Just one more reason to hold corporations accountable for pollution and global warming. The free market is not going to solve this one, even when you give people warm and fuzzy feelings for "doing the right thing". It's just not profitable to be Green yet, and maybe that won't change until companies have to pay for the second order effects of their products.
The problem with implementing these taxes are political; people with vested interests will argue long and hard against any new taxes, and any working solution needs to be global.
It looks to me like outside this we there is a significant bunch of people who do not know or accept this. Actually, at some point I was pondering whether the main distinction [1] between conservative-populist movements and "the elite" these movements are against is exactly the point that "the elite" understands and acknowledges the concept of externality and wants to address this market failure with something, while the populists refuse to understand or accept the issue.
[1] At least we can be confident that the distinction is not wealth, money or political influence, what one could naively think elite has and non-elite not.
> It looks to me like outside this we there is a significant bunch of people who do not know or accept this. Actually, at some point I was pondering whether the main distinction [1] between conservative-populist movements and "the elite" these movements are against is exactly the point that "the elite" understands and acknowledges the concept of externality and wants to address this market failure with something, while the populists refuse to understand or accept the issue.
If the populists refuse to understand or accept the issue, the population refuses to understand or accept the issue.
It really depends on the population. Green parties are often pretty strong in wealthy European countries. Unfortunately, Greens also tend to be leftists that refuse whole idea of a free market. They'd rather ban things than handling externalities with prices.
The other problem is that externalities are hard to price. If the price is too low, the problem isn't solved. If the price is too high, people won't want to pay it.
In any event, the underlying problem isn't free markets itself, it's what the people want (or think they want).
The point of the tax is not that the revenue will be used to reduce waste. The point is that it will increase the cost of producing waste for the polluter, ideally exactly to the point where it matches the cost to society of that waste.
The purpose isn't to make people stop polluting entirely, but to make it so they will only do so when it brings them a benefit larger than the societal cost of the pollution.
Right, but if the public wants to reduce X, and makes a tax on X a big contributor to city revenue, a city can improve their finances by increasing X, i.e. doing the opposite of what the public wants.
Why spend $$$ promoting and supporting recycling if a landfill tax is paying your wages?
It seems incorrect to conclude the public wants to reduce X when it taxes X.
The minimally logical conclusion (to me) is the public doesn’t want to pay for the externalities of X. Taxing X—assuming the tax levied is an appropriate amount to cover the externalities of X—makes actor Y who is doing X pay for X and its externalities, alleviating the burden on the public while avoiding taking an actual stand and/or engaging an effort to reduce X. Y does X? Y pays for it, not the public.
How much taxes on X adds to public revenue is mostly irrelevant, so long as it is enough to cover the costs of dealing with X without shifting that burden onto the general public via other taxes. If the revenue from X is enough to cover the costs of X’s externalities and also pays for wages and/or other public needs, that’s a net win for the public. You likely won’t see a city starting up a campaign to increase undesirable thing X just because it’d increase revenues.
Now, if the public really wants to reduce X by means of taxing X, it will likely choose to levy heavy, punitive taxes on X as doing X increases/continues, hoping to make it financially painful to those doing X to have to pay for X—for example, look at cigarette taxes. That can only go so far, though, before you encounter those for whom the added punitive tax is not a sufficient deterrent. Then it’s either a choice between more increases to get X to zero, or some other type of concerted public or legal effort to curtail X.
The act of taxing X isn’t enough of a signal to conclude the public is using the tax as a reduction effort. But it’s certainly a signal that the public doesn’t want to pay for X via standard revenues—and the public absolutely should not bear the burden for the negative externalities of any X. There’s no doubt a built-in hope that, assuming the costs of X’s externalities are known, taxing Y to pay for X will encourage reduction because—especially if Y is a company—Y wants to keep their expenses low, and really doesn’t want to pay for X. A city levying such taxes, assuming it is even moderately well-managed, will hope to see that the tax revenue for X will hit zero in tandem with X itself hitting zero—the success state[0].
[0]: I’m going to ignore the real-world chance that revenues from X get allocated to previously non-existing programs that then need to find a new source of revenue—but that’s a different problem.
The example I was thinking of is [1] - "Revenue-hungry cities mess with traffic lights to write more tickets [...] cities and towns shortening yellow lights spike the number of tickets, and thereby increase revenue. The profits come at a social cost, as shorter yellow light times have been associated with an increase in car accidents."
In that case, X=car accidents - any public red-light-camera advocacy will say they reduce X.
Of course, you're right to say that a tax on X doesn't prove people dislike X - a tax on income doesn't mean citizens hate income. You could even argue a tax on alcohol means citizens like alcohol too much! But a subset of taxes, such as fines and some sin taxes, are presented in the public discourse as about reducing X rather than making money.
I’d agree that some taxes are presented in public discourse as at least partially being about reducing some X—though fines shouldn’t be lumped in with taxes. Fines are worth considering as a different thing with their own reasoning and goals that often make them distinct from taxes—particularly because fines are punitive and come after known legislated/regulated behavior has occurred.
That worked really well for cigarettes and alcohol. Time to face the truth: these type of taxes are a way to profit off of people's behavior for the sake of the politically connected.
the purpose of a waste tax is not to get money for the government to use to reduce waste, it is to get companies to reduce waste because they want to reduce their tax burden.
If the consumer pays the tax the prices rise, if the prices rise the consumer goes elsewhere, therefore you look at if you can reduce pollution, reduce the tax and keep the cost for the user the same hopefully leading over time to more of that wonderful thing - profit.
Yes, give the corporations this as something to be sold then it can be a part of a product, making people(or corporations) do things is last resort imo.
What does plastic that went from the recycling bin to the landfill have to do with "pollution and global warming" beyond plastic being an almost trivial use of oil?
Disposable plastics under open sun -> Microplastics -> Unknown damage to the whole foodchain -> Possibly (we don't have good data to work off), widescale ecosystem collapse, people dying.
These two issues are frequently conflated together, to the detriment of the overall discussion. But it is true that they both ultimately are results of the same failures of market-based economy. If you do root cause analysis on both, you'll end up in the same place. But since it's (AFAIU) unpractical to address the root cause directly, we need to consider which of the two problems to focus on; I'd argue we should focus on the emissions first.
This is a question I've found myself asking quite a bit lately. Paper products are often marketed as a 'green' alternative to petroleum products. IIRC much of the plastic we use is made from a byproduct of the oil refinement process so it's something we have anyways. Even though paper products biodegrade quicker, it seems like unless the paper product is made from 100% post consumer waste a properly disposed plastic product is better for the environment.
I do think part of the problem is that so many of our landfills are poorly managed. In high school I used to spend my summers working for the public works department in the rural community I grew up in. A few days out of the month we had to go out to the fields near the landfill and pick up plastic bags and other bits of trash that had blown out of the landfill before being covered.
