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Just one more reason to hold corporations accountable for pollution and global warming. The free market is not going to solve this one, even when you give peopl

Just one more reason to hold corporations accountable for pollution and global warming. The free market is not going to solve this one, even when you give people warm and fuzzy feelings for "doing the right thing". It's just not profitable to be Green yet, and maybe that won't change until companies have to pay for the second order effects of their products.

dehrmann 7y ago
What does plastic that went from the recycling bin to the landfill have to do with "pollution and global warming" beyond plastic being an almost trivial use of oil?
- sh-run 7y ago
  This is a question I've found myself asking quite a bit lately. Paper products are often marketed as a 'green' alternative to petroleum products. IIRC much of the plastic we use is made from a byproduct of the oil refinement process so it's something we have anyways. Even though paper products biodegrade quicker, it seems like unless the paper product is made from 100% post consumer waste a properly disposed plastic product is better for the environment. I do think part of the problem is that so many of our landfills are poorly managed. In high school I used to spend my summers working for the public works department in the rural community I grew up in. A few days out of the month we had to go out to the fields near the landfill and pick up plastic bags and other bits of trash that had blown out of the landfill before being covered. I say this as someone who avoids single use plastics, drinks tap water, recycles, etc.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    More like plastics are usually made from polyethylene. Thanks to fracking, the ethane that goes into making it is dirt cheap in N. America. More and more polyethylene plants are being set up all the time.
  - graeme 7y ago
    Plastics leech estrogen mimicking materials into the food chain. All living creatures now have bits inside us, and there have been large hormonal effects such as early puberty, increase in intersex births, declining male fertility, and so on. It's hard to say exactly which types of plastics do what, so maybe some are benign, but it's a large uncontrolled experiment at present. For example this shows how plastics shed fibres that end up in sea creatures: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics-found-in-stomachs-of-deepest-sea-creatures https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics... Some info on plastic estrogen-mimicking leaching: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ Bisphenol A is only one type. Plastics likely have other hormonal effects from other components. Increased intersex births from endocrine disrupting chemicals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ Testicular cancer rates are rising in the developed world, and it's linked to endocrine disruption in the womb. Waste is the focus, but I think it's misplaced. Our materials are everywhere in the environment. Even synthetic clothing sheds fibers everytime it's washed, and the same for microfiber clothes. (Note of course that plastics are not the only source of endocrine disruption)
    - fiblye 7y ago
      Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but could this be part of the reason for the (maybe just perceived) increase in trans people? I don’t have solid stats, but based off of what I see outside and on the internet, the number of openly trans people has grown tremendously this past decade, and MTF seem to outnumber FTM by a huge margin.
      - mschuster91 7y ago
        Largest reason is that trans, homosexual and bisexual people don't have to fear being killed or shunned by their families or in school any more. (Yes, in reality they do have to fear discrimination, but soxiety as a large has gotten way, way more open in the last 30 years!) Trans people were known in ancient Greece ffs, it's mostly thanks to the Catholic church and its "morals" that we ended up with imprisoning people for being gay or trans.
  - kd5bjo 7y ago
    Paper and other plant-based products are one major method of getting carbon in a useful form from the air instead of underground. Generally, the trees that are chopped down to make paper were specially planted for the purpose in managed forests, and a larger market for paper goods will lead to more land use for such forests.
  - xorfish 7y ago
    Recycle what you can and burn the rest. That is the most ecological solution if it is done by modern standards. It works and is done in most of Europe. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Austria all put less than 5% of their trash directly into landfills. Functioning trash handling is far more effective at reducing the ecological impact of plastic than any attempt to reduce plastic consumption. Personaly I think Switzerland is the best model on how to handle trash properly. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-world-champion-of-recycling/42382610 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-w...
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      When we run out of land for landfills, incineration will be the next best option. It's just... we have a lot of land for landfills.
- avip 7y ago
  Both are symptoms of the same issue (environmental damage not being priced into products and services to reflect its actual cost)
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Not much. The high level view is like this: Burning fossil fuels -> CO₂ emissions -> Climate change -> Widescale ecosystem collapse, people dying. Disposable plastics under open sun -> Microplastics -> Unknown damage to the whole foodchain -> Possibly (we don't have good data to work off), widescale ecosystem collapse, people dying. These two issues are frequently conflated together, to the detriment of the overall discussion. But it is true that they both ultimately are results of the same failures of market-based economy. If you do root cause analysis on both, you'll end up in the same place. But since it's (AFAIU) unpractical to address the root cause directly, we need to consider which of the two problems to focus on; I'd argue we should focus on the emissions first.
