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Canada declares plastics toxic, paving the way for restrictions

motherjones.com

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

#51

Post by perardi »

version_five wrote: post #3

The canadian government is big into the business of making these kind of "declarations" these days, so our PM can demonstrate to everyone how progressive he is. Although I don't think Mother Jones is a legitimate news source, so would be careful about taking anything in the article at face value.

So the weird thing is: I can’t find a CBC report on this announcement on Wednesday. Nor any other Canadian news source, even in the weeds ones like iPolitics. Maybe I’m just not searching properly, but I don’t see any other reporting.

I mean, they absolutely promised they’d ban single-use plastics, and I was under the impression that was definitely a real thing:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/government-to-ban-single-us...

I just cannot find an actual press release from a government agency as of this week. I’d be appreciative if someone could actually dig that up.

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

#52

Post by hparadiz »

My car was recently hit while it was parked and the plastic trim under the front bumper started to come off by of course scraping against the road. It's not simple to remove either. I had to jack the car and remove some bolts from under it holding this plastic. I can only imagine how much micro plastics it spread all over the road and then of course washed into the ocean.

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

#53

Post by wearywanderer »

pharke wrote: post #44
pedalpete wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

These are the fibers in the reinforcing bands and rims, right? Those are buried under the rubber and if your tire is shedding material from those bands then your tire must be truly worn to nothing. I think the vast majority of material shed from tires must be the rubber itself.

Illustration of a tire cross section: https://www.michelintruck.com/img/tires/xze-zoomer.jpg

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

#54

Post by bioinformatics »

Looking forward to reduce plastic in the clinical and research settings. I think it's a great idea to elminate at least 99% of plastic in these environments. It will make patient treatment much more human, research much more transactional and pure, while eliminating pollution in most places.

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

#55

Post by waterhouse »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #39
gogopuppygogo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That penn and teller episode with the petition for removing dihydrogen monoxide from schools was fantastic. https://youtu.be/zVxypRWZODQ

Using obscure terminology to confuse people certainly makes a good joke :-) I'm not sure it really tells us much though.

It tells us that people are willing to sign a petition to ban a thing while clearly not having done their research on the thing, just because an authoritative-seeming stranger told them something plausible. It means that such petitions shouldn't be taken seriously; and, to the extent that they are serious, it implies something about people's recklessness with regard to policymaking.

(I wonder how such a survey would fare today, when most people have smartphones with browsers and an internet connection.)

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

#56

Post by belinder »

lstamour wrote: post #49
belinder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-commis…

Right. My point is if we stop producing plastic we are still going to have a lot of plastic waste. Perhaps we could invest instead in actually making recycling work for the waste we already have

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

#57

Post by nemo44x »

I thinking banning plastic straws will end up pushing the movement towards reduced plastic usage backwards. At least until there is a competent alternative. Paper straws are not it.

Especially since straws aren’t even a real contributor or issue overall. But it’s not at all difficult for a populist or reactionary to hit a nerve with this kind of thing however well intentioned it is.

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

#58

Post by galangalalgol »

robscallsign wrote: post #45
galangalalgol wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bo…

Not at all, I agree packaging and liners should never need to be plastic. Lets ban them now. Glass and ceramics can replace almost everything that metal can't. Recycle the metal and reuse the glass/ceramic. I was just astounded how few things really needed to be plastic.

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

#59

Post by 29athrowaway »

belinder wrote: post #20
_qwfv wrote: 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.

Reducing and reusing are much more important than recycling.

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

#60

Post by galangalalgol »

lstamour wrote: post #41
galangalalgol wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 "rin…

Cans for food is iffy, without the liners doesn't it disintegrate the metal? Jars work well and can be reused. Bring back deposits!
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