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I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc. This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some d

by jraby3 4y ago

I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially plastic bags, plastic bottles, etc. This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some days but will wait till I get home or to work to drink filtered water out of the tap. I went to Las Vegas about a year ago on a work trip and realized that the hotel I stayed at uses more plastic bottles in an hour than I would use in my lifetime with no thought to conserving them. All this to say that tragedy of the commons is an extremely hard problem to solve, even when you know about it and care. I constantly repeat to myself “no single drop of rain thinks it’s responsible for the flood” and try not to think of that Vegas hotel.

pigsty 4y ago
That example is one reason why legislation is necessary. There will always be detractors saying we should just make people want to make the right choice, but all it takes is one person in a company to make a decision that outweighs the collective efforts of millions.
- dublin 4y ago
  Aristo! Aristo! A la lanterne!
swarnie 4y ago
I've got to a similar conclusion as you but with a very different outcome. It makes absolutely no difference if i minimise my plastic or diligently sort them for recycling because a Vegas hotel will make all my efforts for naught. Climate change is already here and there is nothing the individual can do about it. The optimum play now is to accept that the group is useless and make individual steps to mitigate the effects on you personally. Sorry, never nice doing a pre-7am nihilism dump.
- jraby3 4y ago
  I think individuals can help but not so much by conservation. More in trying to affect policy change at local or national political agencies.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Apathy guarantees failure. "All it takes for evil men to succeed..." and all.
wjnc 4y ago
Dehydration is more of a risk to you than the environmental risks you marginally save on others. Still I applaud the effort since the economists view is too restricted. Get a stainless steel container and hydrate for a lifetime.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Stainless steel containers are often lined with plastic, since people don't like the metallic taste that the steel imparts.
  - Reason077 4y ago
    In general there is nothing wrong with long-life plastic products. Plastic is a really useful and important material when used appropriately! It's the insane amount waste and environmental pollution that single-use plastic generates that is the problem.
    - jraby3 4y ago
      Exactly. What I always tell vendors when I get a strange look after refusing their plastic bag is that we use it for 5 minutes but it stays in the environment for 1000 years.
      - bluGill 4y ago
        They make plastics that biodegrade in a few years. Supposedly even in a landfill they degrade (I've seen this debated, I'm not qualified to figure out who is right). However they are more expensive and so rarely used except when someone wants to make a point about being green.
    - citrin_ru 4y ago
      Nothing wrong unless it is used to store food or water and contains some BPA-like compound (AFAIK it includes most plastic produces nowadays even so called BPA-free).
tintor 4y ago
There are reusable metal water bottles. Don't be thirsty.
standardUser 4y ago
Nothing government regulations with decent enforcement couldn't stop. We just need to elect governments that pass those regulations. The thing is, the majority of voters in most societies don't want those regulations.
- runnerup 4y ago
  Actually the tragedy of the commons cannot be stopped by one government. If USA chooses to tax all externalities perfectly, both our production capacity and consumption will be a tiny sliver of its current quantities. By GHG alone we'd lose 80% of our economy, but that doesn't take into account the potential cost of removing dioxin and PFAS from our groundwater, remediating lithium mines, cleaning our air of fly ash, preventing any toxic chemical leaks, making our rivers and lakes and ponds drinkable again, etc. I believe that would reduce us to about 1% of our current GDP. Assuming we didn't riot ourselves to rubble, other nations will quickly outstrip us. Eventually we'd be a vassal state of another superpower. Either because they'd buy our politicians, use crises of supply shortages to force us into free trade deals which axe our externality taxes, or via outright force. Other nations would do to us what the USA did to Latin America when those nations wanted to throttle their development for ecological reasons in the 60's and 70's. Sustainably, we probably wouldn't even be able to keep and train a competitive military -- 6% of our nations carbon emissions are from our military, accounting for 52% of federal carbon footprint, and our military emits more GHG than 140 countries (individually/separately).
  - oblio 4y ago
    > Actually the tragedy of the commons cannot be stopped by one government. Perfect is the enemy of good. The US could focus on lower cost - high impact externalities taxing. It could persuade, cajole, bully its partners and allies to agree to a treaty doing the same. It did it for FATCA, for sure it can do it for climate change and general environmental destruction. Once you have such an international treaty in place, most of the rest of the world would follow. US partners and allies are probably 70% of the world economy, and the countries with the most slack, economically, that can best afford this.
  - 4y ago
Reason077 4y ago
