We are poisoning ourselves in the name of economic growth would be more correct.
But in HN the debate is about if plastic is a correct word and what term should be used and labeling, a place where everybody knows that the majority of people don't read labels, instructions or manuals.
Plastics are poisoning us
361–370 of 528 posts
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the solution is better labeling. No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work.
> No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work. Some labels are good and informative. Some labels are just a way for corporations to blame consumers for what consumers cannot do anything about. Falsehood: - "Consumers are purchasing toxic products, so that is w…
Recycling labels are some of the biggest falsehoods. Many plastics are simply not recycled at all, I think at best only #1 and #2 plastics are largely ever recycled. Even things like orange juice containers are considered not recyclable due to their heavy plastic coatings inside the paper shell and they will get sorted out to be dumped.
It's one way industry has scammed the public by convincing them much of the waste generated by low-cost (to the manufacturer) packaging was recyclable.
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#363Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe the solution is better labeling. No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work.
> No, we are awash in labels already and I am sick of everything having a legal treatise attached to it. Labels just throw the problem back in the laps of consumers, an approach which clearly does not work. Some labels are good and informative. Some labels are just a way for corporations to blame consumers for what consumers cannot do anything about. Falsehood: - "Consumers are purchasing toxic products, so that is w…
Brand names were introduced to fight product adulteration. We still default to assuming that is working today. We should probably demand that this is actually true.
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#364I wonder if all our plastic waste will ultimately leave a geological record.
Will far future organisms call this the plasticene?
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#365Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd have thought that fluorine, like oxygen, is a strong oxidizer (fluorine being even stronger), and so fluorides, like oxides (e.g. rust) would be extremely stable, among the most stable compounds possible. Unless I'm forgetting the other side: Maybe the other half of the compound is not a strong enough reducer? It's a hydrocarbon though, it burns well in oxygen... That said, even oxides do break down when heated.…
Carbon Florine bonds are some of the strongest you will find. Carbon tetrafluoride CF4 is almost as safe as nitrogen at room temperature. Tetrafluoroethylene C2F4 is actually explosive on the other hand because of it’s carbon carbon bond, the stuff is happy to spit out the carbon and get CF4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrafluoroethylene
Carbon tetrafluoride and Carbon tetrachloride are the two "carbon tets" you never want to mix up.
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#366Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#367Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> 5. Collect rain water and/or use less water > > Not sure about that -- With modern pollution rain water is not likely to be safe to drink (depends on your location) Water availability is also very different from country to country, region to region, and even town to town. How your water usage affects the environment depends on so many things.
I collect rain water but use it on the veggie garden. So either it is safer because I ma not drinking it directly OR it is worse because the planet are bio-accumulating it. I don't know.
Well, you can get it tested for things that bioaccumulate.
Air pollution does change abruptly, but on most places it tends to not do that frequently.
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#368There are plastic rocks forming. Those aren't rocks with plastic melted on top of them. They are literally plastic rocks formed via the same processes alongside normal rocks. We could ban plastics tomorrow, and it wouldn't be enough. We've screwed over the entire Earth.
One day we'll start having microorganisms that can break down plastics efficiently. It took a few million years for wood, so I'm not holding my breath until it happens, but it will almost certainly happen. So the worse that can happen to the Earth itself is it'll have a layer of plastic residue just like it had a layer of wood residue (coal) until we started digging it up. Of course, as George Carlin used to say, the…
The planet really isn't fine by any rubric that considers the health of ecosystems and the environment unless one considers Mars and Venus also fine.
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#369The word 'Plastic' needs to die. Instead we should be more specific on the type of plastic. Teflon, PLA, ABS, resins, foams, etc... are all plastics, but they are so unrelated outside their long chains, its terrible to stereotype them all into one category. You aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon, but rather the manufacturing process. You can eat these plastics as far as I know and you'd be fine. Eat someth…
I don't want more labels. I don't want to have to be an "informed consumer" when im buying cookware in order to know whats going to give me cancer. Those products shouldn't exist.
Re: Plastics are poisoning us
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
You raise an interesting point, but isn't this just moving to another extreme? It seems like both quality and efficiency have their place, we are probably putting too much emphasis on efficiency at the moment, but completely focusing on quality and disregarding efficiency isn't the solution either. It's maximising a single (ill-defined) metric as well, no? If we stick with the plastic vs cotton bag example, we are co…
> isn't this just moving to another extreme? > It seems like both quality and efficiency have their place, Actually, I would agree with that for sure. The real world is grey, and multiple things are true at once. I'm certainly guilty of leaning to the other extreme here. > some aggregate of environmental impact metrics e and the number of times we use the bag n I believe I understand, and I appreciate the overall pus…
> A cotton bag will not have a reuse of one. It is more expensive to begin with. It could hold sentimental value.
I agree that on average, a cotton bag will not have a reuse of one. Some cotton bags absolutely will only be used once, however. Sometimes it's even predictable that a cotton bag will only be used once. Ideally, we would get people to use whatever product is best suited for the situation at hand on a quality-environmental impact pareto front. There is no catch all that's going to be the best solution in every situation. We shouldn't give out plastic bags like their going out of style, but I'm also not sure we should eliminate them completely.
> I think that is where we might disagree the most. Quality cannot be measured, it can only be known. I hate that this reads as touchy-feely, but I don't know a better way to put it. Once you accept that quality cannot be measured in numbers, it is liberating. Then it allows you to argue in a different paradigm; How your neighborhood "feels" because there's no plastic bags stuck in roadside shrubbery, the peace of mind knowing that your drinking water doesn't have microplastics in it, ... that's genuinely immeasurable. Yet it is the stuff that makes up quality of life. People can be convinced of those qualities, and their value, _without_ quantifying them.
Yes, I was trying to say that quality is hard to measure by calling it an ill-defined metric. You are still trying to maximise it, even if you cannot measure it. I get that, I'm with you most of the way, but I just don't think you can only look at quality. We could be creating the most high quality neighbourhood at the cost of increasing entropy outside of it. Nothing comes for free.