In an effort to reduce plastic bag pollution, Kenya has introduced tough laws that will result in a prison term of up to 4 years or a maximum of $40,000 for any Kenyan producing, selling or even using plastic bags, although initial enforcement will target manufacturers and suppliers.
"The East African nation joins more than 40 other countries that have banned, partly banned or taxed single use plastic bags, including China, France, Rwanda and Italy."
Bags can take 500-1000 years to decompose, in the mean time killing or harming wildlife and entering the human food chain.
What is being done about plastic bag pollution where you live?
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday August 29 2017, @03:56PM (25 children)
It would be helpful if someone could train dog-owners not to leave plastic bags of dog fæces lying about hidden in long grass or tied to trees and bushes. Throwing them in domestic waste disposal is also a bad idea - the most environmentally friendly thing you can do is flush the contents down the toilet, then burn the bag (composting the fæces in special composters is also a possibility, but not everyone can do that). About the same amount of space in landfill sites is taken up by bags of dog fæces as nappies for human babies.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:12PM (4 children)
What we need is proper waste infrastructure. The simple fact is most people operate on convenience, so if they have to take a poop bag back home in their car and then separate the poop out you are just not going to have many people participate.
Similarly, recycling has many problems. Some waste companies have recycling bins yet they throw all recyclables into the landfill anyway because it is too expensive for them to separate and deal with the inevitable mixed garbage/recycling issues. I've seen my own garbage service toss both bins into the same truck, so at least my recycling bin is a PR prop only.
These are issues that must be tackled by the community since proper waste handling is not profitable.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:08PM (3 children)
I understand the Germans have some very impressive and convenient waste-handling facilities - dump in unsorted garbage and it gets mechanically sorted for recycleables (metals, glass, and I think plastic), while organics gt incinerated for energy. Profitable enough that they're importing huge quantities of other countries trash. Whether it would be profitable in the US with our cheaper energy and much laxer pollution regulations... I have no idea.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:47PM (2 children)
Not true! Germany is filthy. Dogs shit everywhere and people don't clean it up. The cheating diesel cars were illegal in the US but not Germany. And Gemany heavily burns brown coal, which is the dirtiest kind.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday August 30 2017, @07:06AM (1 child)
The US gets though 3.5kg of brown coal per capita per year.
Stop trying to pollute SoylentNews with your Fox-News-style "truths".
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 30 2017, @09:31PM
How many kg per square mile?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:19PM (17 children)
Even better is if people just didn't have dogs in cities. They're nasty animals: they smell bad, they shit everywhere, many of them are huge and consume an inordinate amount of food (and then generate a lot of shit), they shed, they scratch up your car seats and car paint, they can't be left alone at home for too long, they're just a giant pain in the ass. I have no idea why Americans love them so much, especially women. Honestly, looking through online dating profiles, it seems like about 80% of white American women (generally liberal city-dwelling ones) have some giant dog.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:27PM (6 children)
Dogs provide companionship and security, and many people grow up with dogs and enjoy having them around. I've never noticed any partisan trend with pet ownership, perhaps you're just running into the fact that most urban dwellers happen to be liberal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:28PM (3 children)
Dogs provide companionship and security, and many people grow up with dogs and enjoy having them around
Cats and other pets provide companionship too, and without being such a giant pain in the ass and needing constant 24x7 attention. Dogs need even more attention than kids (once the kids are past about 4yo).
Many people grow up with abusive parents and then become abusers when they're adults; that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
Many people enjoy smoking, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
I've never noticed any partisan trend with pet ownership, perhaps you're just running into the fact that most urban dwellers happen to be liberal.
Well yes, but considering how much of a PITA dogs are in the city (compared to rural areas where you can just let them outside to run around on their own instead of having to take your time to take them to a dog park and walk them), I guess I'm befuddled why so many liberal city-dwelling women love giant dogs so much when I would have expected them to be a clear minority. Maybe the ones who are single and over 30 are more likely to be big-dog-lovers and that's why I'm seeing this? (And maybe there's more factors here: maybe the fact that they all demand any men courting them to also be dog-lovers drives men away so they're stuck single, and maybe the dog has taken the place of them having kids, since most of these women are also childless.)
(Score: 2, Informative) by qzm on Tuesday August 29 2017, @10:23PM (2 children)
Ah, Cats you say?
These would be the animals that spend all night hunting and torturing to death any small wildlife that is in the area?
The ones that have a high rate of going feral, and then breed like rodents?
The ones that carry CSD (cat scratch disease, a rather nasty bacterial infection that happily infects humans, carried by around 40% of all cats..)