> "This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some days" Why not carry a reusable water bottle? I have a great double-wall steel bottle (Hydro Flask), which is much better than a plastic bottle because it keeps water cold all day long and is basically indestructible. In most places I travel to it's not difficult to find sources of clean, cold water to refill it. Worst case, I will buy a large bottle of water to refill it from, which at least is cheaper and generates less waste than using multiple small plastic bottles throughout the day.
- smilekzs 4y ago
  For me, there's always a metallic residual taste in my water whenever I use a stainless steel bottle. Got tired and returned to using normal mugs.
  - bayindirh 4y ago
    Which brand(s) did you use? I use Contigo, Stanley, Alaaddin and (old) Starbucks tumblers and bottles, and they leave no taste in the water.
  - bushbaba 4y ago
    Many of the metal water bottles come with a plastic liner to avoid the metallic taste
    - atombender 4y ago
      Some also come with a non-stick (Teflon-type) coating. Zojirushi makes incredibly nice vacuum-insulated bottle [1] that unfortunately has a non-stick liner. The inside of the bottle is super easy to clean, but the chemicals used in the manufacturing are awful. [1] https://www.zojirushi.com.hk/enproductsview.php?oid=6&tid=17&pid=328 https://www.zojirushi.com.hk/enproductsview.php?oid=6&tid=17...
      - jankeymeulen 4y ago
        Good you mention a teflon-type coating in a discussion about 'forever chemicals'.
wirrbel 4y ago
I recently mail-ordered rice, and because I wanted to buy two different styles I did not opt for the 3kg (like 6 lbs) bag but 2 packs of 1.8kg. Turns out 1.8kg were packed in 3 bags of 600g, so now I have 6 bags at 600g rice, that on first glance look like they are paper, but its actually plastic coated paper. Its really hard to avoid at times. As for avoiding bags I have two wicker baskets like this https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B009BMXLLI/ https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B009BMXLLI/ which means I can avoid shopping bags and they are actually quite convenient for carrying. Tap water is luckily very drinkable in Germany (rumor has it that Coca-Cola company bottles it and sells it under their 'Bonaqua' brand). However, there is so much out of our control with plastics that require regulation. Just think of the packaging.
- jonasdegendt 4y ago
  Most bottled mineral water is just filtered tap water with some different minerals added to give it flavor.
  - Gud 4y ago
    Tap water is vastly different depending on where it is sourced. In my experience, most countries have pretty bad tap water.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      After a few rounds of filtration it's all going to be the same.
    - Reason077 4y ago
      But if you carefully filter and re-mineralise it before bottling, you can turn it into more or less the same product anywhere.
      - Gud 4y ago
        Not really talking about bottling- in Scandinavia their tap water is better than most bottled water.
beezlewax 4y ago
You can carry a water bottle in a small backpack or if you're in a city with fountains use them. Or buy water that comes in cartons though I'm not sure it's easy to find these or if they're actually plastic free.
- jraby3 4y ago
  I realize that. It’s definitely a choice since I like to travel light and walk a lot.
  - cyxxon 4y ago
    I have used the Stash bottle from Hydrapak [1] for a few years now, that one is the definition of light, and very versatile. The interesting thing is that the opening fits the filter by Katadin made for their BeFree bottles [2], so you could even take that on hikes where you are not entirely sure of the water quality (filters particles and bacteria, but not viruses). I actually carry and use this combo, not related to the companies. [1] https://hydrapak.com/collections/water-bottles/products/stash-750-ml https://hydrapak.com/collections/water-bottles/products/stas... [2] https://www.katadyngroup.com/us/en/8019641-EZ-Clean-Membrane-Filter-Cartridge~p6745 https://www.katadyngroup.com/us/en/8019641-EZ-Clean-Membrane...
- asenkyr 4y ago
  Water (or any other liquid) packed in cartons is mostly just green washing. Most of the cartons are either lined with plastic, or they are tetra packs. Both of these options (especially tetra packs) are much more difficult to recycle and worse for the environment than simple PET bottles.
mrpopo 4y ago
You need to stop thinking about bringing your own footprint ever closer to zero, you must also stop thinking that doing so is a powerful revolutionary act, and join or create organized groups vowing to bring about social change. Be it in your family, your neighbourhood or your municipality. Forget shorter showers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TbrtCGbhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TbrtCGbhQ
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Yes, unfortunately the core item that more hardcore evangelists for topic XYZ seem to be unable to grasp, maybe due to being too close/deep in the subject. If I had a NFT every time somebody on HN stated 'we need to abandon cars, or abandon plastics altogether' and similar, I would be drowning in a lot of useless tokens. The thing is, the motivation for given topic is always fair and just, and so are the goals, so its normal to want to do more and more. But at one point they move so far from general population they are seen as extremists, and whatever good their push is trying to achieve is completely blocked by this extreme approach and negative emotions it sparks. Get engaged in politics, create groups, figure out who has real deciding power and apply soft pressure there... this is how good changes are done in timely manner. Other way is to wait till SHTF and there is reaction, but damage is already done like in this topic. Otherwise society just heads to division and conflict on many levels, and as for example covid showed us if you push big part of population hard/long enough they will eventually move to some outright non-smart positions that will be then very hard to abandon.
