11 ms·

Breaking free of plastic pollution

74 points by dnetesn 3y ago

skybrian 3y ago
Seems like this is missing "support regulation to make landfills secure against leaks." We shouldn't just accept that they're going to leak.
- tokai 3y ago
  Just stop using landfills all together. Burn it, scrub the exhaust, and enjoy the cheap electricity.
- 542458 3y ago
  I don’t think it’s highly realistic to leakproof something as large as a landfill - we can’t even consistently leakproof house foundations, and those are smaller, easier to inspect, and higher budget. And that’s for new landfills, I don’t think there’s any way to retrofit every existing landfill to prevent leaks.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  Landfills will always leak. Sure, we can try to line them with multiple plastic barriers, but the reality is that these barriers will get holes and tears in them and let contaminated water out. Sure, we can detect that and dig out the whole landfill into a new landfill whenever the liner fails, but at some point into the future there will be no money to do that. Instead, we should aim to not put contaminated stuff into the landfill in the first place. Which in turn means don't sell toxic stuff to consumers.
  - skybrian 3y ago
    This seems rather defeatist. We are trying to do near-impossible things like getting rid of carbon emissions everywhere and we can't fix landfills?
kyleyeats 3y ago
How does recycling reduce plastic pollution? It's degrading and destroying the same plastic over and over. You're taking the high-quality plastic that would have sat in a landfill, making it into a lower-quality plastic and then sending it back out in the world. And then eventually... yep, the landfill, in the best-case scenario. Recycling just increases the chance that it's going to end up as low-quality plastic polluting the environment.
- tmikaeld 3y ago
  Plastic eating bacterium seems to be the only proper way of disposal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis
- aarond0623 3y ago
  If you reuse the same plastic multiple times, doesn't that reduce the total amount of plastic needed to produce the same number of goods, thus reducing plastic pollution?
  - tmikaeld 3y ago
    Recycling is complicated, because only certain polymers can be recycled, then it has to be separated from contaminants, transported, sorted and re-shipped to re-use facilities (often in China). A lot of improvements are needed for this to be both lucrative and effective [0]. Then there's the microplastics that still spread across the globe. [0] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/gc/d2gc02162e https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/gc/d2gc0...
- mrweasel 3y ago
  > How does recycling reduce plastic pollution? So the solution is to make more plastic? If we're not reducing the amount of plastic we're using, we can at least make less, by reusing the plastic we've already created. Take plastic conduits, they are mostly made from recycled windows, but still last a heck of a long time, that is going to be the better option than making all new plastic for them. We also reuse plastic bottles all the time, 87% of soft drink bottles are reused and made into new bottles (in Denmark), so we'd need to create a lot more plastic overall to compensate if they where not reused. On a lower level, having to recycle your plastic at home makes you painfully aware how much plastic you drag into your home. Ideally that would mean that you "buy" more, but mostly you don't have any control over that. Everything is packaged in way more layers than strictly needed. The amount of plastic we have to sort on a daily basis is insane. It has made me look for products that are packaged in less plastic, but it's an uphill battle.
david_draco 3y ago
Not disagreeing that plastic is a concern, but calling it one of the biggest threats? I recall it is negligible compared to climate change and expanding land use, which can be addressed by reducing meat, flying, consumption, and increasing regulation, carbon tax, and all the other good things that various NGOs have advocated for years.
- Erratic6576 3y ago
  So many urgent threats. It’s mostly checkmate
  - bamboozled 3y ago
    It's been almost checkmate from the beginning.
- CWIZO 3y ago
  The good thing about reducing/ eliminating meat consumption is that it would actually help with plastic as well. Mainly because the fishing industry is responsible for over 50% of the plastic pollution in the oceans. And because you reduce the packaging waste of all that meat being sold.
  - sgu999 3y ago
    > Mainly because the fishing industry is responsible for over 50% of the plastic pollution in the oceans. !!! Because of the nets?
    - CWIZO 3y ago
      Yes and all the other discarded equipment. It's a massive problem.
- born-jre 3y ago
  i would certainly rant just below climate change so think it deserves one of the biggest title for sure.
cptaj 3y ago
