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Off-topic, but sometimes I feel like we could harvest the plastic from the ocean, make plastic bricks, and build millions of houses. Edit: Just to be clear, I’
by joshspankit 6y ago
Off-topic, but sometimes I feel like we could harvest the plastic from the ocean, make plastic bricks, and build millions of houses.
Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that this is a viable solution to anything, or that it’s a good use of resources based on our current methodologies. I’m more just trying to say that there’s so much raw material out there and that it’s better if it comes out of the ocean. Like, if suddenly we found a non-polluting method to perfectly separate out all the components, then a health-safe chemical mixture with those components that was solid and fireproof (and UV proof), there’s probably enough out there to do something significant with.
- tachyonbeam 6y agoYou certainly could, but you could also build houses out of stone and cement, like they used to do in the old days. Makes for very durable construction.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoBetter to harvest the plastic from the ocean, and power the collection system with the plastic in a plasma gasifier. The slag can be disposed of in the ocean, as its chemically inert.
- mnouquet 6y ago> [...] build millions of houses ... slowly leaching endocrine disruptors in the environment for generations to come.
- da_big_ghey 6y agoThis would also cut reproduction rates, which is not pleasant but is necessary to stop climate change.
- JulianMorrison 6y agoThere are more species than humans who need to reproduce.
- da_big_ghey 6y agoThat is a good point, maybe something like one-child policy better serve this need. Or possibly we must consider which is worse for animals, damage from climate change or damage from endocrine disruptor.
- JulianMorrison 6y agoThe answer is neither. Human energy use that causes climate harms can be replaced with renewables. Fuel can be replaced with batteries. In the longer term, the sun is absolutely pouring out energy, which largely goes to waste, and a Dyson swarm capturing a small fraction of that would satisfy the energy needs of a much larger population.
- da_big_ghey 6y agoThese are not solving land impact of human. We must have fewer human or live in smal space like in Tokyo and others city like it. Most human no have desire to do this. Batery take resources like lithium more than we have. Maybe Dyson swarm eating star energy output cause climate change of its own, fewer energy reaching earth surface. There is always impacts that human create. We only can for truly mitigate climate change with reducing human numbers. One action we take for to reduce impact create impact again in one other place. We swalow spider to catch fly and continue on each and again. One child policy is the forebest way for to accomplish.
- mnouquet 6y ago> We only can for truly mitigate climate change with reducing human numbers. Then you should welcome pandemic, genocide and war.
- da_big_ghey 6y agothey are having some positive efect in long enough view. also they are having sufering first. best is not to have as much persons born.
- astrange 6y agoIt is not necessary. Malthus was wrong. You'll notice this position was popular among boomer environmentalists, which is why it was parodied just recently by 70s comic villain Thanos. The birth rate everywhere outside Africa has already collapsed, anyway. It's probably too low.
- esarbe 6y agoMalthus wasn't wrong in a sense that /if/ there's geometric population growth, there /will/ come a point where a die-off of said population is inevitable. Funny thing is that Malthus already recognized the effects that artificial birth control can have on the reproductive rate and was worried about that - I don't the the citation at hand though. I agree that the birth rate outside Sub-Saharan Africa is probably too low and I think that this will become an issue, probably first in China, then the EU and finally in the USA.
- astrange 6y agoWell, Malthus was right in terms of history, he just made one of the worst future predictions ever - he wrote his theory about human population crises right when it stopped being true. I think we are seeing people having fewer children because they're depressed about the world/future expectations, of course, but that's not quite the same thing.
- BariumBlue 6y agoThere is a Kenyan Entrepreneur that is trying making bricks from excess and non-recyclable plastic: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-environment-recycling/kenyan-recycles-plastic-waste-into-bricks-stronger-than-concrete-idUSKBN2A211N https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-environment-recycli...
- pkaye 6y agoYou also need to make it fireproof or use an outer layer of fireproof material.
- roywiggins 6y agoYeah, if you aren't careful plastic building materials have some grim failure modes, the cladding that burned Grenfell Tower was made of aluminum and polyethylene, which more or less acted like a candle.
- joshspankit 6y agoI’ve edited my comment to clarify the subtext, but yes you’d definitely need to make it fireproof. Fiery liquid plastic is exceptionally unpleasant.
