- eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?)
- tea bags made with plastic (yes, they're there, not biodegradable, lots of microplastics in your tea)
- tooth brushes (what's wrong with wood/bamboo ?)
- textiles ( cotton / hemp / flax. you think you need to run in modern textiles because it's raining ? stay home, i don't need your pfoas in my water )
- polystyrene for home insulation (why not support plant based alternatives, like hemp / hempcrete)
- fishing nets (70% of macro plastic at sea comes from fishing gear, just eat plants people, there are not that many fish left anyway)
Necessary:
- health care
- what have i forgot?
Better to stop producing the crap, than to have to find ways how to utilize it without harming everything and everybody. It's good only for the packaging industry, nobody else.
You're ignoring pretty much all industrial use of plastic, which is a huge contributor to plastic use.
All your other points are essentially "If you paid way more, then plastic wouldn't be necessary." However, if you paid more, then you'd have less money for other stuff. So clearly plastic is necessary for our current levels of consumption.
I think you're both right: the current global level of consumption not sustainable, or necessary. Everybody wants a healthy planet, almost nobody wants to volunteer to consume less. Regulation is needed, and it will mean we have to consume less. I realize that's not what anyone wants to hear. On top of that, I think we need social safety nets that prevent the burden from simply crushing the poor while the rich continue to over-consume. In the climate crisis we are trying to pay off generations worth of CO2 debt and we haven't even stopped digging the hole deeper yet.
All over-packaging plastic use aren't at all related to paying more. In fact, it costs more to put additional plastic wraps around product to make “bundles” …
Generally speaking when you see some boring industry with margins too tiny to indulge in cargo cutting doing something it's because that something offers measurable (and therefore quantifiable improvement to the bottom line, usually by undercutting competition.
Sorry for the very kitchen focused comment but the kitchen is where I used the most plastic.
Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen.
To a lesser extent the same argument could be made for polypropylene deli containers (for food storage and kitchen prep, not as disposable food containers).
I use plastic wrap probably more than I should in the kitchen (when baking) which could obviously be replaced by lids that fit whatever containers I'm putting the plastic wrap on but in some applications I can't imagine plastic wrap being replaced without some special lid (proofing a bread loaf that you want to proof out of the top of the container).
I think that's it though. In general, I agree that single-use plastics (or "re-use for a while and eventually throw out") are unnecessary but if something can be used indefinitely (I've had my cambros for something like 5 years at this point and they still look new) then I don't see it as an unnecessary plastic.
In South East Asia, you can buy a lot of different prepared foods in banana, lotus, or bamboo leaf wrappings. Additionally, corn husks are used for wrapping tamales in Mexico. I wish I knew what the equivalent would have been in Europe. I would love to see traditional packaging getting popular in supermarkets around the world.
Lack of an air barrier is a huge limitation on shelf life. It’s not an issue for prepared foods you are about to eat but it is most things you’re buying at a grocery store.
Risk adversity in the US will pretty much never allow this to happen. The moment one of those leaves has listeria or something like that on it, they'll be back in sterile plastic wrap.
Unfortunately the cheese cloth solution doesn’t work if you’re cold-fermenting an enriched/fatty dough in the fridge, as it can pick up “fridge flavor” without a lid or plastic wrap.
For very long ferments (cold proofing sourdough for example) it’s also liable to dry out.
All other situations it works fine for in my experience.
> Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen.
Cambro will happily sell you polypropylene bins, too. They even stack with the polycarbonate ones.
There are now silicone lids you can purchase for pyrex storage containers. As a bonus, they stay supple and don't crack. Even so, lids do not touch food as much as the container itself.
Sadly, silicon freezer bags have yet to work as well as plastic ones. Give them time.
How long have you been cooking? I've broken pie dishes, 9x13 baking dishes, measuring cups ... probably other things. Maybe I'm a butterfingers but that doesn't change matters.
Question for both of you: what are your floors made of? Wood and linoleum often won't break dishes. Tile eats dishes like the cookie monster eats... ummm... carrots I guess.