Its hard to explain how bad this problem is getting to people that don't live near the sea. If you're downcurrent anywhere in the world, your beaches are basically full of trash that gets replenished on a daily basis It really pisses me off
- ks2048 3y ago
  I just had my most glaring experience of this ever on a beach that is basically on the open sea - Coco beach in Dar Es Salaam on the Indian Ocean. Incredibly beautiful beach and the warmest ocean water I can remember. And just walking through a foot of water you are basically continually hit with plastic waste. So, sad.
  - shauryamanu 3y ago
    With our current attitude that day's not far away when all our oceans will be dead, just like we killed our rivers, at least in my own country India. At least one country needs to put the biggest offender liable. Like having Plastic tax just like Carbon tax.
rastignack 3y ago
I don’t know why all the attention is on climate change and not on the consequences of microplastics everywhere. Such an important issue, yet no world summit, no word about the topic when we talk about environmental issues. Change is due !
- dao- 3y ago
  > I don’t know why all the attention is on climate change Because it's the largest existential threat human civilization has ever faced. But perhaps two things can be bad at the same time, and we should stop flooding earth with microplastics without taking away any attention from climate change. There's plenty of attention to go around. It's not like humanity is wholly committed to fighting climate change. Quite the contrary.
  - rastignack 3y ago
    I think there is more than enough attention on climate change (it’s constant hammering at this point) and that it is predatory to awareness about other environmental risks.
    - dao- 3y ago
      More than enough by what measure? That constant hammering hasn't yet translated to political will to actually turn the ship around.
      - rastignack 3y ago
        Well for example I spend 3 full days a year of training at my company being lectured about climate change. There are yearly events and summits with huge press coverage. I don’t know if my company can afford to spend 3 more days per employee talking about microplastics and chemicals pollution.
        sgu999 3y ago
        > Well for example I spend 3 full days a year of training at my company being lectured about climate change. I can perfectly imagine employees of a bank having to do that for the SRI rating. Then head back to their cubicle for the 280 other days and give loans for mining, road constructions, malls, etc. 99% of the time spent on business as usual isn't exactly being too much concerned about an existential threat... That said, 3 days is better than nothing at all, and your company is likely an exception.
londons_explore 3y ago
One way to make unknown waste mixtures safe: * Burn it hot. * Take the exhaust from the burnt waste and fractionally distill it to extract the Nitrogen, CO2, water and other safe gasses. * Take the ash and extract things that are worth money (metals), then vitrify the rest (turn it into glass) * Take everything else and stick it back into the input, letting it go round again and becoming something safe this time. 1 ton of household waste probably only makes 5kg of vitrified glass - turns out nearly everything in your house is carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. I suspect the energy in all the waste makes this process "free" from an energy standpoint. But obviously the capital cost of a plant big enough for the worlds waste is huge, and unless laws are written to ban landfills and regular incineration, it would never make financial sense.
- invernomut0 3y ago
  You're forgetting dioxins and other pollutants resulting from burning various materials, especially plastic.
  - pwarner 3y ago
    Burning above 1000°C supposedly destroys the dioxins. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dioxins-and-their-effects-on-human-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dioxins-and...
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    By having a 'loop' in the process, anything that is incompletely burned and results in dioxins (and anything with a boiling point under ~1500C, which cannot be vitrified) will end up not passing the fractional distillation stage and will be put back into the start of the process to have a 2nd go at breaking down.
- nerdponx 3y ago
  New York City had a pilot plasma gasification program in the early 2010s, but I never heard anything about it after 2015 or so and I can't find any updated information about it. I guess the project folded for one reason or another.
areed 3y ago
The recommendations at the end of the article to change individual behavior are a distraction but thankfully the author provided links to three organizations that are dedicated to real policy changes. I clicked through all and found 5gyres.org to be the most promising.
nemo 3y ago