I say this as someone who avoids single use plastics, drinks tap water, recycles, etc.
Plastics leech estrogen mimicking materials into the food chain. All living creatures now have bits inside us, and there have been large hormonal effects such as early puberty, increase in intersex births, declining male fertility, and so on.
It's hard to say exactly which types of plastics do what, so maybe some are benign, but it's a large uncontrolled experiment at present.
Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but could this be part of the reason for the (maybe just perceived) increase in trans people? I don’t have solid stats, but based off of what I see outside and on the internet, the number of openly trans people has grown tremendously this past decade, and MTF seem to outnumber FTM by a huge margin.
Nonhuman studies would almost certainly be more definitive as gender identity (in humans) is hugely compounded with exogenous societal, cultural, political, and medical factors. As an example of the latter, until recently considered a diagnosible and treatable medical and/or psychological disorder.
Disentangling those factors would be exceedingly difficult, although longitudinal cross-cultural studies (possibly widely separated twins) might get you somewhere.
Animal model populations' medical institutional bias is somewhat lower.
The simplest explanation is that it's 'acceptable' to be trans in 2019. Plastic didn't make people gay, but the gay population increased in the mid to late 1900s just as the trans population is increasing now.
There aren't just the social factors with coming out, but also the education around being being trans. Some people live their entire lives not knowing and only find out after watching youtube, meeting people in the community, or going to therapy (which is also becoming more commonplace and acceptable). The stigma attached to trans people as mentally unwell 'others' prevented people from even considering it for most of their lives.
Also, I do not believe there is an unbalance of trans woman to trans men. Trans women are more controversial (bathrooms) than trans men, which puts them in a public spotlight. Trans women often present themselves as stereotypical women, and if they've not fully medically/surgically transitioned yet, it makes them easy to pick out in a crowd. Trans men, on the other hand, wear men's clothes, which happen to be gender neutral if worn casually. They are often seen as 'butch' women if not fully transitioned, not trans men. You oftentimes probably wouldn't notice or identify trans men when you see them.
So much of our identity is special to us. How would you feel as a gay man if someone told you that the reason your sexuality was not standard heterosexual was because your mum's womb was knackered from having seven kids and you were last in the line?
This is a thing, but, after spending a teenage coming out, it is just a bit of a harsh thing to be told.
Since we can't even discuss this yet, what chance is there that we will have the conversation about how pollution is messing up our fertility and gender?
Largest reason is that trans, homosexual and bisexual people don't have to fear being killed or shunned by their families or in school any more. (Yes, in reality they do have to fear discrimination, but soxiety as a large has gotten way, way more open in the last 30 years!)
Trans people were known in ancient Greece ffs, it's mostly thanks to the Catholic church and its "morals" that we ended up with imprisoning people for being gay or trans.
Do you have citations for that being the reason? And what about societies outside of Catholic influence? Seems odd to blame them.
And I never said they didn’t exist, so I’m not sure why you seem to have an aggressive tone. I know they’ve always existed. But with research showing intersex births becoming more common than ever, I have to wonder if there’s a connection to rates of being trans as well.
The Catholic Church policy on condoms was blamed for the high rates of HIV in Africa and yet if you looked at the stats, the countries where protestantism was more predominant than Catholicism had higher rates and vice versa. Not claiming there was any causation there but the original allegation had no basis. If someone is going to flout church teaching on sex outside marriage they are hardly going to be worried about flouting it by using a condom.
I'm curious why you feel its the Catholic church specifically. My understanding is that strong disapproval of gay or trans people is common throughout the Abrahamic religions.
It is, but he or she said "mostly" because of the catholic church and that might be true, because they are the oldest and still most powerful single organization of the abrahamic religions.
What's an older and more powerful single institution of an abrahamic religion? I can only guess you are referring to something involving Judaism but there is nothing even remotely like the Catholic church (large, rich, organized, formal creed, central authority, standardized practice across large territories) in thousands of years of the history of Judaism.
There isn't really any research either way that I'm aware of. Without knowing the likely cause of gender dysphoria, we can't really know if the factors I listed would be relevant.
That said, I think it's worth investigating. Here's a paper from Scott Kerlin, showing the results of survey from DES sons. It's a group of people born as male to women given DES, an estrogen affecting drug.
"More than 150 network members with “confirmed” or “strongly suspected” prenatal DES exposure status indicated they are either transsexual (pre- or post-operative, 90 members), transgender (48 members), “gender dysphoric” (17 members), or intersex (3 members)."
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A strong caveat to this would be that people don't just join a group called DES sons on a whim. A large number of women were given DES. Many more than 500 sons were born to them. People who joined the group are self selecting as having had some sort of problem or concern to discuss.
And that's almost all I could find on the topic. The only other thing that seemed notable is that the brains of transgender people resemble those of their chosen sex, not their birth sex. I.e. a MTF person had a brain typical of a women, not a man. But, this difference may only appear in adulthood, so it isn't clear if it is physiological or social.
If someone wanted to investigate this, investigating the testicular and endocrinal health of MTF people before transition would be a good start. If endocrine disruption had anything to do with it you would expect to see much more testicular cancer. The DES group had 5 out of 500 with this cancer, incidentally, while having a low cancer incidence overall.
I would categorize the published research on this topic as extremely slim. It's not even at the hypothesis stage, and your question isn't answerable without much further research.
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Oh also, while traditionally there were more MTF, recently gender dysphoria clinics are reporting more FTM.
The year on year referral increase is very large. So social acceptance/awareness must have a sizeable role. Endocrine dysruption can't explain a ~4x increase in 5 years.
Not that I know of, or that I could find. And if there were, I suspect many men would try to use it. The absence of this phenomenon implies that the substance does not exist.
Recycle what you can and burn the rest. That is the most ecological solution if it is done by modern standards. It works and is done in most of Europe.
Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Austria all put less than 5% of their trash directly into landfills.
Functioning trash handling is far more effective at reducing the ecological impact of plastic than any attempt to reduce plastic consumption.
Personaly I think Switzerland is the best model on how to handle trash properly.
Paper and other plant-based products are one major method of getting carbon in a useful form from the air instead of underground. Generally, the trees that are chopped down to make paper were specially planted for the purpose in managed forests, and a larger market for paper goods will lead to more land use for such forests.
I find it amazing that if an alien civilization descended on us and taxed all fossil fuel usage by 100%, and took all that money out of planet Earth forever, both we and the aliens would be better off.
Are you referring to cow farts? ISTM that cow farts come from cow food, which in turn comes from plants that pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Elsewhere ITT this cycle is used to justify using paper products. This seems very different than pulling fossil fuel out of the ground and burning it?
Air travel is particularly carbon intensive on a per-journey basis and cannot be decarbonized using current technology. We can replace your car with an EV, we can run your air conditioner on renewable electricity, we can swap your gas furnace for a ground-source heat pump, but passenger aviation is going to involve burning tonnes of kerosene for the foreseeable future.
