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Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

nytimes.com

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Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#71

Post by munificent »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #30
lisper wrote: post #14

My wife and I were traveling in Borneo a few years back. They have "water villages" there where all the houses are built on stilts in shallow water. You could not see the shore because it was completely covered in a layer of garbage. It was like living on top of a landfill. At first I thought it was garbage thrown out by the villagers, but it's not. It was garbage that washes in on the tide. Every now and then the vi…

I saw that on the Malaysian peninsula. Chinese fishing villages that still speak an old dialect of Cantonese. It's worse in what looks to be the dry season and low tide like you have there. The other issue is that it's not important to them to clean it up - as it was explained to me. I talked to a local while there and she explained that growing up she never saw it, but years away and she doesn't like it now but know…

I live in Seattle, one of the most expensive cities in the US. Most of the houseboats on Lake Washington and Lake Union dumped their sewage straight into the lakes until the late 60s.

It was only this year that we passed an ordinance prohibiting dumping treated sewage from boats into Puget Sound and the lakes. That's a shudder-inducing thought when you consider that many of the delicious oysters we have here are directly under those boats, filtering everything they can out of the water.

Most of human history has involved treating bodies of water like magical devices that teleport waste away forever.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#73

Post by dragonwriter »

henvic wrote: post #41
gfo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw? It's a step forward, a small one at that, but it's progress. I don't understand those complaining - they usually fall back to people with disabilities, and yet establishments will still have straws on-hand for those folks.

How about if I'd rather drink acid drinks like Coke (when I do) without damaging my teeth? What about my freedom of choosing whether I'd use straws or not?

Afaik, Acid damage to teeth is mostly from long term effects of acid produced by bacteria on the teeth, not acidic liquids that transit through the mouth.

In any case, disposable plastic straw bans do not affect your freedom of choosing whether you use a straw or not.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#74

Post by throwaway427 »

gfo wrote: post #17
throwaway427 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid I use a straw, though.

Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw? It's a step forward, a small one at that, but it's progress. I don't understand those complaining - they usually fall back to people with disabilities, and yet establishments will still have straws on-hand for those folks.

> Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw?

Simple, I like using straws. Now I can't get one. It's not a small step forward, it's a minuscule step forward. Nothing significant has changed except peoples silly image of themselves.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#75

Post by unfunco »

I didn't realise how big of a problem it was until Blue Planet II last year, and then earlier this year I stayed in Unawatuna, and the hotel had a small private beach that is cleared of plastic daily, and it was covered again within hours. I didn't take any photos of the litter directly, but in the top-left of this photo: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bg7qXxyH-2c/?taken-by=unfunco it is somewhat visible.

It's endless, it'll just keep washing up for the foreseeable future. In the UK you're now vilified if you ask for a plastic bag to carry your shopping home, and the pubs and bars near me no longer offer plastic straws, I'm fine with this, but our waste is an almost literal drop in the ocean compared to the waste being dumped in rivers and oceans by developing nations.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#76

Post by Alupis »

kaybe wrote: post #53
sattoshi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statistic shows that as NA or EU residents, what we do basically does not matter. The plastic waste of Asia will only grow. What we can do is focus on the cleanliness of our local communities as that is the only place where we can have an effect. But on the global scale, unless if we manage to strongarm Asia into behaving, it's borderline meaningless.

What would help is to develop a material that is just as good as plastic (or better), degrades easily and is cheaper as well, and then wait for them to copy. Germany basically did this for solar energy.

Such as biodegradable plastics, which can, in some cases, fully decompose in as little as 24 months![1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodegradable_plastic

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#77

Post by cptaj »

dsabanin wrote: post #4

I'm curious. Quotes from the article: -- “It happens pretty much all the time if there is a strong rainfall or a storm,” The phenomenon is not confined to the Dominican Republic, he said, and can be seen in many developing nations with a coastline. “Everybody uses the rivers and the beaches as dump sites.” -- So we're being told that ocean's plastic garbage patch is somehow made out of the contents of landfills aroun…

Its not the landfills. Its the slums around cities in developing countries. They don't even have roads most of the time, much less effective trash collection. They usually just dump the trash down the hill or through some water drainage. You can clearly see the problem if you go there.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#78

Post by oh_sigh »

gfo wrote: post #17
throwaway427 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God forbid I use a straw, though.

Explain the inconvenience you're experiencing because you can't get a straw? It's a step forward, a small one at that, but it's progress. I don't understand those complaining - they usually fall back to people with disabilities, and yet establishments will still have straws on-hand for those folks.

Why does it need to be inconvenience, why not just preference? The detrimental effects of straw usage in the US are extremely minimal. We are basically going through a stage where we ban all straws in the country because of a sad photo of a turtle from Costa Rica.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#79

Post by bargl »

pkaye wrote: post #40

Same thing happened in Mumbai a week back. The monsoon rains pulled back all the trash. http://observers.france24.com/en/20180720-video-mumbai-ocean... Also the Dominican Republic is pretty developed country but in neighboring Haiti things are in pretty bad shape. I saw in a Youtube video by somebody who went there on an eco tour the piles on garbage on a river. He said the garbage was so bad you could walk across th…

I was in Haiti. This is true, mounds and mounds of styrafoam lunch disposal because there is NO place to put garbage. If it is collected it's burned. The people will burn it themselves because again there is no place to collect it.

Re: Wave After Wave of Garbage Hits the Dominican Republic

#80

Post by jbob2000 »

ksenzee wrote: post #66
jbob2000 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How hard is it to carry a metal straw with you? You hear news about the ban, and you put a couple plastic ones in your bag until the metal one from amazon arrives. Why are people so helpless? Jesus christ, it takes half a second to figure out this solution for yourself.

How hard is it to carry some TP with you? NBD, right? So you wouldn't mind having to take your own with you everywhere you go? > Why are people so helpless? I... you are literally talking about disabled people. A decent society should have some care for the needs of these people, and not ignore them when they tell us what is important to them.

Toilet paper and drinking straws are not equivalent. TP is biodegradable and EVERYBODY needs it. If stores were to stop carrying TP, then everyone would need to carry it around and that's silly.

Disabled people aren't helpless, they generally will do everything they can up until their disability stops them. I'm really struggling to think of a disability where someone would be prevented from putting a straw on their persons.

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