At this point whenever I'm on a walk I clean up any plastic litter I spot and dispose of it. I live not too far from some creeks and retention ponds along a local flood plain where I know my neighborhood's storm drains are headed. Seeing so much plastic litter and other pollutants spoil a habitat that once supported a very vibrant ecosystem was sad to watch, and I'm doing whatever small things I can to help. But we need systemic change to deal with plastic pollution. (The fish died from lawn runoff causing algae blooms as well - please be aware that if you live somewhere where it rains, then over fertilizing pollutes.)
- barbazoo 3y ago
  That's why I always try to carry a bag or something to collect garbage in that I find.
born-jre 3y ago
its not my area of my expertise but i keep thinking about this problem and comes to conclusion some kind of incineration facility in each county/zone is only alternative. Off course u would not release that dirty smoke to air and capturing and filtration technology should get a lot better.
WhatsTheBigIdea 3y ago
There is clearly a problem, but the remedies proposed in this article are absurd and completely ignore the cause of the problem. Plastics are incredibly useful, fabulously performant, and astoundingly cheap. It is no wonder they are ubiquitous. If you are poor anywhere in the developed world, you are surely wearing plastic cloths & shoes, eating food packaged in plastic, and drinking water provided via plastic pipes and vessels. What's more, you likely don't have a meaningful choice in the matter. If you are not poor, this probably still holds true. It is frustrating that there is not a good and clear path forward to resolve this issue... and many other issues of the Anthropocene. We need to do better thinking about how we can help our ecosystems remain viable despite these upheavals.
jkestner 3y ago
It’s hard to know what is practically recyclable even ignoring the variation in municipalities. A good resource for product makers from the actual recyclers that’s a little more direct: https://plasticsrecycling.org/apr-design-guide https://plasticsrecycling.org/apr-design-guide
CptFribble 3y ago
I am once again asking you to consider plasma gasification. Here is my standard comment, copied again: --- Why are we still not talking about plasma gasification? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification As far as I can tell, the only real "disadvantages" if you can call them that, are: 1. more expensive than throwing the garbage in a big pile somewhere 2. need to clean it from time to time 3. not necessarily a profitable business Other than that, it can handle just about anything that's not radioactive, can be designed to produce 0 toxic byproducts, and can run at or at least only slightly below energy neutral. Plasma gasifiers can also consume a huge amount of garbage for their size, so much so that the US Navy is starting to put them on the latest generation of aircraft carriers. Not building out more gasifiers seems to me a failure of the free market. Because it's hard to make it profitable, no one is doing it - when really we should just be building one or two near every major city and funneling all our garbage there. In theory, we could build out enough to start working through all the landfills too. --- ADDENDUM: * This is NOT the same as incineration. Plasma gasification does not produce toxic gases vented to atmo, etc. The main byproducts are "syngas", which is mainly H2 and CO and can be reused to power the facility, and slag.
- carapace 3y ago
  Molten salt oxidation is perhaps preferable: it's an exothermic reaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation
- cashsterling 3y ago
  Burning plastic (and all kinds of other trash) for energy, if done well, IS economical/profitable and not much more 'dirty' than burning natural gas. I think a lot of refuse to energy plants in the US have been shutdown by environmental interest groups and negative sentiment from local residents, etc. We should first use a lot less plastic in disposable things... but if we can't do that we, should burn it along with a lot of other trash.
  - carapace 3y ago
    That just puts the carbon into the air, where we do not want it. It would be better to bury it than burn it.
kennywinker 3y ago
Up to 30% of ocean microplastics appear to be coming from car tires. Yes, buy less shit. But also, shift your life away from cars towards public transit systems, and active transport (bicycle, walk, etc) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39042655 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39042655
cushpush 3y ago
Is there a way for everyday citizens to walk around and collect ambient plastics?
hulitu 3y ago
Long rant about "plastics bad" and then: > Avoid bringing in all new plastics and single-use plastics into your home and recycle what you have. He either lives in a buble or didn't do any research. There is no recycling of plastic. Almost everything is single-use plastic: clothes, bottles, shopping bags. A lot of things are made from plastic which cannot be recycled: TVs, phones, furniture, shoes, clothes, housing insulation, a big part of cars, buses, trains.