  - Retric 4y ago
    The secret is to aim for lesser goals. Don’t try to get rid of all plastics just aim to reduce some specific kind of single use plastic etc. Setup an organization to ban cars in the central core of your city. The advantage to ‘save the whales’ over save every endangered species is it’s much easier to gain traction and you can pick the easiest targets.
    - oblio 4y ago
      Plus if you can somehow get the numbers, everything is a 80-20 deal. 80% of the bang can be gotten for 20% of the buck. I'm reasonably sure Coca Cola and co should be the biggest targets in the anti-plastic campaign.
concordDance 4y ago
Why try and minimise single use plastic? That's oil going straight back into the ground (landfill) rather than being refined into petrol and burnt! Single use plastic is way better than recycled plastic at slowing global warming.
- Reason077 4y ago
  A lot of it doesn’t just go into the ground. It ends up getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean where it pollutes beaches, and gets ground down into micro-plastic particles which poison sea life. Still more gets incinerated, creating local air pollution and contributing to carbon emissions.
  - concordDance 4y ago
    If you're putting single use plastic in a non-recycling bin in the developed world its pretty much guaranteed to go to landfill, not the sea. More so than putting it in a recycling bin where they might transport it on a ship to China.
    - Reason077 4y ago
      In many (most?) European cities the non-recycling bin will go to an incinerator, not landfill. China banned the import of waste in 2018. But other countries do still import it.
    - DocTomoe 4y ago
      Welcome to the developed world (in my case: Germany), where recycling is enforced by ordinances and/or contracts with your waste removal organisation, which will check if you did so properly, and refuse to take your refuse away if they think you have not recycled properly enough.
  - dtgriscom 4y ago
    > It ends up getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean Not where I live (northeastern USA), where the vast majority of discarded plastic ends up in landfills. Virtually none gets "washed (or dumped) into the ocean"; the minor exception is trash dropped by thoughtless people.
XorNot 4y ago
Single use plastics literally don't matter if they end up in landfill. The vast majority of plastics in the ocean are coming from about 5 rivers in China. Plastic in a landfill is fine, it's a no-op: oil comes out of the ground, does not get burned into CO2 in the atmosphere and then will go and sit in the ground for several thousand years (or more likely, we'll dig it all back up once energy is cheap enough that it can depolymerized and reused).
- throwaway2037 4y ago
  You wrote: <<The vast majority of plastics in the ocean are coming from about 5 rivers in China.>> I tried to Google about it but found nothing. Where did you learn about it?
  - XorNot 4y ago
    I misremembered - it's 10 rivers, 8 of which are in Asia: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 Summarised in this article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti...
bboygravity 4y ago
The amount of plastic ending up in oceans/nature from "The Western world" is not very significant relative to the total. There are entire continents that essentially dump most of their (plastic) trash straight into rivers (and thus oceans). Looking at you (South East) Asia...
- w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
  Where does it end then ? Burned in the air ? I don't know if it is worse or better, I have no data about it. But I suppose it's neither neutral. Recycling plastic is very hard as a single product is often a combinaison of different kind of 'plastics', which happen to be a generic name for different materials, and which impose different kind of treatment for each of them. Colored plastics add up to the issue as you can't recycle different colored plastic of the same kind together... For example, a single coca-cola bottle is typically made of 3 kind of plastics : the bottle itself (transparent), the cap(red with white or black scripting), and the wrapping around of the bottle (made of 2 or 3 different colors). And that's nothing compared to toothpaste tubes, which was taken as an example in a recent 'Der Spiegel' issue to illustrate the ecologic nightmare plastics represent. And let's not forget ketchup plastic bottles, which is also some kind of marvel of assembled plastic enginering. Plastic recycling is currently more a matter of vertue signaling than a reality as only 1 to 5 percent of plastic (I don't know the exact numbers) is curently recycled worldwide. In western world (or at least in europe), most of them are incinerated in electricity thermal generators or buried in waste dumps. Until recently, american waste (plastics) were send to China to be buried or burned, until the chinese government made it illegal. The real indicator should be some kind of a 'plastic consumption index' by countries and/or companies and/or household, used to monitor the amount we produce it, use it and get rid of the waste.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  The Western wolds is comitting massive fraud and has you fooled too. In UK recyclers get paid by the government a small amount per ton recycled. It is , however, not enough to trully recycle anything. So they take out a few valuable plastics, and pay randpm company in poor country to tale this plastic, and to sign paperwork saying that it's going to a recycling facility. In reality it will simply be dumped, and money will be pocketed. Then when someone complains, they pull the documents thst were signed by some random fall guy, make a surprised face, and claim they thought the plastic would be recycled.