neom 7y ago
David Attenborough says air travel should be more expensive to fight climate change https://7news.com.au/news/environment/david-attenborough-says-air-travel-should-be-more-expensive-to-fight-climate-change-c-208037 https://7news.com.au/news/environment/david-attenborough-say...
- abraae 7y ago
  I find it amazing that if an alien civilization descended on us and taxed all fossil fuel usage by 100%, and took all that money out of planet Earth forever, both we and the aliens would be better off.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    An alien civilization would be better off if they started using our money?
    - abraae 7y ago
      Let's assume they took it in the form of gold, ergs, Apple store credit etc.
      - Doubl 7y ago
        Do they take plastic?
    - anonymou2 7y ago
      no, they will become corrupt.
  - vinay427 7y ago
    Why just fossil fuels? Other massive contributers like the meat industry should be taxed as well.
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      Are you referring to cow farts? ISTM that cow farts come from cow food, which in turn comes from plants that pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Elsewhere ITT this cycle is used to justify using paper products. This seems very different than pulling fossil fuel out of the ground and burning it?
mr_toad 7y ago
> The free market is not going to solve this one We’ve known this for over 100 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality). And solutions to the problem have been proposed for as long (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax). The problem with implementing these taxes are political; people with vested interests will argue long and hard against any new taxes, and any working solution needs to be global.
- cheez 7y ago
  Where I live, there is a waste tax and guess what, it goes into the general fund and is not used for reducing waste.
  - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
    the purpose of a waste tax is not to get money for the government to use to reduce waste, it is to get companies to reduce waste because they want to reduce their tax burden.
    - cheez 7y ago
      The consumer pays the tax.
      - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
        If the consumer pays the tax the prices rise, if the prices rise the consumer goes elsewhere, therefore you look at if you can reduce pollution, reduce the tax and keep the cost for the user the same hopefully leading over time to more of that wonderful thing - profit.
        cheez 7y ago
        If the price of everything goes up 15%, you can't pocket that 15% if you spend money to reduce price by 15%. Inertia dictates that the tax will be permanent. But I hope you're right of course.
BurningFrog 7y ago
The free market solves this easily, if given the correct incentives. It's up to the political system to to produce those, and it's proven incapable. For example, we've known for a long time what will solve global warming most effectively: Carbon taxes. Preferably global ones, but local ones are the correct regional step. And our political systems have spent decades doing everything except this simple thing that will actually work.
- saila 7y ago
  It sounds like you’re saying that regulation, not an unrestrained free market, could solve this problem.
  - stuaxo 7y ago
    Indeed, the idea of a free market is a myth. Markets only function because there are rules, we just argue about what they should be.
- rebuilder 7y ago
  There's no such thing as a free market, except as a hypothetical construct. Markets are always regulated, if not by governments, then by large market participants who can use their clout to create conditions favourable to themselves.
ced 7y ago
Being "Green" was always about Reducing first and foremost, which is what would happen collectively under a carbon tax scheme.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
> It's just not profitable to be Green yet, and maybe that won't change until companies have to pay for the second order effects of their products. It will be as soon as plastic recycling becomes economically attractive. I think it'll take a ban on new plastic production and consequent shortage for that to happen. Until then, I'm sure there's a few of these dodgy "recycling" businesses that put plastic in landfills with the intent of mining it for resources again in a possible future.
garmaine 7y ago
Except that throwing plastic in a landfill is carbon sequestration, and way, way better for the environment than “recycling” which usually results in it shipped to unaccountable companies overseas that dump it in the nearest river, or ending up in an incinerator and releasing it as CO2.
- chimprich 7y ago
  > way, way better for the environment than [...] ending up in an incinerator and releasing it as CO2. Not necessarily. Just thinking about total CO2 released, it should be better for the environment to release the energy in the oil you have currently (in plastic form) than burn extra CO2 extracting an equivalent oil from the ground, refining it, transporting it, etc. The equation might be different if you're getting your energy from non-fossil fuels. In this case, the correct answer is probably to recycle it properly rather than ship it to a third country for an unknown fate. EDIT: I'm assuming here that your incinerator is a modern one that generates energy and that you're not just burning things because they're inconvenient.
cltsang 7y ago
When the market is not informed or cared enough to make the move, it needs external push from the government. This is exactly why I see a ray of hope since Canada announced she will ban single use plastic in near future [0]. I hope international cooperations grasp this chance to abandon as much plastic as possible altogether in the global supply chain, not just to cater to Canada's upcoming regulations. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/canada-single-use-plastics-ban-2021/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/canad...
hkai 7y ago
Why would you hold corporations accountable for people in developing countries throwing plastic into rivers, which is the source of 80% of ocean plastic?
- jessaustin 7y ago
  Maybe some of that comes from garbage shipped to those countries from abroad?

