4 ms·

> "and nearly a quarter is discarded into the environment, such as plastic in waterways and oceans." That piece of the graph showing that 22 billion tons is di

> "and nearly a quarter is discarded into the environment, such as plastic in waterways and oceans." That piece of the graph showing that 22 billion tons is discarded into the environment almost seems unbelievably high. There must be some caveat to that figure right?

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
>that piece of the graph showing that 22 billion tons is discarded into the environment almost seems unbelievably high. There must be some caveat to that figure right? A quick google search says oil consumption in 2015 was 9.3x10^7 barrels and a barrel weighs 3x10^2 pounds so if we used 100% of our 2015 oil consumption to make plastic which comes out about three orders of magnitude short. Less than 5% of oil production is used for plastic, more than making up for any increase in tonnage from other ingredients (mostly nitrogen and/or oxygen) in the plastic. So yeah, there's something in that statistic that got lost in translation.
- pixl97 7y ago
  Being that plastic is also made of natural gas it may not have been directly included in the oil stat.
Accujack 7y ago
What most graphs showing garbage being thrown into the environment won't show is who is doing the discarding. China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastics into the ocean than all other countries combined. That's because these countries have large numbers of people in poverty or under economic or political stress, who typically are far more concerned with the immediate needs of survival than with hypothetical environmental concerns. What makes it worse is that the garbage doesn't all come from those countries... a good part of it comes from industrialized western nations because those nations find it cheap to make their trash someone else's problem. The reason this isn't discussed is that fixing the issue would require the wealthy western nations to intervene economically in those places to change the situation, something which would be resisted by the governments who find advantage in having a population that's not educated and remains under stress. On top of that, climate change is happening.. those countries and people are going to be under more stress soon, not less... what will happen if, one day, those people have a choice between surviving another year by dumping toxins into the environment that will sterilize the oceans or dying?
- pinkfoot 7y ago
  > because these countries have large numbers of people in poverty… Its probably going to be a surprise to you then to learn that Kigali, Rwanda is absolutely spotless. Somehow they manage to come together every month to clean the city and have banned plastic I know it makes 'sense' that poor people don't care about the environment, but you really should include all the data in your hypothesis.
  - jsjohnst 7y ago
    >> China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastics into the ocean than all other countries combined. > Its probably going to be a surprise to you then to learn that Kigali, Rwanda is absolutely spotless. GP enumerated the countries they were talking about, they didn’t imply all countries with poverty are to blame. It’s well documented that those countries are the source of a large portion of ocean plastic and that US and other western countries ship their recycling and garbage to those countries.
    - pinkfoot 7y ago
      So what's their plan when the plastic gets to them? 1. refuse it (China did) 2. process it (pyrolysis → diesel ?) 3. clean it and resell it (clothing, furniture) 4. do nothing, let it wash into their environment. Shame. As I showed, the desperately poor folk of Rwanda managed to get their government to make a plan. Their is no reason why hundreds of millions of these less-poor folk can't do it. I suggest we stop handing out free-passes for poor behaviour.
      - thrwaway69 7y ago
        I suggest western countries stop outsourcing manufacturing at peanuts (so those poor countries can make effective recycling, cleaning plants, etc), sending off their garbage and pretending total waste produced by more people should be the same as total waste produced by less people. Per capita, people in developed countries are polluting far more. Comparing the total waste of Canada or US to India is similiar to saying CEO deserves more money because he works much harder than hundreds of people under them. India has 1.34 billion people while US has almost 4x less and Canada 36x less. An average American produce enough plastic for 10 Indians. Poor countries than india have even less per capita wastage.
mytailorisrich 7y ago
I'm thinking that most of the 21 billion tons of food produced are "lost to environment" depending on how "refuse" is defined, mostly as human waste and some as human beings.
FiatLuxDave 7y ago
21.3 billion tons of the input materials are used to make food. I suspect that a lot of that 22 billion tons "discarded to the environment" includes sewage.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

>that piece of the graph showing that 22 billion tons is discarded into the environment almost seems unbelievably high. There must be some caveat to that figure right? A quick google search says oil consumption in 2015 was 9.3x10^7 barrels and a barrel weighs 3x10^2 pounds so if we used 100% of our 2015 oil consumption to make plastic which comes out about three orders of magnitude short. Less than 5% of oil production is used for plastic, more than making up for any increase in tonnage from other ingredients (mostly nitrogen and/or oxygen) in the plastic. So yeah, there's something in that statistic that got lost in translation.

pixl97 7y ago
Being that plastic is also made of natural gas it may not have been directly included in the oil stat.

Accujack 7y ago

What most graphs showing garbage being thrown into the environment won't show is who is doing the discarding. China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastics into the ocean than all other countries combined. That's because these countries have large numbers of people in poverty or under economic or political stress, who typically are far more concerned with the immediate needs of survival than with hypothetical environmental concerns. What makes it worse is that the garbage doesn't all come from those countries... a good part of it comes from industrialized western nations because those nations find it cheap to make their trash someone else's problem. The reason this isn't discussed is that fixing the issue would require the wealthy western nations to intervene economically in those places to change the situation, something which would be resisted by the governments who find advantage in having a population that's not educated and remains under stress. On top of that, climate change is happening.. those countries and people are going to be under more stress soon, not less... what will happen if, one day, those people have a choice between surviving another year by dumping toxins into the environment that will sterilize the oceans or dying?

pinkfoot 7y ago
> because these countries have large numbers of people in poverty… Its probably going to be a surprise to you then to learn that Kigali, Rwanda is absolutely spotless. Somehow they manage to come together every month to clean the city and have banned plastic I know it makes 'sense' that poor people don't care about the environment, but you really should include all the data in your hypothesis.
- jsjohnst 7y ago
  >> China, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam dump more plastics into the ocean than all other countries combined. > Its probably going to be a surprise to you then to learn that Kigali, Rwanda is absolutely spotless. GP enumerated the countries they were talking about, they didn’t imply all countries with poverty are to blame. It’s well documented that those countries are the source of a large portion of ocean plastic and that US and other western countries ship their recycling and garbage to those countries.
  - pinkfoot 7y ago
    So what's their plan when the plastic gets to them? 1. refuse it (China did) 2. process it (pyrolysis → diesel ?) 3. clean it and resell it (clothing, furniture) 4. do nothing, let it wash into their environment. Shame. As I showed, the desperately poor folk of Rwanda managed to get their government to make a plan. Their is no reason why hundreds of millions of these less-poor folk can't do it. I suggest we stop handing out free-passes for poor behaviour.
    - thrwaway69 7y ago
      I suggest western countries stop outsourcing manufacturing at peanuts (so those poor countries can make effective recycling, cleaning plants, etc), sending off their garbage and pretending total waste produced by more people should be the same as total waste produced by less people. Per capita, people in developed countries are polluting far more. Comparing the total waste of Canada or US to India is similiar to saying CEO deserves more money because he works much harder than hundreds of people under them. India has 1.34 billion people while US has almost 4x less and Canada 36x less. An average American produce enough plastic for 10 Indians. Poor countries than india have even less per capita wastage.

mytailorisrich 7y ago

I'm thinking that most of the 21 billion tons of food produced are "lost to environment" depending on how "refuse" is defined, mostly as human waste and some as human beings.

FiatLuxDave 7y ago

21.3 billion tons of the input materials are used to make food. I suspect that a lot of that 22 billion tons "discarded to the environment" includes sewage.