> A norm around consensus-based decision-making discouraged compromise from all countries
So, a maladaptive systemic influence was noted, but they continued to focus on lower-level discussions around plastics. When will we start to see that it is the communication protocols that are driving this failure, and that good-faith bargaining is a fallacy, when there is profit to be made? I would like to know how this is being addressed, and which other proposals have been made that represent alternative routes to progress - specifically ones that do not require vested interest to forego their short-term benefits in favour of others' long-term needs.
> But only one speaker was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting
If the observers' voices are so important, why schedule them for the very end? Yet another structural failing that demonstrates that the scale of thinking and organisation being employed is insufficient for the stated task.
Treaties in general aren't the best way to deal with anything. At best they're virtue signaling, at worst they're just misleading.
The countries which benefit the most from ignoring the paper will ignore it in the shadows, then in the light, to the point they just unilaterally denounce it and do their own thing. You can't "stimulate" a country's representatives to care about something unless you give them an equally important incentive, carrot or stick. The stick doesn't work with powerful countries, and the carrot is usually too expensive.
So the methods employed to negotiate and agree on a treaty's text are even less meaningful.
It’s a bit frustrating how difficult (near impossible) it can be to not buy plastic products. I try to avoid it as much as possible but more often than not, the only option (other than not being a consumer) is to purchase a product contained in plastic.
I’ll use the simple example of dental floss. When I was younger, you could purchase dental floss in a small circular metal container. Today, almost every option of dental floss available for purchase is in an often oversized / non-recyclable plastic container with non-recyclable plastic packaging.
This actually prompted me to once again go on the hunt for that little metal container of dental floss from my youth, and I actually found an option! A US company called Poh sells dental floss in metal container. Just thought I’d share, for anyone else that is dumbfounded when they have to buy more plastic wrapped plastic products to practice good dental hygiene.
I am actually working on a plastic free toothpaste alternative, we are planning to launch in the next few months. Its not a paste but rather tooth tablets that you crush with your teeth and as they dissolve you brush your teeth as you would normally. Zero plastic, refillable aluminum container, refill packaging made out of paper, and we plan to put free floss and toothbrush for the monthly subscription. Do you want me to add you to our waitlist? Deliquify.com is our website that i hacked together very quickly, but we will rebrand soon.
Tooth tabs are already a thing. One of them (Bite) has been flacking itself pretty heavily in podcasts.
The floss and toothbrush are a nice touch, though. Perhaps a wooden toothbrush? (Bristles will still have to be plastic, I'm sure; anything else would be too expensive.)
I tried to find a coffee maker once. There's one automated product in the $1000 price range. I just use my all metal french press.
FYI: They do sell cotton dental floss in paper packaging.
Also, here's an unintuitive thing people may not be aware of. Beverages in glass bottles contain about 10x the dissolved plastics in the liquid. This is believe to be from the paint and coatings used on the cap.
It's very much a matter of of marketing. I think the explanation for why partially hydrogenated oils have been replaced is because there was a viable alternative (palm oil, mainly) and no one was devious enough or saw profit in countering the honest narrative that they were hurting everyone's health. That's unlike tobacco or oil industry games. They spend as much as needed to protect their profits, consequences be damned. More importantly, I think, plastics are actually wonderful materials and the cost of overproducing is hard to convince people of. It's like the abuse of antibiotics or CO2 pollution. Some people try being alarmist to compensate for how little most people care about these serious problems. But most people go on uninformed or just don't care, even if they are informed.
Plastic is magic. Non-reactive, sterile, cheap, strong, lightweight, an electrical isolator. Using something like metal instead of it is complete utter madness from a product design standpoint. Something like corn based PLA is probably still the more cost effective option.
Think of the package designers! Honestly, I worked on a team with "Package Designers" back in the early 2000s... they were consumer junkies, looooathed blister packs, but wouldnt hesitate to overuse plastic to promote their fancy visual designs that went into labels.
Aside from the ocean problem, nations could take action on these items themselves in many cases. Require the chemical lists, chemical phaseout, restrict production and import, etc.
