Also show me a place where plastic recycling rates are over 10%
Use less or go for (less poisonous!) alternatives to plastic.
Every time I hear someone complain about a single tiny piece of plastic on the ground or someone uses slightly more than needed cling wrap, all I can think of is the couple of warehouses I used to work in a couple jobs ago.
Everything comes on pallets wrapped in about a dozen layers of cling wrap. 8-10ft tall pallets.
Every box gets opened, the items pulled out of a large plastic bag, each item wrapped in its own plastic bag.
Those items get put in other boxes, stacked on a different pallet, and wrapped in another dozen layers of plastic wrap.
The pallets get moved to a temporary spot for a few hours, then someone comes up and curs all the wrap off. Moves the boxes onto 4 other pallets, and each of those goes to a separate forklift driver who puts them on shelves.
When the item leaves, it’s placed in plastic bags, then a box, then goes on a pallet that gers wrapped in a dozen layers of plastic wrap. Onto the truck for shipping elsewhere.
They have a truck that comes twice a day to replace a shipping container filled with plastic.
So much plastic, every day, all day, they only close for Christmas and 4th of July.
Am I still going to use anything but plastic wherever possible? Sure. Am I still going to pick up that piece of plastic and put it in the recycling bin? Absolutely.
Companies suck and will blame you for their shitty treatment just like every abuser does.
This is why I need to remember the based takes I had when I was young.
I always thought it was silly that we were told to recycle because, who could do anything with an old half-melted plastic bottle of coke? But I assumed the people who owned the companies knew something I didn’t.
I still recycle because it’s just the right thing to do, but… I wonder what other lies I accidentally called.
I’m sure you called many…
Me rinsing the yogurt container before putting it in the recycling bin vs reading that a Belgian airline had 3000 empty flights just to keep airport slots
Recycling is chemically possible at very high temperatures and pressures; it’s just energy intensive and wasn’t financially feasible until just about now, when solar energy can offer cheap energy.
We’ll see how this will develop in the future. For the point of oil consumption (and therefore CO2 emission), plastics is only like 3% of oil consumption anyways (other 97% is fuel for vehicles). For the point of pollution, you don’t need recycling, just collecting and combusting at high temperatures (to fully oxydize it and not leave any toxic fumes.
We recently built a plastic recycling facility here in sweden which recycles… 12 types of plastic i think? several of which were basically not possible before.
so yeah it’s definitely possible to recycle plastics, countries have just been refusing to actually take measures to make it happen.
just collecting and combusting at high temperatures
You mean GHG pollution.
what’s the fix?
For the harm that’s already been done? Time.
For the future? Regulation.
Regulation
that’s extremely vague, what does the regulation do? Does it limit types of plastic? Uses of plastic? Production quantities? Waste allocations?
I’m not a plastic or environmental specialist, so I can’t say. Surely you don’t expect me to know all the answers, do you? Come on, now.
I’d think regulation would encompass all the things you mentioned, possibly more like subsidizing the use of non-plastics in industrial applications, for example.
My point is that regulations are likely insufficient.
What we really need is a reduction in consumption. We need to stop living life as “dedicated waste manufacturers”.
Here’s a useful article to help get over the limits of regulations: https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/
Did you link the wrong thing?
Obviously, individuals also matter. Vote with your wallet, always.
However, pointing the finger at consumers seems fruitless? People will do the most convenient thing, not the best thing. As such, I’d suspect it best to make the most convenient thing equal the best thing.
I’m not trying to say that pushing for anti-consumerism and sustainable consumption is wrong—as a matter of fact, I think that’s great and it’s something I do, personally—but I do think that, at the end of the day, if disposable plastic bags are handed out, people will use them; if fruits are wrapped in plastic, people will use it; if plastic straws come with drinks, people will use them; if disposable cutlery is for sale, people will buy it. The solution is, therefore, to regulate this stuff. Maybe ban it, even.
Get rid of them. I was very young but existed in the 70’s and the grocery store did not have all the plastics and there was plenty of convenience in foods. Its amazing what glass, paper, and aluminum can do. Glass was not even recycled usually. Had a deposit added to the cost and got it back when you returned it to the store where the person supplying the item took them back and they were washed and reused. It was why bottle caps were so prevalent.
glass was not even recycled usually
Yeah, we would reuse it (as the order implies in reduce, reuse, recycle). Recycling glass takes wayyyyyyy more energy than cleaning it. But the glass makers benefit more from access to cheap broken glass, so we get them lobbying so that glass recycling drop-off/containers almost force you to shatter every bottle you put into them…
Dropping at the grocery store bottle return and you can hear the glasses being shattered shortly after scanning.
Yeah put think about all the rain forest you saved by using plastic bags!
I know you’re joking, but as far as aluminum is concerned, this is true. Which is why paper and glass are crucial.
I think this is sarcastic but just in case. Given how much paper we used before and that this is something that works great with recycled paper and that we can make paper from grasses like bamboo now, I don’t see the need for rainforest cutting to do it.
Yes it was sarcastic. Plastic bags were pushed to “save the rain forest”. But we never had the problem to begin with. We have since switched to mostly tree plantations for are wood/paper production.
Everything is a compromise. We could bring back paper in a larger scale, but then more land would have to be dedicated to working forests which are sustainable but aren’t ecologically friendly. We could bring back glass in a larger scale, but that would make shipments much heavier thus increasing the emissions required to ship it.
We handled the paper needed for all the paperwork that has gone away and we did not even use non tree alternatives at that time. Plus the grocery usages work well with recycled paper. Most of what glass is used for is filled locally. You don’t ship cans of pop or beer from china. Since most glass was liquids the container is not a majority of the weight.
Just an FYI, shipping means “the process of transporting packages and mail from one location to another” not literally transporting goods internationally on a ship.
Yeah I was pointing out just the minimal effect. Shipping locally has the capability of being able to be done with clean energy and then there is the whole most of the weight is from the liquid thing. Not implying international shipping is the only prospect but more how its not really tradeoffs as all the tradeoffs are better options.
Significant reduction in single use plastics, banning plastic use in certain products (even non-single-use), and a drastic increase in accountability for producers and consumers.
You don’t need to ban plastics, you just regulate the people making things to have to ethically dispose of the waste generated by their products. They will pretty rapidly switch to something they can actually dispose of. The manufacturer needs to be responsible for the full life cycle of their products.
They don’t actually have alternatives in the single-use realm. The result must be an end to it, bankruptcy from their perspective.
If we replace plastic containers with containers that are paper covered in PFAS and similar substances, we’re not solving the problems.
I disagree that full responsibility needs to go on the manufacturer. An undeniable issue with our current system is that consumers expect to throw all plastic in one bin that isn’t the garbage and be done with it. There are lots of different ways to set up responsibility, but on top of production changes plastic “recycling” will need to change significantly from the user perspective. Things like stronger deposit programs would be a bare minimum to start addressing the consumer side (in tandem with measures addressing production of course)
Better government
For capitalism: horizontal organizing
For plastic waste: plastic-eating fungi
For plastic waste: plastic-eating fungi
It’s going to be fun when I have to spray my computer devices with fungicides.
