8 ms·

> ...this is horrible idea as the plastic is going to be broken down and dispersed in environment in large amounts This take seems trivially and obviously wron

> ...this is horrible idea as the plastic is going to be broken down and dispersed in environment in large amounts This take seems trivially and obviously wrong. Recycling plastic produces a lot of nasty chemicals and is awful for the environment, but we still do it, because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse. The question is not whether these plastic bricks are bad in absolute terms, it is whether they're worse than whatever was being done with Kenya's plastic waste before this woman came along. However, it is curiously common. From elsewhere in this thread: > What about leaching [sic] chemicals into the soil and groundwater? > I do wonder about microplastics flaking off of them, though.... > ...making me concerned about plastic particulate being released... > What happens when these erode - wouldn’t plastic particles contaminate water? > ...how does this product not heavily pollute the environment? Isn't that interesting? Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist?

LockAndLol 6y ago
> What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? This is obvious and very easy to see, while the other examples you brought up aren't. Your examples might even be doing more damage, but because the end result is shiny, people are distracted. Plus, I'm sure there's a part of first world vs third world prejudice: "she's probably uneducated and doesn't know what she's doing, plus her accent sounds that way".
Bakary 6y ago
>Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? This is one aspect of the tech world (and more broadly the "comfortable knowledge worker" class) that irritates me. There are so many aspects of sustainable development that are only considered from a perspective of NIMBYism mixed with orientalism. The one that bothers me the most is the portrayal of overpopulation as something caused only by people in developing countries, as if the first world wasn't part of the total count.
- EL_Loco 6y ago
  Plus, the first world inhabitants pollute much, much more than third world individuals. Plane travel, consumerism, person/car ratio, etc etc
  - bromuro 6y ago
    Oh “first” or “third”, this is actually the “only one” world we have. The more we want to be rich, the more we destroy it. ...how many want to be rich?
    - murukesh_s 6y ago
      What is rich actually? I still don't understand how can an entire nation be rich without someone (immigrant) or machines doing your job.. or access to latest gadgets? but i still see people struggling to pay for education, finding jobs is extremely difficult etc.. people are still low/middle/upper irrespective of the country. there are several developing nations where people don't have so much struggle to live.
  - Const-me 6y ago
    > Plane travel, consumerism, person/car ratio, etc etc The rest of the world is catching up faster than most people are aware. Here's a link for daily plastic waste generation per person: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita I don't see an obvious correlation between first world and amount of waste: the #1 country is Guyana, China and Russia are well above Canada, etc. Similar with CO2 emissions: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe... The #1 is Qatar, we in Montenegro are on the second place.
    - vinay427 6y ago
      Yes, there isn't a clear divide between "first-world" and everyone else anymore. That being said, I think the wealthier countries that are more industrialized have a debt to pay with regards to climate impact given that they were able to develop and build before mainstream awareness of the issue, and virtually all of the accumulated pollution today is therefore due to these industrialized nations. I'd like to see a period in which China, India, and smaller nations are able to use more than their share of the global quota while the wealthier countries in western Europe and North America use less, per capita and in sum.
theklub 6y ago
Yes about Bitcoin and it was a rather large discussion too.
jeromenerf 6y ago
> What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? Because the project is literally about plastic pollution solving? Plastic is so cheap any recycling project faces either an environmental or an economical showstopper. I am glad this one is having some impact. Iirc, plastic wastes are added to the tar mix to cover roads, to saw dust and glue to produce composite deck boards, etc. I am not informed enough to have an opinion on whether it’s a good or bad thing.
foerbert 6y ago
One possible explanation is that this has an obvious environmental aspect. If somebody is doing something for environmental reasons, it doesn't seem surprising that people are thinking about it from an environmental perspective. Obviously many things not done for environmental reasons have environmental impacts, but the mere idea itself doesn't automatically invoke that perspective. You can read about a new fab without thinking about the environmental aspects, but you probably cannot read about somebody recycling plastic without thinking about the environment.
- ianai 6y ago
  That’s called letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The perfect doesn’t exist in this case.
nitrogen 6y ago
the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse. How so?
- ineptech 6y ago
  hehehe, I knew someone would challenge that. I don't know the particulars, I am inferring that recycling plastic is better than dumping it in some way from the fact that it's more expensive yet people still do it. I did not mean it in the sense of "I know a lot about plastic recycling and ready and willing to defend the mainstream view against people who think it is misguided."
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > I am inferring that recycling plastic is better than dumping it in some way from the fact that it's more expensive yet people still do it. There is a lot of demand to be told that when you separate your plastic out, it gets recycled. There's no demand for the recycling to actually happen, so mostly it doesn't.
nomel 6y ago
> This take seems trivially and obviously wrong. I don't think this is obviously wrong at all. Dispersing a fine mist of micro plastics into the environment, where it can enter the air and water system, is very very different than sticking a piece of plastic into the ground, where it will comfortably sit for a thousand years with minimal decomposition. For a good example, here's [1] a study about how car tires, which slowly disappear into the environment, are a major contributor to micro plastics in the ocean. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/tires-unseen-plastic-polluter/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/tires...
- culopatin 6y ago
  You’re missing that not all plastics make into a landfill and are around us already leeching microplastics. I’d think that bricking them and covering them with other materials would lock them in better than a bottle floating in a river
  - Jeff_Brown 6y ago
