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Yea, plastic in a landfill is basically the perfect form for 'carbon capture'. For those that think that carbon needs capture. But acting like plastic isn't 10

Yea, plastic in a landfill is basically the perfect form for 'carbon capture'. For those that think that carbon needs capture. But acting like plastic isn't 100% bad goes against the narrative, and happens to align with those who don't think carbon needs capture. Just throw it away.

tpm 2y ago
The BPA and other additives will leak into water. PVC will break into VC and that will leak and cause cancer. And so on. Plastic is bad, especially single-use plastic.
- beerandt 2y ago
  BPA might have its negatives, but it at least locked itself and all the other chemicals into the product. Making it into a boogeyman has ironically caused the remaining chemicals to be more leechable, as the substituted hardeners don't work as well, yet likely have similar negatives as the BPA replaced. It's the unlearned lessons from asbestos all over again.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    I wonder if the your argument holds true for organic food as well. The farmers have to fight off the same pests and weeds, just with “natural” compounds instead of strong, tailor-made artificial ones. But surely the natural spray and the artificial spray has to have either the same active ingredient, or ingredients that are chemically very similar? And if it doesn’t work as well, the farmer will surely end up using even more of “natural” compounds than he would’ve if he just went with RoundUp?
    - jfengel 2y ago
      The alternative to Roundup is labor. Mulch, weeding, interplanting, and others. Similar for many pesticides: instead of spraying chemicals, you use different planting techniques, including more diversity in your fields. That was the original definition of "organic" farming. It's not the food that's organic; it's the farmer. That has since become captured by agribusiness, who wrote the rules to exclude the kinds of small farms that practiced organic farming before it became a buzzword.
      - FredPret 2y ago
        I’d like my carrots to cost less than $100/lb thanks
        jfengel 2y ago
        It is more expensive, but it's twice as much, not orders of magnitude. And given that we now consume twice as many calories as we need, we can eat vastly better on the same budget without destroying the environment. It's unreasonable to expect 100% of our food supply to come that way. But we can do a lot better than we do, and actually looking at the numbers instead of guessing makes that clear.
        PaulHoule 2y ago
        It is not a simple story https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/07/09/organic-vs-conventional-farming-lower-environmental-impact/ https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/07/09/organic-vs-con... The most important advantage traditional agriculture has is that it uses less land and frees up space for nature.
        nativeit 2y ago
        It’s a good thing that’s an exaggerated and disingenuous notion, then.
    - idunnoman1222 2y ago
      A natural defoliant? Would be what, rubbing alcohol? I think they have to pull the weeds or lay a ground cover
- FredPret 2y ago
  Though you are right about the pollution, plastic isn’t all bad. It’s much more efficient than other materials in many ways. If every single-use plastic container/wrapper had to be replaced by some kind of paper or waxed paper doing the same job, we’d need dramatically more of that material than plastic (barring clever inventions). That comes with its own side-effects. More dead trees if it’s paper vs plastic, more metal mining if it’s metal vs plastic, more weight being shipped around, in many cases more energy being used to produce the alternative packaging in the first place. And all that to have packaging that’s functionally worse than plastic.
  - tpm 2y ago
    > It’s much more efficient than other materials in many ways. That does not matter if it's poisoning us. And if we end up in a situation where energy is cheap (thanks to PV or whatever), it might be much better to use less efficient less poisonous materials, like glass or ceramics (and so on).
  - d13 2y ago
    My dad grew up in a world without plastic. Packaging of food and goods was orders or magnitude less than now. Most of it is completely unnecessary.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      There's definitely more plastic than we need. I've seen individual bananas sold in styrofoam. But I think that's a tiny % of plastic waste and the vast majority comes from the production processes. Factories wrap things up heavily before sending their items along to the next step in the value chain. Farmers sometimes lay down plastic sheets on the ground. I hate it as much as anyone but removing any of it will have knock-on effects. It's better to wrap that pallet in an extra pound of plastic rather than it getting damaged and having to re-produce the whole 1000-2000lb amount of goods. It might be better to lay down the sheet and use less pesticide & water, or be able to grow crops closer to the point of use.
      - 2y ago
- XorNot 2y ago
  > PVC will break into VC No it will not, stop pushing junk science. Vinyl Chloride is a chlorinated double-bond. PVC is made by opening the double bond to form connected monomer units (i.e. polymers). PVC doesn't "degrade" back into a higher energy state compound. Even if you left it you in the sun where UV might re-double bond it, the molecule itself is incredibly reactive - it's environmental lifetime is basically zero under those conditions since it'll oxidize and break down in air in a few days at most, and photochemical reactions are amongst the slowest and most inefficient. Buried PVC doesn't even have the energy to do that.

