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>You've heard about the 'plastic continent' circling in the ocean, made of a soup of plastic waste that's never going to go away? Do we count those thousands of
by mason240 11y ago
>You've heard about the 'plastic continent' circling in the ocean, made of a soup of plastic waste that's never going to go away? Do we count those thousands of square miles in the 'landfill equation'?
Yes, we have all heard of the extreme hyperbole surrounding it, such as calling it a "continent."
>The idea that we cut thousands of acres of wood a year to make paper,
Paper has been grown a crop using fast growing, poplar-like trees for decades now. In fact, we have tens of thousands of acres of paper trees that will never be harvested because email caused the demand for paper to plummet.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoHyperbole notwithstanding, its an enormous volume of ecology impacted by garbage. The words exaggerate the mass of the thing (its like 1 piece of garbage per cubic foot of water) but not the extent of it. The tree thing was about the space it takes to dispose of it all, not the cutting of the trees. That a few square miles of landfill will be enough for 1000 years for everybody is a laughable notion.
- vectorjohn 11y agoPaper decomposes so fast it's ridiculous to be concerned with the space it takes up in a landfill. There is nothing to worry about with paper. Also, "a few square miles of landfill"? Maybe you're talking about a different country, but the US has such an enormous amount of land with low population density, we could spend hundreds of square miles on landfill, and you know what? Landfills aren't permanent! They turn into just land. Land you could use for: a landfill. It doesn't take an ever increasing amount of landfill to deal with garbage.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoPaper doesn't decompose at all once its covered with soil. Landfills last for centuries. Archaeologists love digging them up. Read up on it.
- zo1 11y ago>"Yes, we have all heard of the extreme hyperbole surrounding it, such as calling it a "continent."" And don't forget to mention the stock-image that most fear-mongering articles regarding this topic use. It's usually an entire image filled with plastic trash that's floating above murky-dark water. It grabs peoples' attention, but misrepresents the extent of the problem by evoking forced emotion on individuals who think that there is quite literally "a floating island/continent of plastic trash in the ocean somewhere". Sadly, a lot of environmental issues are dealt with like this, with fear mongering rather than objective and calm discussions.