    I lived in Kenya. Stuff under the road doesn't stay there long. They get incredible abuse and little maintenance. It's hard to think of anything that would generate more microplastics than putting it in a road. Plastic in the ocean, in your garden, in an animal's mouth, anywhere else, just can't compare to the grinding action of thousands of cars daily.
    - finnh 6y ago
      The road? These are footpath pavers.
      - ceres 6y ago
        He obviously didn't read the article.
      - iso1210 6y ago
        Footpath state in Nairobi is awful, I haven't spent much time out of the capital.
fudged71 6y ago
When I visited Kenya, people literally just burned their plastic trash in a pit on the side of the road. So yeah, any form of reuse/recycling seems better than that.
nostromo 6y ago
> the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse Why is that worse? Plastic is made out of oil. It belongs in the ground.
- loyukfai 6y ago
  So if the rate we produce new plastic is slower or the same as decomposition, than it will be a lesser problem than its today?
ekianjo 6y ago
> Recycling plastic produces a lot of nasty chemicals and is awful for the environment, but we still do it, because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse Manority of plastic waste is NEVER recycled. Lets not spread myths.
- wombatmobile 6y ago
  There is no need for myths when you can rely on powerful euphemisms such as "thermal recycling"... "Officially, Japan recycles 84 percent of the plastic it collects, one of the highest rates in the world, but the government designates three types of recycling processes: material, chemical and thermal. Material recycling means the plastic itself is reprocessed into new plastic — PET bottles, for instance, are made into new PET products. This is probably the image of recycling that most people have. Chemical recycling means that plastic waste is broken down into its constituent components, which are then recombined to make new plastic materials. Thermal recycling means that the plastic is burned in incinerators to produce energy." https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/06/national/media-national/japan-faces-uphill-battle-reduce-plastic-consumption/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/06/national/media-...
  - ekianjo 6y ago
    Burning plastic to produce heat hardly counts as "recycling"... Incidentally, in Japan, PET recycling is a very small minority of all plastic collected, so it hardly moves the mark even if that part is recycled in plastic-loving Japan.
davidandgoliath 6y ago
Isn't that interesting? Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" > reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? Thanks for bringing this up: Honestly, that thought has never crossed my mind when thinking about these initiatives. Much appreciated: You've changed the way I think.
markdown 6y ago
> This take seems trivially and obviously wrong. Quite the opposite actually. Tires are already a huge source of microplastics pollution. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/ > because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse. The problem is that landfills aren't living up to their names. They aren't being filled in and buried. Burying plastic is the best thing you can do to dispose of it. It's only when they're left in the open air to break down and be spread all over the oceans by wind that you have a problem.
Nasrudith 6y ago
> Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? The others aren't claiming to be an environmental solution so it doesn't get looked at under that lens first. Plastic as well strikes a nerve by hitting upon other issues like microplastics and past deception of recyclability. I think it essentially hits a lot of "bad idea flags" combined with a cognitive bias I noticed. A company which casts itself as "pro-worker" company paying $12/hr for say sign-turner jobs when most in the field/area pay only minimum wage getting more backlash than everyone else. didn't "betray them" in spite of paying higher than everyone else. It seems everybody hates hypocrisy in which they are not a participant.
ericmcer 6y ago
Because this article specifically deals with the environmental impacts of plastics and how to reduce them. Starlink could raise hundreds of moral/philosophical issues, it would be insane to address them all every time. If the starlink article involved how much plastic waste they caused the discussion would be around that, if it involved privacy and surveillance we would talk about that, if it involved how fast the speeds are we would talk about that...
anomaloustho 6y ago
5 of the 6 points noted in OP’s comment had to do with brick’s rigidity and compressive strength. 1 point was related to the environment. Plastic bricks are an alternative to sand/clay bricks. Traditional bricks first appeared in China and have been adopted and used by humans across various civilizations for thousands of years. As engineering advanced globally, the pros and cons of bricks have been well explored and well understood. Plastic bricks are a new contender to this problem. That said, when you have a new contender to a centuries established and globally adopted solution, it might be more likely to prompt exploration of its potential cons. Starlink is a new engineering solution with several of its own cons that have been reported in HN. It is difficult to compare Starlink against other alternatives when Starlink has a narrow use case that it particularly excels in (high speed Internet to unserviced areas of the globe)
pessimizer 6y ago
> Recycling plastic produces a lot of nasty chemicals and is awful for the environment, but we still do it, because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse. Is it, though? Or was that just a scam to keep us buying plastic shit and to keep packaging unregulated? It is not trivially and obviously wrong that it might be better to throw plastic into big holes than to spread it all over the surface of the planet. It's not true for nuclear waste. Not to be preachy, but the "at least they're doing something" common sense argument is not good. You have to do the math.
tweetle_beetle 6y ago
It's quite common for users to jump down the throats of anyone who talks about privacy/encryption without sufficient perceived weight behind them. I suppose this could be seen as more of the same. But I also wonder if the comments would be less dismissive and condescending if the article were framed differently. There's a lot more to this story than the journalist has bothered to cover and they are partly to blame for the reaction. "Former data analyst and engineer creates startup to develop award-winning material over five times stronger than concrete from waste, following scholarship in US university materials lab."
hombre_fatal 6y ago
> What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? This is the oldest internet comment phenomena in the world, so why do you only notice it here and not every other time? People always have the nature to attack and knock down, and stories of an individual building something on their own is a far more accessible punching bag than anything else you mentioned. We get to roleplay as critics, scientists, environmentalists, bureaucrats, and we love it. pg's "middlebrow dismissal" was coined from watching HNers attack the guy building something in his garage.