VBprogrammer 4y ago
I had a similar discussion with friends who said they were going to stop flying completely. To me all you are really doing there is reducing the cost at the margin by reducing the demand by a tiny amount.
Mistletoe 4y ago
You really shouldn’t do this. You are risking your health by becoming dehydrated. I’m not sure your avoidance of plastic at all costs even makes sense on any level.
- dublin 4y ago
  Funny how Europeans and others aren't constantly "hydrating" (in fact, they tell me they think Americans are silly for carrying water bottles around), yet they never suffer any effects of dehydration. (Most European meals are served with only single-digit ounces of liquid.) You really don't need to drink very much, and in fact drinking large quantities can produce some bad effects by demineralizing the body (magnesium in particular, but many others too), especially over the long term...
- jraby3 4y ago
  I monitor my urine color and how I feel. If I feel bad I’ll grab a glass of water or even buy a plastic bottle, but that happens maybe once a year. I really think that people aren’t that fragile and the bottled water industry has done an excellent job of making people think they need to constantly hydrate in order to not have a heat stroke. Imo it’s enough to just pay attention to yourself and how you feel.
dmd 4y ago
About 20 years ago, I made a mistake at work which I later calculated put an extra 8500 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. (It had to do with the delay/routing of a cargo ship.) There is literally nothing I could possibly do that could come even close to making up for that...
- saint_fiasco 4y ago
  You just have to keep working and do a better job from that point on. If you make fewer mistakes than the person who replaced you if you quit, you will make up for your mistake eventually.
- elevaet 4y ago
  That's in the range of 10x the CO2 an average human will produce in their lifetime. If you could find a way to get 20 people to cut their emissions in half, or 200 people to reduce it by 5%, or 1000 people by 1%, you could balance out your CO2 ledger :) Or, if you still work in the industry and can find a way to make the shipping routes more efficient, or prevent future mistakes like that, you could make it into the green and achieve CO2 karmic heaven!
  - cj 4y ago
    (Controversial comment warning) one way to save more than your lifetime’s worth of CO2 is to not have children. By not having children, you’re not just saving the CO2 output of the child itself, but the entire lineage that could have resulted from that single child. Obviously this advice is not good advice for anyone who wants to have children :)
    - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
      I’ve thought about this. I think it really depends on whether we need more climate-minded voters in the future. If we do then those susceptible to this message are exactly the wrong ones to hear it.
      - 4y ago
bilsbie 4y ago
I would try not to worry too much though. It becomes a sickness at some point. Check out Scott Adam’s law of slow moving disasters if you want some optimism.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Doesn't look like much of a 'law' to me. His optimism ignores some fundamental facts, like living in a (nearly) closed system. So there must be a point at which oil production will decline because our usage far outstrips it's production. Humans are trying to adapt yet I don't think extraction from shale, fracking, and giant super buildings in the desert are going to solve the fundamental issues around sustainability.
  - bilsbie 4y ago
    He’s not saying to ignore problems. Rather that we tend to fix things just in time once the problem becomes very apparent. Y2K is the best example. Fixing the ozone hole would be another one.
- jraby3 4y ago
  I really don’t worry too much. I’m lucky to be surrounded by the tech seen in Israel and just see so many innovative ideas and solutions to various problems on a daily basis. It’s more that it just doesn’t seem worth it. We use a bag for a few minutes and it’s in our environment for 1000 years. It seems like such a bad trade to me.
latexr 4y ago
> I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially plastic bags People treat plastic bags as single use, but you can reuse them for years. I’m not saying you should seek them out, but don’t just throw them away after one use when you find yourself with some.
- jraby3 4y ago
  I end up using the bags I get (from food delivery, shopping for fruits etc) as garbage bags or dog poop bags. So I reuse the ones I have. But they still last 1000 years in our environment to save me a minimal amount of convenience.
- dtgriscom 4y ago
  I love thin grocery store plastic bags, and reuse each one dozens of times. But my local government (small Massachusetts city) banned them, so now grocery stores have to use paper (much less reusable) or extra-thick bags (more bulky, less flexible, don't last significantly longer). It takes real amounts of thought to reduce your footprint; the visible/obvious solution often isn't the right one.
int0x2e 4y ago
Please, please, please stay hidrated! As a person on their 3rd round of kidney stones - please drink more water!

