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There's one night every minute. Why did all of the "save the planet" and "stop polluting" crowd turn a blind eye to bad excuses for products like this? I'm ce

by rob_c 5y ago

There's one night every minute. Why did all of the "save the planet" and "stop polluting" crowd turn a blind eye to bad excuses for products like this? I'm certain the amount of single use things have shot up in the last 2 years under the covid banner and the fact it's getting not just a free pass but celebrated by some is nauseating.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Everything has a cost/benefit analysis. The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment, and it's got a lot more societal benefit than, say, the plastic wrapper on a banana (https://twitter.com/flybyday63/status/1006650858505949190 https://twitter.com/flybyday63/status/1006650858505949190).
- Fnoord 5y ago
  There's a need to have plastic around a banana: it spreads less good that smell it does to ripe other bananas around it, which 'modern' bananas do (they're send while green and ripe in grocery store). Whether that is a valid reason and how valid is a different debate.
- carlmr 5y ago
  >The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment Citation needed. In most countries except Japan or the US I haven't seen single wrapped bananas. Even the normal covid tests produce so much plastic trash. This adds electronics which are even worse waste. All to determine with terribly low accuracy that someone has covid.
  - jacobolus 5y ago
    You won’t believe how much plastic trash is produced by hospitals treating Covid patients. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118
    - carlmr 5y ago
      Sure, but the tests are so inaccurate that a lot of people still spread covid, any time the government instituted extreme testing measures there was 0 dent in the covid cases. Where from a statistical perspective you would expect a similar dent in the number of prevented cases if this worked. They did a test of the tests he in Germany and basically 6/7 failed to be positive for everything except huge viral loads where you would feel seriously sick anyway. So it's not even clear these tests help. And testing PCR at scale is too inefficient.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    These specific tests are wasteful; I think Bluetooth is an absurd addition to what works quite well as a plain old analog test strip. It's a bit like banning single-use plastic straws, though. The overall contribution to the waste in landfills and oceans is tiny in the grand scheme of things. Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. The plastic from all that would fit in a quart-sized ziplock. A drop in the bucket, and that's likely to hold on the global scale.
    - carlmr 5y ago
      >Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. In some places you have to get tested every day at the job. It adds up quickly. Or every day when you want to go out.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        The cost of at-home tests (and availability issues; they're pretty much universally sold out here at the moment) in the US means basically no one here would dream of testing "every day when you want to go out" as is possible in, say, the UK.

by rob_c 5y ago

ceejayoz 5y ago

Everything has a cost/benefit analysis. The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment, and it's got a lot more societal benefit than, say, the plastic wrapper on a banana (https://twitter.com/flybyday63/status/1006650858505949190 https://twitter.com/flybyday63/status/1006650858505949190).

Fnoord 5y ago
There's a need to have plastic around a banana: it spreads less good that smell it does to ripe other bananas around it, which 'modern' bananas do (they're send while green and ripe in grocery store). Whether that is a valid reason and how valid is a different debate.
carlmr 5y ago
>The waste from COVID testing is a rounding error on the damage we're doing to the environment Citation needed. In most countries except Japan or the US I haven't seen single wrapped bananas. Even the normal covid tests produce so much plastic trash. This adds electronics which are even worse waste. All to determine with terribly low accuracy that someone has covid.
- jacobolus 5y ago
  You won’t believe how much plastic trash is produced by hospitals treating Covid patients. https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/47/e2111530118
  - carlmr 5y ago
    Sure, but the tests are so inaccurate that a lot of people still spread covid, any time the government instituted extreme testing measures there was 0 dent in the covid cases. Where from a statistical perspective you would expect a similar dent in the number of prevented cases if this worked. They did a test of the tests he in Germany and basically 6/7 failed to be positive for everything except huge viral loads where you would feel seriously sick anyway. So it's not even clear these tests help. And testing PCR at scale is too inefficient.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  These specific tests are wasteful; I think Bluetooth is an absurd addition to what works quite well as a plain old analog test strip. It's a bit like banning single-use plastic straws, though. The overall contribution to the waste in landfills and oceans is tiny in the grand scheme of things. Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. The plastic from all that would fit in a quart-sized ziplock. A drop in the bucket, and that's likely to hold on the global scale.
  - carlmr 5y ago
    >Our family has taken probably a dozen tests. In some places you have to get tested every day at the job. It adds up quickly. Or every day when you want to go out.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      The cost of at-home tests (and availability issues; they're pretty much universally sold out here at the moment) in the US means basically no one here would dream of testing "every day when you want to go out" as is possible in, say, the UK.