4 ms·

This is a really great point that deserves to be it's own comment, rather than a reply to another. The two greatest challenges facing us in the next few years a

This is a really great point that deserves to be it's own comment, rather than a reply to another. The two greatest challenges facing us in the next few years are climate change and water usage. Plastic is an issue, but it's not a life-or-death-for-the-species problem. We can figure plastic out later. We already are discovering bacteria and other organisms that can digest plastics. It seems to me we have a kind of liberal guilt when it comes to plastic production. As if we're defiling this green and pleasant land with something alien to the universe. We're almost certainly not producing anything that hasn't already existed. We should stop acting like we are. (The same goes for nuclear waste.) As long as plastics are disposed responsibly in ways that don't damage plants and animals, what's the issue?

state_less 8y ago
> As long as plastics are disposed responsibly in ways that don't damage plants and animals, what's the issue? Please don't discount one of the biggest issues though. I've told folks their plastic bottle is about to blow away (overlooking lands end, right over the ocean). The person picks it up, walks a bit further up the trail and throw it in the bushes. I've had folks throw their cigarette butt on the side of the road on Independence pass. I asked them to pick it up, and they noodled around at the ground with their foot as if to find it, then hop in their car and take off. We should design for some irresponsibility and more so in places where there isn't much environmental consciousness.
- scotchmi_st 8y ago
  You're referring to anecdotes. Maybe the sort of behaviour is widespread, but even if it is, you then need to prove it's having much of an impact on the environment, and even then it's a drop in the ocean compared with the damage done via climate change and water consumption. We need to get out of our parochial ideas about waste. Plastics are aesthetically bad, but other forces are quantitatively way worse.
  - state_less 8y ago
    It probably won't come as a big surprise that I also would like to address the larger forces as well. That doesn't mean that we can't also want to address the garbage that is littering our oceans.
  - titzer 8y ago
    > Plastics are aesthetically bad, but other forces are quantitatively way worse. I don't agree with this line of reasoning. We have room for more than one priority, and solving the waste pipeline is ultimately one of logistics and political will, as well as elbow grease and the pluck to get out there and pick up some garbage. I've seen whole gaggles of people walk past a bottle lying on the ground next to a trash can, and no one would stoop over and pick it up and put it in the trash. Humans have this disease on societal scales, and the oceans are taking hell because of it.
    - mikec3010 8y ago
      The shit loads of trash in the ocean are from impoverished developing nations who use their rivers as garbage dumps. Not the ignorant yuppie who let's his Pepsi bottle blow into the marina. Don't let a few assholes be a surrogate for justifiable outrage that comes from a completely different source on an incomprehensibly massive scale.
      - titzer 8y ago
        > Don't let a few assholes be a surrogate for justifiable outrage that comes from a completely different source on an incomprehensibly massive scale. Oh I'm well acquainted with the problems in developing countries and they are disproportionately responsible for the state of the oceans. However, I'd say that they are all just degrees of the same problem. I've picked up lots of trash in developing countries, but also plenty along American highways, even in the most scenic areas of the country, and even seen it here and there even in the cleanest countries (Japan, Switzerland, Germany). I met some really nice people all over New Zealand who as volunteers simply go out and pick up garbage off the beach, in the bushes, trees, rivers, whereever it occurs. They recognize other places are shitholes but that doesn't stop them from doing something about the trash where they live. If you join in, in short order you can't help but realize that it isn't all washing up from some shithole in Southeast Asia, but a lot of it comes from local sources. Litter and dumping are universal problems. Don't fall prey to the "solving the biggest problem first" fallacy. Yes, we need to fix the pipeline and help those countries develop waste management systems, we need to stop producing so much plastic, but hell, when there is trash laying around, just pick it up! Getting people involved in doing this is the best way for them to see that this is a widespread problem, not just some trashy fuckwits over there that we can blame it all on.
buckminster 8y ago
> As long as plastics are disposed responsibly in ways that don't damage plants and animals, what's the issue? But they are not disposed of responsibly. Fish sold for human consumption increasingly contain plastic microparticles, which bind toxins. The oceans already contain a vast amount of macro plastic which is disintegrating into microparticles and will be basically impossibly to remove. This is new, it's getting worse, and we don't know what effect it will have on human health.
- njarboe 8y ago
  Seems to me the only way that wild fish will survive is if they become toxic to human consumption and even then we will probably keep eating them (see Japan and mercury contaminated tuna).

