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“Reusable straws and bags are often more resource intensive than single-use ones. Ever noticed that plastic bags and straws are both incredibly thin and incredi
by svd4anything 7y ago
“Reusable straws and bags are often more resource intensive than single-use ones. Ever noticed that plastic bags and straws are both incredibly thin and incredibly cheap? Almost no resources go into making each one — it’s kind of amazing.“
I’m confused by these new plastic bag rules in some cities. What is the underlying reasoning that was used to advocate for them?
- derp_dee_derp 7y agoVirtue signalling. Everyone uses plastic bags, everyone has a whole bunch of them under their kitchen sink. Politicians took a highly visable problem that affects the majority of their constituency and "solved" it. It doesn't matter if it's an actual problem or not to politicians, it only matters if their voters think it's a problem.
- zifnab06 7y agoWikipedia covers this pretty well: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_plastic_bags https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_pla... Roughly, plastic bags are bad for wildlife and enough of them don't make it into the landfill that it's a problem.
- svd4anything 7y agoIt was this section of the posted article which caught my attention: “The problem of rubbish polluting the sea, rivers and land can be most cheaply addressed by improving rubbish collection and making sure everything gets to landfill. Almost all of the litter that escapes into nature, especially the sea, comes from poorer riverine countries with bad rubbish collection practices, such as China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. Rich countries like the UK or US have rubbish collection rates approaching 100% and are responsible for almost no new waste reaching the oceans. Focussing on recycling is a distraction from making sure everything gets collected and cheaply buried underground — something which many countries already do successfully.”