dehrmann 7y ago

What does plastic that went from the recycling bin to the landfill have to do with "pollution and global warming" beyond plastic being an almost trivial use of oil?

sh-run 7y ago
This is a question I've found myself asking quite a bit lately. Paper products are often marketed as a 'green' alternative to petroleum products. IIRC much of the plastic we use is made from a byproduct of the oil refinement process so it's something we have anyways. Even though paper products biodegrade quicker, it seems like unless the paper product is made from 100% post consumer waste a properly disposed plastic product is better for the environment. I do think part of the problem is that so many of our landfills are poorly managed. In high school I used to spend my summers working for the public works department in the rural community I grew up in. A few days out of the month we had to go out to the fields near the landfill and pick up plastic bags and other bits of trash that had blown out of the landfill before being covered. I say this as someone who avoids single use plastics, drinks tap water, recycles, etc.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  More like plastics are usually made from polyethylene. Thanks to fracking, the ethane that goes into making it is dirt cheap in N. America. More and more polyethylene plants are being set up all the time.
- graeme 7y ago
  Plastics leech estrogen mimicking materials into the food chain. All living creatures now have bits inside us, and there have been large hormonal effects such as early puberty, increase in intersex births, declining male fertility, and so on. It's hard to say exactly which types of plastics do what, so maybe some are benign, but it's a large uncontrolled experiment at present. For example this shows how plastics shed fibres that end up in sea creatures: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics-found-in-stomachs-of-deepest-sea-creatures https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics... Some info on plastic estrogen-mimicking leaching: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ Bisphenol A is only one type. Plastics likely have other hormonal effects from other components. Increased intersex births from endocrine disrupting chemicals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ Testicular cancer rates are rising in the developed world, and it's linked to endocrine disruption in the womb. Waste is the focus, but I think it's misplaced. Our materials are everywhere in the environment. Even synthetic clothing sheds fibers everytime it's washed, and the same for microfiber clothes. (Note of course that plastics are not the only source of endocrine disruption)
  - fiblye 7y ago
    Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but could this be part of the reason for the (maybe just perceived) increase in trans people? I don’t have solid stats, but based off of what I see outside and on the internet, the number of openly trans people has grown tremendously this past decade, and MTF seem to outnumber FTM by a huge margin.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      Largest reason is that trans, homosexual and bisexual people don't have to fear being killed or shunned by their families or in school any more. (Yes, in reality they do have to fear discrimination, but soxiety as a large has gotten way, way more open in the last 30 years!) Trans people were known in ancient Greece ffs, it's mostly thanks to the Catholic church and its "morals" that we ended up with imprisoning people for being gay or trans.
- kd5bjo 7y ago
  Paper and other plant-based products are one major method of getting carbon in a useful form from the air instead of underground. Generally, the trees that are chopped down to make paper were specially planted for the purpose in managed forests, and a larger market for paper goods will lead to more land use for such forests.
- xorfish 7y ago
  Recycle what you can and burn the rest. That is the most ecological solution if it is done by modern standards. It works and is done in most of Europe. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Austria all put less than 5% of their trash directly into landfills. Functioning trash handling is far more effective at reducing the ecological impact of plastic than any attempt to reduce plastic consumption. Personaly I think Switzerland is the best model on how to handle trash properly. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-world-champion-of-recycling/42382610 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-w...
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    When we run out of land for landfills, incineration will be the next best option. It's just... we have a lot of land for landfills.
avip 7y ago
Both are symptoms of the same issue (environmental damage not being priced into products and services to reflect its actual cost)
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Not much. The high level view is like this: Burning fossil fuels -> CO₂ emissions -> Climate change -> Widescale ecosystem collapse, people dying. Disposable plastics under open sun -> Microplastics -> Unknown damage to the whole foodchain -> Possibly (we don't have good data to work off), widescale ecosystem collapse, people dying. These two issues are frequently conflated together, to the detriment of the overall discussion. But it is true that they both ultimately are results of the same failures of market-based economy. If you do root cause analysis on both, you'll end up in the same place. But since it's (AFAIU) unpractical to address the root cause directly, we need to consider which of the two problems to focus on; I'd argue we should focus on the emissions first.

neom 7y ago

David Attenborough says air travel should be more expensive to fight climate change https://7news.com.au/news/environment/david-attenborough-says-air-travel-should-be-more-expensive-to-fight-climate-change-c-208037 https://7news.com.au/news/environment/david-attenborough-say...

