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Plastics are poisoning us

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Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#501

Post by kwhitefoot »

fullstop wrote: post #257
yetihehe wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I solved this problem in minimalist way - I wash my car maybe twice a year. It sits in my driveway in rain anyway because my garage is waiting for some spare time so that I can finally reuse all that pallets I collected since last year (mostly clean pallets I've already made some nice yard furniture for myself and family, all those pallets already have planned use but I don't have enough time).

Pallets are often treated with chemicals, so keep that in mind.

True but it's very much not all pallets. EUR pallets are mostly heat treated. Some are methyl bromide fumigated but that is banned in Germany.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#502

Post by 11235813213455 »

11235813213455 wrote: post #17
realshadow wrote: post #11

I became a minimist to save the planet as much as i could. Its easier than any one could think you know. Here is what i have been doing for a decade and would receommend 1. Reusing plastic bags (i love cotton bags but not ideal). Fold and keep one or two in your pocket before you leave home 2. Support and use light software so you dont need to upgrade your gadgets (12y laptop i use) 3. Prepare and eat home cooked mea…

I'm like you, just adding a bike (found in garbage), foraging (figs, medlars persimmons, oranges, lemons), collecting food at the end of garbage (lots of waste), no fridge, no hot water, no A/C or heating, €10/mo electricity bill

at the end of market* I meant, a bit similar, but better quality

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#503

Post by 11235813213455 »

yetihehe wrote: post #95
NovaDudely wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my two pieces of luxury technology I use are my laptop and by Fridge. Being able to preserve food without 'preservation techniques' is just so dang handy!

Some of those preservation techniques are also considered unhealthy.

just a cave is good enough for vegetables, or somewhere ventilated and not under the sun

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#504

Post by grimgoldgo »

abathur wrote: post #397
hirundo wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take your skill in this for granted. It's a gift. I've been using cast iron pans sporadically for four decades, following all of the common advice, and failing magnificently every time. I still use one occasionally to put a crust on a steak ... and then use a small piece of chainmail[1] to defeat the klingons. It's not that I don't believe you. It just doesn't work that way in my pan on my stove with my…

I don't cook enough (and never steak) for you to assign me much weight, but FWIW I've had a (lighter, spun) cast iron skillet for 8ish years. I followed a seasoning procedure available online that involves (IIRC) 3 rounds of applying thin coats of flaxseed oil and leaving it in an oven at a fairly high temp. This process went fine, but I always had to baby the pan (had to be very careful cleaning it with said chainma…

Consider a different oil. Flax makes a very pretty but very brittle seasoning. Canola works great IME.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#505

Post by acuozzo »

literalAardvark wrote: post #489
shortcake27 wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steel is not recycled by consumers. You cannot put steel in a recycling bin. You _ may_ be able to take steel to a resource recovery centre. However if the travel uses oil or electricity that comes from coal, I wouldn’t be surprised if this ended up being worse for the environment than a PET bottle. With regards to leaching, the FDA has declared PET bottles safe for repeated use.

Electricity coming from coal is not something you address by using plastic bottles. There's almost nothing worse than forever plastics at this point in time. They're everywhere, they're toxic, and we don't know how to fix it. Steel is recycled as often as it's economically feasible to do. It's not hand selected by consumers because there's already a whole process for dealing with metals in general that's been in plac…

> They're everywhere, they're toxic, and we don't know how to fix it.

True, but they're also good carbon sinks.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#506

Post by acuozzo »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #237
Sankozi wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does not seem that easy and does not seem that important to be honest. Donating 100 dollars monthly to sensible causes seems more beneficial than all combined and easier for lots of people. 3. 4. 5. 4. are barely positive if positive at all (considering environment, some are definitely healthy)

I feel the same way. One private jet flight would take 100+ years of OP’s “minimalism” lifestyle to be carbon neutral. Want to know how many private jet flights left the Super Bowl in 2023? And that’s just one event. Being politically active and pushing for a carbon tax would do far more than any amount of individual lifestyle choices.

> pushing for a carbon tax

Would this not incentivize offshoring even more and artificially lengthening supply chains to "hide" emissions?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#507

Post by Metacelsus »

hospitalJail wrote: post #133

The word 'Plastic' needs to die. Instead we should be more specific on the type of plastic. Teflon, PLA, ABS, resins, foams, etc... are all plastics, but they are so unrelated outside their long chains, its terrible to stereotype them all into one category. You aren't going to get cancer from PLA or Teflon, but rather the manufacturing process. You can eat these plastics as far as I know and you'd be fine. Eat someth…

>skeptical of the oxygen double bond attached to a carbon attached to an oxygen

Ester groups are quite innocuous. The most it will do is hydrolyze to oligomers of lactic acid.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#508

Post by literalAardvark »

acuozzo wrote: post #505
literalAardvark wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity coming from coal is not something you address by using plastic bottles. There's almost nothing worse than forever plastics at this point in time. They're everywhere, they're toxic, and we don't know how to fix it. Steel is recycled as often as it's economically feasible to do. It's not hand selected by consumers because there's already a whole process for dealing with metals in general that's been in plac…

> They're everywhere, they're toxic, and we don't know how to fix it. True, but they're also good carbon sinks.

So is grey goo, but can we please not do that?

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#509

Post by friend_and_foe »

bzzzt wrote: post #483
friend_and_foe wrote: post #469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not who youre responding to (but probably who you thought you were responding to) but where I live is not Hawaii or the pacific northwest, it's not all roses. It gets hot and it gets cold, not Montana cold and not Arizona hot but still a bit extreme. And very, very humid. There's always a reason to say you can't do it, but I do what I can and if it's important to you you can too. It's a change in habit and lifestyle,…

> Live lighter and don't rely on comfort like you'll die without it. While for some people it's a comfort issue there are lots of people that will literally die without cooling during heatwaves. Besides that, you can't expect people to be productive (especially in jobs where you're supposed to make use of your brain) when they are slowly cooked in a hot office.

Sure, I don't expect everyone to be like me. I know not everyone can.

But everyone lived without air conditioning for all of human history until about a hundred years ago. The number of people who will die without it is much less than you'd think, and there are ways to keep cool without it that people used when they build houses, public buildings etc before air conditioning.

Re: Plastics are poisoning us

#510

Post by grimgoldgo »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #491
grimgoldgo wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incredible, "do fascism" is your only solution?

If you've read Dune, you would get it. I welcome you to propose a better solution than eco-fascism. I would be genuinely interested in hearing any other suggestions that could work. Just saying "Let's all stop being nasty and live in peace" doesn't work, unfortunately.

Oh I get it, I just think it's naive. I've read dune several times over the past 40 years, and the person I was in my youth would have agreed with you.

These days, not so much. I believe in building communities via mutual aid and support, and that if people have their basic needs meet they will produce incredible results. People want to do good, but are often too tired or too afraid or too burnt out to do it.

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