LockAndLol 6y ago

> What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? This is obvious and very easy to see, while the other examples you brought up aren't. Your examples might even be doing more damage, but because the end result is shiny, people are distracted. Plus, I'm sure there's a part of first world vs third world prejudice: "she's probably uneducated and doesn't know what she's doing, plus her accent sounds that way".

Bakary 6y ago

>Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? This is one aspect of the tech world (and more broadly the "comfortable knowledge worker" class) that irritates me. There are so many aspects of sustainable development that are only considered from a perspective of NIMBYism mixed with orientalism. The one that bothers me the most is the portrayal of overpopulation as something caused only by people in developing countries, as if the first world wasn't part of the total count.

EL_Loco 6y ago
Plus, the first world inhabitants pollute much, much more than third world individuals. Plane travel, consumerism, person/car ratio, etc etc
- bromuro 6y ago
  Oh “first” or “third”, this is actually the “only one” world we have. The more we want to be rich, the more we destroy it. ...how many want to be rich?
  - murukesh_s 6y ago
    What is rich actually? I still don't understand how can an entire nation be rich without someone (immigrant) or machines doing your job.. or access to latest gadgets? but i still see people struggling to pay for education, finding jobs is extremely difficult etc.. people are still low/middle/upper irrespective of the country. there are several developing nations where people don't have so much struggle to live.
- Const-me 6y ago
  > Plane travel, consumerism, person/car ratio, etc etc The rest of the world is catching up faster than most people are aware. Here's a link for daily plastic waste generation per person: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/plastic-waste-per-capita I don't see an obvious correlation between first world and amount of waste: the #1 country is Guyana, China and Russia are well above Canada, etc. Similar with CO2 emissions: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe... The #1 is Qatar, we in Montenegro are on the second place.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    Yes, there isn't a clear divide between "first-world" and everyone else anymore. That being said, I think the wealthier countries that are more industrialized have a debt to pay with regards to climate impact given that they were able to develop and build before mainstream awareness of the issue, and virtually all of the accumulated pollution today is therefore due to these industrialized nations. I'd like to see a period in which China, India, and smaller nations are able to use more than their share of the global quota while the wealthier countries in western Europe and North America use less, per capita and in sum.

