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Another Dead Whale Is Reminder Of Plastic Problem
- spodek 9y agoThat picture is horrifying, as are the ones in the article's first link https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/10/27/idyllic-caribbean-island-covered-in-a-tide-of-plastic-trash-along-coastline/#763919522524 https://www.forbes.com/sites/trevornace/2017/10/27/idyllic-c.... I hope all of our needless plastic bottles, food packaging, and trinkets bring us joy greater than the centuries of destruction they bring. Oh wait, they're mostly needless since humans lived without plastic for hundreds of thousands of years. Regulation and pollution taxes can help, but right here right now we can each cut our plastic consumption by 90% without changing our lives at all beyond saving money. EDIT: Thanks barrad0s for pointing out the picture is a "representation," which I find counterproductive, though it doesn't change the situation or images in the other link.
- barrad0s 9y agoThat's not a real picture. Kinda screws up the article a bit in my opinion, no need for that. Says right below the pic "A Greenpeace Philippines representation of a dead whale from ingestion of plastic. The representation is increasingly becoming a reality."
- setquk 9y agoIgnore the Greenpeace rubbish. There's a picture in the video of what was actually extracted from the whale.
- emmelaich 9y agoThat picture really is counterproductive. All it will do is support the people who say the problem is exaggerated.
- ben509 9y ago> Oh wait, they're mostly needless since humans lived without plastic for hundreds of thousands of years. This kind of moral excoriation is not persuasive. You're claiming the moral authority to dictate which things people need, or whether an activity is permissible. You don't have that authority, none of us do, and that you feel passionately about the subject doesn't grant it to you. Many people, especially artists, engineers, etc. work quite hard at producing such "trinkets" or their livelihoods depend on them. You're not going to persuade them by denigrating them or their work as mere consumerism.
- KozmoNau7 9y agoIf everyone stopped buying plastic crap today, those people would find other jobs. Effort != value. Personally, I try to buy as little physical stuff as possible, and I try to use what I buy for as long as possible, fixing things instead of throwing them out when they break. We should all do the same, really.
- stordoff 9y ago> Oh wait, they're mostly needless since humans lived without plastic for hundreds of thousands of years. I don't think this is a convincing argument. There are lots of things that we lived without (e.g. antibiotics) that we wouldn't now give up.
- cvaidya1986 9y agoIs there a cheaper biodegradable alternative to plastic?
- IAmEveryone 9y agoIn many cases, "nothing" is the better alternative. I was somewhat surprised when I was in the UK (IIRC) and saw apples where sold in packs of six, on a tray of Styrofoam with plastic foil all around. While in my country it's common to pack fresh vegetables and fruits into plastic bags, those are a fraction of the weight and many people choose not to use them. Same applies to packaging across the board: bags containing smaller bags containing individually-wrapped sweets are insane. Frozen pizzas packed in two layers of foil plus a cardboard box? The US is actually better in that regard, largely dispensing with the cardboard.
- paulie_a 9y agoI picked up some of those recently, I can't claim the effectiveness of their biodegradable nature, but they are incredibly brittle
- cup-of-tea 9y agoWhy does it have to be cheaper?
- DataWorker 9y agoIsn’t most of this coming from China and if so how much impact can European laws really have on the problem?
- latch 9y agoThere's a fine line between ignorance and racism and presenting a fact as a question isn't particularly clever. If you don't know, ask (or better yet, research and educate the rest of us), but don't ask and imply (with no source). The idea that laws affecting 770 million of the most affluent consumers won't have an impact is laughable. The view of "why should we do things if they aren't", is sad.
- smsm42 9y agoHow it is racism to find out - either by question or by statement - the actual source of the plastic? Is attributing any issues to anybody other than "770 million of the most affluent consumers" racist? This is completely insane. One can not solve a problem while ignoring the factual sources of it and being driven by ideology instead of reality.
- latch 9y agoIt's a leading question which is based on what? Either provide a source, or at least avoid singling a group out. If you say "China produces most of the plastic waste" without any background, that's just prejudice. We constantly see this ( blaming specific groups for all the pollution, or crime, or job stealing, or...). Changing that to "Doesn't China produce most of the plastic waste?" is not better. To add actual information to this, it looks like China is a major polluter, but that until the recent Chinese ban (discussed on HN) Europe (and America) was exporting a lot of garbage to China. According to [1] Europe exported 1.6 million tons of plastic to China in 2016 [1] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash-ban-forces-europe-to-confront-its-waste-problem/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash...
- smsm42 9y ago
- Eurongreyjoy 9y agoIts insane to me that back in the 80's a plastic trash "island" was discovered somewhere between the size of Texas and Russia (depending on estimate). All these years later and there has been almost nothing done to combat the problem. California is still the only state to completely ban single use plastic bags. Is the convenience of a super market giving you multiple plastic bags every time you enter worth the damage we are doing to the planet?
- noer 9y agoChicago banned single use plastic bags a few years ago. While some stores switched to paper, most just began to use thicker plastic bags and called them "reusable bags". I think the ban lasted about 18 months and when it was found that plastic bag use hadn't dropped at all, the city instituted a bag tax of $0.07 per bag used. I think that actually worked to reduce bag usage.
