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> first world nations often export their trash to third world nations Not anymore, pretty much all Asian countries have stopped accepting plastic trash.
by sampo 7y ago
> first world nations often export their trash to third world nations
Not anymore, pretty much all Asian countries have stopped accepting plastic trash.
- Amygaz 7y agoPlastic pollution didn't just happen in the past few months. It's been decades.
- uhhhhhhh 7y agoThey still have tons of it to dispose of, and still have lower regulations/controls on how it gets disposed of. And now there is a backlog of recycling plastics in north america that is increasingly likely to get thrown in landfills, some of that may make it to waterways.
- sampo 7y agoPast 10 years, Europe is increasing burning waste for generating electricity, and heat for district heating. Especially Sweden is burning 50% of the waste they generate. Waste plastic makes pretty good fuel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration#Incineration_in_Europe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration#Incineration_in_E...
- thatfrenchguy 7y agoAnd emits CO2. No more plastic, less CO2 from production and from the waste. And it’s clearly our major crisis of the century.
- sampo 7y agoSweden (5.1) is very close to the world average (4.9 tCO2/capita/year) in fossil CO2 emissions, so they're doing really well for a developed country. (2017 data from Wikipedia.)
- perfunctory 7y agoThere is a caveat in per country carbon accounting. It doesn't include imported goods, nor shipment of those goods. Having said that, Sweden is indeed doing relatively good compared to other developed countries.
- uhhhhhhh 7y agoImagine how much better they could do without such high emitting activities
- ccozan 7y agoLet me put it that way: CO2 might be mitigated at some point, but plastic in oceans is a lost cause.
- magduf 7y agoYes, it emits CO2, but is that really a problem? If they didn't burn plastic to produce heat and electricity, they'd likely be burning fossil fuel, which is going to emit probably about the same amount of CO2. Is trash burning really offsetting the use of non-carbon energy sources?
- devy 7y agoThe damages has been done. It could take hundreds of years and an order of magnitude's financial resources to clean it up land and underground water pollutions. But the air/ocean/atmosphere/carbon footprints are shared and affecting globally.
- whatshisface 7y agoWe should take a break from games and adtech and save the earth.
- chopin 7y agoThere's no money in it.