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Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

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Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#81

Post by jillesvangurp »

Plastic and glass bottle and can recycling is pretty common in most of Europe. You pay a deposit when you buy a can or bottle. And you get it back when you return it. If you leave your empty bottle on the street, some homeless person will return it for you. This is actually a pretty common form of charity in Berlin and it's not considered littering to leave your empty bottle for someone to collect it.

It's not a perfect system but most bottles and cans are collected this way and recycled. That would cover most of the bottles produced by the five companies mentioned in the article. You also don't get a plastic bag for free anymore but you can buy one. In most places it's going to be a paper bag. Simple solutions that work pretty well. And once people adjust, it isn't the end of the world.

The real issue is of course people dumping their trash all over the place instead of putting it in a trash can from where most of it would end up in a landfill, incinerator, or even being recycled. Some places have steep fines for littering, which works. IMHO not a bad thing. If you are too lazy to use a trashcan and get caught, there should be a penalty for being a jerk.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#82

Post by strogonoff »

paganel wrote: post #77
strogonoff wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumerist part of society may not be capable of generating as massive of a backlash as you might think. The key is in the name. :) People will do the next convenient thing, whatever it is. Re-use containers made of sustainable materials, not buy something on a whim that they do not need, pay more for plastic as an indulgence (obviously it should not be banned, just taxed), etc. Also, not a psychologist, but I r…

That's the thing, plastic is not an "indulgence", is part of everyday life now, more than any other material.

I described the state of affairs that would follow a hypothetical taxation of plastic, not that plastic today is an indulgence. Today plastic is a necessity to buy a drink or even clean water in many places. That’s the problem.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#83

Post by baud147258 »

blitzar wrote: post #50
strogonoff wrote: post #5

Thinking that recycling would address the problem of plastic pollution is wishful thinking. Plastic recycles very poorly. Companies like plastic because it means thicker margins for them, environment be damned; the proper solution is not to buy into the “consumers should be recycling” narrative but to thin out their margins so that using more sustainable and recyclable materials is financially attractive again.

> Thinking that recycling would address the problem of plastic pollution is wishful thinking People putting their rubbish in the bin rather than throwing it in the nearest gutter / river / garden would get us 90% of the way there.

Part of the issue is that rubbish in our bin (in the West) sometime ends up shipped across the world, in theory for 'recycling', but instead ends up dumped in another river...

Of course sometime I see littering in streets and parks, sometime literal feet away from bins and yeah, that's infuriating.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#84

Post by rob74 »

> Altria, a tobacco company, disagrees with the findings. In an email, a spokesperson said that the study data includes 80 countries, but its cigarette company Philip Morris USA, which owns brands such as Marlboro and Parliament, only operates in the United States, making it impossible for it to be responsible for 2 percent of the world’s branded plastic pollution.

Not sure about the other companies, but Coca-Cola could also try to weasel out of their responsibility this way: it's not widely known, but they operate on a franchise system, the actual regional bottlers operating independently from the Coca-Cola Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coca-Cola_Company#Bottlers).

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#85

Post by gaiagraphia »

If I made branded disposable products which ended up thrown around all over town, the police would become interested in me very quickly.

Enrages me how huge corporations churning out consumer slop aren't held to any standards.

Would love to see ringfenced taxes on domestic revenue for such companies, which go into cleaning up the streets of their shite, research into more sustainable materials, recycling and bottle collection schemes, etc.

Quite incredible the amount of guilt and societal pressure the little man has in 'saving the planet', when companies with nation state resources seem to be devoid of any responsibility.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#86

Post by lupusreal »

esperent wrote: post #64
blueflow wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pieces of plastic that they collected during clean-up events The article is about trash from littering. Surely the consumers fault.

> Surely the consumers fault. Finding fault is not the same thing as finding a solution. Does it get us in any way closer to a solution if we blame the company, the consumers, or both, or neither? I don't think so.

Littering is a solvable problem though; it's a cultural practice and can therefore be addressed. For instance, in Japan there are very few public trash cans (ever since a terrorist attack which used them) and yet almost nobody there litters. If Japanese people can hold onto their trash until they find a trash can, everybody else can to. We need to greenlight the kind of social pressures which create this sort of conscientious culture, namely intense bullying of anybody who is caught littering.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#87

Post by strogonoff »

actionfromafar wrote: post #74
blitzar wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thinking that recycling would address the problem of plastic pollution is wishful thinking People putting their rubbish in the bin rather than throwing it in the nearest gutter / river / garden would get us 90% of the way there.

Yes, but much of the ocean plastic is fishing nets and such.

That’s also true. The article states that those food and bev companies produce more plastic than household goods industry, but it does not rule out the amount of industrial plastic being bigger than both of those, which it realistically could be. That in turn does not mean food and bev companies should get a free pass, but it’s good to keep in mind.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#88

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gaiagraphia wrote: post #85

If I made branded disposable products which ended up thrown around all over town, the police would become interested in me very quickly. Enrages me how huge corporations churning out consumer slop aren't held to any standards. Would love to see ringfenced taxes on domestic revenue for such companies, which go into cleaning up the streets of their shite, research into more sustainable materials, recycling and bottle c…

I have mixed feelings tbh. On the one hand, sure, Coca Cola and co manufacture the plastic in the first place. On the other, consumers buy them and discard the packaging inappropriately OR the place they live in does not have adequate trash infrastructure in place.

Plastic waste is not a problem if it's handled correctly is what I'm saying. In big chunks of europe you pay a deposit for even small plastic bottles nowadays, to be returned if you (or someone else) returns it to a collection point from where it's (theoretically) disposed of properly. If it ends up in general waste or the environment, that deposit is theoretically used for its cleanup.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#89

Post by gaiagraphia »

blueflow wrote: post #26
OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #16

To everyone blaming consumers: I encourage you to take a solution driven mindset here. Consumers won't change. There's far too many people, some of which don't care about the environment. Tight regulations and additional tax on single use plastics can reduce plastic waste.

> pieces of plastic that they collected during clean-up events The article is about trash from littering. Surely the consumers fault.

Foreign companies with armies of staff, nation state resources, and global scale have a responsibility to leave the world in a better place. If not, what's the point of them operating?

If their goods are being used irresponsibly, they have a responsibility to educate those they manipulate into consuming their slop, and to develop systems to ensure that those who opt out of their nonsense aren't affected by the negative externalities of their operations.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#90

Post by Freak_NL »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #81

Plastic and glass bottle and can recycling is pretty common in most of Europe. You pay a deposit when you buy a can or bottle. And you get it back when you return it. If you leave your empty bottle on the street, some homeless person will return it for you. This is actually a pretty common form of charity in Berlin and it's not considered littering to leave your empty bottle for someone to collect it. It's not a perf…

Glass and aluminium are recycled. This works quite well. Plastic (and clothing) on the other hand, is now mostly just collected and afterwards discarded (burned, shipped overseas to dumping grounds, etc.).

Plastic recycling factories are going bankrupt (five in the tiny Netherlands in the space of one year), because they can't compete with new plastic. Textile processors are stuck with warehouses full of unusable discarded fast fashion.

Littering is just a tiny part of this problem. Reducing plastic (by charging for bags) is good and works, but the bigger issue lies with the fact that we use so much plastic, and often have no real choice in the matter.

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