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Yes! As an agriculturist I've been TRYING TO sound the alarm that every single food supply chain is contaminated with plastics. EVERY SINGLE soil sample we've

Yes! As an agriculturist I've been TRYING TO sound the alarm that every single food supply chain is contaminated with plastics. EVERY SINGLE soil sample we've been testing has some amount of plastics. Farmers are feeding plastic to our pigs, then spreading the waste as fertilizer. Imagine our farm fields being covered with a thin layer of partially digested micro plastics, neurotoxins and Roundup-like herbicides. There is no longer any industrial food stream not heavily contaminated with plastics, the weird thing is no one seems to care at all!

graemep 1y ago
Learned helplessness. What can we actually do about it?
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- vladms 1y ago
  Talk about it (worked for the ozone layer and some pesticides), use less (not that hard), support any alternative. And I think this works for any topic. The helplessness is a feeling, hard to assess the impact of individual actions, so why bother? You do what you can/think of and continue living - with a critical mass things will move in the right direction.
  - graemep 1y ago
    > Talk about it (worked for the ozone layer and some pesticides) Partly, if not largely, because we were lucky enough to have an influential politician who had been a chemist: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22069768 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22069768 It was also a much simpler and cheaper to fix issue than micro-plastics because it involved replacing a few substances, used for particular things, that had alternatives.
- hnthrow90348765 1y ago
  Wait for the science to deal with it, or become a scientist yourself. With how ubiquitous it is, it's going to be hard to filter it out of the entire planet, so chances are you'd want to find something to deal with it in humans. Plus any planet-wide solution risks having its own side effects which may be worse.
  - worldsayshi 1y ago
    Science doesn't "deal with it". Science just gives us the facts. Politics and economics has to deal with those facts. And politics/economics today is inadequate for dealing with our most complex problems. Leading to either learned helplessness or populism. I guess we need to upgrade politics somehow.
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  Vote for political parties that have it in their party program. Prefer buying products without plastic packaging, this includes bottled or canned products; find markets if you can't find it in your local grocery store. Donate or join up with anti-plastic activist organizations.
  - Forbo 1y ago
    Direct action against manufacturers. You don't have to be a wizard to cast fireball.
- JTbane 1y ago
  IMO a start would be to require that plastic-producing companies accept all their used products back at end-of-life and incinerate them.
floundy 1y ago
>partially digested micro plastics I'd imagine they come out in essentially the same condition they go in. :)
roxolotl 1y ago
I’d be surprised if there weren’t microplastics in the veggies I’m growing in my organic backyard garden. They are in the water and since uptake by plants has been shown[0] I’d assume they are basically unavoidably at this point. Of course limiting consumption is a goal so avoiding the industrial food system and eating mostly things at the bottom of the food chain are good ways to do that. 0: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10966681/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10966681/
dns_snek 1y ago
There's no escaping it. Every bag of store-bought soil I've used as a hobbyist over the past couple of years contained visible plastic scraps and who knows how many microplastics.
infecto 1y ago
Not to mention the use of plastic sheets to cover rows.
nemo44x 1y ago
Well, people have never lived longer and basically starvation and even hunger for many people has been eliminated. People are far more likely to get sick from eating too much and acquiring a disease than they are from any of the things you’ve mentioned. Everything is a tradeoff I guess. The question is if this is a good one and if so how can we make it a better one. Alarmism is going to fall on deaf ears when the reality isn’t as bleak.
- nativeit 1y ago
  …and these things are the direct result of plastics?
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Almost 10% of the population don’t have enough food even though we produce more than enough for everyone. https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/the-hunger-crisis/world-hunger-facts/ https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/the-hunger-crisis/world-... It’s not even that we’re destroying the planet and our health so that everyone has enough.
  - wil421 1y ago
    There’s no way you can send rotting food waste to the 10% without food.
    - barbazoo 1y ago
      Parent claimed > basically starvation and even hunger for many people has been eliminated That's false unless by "basically" they mean "everyone but 750 million people.
  - nemo44x 1y ago
    They aren’t starving by and large which was my main claim. Just compare today to 30 years ago to 60 to 120. Massive improvements in all relevant metrics. We’re doing the right things is the only way to interpret the data. Doesn’t mean perfect but certainly fertilizers and plastics and petro-chemicals have been a massive net positive.
swayvil 1y ago
[flagged]