> polystyrene for home insulation (why not support plant based alternatives, like hemp / hempcrete)
Not a class-II vapor retarder. Can't build a comfortable and energy-efficient home without air barrier vapor retarders. (You can build an uncomfortable one, or one which uses far more energy).
> tooth brushes (what's wrong with wood/bamboo ?)
They all still use nylon brushes.
> food wrappers
You must be unfamiliar with warehouse conditions if you're willing to eat unprotected food like that.
No time to elaborate, but from what I've read about it, hempcrete houses were built in different environments, even on seashores, as the hemp will petrify and turn the lime back into stone, but keeping the good properties. I've yet to hear about problems with water vapor or about one where it's uncomfortable to live in. Hempcrete has superb insulation properties, it may easily be the best material for home construction.
Or boar hair ... and that's obviously not good either. Don't know what the best material is. But with using just the nylon brushes, and replacing the rest with wood, we'd save apx. 98% of the material.
> You must be unfamiliar with warehouse conditions
I'm not. But if you eat plant based only, that's maybe less worry than if we were talking about meat/cheese, I assume.
There were no individually packed deli/cheese cuts when I was young. The shops instead had a counter with a shop person preparing orders, packing them into waxed paper. I've seen some counters recently, so it's still practiced somewhere. And people buy it and live, even without plastic.
A huge barrier to eliminating plastic use is making people aware of their plastic use. Prior to thinking about it and investigating, I was unaware of how many plastics I was using.
How many people think their clothing is plastic? They probably think it’s “some textile” and that’s all the thought they ever give it. How many people consider the plastic in their dishwasher or laundry pods, or in packaging? They’re all unconscious decisions that people make because they are using what corporations give them.
Also, related, reusable stuff is great and disposable stuff sucks. I always joke about wondering what the sales pitch was for disposable razors: “have you ever wished you had to replace your entire razor every time the blade dulled?” Not only is it wasteful but it simply makes no sense in many cases.
> probably think it’s “some textile” and that’s all the thought they ever give it.
Even when aware it can be a challenge to find replacements. I bought https://www.patagonia.com/product/mens-pile-lined-trucker-ja... a year ago and while I put reasonable effort into finding an alternative that didn't use "pile" or "sherpa wool" (fake wool), it was hard to find any at all. The very few results I did find were a totally different style. Ordinary shirts seem to be a fair bit easier but I would love suggestions for high quality jackets made of natural materials.
I’ve got the same problem with socks. It’s quite literally impossible. Even brands that sell “100% cotton” socks have a small amount of polyester or spandex, etc.
Electrical insulation is a pretty big use case. Both rubber and paper breaks down in some really unfortunate ways, ceramics are great but aren't really viable if you want to make a cable or wire. Laquer isn't really up for the job either.
And the soy plastic alternatives have caused huge problems in practice. Squirrels and mice totaling entire brand new cars by eating the insulation. Not to mention terrible longevity.
Yeah in a lot of ways the things that make plastics bad for the environment makes them good for electrical insulation. Primarily how they don't break down very easily, aren't particularly chemically reactive, don't rot, etc.
The knob and tube wiring in my 1930's house was still working fine. That tech would need to be updated for modern safety requirements (ground wire, etc) but worked without plastics for about 50 years. Much high cost though, I would guess.
Old wire is usually fine if it just sits there, but it may no longer be water proof or turn hard and brittle. That's why the failure mode is so unfortunate, it loses the properties you'd want in an insulator while still appearing safe.
Modern waterproof textiles are used by lots and lots of people that keep your basic infrastructure running, that allows you to stay in your warm, insulated, dry house. So they can stay reasonably comfortable while doing jobs like keeping the power running in a snowstorm, or keeping the roads clear for emergency vehicles.
One use that comes to my mind are trash bags. I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but what did people use for trash bags before plastic was invented? I've tried Googling this a few times with unsatisfying results. Trash bags by definition need to be disposable.
