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3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

reuters.com

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Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#391

Post by Traubenfuchs »

jnwatson wrote: post #365
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 :)

To optimize, you should aim to kill as many people as possible. Bonus points for killing children of wealthy individuals, since they have the highest potential for future CO2 usage.

A less deadly alternative is destroying society and industry. Cavemen have a pretty good climate footprint.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#392

Post by Sugimot0 »

Tepix wrote: post #253
4ad wrote: post #57

I'm calling it, if you want GoreTex or similar clothing, get it now, in five years it will start to get banned, and in 10 years you won't find it anywhere.

The more gore-tex is bought, the more PFAS will be released into the environment. No thanks.

Tbh unless you seriously need your duds to be totally closed breathable and waterproof, silpoly with pit zips etc is a cheaper / more eco alternative that is lighter / stronger and does the same job in most scenarios.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#394

Post by fomine3 »

feet wrote: post #302
mensetmanusman wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glass is heavy and causes transportation tires to generate more micro plastics on the highway and has a higher co2 emission burden.

More than steel? We're talking about reusable bottles here, shipped empty. What is the comparison of empty glass or steel to full plastic? What is the difference in mass?

Why not aluminum

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#395

Post by elevaet »

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 :)

Well, following that logic, one should also commit suicide. I hope no one is logical enough to do that.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#396

Post by m463 »

willio58 wrote: post #364
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.

Agreed. If we could force companies to pay for externalized costs we could get to a net-zero earth immediately. Suddenly investments in green energy would increase 1000x

(and plunge civilization into a dark age overnight)

Maybe people would stop self destructive habits like cigarettes and alcohol...

(and maybe meat, and keeping pets)

But all current electricity use would be diverted to solar panel and battery factories for a few years.

Only rich people with solar panels could take hot showers... probably then only during sunny days.

(interesting thought experiment)

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#397

Post by m463 »

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.

I would like to know when I'm buying toxins.

Overheating teflon pans will kill any pet birds in the house. It's also not great for humans (but details have been suppressed by large corporate campaigns)

But try to find a pan without teflon?

impossible to determine (almost)

I remember finding that hexclad alledgedly doesn't use teflon...

until I found out they do ... and they put it on the OUTSIDE of the pan too. ugh.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#398

Post by einpoklum »

runnerup wrote: post #46
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.

I always thought that if our universe is actually a simulation, it's one of countless simulations trying to determine a solution to the Tragedy of the Commons. I suspect it's one of the hardest problems to solve in any universe.

There was, and is, no tragedy of the commons. It is an a-historical thought experiment by pro-capitalist writers.

The commons work well enough, and are managed collectively.

Want to read the high-brow argument? Try: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionI.html#seci6

Want the lived-experience argument? I live in Palestine. Palestinian villages managed their lands collectively for ages and ages, up until the 20th century. This broke down not because anybody was misusing the commons, or fencing, or whatever - it broke down because the damn Ottomans started a land registry and you got a few people making themselves official owners of huge swaths of land they should not have had any claim to. So the only tragedy was external elements disrupting the commons by force.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#399

Post by centro »

"Legal pressure over the damage caused by PFAS has increased. Last month, 3M and DuPont de Nemours Inc (DD.N) were among several companies sued by California's attorney general to recover clean-up costs." This sentence very clearly explains the main problem with late-stage capitalism. It externalizes real costs to humanity unless governments enforce dollar costs for the societal harms of corporate actions. Neither of these companies would've done anything about this issue on their own.

Re: 3M to end 'forever chemicals' output

#400

Post by scrose »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #349
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...

>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 m…

Sorry for going off-topic, but would you mind sharing a bit more about this business? The domain sounds really interesting to me. My e-mail is also in my profile if that's better.
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