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posted by CoolHand on Wednesday May 30 2018, @02:45PM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-care-of-the-place dept.

The European Commission has proposed new rules to ban certain plastic products in order to reduce the waste filling our oceans, it announced Monday.

The EU's measures tackle the top 10 plastic products that wash up on Europe's beaches and fill its seas, including a ban on the private use of single-use plastics like plastic straws, plates and utensils and containers used for fast food or your daily takeaway coffee.

The measures would also have each country in the EU come up with a system that would collect 90 percent of plastic bottles by 2025.

"The proposed ban in the European Union of single use plastics, notably plastic straws and cotton buds, is welcome and very promising news," said Dr. Paul Harvey from Macquarie University in a press release. "Single use plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental catastrophes of this generation."

You can see why the EU is making the proposal. Single-use plastic objects and fishing gear account for 70 percent of waste in the ocean, according to the EU. In 2017, researchers found 38 million pieces of plastic waste on an uninhabited South Pacific island. Figures from the same year showed that a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute, a number predicted to jump 20 percent by 2021.

Fortunately, others are tackling the plastic problem, including scientists and environmentalists who've come up with one solution involving mushrooms that can eat plastic.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:15PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:15PM (#686489)

    Lol, and what exactly would you call corporate structures? Through your reasoning they are "An attempt at a command-and-control economy, whereby top-down decrees are made according to the fantastical whims of know-nothing bureaucrats."

    Guess it is time we tossed out corporations and let all the "moving parts" FIND the optimal solution through variation and selection. That means the workers need to find the optimal solution and toss out the no-nothing "bureaucrats".

    Finally you've said something approaching useful!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:50PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 30 2018, @09:50PM (#686503)

    A corporation is a hierarchical centralization that emerges within a decentralized system of voluntary interaction.

    It's form or very existence is NOT guaranteed in perpetuity; unlike a government, a corporation does NOT get to decree its income regardless of performance.

    Should a corporation become dysfunctional, the wider society can (without even realizing it) deem that dysfunction to be damage and then go about the business of routing around it! By dropping back down into the underlying decentralized market place, society can find a new solution, which may result in the emergence of a new, functioning centralization to replace the old dysfunctional one.

    DO YOU GET IT YET????

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:23AM (#686577)

      no, i don't think we get it yet, and you clearly don't get the inherent contradictions of capitalism yet

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:49AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @04:49AM (#686597)

      No we don't get it yet. things aren't that simple.

      Case in point, Microsoft Windows is still dominant, although it's pretty clear that MS as a company has been pretty dis-functional for many years.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:26AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @05:26AM (#686606)

        You are begging the question; your logic is circular.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:56PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 31 2018, @03:56PM (#686790)

          You learned how to argue through mimicry. Introspection is important, grow into a better person.