Direct Air Capture can pull carbon out of the atmosphere for ~$200 per tonne. Flying generates about 0.1 tonne per passenger-hour. We can make flying carbon neutral and it'd only be ~20% more expensive.
If you account for the impact of the emissions, rather than their weight, air travel is ~6-10% (Because emissions at 30,000 feet have a larger greenhouse effect.)
Society tends to underestimate the power of inefficiencies and shortcomings to keep us in the right track by making it difficult to attain our immediate aspirations. The exception is in the case of the underclasses. In this case most people just find it obvious that if they have too much too easily then the entrepreneurial spirit would collapse and along with it society.
I wonder why the comment is called "incendiary" in the article. Flight prices are ridiculously cheap, especially in Europe. As far as I know the jet fuel isn't even taxed, while it would make sense to tax it harder than fuel for other uses.
I do take advantage of these almost-free flights, but often wish they'd be more expensive -- to make rail travel more competitive if nothing else.
This might be off topic but why does the Australian media constantly source their "expert" quotes from the Institute of Public Affairs? The entire organisation is complete bullshit. Surely they can find people with actual credibility to put up an opposing argument once in a while.
The free market solves this easily, if given the correct incentives.
It's up to the political system to to produce those, and it's proven incapable.
For example, we've known for a long time what will solve global warming most effectively: Carbon taxes. Preferably global ones, but local ones are the correct regional step.
And our political systems have spent decades doing everything except this simple thing that will actually work.
There's no such thing as a free market, except as a hypothetical construct. Markets are always regulated, if not by governments, then by large market participants who can use their clout to create conditions favourable to themselves.
When the market is not informed or cared enough to make the move, it needs external push from the government.
This is exactly why I see a ray of hope since Canada announced she will ban single use plastic in near future [0].
I hope international cooperations grasp this chance to abandon as much plastic as possible altogether in the global supply chain, not just to cater to Canada's upcoming regulations.
Except that throwing plastic in a landfill is carbon sequestration, and way, way better for the environment than “recycling” which usually results in it shipped to unaccountable companies overseas that dump it in the nearest river, or ending up in an incinerator and releasing it as CO2.
> way, way better for the environment than [...] ending up in an incinerator and releasing it as CO2.
Not necessarily. Just thinking about total CO2 released, it should be better for the environment to release the energy in the oil you have currently (in plastic form) than burn extra CO2 extracting an equivalent oil from the ground, refining it, transporting it, etc.
The equation might be different if you're getting your energy from non-fossil fuels. In this case, the correct answer is probably to recycle it properly rather than ship it to a third country for an unknown fate.
EDIT: I'm assuming here that your incinerator is a modern one that generates energy and that you're not just burning things because they're inconvenient.
Why would you hold corporations accountable for people in developing countries throwing plastic into rivers, which is the source of 80% of ocean plastic?
> It's just not profitable to be Green yet, and maybe that won't change until companies have to pay for the second order effects of their products.
It will be as soon as plastic recycling becomes economically attractive. I think it'll take a ban on new plastic production and consequent shortage for that to happen. Until then, I'm sure there's a few of these dodgy "recycling" businesses that put plastic in landfills with the intent of mining it for resources again in a possible future.
The correct place to take plastic out of landfills is by forbidding its use in manufacture, for anything except unavoidable necessities such as medical uses.
You can use glass bottles and wash and reuse them.
You can package things in wax paper.
You can wear clothes made of natural fiber.
Plastic needs to be treated like asbestos: useful, but the uses do not justify the risk in most cases.
We need to look at things in a moderate and reasonable way instead of going from an extreme to the opposite extreme. It used to be that plastic was fantastic. Now we arguably use too much of it so some people go to the other extreme of wanting to get rid of it altogether.
The reality is that plastics are great materials that are very useful, the flip side being that they need to be properly disposed of.
Yes, they are probably over-used in some cases, e.g. packaging, but that does not mean we should treat plastics "like asbestos".
For example, you mention glass bottles: They require a lot of energy to be manufactured, they are heavy (more energy needed to transport them), they require energy, water, and chemicals to be washed. Is that necessarily more environmentally friendly that plastic efficiently recycled?
You also mention wax paper, which (as far as I know) is not very recyclable because it's waxed. Probably better to use cardboard or a type of plastic that recycles well (and is actually recycled!)
A potential "solution" is to price in the externality and tax the use of plastic in manufacturing. Then the market can decide whether it's "worth" using plastic for disposable water bottles or food wrapping.
We could, but then we should also tax everything else (e.g. glass bottles) based on objective criteria as there is no reason to single out plastic.
Perhaps these criteria could be based on the ease and cost of recycling, with a huge penalty if not recyclable and a bonus if biodegradable/compostable.
The money will be squander by the government and all that will happen is the poor people will get poorer. It's so easy to be like oh just tax it, and forget the guy who's scraping by can't afford another 10-25 cents more per thing they buy at dollar general because adding a tax to it tried to justify the plastic.
I refuse to buy into the idea that ecological destruction is benelovent because we couldn't otherwise support such a drastic level of poverty and inequality.
The same argument could be made for rainforest deforestation, saying it's a good thing because it's feeding the poor!
Nonsense, tax the externality and then give back and support the worst affected through taxation or aid if needed. Inequality is at a record high, perhaps it wouldn't be so high if we made everything more expensive and then taxed the rich to pay for it.
In the UK there have been effects, but it's too early to tell the full picture. Many drinks cut down their sugar content to avoid the tax and full-sugar drinks are often excluded from 'meal deals' (or the levy is explicity added, e.g. McDonalds' meals) so I would expect that people have be switching to diet versions in those cases. The Uk is pretty small so things can be changed at a whole country level more easily.
>another 10-25 cents more per thing they buy at dollar general because adding a tax to it tried to justify the plastic
In fairness, there is absolutely no way Dollar General is going to continue to source your product if it starts costing an extra 10-25 cents more per unit. You'd get cancelled quicker than your average Netflix Original.
If you think the Walmart process is bad behind the scenes, you definitely don't want to see how the Dollar General sausage is made. I'm pretty sure you could count on a switch to aluminum and paper containers in Dollar General fairly quickly.
They'd probably even market it as, "Eco Friendly".
If you want to buy a drink, bring a reusable bottle to the shop and fill it up from a dispensery or use glass bottles.
The culture simply needs to change - its a habitual problem, not a technical one. We have the technology.
I think Germany has their Pfand (plastic/glass deposit) system working really really well, although admittingly the plastic gets incinerated.
I don't know why more countries don't adopt these methods or similar.
Homeless people pick them up, and get 25c for it, then the bottles are washed and reused. Fantastic.
We should invest in optimising these ideas so they become more ubiquitous and cheaper than plastic.
