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Good stuff, but it's still that (Western?) way of thinking about treating the symptom.
by euroclydon 17y ago
Good stuff, but it's still that (Western?) way of thinking about treating the symptom.
- jsonscripter 17y agoI love plastic :( I'd vastly prefer to recycle or decompose it than to never use it again.
- onreact-com 17y agoRemember plastic is made of oil (petroleum) so people actually die for plastic.
- TrevorJ 17y agoHistorically people die over anything desirable. Food, land, water, gold. There's no solution other than fixing human nature itself.
- onreact-com 17y agoWhen did the US start the last war about food, land, water or gold?
- mrkurt 17y ago1) War doesn't have a monopoly on killing people. 2) We've forcefully relocated (and killed!) people for their land several times in the past few hundred years. 3) How much violence in this country is sparked over money? Michael Mann's made some pretty good movies dramatizing bank robberies that result in gunfights.
- onreact-com 17y agoSo what's your point? War over petroleum (and thus plastic) is not that bad because we kill for other reasons too? Come on!
- briancooley 17y agoMany common plastics are made from ethylene and propylene, which are byproducts of the refining process and for many years were simply burned in flares. The fact that those (formerly waste) gases are now turned into useful products is a turn for the better, I think. Eliminating plastic would have no significant impact on the exploration and production of oil. Things are not always as simple as they seem.
- onreact-com 17y agoSo why lead rising oil prices to higher costs of plastic if it's just trash or a "byproduct"? There is no future for oil based fuels and plastics if you want to keep this planet.
- ScottWhigham 17y agoI'm absolutely effing baffled at your statement so forgive me if I seem incoherent. Here's what I assume from your sentence: You think that, instead of ridding the world of billions of rather large and bulky objects that won't decompose for thousands of years, we should leave those alone and instead focus our thinking on how not to produce any more. I imagine a cartoon of a man standing on the earth with a megaphone screaming, "Everyone - listen up! This - this thing right here - it's incredibly important and I want everyone (and i mean everyone) to focus exclusively on it! World - are you listening to me? Stop trying to do other things! I don't care if thousands of you end up reproducing each others work - it's all in the name of solving this problem! I said stop trying to multitask - we've got to exclusively solve this one thing! World? Hello?"
- gamache 17y agoThe man with the megaphone would have a bright future in the Catholic Church. "Put down that box of rubbers, I have something important to say!!"
- Gormo 17y agoI don't really understand what this means. What is the symptom here, and what is it a symptom of?
- thras 17y agoThe above poster has a valid point. He thinks that rather than making millions of single-purpose plastic bags and then going through an expensive process to clean up after them, we should instead not produce the plastic bags in the first place. For example, we could just keep canvas bags in our cars. That the parent has been moderated down so much is troubling.
- edw519 17y ago"That the parent has been moderated down so much is troubling." It's only troubling until you understand why. No one would reasonably argue against the idea of producing something other than plastic in the first place. The downmodding was most likely in response to the word "Western". Bash the U.S. (or anyone else, for that matter) and get downmodded. What's so troubling about that? You can make a logical point on hn without insulting anyone else. The downmodding here is a clue to do just that.
- euroclydon 17y agoWell, I questioned whether it's a Western phenomenon. I'm not trying to bash the U.S. I like being a citizen. I was actually trying to make an analogy to diet, health and medicine, where Western lifestyles have traditionally been found to be inferior to Eastern ones, because we, on average, eat crappy food, get diseases, then spend a bunch of money trying to fix the symptoms of those diseases.
- swombat 17y agoIt's hardly a western problem. I've been to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and they have just as many plastic bags as we ("The West") do, if not more. And they're just as concerned about them as we are.
- prewett 17y agoI just got back from HK, and while I was there I saw a bunch of advertisements warning that many stores will start charging HK$0.50 for plastic bags if you don't bring your own bag. Seems like a good move.