Downstream, the shores were matted and…

You are correct.

I infrequently do some light googling to see if anyone is seriously trying to use bamboo or hemp for paper and fabrics. This was the biggest hit last time.

http://www.bamboopulp.com

For future, I'll be mindful of the labor and ecological impacts of their processes.

Thank you.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#289

Post by Doxin »

Slippery_John wrote: post #131
intarga wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there something in particular necessary about animal protein, that it gets a distinct category from just protein in general? It also stands to reason that if that many people really are dependent on fish, it will be devastating to them when overfishing and pollution destroy fish stocks. All the more reason to reduce fishing and build alternatives now.

Well yes, but actually no. Not all proteins are equal, they have different quantities of different kinds of amino acids. Humans need 9 distinct amino acids for a healthy diet, and animal proteins are by far the easiest source of "complete proteins" from a single source. It's absolutely possible to get plant-based complete proteins (e.g. soy or quinoa), but often that involves deliberately mixing different protein sou…

Turns out that eating the exact same thing every day is bad for you. That goes for meat as much as it goes for not-meat.

Re: Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

#290

Post by s_y_n_t_a_x »

rsj_hn wrote: post #273
undersuit wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single use lids are next. We're destroying the environment because we can't be assed to take a break to have a drink.

We are not "destroying the environment" and you are not going to "save the environment". This is childish. Nations which don't have good sanitation systems are dumping garbage into the oceans, as are ships. Your attempt to self-flagellate, or more accurately flagellate others by abstaining from straws does not help or hurt the environment. It does annoy people and cause resentment and blowback that might stop useful…

> It's a type of modern religious ritual meant to absolve yourself of invented sins...

Nail on the head.

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