Nations simply need to lead by example and reject plastic waste. That certainly won't happen until at least 2029 in USA, if ever. If USA still exists then.
This is the correct answer. It's really sad to see that the west is just a propaganda machine. We don't need the oil states to end plastic or whatnot in our countries. But we sure love to point fingers at various nations in search of a scapegoat.
It never said it will stop right away. It put a target and the process is called phasing out. The same way you migrate away from AWS. You don’t just stop your platform you move over while still using some AWS services.
Too easy. Unfortunately it takes forever to decouple, but that doesn’t mean steps aren’t being taken.
And yes, we’re all stuck under capitalism so anything that really threatens the profitability of companies will be opposed as much as possible. Combine that with geopolitical events like Americans being the dumbest people possible who elect an openly corrupt authoritarian not once but twice and everything becomes even harder.
They weren't really trying. Once you give oil-producing states a veto the result is obvious. If they were serious, EU and others would negotiate a separate treaty and then maybe get others to join.
> ... senior policy officer for the U.S. nonprofit Society of Native Nations, which has advocated that the treaty include specific language on Indigenous peoples’ rights and the use of Indigenous science.
things like polynesian ocean navigation methods,
and various land management practices to creat fire breaks, and promote different species benificial to there needs, inuit technolgy's that are very specialised for survival in the far north, and include the totaly indipendent development of the screw thread fastener, other far north technologys exist accross the polar regions.
There is a very very ling list of things that were explored and refined, and developed into the basic framework that we call science now.....ceramics are ancient, but were developed many times in far flung places through ,what apears to be an inate drive to understand and explore our world, test our ideas and impliment those in some way benificial to our survival and comfort. They has science, that existed in a pure meritocracy,certain studys into lithic ,pigment, and fibre technologys have outlasted the species that started them, but have been continious and in some sense are ongoing today more than 1 million years later....no break.
As there is now mountains of video of other species useing tools and solving problems, the question for "modern science" is to find out how much specific information is pre loaded into our DNA, along with the drive to find more information.
Which then begs the question is "science" instinctual rather than a process?
If you profit from the problem, you shall not get a vote on the solution. Especially when we are talking on a commonwealth problem.
---
A "like-minded group" of oil states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Russia) refused to accept:
- Legally binding obligations to reduce plastic production
- Mandatory phaseouts of hazardous chemicals
- Disclosure requirements
- Any controls on new plastic production
I mean does anyone expected anything like this to happen?
---
And here's the biggest joke:
Taxpayers around the world are funding all of this. Countries should represent their citizens' interests, right? So taxpayers collectively spend tens of millions to send their representatives, only to get this unexpected result. Saudi Arabia, Russia, and co. blocked the agreement.
Plastics are one of the greatest modern inventions today. It’s saved literally millions of lives and makes possible countless things in manufacturing that previously literally could not exist. It’s probably the single greatest contributor to reducing human climate change of any other invention (by drastically reducing packaging weight and thus transportation costs around fuel).
It’s not without downsides, but too often people just say “plastic sucks” (or equivalent) without thinking of what a world without plastics would look like. A de-growther’s dream perhaps, but everyone else’s nightmare.
Plastics aren't a problem if people actually put them in the bin, and they are buried / recycled / burned. The problem is littering and poor waste management.
You can solve plastic pollution in two ways. Either crackdown on inappropriate waste disposal, or eliminate the use of plastics. One is actually possible, the other isn't.
Edit: although to be fair there are a range of "harm reduction" type measures. But if you focus on those, you might solve 10% of the problem and just drain energy from actually solving waste management.
You are not wrong. We tend to zoom on on the wrong problems. Most of continental Europe produces a lot of waste. Almost none of that ends up in the oceans. The problem exists mostly in coastal areas with a lack of legislation and rules or just a generally a sloppy attitude to cleaning up. And shipping in international waters. Once you are in international waters, there are very little rules and essentially no enforcement. Most of the problems in our oceans come from very specific countries and shipping just dumping their waste directly in the oceans. The problem is not the oil industry but some countries not managing their waste effectively.