My neighbor is in his 80s and we live in what used to be a rural area before urbanization caught up. He told me there wasn't any garbage collection, they put rubish in a small bin and just dumped everything in a hole in the garden when the bin was full. They didn't use any plastic so everything would just decompose. When the hole was full they'd dig another one and that was it.
In rural areas they commonly composted the organic garbage and burned much of the rest. Food scraps were also fed to animals so there was generally very little food waste.
My uncle used to pick up all the food scraps from a local restaurant and feed those to his pigs. It made a mess in his pickup truck, but it was a lot cheaper than commercial pig food.
We still do it. Every kitchen waste goes to the chickens, everything that's compostable goes to a pile in the back of the garden. With two adults we have about three bags going in the recycling bin and one bag in the garbage bin per month. We still have a bit of progress to do by buying less packaged items.
Thank God it is. Burning trash is much better than landfills. Modern incineration plants are not very dirty and they don't poison ground water and wreck nearby ecosystems.
Uncontrolled burning of trash is much worse than a proper landfill. Modern landfills are constructed with water barriers and do not poison ground water. Old trash dumps were a problem but that is not what is happening in developed nations.
Of course, in some areas of the world, both uncontrolled trash burning and unregulated trash dumps are used.
I think you're talking about two different things.
I think the other post may be talking about people who burn their trash at home, instead of at an industrial scale? It seems like a neighborhood of people burning their batteries and plastics would not be great, compared to an industrial incinerator.
Throw trash in the bin without a bag. Dump trash in your big trash can outside (that still doesn't have a trash bag). That can gets dumped into the garbage truck (truck also does not have a huge trash bag). Wash bin when it gets too dirty/stinky.
Trash bags are just a great time saver and more sanitary. I sure like them.
Before wide availability of plastic bags, reusable bins/buckets were used for trash. It's not even that historic, for example, 1980s USSR did it that way if I recall it correctly.
I'm an old enough gen-Xer to remember using paper grocery bags as a kid. There is a "standard" rectangular kitchen trash can size that used to fit grocery paper bags perfectly. Toss the bag in the galvanized steel trash can and the can is dumped out once a week.
Its a little more labor intensive, you can't dump liquids in a paper bag at least without paper towels, etc.
I was born in the 80s and plenty of people were still just throwing it 'over the hill' or 'in a hole'. There are still remnants of it lying around if you know where to look. About 10 years ago when China was buying lots of scrap iron and steel, the scavengers dragged away all of the metal that was in these places which at least made them look better. You can still spot some old tires now and then.
Burn it and dump it into pits. Of course while that is not really a problem when 95% of your trash is organic with a bit of random iron scrap and most people live on low density farms, it is a problem with modern materials like plastics and other hydrocarbon products and increasing population densities.
>natural wax
The only commercially viable wax is paraffin, which is petroleum derived
>bamboo
All of the bamboo products for sale are glued together with petroleum derived adhesives and often finished with petroleum based products like mineral oil
Because mineral oil isn't a "drying" oil (it doesn't polymerize in air), it's an unlikely choice for finishing furniture because it stays greasy and will rub off on things.
More likely is a drying oil, like linseed, or a synthetic finish, like polyurethane or epoxy.
On the other hand, what would the the environmental impact of stopping plastic use? I have to assume that producing a plastic bottle requires a minuscule fraction of the energy (and has a fraction of the greenhouse emissions) of creating a glass bottle?
Not that single use plastic items isn't an issue; it clearly is. But I'm guessing that the solution isn't generally to replace the single use plastic item with a single use wood/glass/textile item.
I could also be wrong. If producing plastic stuff has a much larger impact than what I'm assuming here, please do correct me.
Not to mention transporting it. I wonder where the breakeven point is on energy costs.
Soda did come in glass bottles when I was young. I don't know precisely why we stopped, but my guess is because people didn't like getting new drinks in beat up old glass.