state_less 8y ago

> As long as plastics are disposed responsibly in ways that don't damage plants and animals, what's the issue? Please don't discount one of the biggest issues though. I've told folks their plastic bottle is about to blow away (overlooking lands end, right over the ocean). The person picks it up, walks a bit further up the trail and throw it in the bushes. I've had folks throw their cigarette butt on the side of the road on Independence pass. I asked them to pick it up, and they noodled around at the ground with their foot as if to find it, then hop in their car and take off. We should design for some irresponsibility and more so in places where there isn't much environmental consciousness.

scotchmi_st 8y ago
You're referring to anecdotes. Maybe the sort of behaviour is widespread, but even if it is, you then need to prove it's having much of an impact on the environment, and even then it's a drop in the ocean compared with the damage done via climate change and water consumption. We need to get out of our parochial ideas about waste. Plastics are aesthetically bad, but other forces are quantitatively way worse.
- state_less 8y ago
  It probably won't come as a big surprise that I also would like to address the larger forces as well. That doesn't mean that we can't also want to address the garbage that is littering our oceans.
- titzer 8y ago
  > Plastics are aesthetically bad, but other forces are quantitatively way worse. I don't agree with this line of reasoning. We have room for more than one priority, and solving the waste pipeline is ultimately one of logistics and political will, as well as elbow grease and the pluck to get out there and pick up some garbage. I've seen whole gaggles of people walk past a bottle lying on the ground next to a trash can, and no one would stoop over and pick it up and put it in the trash. Humans have this disease on societal scales, and the oceans are taking hell because of it.
  - mikec3010 8y ago
    The shit loads of trash in the ocean are from impoverished developing nations who use their rivers as garbage dumps. Not the ignorant yuppie who let's his Pepsi bottle blow into the marina. Don't let a few assholes be a surrogate for justifiable outrage that comes from a completely different source on an incomprehensibly massive scale.
    - titzer 8y ago
      > Don't let a few assholes be a surrogate for justifiable outrage that comes from a completely different source on an incomprehensibly massive scale. Oh I'm well acquainted with the problems in developing countries and they are disproportionately responsible for the state of the oceans. However, I'd say that they are all just degrees of the same problem. I've picked up lots of trash in developing countries, but also plenty along American highways, even in the most scenic areas of the country, and even seen it here and there even in the cleanest countries (Japan, Switzerland, Germany). I met some really nice people all over New Zealand who as volunteers simply go out and pick up garbage off the beach, in the bushes, trees, rivers, whereever it occurs. They recognize other places are shitholes but that doesn't stop them from doing something about the trash where they live. If you join in, in short order you can't help but realize that it isn't all washing up from some shithole in Southeast Asia, but a lot of it comes from local sources. Litter and dumping are universal problems. Don't fall prey to the "solving the biggest problem first" fallacy. Yes, we need to fix the pipeline and help those countries develop waste management systems, we need to stop producing so much plastic, but hell, when there is trash laying around, just pick it up! Getting people involved in doing this is the best way for them to see that this is a widespread problem, not just some trashy fuckwits over there that we can blame it all on.

buckminster 8y ago

> As long as plastics are disposed responsibly in ways that don't damage plants and animals, what's the issue? But they are not disposed of responsibly. Fish sold for human consumption increasingly contain plastic microparticles, which bind toxins. The oceans already contain a vast amount of macro plastic which is disintegrating into microparticles and will be basically impossibly to remove. This is new, it's getting worse, and we don't know what effect it will have on human health.

njarboe 8y ago
Seems to me the only way that wild fish will survive is if they become toxic to human consumption and even then we will probably keep eating them (see Japan and mercury contaminated tuna).