by jraby3 4y ago

pigsty 4y ago

That example is one reason why legislation is necessary. There will always be detractors saying we should just make people want to make the right choice, but all it takes is one person in a company to make a decision that outweighs the collective efforts of millions.

dublin 4y ago
Aristo! Aristo! A la lanterne!

swarnie 4y ago

I've got to a similar conclusion as you but with a very different outcome. It makes absolutely no difference if i minimise my plastic or diligently sort them for recycling because a Vegas hotel will make all my efforts for naught. Climate change is already here and there is nothing the individual can do about it. The optimum play now is to accept that the group is useless and make individual steps to mitigate the effects on you personally. Sorry, never nice doing a pre-7am nihilism dump.

jraby3 4y ago
I think individuals can help but not so much by conservation. More in trying to affect policy change at local or national political agencies.
paulryanrogers 4y ago
Apathy guarantees failure. "All it takes for evil men to succeed..." and all.

wjnc 4y ago

Dehydration is more of a risk to you than the environmental risks you marginally save on others. Still I applaud the effort since the economists view is too restricted. Get a stainless steel container and hydrate for a lifetime.

SoftTalker 4y ago
Stainless steel containers are often lined with plastic, since people don't like the metallic taste that the steel imparts.
- Reason077 4y ago
  In general there is nothing wrong with long-life plastic products. Plastic is a really useful and important material when used appropriately! It's the insane amount waste and environmental pollution that single-use plastic generates that is the problem.
  - jraby3 4y ago
    Exactly. What I always tell vendors when I get a strange look after refusing their plastic bag is that we use it for 5 minutes but it stays in the environment for 1000 years.
    - bluGill 4y ago
      They make plastics that biodegrade in a few years. Supposedly even in a landfill they degrade (I've seen this debated, I'm not qualified to figure out who is right). However they are more expensive and so rarely used except when someone wants to make a point about being green.
  - citrin_ru 4y ago
    Nothing wrong unless it is used to store food or water and contains some BPA-like compound (AFAIK it includes most plastic produces nowadays even so called BPA-free).

tintor 4y ago

There are reusable metal water bottles. Don't be thirsty.

standardUser 4y ago

Nothing government regulations with decent enforcement couldn't stop. We just need to elect governments that pass those regulations. The thing is, the majority of voters in most societies don't want those regulations.

runnerup 4y ago
Actually the tragedy of the commons cannot be stopped by one government. If USA chooses to tax all externalities perfectly, both our production capacity and consumption will be a tiny sliver of its current quantities. By GHG alone we'd lose 80% of our economy, but that doesn't take into account the potential cost of removing dioxin and PFAS from our groundwater, remediating lithium mines, cleaning our air of fly ash, preventing any toxic chemical leaks, making our rivers and lakes and ponds drinkable again, etc. I believe that would reduce us to about 1% of our current GDP. Assuming we didn't riot ourselves to rubble, other nations will quickly outstrip us. Eventually we'd be a vassal state of another superpower. Either because they'd buy our politicians, use crises of supply shortages to force us into free trade deals which axe our externality taxes, or via outright force. Other nations would do to us what the USA did to Latin America when those nations wanted to throttle their development for ecological reasons in the 60's and 70's. Sustainably, we probably wouldn't even be able to keep and train a competitive military -- 6% of our nations carbon emissions are from our military, accounting for 52% of federal carbon footprint, and our military emits more GHG than 140 countries (individually/separately).
- oblio 4y ago
  > Actually the tragedy of the commons cannot be stopped by one government. Perfect is the enemy of good. The US could focus on lower cost - high impact externalities taxing. It could persuade, cajole, bully its partners and allies to agree to a treaty doing the same. It did it for FATCA, for sure it can do it for climate change and general environmental destruction. Once you have such an international treaty in place, most of the rest of the world would follow. US partners and allies are probably 70% of the world economy, and the countries with the most slack, economically, that can best afford this.
- 4y ago

Reason077 4y ago

> "This frequently means I’ll be extremely thirst throughout some days" Why not carry a reusable water bottle? I have a great double-wall steel bottle (Hydro Flask), which is much better than a plastic bottle because it keeps water cold all day long and is basically indestructible. In most places I travel to it's not difficult to find sources of clean, cold water to refill it. Worst case, I will buy a large bottle of water to refill it from, which at least is cheaper and generates less waste than using multiple small plastic bottles throughout the day.

