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This is a classic example of a 'Wicked Problem' [0] Plastic is a literal miracle material - light-weight, infinitely formable, strong, flexible, not made from

by RC_ITR 4y ago

This is a classic example of a 'Wicked Problem' [0] Plastic is a literal miracle material - light-weight, infinitely formable, strong, flexible, not made from observable natural resources (e.g. trees <> paper), water resistant, rot-resistant, sterile, a meaningful carbon sink (lol - better than burning that oil!) etc. Other materials that do not have those properties should be recycled for various reasons, but those characteristics do not really apply to plastic. For example, if we sucked up every drop of oil in the crust, made it plastic and then re-buried it in landfills, there's barely any observable downsides, whereas cutting down every tree or mining/smelting all the aluminum would be noticeably bad. Humans, being the pattern matchers we are see 'recycling glass/paper/aluminum is good, plastic bottles are similar to glass bottles, recycling plastic must be good too' So instead of doing the very simple thing of just burying our plastic (like we used to), a bunch of well-meaning pattern matchers spend a lot of effort trying to make plastic recycling work, even though, for reasons intrinsic to the chemical properties that make plastic a miracle material it is a mostly pointless endeavor. Then, as always happens, bad actors step in to make money of the well-intended who are at the end of their rope (in this case Asian 'recyclers' who would accept plastic trash and recycle it by putting it in the ocean). And so now, not only do we have a ton more plastic in the ocean, we have airports banning plastic bottles, which increases the weight of flights (glass bottles are heavy! and for some reason almost no vendors at SFO sell tetrapak water!) and burns more jet fuel. And any reasonable person who argues 'the oil came from the ground, why don't we just put it back when we are done with it is met with vague concerns about microplastics. So yeah, welcome to society, I guess. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem

morsch 4y ago
No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles. I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal.
- GauntletWizard 4y ago
  It's not at the scale of "Person holding a bottle of coke" that the packaging is inefficient, but at the scale of "Delivery truck holding a bottle of coke". If we were washing and recycling glass bottles of coke like they used to do with Milk, it may be possible that the resulting efficiency would be better, but washing bottles to the same sanitary level is an energy-and-water intensive process; I am not so sure.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    They used to do exactly that with glass coke bottles. You'd buy your coke or whatever drink in glass bottles. You would pay a bottle deposit to encourage returns. You would take the empties back to the store, they would get picked up by the bottler, who would truck them back to the plant where they would get washed and sterilized and refilled. The glass bottles were heavy. The energy needed to truck them back and forth, and to clean and santize them was substantial. Most of that went away with plastic bottles. Aluminum cans have similar benefits, and replaced the steel cans that predated them. But plastic is cheaper than aluminum, or even steel.
- elil17 4y ago
  As for planes, it's not about the weight of the bottle vs. the weight of the passenger, it's about the energy required to move the bottle vs. the environmental impact of how the bottle was made. Small amounts of weight multiplied by many flights equals lots of fuel. American Airlines once saved $40k/year in fuel by taking out a single olive from each of the salads it served. We don't just bury our trash, that's an oversimplification. Modern landfills are designed to prevent leachate (water that soaks through the landfill) from entering the water supply. Putting something in a landfill is one of the best ways we have to safely store it. Contrast that to dumping plastic in the ocean or remelting it without adequate exhaust gas cleaning and land-filling plastic looks really nice. I'm not saying plastic pollution isn't a problem. It is. But landfills are a good solution.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  >No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. Sure, but those are relatively solvable problems (they extract oil right in the middle of America's second largest city and almost no one notices) >A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles. Jet fuel burnt is an incremental problem (just like radiation exposure). Even if it's a tiny amount on the margin, it's still more than we otherwise have to and keep in mind, a large US airport like SFO (which does not sell any plastic bottles of any kind) will do 250k+ aircraft movements per year, so an incremental half gallon of fuel burnt per flight is still like 2.5mn tons of CO2 unnecessarily put into the atmospheric carbon well (not counting the trucks that got the heavier bottles to the airport). >I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal. Well first and foremost, please do not support burning anything other than as a last resort. We are in a climate crisis and we need to keep as much carbon out of our atmospheric well as possible. Again, it's an incremental problem. And sure, burying it is not perfect (most human actions have some amount of environmental consequence if you look closely enough), but recycling it literally doesn't work, so the only other option is the Ocean (which is weirdly what we've chosen.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> For example, if we sucked up every drop of oil in the crust, made it plastic and then re-buried it in landfills, there's barely any observable downsides, whereas cutting down every tree or mining/smelting all the aluminum would be noticeably bad. There's so many incorrect statements in your post I don't know where to start, but: We don't recycle aluminium because mining/smelting all the aluminium would be noticeably bad. Nor do we recycle paper and other wood products because cutting all the trees down would be bad. Burying plastics in landfills is regularly shown to be less desireable than recycling (and even burning with energy recovery while fossil fuels are still in use). You've created a world of confusion to justify some vague fossil fuel propaganda you were subjected to. And now you're complaining that people won't listen to your "reasonable" argument.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  >We don't recycle aluminium because mining/smelting all the aluminium would be noticeably bad. Ok then we why do we recycle aluminium? >Nor do we recycle paper and other wood products because cutting all the trees down would be bad. Ok then why do we recycle paper? >Burying plastics in landfills is regularly shown to be less desireable than recycling (and even burning with energy recovery while fossil fuels are still in use). Ok by whom? And what is plastic being recycled into? How many cycles does it go through? And again what's this insane obsession with burning plastic? You don't like it in managed underground landfills, but you love it and it's smoke in your air? >You've created a world of confusion to justify some vague fossil fuel propaganda you were subjected to. And now you're complaining that people won't listen to your "reasonable" argument. You've contributed absolutely nothing except a baseless argument.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    > Ok then we why do we recycle aluminium? Because throwing it away, then digging up more of it in a raw form, then spending time/money/energy on turning it into the thing we just threw away is stupid and inefficient.
    - RC_ITR 4y ago
ranguna 4y ago
> re-buried it in landfills, there's barely any observable downsides Please elaborate. Its not like we are in a world crisis where marine life is dying and even humans are found to have more and more micro plastics in our bodies. You do know that landfills are not nuclear disposal facilities, right? Nature will process that plastic in unimaginable ways, which will lead to unforseen consequences. Consequences we see today, hence why people want to move away from single use plastic.
- RC_ITR 4y ago
  >Its not like we are in a world crisis where marine life is dying I'm begging you to look into how plastic gets into the ocean. It's "recycling" it, not landfill escape. Additionally, you're missing the entire point - the current problem is primarily how we dispose of plastic which is what I'm trying to help people understand. We could avoid most of what you're talking about if we put forth even minimal effort to contain our plastic waste! Sure, a counter-factual world where everything runs on abundant solar power should also be a world without plastic, but good luck getting there. As of today we burn fuel and put carbon into our atmospheric well to move shit around, and we do that the least when we use plastic Full stop. You may disagree, but putting more carbon into our atmospheric and oceanic wells is the #1 problem facing humanity right now by a mile and more plastic is a means to slow the rate at which we are doing that. I'm glad you care about the environment, but please please please pivot your concerns hardcore to the climate. It may feel like a less solvable problem than plastic (and I know it sucks to care about unsolvable problems), but its 1000x more impactful. >even humans are found to have more and more micro plastics in our bodies. Still waiting to read the research on why this is so dangerous. Maybe it is, but show me the data! Meanwhile, I know burning any incremental fuel is very very bad. And again, don't you think plastic in the ocean subject to constant kinetic energy is much more of a problem than stationary plastic? >You do know that landfills are not nuclear disposal facilities, right? You realize plastic doesn't emit gamma radiation, right? >Nature will process that plastic in unimaginable ways, which will lead to unforseen consequences. Consequences we see today, hence why people want to move away from single use plastic. Again, we test nukes underground (because we live in the atmosphere not the crust). I agree that 'nature' decomposes plastic, but most 'nature' is in the atmosphere! The thing that we are ruining the fastest and need to protect the most (even though its invisible and humans hate invisible things)!

