6 ms·

Yes? At this point, it's hopeless - plastics are expanding like never before, Shell expanding several new enormous factories right in the US. No politician is i

Yes? At this point, it's hopeless - plastics are expanding like never before, Shell expanding several new enormous factories right in the US. No politician is interested in stopping it either, since the lobbying industry for plastics is also going strong. The only legislation passed in modern time is against single-use plastics, which is just a tiny drop in the ocean (!!) of plastic. And also, the clothes industry is massive and went from an already cheap source like cotton, to plastic. Consider the forces here that push plastics - influensers, marketers and huge brands. It's hard to find consumers or manufacturers willing to pay several times more for the better alternative.. EDIT: In the end, it's up to consumers. Personally, I'm using glass, it's infinitely re-usable. I use hemp clothes, it lasts many times longer and I don't own a car, I bike everywhere.

tfourb 3y ago
Not sure how the "it's to late to do anything about it" is supposed to contribute to this debate. It's also factually wrong. The production of new plastics could be drastically reduced through regulation of both the production itself and its use cases. Most food and drink containers could be made from non-plastic materials. I've built a house that uses maybe 5% of the plastic that is common in construction where I live. You could pull out the cables, window seals, roof cover and switches and basically leave the rest of the house to compost. The government could mandate that producers of plastics must offer a convenient and financially attractive way to hand in old plastics. There are a thousand ways to drastically improve this problem, fatalism only contributes to it.
- iforgotpassword 3y ago
  > The government could mandate that producers of plastics must offer a convenient and financially attractive way to hand in old plastics. We already have this. It's called trash can. How would letting the producers handle this instead would change anything? The plastic was still produced and will end up in a landfill or the ocean.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    I couldn't speak for other brands, but Brother will give you a free shipping label so you can send your empty toner cartridge back to them. It's not charity, they want it back because they can reuse most of it in ways that a melt-and-remold style recycling scheme can't. I see no reason the same couldn't be true of most packaging, in addition to things like TV's. If you built it, you ought to be uniquely positioned to recycle it. In addition to trying to get consumers to change their habits we should also be fining/billing manufacturers when their stuff end up as litter or in a landfill. If they don't like it, they can redesign their processes to avoid it.
    - mrob 3y ago
      I think we should be subsidizing plastics that end up in landfill. It's the best place for it, as it's both safely contained and impractical to take out again, making it a reliable form of carbon sequestration.
      - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
        That sounds like a fine idea to me, so long as the product was designed to end up there rather than it being the catch-all solution for anything whose maker didn't think ahead.
  - tfourb 3y ago
    Why not pay people per kg to return plastics. We have a scheme in Germany where you get something like 30 cents per glass bottle that you return. Even people who don't care about this small sum leave their beer bottles in a convenient place for others to pick up as a result. Mandating a non-trivial payment per kg of plastics would create the incentives for people to not only throw stuff in the bin if they find it convenient, but also for others to collect plastic trash that nobody else feels responsible for.
    - simiones 3y ago
      Collect it for what? Glass is somewhat easily recyclable, most plastics are not. Even if it's collected with utmost care, it will be taken to a landfill, or "sent to China for recycling" (spilled in the ocean) or burned in a power plant - none of which is that great. Conversely, if it's thrown in the regular trash, it will probably end up in a landfill, which is probably right now the best solution for it.
- swalling 3y ago
  Most people have microplastics in their body, and even babies in the womb are being exposed (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...). The most remote, otherwise pristine environments have microplastics due to atmospheric transport (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/). It is too late.
  - amake 3y ago
    I suppose it was too late to ban lead from gasoline because everyone alive at the time had already been exposed.
    - jf22 3y ago
      I think the person meant it is too late to avoid consequences, but not too late to take action.
      - swalling 3y ago
        Correct. Eliminating plastic pollution will be a benefit not to us, but to our children's children. The same with reducing carbon emissions.
  - light_hue_1 3y ago