smilekzs 4y ago
For me, there's always a metallic residual taste in my water whenever I use a stainless steel bottle. Got tired and returned to using normal mugs.
- bayindirh 4y ago
  Which brand(s) did you use? I use Contigo, Stanley, Alaaddin and (old) Starbucks tumblers and bottles, and they leave no taste in the water.
- bushbaba 4y ago
  Many of the metal water bottles come with a plastic liner to avoid the metallic taste
  - atombender 4y ago
    Some also come with a non-stick (Teflon-type) coating. Zojirushi makes incredibly nice vacuum-insulated bottle [1] that unfortunately has a non-stick liner. The inside of the bottle is super easy to clean, but the chemicals used in the manufacturing are awful. [1] https://www.zojirushi.com.hk/enproductsview.php?oid=6&tid=17&pid=328 https://www.zojirushi.com.hk/enproductsview.php?oid=6&tid=17...
    - jankeymeulen 4y ago
      Good you mention a teflon-type coating in a discussion about 'forever chemicals'.

wirrbel 4y ago

I recently mail-ordered rice, and because I wanted to buy two different styles I did not opt for the 3kg (like 6 lbs) bag but 2 packs of 1.8kg. Turns out 1.8kg were packed in 3 bags of 600g, so now I have 6 bags at 600g rice, that on first glance look like they are paper, but its actually plastic coated paper. Its really hard to avoid at times. As for avoiding bags I have two wicker baskets like this https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B009BMXLLI/ https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B009BMXLLI/ which means I can avoid shopping bags and they are actually quite convenient for carrying. Tap water is luckily very drinkable in Germany (rumor has it that Coca-Cola company bottles it and sells it under their 'Bonaqua' brand). However, there is so much out of our control with plastics that require regulation. Just think of the packaging.

jonasdegendt 4y ago
Most bottled mineral water is just filtered tap water with some different minerals added to give it flavor.
- Gud 4y ago
  Tap water is vastly different depending on where it is sourced. In my experience, most countries have pretty bad tap water.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    After a few rounds of filtration it's all going to be the same.
  - Reason077 4y ago
    But if you carefully filter and re-mineralise it before bottling, you can turn it into more or less the same product anywhere.
    - Gud 4y ago
      Not really talking about bottling- in Scandinavia their tap water is better than most bottled water.

beezlewax 4y ago

You can carry a water bottle in a small backpack or if you're in a city with fountains use them. Or buy water that comes in cartons though I'm not sure it's easy to find these or if they're actually plastic free.

jraby3 4y ago
I realize that. It’s definitely a choice since I like to travel light and walk a lot.
- cyxxon 4y ago
  I have used the Stash bottle from Hydrapak [1] for a few years now, that one is the definition of light, and very versatile. The interesting thing is that the opening fits the filter by Katadin made for their BeFree bottles [2], so you could even take that on hikes where you are not entirely sure of the water quality (filters particles and bacteria, but not viruses). I actually carry and use this combo, not related to the companies. [1] https://hydrapak.com/collections/water-bottles/products/stash-750-ml https://hydrapak.com/collections/water-bottles/products/stas... [2] https://www.katadyngroup.com/us/en/8019641-EZ-Clean-Membrane-Filter-Cartridge~p6745 https://www.katadyngroup.com/us/en/8019641-EZ-Clean-Membrane...
asenkyr 4y ago
Water (or any other liquid) packed in cartons is mostly just green washing. Most of the cartons are either lined with plastic, or they are tetra packs. Both of these options (especially tetra packs) are much more difficult to recycle and worse for the environment than simple PET bottles.

mrpopo 4y ago

You need to stop thinking about bringing your own footprint ever closer to zero, you must also stop thinking that doing so is a powerful revolutionary act, and join or create organized groups vowing to bring about social change. Be it in your family, your neighbourhood or your municipality. Forget shorter showers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TbrtCGbhQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2TbrtCGbhQ

