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I think it's a decent bet that future generations will see our usage of plastic in the past few decades pretty similarly to the way we see the historical usage
by jaggederest 7y ago
I think it's a decent bet that future generations will see our usage of plastic in the past few decades pretty similarly to the way we see the historical usage of asbestos during the middle part of the 20th century.
- romaaeterna 7y agoAgreed, but as a practical matter, we should be clear about where the vast majority of Ocean plastic comes from. https://i.imgur.com/D60ySOI.png https://i.imgur.com/D60ySOI.png
- contingencies 7y agoThat data is suspect.
- contingencies 7y agoKnowing there is no way those numbers are right I point out it's dodgy looking, get viciously downvoted (probably by some kind of yay US crowd who dislike people living in China having an opinion) but when the source is quoted has literally been corrected by its own authors.[0] Typical HN. [0] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.7b06377/suppl_file/es7b06377_si_002.pdf https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.7b06377/suppl...
- romaaeterna 7y agoI don't know what is "typical HN", but what you have linked to was only a correction in the table headings. They say in the correction notice that it "does not affect the data, only the table headings." They had switched "Model 1" and "Model 2" in the original. https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06377 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b06377
- contingencies 7y agoOK. Actually the reason I felt it was unlikely to be correct was that I have lived in both river deltas (a year each in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Zhuhai) as well as travelled extensively (Suzhou, Yangzhou, upper Yangtse, Jiangmen, etc.) and suspect given the manufacturing and residential density and geographic expanse of the lower PRD, it should have significant garbage versus Yangtse. How was the data gathered? Satellite? When was it gathered? The 2017 paper probably uses 2015 or earlier data, there have been substantial improvements on environmental issues in the PRD region (really China-wide) of late, but I'd still be surprised if it's substantially cleaner in plastic refuse terms than the Yangtse.
- martin_a 7y agoNow what? Nuke India/China? Also: What's the source of this information?
- romaaeterna 7y agoSource: “Export of Plastic Debris by Rivers into the Sea,” by Christian Schmidt et al., in Environmental Science & Technology, Vol. 51, No. 21; November 7, 2017
- Baeocystin 7y agoMore like invest in proper waste management and landfill facilities in the cities that border the main rivers in asia. Seriously, that's the answer. As it stands, a truly staggering amount of waste, of which plastics are only a fraction, is just straight dumped into these rivers because there's no way to handle it locally. Stopping the flow at the source through proven, straightforward waste management techniques would help the environment is innumerable ways, including the plastics problem.
- im3w1l 7y agoIf I'm interpreting that image correctly, a large fraction of plastics is not coming from any of the top 10 sources.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoI often think this will be known as "The Plastic Age" and we will be known by a layer of it in the sediment like the K-T boundary has iridium.
- devenson 7y agoThe plastic layer will sequester the carbon previously sequestered as oil and coal.
- naravara 7y agoOver time it’s possible you’ll get some kind of fungus or yeast that can break the plastic down. This is already getting to be a problem in some modern art galleries where modernist plastic exhibits are slowly dissolving into (and smelling like) arctic acid because some novel strains of yeast showed up that could digest them.
- adammunich 7y agoWhere can I read more about this?
- naravara 7y agoI first read about back in 2009: https://slate.com/culture/2009/07/a-generation-of-plastic-art-objects-are-degrading-like-overused-tupperware-can-they-be-saved.html https://slate.com/culture/2009/07/a-generation-of-plastic-ar...
- rch 7y agoI've been calling it the Plasticene, and looking around now maybe a few other people do as well.
- Baeocystin 7y agoI really don't think so. Plastics are used because they solve a lot of very real problems for the amount they cost to produce. That's a good thing. The vast majority of the plastic waste in the environment comes from rivers that flow through countries that lack even basic sanitation/garbage collection facilities. A plastic bottle floating down a river has a real potential environmental impact. A plastic bottle sitting in a landfill isn't hurting anything, and isn't going to. Investing in waste management infrastructure in these communities would essentially solve the plastics problem, even if nothing else was changed. It is, unfortunately, not very exciting to talk about civil waste management infrastructure as the way forward, but it doesn't stop it from being the correct answer.
- azinman2 7y agoThey’ll still exist for a long time, and will be eaten by birds, etc, even in a landfill. Managing AND reducing waste needs to happen simultaneously.
- Baeocystin 7y agoPlastics that sit undisturbed in the earth are a form of carbon sequestration. That is not a bad thing, as long as they are concentrated in a known place. Landfills are lot more complex than just dumping trash in a pit. https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/swfacilities/landfills/needfor#EnsureSafety https://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/swfacilities/landfills/needfor... may be of interest. The tl;dr is that properly-managed ones genuinely are a safe form of waste disposal.
- abathur 7y agoWell-designed landfills are probably better than loading plastic into confetti cannons, but calling anything in a man-engineered landfill "undisturbed in the earth" is a stretch. Plastics sitting in our landfills are, at human timescales, sitting relatively undisturbed on the outer skin of this world, where they are probably a teensy bit less "sequestered" than they were several thousand feet into the crust. At anything approaching geologic time, some fraction of these feats of engineering will be graciously buried by layer upon layer of new sediments; others will be sundered by the same forces that flatten mountain-ranges and carve canyons, their contents re-circulated through nature's supply chains.
- 0x8BADF00D 7y agoWhat is the replacement material? Graphene? It will be a long time before that switch happens.
- protonfish 7y agoThe shame will be from how we treat our oceans. Dumping garbage and overfishing are perpetrated by psychopaths while average people wail and wring their hands about how they are powerless to do anything.