74 points by dnetesn 3y ago

Seems like this is missing "support regulation to make landfills secure against leaks." We shouldn't just accept that they're going to leak.

tokai 3y ago
Just stop using landfills all together. Burn it, scrub the exhaust, and enjoy the cheap electricity.
542458 3y ago
I don’t think it’s highly realistic to leakproof something as large as a landfill - we can’t even consistently leakproof house foundations, and those are smaller, easier to inspect, and higher budget. And that’s for new landfills, I don’t think there’s any way to retrofit every existing landfill to prevent leaks.
londons_explore 3y ago
Landfills will always leak. Sure, we can try to line them with multiple plastic barriers, but the reality is that these barriers will get holes and tears in them and let contaminated water out. Sure, we can detect that and dig out the whole landfill into a new landfill whenever the liner fails, but at some point into the future there will be no money to do that. Instead, we should aim to not put contaminated stuff into the landfill in the first place. Which in turn means don't sell toxic stuff to consumers.
- skybrian 3y ago
  This seems rather defeatist. We are trying to do near-impossible things like getting rid of carbon emissions everywhere and we can't fix landfills?

kyleyeats 3y ago

How does recycling reduce plastic pollution? It's degrading and destroying the same plastic over and over. You're taking the high-quality plastic that would have sat in a landfill, making it into a lower-quality plastic and then sending it back out in the world. And then eventually... yep, the landfill, in the best-case scenario. Recycling just increases the chance that it's going to end up as low-quality plastic polluting the environment.

tmikaeld 3y ago
Plastic eating bacterium seems to be the only proper way of disposal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis
aarond0623 3y ago
If you reuse the same plastic multiple times, doesn't that reduce the total amount of plastic needed to produce the same number of goods, thus reducing plastic pollution?
- tmikaeld 3y ago
  Recycling is complicated, because only certain polymers can be recycled, then it has to be separated from contaminants, transported, sorted and re-shipped to re-use facilities (often in China). A lot of improvements are needed for this to be both lucrative and effective [0]. Then there's the microplastics that still spread across the globe. [0] https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/gc/d2gc02162e https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2022/gc/d2gc0...
mrweasel 3y ago
> How does recycling reduce plastic pollution? So the solution is to make more plastic? If we're not reducing the amount of plastic we're using, we can at least make less, by reusing the plastic we've already created. Take plastic conduits, they are mostly made from recycled windows, but still last a heck of a long time, that is going to be the better option than making all new plastic for them. We also reuse plastic bottles all the time, 87% of soft drink bottles are reused and made into new bottles (in Denmark), so we'd need to create a lot more plastic overall to compensate if they where not reused. On a lower level, having to recycle your plastic at home makes you painfully aware how much plastic you drag into your home. Ideally that would mean that you "buy" more, but mostly you don't have any control over that. Everything is packaged in way more layers than strictly needed. The amount of plastic we have to sort on a daily basis is insane. It has made me look for products that are packaged in less plastic, but it's an uphill battle.

david_draco 3y ago

Not disagreeing that plastic is a concern, but calling it one of the biggest threats? I recall it is negligible compared to climate change and expanding land use, which can be addressed by reducing meat, flying, consumption, and increasing regulation, carbon tax, and all the other good things that various NGOs have advocated for years.

Erratic6576 3y ago
So many urgent threats. It’s mostly checkmate
- bamboozled 3y ago
  It's been almost checkmate from the beginning.
CWIZO 3y ago
The good thing about reducing/ eliminating meat consumption is that it would actually help with plastic as well. Mainly because the fishing industry is responsible for over 50% of the plastic pollution in the oceans. And because you reduce the packaging waste of all that meat being sold.
- sgu999 3y ago
  > Mainly because the fishing industry is responsible for over 50% of the plastic pollution in the oceans. !!! Because of the nets?
  - CWIZO 3y ago
    Yes and all the other discarded equipment. It's a massive problem.
born-jre 3y ago
i would certainly rant just below climate change so think it deserves one of the biggest title for sure.