    And of course if it doesn't help people who are currently alive only our children we should never do it and it's too late to bother?
    - swalling 3y ago
      Plastic replacement isn’t like leaded gasoline or ozone-depleting substances where you had just a few applications to design alternatives for. It’s in fucking everything. Even just finding a realistic replacement for plastic in shoes is not being productized seriously. It’s going to take generations for it to be fixed, and it probably won’t happen until humans and other animals get much much sicker.
- nukeman 3y ago
  I’m curious to hear about what you did with the house (I’m thinking about building/renovating a house in a few years). Did you go DIY or hire a contractor? What were some of your replacements for plastics?
  - tfourb 3y ago
    We basically built an all-wooden house: Timber posts and beams (not the flimsy sticks that are used commonly in construction in the US but solid 8" posts), interlocking OSB-boards on the inside for air tightness (this can also be achieved with other wood-based techniques, my house has an air tightness comparable to passive house construction), wood fibre insulation material (15+ inches on all sides and the roof), clay plastering on the inside (great for thermal mass). The house is really air tight but moisture can get out through the walls easily without causing rot. There are thermal bridges. Window frames are from oak. We have a bit of plastics-based insulation around the foundation and the roof is covered with an oil-based-rubber, but that's about it except for smaller items like cable insulations, switches, etc. We did some of the interior stuff DIY but the major parts of the construction were done by various contractors.
    - nukeman 3y ago
      Interesting, what made you go for wood fiber insulation versus something like ICF? Also, UK or Canada? Noticed the spelling difference.
      - tfourb 3y ago
        Germany, actually ;-) We chose wood fibre because we wanted the house's CO2 footprint to be as low as possible. We are slightly above passive house levels in terms of ongoing energy use (mostly because the house has an inefficient shape = not a cube) and we produce more kw/h from solar power each year than we use despite having a relatively inefficient electricity-based heating system. But we also wanted to reduce the CO2 emitted during construction and cement/concrete is really bad in that regard. The wood fibre insulation has a fraction of the embodied energy/CO2 emissions of concrete and fossil fuel based insulation and it is fully compostable. I could theoretically also be reused if the house is demolished at some point, as it doesn't deteriorate if it stays dry (or is allowed to dry quickly after getting wet), though I think that would be unlikely to happen. Also, wood fibre is an excellent insulator against heat, which is nice given that our summers can get quite hot. The wood-only construction also eliminates all thermal bridges, as wood is itself an insulator and the required fasteners are small diameter and do not reach through the entire wall.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
kossTKR 3y ago
"In the end, it's up to consumers." No it's not. Please don't spread sinister pro industry falsities like this. Nothing has ever changed because of some symbolic drops in the ocean. Regulation and collective action is the only thing that has ever worked, all personal lifestyle choices are romanticizations about personal effects that the industry loves because it has pushed responsibility to consumers, like much of the astroturfed recycling movement that is theatre hiding actual policy making. If people want to do anything that makes any kind of actual difference they should get into anything that's anti the big industry lobbies or collective action and see through the jungle of astroturfing and "lifestyle signaling" greenwashing noise.
- tmikaeld 3y ago
  I point out in my post that it's hopeless, that huge forces are pushing for more plastic. What's left? Only consumers affecting the supply and demand - or tech. I'm hoping more of a technological revolution, like this: https://twitter.com/thebetterindia/status/1673020840374333440 https://twitter.com/thebetterindia/status/167302084037433344... Algae is abundant, easy to grow and completely compostable - the problem - again, is capitalism holding it hostage.
  - simiones 3y ago
    Voters have a much higher chance of collectively modifying this behavior than consumers do. It's not easy, and the will doesn't seem to be there yet, but it's a hell of a lot easier to influence politicians than corporate conglomerates.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago
> In the end, it's up to consumers. ...to vote for politicians who will regulate this shit. Pushing the responsibility to consumers is just BigCorp's messaging to externalize the responsibility.
yowzadave 3y ago
> In the end, it's up to consumers. This is the exact wrong conclusion to draw. The only way we've ever solved issues like this (CFCs, lead paint, leaded gas, etc.) is on the supply side through regulation. Yes, it's challenging and there are forces resisting these efforts, but it's certainly possible and has been done before.