graemep 1y ago

Learned helplessness. What can we actually do about it?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
vladms 1y ago
Talk about it (worked for the ozone layer and some pesticides), use less (not that hard), support any alternative. And I think this works for any topic. The helplessness is a feeling, hard to assess the impact of individual actions, so why bother? You do what you can/think of and continue living - with a critical mass things will move in the right direction.
- graemep 1y ago
  > Talk about it (worked for the ozone layer and some pesticides) Partly, if not largely, because we were lucky enough to have an influential politician who had been a chemist: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22069768 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22069768 It was also a much simpler and cheaper to fix issue than micro-plastics because it involved replacing a few substances, used for particular things, that had alternatives.
hnthrow90348765 1y ago
Wait for the science to deal with it, or become a scientist yourself. With how ubiquitous it is, it's going to be hard to filter it out of the entire planet, so chances are you'd want to find something to deal with it in humans. Plus any planet-wide solution risks having its own side effects which may be worse.
- worldsayshi 1y ago
  Science doesn't "deal with it". Science just gives us the facts. Politics and economics has to deal with those facts. And politics/economics today is inadequate for dealing with our most complex problems. Leading to either learned helplessness or populism. I guess we need to upgrade politics somehow.
Cthulhu_ 1y ago
Vote for political parties that have it in their party program. Prefer buying products without plastic packaging, this includes bottled or canned products; find markets if you can't find it in your local grocery store. Donate or join up with anti-plastic activist organizations.
- Forbo 1y ago
  Direct action against manufacturers. You don't have to be a wizard to cast fireball.
JTbane 1y ago
IMO a start would be to require that plastic-producing companies accept all their used products back at end-of-life and incinerate them.

floundy 1y ago

>partially digested micro plastics I'd imagine they come out in essentially the same condition they go in. :)

roxolotl 1y ago

I’d be surprised if there weren’t microplastics in the veggies I’m growing in my organic backyard garden. They are in the water and since uptake by plants has been shown[0] I’d assume they are basically unavoidably at this point. Of course limiting consumption is a goal so avoiding the industrial food system and eating mostly things at the bottom of the food chain are good ways to do that. 0: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10966681/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10966681/

dns_snek 1y ago

There's no escaping it. Every bag of store-bought soil I've used as a hobbyist over the past couple of years contained visible plastic scraps and who knows how many microplastics.

infecto 1y ago

Not to mention the use of plastic sheets to cover rows.

nemo44x 1y ago

Well, people have never lived longer and basically starvation and even hunger for many people has been eliminated. People are far more likely to get sick from eating too much and acquiring a disease than they are from any of the things you’ve mentioned. Everything is a tradeoff I guess. The question is if this is a good one and if so how can we make it a better one. Alarmism is going to fall on deaf ears when the reality isn’t as bleak.

nativeit 1y ago
…and these things are the direct result of plastics?
barbazoo 1y ago
Almost 10% of the population don’t have enough food even though we produce more than enough for everyone. https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/the-hunger-crisis/world-hunger-facts/ https://www.actionagainsthunger.org/the-hunger-crisis/world-... It’s not even that we’re destroying the planet and our health so that everyone has enough.
- wil421 1y ago
  There’s no way you can send rotting food waste to the 10% without food.
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    Parent claimed > basically starvation and even hunger for many people has been eliminated That's false unless by "basically" they mean "everyone but 750 million people.
- nemo44x 1y ago
  They aren’t starving by and large which was my main claim. Just compare today to 30 years ago to 60 to 120. Massive improvements in all relevant metrics. We’re doing the right things is the only way to interpret the data. Doesn’t mean perfect but certainly fertilizers and plastics and petro-chemicals have been a massive net positive.

swayvil 1y ago

[flagged]