From Germany here: I disagree! The 'Single use plastic bottle deposit' you probably refer to doesn't really have the effect it was supposed to have.
There are three types of bottle deposits: glass bottles 8c 29.2% market share (ms) (probably almost entirely beer), reusable plastic bottles 25c 13.6% ms, single use plastic bottles 52.2% ms and aluminum cans 25c 3.2% ms (2016, numbers are up now). [0]
The single use plastic bottle deposit was introduced as a measure to REDUCE market share and support use of glass, but instead people got used to paying more for their water bottles and returning them or "donating" them to poor retired or just plain poor people and might even feel good about themselfes which is not a great incentive. Reusable plastic bottles got more and more replaced by single use and glass bottles water vanished almost entirely. Every grocery store in Germany had to install huge sorting-and-compressing machines for all the different bottle deposits. For some years (long before plastics deposit I believe) a deposit for aluminum soda cans worked quite well but I get the impression products are increasing (I guess bcs people got used to pay the extra 25c.).
This all boils down to one solution in my opinion: Regulation.
The 'free' market is not willing and/or able to factor in environmental variables but is forced to ramp down prices no matter what to nuture their shareholders and growth.
There is literally no need to buy bottled water. There is probably not a single town in Germany where you are not able to drink tap water. So yes, a change in mentality would be necessary. But banning single use plastic bottles (as a start) instead of "taxing them properly" wouldn't change our lifestyle one bit.
This troubles me because I am pretty certain we all have to change our lifestyles drastically if we want to somehow limit the environmental impact.
Which means in practise it's not recyclable at all. I don't count something as such if the cycle isn't fully closed. Aluminium is, glass is, plastic is not.
Explicit recycling is not necessarily the best option depending on the resources (e.g. energy) needed.
Burning plastics is an option especially if plant-based (to be carbon neutral) but it then raises the issue of land use.
Biodegradability/compostability is another option with new types of plastics and/or GMO bacteria.
The point is to look at the full picture instead of claiming that all plastics should be get rid of without considering if the alternatives are any better.
The full picture looks pretty grim. I think y’all miss out on the bigger picture cus y’all hit these ideological blinders, very peculiar to HN.
For example, the article is very explicit about why recycling is not working - it has to do with economics - and y’all talking nonsense about GMO bacteria and energy use.
There is a major, qualitative difference between Reduce, which is strategic and lowers pollution, and Reuse and Recycle, which are tactical and mostly just shuffle pollution around.
If your strategy is in place and people support it, use all the tactics you can. But if your strategy is not in place, tactics often backfire. As this article points out, people think they're being virtuous by recycling so they buy plastic profligately -- the opposite of the strategy. I'm starting to think we should change the phrase "Reduce, reuse, recycle" to "Reduce".
We can each reduce our consumption and therefore demand significantly, while improving our lives. When I cut out nearly all my packaged food, my food costs went down and quality of life and food went up. The last two times I emptied my garbage were September 2018 and July 2017.
Some might say it's hard or only one person, as I would have before experiencing the change, but it was rewarding and improves my life, as it will yours. That it reduced my garbage by about 90% is a side effect. http://joshuaspodek.com/year-emptied-garbage.
I'm not saying only individuals should change or suggesting not doing other things. I support institutional change and pricing extraction and waste with taxes since the public pays for the cleanup. But everyone right here right now can cut their consumption and waste, which will lead to faster implementation of institutional change, legislation, etc.
>Asbestos kills people. What plastic risk are you referring to, environmental pollution?
Plastic likely has all sorts of medical complications, that we will probably start to see manifest here in the near future now that it is now in the food and water we consume [1], now in the air we breathe [2] and even in our poop [3].
>Ingested microplastic particles can physically damage organs and leach hazardous chemicals—from the hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA) to pesticides—that can compromise immune function and stymie growth and reproduction. Both microplastics and these chemicals may accumulate up the food chain, potentially impacting whole ecosystems, including the health of soils in which we grow our food. Microplastics in the water we drink and the air we breathe can also hit humans directly.
Not sure why this is downvoted. He is absolutely right.
Whilst rich people on hacker News get to eat quality
produce, most people aren't as fortunate.
They are exposed to higher levels of pollution. I mean, the west basically dumps their trash in South East Asia now with little care or regard. Do you think this doesn't pollute the land, animals and people?
You can burn plastics into energy or reuse it. Temperature should be high enough to avoid toxic byproducts.
Consider:
hydrocarbons -> energy
vs.
hydrocarbons -> plastic product -> possible recycling -> energy.
Plastics can also be made from cellulose. If this route is taken and becomes more popular, you could grow stuff, make it into plastics, use it, then bury it to store rid of carbon. Possibly turn plastics it into cubes and drop them into some deep place in ocean without volcanic activity where it stays inert hundreds of millions of years.
Sure, you can burn plastics -- but releasing even more CO2 is not attractive. There is a lot of talk about ways to sequester carbon -- it seems like throwing away tons of plastic is doing exactly that. Now, I'm sure it could be done in a better way that is currently being done, but burning it seems like non-starter.
Yesterday I posted on /r/crazyideas about doing a startup that would design reusable, standard packaging of difference shapes for all possible food forms. It could be made of high quality plastic, glass, maybe stainless steel, etc as long as it can be easily recycled and that brands can put paper stickers on them. Those can be returned/sold back.
Someone answered me that most plastics can be recycled because he worked in a recycling plant, meaning this was a bad idea. I linked him a forbes article after a few comments and he stopped answering. It's hard to know if that guy was just astroturfing me.
> Second paragraph seems a little conspiracy theorist-y to be honest!
I agree, though it's always worth remembering 1) that AI and automated marketing and responses will only get better as time goes on, and 2) there are a lot of unemployed people who can, could, and will shill for things on the internet. If there is a profit motive 1 & 2 will likely happen.
The problem is separating idiots from deliberate misinformation.
It doesn't stay there. And microplastic looks very likely to be an asbestos-level menace up and down the food chain, including to humans. The more it breaks down, the worse it is. The only safe way to dispose of plastic is incineration, adding to the carbon dioxide problem. The best way to avoid this is not to make it.
It does just stay there in a well run landfill, and microplastics mostly either come from tyres and cosmetics, or plastics that aren't disposed of in landfills.
There's some poorly run landfills, but how about we campaign to somewhat improve landfills instead of trying to reform all of modern society?
Most landfills aren't well run. They're in third world countries, or places with business-favouring politics, or corrupt.
Also, you aren't thinking in deep time. Plastic waste needs to be managed indefinitely if it isn't going to be incinerated, because plastic becomes more dangerous, not less, as it becomes finer particles. Which also penetrate containment more readily.
> Most landfills aren't well run. They're in third world countries, or places with business-favouring politics, or corrupt.
We can regulate our own landfills and we can regulate which countries we export to. This is a far more realistic prospect than just banning most plastic products outright, as you suggest.
