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The US sends millions of tons of trash to China, India, and other places. Perhaps it would be better for places to implement local sorting (glass, plastic, pape
by fritztastic 4y ago
The US sends millions of tons of trash to China, India, and other places. Perhaps it would be better for places to implement local sorting (glass, plastic, paper, etc.) and composting- as many other nations do as opposed to disposing of all trash in the same containers and shipping the problem off for someone else to deal with. But even better would be to generate less trash in the first place or at least have an attempt at transitioning to using biodegradable packaging. Packaging, which also is excessive and unecessary in the first place, like items in layers of plastic casing, plastic boxes, plastic wrapping, and so on when there are ways of distributing goods without convenient prepackaging in favor of instead refilling reusable containers or utilizing materials such as fabric, glass, or others which can be repurposed and reused more flexibly and reliably than plastic.
Not even going to get into plastics being contaminated by toxic things, leaching chemicals, microplastics, affecting acquatic life, a variety of other problems relating to plastics and excessive plastic waste.
I really wish people would push to decrease the production and use of plastics in the first place, seems more sustainable than trying to engineer solutions at the tail end of the issue. Seems to me much more effective to curtail the source of the problem than to attempt to implement solutions later on although I do appreciate that some people see the issue and are working to do something about it.
- Cryptoclysm 4y agoIt's easy to reduce problems down to an exclusive-or choice, but in reality we need to use all our cards at the same time to look after our planet. Of course we should be reducing plastic waste, and at least where I live, I've seen a big push for the reduction of of single use plastics, both through legislation, savvy consumers and responsible supermarkets. While the biologists work on plastic-eating enzymes, product engineers can work on sustainable packaging, logistics specialists can work on low carbon distribution and politicians can work on ensuring economic motives align with a positive future for our planet. There is hope.
- wiz21c 4y agoDunno... In my country, you put your garbage in special bags on your front door once a week. They get collected. We have to sort our garbages: plastics and metals (mostly use to wrap food) in one bag, paper in another one, biological stuff (plants, unused parts of vegetables, etc) in another one and the rest in the yellow bag. Nice and cool (although I'm not sure how useful it is in the end). Now the funny thing is that you get to see other families' trash bags once a week on their front door and there are big differences. My family has a tiny yellow bag every week and a blue one every other week whereas many others (with comparable family sizes) have 2 yellows at least and 1 blue every single week. My guess is that they eat a lot of food coming from the supermarket: lots of wrapping, lots of cans, etc. It's an informed guess because the blue bags are transparent :-)
- pschuegr 4y agoAbsolutely not a complaint or really directed at you, but random thought: I wish people would name the country instead of saying "in my country" - teach me something that is attached to a real place!
- andrepd 4y ago> at least where I live, I've seen a big push for the reduction of of single use plastics, both through legislation, savvy consumers and responsible supermarkets Have we? Or have we just seen campaigns and legislation against plastic straws and supermarket bags, which amounts to mere virtue signalling and greenwashing by corporations and governments? We need to do much better than ban plastic straws and advertise how we've saved the world. Properly pricing in externalities onto the price of single use plastics would probably go a long way to motivate the market to give a shit.
- headmelted 4y ago“I really wish people would push to decrease the production and use of plastics in the first place, seems more sustainable than trying to engineer solutions at the tail end of the issue” Absolutely this. Watching the video in the article above was a bit worrying when it gets to the end. It’s really not clear to me if the researchers have created a plastic removing enzyme or inadvertently created a tool to increase micro-plastic pollution a trillion fold. Hoping someone can come along to tell me how stupid what I just said above is, because it’s really not my field and I’ve no idea.
- limaoscarjuliet 4y agoPlastics are extremely good on the account of features and price. As such they are difficult to replace. I want to bet we would create bigger negative impact to environment due to additional spoiled food alone if it was not for plastics. Recycling is hard but we need to tackle it. Enzymes seem like a good direction - dissolve plastics to chemicals that can be re-processed and re-purposed.