They stopped using hard-PET plastics here for the same reason as glass: Higher cost (even environmentally) for maintaining and cleaning the bottles (min temp of 60c water is required afaik). The plastic is now separated and recycled as-is instead of reused. It's also one of the main reasons they want to get rid of glass beer bottles (as well as that cans do a better job of sealing it) but that is somewhat more difficult culturally.
Also, changing the material changes the experience of drinking something. At least I find the experience of drinking from glass to be very different to drinking from plastic or drinking from aluminium cans, even if the properties of the liquid itself is completely unchanged.
(I dislike drinks with straws for the same reason; cold glass touching lips and liquid running out from it is a different and better experience than putting plastic in the mouth and letting liquid shoot up into the palate.)
You still can around me- there's a company that specializes in making flavored sodas and encouraged returning empty bottles so they could be reused.
It's a fun novelty, but I think one of the first bottles that I had tasted like soap- probably didn't get fully washed or something. That also ended up being the last one I had. If I'm going to drink soda, aluminum cans are hard to beat.
If bottles are returned to be washed it doesn't take that much energy. An empty semi-truck doesn't consume that much less gas than one loaded with product because air resistance is the same either way. It isn't free, but it isn't very expensive or hard either.
They touted the plastic as a way to protect the trees. It didn't stop the deforestation.
They told us they're inert. Then we've learned about bpa, pfas and microplastics.
They told us they're recyclable. Now we now that's not really the truth.
They tell us it's for saving CO2. Now we have the stuff in our seas, on beaches, microplastics in rain and wind, there is no place on earth free of it (not even the most remote areas).
The only reason why it's used is money ... to make & wrap stuff we don't need, and we (shall) pay for it with our health and poisoned environment.
Give me the glass, and reuse it and or recycle it. Energy is (soon will be) free.
> So long as plastics are not being burned, at least their carbon is not going into the atmosphere.
I mean, I understand the sentiment. At the same time, most of the consumers of said plastics are living longer than previous generations. I don't think it's as bad as you make it out.
Granted, at some point the human race will need to act more holistically about their resource usage, but I think that will take a very long time and probably not until it has become a much more painful problem.
> most of the consumers of said plastics are living longer than previous generations
Can we say, for sure, that this is true? My grandma just died a few years ago. I couldn't tell you exactly when the plastic revolution happened, but I would say it was significantly long after she became an adult. I'm not sure we are at the point of knowing yet whether my plastic generation outlives my grandma's non-plastic generation, statistically speaking.
Use of plastic started exploding in the 60s and 70s, so it would depend on how old your grandma was. But sixty years is a fairly substantial length of time for exposure.
I'm all for reducing plastics, but some of your ideas are quite naive.
Like replacing plastics with glas - I mean, you can do that, but glas isn't exactly an environmentally friendly material. Glas making uses a lot of fossil gas, the technology to make glas with renewable electricity does not exist at scale (it's been tried more than a decade ago and was a big failure), and it has emissions that cannot be easily avoided due to the use of carbonates.
My city has stopped taking glass in the recycling saying the cost to recycle it outweigh the benefits. It makes me wonder why we don't just clean/reuse them instead like we did in the old days when we returned glass bottles to the grocery store.
The relentless drive to make our labor available outside our local community in a single global labor market.
The trend of interconnected markets has pushed many families and companies to use more and more of their time getting cash instead of being productive in the home or local community.
In Germany they have the Pfand deposit scheme, where almost all beverage bottles and tins have a deposit charged on them, and shops have automated bottle and crate collecting machines, which you feed your bottles into and get out a receipt which entitles you to the deposit money off your next shop. You see very few stray bottles on the street, and those you do see are set neatly beside the bins for bottle collectors to pick up
A couple US states have bottle deposit returns also, and they are highly effective programs. I don't understand why more places don't do it, and some places that do use it could increase deposit amounts slightly to get far better return rates.
Probably because they don't have the infrastructure setup to wash and reuse glass due to the competition from plastic. Most glass recycling is instead just smashing it which is a huge hit to the cost effectiveness of glass.
And increases the hospital bills (and more plastic waste) dramatically.