Of course the best thing is just not having one time use plastics to begin with. But we tend to over-emphasize the problem and focus on the wrong parts. People using e.g. straws in their drinks is maybe unnecessary but in tons of plastic it's a very minor part of the actual problem. Especially if most of it goes into the trash and ends up in a landfill or incinerator. E.g. People using plastic or paper straws in Berlin makes no measurable impact. It's all very symbolic. The Spree, the main river that runs through Berlin and the only way trash could physically make it to oceans, has been pretty clean since the DDR stopped dumping toxic waste into it a few decades ago. I don't think rule changes in recent years for one time use plastics made any measurable difference.
It's more of a problem on beaches and near coastal areas where some people can't be bothered to clean up after themselves. You see the same on public roads or train tracks where people just toss their crap out of the window. This is the root of the problem: too many people just do the wrong thing without even thinking about it.
IMHO littering fines and more effective enforcement would be very appropriate and should be fairly uncontroversial. If people are being jerks, just treat them as such. Shame them into doing the right thing. Inconvenience them. Etc. Littering is a choice. And it should have consequences. And when people know there might be consequences, they usually adapt. Other things that work are deposits on bottles and cans. Making people separate their trash.
And then go after the big polluters and force them via tariffs, trade restrictions, etc. to do better.
> Plastics aren't a problem if people actually put them in the bin, and they are buried / recycled / burned.
Only 9% of all plastics ever produced has been recycled. 100% is impossible due to the various composite materials that exist.
Landfills don't work in many places in the world due to lack of space and are expensive, hard to manage and come with methane emissions. Burning is obviously the same as burning fossil fuels and cannot happen if we want to keep our planet habitable. It also happens almost always in poor communities that suffer health consequences because of it.
Even if the disposal was somehow magically solved, we still have the problem with production. Plastics are a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and are expected to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030. Cracker plants for plastics production are also usually placed near communities of colour or in developing countries and create toxic conditions for life around them.
Plastics are a problem. Regardless of the disposal.
Burning is a lot better than dumping it in a river, as happens in many places in Asia. It reliably gets rid of the plastic, produces energy (ideally offsetting fossil fuels that would otherwise have been burned), and regulations for exhaust filtration keep the toxins at bay.
Not producing plastic would be preferable, and sequestering it in a landfill is the second best option, but burning it is a great alternative where the first two don't work
that is a misleading number.
In my country it is almost 100%.
Most gets recycled, the rest used as fuel in energyplants.
The real problem is the 10 countries in the world that are responsible for 90% of dumping stuff in the rivers (all in south asia and africa).
Plastic can't be recycled at all, that is a complete myth. The only thing one can practically do is down cycle it, and even that costs more than virgin plastic so is uneconomical.
Of course theoretically perfectly clean and pure singly type plastic can be recycled, but that is something very different from post-consumer waste
> How much of it is their own waste? How much was produced for Western consumers and then off-loaded onto them?
From following ocean cleanup project, for plastic ending up in the ocean it's usually own waste. The issue is countries that don't have working waste collection systems, any rainpour will often wash out the trash into river/oceans.
(littering is also an issue in countries with waste management though, but to a smaller degree, I kinda hate when people don't realize that stuff they throw in the street will often end up in rain collectors and directly flow into rivers)
Thanks for the reply! I was able to find the source you mentioned. Is there room in the conversation to talk about how much of their "own use" plastic is sold to them by Western companies who control the local markets?
You are ignoring the other problems with plastics. Microplastics in the environment, greenhouse gas emissions, and health problems from plasticizer chemicals.
I doubt either of those is really possible. The worst offenders are countries with little resources for enforcement (at least unless it threatens tourism income). It’s still needed, but at the same time we have to work towards a big reduction in our addiction to expendable, single-use plastic products. Disposal of plastic by burning cannot be a long-term solution, either, as long as almost all of it is made of fossil hydrocarbons.
