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Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

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Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#41
post #6

Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue. There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient. It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.

Is there a good list of what things we can reasonably replace? As I'm typing this I wonder what we would use for shock absorbant things like phone cases or water proof seals like cv boots on car suspensions. Edit:. Looking around, electrical insulation, seals, and shock absorbers are the three things that I cant think of a good replacement for. Some seals like for weather proofing you could use spring bronze.

Anything that can be made from paper, should be. Primarily bags, shipping containers, product packaging, etc. I've seen Amazon replace plastic bubble wrap with paper-based bubble wrap, for example. They use really fine bits of paper and presumably glue to create the "bubbles".

Instead of using plastic to wrap shipping containers, you could use a more re-usable material. Or perhaps we could come up with cardboard "rings" or other techniques to keep stuff together instead of wrapping it in plastic.

We might have to use more soap or other sterilization techniques, but where practical, using glass containers and aluminum cans would still make sense. I'm certain that if plastic single-use containers were eliminated in convenience stores for a country, we'd see a switch to cans, glass and waxed paper instead, almost overnight. Same as in alcohol stores, perhaps.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#42
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't understand this perspective at all, but it seems to have been a key philosophy guiding human development for a very long time. Was it just a belief based on convenience?

It's a story as old as humanity. There's many examples of humans exhausting their nearby resources because they thought they were effectively infinite. Whether that's a forest, a food stock, a water source, or something else.

And every time it's happened in the past, the solution has been to leave. There's always been somewhere else to go.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#44

If there are restrictions, I hope they target major microplastic sources like tires and textiles, rather than easily scapegoated but very minor sources, like plastic bags and drinking straws. Based on precedent, I am not holding my breath, but I hope so.

Have you got a source for this concern? Tires are rubber, not plastic as far as I know, and though many textiles are polyester, and fleece is mostly recycled plastics (if I recall) where is the mass use of plastic in the textile industry?

There's a lot more to tires than rubber:

https://www.ustires.org/whats-tire-0

Synthetic fibers include Rayon, Nylon, Polyester, Acrylic, and Spandex among the more widely used ones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fiber

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#45
post #6

Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue. There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient. It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.

Is there a good list of what things we can reasonably replace? As I'm typing this I wonder what we would use for shock absorbant things like phone cases or water proof seals like cv boots on car suspensions. Edit:. Looking around, electrical insulation, seals, and shock absorbers are the three things that I cant think of a good replacement for. Some seals like for weather proofing you could use spring bronze.

> As I'm typing this I wonder what we would use for shock absorbant things like phone cases or water proof seals like cv boots on car suspensions.

Respectfully, CV boots on car suspensions have a lifespan of several years, same with phone cases potentially.

As a first step I'm more interested in replacing the things that hundreds of millions of people discard multiple times a day. Starting off by thinking about CV boots and phone cases strikes me as being precipitously close to the "we can't replace everything so lets replace nothing" path.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#46
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a story as old as humanity. There's many examples of humans exhausting their nearby resources because they thought they were effectively infinite. Whether that's a forest, a food stock, a water source, or something else.

And every time it's happened in the past, the solution has been to leave. There's always been somewhere else to go.

Not every time, or at least the solution doesn't always result in everyone surviving. The Mayan civilization, for instance, is thought to have exhausted their local resources and fallen apart as a result.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#47

If there are restrictions, I hope they target major microplastic sources like tires and textiles, rather than easily scapegoated but very minor sources, like plastic bags and drinking straws. Based on precedent, I am not holding my breath, but I hope so.

Have you got a source for this concern? Tires are rubber, not plastic as far as I know, and though many textiles are polyester, and fleece is mostly recycled plastics (if I recall) where is the mass use of plastic in the textile industry?

here's a tire company admitting that tires are a major source of microplastics in the ocean

https://www.nokiantyres.com/company/sustainability/environme...

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#49
post #6

Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue. There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient. It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.

Hopefully reduction of plastic production does not lead to reduction in plastic recycling.

As TFA says:

> Plastic recycling was invented by the plastics industry in the 1970s to assuage environmental concerns without substantially reducing plastic consumption, according to Max Liboiron, an expert on plastic waste and a professor at Memorial University.

> It has never worked. Despite decades of effort, only about nine percent of Canada’s plastic waste is currently recycled, according to the 2019 ECCC-commissioned study.

Re: Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

#50

I don't understand why a bunch of comments here are showing as downvoted. Is this a controversial topic by any means? Honest question.

HN can be a bit of a hive for libertarian-minded engineers. Regulation = bad, to hell with the nuance, etc.
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