tpm 2y ago

The BPA and other additives will leak into water. PVC will break into VC and that will leak and cause cancer. And so on. Plastic is bad, especially single-use plastic.

beerandt 2y ago
BPA might have its negatives, but it at least locked itself and all the other chemicals into the product. Making it into a boogeyman has ironically caused the remaining chemicals to be more leechable, as the substituted hardeners don't work as well, yet likely have similar negatives as the BPA replaced. It's the unlearned lessons from asbestos all over again.
- FredPret 2y ago
  I wonder if the your argument holds true for organic food as well. The farmers have to fight off the same pests and weeds, just with “natural” compounds instead of strong, tailor-made artificial ones. But surely the natural spray and the artificial spray has to have either the same active ingredient, or ingredients that are chemically very similar? And if it doesn’t work as well, the farmer will surely end up using even more of “natural” compounds than he would’ve if he just went with RoundUp?
  - jfengel 2y ago
    The alternative to Roundup is labor. Mulch, weeding, interplanting, and others. Similar for many pesticides: instead of spraying chemicals, you use different planting techniques, including more diversity in your fields. That was the original definition of "organic" farming. It's not the food that's organic; it's the farmer. That has since become captured by agribusiness, who wrote the rules to exclude the kinds of small farms that practiced organic farming before it became a buzzword.
    - FredPret 2y ago
      I’d like my carrots to cost less than $100/lb thanks
      - jfengel 2y ago
        It is more expensive, but it's twice as much, not orders of magnitude. And given that we now consume twice as many calories as we need, we can eat vastly better on the same budget without destroying the environment. It's unreasonable to expect 100% of our food supply to come that way. But we can do a lot better than we do, and actually looking at the numbers instead of guessing makes that clear.
        PaulHoule 2y ago
        It is not a simple story https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/07/09/organic-vs-conventional-farming-lower-environmental-impact/ https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/07/09/organic-vs-con... The most important advantage traditional agriculture has is that it uses less land and frees up space for nature.
      - nativeit 2y ago
        It’s a good thing that’s an exaggerated and disingenuous notion, then.
  - idunnoman1222 2y ago
    A natural defoliant? Would be what, rubbing alcohol? I think they have to pull the weeds or lay a ground cover
FredPret 2y ago
Though you are right about the pollution, plastic isn’t all bad. It’s much more efficient than other materials in many ways. If every single-use plastic container/wrapper had to be replaced by some kind of paper or waxed paper doing the same job, we’d need dramatically more of that material than plastic (barring clever inventions). That comes with its own side-effects. More dead trees if it’s paper vs plastic, more metal mining if it’s metal vs plastic, more weight being shipped around, in many cases more energy being used to produce the alternative packaging in the first place. And all that to have packaging that’s functionally worse than plastic.
- tpm 2y ago
  > It’s much more efficient than other materials in many ways. That does not matter if it's poisoning us. And if we end up in a situation where energy is cheap (thanks to PV or whatever), it might be much better to use less efficient less poisonous materials, like glass or ceramics (and so on).
- d13 2y ago
  My dad grew up in a world without plastic. Packaging of food and goods was orders or magnitude less than now. Most of it is completely unnecessary.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    There's definitely more plastic than we need. I've seen individual bananas sold in styrofoam. But I think that's a tiny % of plastic waste and the vast majority comes from the production processes. Factories wrap things up heavily before sending their items along to the next step in the value chain. Farmers sometimes lay down plastic sheets on the ground. I hate it as much as anyone but removing any of it will have knock-on effects. It's better to wrap that pallet in an extra pound of plastic rather than it getting damaged and having to re-produce the whole 1000-2000lb amount of goods. It might be better to lay down the sheet and use less pesticide & water, or be able to grow crops closer to the point of use.
    - 2y ago
XorNot 2y ago
> PVC will break into VC No it will not, stop pushing junk science. Vinyl Chloride is a chlorinated double-bond. PVC is made by opening the double bond to form connected monomer units (i.e. polymers). PVC doesn't "degrade" back into a higher energy state compound. Even if you left it you in the sun where UV might re-double bond it, the molecule itself is incredibly reactive - it's environmental lifetime is basically zero under those conditions since it'll oxidize and break down in air in a few days at most, and photochemical reactions are amongst the slowest and most inefficient. Buried PVC doesn't even have the energy to do that.