Plastics were not a problem until the radical environmentalists found their new target. I remember when they were strongly against paper products and "use plastic, save trees" was a popular slogan.
we have got to stop the production of plastic
Look back to the early 19th century if you want to know what it's like to live in a "world without plastic".
We learned about microplastics and updated our worldviews? We saw the oceans become saturated with plastic waste and thought again?
People believed different things in the past because they had a different understanding of the world. Not sure why you would find that surprising or so contentious as to frame it as a purely radical action.
I think its a real hallmark of the conservative mind that it pathologizes the act of changing one's mind in the face of new evidence as some kind of fundamental weakness.
>We learned about microplastics and updated our worldviews?
What are the main sources of microplastics? These are various surface coatings, plastic interior elements, clothing.
But what are the efforts to combat plastic concentrated on? On plastic bags and bottles, plastic straws and dental floss. Seriously? This is less than a percent of plastic use, and this is plastic with a short lifespan. Use and throw away. Near-zero impact on the amount of microplastics in the environment and the environment itself.
Unlike furniture coatings or clothing that are used for decades, regularly exposed to sunlight, which literally knocks microplastic particles off the surface. But instead of fighting plastic coatings, what do the same people who are pushing the fight against plastic bags and straws tell us?
They order us to cover our houses with PLASTIC insulation! LIVE IN MULTILAYER PLASTIC THAT HAS BEEN USED FOR DECADES. But with a plastic straw for drinks. What a crazy joke aimed at clinical idiots.
The fight against plastic in its modern form is a radical totalitarian, destructive cult.
> We saw the oceans become saturated with plastic waste and thought again?
And instead of the cheapest, easiest and most effective way to deal with plastic (just throw it in the garbage pile where it will lie until the end of time with zero impact on the environment and zero microplastic emissions) the cultists make us do what?
They spend a ton of our money on their cultish plastic transformation and what not rituals that ultimately don't work and result in all that plastic ending up in the ocean.
> Look back to the early 19th century if you want to know what it's like to live in a "world without plastic".
We're talking about reducing plastic use, which is crazy high nowadays, not full scale elimination. I remember going to the store in the eighties and nineties and sure, there was plastic, but the packaging wasn't three layers of plastics just to get the thing out. Use less, recycle what you do use, prevent it from getting into the environment and crumbling into microplastic pollution. PET can be recycled once of twice, but the other stuff is hopeless. Most other materials are just more recyclable, that's just a fact. rubber, cork, ceramic, plaster, tin, aluminum, paper, cartboard, glass, wax, etc... there's plenty of viable industrial scale materials depending on the usecase.
What exactly makes an environmentalist "radical" in your mind? Is it reading studies about planetary boundaries and the effects on micro plastics pollution?
> A norm around consensus-based decision-making discouraged compromise from all countries
So, a maladaptive systemic influence was noted, but they continued to focus on lower-level discussions around plastics. When will we start to see that it is the communication protocols that are driving this failure, and that good-faith bargaining is a fallacy, when there is profit to be made? I would like to know how this is being addressed, and which other proposals have been made that represent alternative routes to progress - specifically ones that do not require vested interest to forego their short-term benefits in favour of others' long-term needs.
> But only one speaker was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting
If the observers' voices are so important, why schedule them for the very end? Yet another structural failing that demonstrates that the scale of thinking and organisation being employed is insufficient for the stated task.
Treaties in general aren't the best way to deal with anything. At best they're virtue signaling, at worst they're just misleading.
The countries which benefit the most from ignoring the paper will ignore it in the shadows, then in the light, to the point they just unilaterally denounce it and do their own thing. You can't "stimulate" a country's representatives to care about something unless you give them an equally important incentive, carrot or stick. The stick doesn't work with powerful countries, and the carrot is usually too expensive.
So the methods employed to negotiate and agree on a treaty's text are even less meaningful.
It’s a bit frustrating how difficult (near impossible) it can be to not buy plastic products. I try to avoid it as much as possible but more often than not, the only option (other than not being a consumer) is to purchase a product contained in plastic.