theklub 6y ago

Yes about Bitcoin and it was a rather large discussion too.

jeromenerf 6y ago

> What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? Because the project is literally about plastic pollution solving? Plastic is so cheap any recycling project faces either an environmental or an economical showstopper. I am glad this one is having some impact. Iirc, plastic wastes are added to the tar mix to cover roads, to saw dust and glue to produce composite deck boards, etc. I am not informed enough to have an opinion on whether it’s a good or bad thing.

foerbert 6y ago

One possible explanation is that this has an obvious environmental aspect. If somebody is doing something for environmental reasons, it doesn't seem surprising that people are thinking about it from an environmental perspective. Obviously many things not done for environmental reasons have environmental impacts, but the mere idea itself doesn't automatically invoke that perspective. You can read about a new fab without thinking about the environmental aspects, but you probably cannot read about somebody recycling plastic without thinking about the environment.

ianai 6y ago
That’s called letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. The perfect doesn’t exist in this case.

nitrogen 6y ago

the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse. How so?

ineptech 6y ago
hehehe, I knew someone would challenge that. I don't know the particulars, I am inferring that recycling plastic is better than dumping it in some way from the fact that it's more expensive yet people still do it. I did not mean it in the sense of "I know a lot about plastic recycling and ready and willing to defend the mainstream view against people who think it is misguided."
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  > I am inferring that recycling plastic is better than dumping it in some way from the fact that it's more expensive yet people still do it. There is a lot of demand to be told that when you separate your plastic out, it gets recycled. There's no demand for the recycling to actually happen, so mostly it doesn't.

nomel 6y ago

> This take seems trivially and obviously wrong. I don't think this is obviously wrong at all. Dispersing a fine mist of micro plastics into the environment, where it can enter the air and water system, is very very different than sticking a piece of plastic into the ground, where it will comfortably sit for a thousand years with minimal decomposition. For a good example, here's [1] a study about how car tires, which slowly disappear into the environment, are a major contributor to micro plastics in the ocean. [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/tires-unseen-plastic-polluter/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/tires...

culopatin 6y ago
You’re missing that not all plastics make into a landfill and are around us already leeching microplastics. I’d think that bricking them and covering them with other materials would lock them in better than a bottle floating in a river
- Jeff_Brown 6y ago
  I lived in Kenya. Stuff under the road doesn't stay there long. They get incredible abuse and little maintenance. It's hard to think of anything that would generate more microplastics than putting it in a road. Plastic in the ocean, in your garden, in an animal's mouth, anywhere else, just can't compare to the grinding action of thousands of cars daily.
  - finnh 6y ago
    The road? These are footpath pavers.
    - ceres 6y ago
      He obviously didn't read the article.
    - iso1210 6y ago
      Footpath state in Nairobi is awful, I haven't spent much time out of the capital.

fudged71 6y ago

When I visited Kenya, people literally just burned their plastic trash in a pit on the side of the road. So yeah, any form of reuse/recycling seems better than that.

nostromo 6y ago

> the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse Why is that worse? Plastic is made out of oil. It belongs in the ground.

loyukfai 6y ago
So if the rate we produce new plastic is slower or the same as decomposition, than it will be a lesser problem than its today?

ekianjo 6y ago

> Recycling plastic produces a lot of nasty chemicals and is awful for the environment, but we still do it, because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse Manority of plastic waste is NEVER recycled. Lets not spread myths.

wombatmobile 6y ago
There is no need for myths when you can rely on powerful euphemisms such as "thermal recycling"... "Officially, Japan recycles 84 percent of the plastic it collects, one of the highest rates in the world, but the government designates three types of recycling processes: material, chemical and thermal. Material recycling means the plastic itself is reprocessed into new plastic — PET bottles, for instance, are made into new PET products. This is probably the image of recycling that most people have. Chemical recycling means that plastic waste is broken down into its constituent components, which are then recombined to make new plastic materials. Thermal recycling means that the plastic is burned in incinerators to produce energy." https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/06/national/media-national/japan-faces-uphill-battle-reduce-plastic-consumption/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/07/06/national/media-...
- ekianjo 6y ago
  Burning plastic to produce heat hardly counts as "recycling"... Incidentally, in Japan, PET recycling is a very small minority of all plastic collected, so it hardly moves the mark even if that part is recycled in plastic-loving Japan.