abraae 7y ago
I find it amazing that if an alien civilization descended on us and taxed all fossil fuel usage by 100%, and took all that money out of planet Earth forever, both we and the aliens would be better off.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  An alien civilization would be better off if they started using our money?
  - abraae 7y ago
    Let's assume they took it in the form of gold, ergs, Apple store credit etc.
    - Doubl 7y ago
      Do they take plastic?
  - anonymou2 7y ago
    no, they will become corrupt.
- vinay427 7y ago
  Why just fossil fuels? Other massive contributers like the meat industry should be taxed as well.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    Are you referring to cow farts? ISTM that cow farts come from cow food, which in turn comes from plants that pull carbon out of the atmosphere. Elsewhere ITT this cycle is used to justify using paper products. This seems very different than pulling fossil fuel out of the ground and burning it?

mr_toad 7y ago

> The free market is not going to solve this one We’ve known this for over 100 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality). And solutions to the problem have been proposed for as long (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax). The problem with implementing these taxes are political; people with vested interests will argue long and hard against any new taxes, and any working solution needs to be global.

cheez 7y ago
Where I live, there is a waste tax and guess what, it goes into the general fund and is not used for reducing waste.
- bryanrasmussen 7y ago
  the purpose of a waste tax is not to get money for the government to use to reduce waste, it is to get companies to reduce waste because they want to reduce their tax burden.
  - cheez 7y ago
    The consumer pays the tax.
    - bryanrasmussen 7y ago
      If the consumer pays the tax the prices rise, if the prices rise the consumer goes elsewhere, therefore you look at if you can reduce pollution, reduce the tax and keep the cost for the user the same hopefully leading over time to more of that wonderful thing - profit.
      - cheez 7y ago
        If the price of everything goes up 15%, you can't pocket that 15% if you spend money to reduce price by 15%. Inertia dictates that the tax will be permanent. But I hope you're right of course.

BurningFrog 7y ago

The free market solves this easily, if given the correct incentives. It's up to the political system to to produce those, and it's proven incapable. For example, we've known for a long time what will solve global warming most effectively: Carbon taxes. Preferably global ones, but local ones are the correct regional step. And our political systems have spent decades doing everything except this simple thing that will actually work.

saila 7y ago
It sounds like you’re saying that regulation, not an unrestrained free market, could solve this problem.
- stuaxo 7y ago
  Indeed, the idea of a free market is a myth. Markets only function because there are rules, we just argue about what they should be.
rebuilder 7y ago
There's no such thing as a free market, except as a hypothetical construct. Markets are always regulated, if not by governments, then by large market participants who can use their clout to create conditions favourable to themselves.

ced 7y ago

Being "Green" was always about Reducing first and foremost, which is what would happen collectively under a carbon tax scheme.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

> It's just not profitable to be Green yet, and maybe that won't change until companies have to pay for the second order effects of their products. It will be as soon as plastic recycling becomes economically attractive. I think it'll take a ban on new plastic production and consequent shortage for that to happen. Until then, I'm sure there's a few of these dodgy "recycling" businesses that put plastic in landfills with the intent of mining it for resources again in a possible future.

garmaine 7y ago

Except that throwing plastic in a landfill is carbon sequestration, and way, way better for the environment than “recycling” which usually results in it shipped to unaccountable companies overseas that dump it in the nearest river, or ending up in an incinerator and releasing it as CO2.

chimprich 7y ago
> way, way better for the environment than [...] ending up in an incinerator and releasing it as CO2. Not necessarily. Just thinking about total CO2 released, it should be better for the environment to release the energy in the oil you have currently (in plastic form) than burn extra CO2 extracting an equivalent oil from the ground, refining it, transporting it, etc. The equation might be different if you're getting your energy from non-fossil fuels. In this case, the correct answer is probably to recycle it properly rather than ship it to a third country for an unknown fate. EDIT: I'm assuming here that your incinerator is a modern one that generates energy and that you're not just burning things because they're inconvenient.

cltsang 7y ago

When the market is not informed or cared enough to make the move, it needs external push from the government. This is exactly why I see a ray of hope since Canada announced she will ban single use plastic in near future [0]. I hope international cooperations grasp this chance to abandon as much plastic as possible altogether in the global supply chain, not just to cater to Canada's upcoming regulations. [0]: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/canada-single-use-plastics-ban-2021/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/canad...

hkai 7y ago

Why would you hold corporations accountable for people in developing countries throwing plastic into rivers, which is the source of 80% of ocean plastic?

jessaustin 7y ago
Maybe some of that comes from garbage shipped to those countries from abroad?