cptaj 3y ago

Its hard to explain how bad this problem is getting to people that don't live near the sea. If you're downcurrent anywhere in the world, your beaches are basically full of trash that gets replenished on a daily basis It really pisses me off

ks2048 3y ago
I just had my most glaring experience of this ever on a beach that is basically on the open sea - Coco beach in Dar Es Salaam on the Indian Ocean. Incredibly beautiful beach and the warmest ocean water I can remember. And just walking through a foot of water you are basically continually hit with plastic waste. So, sad.
- shauryamanu 3y ago
  With our current attitude that day's not far away when all our oceans will be dead, just like we killed our rivers, at least in my own country India. At least one country needs to put the biggest offender liable. Like having Plastic tax just like Carbon tax.

rastignack 3y ago

I don’t know why all the attention is on climate change and not on the consequences of microplastics everywhere. Such an important issue, yet no world summit, no word about the topic when we talk about environmental issues. Change is due !

dao- 3y ago
> I don’t know why all the attention is on climate change Because it's the largest existential threat human civilization has ever faced. But perhaps two things can be bad at the same time, and we should stop flooding earth with microplastics without taking away any attention from climate change. There's plenty of attention to go around. It's not like humanity is wholly committed to fighting climate change. Quite the contrary.
- rastignack 3y ago
  I think there is more than enough attention on climate change (it’s constant hammering at this point) and that it is predatory to awareness about other environmental risks.
  - dao- 3y ago
    More than enough by what measure? That constant hammering hasn't yet translated to political will to actually turn the ship around.
    - rastignack 3y ago
      Well for example I spend 3 full days a year of training at my company being lectured about climate change. There are yearly events and summits with huge press coverage. I don’t know if my company can afford to spend 3 more days per employee talking about microplastics and chemicals pollution.
      - sgu999 3y ago
        > Well for example I spend 3 full days a year of training at my company being lectured about climate change. I can perfectly imagine employees of a bank having to do that for the SRI rating. Then head back to their cubicle for the 280 other days and give loans for mining, road constructions, malls, etc. 99% of the time spent on business as usual isn't exactly being too much concerned about an existential threat... That said, 3 days is better than nothing at all, and your company is likely an exception.

londons_explore 3y ago

One way to make unknown waste mixtures safe: * Burn it hot. * Take the exhaust from the burnt waste and fractionally distill it to extract the Nitrogen, CO2, water and other safe gasses. * Take the ash and extract things that are worth money (metals), then vitrify the rest (turn it into glass) * Take everything else and stick it back into the input, letting it go round again and becoming something safe this time. 1 ton of household waste probably only makes 5kg of vitrified glass - turns out nearly everything in your house is carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. I suspect the energy in all the waste makes this process "free" from an energy standpoint. But obviously the capital cost of a plant big enough for the worlds waste is huge, and unless laws are written to ban landfills and regular incineration, it would never make financial sense.

invernomut0 3y ago
You're forgetting dioxins and other pollutants resulting from burning various materials, especially plastic.
- pwarner 3y ago
  Burning above 1000°C supposedly destroys the dioxins. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dioxins-and-their-effects-on-human-health https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/dioxins-and...
- londons_explore 3y ago
  By having a 'loop' in the process, anything that is incompletely burned and results in dioxins (and anything with a boiling point under ~1500C, which cannot be vitrified) will end up not passing the fractional distillation stage and will be put back into the start of the process to have a 2nd go at breaking down.
nerdponx 3y ago
New York City had a pilot plasma gasification program in the early 2010s, but I never heard anything about it after 2015 or so and I can't find any updated information about it. I guess the project folded for one reason or another.

areed 3y ago

The recommendations at the end of the article to change individual behavior are a distraction but thankfully the author provided links to three organizations that are dedicated to real policy changes. I clicked through all and found 5gyres.org to be the most promising.