I’ll use the simple example of dental floss. When I was younger, you could purchase dental floss in a small circular metal container. Today, almost every option of dental floss available for purchase is in an often oversized / non-recyclable plastic container with non-recyclable plastic packaging.
This actually prompted me to once again go on the hunt for that little metal container of dental floss from my youth, and I actually found an option! A US company called Poh sells dental floss in metal container. Just thought I’d share, for anyone else that is dumbfounded when they have to buy more plastic wrapped plastic products to practice good dental hygiene.
I am actually working on a plastic free toothpaste alternative, we are planning to launch in the next few months. Its not a paste but rather tooth tablets that you crush with your teeth and as they dissolve you brush your teeth as you would normally. Zero plastic, refillable aluminum container, refill packaging made out of paper, and we plan to put free floss and toothbrush for the monthly subscription. Do you want me to add you to our waitlist? Deliquify.com is our website that i hacked together very quickly, but we will rebrand soon.
Tooth tabs are already a thing. One of them (Bite) has been flacking itself pretty heavily in podcasts.
The floss and toothbrush are a nice touch, though. Perhaps a wooden toothbrush? (Bristles will still have to be plastic, I'm sure; anything else would be too expensive.)
Good move. It is badly needed. Wish you the best.
India has had the notion of "tooth powders" for ever. Even colgate has been selling it in metal containers for many decades.
Are the floss and brush plastic-free also?
I tried to find a coffee maker once. There's one automated product in the $1000 price range. I just use my all metal french press.
FYI: They do sell cotton dental floss in paper packaging.
Also, here's an unintuitive thing people may not be aware of. Beverages in glass bottles contain about 10x the dissolved plastics in the liquid. This is believe to be from the paint and coatings used on the cap.
It's very much a matter of of marketing. I think the explanation for why partially hydrogenated oils have been replaced is because there was a viable alternative (palm oil, mainly) and no one was devious enough or saw profit in countering the honest narrative that they were hurting everyone's health. That's unlike tobacco or oil industry games. They spend as much as needed to protect their profits, consequences be damned. More importantly, I think, plastics are actually wonderful materials and the cost of overproducing is hard to convince people of. It's like the abuse of antibiotics or CO2 pollution. Some people try being alarmist to compensate for how little most people care about these serious problems. But most people go on uninformed or just don't care, even if they are informed.
Plastic is magic. Non-reactive, sterile, cheap, strong, lightweight, an electrical isolator. Using something like metal instead of it is complete utter madness from a product design standpoint. Something like corn based PLA is probably still the more cost effective option.
And to prevent corrosion, cans are often lined with BPA containing plastic. Paper packaging is lined with PFAS...
Think of the package designers! Honestly, I worked on a team with "Package Designers" back in the early 2000s... they were consumer junkies, looooathed blister packs, but wouldnt hesitate to overuse plastic to promote their fancy visual designs that went into labels.
First world probs. Check who uses Dental Floss in the rest of the world.
Aside from the ocean problem, nations could take action on these items themselves in many cases. Require the chemical lists, chemical phaseout, restrict production and import, etc.
Nations simply need to lead by example and reject plastic waste. That certainly won't happen until at least 2029 in USA, if ever. If USA still exists then.
If the EU really wanted an agreement, there would have been an agreement.
Put tarrifs on all trade with non compliant nations and their partners.
It's not just the oil states, it's almost all of them.
This is the correct answer. It's really sad to see that the west is just a propaganda machine. We don't need the oil states to end plastic or whatnot in our countries. But we sure love to point fingers at various nations in search of a scapegoat.
European petrochemical industry is actively expanding its plastic production.
Seeing China criticize Gulf states for torpedoing the agreement is sure something.
EU only cares to the degree that is necessary to virtue signal to its citizens.
They are still buying natural gas from Russia at record levels lmao.
https://www.bruegel.org/dataset/european-natural-gas-imports
It never said it will stop right away. It put a target and the process is called phasing out. The same way you migrate away from AWS. You don’t just stop your platform you move over while still using some AWS services.