- robotkdick 9y agoSame in California. Thicker plastic bags at Vons. Whole Foods, however, does not use them from what I've witnessed. Coke, Pepsi and others are the producers, and they won't change unless they get hit with regulations or losses. Boycott plastic.
- dragonwriter 9y agoCalifornia has both a single-use ban and a minimum per bag charge (which isn't strictly a bag tax but should have the same direct effect on consumer behavior, even if it has a different direct effect on retailer behavior.)
- Waterluvian 9y agoI'm always a little annoyed by that term. Island. It makes people think there's an actual barge of plastic the size of Texas somewhere. Like something you could stand on or crash into. In reality it's an area of much higher density of plastic the size of Texas. Which is still terrible. But it's not a floating garbage barge.
- ulyssesv 9y agoSame goes for the birds: https://vimeo.com/218502282 https://vimeo.com/218502282
- gigatexal 9y agoSeeing this made me sick: the things we do to the environment and to the animals that live in it sucks sometimes. My family has moved to reusable plastic grocery bags and we try to recycle everything. Living in Germany they take trash and recycling very seriously
- lkrubner 9y ago"and to the animals that live in it sucks sometimes" We humans are also animals that live in it. I think a first step towards fixing the problem is remembering that there is no meaningful "us versus them" issue regarding the environment.
- craftyguy 9y agoI don't disagree with you but, generally, we have a very hard time with "us versus them" even within our own species to have little/no hope that we could remember such a thing when we look at other species.
- ataturk 9y agoWhenever you don't disagree with someone that means you agree with them. So say you agree and stop being so high minded.
- pasta 9y agoThe Dutch Ocean Cleanup project planned to start cleaning up plastic mid 2018 [1]. I really hope they can make this happen. [1] https://www.theoceancleanup.com/milestones/ https://www.theoceancleanup.com/milestones/
- jdavis703 9y agoThe other day I noticed someone had deposited a disposable coffee cup in the compost bin. The top was a plastic lid. This plastic lid will wind up in an industrial composter, and degrade into a few largish chunks of plastic. This compost (with the plastic remains) will then be dumped on a farm field somewhere. It will then rain, and those plastic fragments will then wind up washing in to the ocean. The point of this story: if you genuinely care about having clean water and a clean food chain, put the right materials in the right waste bins. Details: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/04/06/600174922/another-place-plastics-are-turning-up-organic-fertilizer-from-food-waste https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/04/06/600174922/an...
- speg 9y agoDon't they float the plastic out? Our composter is starting to accept plastic bags and I think while reading about the process, I saw the plastic gets skimmed of somehow.
- whiddershins 9y agoAny system that can be so easily defeated by user mistakes is a terrible system. That’s self evident in a software development context, but I feel like people lose track of that in the real world. Asking people to correctly sort their trash in to more and more specific categories manually seems like a system set up to fail. People aren’t necessarily that trainable or malleable or conscientious. Yelling at people to be more careful is only going to get us so far. We need robust systems that can tolerate at least a certain threshold of abuse by the user. The ideal system would require no thought on the part of the user, it would be impossible to break it through misuse.
- quantum_magpie 9y agoThe system does work in civilized societies, though. Getting a couple hundred euro fine for improper sorting fixes the issue really fast.
- privacypoller 9y agoour recycling allows/encourages coffee cups, lids and sleeves all together. plastic bags/wrap are really hard to recycle and some jurisdictions have stopped collecting them all together glass jars are probably the worst though - the energy to transport, sort and reclaim is far greater than making new jars. Some of the most committed recyclers throw them away rather than burden the system.
- s0fa37 9y agoI find the closing remarks around the banning of single-use plastic bags troubling - surely there are much more beneficial areas to target to reduce our overall use of plastic? Within each of these plastic bags full of supermarket groceries is likely anywhere from 5-20 other items caked in plastic packaging. How much of an impact is banning single use plastic bags, even globally, going to make really? Not saying that I'm against the banning of them, but shouldn't bans be extending much further across other products. The single-use plastic bag seems like such a low-hanging fruit, easy-win, that in my mind will make a negligible difference
- vitro 9y agoOne step after another, you have to start somewhere.
- marcosdumay 9y agoSo you start at the hardest to replace item around that is also the one with the smallest overall impact?
- chiefalchemist 9y agoI don't recall the exact figure it was significant, but the majority of human garbage is single use plastic (e.g., water bottles, plastic forks, etc.). The problem isn't plastic. It's human nature. We're lazy and default to convenience over respect for Mother Nature.
- colmvp 9y agoYour post made me recall an old acquaintance of mine. Being environmentally conscious, he'd bring utensils with him everywhere so that if he ever ate out, he could use those instead of using plastic utensils.
- chiefalchemist 9y agoHa! Thanks!! That's on my TODO list. I'm hoping there's some sort of compact camping set I get buy and leave in the car, my back pocket, or strapped to my calf. Heck! Even a reusable coffee stirrer would be a plus.