nemo 3y ago

At this point whenever I'm on a walk I clean up any plastic litter I spot and dispose of it. I live not too far from some creeks and retention ponds along a local flood plain where I know my neighborhood's storm drains are headed. Seeing so much plastic litter and other pollutants spoil a habitat that once supported a very vibrant ecosystem was sad to watch, and I'm doing whatever small things I can to help. But we need systemic change to deal with plastic pollution. (The fish died from lawn runoff causing algae blooms as well - please be aware that if you live somewhere where it rains, then over fertilizing pollutes.)

barbazoo 3y ago
That's why I always try to carry a bag or something to collect garbage in that I find.

born-jre 3y ago

its not my area of my expertise but i keep thinking about this problem and comes to conclusion some kind of incineration facility in each county/zone is only alternative. Off course u would not release that dirty smoke to air and capturing and filtration technology should get a lot better.

WhatsTheBigIdea 3y ago

There is clearly a problem, but the remedies proposed in this article are absurd and completely ignore the cause of the problem. Plastics are incredibly useful, fabulously performant, and astoundingly cheap. It is no wonder they are ubiquitous. If you are poor anywhere in the developed world, you are surely wearing plastic cloths & shoes, eating food packaged in plastic, and drinking water provided via plastic pipes and vessels. What's more, you likely don't have a meaningful choice in the matter. If you are not poor, this probably still holds true. It is frustrating that there is not a good and clear path forward to resolve this issue... and many other issues of the Anthropocene. We need to do better thinking about how we can help our ecosystems remain viable despite these upheavals.

jkestner 3y ago

It’s hard to know what is practically recyclable even ignoring the variation in municipalities. A good resource for product makers from the actual recyclers that’s a little more direct: https://plasticsrecycling.org/apr-design-guide https://plasticsrecycling.org/apr-design-guide

CptFribble 3y ago

I am once again asking you to consider plasma gasification. Here is my standard comment, copied again: --- Why are we still not talking about plasma gasification? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification As far as I can tell, the only real "disadvantages" if you can call them that, are: 1. more expensive than throwing the garbage in a big pile somewhere 2. need to clean it from time to time 3. not necessarily a profitable business Other than that, it can handle just about anything that's not radioactive, can be designed to produce 0 toxic byproducts, and can run at or at least only slightly below energy neutral. Plasma gasifiers can also consume a huge amount of garbage for their size, so much so that the US Navy is starting to put them on the latest generation of aircraft carriers. Not building out more gasifiers seems to me a failure of the free market. Because it's hard to make it profitable, no one is doing it - when really we should just be building one or two near every major city and funneling all our garbage there. In theory, we could build out enough to start working through all the landfills too. --- ADDENDUM: * This is NOT the same as incineration. Plasma gasification does not produce toxic gases vented to atmo, etc. The main byproducts are "syngas", which is mainly H2 and CO and can be reused to power the facility, and slag.

carapace 3y ago
Molten salt oxidation is perhaps preferable: it's an exothermic reaction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation
cashsterling 3y ago
Burning plastic (and all kinds of other trash) for energy, if done well, IS economical/profitable and not much more 'dirty' than burning natural gas. I think a lot of refuse to energy plants in the US have been shutdown by environmental interest groups and negative sentiment from local residents, etc. We should first use a lot less plastic in disposable things... but if we can't do that we, should burn it along with a lot of other trash.
- carapace 3y ago
  That just puts the carbon into the air, where we do not want it. It would be better to bury it than burn it.

kennywinker 3y ago

Up to 30% of ocean microplastics appear to be coming from car tires. Yes, buy less shit. But also, shift your life away from cars towards public transit systems, and active transport (bicycle, walk, etc) https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39042655 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-39042655

cushpush 3y ago

Is there a way for everyday citizens to walk around and collect ambient plastics?

hulitu 3y ago

Long rant about "plastics bad" and then: > Avoid bringing in all new plastics and single-use plastics into your home and recycle what you have. He either lives in a buble or didn't do any research. There is no recycling of plastic. Almost everything is single-use plastic: clothes, bottles, shopping bags. A lot of things are made from plastic which cannot be recycled: TVs, phones, furniture, shoes, clothes, housing insulation, a big part of cars, buses, trains.