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3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

reuters.com

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Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#341

Post by spikeagally »

wkat4242 wrote: post #26
Centigonal wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...which is a good thing! we should stop taking $20 teflon pans, nonstick fast food containers, and $40 raincoats with negative externalities for granted. We did fine without PFAS, we'll be okay with expensive PFAS (where externalities are internalized and built into the cost) too.

Does paying for the pollution really help fix the problem? Will the government use that money to filter rivers for PFAS? I think a lot of this need also comes from other supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if recycled properly. And raincoats were really really horrible before Gore-Tex.

>> I think a lot of this need also comes from other supposedly environmental choices. My work banned plastic cups and now has paper cups with PFAS which are more toxic. I think the plastic ones were the better choice if recycled properly.

Why do you need to choose between plastic or paper (PFAS)? Does your work not provide glasses? Ceramic mugs? Can you not bring your own reusable water bottle?

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#342

Post by nonameiguess »

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 :)

If nobody has children, then it won't matter if there is more or less CO2 in the air. Environmental quality doesn't have inherent moral worth. The moral worth is in the impact it has on people in the world. Nothing at all matters any more if there are no people.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#343

Post by themerone »

titzer wrote: post #161
themerone wrote: post #5

I'm not sure this is a win for the environment or human health. 3M is gifting sales to it's competition to avoid future liabilities. Chinese companies are ready to pick up the slack. 3M is certainly developing safer alternatives, but until they are as good and as cheap, companies will buy their toxins elsewhere.

This is the "someone's gonna do bad in this world, better if the most righteous person around does--hey that's me" defense. Sigh, there is no iteration of that logic that doesn't devolve to vacuous self-justification for engaging in immoral acts.

I don't agree with your reasoning. Most bad things aren't driven by supply and demand. If you jail a rapist, you aren't creating incentive for someone else to commit more rapes.

Also, performing a dirty industrial process in a country with strong environmental and workplace safety regulations is better than moving that process to a country with no protections.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#344

Post by kennywinker »

iicc wrote: post #304
DoreenMichele wrote: post #36

3M has been facing a raft of litigation that has prompted the move Generally speaking, toxic substances are only "cheap" due to externalizing many of the costs involved, like increased healthcare costs and lost productivity. If you do a thorough analysis of the costs of using such chemicals, they aren't cheap at all. Maybe someday humans will get that.

>Maybe someday humans will get that. That's what the litigation is .

The implication of your statement is that the people running 3M are acting in an in-human way. I would agree.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#345

Post by TylerE »

dublin wrote: post #265
Eisenstein wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass with a silicone sleeve over it is surprisingly resilient. I have had a few glass bottles with silicone covers that I carry around (not all at once...) and have dropped them more times than I can recall and they always just bounce. Of course they can break, especially if you do something like put it in your shopping cart and drop something heavy on it (whoops).

The inertness of glass not only makes it always the first choice for food contact, it's also the most cleanly recycled material on the planet, when it does break. Unlike plastics (which for all practical purposes can't really be recycled), and metals, which require complex separation and realloying, glass can be easily separated visually and reused indefinitely. It is quite likely that the glass in your refrigerator…

Big caveat that all that recyclability really only works for clear glass.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#346

Post by Reason077 »

opan wrote: post #227
Reason077 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some days" Why not carry a reusable water bottle? I have a great double-wall steel bottle (Hydro Flask), which is much better than a plastic bottle because it keeps water cold all day long and is basically indestructible. In most places I travel to it's not difficult to find sources of clean, cold water to refill it. Worst case, I will buy a large bottle of…

>I have a great double-wall steel bottle (Hydro Flask), which is much better than a plastic bottle because it keeps water cold all day long and is basically indestructible. They actually dent quite easily. I have a 40oz Hydro Flask with a couple dents from an incident with a spider a couple years ago. I had my bottle on the counter top while I was eating and suddenly a spider was on it. In an attempt to kill the spid…

> "I'm pretty sure the outside is aluminum, fyi, unless they make multiple types. The inside part is probably steel."

The original standard Hydro Flask is, except the lid, entirely Type 304 stainless steel (aka: 18/8 steel), powder coated on the outside.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#347

Post by int0x2e »

devnullbrain wrote: post #300
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 :)

Murder is even more effective.

No post body was provided.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#348

Post by herrrk »

dublin wrote: post #256
dmd wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 20 years ago, I made a mistake at work which I later calculated put an extra 8500 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. (It had to do with the delay/routing of a cargo ship.) There is literally nothing I could possibly do that could come even close to making up for that...

Fortunately, this planet has abundant land and sea life that will absorb and fix that carbon dioxide for you, liberating highly reactive oxygen in the process. No problem - the amount of carbon used is proportional to the amount of carbon available. All available evidence shows that CO2 lags global temperature rises, rather than leading it. Science IS real, and it says carbon is NOT a pollutant. You should have no gu…

Hate to be that guy but surely this is a (citation needed) scenario. Especially because google sez you're wrong.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#349

Post by Enginerrrd »

dmd wrote: post #213
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…

About 20 years ago, I made a mistake at work which I later calculated put an extra 8500 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. (It had to do with the delay/routing of a cargo ship.) There is literally nothing I could possibly do that could come even close to making up for that...

>There is literally nothing I could possibly do that could come even close to making up for that...

I can say from personal experience this is not true! You can help fix other people's mistakes! I was an energy engineer for a while.

You'd be amazed just how much low-lying fruit there is in terms of energy waste. I was also GOOD at this job. Instead of doing the brainless measures, I would really dig and do a lot of modeling and data mining and stuff to figure out truly optimal solutions. My fee + cost of measures were easily covered within 1-year of savings, and yet it was an incredibly difficult sell to get people to want to spend the money.

But... I had one client, for whom I had to sign an NDA, that single-handedly blew all the others out of the water. They had been emitting LARGE (like, think ~1 ton/month) quantities of sulfur hexafluoride for years. Sulfur hexafluoride, if you don't know is 23,500 times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. This had been going on for YEARS.

Our three-man team came in and was able to find all the leaks with some really nice thermal cameras so they could replace the failed seals and parts.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#350

Post by walleeee »

nightski wrote: post #324
TrickyRick wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the most environmentally conscious person in an industrialized nation will emit massive amounts of CO2 in their lifetime, provided of course that nobody invents a "quick fix" for CO2 emissions in their lifetime. Of course in theory the child could be that person to invent that quick fix, but the expected value is still that the child will contribute to a lot of CO2 emissions.

It doesn't matter. Climate change is happening. It doesn't matter what we do as individuals, the system can't be changed from individual action and it can't be changed via collective action as that would require full cooperation. There is no practical way we can achieve the goal of survival for all through reduction of CO2 emissions. It's a farce because we'll never get all parties to agree. The only path forward is…

> There is no practical way we can achieve the goal of survival through reduction of CO2 emissions. It's a farce

It's a farce because it's already too late for emissions reductions to cut it. We need to pull carbon out of the atmosphere or, as you say, engineer other solutions.

But a robust solution is not going to be limited to the physical/material domain. Societies are malleable and so are people. We need to design ourselves and our activities into a vibrant planetary ecology, not throw up our hands and try to patch around historically contingent circumstances

As Octavia Butler put it, God is change, and change is not to be reacted to, but to be shaped

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