If you didn't come from a generation that had glass bottles everywhere you just don't know how bad it was. Even to this day there are still issues with beer bottles broken on beaches and stuff, but typically drinking alcohol is much more highly regulated then drinking soda from a glass bottle.
I really enjoy soft drinks (terrible ik) and will never buy plastic bottles or cans instead of glass bottles. I really don't think I'm crazy or alone in thinking glass-bottled tastes better. My local convenience store sells Jarritos but not the glass-bottled Mexican coke and as a direct consequence I only buy the Jarritos, otherwise I'd mix it up a bit.
I assume glass is also better environmentally but I do wonder how much of the benefit is offset by taking more energy to produce (I assume) and to ship.
iirc you would have to use a textile bag several hundred times to have a lower impact that plastic bags, maybe reusing plastic bags is a better option. Or polyester idk.
same for cotton, water use and carbon dioxide emissions are huge and debatably polyester clothes are better environmentally (it's hard to compare as there is no conversion rate between plastic waste/microplastic pollution and carbon dioxide) emissions)
> tea bags made with plastic (yes, they're there, not biodegradable, lots of microplastics in your tea)
I would imagine every time you scrape off the lint from your dryer's lint trap you inhale orders of magnitude more microplastics than these food/drink examples and and swallow more too from nasal drip.
I think as soon as you recommend to reduce someone’s quality of life you can forget about it. I agree with a lot of the other recommendations, but telling someone to stay home sounds a lot like dismissal. However, anything where behavior can be changed without changing QoL should be done.
Cars are mostly plastic by weight. Remember every extra pound means burning an extra Y gallons of fuel over the life of the car. Replacing plastic with steel would likely be a net loss environmentally speaking.
> "But the agency won’t turn over these records or reveal information about the waste-based fuels, even their names and chemical structures. Without those basic details, it’s nearly impossible to determine which of the thousands of consent orders on the EPA website apply to this program. In keeping this information secret, the EPA cited a legal provision that allows companies to claim as confidential any information that would give their competitors an advantage in the marketplace."
There's no explanation of this other than regulatory capture. Might want to look into how many people from the EPA Chevron has been hiring as consultants etc., or how much money Chevron has been giving to politicians who approve EPA heads, the hiring practices of EPA heads, and so on.
I'd guess much of the problem is that they only partially breakdown the plastics into the desired long-chain hydrocarbons that make up the jet fuel, so there's likely a big pile of partially-broked down plastics that they then have to dispose of, which is a likely source of carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and so on, plus dioxin which is particularly problematic as a hormone mimic and disruptor of basic cellular processes (see Agent Orange, Vietnam):
"Dioxin formation during combustion of nonchloride plastic, polystyrene and its product" (2005)
- "There's no explanation of this other than regulatory capture. Might want to look into how many people from the EPA Chevron has been hiring as consultants etc., or how much money Chevron has been giving to politicians who approve EPA heads, the hiring practices of EPA heads, and so on."
If you read down to the last paragraph, the EPA's Inspector General has an open investigation into this division of the EPA, on precisely those allegations ("whistleblowers’ allegations of corruption and industry influence").
They link to this investigative series from the Intercept,
https://theintercept.com/series/epa-exposed/ ("Whistleblowers speak out about the Environmental Protection Agency’s practice of routinely approving dangerous chemicals", 2021-)
> according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and The Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer
> That risk is 250,000 times greater than the level usually considered acceptable by the EPA division that approves new chemicals.
This confusion is part of the problem. I've been watching this space a bit, and it tends to be that all types of energy from waste schemes are sometimes advertised as "bioenergy" or "like bioenergy" or "renewable".
To actually evaluate these, one relevant factor is what waste we are talking about. If the source is plastics then of course the more accurate term would be "fossil fuels", because that's what plastics is usually made from.
> In a subsequent phone call, Allen said: “We do take care of our communities, our workers and the environment generally. This is job one for Chevron.”
The only possible way this can be true is if Chevron pays everyone in the effected area $100,000 so they can move out.