Phase out buying directly and buy via India instead. Europe is a joke, we have completely failed Ukraine.
You do when that platform invades a sovereign nation, murders its people, and traffics its children.
Too easy. Unfortunately it takes forever to decouple, but that doesn’t mean steps aren’t being taken.
And yes, we’re all stuck under capitalism so anything that really threatens the profitability of companies will be opposed as much as possible. Combine that with geopolitical events like Americans being the dumbest people possible who elect an openly corrupt authoritarian not once but twice and everything becomes even harder.
LNG imports have dramatically increased since the invasion started.
Americans are their own captors, fuck them. Using them as a excuse for EU cowardice is not convincing.
They weren't really trying. Once you give oil-producing states a veto the result is obvious. If they were serious, EU and others would negotiate a separate treaty and then maybe get others to join.
> ... senior policy officer for the U.S. nonprofit Society of Native Nations, which has advocated that the treaty include specific language on Indigenous peoples’ rights and the use of Indigenous science.
What is indigenous science?
ffs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science
things like polynesian ocean navigation methods, and various land management practices to creat fire breaks, and promote different species benificial to there needs, inuit technolgy's that are very specialised for survival in the far north, and include the totaly indipendent development of the screw thread fastener, other far north technologys exist accross the polar regions. There is a very very ling list of things that were explored and refined, and developed into the basic framework that we call science now.....ceramics are ancient, but were developed many times in far flung places through ,what apears to be an inate drive to understand and explore our world, test our ideas and impliment those in some way benificial to our survival and comfort. They has science, that existed in a pure meritocracy,certain studys into lithic ,pigment, and fibre technologys have outlasted the species that started them, but have been continious and in some sense are ongoing today more than 1 million years later....no break. As there is now mountains of video of other species useing tools and solving problems, the question for "modern science" is to find out how much specific information is pre loaded into our DNA, along with the drive to find more information. Which then begs the question is "science" instinctual rather than a process?
If anyone is upset about obscene use of single use plastics, do not visit Japan. You will be shell shocked.
If you profit from the problem, you shall not get a vote on the solution. Especially when we are talking on a commonwealth problem.
---
A "like-minded group" of oil states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Bahrain, Russia) refused to accept:
- Legally binding obligations to reduce plastic production
- Mandatory phaseouts of hazardous chemicals
- Disclosure requirements
- Any controls on new plastic production
I mean does anyone expected anything like this to happen?
---
And here's the biggest joke:
Taxpayers around the world are funding all of this. Countries should represent their citizens' interests, right? So taxpayers collectively spend tens of millions to send their representatives, only to get this unexpected result. Saudi Arabia, Russia, and co. blocked the agreement.
Plastics are one of the greatest modern inventions today. It’s saved literally millions of lives and makes possible countless things in manufacturing that previously literally could not exist. It’s probably the single greatest contributor to reducing human climate change of any other invention (by drastically reducing packaging weight and thus transportation costs around fuel).
It’s not without downsides, but too often people just say “plastic sucks” (or equivalent) without thinking of what a world without plastics would look like. A de-growther’s dream perhaps, but everyone else’s nightmare.
You can say the same about everything that’s going to end up killing us all
No surprise there. Making oil producers part of the discussion isn't exactly what a serious effort to curtail plastic production looks like.
Plastics aren't a problem if people actually put them in the bin, and they are buried / recycled / burned. The problem is littering and poor waste management.
You can solve plastic pollution in two ways. Either crackdown on inappropriate waste disposal, or eliminate the use of plastics. One is actually possible, the other isn't.
Edit: although to be fair there are a range of "harm reduction" type measures. But if you focus on those, you might solve 10% of the problem and just drain energy from actually solving waste management.