tfourb 3y ago

Not sure how the "it's to late to do anything about it" is supposed to contribute to this debate. It's also factually wrong. The production of new plastics could be drastically reduced through regulation of both the production itself and its use cases. Most food and drink containers could be made from non-plastic materials. I've built a house that uses maybe 5% of the plastic that is common in construction where I live. You could pull out the cables, window seals, roof cover and switches and basically leave the rest of the house to compost. The government could mandate that producers of plastics must offer a convenient and financially attractive way to hand in old plastics. There are a thousand ways to drastically improve this problem, fatalism only contributes to it.

iforgotpassword 3y ago
> The government could mandate that producers of plastics must offer a convenient and financially attractive way to hand in old plastics. We already have this. It's called trash can. How would letting the producers handle this instead would change anything? The plastic was still produced and will end up in a landfill or the ocean.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I couldn't speak for other brands, but Brother will give you a free shipping label so you can send your empty toner cartridge back to them. It's not charity, they want it back because they can reuse most of it in ways that a melt-and-remold style recycling scheme can't. I see no reason the same couldn't be true of most packaging, in addition to things like TV's. If you built it, you ought to be uniquely positioned to recycle it. In addition to trying to get consumers to change their habits we should also be fining/billing manufacturers when their stuff end up as litter or in a landfill. If they don't like it, they can redesign their processes to avoid it.
  - mrob 3y ago
    I think we should be subsidizing plastics that end up in landfill. It's the best place for it, as it's both safely contained and impractical to take out again, making it a reliable form of carbon sequestration.
    - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      That sounds like a fine idea to me, so long as the product was designed to end up there rather than it being the catch-all solution for anything whose maker didn't think ahead.
- tfourb 3y ago
  Why not pay people per kg to return plastics. We have a scheme in Germany where you get something like 30 cents per glass bottle that you return. Even people who don't care about this small sum leave their beer bottles in a convenient place for others to pick up as a result. Mandating a non-trivial payment per kg of plastics would create the incentives for people to not only throw stuff in the bin if they find it convenient, but also for others to collect plastic trash that nobody else feels responsible for.
  - simiones 3y ago
    Collect it for what? Glass is somewhat easily recyclable, most plastics are not. Even if it's collected with utmost care, it will be taken to a landfill, or "sent to China for recycling" (spilled in the ocean) or burned in a power plant - none of which is that great. Conversely, if it's thrown in the regular trash, it will probably end up in a landfill, which is probably right now the best solution for it.
swalling 3y ago
Most people have microplastics in their body, and even babies in the womb are being exposed (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...). The most remote, otherwise pristine environments have microplastics due to atmospheric transport (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36868287/). It is too late.
- amake 3y ago
  I suppose it was too late to ban lead from gasoline because everyone alive at the time had already been exposed.
  - jf22 3y ago
    I think the person meant it is too late to avoid consequences, but not too late to take action.
    - swalling 3y ago
      Correct. Eliminating plastic pollution will be a benefit not to us, but to our children's children. The same with reducing carbon emissions.
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  And of course if it doesn't help people who are currently alive only our children we should never do it and it's too late to bother?
  - swalling 3y ago
    Plastic replacement isn’t like leaded gasoline or ozone-depleting substances where you had just a few applications to design alternatives for. It’s in fucking everything. Even just finding a realistic replacement for plastic in shoes is not being productized seriously. It’s going to take generations for it to be fixed, and it probably won’t happen until humans and other animals get much much sicker.
nukeman 3y ago
I’m curious to hear about what you did with the house (I’m thinking about building/renovating a house in a few years). Did you go DIY or hire a contractor? What were some of your replacements for plastics?
- tfourb 3y ago
  We basically built an all-wooden house: Timber posts and beams (not the flimsy sticks that are used commonly in construction in the US but solid 8" posts), interlocking OSB-boards on the inside for air tightness (this can also be achieved with other wood-based techniques, my house has an air tightness comparable to passive house construction), wood fibre insulation material (15+ inches on all sides and the roof), clay plastering on the inside (great for thermal mass). The house is really air tight but moisture can get out through the walls easily without causing rot. There are thermal bridges. Window frames are from oak. We have a bit of plastics-based insulation around the foundation and the roof is covered with an oil-based-rubber, but that's about it except for smaller items like cable insulations, switches, etc. We did some of the interior stuff DIY but the major parts of the construction were done by various contractors.
  - nukeman 3y ago
    Interesting, what made you go for wood fiber insulation versus something like ICF? Also, UK or Canada? Noticed the spelling difference.
    - tfourb 3y ago
      Germany, actually ;-) We chose wood fibre because we wanted the house's CO2 footprint to be as low as possible. We are slightly above passive house levels in terms of ongoing energy use (mostly because the house has an inefficient shape = not a cube) and we produce more kw/h from solar power each year than we use despite having a relatively inefficient electricity-based heating system. But we also wanted to reduce the CO2 emitted during construction and cement/concrete is really bad in that regard. The wood fibre insulation has a fraction of the embodied energy/CO2 emissions of concrete and fossil fuel based insulation and it is fully compostable. I could theoretically also be reused if the house is demolished at some point, as it doesn't deteriorate if it stays dry (or is allowed to dry quickly after getting wet), though I think that would be unlikely to happen. Also, wood fibre is an excellent insulator against heat, which is nice given that our summers can get quite hot. The wood-only construction also eliminates all thermal bridges, as wood is itself an insulator and the required fasteners are small diameter and do not reach through the entire wall.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

kossTKR 3y ago

"In the end, it's up to consumers." No it's not. Please don't spread sinister pro industry falsities like this. Nothing has ever changed because of some symbolic drops in the ocean. Regulation and collective action is the only thing that has ever worked, all personal lifestyle choices are romanticizations about personal effects that the industry loves because it has pushed responsibility to consumers, like much of the astroturfed recycling movement that is theatre hiding actual policy making. If people want to do anything that makes any kind of actual difference they should get into anything that's anti the big industry lobbies or collective action and see through the jungle of astroturfing and "lifestyle signaling" greenwashing noise.

tmikaeld 3y ago
I point out in my post that it's hopeless, that huge forces are pushing for more plastic. What's left? Only consumers affecting the supply and demand - or tech. I'm hoping more of a technological revolution, like this: https://twitter.com/thebetterindia/status/1673020840374333440 https://twitter.com/thebetterindia/status/167302084037433344... Algae is abundant, easy to grow and completely compostable - the problem - again, is capitalism holding it hostage.
- simiones 3y ago
  Voters have a much higher chance of collectively modifying this behavior than consumers do. It's not easy, and the will doesn't seem to be there yet, but it's a hell of a lot easier to influence politicians than corporate conglomerates.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 3y ago

> In the end, it's up to consumers. ...to vote for politicians who will regulate this shit. Pushing the responsibility to consumers is just BigCorp's messaging to externalize the responsibility.

yowzadave 3y ago

> In the end, it's up to consumers. This is the exact wrong conclusion to draw. The only way we've ever solved issues like this (CFCs, lead paint, leaded gas, etc.) is on the supply side through regulation. Yes, it's challenging and there are forces resisting these efforts, but it's certainly possible and has been done before.