Every time I hear someone complain about a single tiny piece of plastic on the ground or someone uses slightly more than needed cling wrap, all I can think of is the couple of warehouses I used to work in a couple jobs ago.
Everything comes on pallets wrapped in about a dozen layers of cling wrap. 8-10ft tall pallets.
Every box gets opened, the items pulled out of a large plastic bag, each item wrapped in its own plastic bag.
Those items get put in other boxes, stacked on a different pallet, and wrapped in another dozen layers of plastic wrap.
The pallets get moved to a temporary spot for a few hours, then someone comes up and curs all the wrap off. Moves the boxes onto 4 other pallets, and each of those goes to a separate forklift driver who puts them on shelves.
When the item leaves, it's placed in plastic bags, then a box, then goes on a pallet that gers wrapped in a dozen layers of plastic wrap. Onto the truck for shipping elsewhere.
They have a truck that comes twice a day to replace a shipping container filled with plastic.
So much plastic, every day, all day, they only close for Christmas and 4th of July.
Am I still going to use anything but plastic wherever possible? Sure. Am I still going to pick up that piece of plastic and put it in the recycling bin? Absolutely.
Companies suck and will blame you for their shitty treatment just like every abuser does.
You're exactly correct. I used to work in a manufacturing environment, and the amount of single-use plastic our production team used on a daily basis was staggering. I would estimate that company created as much plastic waste in one day as my household did in three months.
Consumer recycling or boycotts is only a drop in the bucket. Industry will have to shift away from single-use plastic if we're going to have any chance of saving ourselves from a future filled with generations worth of garbage.
Keep in mind, plastic is everywhere partly because it's a petroleum byproduct.
Yes, you can recycle plastic. Yes, its complex due to different types and grades of it. The only responsibility of the consumer is to put it into the right bin.
Yes, the corporations creating plastic products should do more. It doesn't have to be financially feasible to recycle it, It needs to be ecologically feasible and companies producing plastic products should pay the recycling toll.
We can also just burn it for energy like we do with tires... I recycle it like a good little cog in the machine because even if 5% of it gets back into product and not into my penis, is a win.
We need to make it financially feasible to properly recycle plastics by making it so damn expensive for companies to be wasteful with plastics. Among many other things, of course.
I doubt it will happen in our lifetimes, though.
The true long term solution is eliminating plastic. Back in the iron age there were glass bottles used to distribute milk and they were returned to be used again. Of course this system is more complicated and expensive than trucking in oil and turning it into single use containers so it'll never happen before the world is burned.
I need to clean it to a concerning degree as well or risk being fined.
Also, where do those burned plastic fumes go after being burned also matter and I'm not confident they're not just being sent straight back to my lungs.
I don't have a problem with cleaning tbh. It's not required here but I just feel icky if I put a yogurt stained container into the bin.
With burning, it must be done at very high temperatures to ensure the resulting gasses get burned as well. Here I generally ment collect plastic and send it to a facility which has furnaces which can accommodate this kind of waste (like rubber tires).
Me rinsing the yogurt container before putting it in the recycling bin vs reading that a Belgian airline had 3000 empty flights just to keep airport slots
One of the many other problems with recycling besides this tidbit, is the fact that most people don't even follow the first two instructions before recycling. Nobody reuses anything and nobody has reduced their consumption.
I'm always reminded of the iCarly episode about recycling.
There's a bulk food store near me and it allows BYO containers (or you can use one of their compostable bags). It's great! A little bit more work (you need to tare your/container write down the empty weight), but you get your goods in the container of your choice.
I used to recycle, then I moved out on my own and found out I have to pay extra for it.
Should be paid for by these corporations, imo.
Recycling is chemically possible at very high temperatures and pressures; it's just energy intensive and wasn't financially feasible until just about now, when solar energy can offer cheap energy.
We'll see how this will develop in the future. For the point of oil consumption (and therefore CO2 emission), plastics is only like 3% of oil consumption anyways (other 97% is fuel for vehicles). For the point of pollution, you don't need recycling, just collecting and combusting at high temperatures (to fully oxydize it and not leave any toxic fumes.
We recently built a plastic recycling facility here in sweden which recycles.. 12 types of plastic i think? several of which were basically not possible before.
so yeah it's definitely possible to recycle plastics, countries have just been refusing to actually take measures to make it happen.
just collecting and combusting at high temperatures
You mean GHG pollution.
what's the fix?
Get rid of them. I was very young but existed in the 70's and the grocery store did not have all the plastics and there was plenty of convenience in foods. Its amazing what glass, paper, and aluminum can do. Glass was not even recycled usually. Had a deposit added to the cost and got it back when you returned it to the store where the person supplying the item took them back and they were washed and reused. It was why bottle caps were so prevalent.
glass was not even recycled usually
Yeah, we would reuse it (as the order implies in reduce, reuse, recycle). Recycling glass takes wayyyyyyy more energy than cleaning it. But the glass makers benefit more from access to cheap broken glass, so we get them lobbying so that glass recycling drop-off/containers almost force you to shatter every bottle you put into them...
Everything is a compromise. We could bring back paper in a larger scale, but then more land would have to be dedicated to working forests which are sustainable but aren't ecologically friendly. We could bring back glass in a larger scale, but that would make shipments much heavier thus increasing the emissions required to ship it.
Cultural problems require cultural solutions.
Significant reduction in single use plastics, banning plastic use in certain products (even non-single-use), and a drastic increase in accountability for producers and consumers.
