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Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

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Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#51

Post by WalterBright »

BadassFractal wrote: post #11
hbarka wrote: post #7

Why hasn’t Amazon, Costco, or Walmart used their clout to effect a positive change? Have you seen all the plastic and unnecessary packaging in the goods they sell. The size of the packaging relative to the actual product is so ridiculous sometimes.

It would be great if businesses decided to differentiate themselves from their competition by using biodegradable, environmentally friendly packaging. I wouldn't mind shopping with them instead, even at a slightly higher cost, just so that I as a consumer don't feel like I'm killing our marine life for no good reason.

I would pay more to not get styrofoam peanuts.

I once had a large garbage bag of them get caught by the wind and they blew all over the yard. It took a couple hours to pick them all up, as they'd dance away from my fingertips.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#52

Post by onion2k »

thereare5lights wrote: post #43
chrisco255 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah we paid China to "recycle" trash. And instead of actually recycling they just pocketed the money and dumped it.

That makes no sense. If they were doing that, why would they stop taking free money.

The piles of trash grew too big. The money wasn't worth it any more.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#53

Post by gdfasfklshg4 »

nhebb wrote: post #36
eecc wrote: post #3

Just like Climate Change, oceanic plastic pollution is a case of Tragedy of the commons. I can separate my waste and recycle as much as I want (and I do!) but it’s all useless if a random idiot proceeds to dump my weekly household recycling output into a river and call it a day. This is nothing that can be solved with personal initiative and responsibility; it requires international regulation and enforcement. There’…

Considering the current state of recycling, it may be better to just throw our plastics away instead of putting them in recycling bins. With China turning away our recycling, some cities have started burning them (according to recent headlines - I don't have a source). I would think that would be worse for our environment that putting them in landfills. According to the study by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental…

I think that how bad burning is depends upon the temperature. The level of control of the temperature and the sortedness of the plastic. Also whether the generated heat is actually used.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#54

Post by the6threplicant »

nhebb wrote: post #36
eecc wrote: post #3

Just like Climate Change, oceanic plastic pollution is a case of Tragedy of the commons. I can separate my waste and recycle as much as I want (and I do!) but it’s all useless if a random idiot proceeds to dump my weekly household recycling output into a river and call it a day. This is nothing that can be solved with personal initiative and responsibility; it requires international regulation and enforcement. There’…

Considering the current state of recycling, it may be better to just throw our plastics away instead of putting them in recycling bins. With China turning away our recycling, some cities have started burning them (according to recent headlines - I don't have a source). I would think that would be worse for our environment that putting them in landfills. According to the study by the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental…

> I'm not sure if what we do in the U.S. and Europe will have much impact

It's not like all of that plastic is just domestic consumption. Right? We just exported our negative externalities. We don't really have a moral high-ground here. Even if you are a Jedi master.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#55

Post by barbs »

jl2718 wrote: post #4

Third grade me believed that my recycling got recycled. But it didn’t. We paid extra taxes for corrupt deals to get it dumped in the ocean. That was my plastic that killed the whale. Why did they lie to me? I did always wonder where all the recycling plants were. Would it really have been worse if we had put it in the landfill?

How is no-one linking to any sources in this thread?

Seriously, it's easy to be misinformed on this topic, mostly because the truth is hidden and because people make all sorts of claims without any evidence.

Enough with the FUD

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#56

Post by ehnto »

cageface wrote: post #35

These stories rarely mention this for some reason but the bulk of the plastic junk in the ocean is discarded fishing nets, not consumer waste. Reducing the plastic waste you personally generate is still a good idea, of course, but if you really want to have an impact then stop eating fish. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/ocean-plastic-made-disca... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-ga...

I am not sure that is good advice. Fixing the fishing industry is important, overfishing is rampant as is plastic waste from it. But fish is probably one of the best alternatives we have to other environmentally unfriendly meats we currently raise. As populations grow it is proving to be key to keeping everyone fed. Farmed fish most importantly will soon be the majority of fish consumed.

