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Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

theguardian.com

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Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#31

Post by spodek »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #17
spodek wrote: post #6

Missing from most environmental conversation is how much you can improve your life avoiding polluting things. What you replace packaged food, flying, and such with is fresh fruits and vegetables and local community. You learn that while one flight will bring you closer to a distant loved one, flying in general is what led to your "community" living where you can't see each other. When I point out that you, the reader…

I do hope this doesn't come across as just a cynical rant you can dismiss on my snark and cynicism... I have to admit it's difficult to completely avoid cynicism having seen the world transform from what I remember of the seventies... Whilst I agree in good part with the theme of having little impact on the world, we should be good guardians after all, I have to say you completely miss the right target. You even ment…

Unless I misinterpret, everything you wrote stems from interpreting my suggestion to reduce as exclusive of other things.

I'm learning that I have to clarify every time that I'm not suggesting one solution as exclusive of any other to avoid misinterpretation.

Plenty of legislation emerged from popular behavioral change.

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#32

Post by spodek »

nawtacawp wrote: post #14
spodek wrote: post #6

Missing from most environmental conversation is how much you can improve your life avoiding polluting things. What you replace packaged food, flying, and such with is fresh fruits and vegetables and local community. You learn that while one flight will bring you closer to a distant loved one, flying in general is what led to your "community" living where you can't see each other. When I point out that you, the reader…

Western society may be a large consumer, but you are educating the wrong crowd if you want to make a difference. Higher income countries tend to do a much better job of recycling. This illustrates the problem: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inadequately-managed-plas...

I'm responding to a post, not choosing a crowd to educate, but in any case, your link in your post below shows that per capita the US and UK (probably most HN readers) rank high. Quoting your source,

> plastic waste generation tends to increase as we get richer. Per capita plastic waste at low incomes tends to be notably smaller.

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#34

Post by 1PlayerOne »

rpiguy wrote: post #11

Human beings are astounding! Assuming the Earth is about 5.972 sextillion (1,000 trillion) metric tons, we've converted .000000000000134 of the Earth into plastic. No other species could have accomplished this. A testament to our ingenuity.

And foolishness, if we become extinct as a result of our own ingenuity.

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#35

Post by smileysteve »

ryanmercer wrote: post #28
soulofmischief wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What an incredible false dichotomy. Which do you want, less fossil fuels, or melting the ice caps? Oh wait! I forgot that burning fossil fuels is already melting the ice caps.

>What an incredible false dichotomy. I think their point is more "We're already running out of water, aquifer depletion is a thing on multiple continents and there are now cities that have officially run out of fresh water. Adding even more farming, which requires water input above and beyond natural rainfall, is just going to worsen another dire issue".

> adding even more farming, which requires water input above and beyond natural rainfall

Hemp (referenced in a sibling thread) is known as weed because it is drought tolerant and often requires less water than non invasive species. Kudzu and Bamboo are also invasive species that are drought tolerant when compared to most and even natural land uses.

You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil.

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#36

Post by defterGoose »

rpiguy wrote: post #11

Human beings are astounding! Assuming the Earth is about 5.972 sextillion (1,000 trillion) metric tons, we've converted .000000000000134 of the Earth into plastic. No other species could have accomplished this. A testament to our ingenuity.

This is a, uhhh, strange opinion to say the least. We've also doubled the CO2 in the atmosphere since the last ice age. Big numbers! Progress! Our destiny is assured! Success is inevitable!

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#37

Post by NeedMoreTea »

spodek wrote: post #31
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do hope this doesn't come across as just a cynical rant you can dismiss on my snark and cynicism... I have to admit it's difficult to completely avoid cynicism having seen the world transform from what I remember of the seventies... Whilst I agree in good part with the theme of having little impact on the world, we should be good guardians after all, I have to say you completely miss the right target. You even ment…

Unless I misinterpret, everything you wrote stems from interpreting my suggestion to reduce as exclusive of other things. I'm learning that I have to clarify every time that I'm not suggesting one solution as exclusive of any other to avoid misinterpretation. Plenty of legislation emerged from popular behavioral change.

Well you did effectively write a pre-dismissal of group action; "this community usually responds that you can't and suggests government action". Perhaps the community responses have had a point?

