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Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

propublica.org

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Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#51

Post by daniel_reetz »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #49
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

> - what have i forgot? Electrical insulation is a pretty big use case. Both rubber and paper breaks down in some really unfortunate ways, ceramics are great but aren't really viable if you want to make a cable or wire. Laquer isn't really up for the job either.

And the soy plastic alternatives have caused huge problems in practice. Squirrels and mice totaling entire brand new cars by eating the insulation. Not to mention terrible longevity.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#53

Post by BeFlatXIII »

rockostrich wrote: post #39
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

Sorry for the very kitchen focused comment but the kitchen is where I used the most plastic. Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen. To a lesser extent the same argument could be made for po…

Plastic wrap is also far easier than finding the correct matching lid, in my experience.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#54

Post by marginalia_nu »

daniel_reetz wrote: post #51
marginalia_nu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - what have i forgot? Electrical insulation is a pretty big use case. Both rubber and paper breaks down in some really unfortunate ways, ceramics are great but aren't really viable if you want to make a cable or wire. Laquer isn't really up for the job either.

And the soy plastic alternatives have caused huge problems in practice. Squirrels and mice totaling entire brand new cars by eating the insulation. Not to mention terrible longevity.

Yeah in a lot of ways the things that make plastics bad for the environment makes them good for electrical insulation. Primarily how they don't break down very easily, aren't particularly chemically reactive, don't rot, etc.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#55

Post by shiftpgdn »

rockostrich wrote: post #39
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

Sorry for the very kitchen focused comment but the kitchen is where I used the most plastic. Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen. To a lesser extent the same argument could be made for po…

Proof bread with a cloth. Glass containers for food are very durable, I've yet to break one.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#56

Post by Loughla »

tokai wrote: post #45
sdenton4 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trash burning is still pretty common in some parts of the world. It's incredibly bad when plastics and disposable batteries start getting burnt, as is inevitable when burning is the primary trash disposal strategy.

Thank God it is. Burning trash is much better than landfills. Modern incineration plants are not very dirty and they don't poison ground water and wreck nearby ecosystems.

I think you're talking about two different things.

I think the other post may be talking about people who burn their trash at home, instead of at an industrial scale? It seems like a neighborhood of people burning their batteries and plastics would not be great, compared to an industrial incinerator.

Or maybe I'm way off base.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#57

Post by Tagbert »

tokai wrote: post #45
sdenton4 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trash burning is still pretty common in some parts of the world. It's incredibly bad when plastics and disposable batteries start getting burnt, as is inevitable when burning is the primary trash disposal strategy.

Thank God it is. Burning trash is much better than landfills. Modern incineration plants are not very dirty and they don't poison ground water and wreck nearby ecosystems.

Uncontrolled burning of trash is much worse than a proper landfill. Modern landfills are constructed with water barriers and do not poison ground water. Old trash dumps were a problem but that is not what is happening in developed nations.

Of course, in some areas of the world, both uncontrolled trash burning and unregulated trash dumps are used.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#58

Post by littlestymaar »

rcme wrote: post #38
myshpa wrote: post #21

Change my mind: 90%+ of plastic is not necessary. Not necessary: - plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass) - food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas) - plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did) - eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?) - tea bags made w…

You're ignoring pretty much all industrial use of plastic, which is a huge contributor to plastic use. All your other points are essentially "If you paid way more, then plastic wouldn't be necessary." However, if you paid more, then you'd have less money for other stuff. So clearly plastic is necessary for our current levels of consumption.

All over-packaging plastic use aren't at all related to paying more. In fact, it costs more to put additional plastic wraps around product to make “bundles” …

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#59

Post by darksaints »

FooBarBizBazz wrote: post #11

This is sad. So long as we're going to be making plastics, it seemed that pyrolysis and/or incineration made sense to destroy the plastic waste. Then reduce the amount of plastics at the start of the pipeline. (Obviously it's more efficient to make fuel directly from oil, but that's not the point. Narrowly from an energy perspective, the comparison to make is (a) make plastic from oil, separately make jet fuel from o…

From what I understand of the process, simple incineration (i.e. put it in a barrel and burn it) is the problem. High temp incineration does break up nearly every possible carcinogen of hydrocarbon origin into simpler non-carcinogenic compounds, with the caveat that if it’s high temp while using atmospheric oxygen it will likely produce a lot more NOx emissions, which is also bad.

Re: Plastic-based fuels may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health

#60

Post by mrtranscendence »

littlestymaar wrote: post #58
rcme wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're ignoring pretty much all industrial use of plastic, which is a huge contributor to plastic use. All your other points are essentially "If you paid way more, then plastic wouldn't be necessary." However, if you paid more, then you'd have less money for other stuff. So clearly plastic is necessary for our current levels of consumption.

All over-packaging plastic use aren't at all related to paying more. In fact, it costs more to put additional plastic wraps around product to make “bundles” …

If the bundling prevents breakage, which prevents customer support requests / returns ...
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