Thank goodness that some of these projects coincidentally got funded via something that could be tied to environmentalism, or it would just be business as usual, and no one would care.
Now there's at least some small chance that the "see, green stuff kills you too" response may cause enough fuss for the US to do what most other developed nations would do as a matter of course in terms of protecting their citizens from pollution.
Why's that? Do you often see a trend of environmentalists championing releasing a bunch of toxic chemicals into the environment? Aren't they usually the group most strongly opposed to releasing harmful chemicals into the environment?
They're usually more about strongly opposing the appearance of releasing harmful chemicals. See Nuclear Energy NIMBYism, lithium/ cobalt mining, emissions and supply chain required to make solar panels, and wind turbine blade disposal. To call any of it "clean" energy is quite a stretch.
You're not far away from a very important point. There is no such thing as truly "clean" energy, and calling it "clean energy" does arguably take the focus away from the need to reduce energy consumption. Maybe it should've been called "less dirty" energy, like how we call rubber bullets and tasers "less lethal" rather than "non-lethal". And I share your concern that a sustainable solution to our energy needs can't come from unsustainable levels of cobalt and lithium consumption.
Where your argument falls down, however, is that you're making it sound like a choice between the toxic chemical pollution from "clean" energy and the greenhouse gas pollution from coal, gas and oil. It's not. Burning fossil fuels releases a huge amount of toxic chemicals as well. People are getting lung cancer and asthma from living in polluted cities. And the death toll from coal power is astronomical.
We need to get our greenhouse gas emissions under control, and we need to do it in a way which doesn't destroy other aspects of the environment. And any environmentalist will agree to that statement (even if some individuals are misguided as to how to get there).
>Where your argument falls down, however, is that you're making it sound like a choice between the toxic chemical pollution from "clean" energy and the greenhouse gas pollution from coal, gas and oil. It's not. Burning fossil fuels releases a huge amount of toxic chemicals as well. People are getting lung cancer and asthma from living in polluted cities. And the death toll from coal power is astronomical.
I don't look at them as separate. All these (non-nuclear) 'alternative' or 'green' or 'clean' energies do is adjust the proportions of fossil fuels at various points in the logistics chain to procure them. They don't really reduce its usage; at best they just concentrate it closer to the areas of direct procurement.
For example with electric cars, they simply move the consumption of 'dirty' energy to increase at coal plants and procuring the materials for manufacturing.
Something very rarely considered in the political dialogues surrounding energy is the logistics and security issues. Solar panels are essentially totally dependent on China for example. That issue should be solved before it is taken seriously as an alternative.
https://archive.is/6Mg5V
The only source of energy that reduces pollution the most dramatically with the most controllable costs to the environment is nuclear.
> One recent study by scientists from the Department of Energy found that the economic and environmental costs of turning old plastic into new using a process called pyrolysis were 10 to 100 times higher than those of making new plastics from fossil fuels.
I think they might have linked to the wrong paper, that one doesn't cover pyrolisis and none of the economics cost are even 2x using new fossil fuels.
Plastic based fuels sounds like petro fuel with extra steps! As for the plastic waste, instead of dumping it into the ocean, we blow it into the atmosphere.
Well, as long as we're blowing fuel combustion byproducts into the atmosphere anyways, the fuel might as well be recycled from garbage. If it was really possible to convert plastic waste into a fuel that's no worse than normal fuel, it would've been a good thing (at least if it didn't require additional energy to produce compared to normal fuel), even though the overall goal is to cut down or eliminate the need for fuel over time.
So long as we're going to be making plastics, it seemed that pyrolysis and/or incineration made sense to destroy the plastic waste. Then reduce the amount of plastics at the start of the pipeline.
(Obviously it's more efficient to make fuel directly from oil, but that's not the point. Narrowly from an energy perspective, the comparison to make is (a) make plastic from oil, separately make jet fuel from oil, burn the jet fuel, and send plastic to the landfill, vs (b) make plastic from oil, use it, then turn it into jet fuel and then burn that. Obviously you don't make plastic as only an inefficient intermediate step in jet fuel production.)