Leaders, and corporates today generally lobby, market or campaign to individualise more business overheads and make them an externality (ie someone else's problem, like litter or packaging). It becomes a consumer "choice", which makes it all rather one-sided. It's been a point of almost surreal agreement between major parties around the world in recent decades making the current multiple crises inevitable.

Most quality of life regulations seem to have come from hard-fought, often literally hard-fought, mobilisation in groups - that gave enough leverage - whether through civil disobedience, campaigns and demos or unionisation and strikes, and the occasional bad accident to get government action.

I see politics and group action as leverage, a multiplier, that might bring change in the timescales we need. Individual actions as being about self-respect and looking my kids in the eye rather than any chance of achieving change, as that needs a movement. shrug

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#38

Post by ryanmercer »

smileysteve wrote: post #35
ryanmercer wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What an incredible false dichotomy. I think their point is more "We're already running out of water, aquifer depletion is a thing on multiple continents and there are now cities that have officially run out of fresh water. Adding even more farming, which requires water input above and beyond natural rainfall, is just going to worsen another dire issue".

> adding even more farming, which requires water input above and beyond natural rainfall Hemp (referenced in a sibling thread) is known as weed because it is drought tolerant and often requires less water than non invasive species. Kudzu and Bamboo are also invasive species that are drought tolerant when compared to most and even natural land uses. You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil.

>You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil.

The water that effectively stays in a closed system and can likely be treated on-site for nearly immediate reuse? The water that doesn't largely evaporate (70 percent of the annual precipitation returns to the atmosphere by evaporation, I assume water from irrigation is still several tens of percent) and cause soil erosion?

It takes 180 L of water to produce 1 kg of plastic and 302-492 L for 1kg of hemp based on a quick Google query.

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#39

Post by soulofmischief »

ryanmercer wrote: post #38
smileysteve wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> adding even more farming, which requires water input above and beyond natural rainfall Hemp (referenced in a sibling thread) is known as weed because it is drought tolerant and often requires less water than non invasive species. Kudzu and Bamboo are also invasive species that are drought tolerant when compared to most and even natural land uses. You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil.

>You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil. The water that effectively stays in a closed system and can likely be treated on-site for nearly immediate reuse? The water that doesn't largely evaporate (70 percent of the annual precipitation returns to the atmosphere by evaporation, I assume water from irrigation is still several tens of percent) and cause soil erosion? It takes 180 L of water…

ExxonMobil sits at the epicenter of one of the top 3 purest water tables in the nation, squat on the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. [0]

The insane amount of water they use for oil refinement is causing the entire surrounding area to leech hard water. What was once the softest table in the region is now becoming infested with salt water.

I have seen the water table schematics, I used to live a couple of miles from the plant and I can tell you that even in the last decade it's gotten noticeably worse.

This is objectively worse than the alternative, using hemp for biodiesel and bioplastics which requires far less water and doesn't ruin the environment.

[0] https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_cadd93c...

Re: Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

#40

Post by ryanmercer »

soulofmischief wrote: post #39
ryanmercer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You're missing the mass amounts of water to extract plastic from oil. The water that effectively stays in a closed system and can likely be treated on-site for nearly immediate reuse? The water that doesn't largely evaporate (70 percent of the annual precipitation returns to the atmosphere by evaporation, I assume water from irrigation is still several tens of percent) and cause soil erosion? It takes 180 L of water…

ExxonMobil sits at the epicenter of one of the top 3 purest water tables in the nation, squat on the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge. [0] The insane amount of water they use for oil refinement is causing the entire surrounding area to leech hard water. What was once the softest table in the region is now becoming infested with salt water. I have seen the water table schematics, I used to live a couple of miles from…

That water isn't being used to make plastic though. It's being used to refine crude oil into: gasoline, kerosene, fuel oil, gas oil, naphtha, reduced crude etc. That stuff is going to be refined with or without the plastic end use purely for the various other things that get manufactured from crude oil.

Something like 10% is what gets used to as raw chemicals for further manufacture of goods. Overall about 5% of the original crude gets manufactured into PVC/polystyrene/nylon/PU/PP/polyester etc.

I was specifically comparing the amount of water to manufacture 1kg of plastic and 1kg of dry hemp.

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