> Plastic waste needs to be managed indefinitely if it isn't going to be incinerated, because plastic becomes more dangerous, not less, as it becomes finer particles.
Yes, waste needs to be managed indefinitely, and we will always have to manage waste. We can do that.
>Ingested microplastic particles can physically damage organs and leach hazardous chemicals—from the hormone-disrupting bisphenol A (BPA) to pesticides—that can compromise immune function and stymie growth and reproduction. Both microplastics and these chemicals may accumulate up the food chain, potentially impacting whole ecosystems, including the health of soils in which we grow our food. Microplastics in the water we drink and the air we breathe can also hit humans directly.
And a little more concerning
>What matters most is whether these physical and chemical impacts ultimately affect an organism’s growth, reproduction or susceptibility to illness. In a surprising study published in March, not only did fish exposed to microplastics reproduce less but their offspring, who weren’t directly exposed to plastic particles, also had fewer young, suggesting the effects can linger into subsequent generations.
Asbestos can take 10-80 years to cause cancer based on a cursory Google search while plastics are capable of causing a decline in fertility rates for at least two generations as well as begin to immediately interfere with hormone levels/production.
It took decades to understand asbestos was bad as it is and even then it took direct exposure (generally with you working with the stuff). Plastic is building up in the environment daily, and the levels have only really start to increase.
Plastic is also effectively forever, there is no practical plastic abatement like there is with asbestos. One great way of dealing with asbestos removal is keeping it damp, microplastics though are just going to spread with water. Microplastics are in the air and water, it's effectively falling like snow from the sky which is documented in the NatGeo article I linked.
Concentrations of microplastics is only going to go up as more and more of the plastic we've created starts to break down into smaller and smaller pieces. When you get small enough, like nano-scale, particles can get extremely dangerous as they can cross the cell membrane.
Plastic pollution is likely going to be far worse than asbestos and for incredibly more species.
Which just defers the problem. What's underground will eventually be returned to the surface by [insert geological event here]. What will a landfill be in 10,000 years time?
Deferring the problem seems like a viable strategy in this case. Plastic recycling seems like the kind of thing that technology might have something to say about eventually - especially if the plastic is already conveniently sorted into its own dedicated place. If petroleum demand falls to the point where oil wells shut down, and there's huge piles of plastic ready for the taking just under the surface, the economics of digging it up become more and more favorable. Plausibly, the problem could solve itself in time.
I would argue that the uses do justify the risks in many cases. Plastic isn’t just one thing, there are myriad polymers and applications for them. I’m not aware of any studies that would place all polymers anywhere near the levels of toxicity of the asbestos family, which has roughly one practical application.
I think we should figure out how to make bio-plastics. Instead of wasting all this money sorting and recycling them, make them out of things that biodegrade and use the carbon already in the air.
Putting plastic in a landfill is not a crisis. Sending it to Asia to be processed out in the open where storms carry it off to sea is. Just throw your plastic in the garbage like I started doing after watching Plastic China.
Spread the word.
If you could be assured it would be burned, then separating it would make some sense, but as long as we're looking for a cheap feel-good moment from the recycling bin, there is no assurance of what will happen to it. A properly designed landfill is the best place for plastic right now, unless it can be shredded and mixed with bunker oil to provide a cheap fuel -- that might actually make it more valuable.
I'm reluctant to do that because it often takes human intervention to find the good ones or drop the bad ones. For example, in the above case I searched on both recycling and landfills. Also, we don't allow bots to post HN comments. For submissions, the whoishiring ones are done by software, but that's it.
It's not as though this issue only affects the US:
"Between January and October 2018, Germany exported 114,000 tons of plastic rubbish to Malaysia, an increase of 125 percent"
"Germans are great at separating their household waste, and the country is not allowed to export plastic unless it's for recycling. So why are there piles of German garbage all over Malaysia?"
This fails to mention that German recycling of paper, biowaste, cans and bottles is excellent.
Plastic is a huge problem because it is a different beast and technology isnt there to efficiently recycle a lot of different plastics economically at nationwide scale.
Some plastic needs to be used as ignition help when burning other garbage in power plants (where filtration massively reduces negative effects from burning in a centralized manner).
One thing I don't understand is why nobody seems to consider the obvious solution: put an exorbitant tax on every piece of single use plastic.
If you had to pay $1 for your coffee cup, and $1 extra for the lid, you might consider foregoing the lid. Or maybe you would even bring a reusable coffee cup from home.
Tax everything the amount it costs to clean it up. That way a) people will reduce the pollution it causes so they can sell it cheaper, and b) people will invent cheaper ways to clean up pollution.
If it costs $1 to clean it up, but only $0.50 to collect and recycle, problem solves itself.
In Germany you pay a deposit of 0,25 € for your plastic bottle of water, which you get back when you return it empty in the supermarket. The empty bottle gets shredded, not sure where it ends up, though. This could be probably be extended to other kinds of plastic.
Yes. It goes into cheap storage until we can figure out something to do with it. It's not killing turtles or turning into microplastics in the ocean. We should probably skip the recycling step though, or at least keep the plastics together in one place to make it easier to sort in the future.
It doesn't count as sequestering when the original input didn't come from the carbon dioxide in the air. In effect we are putting perhaps 1% of the fossil fuels back underground.
With biochar the land is improved for growing crops where as landfills are unlikely to be useable in any form in the near term.
But you have to admit having people sort plastics into recycling bins and then having the recycling company sort them again is a pretty inefficient way to get to the landfill.
From what I heard it’s largely due to a concern that admitting recycling doesn’t work would make it extremely difficult to get it back up and working again once the issues have been addressed.
Likewise a lot is the “sorting” people do when they throw out their trash is pretty bad. For example, a plastic bottle the cap on can’t be properly cleaned so it doesn’t get recycled. A pizza box in a stack of cardboard ruins the entire batch.
Planet Money did a really interesting two episode series on recycling. That goes into why things are ending up in landfills and why we continue to practice the ritual of splitting our trash.
When I worked in an office I frequently pulled pizza boxes out of the recycling bin. Even highly educated professionals don't seem to understand the rules.
Come to Switzerland, we have well over 90% success rate here. Also: some people complain the total amount of recycled material is only a fraction of European average. Oh well...
Basing on the fact that materials not recycled by local companies, say TetraPak, are not accepted in collection: I always assumed they actually get recycled.
The rest actually doesn't go to landfill, but gets incinerated.
I view plastics in landfills to be temporary. I think one day it will make economic sense to dig it up and use it, and pre-sorting it probably makes that day closer.
And a key quote:
"Now when you see these mountains, most people think of garbage. We see above-ground mines. And the reason we see mines is because there's a lot of valuable raw materials that went into making all of this stuff in the first place."