by RC_ITR 4y ago

morsch 4y ago

No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles. I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal.

GauntletWizard 4y ago
It's not at the scale of "Person holding a bottle of coke" that the packaging is inefficient, but at the scale of "Delivery truck holding a bottle of coke". If we were washing and recycling glass bottles of coke like they used to do with Milk, it may be possible that the resulting efficiency would be better, but washing bottles to the same sanitary level is an energy-and-water intensive process; I am not so sure.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  They used to do exactly that with glass coke bottles. You'd buy your coke or whatever drink in glass bottles. You would pay a bottle deposit to encourage returns. You would take the empties back to the store, they would get picked up by the bottler, who would truck them back to the plant where they would get washed and sterilized and refilled. The glass bottles were heavy. The energy needed to truck them back and forth, and to clean and santize them was substantial. Most of that went away with plastic bottles. Aluminum cans have similar benefits, and replaced the steel cans that predated them. But plastic is cheaper than aluminum, or even steel.
elil17 4y ago
As for planes, it's not about the weight of the bottle vs. the weight of the passenger, it's about the energy required to move the bottle vs. the environmental impact of how the bottle was made. Small amounts of weight multiplied by many flights equals lots of fuel. American Airlines once saved $40k/year in fuel by taking out a single olive from each of the salads it served. We don't just bury our trash, that's an oversimplification. Modern landfills are designed to prevent leachate (water that soaks through the landfill) from entering the water supply. Putting something in a landfill is one of the best ways we have to safely store it. Contrast that to dumping plastic in the ocean or remelting it without adequate exhaust gas cleaning and land-filling plastic looks really nice. I'm not saying plastic pollution isn't a problem. It is. But landfills are a good solution.
RC_ITR 4y ago
>No downsides expect the environmental impact of resource extraction and refinement. Sure, but those are relatively solvable problems (they extract oil right in the middle of America's second largest city and almost no one notices) >A 500ml glass bottle weighs approximately 250g, which is inefficient in terms of weight contained. But it's pretty insignificant compared to the weight of the passenger and their luggage. There are also reusable plastic bottles. Jet fuel burnt is an incremental problem (just like radiation exposure). Even if it's a tiny amount on the margin, it's still more than we otherwise have to and keep in mind, a large US airport like SFO (which does not sell any plastic bottles of any kind) will do 250k+ aircraft movements per year, so an incremental half gallon of fuel burnt per flight is still like 2.5mn tons of CO2 unnecessarily put into the atmospheric carbon well (not counting the trucks that got the heavier bottles to the airport). >I'm not entirely convinced the plastic is inert enough to bury it in a shallow hole, but that's something that could be established if it isn't already. Burning it for power and heat also seems fine to me as long as we're still burning orders of magnitude more oil, gas and coal. Well first and foremost, please do not support burning anything other than as a last resort. We are in a climate crisis and we need to keep as much carbon out of our atmospheric well as possible. Again, it's an incremental problem. And sure, burying it is not perfect (most human actions have some amount of environmental consequence if you look closely enough), but recycling it literally doesn't work, so the only other option is the Ocean (which is weirdly what we've chosen.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