- Covzire 6y agoThere have been attempts at harvesting plastic from the ocean. I remember one fairly recently that built a system using crowd funding but I don't think it was as successful as hoped. If they keep trying I have little doubt they'll make it work and possibly even turn a profit. https://www.sciencealert.com/that-ocean-garbage-collector-is-finally-hauling-in-bags-of-rubbish https://www.sciencealert.com/that-ocean-garbage-collector-is...
- TheGallopedHigh 6y agoThis company did a slight pivot to building autonomous collectors anchored in rivers which have the most plastic dumped into them leading to the ocean.
- beckman466 6y agoOr... we could not use so much plastic, and make actual bricks to build ‘millions of houses’. Since you sound so excited, are you going to live in the first plastic house with your family? I think suggestions like this are super demeaning. I often see them coming from privileged knowledge workers, who are eager to share ‘free ideas‘/psuedo-solutions as a sort of ‘charity’ for poor people (and people in the global south). They are also often strategies which somehow don’t seem to fit for their own life - and instead are for ‘others’ who are less well off. In other words: tech solutionism. As knowledge workers, let’s try to cut through our false consciousness and come up with some awesome systemic changes that kick butt.
- joshspankit 6y agoDemeaning or proposing ‘charity’ was not my intent at all. I’ve edited my comment to clarify the subtext, but to answer your question: if we could find a health-safe fire and UV-resistant plastic formula that made solid building materials out of the pollution in the ocean, I would definitely live in the first plastic house with my family. It could survive hundreds of years and have a lot of benefits.
- dEnigma 6y agoYou're reading a lot into that short parent comment. Maybe you should be a bit more generous in your interpretation of other people's words.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- labawi 6y agoMost of the plastic can not be practically recovered from the ocean. It's more of a publicity stunt and cleaning hotspots. We need to catch the plastics before they go into the environment, disintegrate, release their plasticizers and other toxins. As has been said, best way to deal with all the plastic garbage that contains who-knows-what would probably be fuel, feedstock in refineries or similar.
- bluGill 6y agoYour edit is where the problem is. Sure there is a lot of plastic in the ocean, but the ocean is big as well. As a whole the size of the ocean cancels out your attempts to do any recovery. You end up using more energy to power the filters (which are typically on ships) than you would by taking the oil powering the filters and directly turning it into plastic. Plastic in the ocean isn't an easy problem to solve with anything other than wait for it to degrade. Which isn't as bad as it sounds because plastic doesn't do well in the sun, and we can easily make plastics that do worse and thus degrade faster.
- JulianMorrison 6y agoYou're assuming smaller plastic is better. You should probably stop assuming that.
- bluGill 6y agoI assume no such thing. Degrade is more than just smaller, though that does come first
- JulianMorrison 6y agoBricks made of plastic weather into dust made of microplastic. If microplastic turns out to be as serious a problem as has been suggested, with bioaccumulation and various sorts of damage, then the only solution is that all plastic without exception has to be thoroughly destroyed chemically or by burning as soon as it it isn't in use. And not put into use in ways that emit microplastic (as fibers, dust, or otherwise).
- derefr 6y agoHow about asphalt with plastics mixed into the underwater, but not the top layer?
- JulianMorrison 6y agoDeferring the problem. Roads get dug up and relaid, roads get abandoned, maybe a few years down the line, we won't be using roads. Mentally insert "Back to the Future 2" clip here. And so a few decades later, we return to the problem.
- spookthesunset 6y agoI forget where I read this but asphalt is perhaps the most recycled plastic out there. Asphalt can be ripped up and then remelted right back into place or moved somewhere else.
- derefr 6y agoRight! They even have road-paving machines that rip up the asphalt; add a bit more tar to replace the tar that seeped away; heat up the mixture and tumble it; lay it back down; and steamroll over it; all in one pass, all in a closed system with no dust escaping. (Ref: https://youtu.be/XKFaC5RYbEM https://youtu.be/XKFaC5RYbEM) Plus, since asphalt’s petroleum-tar binder is liquified during the working process, it would actually act as a solvent perfect for dissolving (certain) microplastics into. The microplastics wouldn’t merely be in mechanical mixture with the asphalt; they wouldn’t exist as distinct entities any more! They’d revert to being a petroleum fraction, in complex with the heavier petroleum fractions of the tar.