If you look at it from the “environmentalism as a religion” metaphor, sorting the trash is sort of a ritual penance sort of like the rosary. In Germany there are 8 different trash cans in many places, and churches are closing left and right. People need to feel like they are atoning for their sins.
I wonder hoy effective this Pfand system is against littering.
When I go to germany for a trip with the family I always find the streets clean, and I bet this is not because the germans clean streets lot, but as a consequence they don't litter instead.
done their part to require a whole other diesel-burning truck to come pick their waste. Even though modern factory equipment can easily sort the garbage automatically at scale. I mean, farms have cameras fast enough to pick out single seeds out of fast-moving conveyor belts. This whole debacle should have been forced on the industry, not consumers.
If what we're doing is bad, surely it would be better to know that it is bad and be forced to internalize that and deal with the consequences (even be inspired to come up with alternatives!) rather than just being tricked into thinking everything's daisies, no?
So long as we’re using plastics (hence the sorting and “recycling”), the better alternative in terms of what to do with post-usage (non-usage is moot given it’s in the stream already), is to bury it and sequester carbon. Actually recycling it doesn’t sequester carbon and it’s energy negative.
> non-usage is moot given it’s in the stream already
You can apply backpressure to the stream by buying things not wrapped in plastic in the first place. It’ll take some time for the signal to have an impact, but if enough people selected less-packaged goods, the market would fix the supply chain over time.
Also, if you pick items with less packaging up-front, then you don’t need to do as much work sorting waste on the back end!
We shouldn't create huge bureaucracies and pointless busy work to make people feel better. Pretending it's going to be recycled would also undermine efforts to reduce packaging.
Well, it did make me feel like I was "doing my bit". But knowing now that recycled material ends up in landfill, often getting shipped around the world first... well, now I feel cheated, disheartened, and basically like an idiot.
I don't understand why people fell for the political ploy though. Even as a kid, the logistics of it never made sense. How could we trust everyone in a society (except maybe Japan and Singapore) to spend their time to sort their trash properly? Which means all the trash would have to be sorted at the waste facility anyway to make sure it wasn't contaminated with non recyclables...in which case why were individuals asked to sort it in the first place?
Not only was this supposed to be sorted between paper/plastic/glass/metal, but also between different types of plastic? That was never going to happen on an individual basis. And what about huge apartment buildings and hotels?
The only way recycling would have made sense was if it was all being sorted at the waste facility, which if it was, wouldn't have required people to sort it individually. Hence, the whole thing was a sham from the beginning.
I'm interpretating this as governments having set up these schemes to fool people into thinking they are doing their bit, so they won't push as strongly for other environmental reforms?
You'd hope that the sort would be less intensive though. You might not need as many eyes to check that all the inappropriate stuff is out of the stream.
This, plus: how about regulation that forces waste management to bury all the plastic in one spot in the landfill, so that its more easily retrievable in the future? Whether for reuse, or if a plastic-consuming incinerator or microbe is ever viable, then you can point it to the quarantine.
Wish there were separate landfills for these recyclables that aren't being recycled so that in the future they can be dealt with in a more proper manner. This can either be the ideal recycling we all imagine when we put a bottle in the bin, or it could be further advanced plastic decomposing microbes and worms.
How about allowing only plastic that can be recycled and banning everything else? This is also going to open a market for companies that create ways to recycle unappealing plastic types (but beware for shady companies that pretend to recycle and actually dump.)
I think you need to read that TDP article a little more closely. I followed this story leading up to them building the first plant and for a while after that, as the whole thing fell to pieces.
That plant had problems due to welds that weren't capable of handling the pressure. The smell was horrible and the neighbors considered it a nuisance. And the company went bankrupt. Ten years ago.
Has anyone else tried TDP since then? If so then please update the article.
> The pilot plant in Carthage was temporarily shut down due to smell complaints. It was soon restarted when it was discovered that few of the odors were generated by the plant.[14] Furthermore, the plant agreed to install an enhanced thermal oxidizer and to upgrade its air scrubber system under a court order.[15]
> According to a company spokeswoman, the plant has received complaints even on days when it is not operating. She also contended that the odors may not have been produced by their facility, which is located near several other agricultural processing plants.[16]
> As of August 24, 2006, the last lawsuit connected with the odor issue has been dismissed, and the problem is acknowledged as fixed.[19] In late November, however, another complaint was filed over bad smells.[20] This complaint was closed on January 11 of 2007 with no fines assessed.[21]
To me that sounds like people complained speciously.
It also says,
> In April 2013, CWT was acquired by a Canadian firm, Ridgeline Energy Services, based in Calgary.
So who knows? In any event, that's why I used "scare quotes" around "solved": TPD needs work; MSO is used to dispose of munitions and stuff but there's no mass plastic recycling center in the world (yet) using it.
Sounds interesting, but that looks like straight gasification. You have an old “gasworks” site in your city? Before natural gas they used to gasify coal to run the street lamps. Nasty stuff full of carbon monoxide. Lots of soil remediation to clean them up afterward too. The one in Seattle was cleaned up, failed inspections, was closed down and cleaned up a second time. They made it into a park which still seems nuts to me.
> So it was that while running, but not so much as to force my body into open rebellion, I noticed something odd. When I was heading down the gently sloping hill on Peter Coutts Road towards Stanford Avenue, I turned right as usual to head back home, passed along the edge of a grassy area, and smelled...cookies. But not really cookies. Raw cookie dough. Outside.
Landfill it, it's harmless. And since it's only ash that messes up the salt, the mass is tiny compared to the input. Plastics produce virtually no ash.
Salt disposal could be a problem if it contains heavy metals, or if it contains something you want to recover (possibly phosphorus). Either way, MSO ended up concentrating the material in question and transforming it into a simpler chemical form, reducing the disposal problem, or making the recycling easier.
Well, worst case scenario: that's your trash, and at least you saved all the other atoms from the (toxic!?) landfill.
That's the floor. The ceiling would be some sort of automated chemical/mechanical filter and recovery system. Technically all those "waste" molecules (chlorine and stuff) are useful industrial material, just in the wrong place.
In the long run we should retire most toxic stuff, just stop using it as much as we do now. Spend out "pollution budget" on rockets and such.
I wish biodegradable polymers would take over non-biodegradable plastics in many applications. There are many interesting research avenues, I wish more money was thrown at it to accelerate the future.
From the article (quote by the inventor of a biodegradable foam) - ’I see now that the main hurdle we face is financial in the sense that if you want to go large you need to have financial guarantees because you are not yet selling the product,’ he says. ‘That is still very hard to find – there are very few actual risk investments in the field of chemistry… it’s very traditional.’
I think there are VC scale returns to be made if the stuff took over conventional plastics but it seems largely overlooked by venture capital. I think regulation could help here too.
It would be great to develop technologies that would allow us to efficiently recycle plastic. We don't have them yet, and until we do, landfilling plastic is better for the environment and the climate than recycling it.