You don't need to ban plastics, you just regulate the people making things to have to ethically dispose of the waste generated by their products. They will pretty rapidly switch to something they can actually dispose of. The manufacturer needs to be responsible for the full life cycle of their products.
Its simple. Make the plastics manufacturers pay for 100% of gathering, sorting and recycling of the hazardous waste they priduce, including plastics. That would make plastic containers expensive and we would come up with alternatives.
Plastic can be recycled. Adding high quality synthetic oil into poor quality plastic can completely restore it's potential for use. HOWEVER! The main and mind consuming problem with plastic: plants can't grow in microplatics. Test it out, grind up plastic, put it in a bowl, and plant a seed in it, use growth hormones, use plant food, use whatever you like. The plant will sprout and die shortly after. It will never flower. Meaning once the Earths soil becomes statistically enough microplastic particles, crops won't grow, any new plants in nature will never reach maturity. Complete decaying death of the natural world because a purified compound that is incompatible with life, has been ground up and spread all over the globe. That's the fear of microplastics. That and the long term impact on people that get exposed to high enough concentrations that plants can't grow... Likely dehydrate to death as the body won't be able to absorb micro plastic laden water. You can also test that at home, but I do not recommend drinking micro plastic heavy water to see what it might be like for your grand kids.
Got a source for that?
Because you can grow plants just fine in hydroponics. Plastic trays. Plastic tubing. Nutrient mixture. Plastic everywhere.
I think plants would grow just fine in plastic given the correct nutrients.
Life, uh, finds a way.
But plants can grow in plastic containers in just water
I wonder if plants will evolve to deal with the increased microplastics or if there'd be a way to filter it out of soil. Life is always adapting. The most obvious solution is to quit manufacturing plastic but that's looking increasingly unlikely.
Or we could just manufacture different plastics that degrade.
This is why I need to remember the based takes I had when I was young.
I always thought it was silly that we were told to recycle because, who could do anything with an old half-melted plastic bottle of coke? But I assumed the people who owned the companies knew something I didn't.
I still recycle because it's just the right thing to do, but... I wonder what other lies I accidentally called.
I wonder what other lies I accidentally called.
Start looking into the meat and dairy industries.
Did you know cholesterol is found almost exclusively in animal products?
Did you know cows have to be pregnant to produce milk, so dairy cows are artificially inseminated throughout most of their lives?
I'm sure you called many...
alright, ive been hearing about that. tell me something:
i grew up hearing the "save water!!11!!!!" bullshit was, well.. bullshit.
is the "recycle" thing also bullshit? how so?
"is the "recycle" thing also bullshit? how so?"
The only honest answer to this is "it's complicated". If I had to give an oversimplified binary answer, I'd say yes, it is a bit bullshit.
To attempt to summarise part of why:
- There are so many different kinds of plastics that actually making recycling supply chains work is difficult
- At the household waste processing level, I've seen a few investigations that show plastic that could be recycled being sent to landfill, or incineration. This is in part because of inconsistent practices by households sorting their trash, meaning the waste processing plant has to do a heckton of work to ensure that everything is indeed recyclable. This may vary depending on one's local authority
- Plastic recycling is far more economical at the commercial/industrial level, especially because there's less work/error in the processing side of it.
- I think it depends on the particular plastic, but I think that plastic can generally only be recycled once, and recycled plastic is often lower quality than "virgin" plastic. This doesn't mean we shouldn't recycle plastic, but that we should be aware that it has its limits.
- Glass and aluminium have less of these issues than plastic, but it's still more complex than most realise. Logistics of processing recycling is hard and often expensive.
Along those lines, I think the main point I want to highlight is that the phrase that was often pushed is "reduce, re-use, recycle". I think that far too much emphasis has been put on recycling in recent years, especially given the complexities and caveats with recycling that I outlined above. "Reduce, re-use, recycle" is explicitly anti-consumerist, which is why I think the rhetoric has morphed to emphasise the recycling aspect, despite recycling ideally being the last item in that list. Reduce how much stuff you're using by being mindful in your purchases, especially with plastics and the like; then consider how you could re-use stuff that you already have; only then should recycling be entering the picture.
My opinion is that changes like this are less about reducing the waste products, but more about how this kind of mindful anti-consumerism shapes us; modern society has made consumers of us all, and we desperately need to resist that as much as possible. It's hard to do because corporations have become very skilled at co-opting eco-conscious rhetoric and "green-washing" consumerism: they placate us by advertising that the plastic products they're selling us are made with 10% recycled plastic, as if that makes much difference to the fact the product will probably end up in landfill
People just like to look a things in a binary way and to look at excuses not do annoying things.
Só since recicling doesn't 100% solve the plastic problem obviously we should stop even trying to do the thing.
And also throw in reduce and reuse in the bucket of things not to do because why try everything at all if we can just point a finger at someone and keep not doing anything besides complain.
I don't think plastic waste is specific to capitalism.
It would be taxed for the irreparable harm on the environment and required to compensate fully all damage to nature if it were not for lobbying, a demonic ritual at the center of capitalism. Almost no other nation allow open bribery and lawmaking to corporations in exchange for money. It's counter productive and immoral
No, but the ultra wealthy having the wealthy necessary to bribe politicians, buy all our media, and push endless disinformation with zero accountability are all a direct result of capitalism.
Publically owner companies, like the USPS, are extremely transparent with how they spend money and they are held to far higher ethical standards than private companies are.