- tabeth 9y agoAll of these issues can be solved with pretty straightforward economics. If only there was an impartial, non-corrupt entity that could price externalities, which would then propagate to consumer product prices and therefore minimize this kind of thing.
- dbatten 9y agoWhere does all this come from? I'm admittedly not the biggest saint on the sustainable living front, but I also don't see how all of this is getting into the oceans? AFAIK, any plastic that comes into my house either ends up in the recycling (where it's presumably recycled or sent to the landfill if it can't be recycled), ends up in the trash (where it's buried in a landfill) or (in the case of plastic grocery bags) gets explicitly taken back to a grocery store for recycling. Exactly 0% ends up in an ocean. It's easy to blame others for this sort of stuff (and, as I already said, I admit I could do more on this stuff). But I can't help but think that first world countries with relatively advanced recycling/trash systems aren't contributing much to this and can't do much about it by implementing additional regulations... Am I wrong about that?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- pinot 9y agoTravel to SEA.
- Arnt 9y agoHere's what relatively advanced recycling systems do/did with much of the plastic: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-ban.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/11/world/china-recyclables-b...
- DanBC 9y agoYou wash your clothes. Any clothing that is mostly synthetic (eg, fleeces[1]) will shed fibres into the water system. In some places those fibres end up in the oceans. But also I think a lot of it is industrial. [1] A bit frustrating that these were sometimes sold as eco-friendly way to recycle PET bottles. EDIT: this comment got downvotes. Here's a newspaper article talking about microfibre pollution: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jun/29/microfibers-plastic-pollution-apparel-oceans https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jun/29... > Multiple studies have shown synthetic fibers to make up the lion’s share of microplastics found in oceans, rivers and lakes, and clothes made from synthetics (polyester, nylon, and so on) are widely implicated as the source of that pollution. Microfibers, as the name implies, are tiny, so they can easily move through sewage treatment plants. Unlike natural fibers, such as cotton or wool, synthetic fibers do not biodegrade, and tend to bind with molecules of harmful chemical pollutants found in wastewater, such as pesticides or flame retardants. Studies have shown health problems among plankton and other small organisms that eat microfibers, which then make their way up the food chain. Researchers have found high numbers of fibers inside fish and shellfish sold at markets. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachid_Dris/publication/290182589_Synthetic_fibers_in_atmospheric_fallout_A_source_of_microplastics_in_the_environment/links/569f935708ae4af52546b675/Synthetic-fibers-in-atmospheric-fallout-A-source-of-microplastics-in-the-environment.pdf https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachid_Dris/publication... > Synthetic fibers are one of the forms in which microplastics can be found. They derive presumably from synthetic clothing or macroplastics. Different pathways are thought to be an important source of fibrous microplastics in the aquatic environment. It has been shown that laundry washing machines discharge large amounts of microplastics into waste-waters reaching 1900 fibers in one wash (Browne et al., 2011)). During wastewater treatment, synthetic fibers are known to contaminate sewage sludge (Habib et al., 1998; Zubris and Richards, 2005). The sources and fate of microplastics in the various compartments of the urban environment are poorly documented (Dris et al., 2015a); this paper focuses on the atmospheric compartment and investigates the contribution of the atmospheric fallout as a potential vector of plastic pollution
- jmcgough 9y agoI was vacationing in Thailand a year ago, and was snorkeling in this beautiful, emerald green lagoon in koh phi phi. I suddenly felt something brush up against me from behind... and it was a small pile of floating plastic trash. Really upset me that someone would disrespect such a uniquely beautiful place. Other tour boats were just dumping their plastic waste in the ocean, because it was easy, the ocean is big, and there were no repercussions to them. It's just a small example of a much larger problem... that very few people think about what happens to their plastic waste, or the amount of it that they throw away each year. It doesn't decompose, so we're filling huge landfills with it, and at least some of it ends up in the ocean (through bad actors, natural disasters, or polluting water that feeds into the ocean). Eventually we'll do something about the problem, but by that point we'll have an ocean full of 200 year old plastic. It seems like global tragedy of the commons problems are among the hardest to solve.
- Paul-ish 9y agoHow much of the plastic is from consumers, and how much is from industrial and commercial sources?
- schnable 9y agoThe alternative to plastic in many or even most cases are items that generate more carbon to produce, and much more to ship.
- svag 9y agoThere is an interesting documentary regarding the plastic problem in oceans, called [A Plastic Ocean](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zrn4-FfbXw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zrn4-FfbXw)
- pvaldes 9y agoI can say by direct experience that often is just like that, yes. I found manure sacks, newspapers, lots of plastic bags and net chunks in knots. Sometimes it was a little, other a lot. Is unclear to me on the other hand, if plastic was the cause of death or just a desperately starving animal trying to survive. The sample in the video is very peculiar (not what they found. Is what is missing there). We talk about 26Kg of plastic, that could look like a lot, but was found inside a 6 ton animal with a huge, huge gut. This is a terminal animal. Deaf by sonar or last storms could easily be the real killer here.
- nanomonkey 9y agoI've never understood why we don't gasify our waste plastic and woody material and use it as a fuel source. PVC withstanding (as it create toxic Chloride gases), the stuff has value for a large power plant.