davidandgoliath 6y ago

Isn't that interesting? Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" > reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? Thanks for bringing this up: Honestly, that thought has never crossed my mind when thinking about these initiatives. Much appreciated: You've changed the way I think.

markdown 6y ago

> This take seems trivially and obviously wrong. Quite the opposite actually. Tires are already a huge source of microplastics pollution. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5664766/ > because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse. The problem is that landfills aren't living up to their names. They aren't being filled in and buried. Burying plastic is the best thing you can do to dispose of it. It's only when they're left in the open air to break down and be spread all over the oceans by wind that you have a problem.

Nasrudith 6y ago

> Not to sound preachy, but did anyone have the "wait isn't this bad for the environment" reaction to any of the other stories on HN today? Starlink? That new Samsung fab plant? Shit, there's an ad on the front page right now for a gourmet dinner delivery startup. What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? The others aren't claiming to be an environmental solution so it doesn't get looked at under that lens first. Plastic as well strikes a nerve by hitting upon other issues like microplastics and past deception of recyclability. I think it essentially hits a lot of "bad idea flags" combined with a cognitive bias I noticed. A company which casts itself as "pro-worker" company paying $12/hr for say sign-turner jobs when most in the field/area pay only minimum wage getting more backlash than everyone else. didn't "betray them" in spite of paying higher than everyone else. It seems everybody hates hypocrisy in which they are not a participant.

ericmcer 6y ago

Because this article specifically deals with the environmental impacts of plastics and how to reduce them. Starlink could raise hundreds of moral/philosophical issues, it would be insane to address them all every time. If the starlink article involved how much plastic waste they caused the discussion would be around that, if it involved privacy and surveillance we would talk about that, if it involved how fast the speeds are we would talk about that...

anomaloustho 6y ago

5 of the 6 points noted in OP’s comment had to do with brick’s rigidity and compressive strength. 1 point was related to the environment. Plastic bricks are an alternative to sand/clay bricks. Traditional bricks first appeared in China and have been adopted and used by humans across various civilizations for thousands of years. As engineering advanced globally, the pros and cons of bricks have been well explored and well understood. Plastic bricks are a new contender to this problem. That said, when you have a new contender to a centuries established and globally adopted solution, it might be more likely to prompt exploration of its potential cons. Starlink is a new engineering solution with several of its own cons that have been reported in HN. It is difficult to compare Starlink against other alternatives when Starlink has a narrow use case that it particularly excels in (high speed Internet to unserviced areas of the globe)

pessimizer 6y ago

> Recycling plastic produces a lot of nasty chemicals and is awful for the environment, but we still do it, because the alternative (chucking it in a landfill) is worse. Is it, though? Or was that just a scam to keep us buying plastic shit and to keep packaging unregulated? It is not trivially and obviously wrong that it might be better to throw plastic into big holes than to spread it all over the surface of the planet. It's not true for nuclear waste. Not to be preachy, but the "at least they're doing something" common sense argument is not good. You have to do the math.

tweetle_beetle 6y ago

It's quite common for users to jump down the throats of anyone who talks about privacy/encryption without sufficient perceived weight behind them. I suppose this could be seen as more of the same. But I also wonder if the comments would be less dismissive and condescending if the article were framed differently. There's a lot more to this story than the journalist has bothered to cover and they are partly to blame for the reaction. "Former data analyst and engineer creates startup to develop award-winning material over five times stronger than concrete from waste, following scholarship in US university materials lab."

hombre_fatal 6y ago

> What is it about this one that brings out HN's inner environmentalist? This is the oldest internet comment phenomena in the world, so why do you only notice it here and not every other time? People always have the nature to attack and knock down, and stories of an individual building something on their own is a far more accessible punching bag than anything else you mentioned. We get to roleplay as critics, scientists, environmentalists, bureaucrats, and we love it. pg's "middlebrow dismissal" was coined from watching HNers attack the guy building something in his garage.