But if the pyrolysis process is going to release potent carcinogens up the smokestack, then that changes everything.
The article is a little bit bad, in that it doesn't clearly explain whether the fuel itself is carcinogenic, or if it's a byproduct of the pyrolysis process that is. It also doesn't explain what those chemicals are (I assume they are hydrocarbons, cousins of benzene), or why they are not burned in the process that powers the pyrolysis. Is the combustion too dirty, not high-temperature enough? Are volatile gasses leaking through some insufficiently-selective distillation process? Are products just recklessly being vented to atmosphere?
There are plenty of examples of corporations doing horrible things to make a buck, and the corporate/PR/lawyer-speak from Chevron does nothing to allay my fears. But I assume there are also chemists involved who do give a shit and are not setting out to poison people nearby. We've heard from the whistleblower. We've heard from the lawyer/PR flaks. I'd like to hear from some chemists.
From what I understand of the process, simple incineration (i.e. put it in a barrel and burn it) is the problem. High temp incineration does break up nearly every possible carcinogen of hydrocarbon origin into simpler non-carcinogenic compounds, with the caveat that if it’s high temp while using atmospheric oxygen it will likely produce a lot more NOx emissions, which is also bad.
> The Environmental Protection Agency recently gave a Chevron refinery the green light to create fuel from discarded plastics as part of a “climate-friendly” initiative to boost alternatives to petroleum. But, according to agency records obtained by ProPublica and The Guardian, the production of one of the fuels could emit air pollution that is so toxic, 1 out of 4 people exposed to it over a lifetime could get cancer.
You can bet your asses that Chevron is lobbying the hell out of Congress. And, thanks to "Citizens United", we'll never know how much.
- "the EPA had blacked out sections, including the chemicals’ names"
If you follow the linked PDF, the publicly disclosed descriptor is "Distillates, hydrotreated light P-21-0158". That's for the one with the insane toxicology ("The cancer risk estimate for inhalation of stack air for P-21-0158 was 2.5E-01").
"The U.S. generated a staggering 42 million metric tons of plastic waste in 2016 — more than any other country in the world, according to the analysis.
Up to 2.2 million metric tons of this waste ended up in the ocean."
So, 5.2%. Is that "much" of the stated 94% that isn't recycled?
Plastic directly released to the ocean in the US (as opposed to US plastic shipped overseas, then released to the ocean) is estimated at < 0.01 kg/capita (2019). That looks low, maybe too low; it's three orders of magnitude below that other estimate.
It's not b**** because you have no idea whether or not the plastic that is generated actually ends up in the ocean. We used to ship most of our ways to other countries. So if the plastic is actually generated in the United States, it is possible that it could actually end up in another country and the end up in the ocean.
I agree with you that the wording is not necessarily the best but it is not facetious to think that plastic created in the United States'could'end up in the ocean.
You are correct that 94% of it does not end up in ocean, but the % is still too high.
Not necessary:
- plastic bottles (good only for coca-cola's profits etc., 90% of bottled drinks contain microplastics, use glass)
- food wrappers (use paper & natural wax, not pfoas)
- plastic shopping bags (use textile bags like our grandma's did)
- eshop packages (ever received goods in plastic bags wrapped in insane amounts of additional plastic?)
- tea bags made with plastic (yes, they're there, not biodegradable, lots of microplastics in your tea)
- tooth brushes (what's wrong with wood/bamboo ?)
- textiles ( cotton / hemp / flax. you think you need to run in modern textiles because it's raining ? stay home, i don't need your pfoas in my water )
- polystyrene for home insulation (why not support plant based alternatives, like hemp / hempcrete)
- fishing nets (70% of macro plastic at sea comes from fishing gear, just eat plants people, there are not that many fish left anyway)
Necessary:
- health care
- what have i forgot?
Better to stop producing the crap, than to have to find ways how to utilize it without harming everything and everybody. It's good only for the packaging industry, nobody else.