My understanding for a while now has been that papers and glass are pretty recyclable, aluminum is super recyclable, and everything else is just garbage by another name.
I don't know why landfills are so controversial. Shit doesn't decompose there which means it doesn't find its way into the ecosystem. Undisturbed in a big pile underground is a great place for all sorts of other nasty things.
There are better landfill technologies from Japan[1][2], Shanghai recently switched[3][4] to them. But they still require careful sorting of the garbage, removing dangerous and easily decomposable organic materials. So maybe it is time for the US to learn from Japan?
There’s an area about 10 square miles around there that smells like rotten waste, perpetually. It’s crazy that there’s a bunch of business and residential development there too.
so one had a problem, therefore they're all bad? Well, here's one battery recycling [1] plant that emitted toxins. Guess I better not recycle car batteries anymore.
It doesn't hurt putting a spotlight on issues rather than brushing them under the carpet and acting like everything is well and dandy and there's no downsides. It's a fine line.
Well, when corporations and governments say "it's properly lined and safe" and then years later the groundwater gets contaminated, people start creating controversy.
Groundwater doesn't get contaminated if it is done properly.
It's true that it is possible for it to be done badly. It seems a lot more likely that the public will care, and pressure people to make sure it is done right, if they aren't spending their energy sorting their supposed recyclables and thinking everything is taken care of.
The problem is "it's done properly" will be verified decades later, and by the time the damage is done, and there may not even be anyone to sue anymore.
You don't need to wait to verify that something is done properly. We can verify that a building is built properly without waiting to see if it falls, for instance. There is solid engineering behind modern landfills, even though the popular opinion is they are terrible things.
I huge component of the reliability of the lining is in the installation. Many things could easily go wrong such as doing a lazy job making sure the subsurface is relatively smooth, or tears happening on installation and nobody speaking up about it, or people seeing it and others saying it'll be fine either because they truly believe that or because it eats into costs to replace it. Depending on the material properties, they may also be UV sensitive and stored out in the sun, decreasing it's "shelf life". This is a common issue with PVC tubing. Many people store them outside, either unaware or ignorant to the fact that it affects the integrity of the pipe.
Yes, well, if society deems it important enough, then we put safeguards in place which includes educating the installers about UV sensitivity. (you'd think the people who engineer these systems would understand the issue and put correct processes in place, no?)
I mean, yeah, if people don't care, negligence will happen because no one is watching. But people apparently care, in fact that why so many people are bothering sorting their refuse, because of their fear of landfills destroying the planet.
There is no guarantee that the check you made while building was exhaustive.
People may not have payed attention, officers may have been bribed, certifications may not have accounted for problems that were not known at the time, unexpected geological activity may cause disruption etc.
We have a few thousand years of managing construction, and we still have bridges that collapse all over the world. Sure, it's a small percentage of the bridges we build, and we should not stop doing that.
I am not against landfills a-priori, they have their role, but considering them without issues is oversimplifying.
>The problem is "it's done properly" will be verified decades later, and by the time the damage is done, and there may not even be anyone to sue anymore.
So is nearly every other public works projects. By the time the bridge falls down the builder has had plenty of time to folds the company and cash out.
Verification during construction mostly solves this problem.
4th result on "landfill leak groundwater" and first solid looking, non biased answer. Yes, modern, but that's a scope on an already scoped excuse.
Second, it's not limited d to landfills. Any corporation claiming they've handled things usually means "until we can disband our Corp structure and eliminate liability". See Superfund sites for other examples, or ask why my family's creek runs orange instead of clear.
> Why are people so against burning plastic? It's easily the most environmentally friendly option.
As someone who thinks they're pretty well-informed, I was under the impression that it would heavily pollute; so assuming what you're saying is true, it's a perception / education piece.
I honestly was not aware you can burn plastic with minimum air pollution. Where I live, many people warm their homes in winter by burning plastic junk they find on the street. I don't have to explain what sort of air it produces. Being in it feels like washing your face with sulfuric acid.
After living under these conditions for many years, it'll be hard to let go of stereotypes.
As with all things, just because it' possible to do it safely doesn't mean it will (chernobyl anyone?). I have a recycling plant near my house and about once a weak it smells horrible. That's just because it's strong enough to reach me on those days, living about a mile away. Those that live near it smell it every day. IT's been reported numerous times, but as always you're limited to what you can do as a mere civilian (in practical terms, not theoretical terms).
Also as the other comment stated, much of it will no doubt be shipped to burn plants that aren't upgraded with the latest and greatest tech. Even then you also have to worry about proper maintenance of the systems. Sure, you can create regulation to cover all these angles, but I highly doubt that will happen.
They mostly think that incinerators need to be modernized first, and old ones should be forbidden to use. This is costly, and the whole "desupply" chain is not transparent: people do not know whether their local incinerators is recent or not. I do not know, even if I try to find info.
Authorities are not incentivized to be transparent about it, and waste management companies neither.
Sticking plastic in landfills is a sort of recycling - before human intervention the hydrocarbons were in the ground as gas or oil, we bring them up, use them a bit then put them back in the ground again.
We as a society need to train an army of material engineers that can design new packaging solutions to minimize impact on the planet. Recyclability (and maybe reusability), lifetime CO2 footprint, biodegradibility etc should be carefully considered and new solutions researched where they will provide the most benefit.
We should also look for low resistance ways to work in container/packaging reusability into the product supply cycle. Are there cases where collection could be done at the store with minimal effort and spare truck space could be used to transport reusable containers back through the supply chain to the originating factories? Are there ways this could be made to work for mainstream products (premium milk products sold in glass are the only case where this is being done where I live)? In Canada they return beer bottles to the store, maybe we should do this in the US if a cost/benefit analysis shows it would worth it.
I must not be the only one that thinks of this sort of thing regularly when taking a product off the shelf.
I remember asking my parents about this in the late eighties and early nineties. We went to the landfills several times a year, and I saw so much plastic that I asked why plastic was being dumped here if we were supposed to be recycling.
I think he said something that not all plastic is recycled or something.
I live in an area my friends like to tell me as, just past the banjo line of Metro Atlanta. We have no separate pickup however our county has for ten plus years published a list of drop offs for different items they would prefer to not have in the landfill, from computer equipment to batteries.
the issue is that they are not widely known and to be honest they really should be at least getting kids in school in on the act if not the schools themselves. Used to be schools had aluminum and paper recycling bins but those long left as people abused them with general junk. Now some fire stations do the same.
I think more people would play along if it were easier and more well known. Get corny if you have too, fire station drop offs, we save lives and you are saving the planet.
> "vast quantities of plastic are now no better than garbage"
That's because they are garbage. Anything that can't be re-used without expending more resources than can be reclaimed is garbage.
This equation changes all the time, and it will change in the future, depending on technology and market rates. Today, Chinese labor might not want deal with the plastic. Tomorrow, some other country might. The day after tomorrow, Garbagebots can do the job.