The ones that carry Toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease easily spread to humans, but carried primarily through cats, that infects 23% of Americas, and can cause psychological problems?
Yes, much much better than Dogs..
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 29 2017, @11:41PM (1 child)
Are you stupid? You're comparing pet dogs (mainly indoor) to outdoor and feral cats?
No, indoor pet cats do not hunt and torture small wildlife, unless perhaps your house is infested by rodents.
No, cats don't "go feral" unless you leave them outside all the time. Abandon a dog in the woods and it's going to go feral too.
CSD? Citation needed. I've had and been around cats for decades and never heard of such a thing being a problem with pet cats. Feral cats are a different matter.
Toxoplasmosis is overblown, and again not a problem with indoor cats.
You seem to be forgetting that cats are normally kept inside (and if they aren't, they should be; outdoor cats don't live very long, and are bad for wild birds. Similarly, feral dogs end up forming wild dog packs and attacking other animals and even humans). And indoor cats *stay* inside, so they don't bring problems into the house. Dogs, on the other hand, have to go outside regularly to shit and piss because they're too stupid to use a litterbox, so at the very least they'll be tracking mud and dirt into your house, if not fleas and other pests and parasites.
Next time, try comparing apples to apples.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday August 30 2017, @02:04PM
You're replying to someone who obviously has an irrational hatred of cats. Changing his mind is like trying to get a klansman to love black people.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:23PM (1 child)
Unless it's a dog to assist the visually impaired or hearing impaired, it's fucking idiotic to have a dog in an urban or even a suburban setting.
It's fucking idiotic in the same way that having a multi-stop subway system in a rural farming area would be fucking idiotic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @09:46PM
You can always tell an urban neighborhood is being gentrified when white folks bring their dogs. I live in a city and there are certain streets I just don't walk down anymore because the sidewalks are too narrow to accommodate foot traffic in two directions when there's a dog walker taking up the entire sidewalk. It's especially bad when a narrow sidewalk is fenced in or up against a wall so there's no way to walk around the dog walker.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:33PM (1 child)
And yet from what I can tell they're still probably better company than you are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:09PM
To be fair, so is my pet cactus.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Spook brat on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:53PM (3 children)
I'd guess that these young, single, liberal, city-dwelling women are morally opposed to firearms and are looking for a suitable replacement for self-defense. If she wants to go for a jog outside, having a fiercely loyal 100+lbs carnivore along for company is probably a good way to avoid being mugged and/or raped.
In many ways the dog is a more rational choice for self-defense in a city setting than a gun would be:
a) the gun won't keep you company if you're living alone
b) the dog serves as both defense weapon and security alarm
c) a dog is very unlikely to harm/injure bystanders in the case of an attack, unlike poorly aimed or over-penetrating shots from a firearm.
Cowboys would say that Sam Colt made all men equal; it's fair to say that Herr Dobermann [wikipedia.org] did the same for city-dwelling women in the U.S.
Travel the galaxy! Meet fascinating life forms... And kill them [schlockmercenary.com]
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:12PM (1 child)
Unfortunately the police will shoot your dog if they decide to enter your yard or house for any reason.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Touché) by urza9814 on Wednesday August 30 2017, @03:52PM
Yes, much better if you have a gun, then they'll just shoot YOU.
(Score: 2) by Taibhsear on Wednesday August 30 2017, @06:12PM
Although, counterpoint, a gun won't shit on the rug when you're at work.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @05:06PM
Muslims to the rescue! They cannot stand dogs, and will gladly poison them.
But then again you will replace one filthy, disgusting animal with another.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @06:33PM (2 children)
When she can't find a man who earns more money than she does, she fucks her dog instead.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Grishnakh on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:31PM
I have actually seriously wondered at times how many of these big-dog-loving women actually do this. Also notice most of these peoples' dogs seem to be purebreds, which you get from breeders, and can be obtained un-neutered, unlike shelter dogs that only come neutered.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @07:53PM
We're talking white american women, not jewesses. Jewesses are known to sleep with all kinds of animals, including giraffe. Being animals themselves, they find it comes naturally. They also let rats (jews) up their vaginas. Rats like company of rats.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 29 2017, @04:54PM
Burn the bag? If you burn the dog, the dog won't shit in your shopping bag again!!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jelizondo on Tuesday August 29 2017, @10:47PM
The most environmentally friendly thing to do with shit is leave it in the long grasses, bushes and trees without a plastic bag: it decomposes rapidly and becomes food for the plants.
Any other treatment requires energy, maybe lots of energy, and contributes nothing to the environment.