You are not wrong. We tend to zoom on on the wrong problems. Most of continental Europe produces a lot of waste. Almost none of that ends up in the oceans. The problem exists mostly in coastal areas with a lack of legislation and rules or just a generally a sloppy attitude to cleaning up. And shipping in international waters. Once you are in international waters, there are very little rules and essentially no enforcement. Most of the problems in our oceans come from very specific countries and shipping just dumping their waste directly in the oceans. The problem is not the oil industry but some countries not managing their waste effectively.
Of course the best thing is just not having one time use plastics to begin with. But we tend to over-emphasize the problem and focus on the wrong parts. People using e.g. straws in their drinks is maybe unnecessary but in tons of plastic it's a very minor part of the actual problem. Especially if most of it goes into the trash and ends up in a landfill or incinerator. E.g. People using plastic or paper straws in Berlin makes no measurable impact. It's all very symbolic. The Spree, the main river that runs through Berlin and the only way trash could physically make it to oceans, has been pretty clean since the DDR stopped dumping toxic waste into it a few decades ago. I don't think rule changes in recent years for one time use plastics made any measurable difference.
It's more of a problem on beaches and near coastal areas where some people can't be bothered to clean up after themselves. You see the same on public roads or train tracks where people just toss their crap out of the window. This is the root of the problem: too many people just do the wrong thing without even thinking about it.
IMHO littering fines and more effective enforcement would be very appropriate and should be fairly uncontroversial. If people are being jerks, just treat them as such. Shame them into doing the right thing. Inconvenience them. Etc. Littering is a choice. And it should have consequences. And when people know there might be consequences, they usually adapt. Other things that work are deposits on bottles and cans. Making people separate their trash.
And then go after the big polluters and force them via tariffs, trade restrictions, etc. to do better.
> Plastics aren't a problem if people actually put them in the bin, and they are buried / recycled / burned.
Only 9% of all plastics ever produced has been recycled. 100% is impossible due to the various composite materials that exist.
Landfills don't work in many places in the world due to lack of space and are expensive, hard to manage and come with methane emissions. Burning is obviously the same as burning fossil fuels and cannot happen if we want to keep our planet habitable. It also happens almost always in poor communities that suffer health consequences because of it.
Even if the disposal was somehow magically solved, we still have the problem with production. Plastics are a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and are expected to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030. Cracker plants for plastics production are also usually placed near communities of colour or in developing countries and create toxic conditions for life around them.
Plastics are a problem. Regardless of the disposal.
Burning is a lot better than dumping it in a river, as happens in many places in Asia. It reliably gets rid of the plastic, produces energy (ideally offsetting fossil fuels that would otherwise have been burned), and regulations for exhaust filtration keep the toxins at bay.
Not producing plastic would be preferable, and sequestering it in a landfill is the second best option, but burning it is a great alternative where the first two don't work
that is a misleading number. In my country it is almost 100%.
Most gets recycled, the rest used as fuel in energyplants. The real problem is the 10 countries in the world that are responsible for 90% of dumping stuff in the rivers (all in south asia and africa).
Plastic can't be recycled at all, that is a complete myth. The only thing one can practically do is down cycle it, and even that costs more than virgin plastic so is uneconomical.
Of course theoretically perfectly clean and pure singly type plastic can be recycled, but that is something very different from post-consumer waste
> In my country it is almost 100%.
> Most gets recycled, the rest used as fuel in energyplants.
Do want to share how much work your "almost" is doing here?
> the 10 countries in the world that are responsible for 90% of dumping stuff in the rivers (all in south asia and africa).
How much of it is their own waste? How much was produced for Western consumers and then off-loaded onto them?
> How much of it is their own waste? How much was produced for Western consumers and then off-loaded onto them?
From following ocean cleanup project, for plastic ending up in the ocean it's usually own waste. The issue is countries that don't have working waste collection systems, any rainpour will often wash out the trash into river/oceans.
(littering is also an issue in countries with waste management though, but to a smaller degree, I kinda hate when people don't realize that stuff they throw in the street will often end up in rain collectors and directly flow into rivers)
Thanks for the reply! I was able to find the source you mentioned. Is there room in the conversation to talk about how much of their "own use" plastic is sold to them by Western companies who control the local markets?