That's why stockpiling and and landfilling is exactly the right thing to do, for the time being. Even burning for energy isn't necessarily that bad, modern incinerators can be relatively clean.
I wonder if a deposit system or similar could help. In some ways I'm reminded of glass bottles, littering, and encouraging the collection and reuse of them. The core of the problem is that producers are blind to a significant portion of the lifecycle cost, so they'll package something in plastic, inside cardboard, inside another cardboard, inside another plastic. That's pretty much the standard packaging for small electronics these days, and it's insane. The only way I think we've come to accept this is that much of it is pretty recyclable.
I recently dug a black plastic flip-close food container that was marked "compostable" out of my parents compost pile, after burying it there almost exactly four years ago.
It looked exactly the same as when I put it in there. Interesting experiment but that's what I was already expecting, based on the very small amount I'd read suggesting that one needs to put plastics marked "compostable" into some kind of weird high-temperature bioreactor in order to get them to break down. nkurz's article seems to delve deeper into this topic.
We have municipal composting here in Seattle, which can handle everything from food scraps to yard waste to bioplastics. The city incentivizes recycling and composting by charging a lot for trash collection, less for compost, and nothing for recycling. I’ve known for some time that much of my recycling is really going into a landfill, but there’s still value to separating for me because I can use a very small (low rate) trash can as there’s hardly anything left that goes in the trash. I wonder if composting is really a net benefit, though.
Why is it a surprise? Isn't the whole idea that at present we do not have economically viable recycling process and it's much cheaper to set it in a pit then dig it out later once we are able to convert plastic into something useful for cheap.
That makes putting plastic in landfill first step towards recycling with more steps to come later.
Not really, if the companies are putting plastic in unrecorded landfills, we can claim they are just dumping and not really recycling (this happens in South Italy). If the landfills are documented and it's not easy to make any place a landfill without going through a proper regulatory process, then it can serve as a good recycling step.
> A Guardian investigation reveals that cities around the country are no longer recycling many types of plastic dropped into recycling bins
So I am suggesting, on the premise that there is a system in place to separate trash, but it is being sent to landfill - to keep it separate WITHIN the landfill, so that a future us can potentially mine it once we have efficient recycling tech.
To some people, recycling is a religion, so they drive to the recycling center just like other people drive to church.
It doesn't matter what happens with the stuff after she drops it off, it doesn't matter how much gas her car uses to get there. The religion demands that certain objects are brought to the sacred place and that's all there is to it.
Plastic (and paper, for that matter) is a good energy store, for use when intermittent sources become unavailable. Incineration should not be seen as a failure, but celebrated as a contribution to an integrated energy system. Of course the plastic should be sourced from non-fossil carbon sources.
Silly question: why doesn't trash get dumped into the dessert? There will be Minimal ecological impact if trash is dumped in places like the sahara dessert,siberia,antarctica,etc... As opposed to the ocean or near major animal and human population centers.
> “All these years I have been feeling like I’m doing something responsible,” said Pai, clearly dumbstruck as she walked away with a full bag. “The truth hurts.”
All is not lost. Consumers can be responsible by radically cutting consumption.
> Consumers can be responsible by radically cutting consumption.
If I drop my consumption by $20k, I believe my extra investment of $20k will get consumed elsewhere in the economy.
If I spend that $20k on eco-friendly shit, I believe that the people I spent it on spend the majority of that on non-eco friendly shit (e.g. international travel holidays).
I want a better answer - one that isn't some simplistic catchphrase.
If you can accept losing money to reduce consumption you could withdraw your 20k In cash and let them sit in a safe? But yeah one way or another money will be spent to spin the economy if there is incentive to do it.
Another way might be to accept a smaller salary and work less. The salary economy requires a lot of consumption compared to just sitting at home doing nothing.
Dropping consumption means not spending that money. You keep it. Nothing to do with spending on eco-friendly things?
Independent of that, you can make specific decisions to avoid plastic-wrapped things. I’m visiting the US at the moment and I’ve seen plastic-wrapped corn, individually plastic-wrapped potatoes (!?!), eggs boiled shelled and in plastic, plastic cutlery individually wrapped in more plastic, straws given with every water at a restaurant (for adults?), plastic cups with plastic lids and plastic straws for every child, motel breakfasts with disposable plates and cutlery (they use a styrofoam cup for five seconds to get waffle batter and pour it in the cooker).
> you can make specific decisions to avoid plastic-wrapped things
So people buy a coffee in a paper cup, or even worse a recyclable plastic cup. But the cup is less than 5% of the ecological impact of the coffee.
The growing of the coffee is where the impact is.
Generally we all get sidelined by recycling the packaging, as an anodyne to salve our consumptive guilt. Purest poisonous propaganda that we mostly willingly swallow.
As I asked: I want some answers for ways that I can help, backed by science and facts, not lies wrapped in plastic tinsel to misguide me.
Let's take an example: Greenpeace (who I do think are valuable activists): yet I have seen their money go on boats (obvious consumption), or paying international travelers to canvas for money (obvious consumption by the travelers), and I have no trust that the payments by Greenpeace are anything but average consumption.
And a lot of "eco-friendly" consumption is pure green-washing. I know people that provide eco friendly services, and I know what they spend their money on, and it is mostly just normal consumer consumption (e.g. international holidays which is clearly pure "waste"). Or eco-friendly people with 5 kids - who just can't see that children are a multiplier effect on current and future consumption.
I'm not a Greenpeace fan, but the obvious argument why environmentalists take planes is that a little energy spent now in convincing folks of the correct path is nothing compared to the impact they are trying to impart.
Think about the "sub graph" of the economy that is wholly ecologically harmonious. I'm trying to come up with ways to help people transition to an ecological lifestyle. Like, start with the people who are already living off-grid, growing their own food, etc., and then make a catalog of all their products/services.
For example: Virtually every food item is packaged in plastic. And it’s not consumers who decided it was more cost effective to use disposable plastic than wash a reusable container.
Yes, a lot of fruit and veg is usually loose, unless you're buying it pre-chopped. There is still a lot of fruit and veg that is wrapped in plastic though.
I don't think I've ever seen pasta not in a plastic wrapper?
For milk, it's usually in a plastic bottle, but often in tetra-pak type containers (don't honestly know what they're made of!).
With oil, it's usually in a plastic bottle, occasionally a glass one for more expensive EV olive oils, and rarely in Europe I've seen shops with oil dispensers that allow you to fill your own container.
For eggs, they are usually in a cardboard box, but occasionally in a plastic one.
For salt, I think I've only ever seen it in plastic bottles or bags.
In my kitchen cupboards right now, I have all of these things packaged in plastic and I've never seen an alternative except sometimes milk in returnable glass jugs that nobody in the store knows how to ring up to get the deposit back.