> For example, if we sucked up every drop of oil in the crust, made it plastic and then re-buried it in landfills, there's barely any observable downsides, whereas cutting down every tree or mining/smelting all the aluminum would be noticeably bad. There's so many incorrect statements in your post I don't know where to start, but: We don't recycle aluminium because mining/smelting all the aluminium would be noticeably bad. Nor do we recycle paper and other wood products because cutting all the trees down would be bad. Burying plastics in landfills is regularly shown to be less desireable than recycling (and even burning with energy recovery while fossil fuels are still in use). You've created a world of confusion to justify some vague fossil fuel propaganda you were subjected to. And now you're complaining that people won't listen to your "reasonable" argument.

RC_ITR 4y ago
>We don't recycle aluminium because mining/smelting all the aluminium would be noticeably bad. Ok then we why do we recycle aluminium? >Nor do we recycle paper and other wood products because cutting all the trees down would be bad. Ok then why do we recycle paper? >Burying plastics in landfills is regularly shown to be less desireable than recycling (and even burning with energy recovery while fossil fuels are still in use). Ok by whom? And what is plastic being recycled into? How many cycles does it go through? And again what's this insane obsession with burning plastic? You don't like it in managed underground landfills, but you love it and it's smoke in your air? >You've created a world of confusion to justify some vague fossil fuel propaganda you were subjected to. And now you're complaining that people won't listen to your "reasonable" argument. You've contributed absolutely nothing except a baseless argument.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > Ok then we why do we recycle aluminium? Because throwing it away, then digging up more of it in a raw form, then spending time/money/energy on turning it into the thing we just threw away is stupid and inefficient.
  - RC_ITR 4y ago

ranguna 4y ago

> re-buried it in landfills, there's barely any observable downsides Please elaborate. Its not like we are in a world crisis where marine life is dying and even humans are found to have more and more micro plastics in our bodies. You do know that landfills are not nuclear disposal facilities, right? Nature will process that plastic in unimaginable ways, which will lead to unforseen consequences. Consequences we see today, hence why people want to move away from single use plastic.

RC_ITR 4y ago
>Its not like we are in a world crisis where marine life is dying I'm begging you to look into how plastic gets into the ocean. It's "recycling" it, not landfill escape. Additionally, you're missing the entire point - the current problem is primarily how we dispose of plastic which is what I'm trying to help people understand. We could avoid most of what you're talking about if we put forth even minimal effort to contain our plastic waste! Sure, a counter-factual world where everything runs on abundant solar power should also be a world without plastic, but good luck getting there. As of today we burn fuel and put carbon into our atmospheric well to move shit around, and we do that the least when we use plastic Full stop. You may disagree, but putting more carbon into our atmospheric and oceanic wells is the #1 problem facing humanity right now by a mile and more plastic is a means to slow the rate at which we are doing that. I'm glad you care about the environment, but please please please pivot your concerns hardcore to the climate. It may feel like a less solvable problem than plastic (and I know it sucks to care about unsolvable problems), but its 1000x more impactful. >even humans are found to have more and more micro plastics in our bodies. Still waiting to read the research on why this is so dangerous. Maybe it is, but show me the data! Meanwhile, I know burning any incremental fuel is very very bad. And again, don't you think plastic in the ocean subject to constant kinetic energy is much more of a problem than stationary plastic? >You do know that landfills are not nuclear disposal facilities, right? You realize plastic doesn't emit gamma radiation, right? >Nature will process that plastic in unimaginable ways, which will lead to unforseen consequences. Consequences we see today, hence why people want to move away from single use plastic. Again, we test nukes underground (because we live in the atmosphere not the crust). I agree that 'nature' decomposes plastic, but most 'nature' is in the atmosphere! The thing that we are ruining the fastest and need to protect the most (even though its invisible and humans hate invisible things)!