saiya-jin 4y ago
Yes, unfortunately the core item that more hardcore evangelists for topic XYZ seem to be unable to grasp, maybe due to being too close/deep in the subject. If I had a NFT every time somebody on HN stated 'we need to abandon cars, or abandon plastics altogether' and similar, I would be drowning in a lot of useless tokens. The thing is, the motivation for given topic is always fair and just, and so are the goals, so its normal to want to do more and more. But at one point they move so far from general population they are seen as extremists, and whatever good their push is trying to achieve is completely blocked by this extreme approach and negative emotions it sparks. Get engaged in politics, create groups, figure out who has real deciding power and apply soft pressure there... this is how good changes are done in timely manner. Other way is to wait till SHTF and there is reaction, but damage is already done like in this topic. Otherwise society just heads to division and conflict on many levels, and as for example covid showed us if you push big part of population hard/long enough they will eventually move to some outright non-smart positions that will be then very hard to abandon.
- Retric 4y ago
  The secret is to aim for lesser goals. Don’t try to get rid of all plastics just aim to reduce some specific kind of single use plastic etc. Setup an organization to ban cars in the central core of your city. The advantage to ‘save the whales’ over save every endangered species is it’s much easier to gain traction and you can pick the easiest targets.
  - oblio 4y ago
    Plus if you can somehow get the numbers, everything is a 80-20 deal. 80% of the bang can be gotten for 20% of the buck. I'm reasonably sure Coca Cola and co should be the biggest targets in the anti-plastic campaign.

concordDance 4y ago

Why try and minimise single use plastic? That's oil going straight back into the ground (landfill) rather than being refined into petrol and burnt! Single use plastic is way better than recycled plastic at slowing global warming.

Reason077 4y ago
A lot of it doesn’t just go into the ground. It ends up getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean where it pollutes beaches, and gets ground down into micro-plastic particles which poison sea life. Still more gets incinerated, creating local air pollution and contributing to carbon emissions.
- concordDance 4y ago
  If you're putting single use plastic in a non-recycling bin in the developed world its pretty much guaranteed to go to landfill, not the sea. More so than putting it in a recycling bin where they might transport it on a ship to China.
  - Reason077 4y ago
    In many (most?) European cities the non-recycling bin will go to an incinerator, not landfill. China banned the import of waste in 2018. But other countries do still import it.
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    Welcome to the developed world (in my case: Germany), where recycling is enforced by ordinances and/or contracts with your waste removal organisation, which will check if you did so properly, and refuse to take your refuse away if they think you have not recycled properly enough.
- dtgriscom 4y ago
  > It ends up getting washed (or dumped) into the ocean Not where I live (northeastern USA), where the vast majority of discarded plastic ends up in landfills. Virtually none gets "washed (or dumped) into the ocean"; the minor exception is trash dropped by thoughtless people.

XorNot 4y ago

Single use plastics literally don't matter if they end up in landfill. The vast majority of plastics in the ocean are coming from about 5 rivers in China. Plastic in a landfill is fine, it's a no-op: oil comes out of the ground, does not get burned into CO2 in the atmosphere and then will go and sit in the ground for several thousand years (or more likely, we'll dig it all back up once energy is cheap enough that it can depolymerized and reused).

throwaway2037 4y ago
You wrote: <<The vast majority of plastics in the ocean are coming from about 5 rivers in China.>> I tried to Google about it but found nothing. Where did you learn about it?
- XorNot 4y ago
  I misremembered - it's 10 rivers, 8 of which are in Asia: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 Summarised in this article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti...

bboygravity 4y ago

The amount of plastic ending up in oceans/nature from "The Western world" is not very significant relative to the total. There are entire continents that essentially dump most of their (plastic) trash straight into rivers (and thus oceans). Looking at you (South East) Asia...

w1nst0nsm1th 4y ago
Where does it end then ? Burned in the air ? I don't know if it is worse or better, I have no data about it. But I suppose it's neither neutral. Recycling plastic is very hard as a single product is often a combinaison of different kind of 'plastics', which happen to be a generic name for different materials, and which impose different kind of treatment for each of them. Colored plastics add up to the issue as you can't recycle different colored plastic of the same kind together... For example, a single coca-cola bottle is typically made of 3 kind of plastics : the bottle itself (transparent), the cap(red with white or black scripting), and the wrapping around of the bottle (made of 2 or 3 different colors). And that's nothing compared to toothpaste tubes, which was taken as an example in a recent 'Der Spiegel' issue to illustrate the ecologic nightmare plastics represent. And let's not forget ketchup plastic bottles, which is also some kind of marvel of assembled plastic enginering. Plastic recycling is currently more a matter of vertue signaling than a reality as only 1 to 5 percent of plastic (I don't know the exact numbers) is curently recycled worldwide. In western world (or at least in europe), most of them are incinerated in electricity thermal generators or buried in waste dumps. Until recently, american waste (plastics) were send to China to be buried or burned, until the chinese government made it illegal. The real indicator should be some kind of a 'plastic consumption index' by countries and/or companies and/or household, used to monitor the amount we produce it, use it and get rid of the waste.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
The Western wolds is comitting massive fraud and has you fooled too. In UK recyclers get paid by the government a small amount per ton recycled. It is , however, not enough to trully recycle anything. So they take out a few valuable plastics, and pay randpm company in poor country to tale this plastic, and to sign paperwork saying that it's going to a recycling facility. In reality it will simply be dumped, and money will be pocketed. Then when someone complains, they pull the documents thst were signed by some random fall guy, make a surprised face, and claim they thought the plastic would be recycled.

