81–90 of 197 posts
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It'll stab you in the throat. A real concern for children, and undoubtedly also for some disabled folk: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2016/starbucks-to-recall-stainl... Just use biodegradable plastic straws.
IKEA sells in Germany straws from paper. Kids love them. Very light.
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On the landfill topic, I found this Slate Star Codex post very interesting: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e... I'd been idly wondering about the topic for years—specifically, WTF happened to all those environmental things schools & kids' nature magazines & cartoons had all the students worked up about back in the 90s? Are they fine now? Did it all go poorly so they gave up? You know, save…
Save the rainforest is still my main environmental mantra, thanks 5th grade. And I still think the pursuit of biodiversity is the best goal. Way more compelling to the average person than co2. And it it turns out that co2 reduction is necessary to save those lemurs, so be it. But do it for the biodiversity -- to save the rainforest. Not nearly as compelling to save the rainforest in order to reduce co2, or whatever.
The threat to lemur habitats is 1) Malagasy people practicing slash-and-burn agriculture, exacerbated by a very high birthrate on the island which means there is ever more need for new agricultural land to exploit, 2) Madagascar’s poor using charcoal for cooking because they cannot afford something like kerosene, and 3) rampant logging so that the exotic wood can be shipped to China for the furniture industry. It has nothing to do with the CO2 crisis.
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It'll stab you in the throat. A real concern for children, and undoubtedly also for some disabled folk: https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2016/starbucks-to-recall-stainl... Just use biodegradable plastic straws.
Biodegradable plastic has its own issues as well. Nearly all of them are food-based and will set off one food allergy or another, plus you may also have issues with straws dissolving in hot liquids. Someone elsewhere in the thread mentioned straws made of lobster shells. In addition to shellfish allergies, such a straw isn't going to be suitable for anyone who's vegan, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't kosher…
The plastics I'm think of are PLA and PHA. Mainly made of corn, but you could synthesize them from pure chemicals as well. Far more common than these "lobster shell" ones.
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IKEA sells in Germany straws from paper. Kids love them. Very light.
...and they'll also get soggy and dissolve in your drinks.
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Biodegradable plastic has its own issues as well. Nearly all of them are food-based and will set off one food allergy or another, plus you may also have issues with straws dissolving in hot liquids. Someone elsewhere in the thread mentioned straws made of lobster shells. In addition to shellfish allergies, such a straw isn't going to be suitable for anyone who's vegan, and I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't kosher…
Hard to drink hot liquids with a straw anyway (stirrers are another story). The plastics I'm think of are PLA and PHA. Mainly made of corn, but you could synthesize them from pure chemicals as well. Far more common than these "lobster shell" ones.
I haven't specifically looked into PLA and PHA much, but a quick google sees PLA being referred to as "too good to be true" and having "misleading biodegradability". I'm not seeing such concerns about PHA, but I've also only spent like a minute looking it up, and I wouldn't be surprised if some more intensive searching turns up some serious drawbacks. I have turned up some concerns about bioplastic production competing with food for the same agricultural resources, though.
I see comments pointing out that the majority of plastic pollution in oceans come from Asia/Africa. This is true, but there are two points worth considering: 1) Whenever you pay cheaply for anything made in any third world country, you're externalizing the societal cost of pollution to that country (and if it gets into the oceans, to everyone). In other words, you're not paying the true cost of that item--economicall…
I would also like to assert that non-western countries are very influenced by trends in North America and Europe. (Source: I am from such country in Africa, and am living in another in Asia) Once the west establishes plastics as something for the uneducated and poor -- that they[the west] got away from, people will rush to use their fancy not-so-cheap bags. Same with fossil fuels, recycling, carbon-related policies,…
Besides, if they west goes in this direction, economies of scale might simply make single-use-plastic more expensive than the alternatives..
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My theory (no evidence) is that the whole recycling movement has been completely counter productive since most of that material has been shipping abroad to countries that are poorly regulated. Had we just stuffed it into landfill (we have no shortage of space to take care of it, despite what the media says), we would be fine.
On the landfill topic, I found this Slate Star Codex post very interesting: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e... I'd been idly wondering about the topic for years—specifically, WTF happened to all those environmental things schools & kids' nature magazines & cartoons had all the students worked up about back in the 90s? Are they fine now? Did it all go poorly so they gave up? You know, save…
It's really weird that this little micro version of climate change denial (promoted by all the same sources) is still socially acceptable in certain circles when the arguments for it are so laughably weak. To see him praise John Tierney's articles is mind boggling to me, I thought his whole schtick was about rationality.
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"microscopic shards of poly-whatever start shredding and poisoning our bodies from the inside" Is there any evidence that this could happen? It's the first I've heard of it.
The effect has only been seen in aquatic animals so far, but they are exposed to much more microplastics than humans are. But microplastics don't (on a human timescale) go away. They just continue to accumulate as plastic items degrade in UV light and water, breaking down into smaller and smaller pieces. Microplastics have been detected in the feces of humans: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/22/659568662…
We know that we have air pollution, I find it unlikely that plastic will be much worse.
Do we have any reason to think so?
Note. I'm not saying it's harmless, just that maybe we have bigger fish to fry first.
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On the landfill topic, I found this Slate Star Codex post very interesting: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/01/what-happened-to-90s-e... I'd been idly wondering about the topic for years—specifically, WTF happened to all those environmental things schools & kids' nature magazines & cartoons had all the students worked up about back in the 90s? Are they fine now? Did it all go poorly so they gave up? You know, save…
Save the rainforest is still my main environmental mantra, thanks 5th grade. And I still think the pursuit of biodiversity is the best goal. Way more compelling to the average person than co2. And it it turns out that co2 reduction is necessary to save those lemurs, so be it. But do it for the biodiversity -- to save the rainforest. Not nearly as compelling to save the rainforest in order to reduce co2, or whatever.
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And emits CO2. No more plastic, less CO2 from production and from the waste. And it’s clearly our major crisis of the century.
Sweden (5.1) is very close to the world average (4.9 tCO2/capita/year) in fossil CO2 emissions, so they're doing really well for a developed country. (2017 data from Wikipedia.)