Recycling here implies reworking existing plastics into new ones, not just collecting them.
> In my country it is almost 100%.
Do you have a link? I think OP meant actual recycling, not waste collection.
I don't think 100% plastic recycling is close to achievable at the moment (even if recycled, it's often downcycled).
You are ignoring the other problems with plastics. Microplastics in the environment, greenhouse gas emissions, and health problems from plasticizer chemicals.
I doubt either of those is really possible. The worst offenders are countries with little resources for enforcement (at least unless it threatens tourism income). It’s still needed, but at the same time we have to work towards a big reduction in our addiction to expendable, single-use plastic products. Disposal of plastic by burning cannot be a long-term solution, either, as long as almost all of it is made of fossil hydrocarbons.
Developed countries generate an order of magnitude more waste per capita. It seems unfair to blame poorer countries.
We make more waste but we don't put it in rivers.
We instead ship it to poorer countries for them to put it in their rivers.
In fairness, most developed countries used to, when they were at their level of industrial development.
We send it to other countries, have them dump it for us, then point our fingers at them.
It is a problem even with 100% recycling if we are talking about food.
This is the logic of yeast. Optimize locally until you drown in your own shit.
Plastics were not a problem until the radical environmentalists found their new target. I remember when they were strongly against paper products and "use plastic, save trees" was a popular slogan.
we have got to stop the production of plastic
Look back to the early 19th century if you want to know what it's like to live in a "world without plastic".
We learned about microplastics and updated our worldviews? We saw the oceans become saturated with plastic waste and thought again?
People believed different things in the past because they had a different understanding of the world. Not sure why you would find that surprising or so contentious as to frame it as a purely radical action.
I think its a real hallmark of the conservative mind that it pathologizes the act of changing one's mind in the face of new evidence as some kind of fundamental weakness.
>We learned about microplastics and updated our worldviews?
What are the main sources of microplastics? These are various surface coatings, plastic interior elements, clothing.
But what are the efforts to combat plastic concentrated on? On plastic bags and bottles, plastic straws and dental floss. Seriously? This is less than a percent of plastic use, and this is plastic with a short lifespan. Use and throw away. Near-zero impact on the amount of microplastics in the environment and the environment itself.
Unlike furniture coatings or clothing that are used for decades, regularly exposed to sunlight, which literally knocks microplastic particles off the surface. But instead of fighting plastic coatings, what do the same people who are pushing the fight against plastic bags and straws tell us?
They order us to cover our houses with PLASTIC insulation! LIVE IN MULTILAYER PLASTIC THAT HAS BEEN USED FOR DECADES. But with a plastic straw for drinks. What a crazy joke aimed at clinical idiots.
The fight against plastic in its modern form is a radical totalitarian, destructive cult.
> We saw the oceans become saturated with plastic waste and thought again?
And instead of the cheapest, easiest and most effective way to deal with plastic (just throw it in the garbage pile where it will lie until the end of time with zero impact on the environment and zero microplastic emissions) the cultists make us do what?
They spend a ton of our money on their cultish plastic transformation and what not rituals that ultimately don't work and result in all that plastic ending up in the ocean.
> Look back to the early 19th century if you want to know what it's like to live in a "world without plastic".
We're talking about reducing plastic use, which is crazy high nowadays, not full scale elimination. I remember going to the store in the eighties and nineties and sure, there was plastic, but the packaging wasn't three layers of plastics just to get the thing out. Use less, recycle what you do use, prevent it from getting into the environment and crumbling into microplastic pollution. PET can be recycled once of twice, but the other stuff is hopeless. Most other materials are just more recyclable, that's just a fact. rubber, cork, ceramic, plaster, tin, aluminum, paper, cartboard, glass, wax, etc... there's plenty of viable industrial scale materials depending on the usecase.
What exactly makes an environmentalist "radical" in your mind? Is it reading studies about planetary boundaries and the effects on micro plastics pollution?