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This article rant on the imperfect nature of our current solutions for plastic, ignore part of the problems (like the floating island of plastics...) and doesn'
by TheBigRoomXXL 4y ago
This article rant on the imperfect nature of our current solutions for plastic, ignore part of the problems (like the floating island of plastics...) and doesn't provide any alternative solution.
- wazoox 4y agoMostly stop using so much plastic, probably. A lot of plastic (for instance plastic bottles) is being used under pressure from the industry. As long as Coca Cola used glass bottle, it was on them to collect, clean and reuse them. Now that they switched to plastic, it's everyone else's problem. Forbid plastic bottles, and that part of the problem will solve itself.
- taylorhughes 4y agoThe author somehow misses this obvious conclusion.
- readingnews 4y agoYes, how do I do that when every damn thing at every damn store is wrapped in plastic? Sometimes two to three times (the package is plastic wrapped, and each item is also wrapped in plastic)? Food, goods, boxes even wrapped in plastic... We need to change the behaviour of companies wrapping everything in plastic. I do not see that happening soon, and am not sure how to encourage them to do so (plastic is so cheap).
- bliteben 4y agoShort of nationalizing the entire petrochemical industry how do you propose stopping them from just making something else with the current plastic by-products?
- objectivetruth 4y ago
- wazoox 4y agoI'm fine with nationalising any industry as necessary. We should be in a war economy, a command economy (exactly like during WWII) to control pollution and climate change. The situation is actually more serious than WWII.
- KptMarchewa 4y agoTax it.
- jamincan 4y agoThey started mandating that businesses charge for plastic bags where I live, and it made a huge difference from a culture that scarcely used reuseable bags/bins, to one that predominately uses them (at least anecdotally, I don't have stats). I sometimes think that obvious solutions seem harder than they actually are in reality.
- dehrmann 4y agoAre plastic bottles a problem? Most of the issues for marine life seem to be shapes things get caught in or eat. I'm not sure if bottles fit that.
- marginalia_nu 4y agoThe island of plastic seems like a different problem. If things disposed of in garbage bins somehow end up in the pacific, plastic isn't the problem, but whatever scandalously corrupt process lets that happen.
- RajT88 4y agoFishing nets make up half the pacific plastic. So you are on the money.
- yodon 4y ago> This article rant on the imperfect nature of our current solutions for plastic, ignore part of the problems (like the floating island of plastics...) and doesn't provide any alternative solution. The article focused on fundamental problems with plastic recycling and specifically focused on the root causes of the floating island of plastics. Rant is an unusual term to apply to a rational, reasoned, and thoughtful analysis of a hard problem where the superficially "obvious" solutions are demonstrably ineffective and counter effective.
- zzzeek 4y agothis language is "ranting". terms like "delusional" and "obsessions" are emotionally charged and reveal the author's anger: > The group’s overall policy remains delusional—the report proposes a far more harmful alternative to recycling—but it’s nonetheless encouraging to see environmentalists put aside their obsessions long enough to contemplate reality.
- yodon 4y agoSeveral decades of profoundly flawed policy on an important economic or environmental topic is enough to make most people angry. That doesn't in itself make a well written article a rant, nor does the quote you cited make it a rant, though it may well make it an article you disagree with, which is quite different from a rant.
- kalkin 4y ago"rational, reasoned and thoughtful" are unusual terms for an article that's fundamentally dishonest about where promotion of plastic recycling has come from: it's never been something environmentalists advocated (as anything more than slightly better than nothing, anyway), but rather is basically greenwashing by the plastics industry, whose trade organizations are the main source of claims that plastics recycling can be efficient. The article also doesn't really attempt to demonstrate that the alternative of using less plastic is ineffective, although that might be true; a mocking aside about syringes, which are obviously not at the top of anybody's list for replacement, is not a demonstration.
- readthenotes1 4y agoDoesn't he say just to burn it in the early part of the article?
- philwelch 4y agoIf you live somewhere with a reasonably non-corrupt and functioning waste disposal industry, the waste plastics are dumped into adequately well-managed landfills and don’t contribute to the floating island of plastics. If you live somewhere where the mafia dumps garbage into the sea, reducing plastic waste is neither necessary nor sufficient to address the problem.