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Is that anything more than a sentiment? It's easy to come up with counter-examples. For example, it's easy for me to "innovate" myself into a 15-foot hole in t
by majewsky 8y ago
Is that anything more than a sentiment? It's easy to come up with counter-examples. For example, it's easy for me to "innovate" myself into a 15-foot hole in the ground, and likely impossible to innovate myself out of it without outside help.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoWhat is the point of this comment? I’m not suggesting any one individual attempt to innovate themselves out of a world polluted with plastic without outside help, but I guess digging yourself a 15-foot grave could be construed as one method. It’s always easier to say why a thing can’t be done than come up with methods of doing a thing and implementing that thing. I have friends who intentionally restrict the amount of plastic-packaged items they buy, they would struggling to throw out a 200mm cube of tightly bound plastics every month or two; so we know significant reductions in plastic waste are possible on an individual scale. In the scope of, for example, landing a probe on an asteroid and returning a sample, the engineering challenges facing us in the form of reducing plastic packaging use seem to me, the non-expert, fairly trivial. I could list some possibilities I, and others, have consider, though they seem to be extensively thrashed out in the comments here and the internet at large. Was going to the moon, or being able to buy an all electric production vehicle, or the modern microchip, not a mere sentiment at some point? It seems like the primary lack in this context is the desire for collective action, which appears to be changing. Perhaps I wildely misunderstood your comment?
- SamReidHughes 8y agoRecycling has nothing to do with plastic pollution. Plastics that don't get recycled instead get buried in a hole in the ground.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoIt’s not clear to me what the point of this comment is. Do you mean to imply that when walking the southern coast of Tasmania I don’t see the area densely littered with plastics? Or perhaps you meant to imply that the oceans aren’t littered with plastic such that cetaceans are dying from eating too much of it? These don’t sound like arguments anyone would intentionally make. Are you certain recycling has nothing to do with plastic pollution? And are you certain that recycled or buried, as a binary choice, are the only two possible outcomes for plastics?
- SamReidHughes 8y agoRecycled plastic is the kind thrown in bins. If you remove recycling programs, it still gets thrown in a bin. Not polluted.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoAh, right, I see where you were going with that.
- harimau777 8y agoCouldn't you use whatever you used to dig the 15 foot hole to dig an angled hole that you could climb up?
- Johnny555 8y agoMaybe he dug a steep sided hole with a backhoe and jumped in. Just because someone is smart enough to dig a hole big enough to get trapped in, it doesn't mean that they were smart enough to allow for a way to get out.