Getting ocean based fishing to not use plastics will be very difficult but moving the majority of fishing into farms by making it more profitable could very well make that problem go away by reducing ocean fishing in general.

Make trade restrictions on non-farmed fish and the demand for ocean fish from nations fishing with plastic would hopefully go down. If fish from the ocean now contains plastic it would probably be a health boon to only accept farm fish anyway.

You might create a new problem of corporate fish farms decimating local fishermans livelihoods, which sucks. But at this rate they will overfish and pollute their own jobs away anyway.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#57

Post by Theodores »

A2017U1 wrote: post #18
Ultramanoid wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As already mentioned, many Western countries ( and others, like Japan ) shipped their plastic waste to China, until recently China refused to take it in anymore.

So you are claiming China paid money for recycling waste and then threw it straight in the ocean? Seems incredibly implausible.

They had lots of poor people and their children separate it, wash it and slice it up into lots of strips that then get compressed together into bundles of 'raw feedstock'.

In this process lots gets washed away, the local water is no longer drinkable (so they have to buy water to drink from trucks that do the rounds).

Any guesses where the river leads to?

The ocean.

Also many plastics are hard to identify. So you were having kids with lighters burn a bit of that microwave tray (in black) to sniff it and then guess what the rest of the tray was made of. Then it would be put in one of the twenty or so piles of different types of plastic.

The Chinese President saw the film about all of this banned the imports and banned the film. That is how we got here.

The bit you didn't see (because the film was band) is how water intensive the process is. The leftover food on the microwaved tray does not clean itself. When it has been sliced up into lots of small pieces, washed and compressed into some block of recyclable stuff you get bits of it washed away to end up eventually in the ocean, even if it blights local fields first before the rains come.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#58

Post by cageface »

ehnto wrote: post #56
cageface wrote: post #35

These stories rarely mention this for some reason but the bulk of the plastic junk in the ocean is discarded fishing nets, not consumer waste. Reducing the plastic waste you personally generate is still a good idea, of course, but if you really want to have an impact then stop eating fish. https://www.onegreenplanet.org/news/ocean-plastic-made-disca... https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/03/great-pacific-ga...

I am not sure that is good advice. Fixing the fishing industry is important, overfishing is rampant as is plastic waste from it. But fish is probably one of the best alternatives we have to other environmentally unfriendly meats we currently raise. As populations grow it is proving to be key to keeping everyone fed. Farmed fish most importantly will soon be the majority of fish consumed. Getting ocean based fishing t…

We don't need to eat meat or fish at all to be healthy, and meat & fish are very resource intensive. We're better off redirecting all the resources we currently waste trying to feed 8 billion people this way into sustainable, plant-based diets anyway.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#59

Post by toofy »

eecc wrote: post #3

Just like Climate Change, oceanic plastic pollution is a case of Tragedy of the commons. I can separate my waste and recycle as much as I want (and I do!) but it’s all useless if a random idiot proceeds to dump my weekly household recycling output into a river and call it a day. This is nothing that can be solved with personal initiative and responsibility; it requires international regulation and enforcement. There’…

> but it’s all useless if a random idiot proceeds to dump my weekly household recycling output into a river and call it a day.

Even if that random idiot dumps their recycling, it is anything but useless.

If you didn't recycle, that would be at least 2 idiots dumping their recycling.

Sorry for being pedantic, but it troubles me when people worry they aren't making a difference because some other random idiot doesn't participate.

Re: Stomach of Dead Whale Contained 'Nothing but Nonstop Plastic'

#60

Post by chrisco255 »

WalterBright wrote: post #50
EGreg wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Government propped up fossil fuels and held back electric cars since 1910. We could have had CHOICE in how our energy is generated. Why in all this time haven’t some alternatives to non-biodegradable plastic emerged?

My reading was that electric cars were edged out because of poor battery life compared to gas. Edison tried for many years to invent a better battery, and failed.

This is true. Edison would have loved for cars to be electric and stood to profit a lot from it. He was also great friends with Henry Ford. Folks act like there's a conspiracy here. 1910 battery tech was pretty primitive. We didn't even discover Lithium tech until the 70s.
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