VBprogrammer 4y ago

I had a similar discussion with friends who said they were going to stop flying completely. To me all you are really doing there is reducing the cost at the margin by reducing the demand by a tiny amount.

Mistletoe 4y ago

You really shouldn’t do this. You are risking your health by becoming dehydrated. I’m not sure your avoidance of plastic at all costs even makes sense on any level.

dublin 4y ago
Funny how Europeans and others aren't constantly "hydrating" (in fact, they tell me they think Americans are silly for carrying water bottles around), yet they never suffer any effects of dehydration. (Most European meals are served with only single-digit ounces of liquid.) You really don't need to drink very much, and in fact drinking large quantities can produce some bad effects by demineralizing the body (magnesium in particular, but many others too), especially over the long term...
jraby3 4y ago
I monitor my urine color and how I feel. If I feel bad I’ll grab a glass of water or even buy a plastic bottle, but that happens maybe once a year. I really think that people aren’t that fragile and the bottled water industry has done an excellent job of making people think they need to constantly hydrate in order to not have a heat stroke. Imo it’s enough to just pay attention to yourself and how you feel.

dmd 4y ago

About 20 years ago, I made a mistake at work which I later calculated put an extra 8500 metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. (It had to do with the delay/routing of a cargo ship.) There is literally nothing I could possibly do that could come even close to making up for that...

saint_fiasco 4y ago
You just have to keep working and do a better job from that point on. If you make fewer mistakes than the person who replaced you if you quit, you will make up for your mistake eventually.
elevaet 4y ago
That's in the range of 10x the CO2 an average human will produce in their lifetime. If you could find a way to get 20 people to cut their emissions in half, or 200 people to reduce it by 5%, or 1000 people by 1%, you could balance out your CO2 ledger :) Or, if you still work in the industry and can find a way to make the shipping routes more efficient, or prevent future mistakes like that, you could make it into the green and achieve CO2 karmic heaven!
- cj 4y ago
  (Controversial comment warning) one way to save more than your lifetime’s worth of CO2 is to not have children. By not having children, you’re not just saving the CO2 output of the child itself, but the entire lineage that could have resulted from that single child. Obviously this advice is not good advice for anyone who wants to have children :)
  - teaearlgraycold 4y ago
    I’ve thought about this. I think it really depends on whether we need more climate-minded voters in the future. If we do then those susceptible to this message are exactly the wrong ones to hear it.
    - 4y ago

bilsbie 4y ago

I would try not to worry too much though. It becomes a sickness at some point. Check out Scott Adam’s law of slow moving disasters if you want some optimism.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Doesn't look like much of a 'law' to me. His optimism ignores some fundamental facts, like living in a (nearly) closed system. So there must be a point at which oil production will decline because our usage far outstrips it's production. Humans are trying to adapt yet I don't think extraction from shale, fracking, and giant super buildings in the desert are going to solve the fundamental issues around sustainability.
- bilsbie 4y ago
  He’s not saying to ignore problems. Rather that we tend to fix things just in time once the problem becomes very apparent. Y2K is the best example. Fixing the ozone hole would be another one.
jraby3 4y ago
I really don’t worry too much. I’m lucky to be surrounded by the tech seen in Israel and just see so many innovative ideas and solutions to various problems on a daily basis. It’s more that it just doesn’t seem worth it. We use a bag for a few minutes and it’s in our environment for 1000 years. It seems like such a bad trade to me.

latexr 4y ago

> I try really hard not to use single use plastic. Especially plastic bags People treat plastic bags as single use, but you can reuse them for years. I’m not saying you should seek them out, but don’t just throw them away after one use when you find yourself with some.

jraby3 4y ago
I end up using the bags I get (from food delivery, shopping for fruits etc) as garbage bags or dog poop bags. So I reuse the ones I have. But they still last 1000 years in our environment to save me a minimal amount of convenience.
dtgriscom 4y ago
I love thin grocery store plastic bags, and reuse each one dozens of times. But my local government (small Massachusetts city) banned them, so now grocery stores have to use paper (much less reusable) or extra-thick bags (more bulky, less flexible, don't last significantly longer). It takes real amounts of thought to reduce your footprint; the visible/obvious solution often isn't the right one.

int0x2e 4y ago

Please, please, please stay hidrated! As a person on their 3rd round of kidney stones - please drink more water!