The US is one of the world’s biggest sources of plastic pollution:
The US is responsible for way more of the plastic polluting the world's oceans than previously thought, a new study reveals. When it comes to the countries that contributed the most to coastal plastic pollution, the US could rank as high as third in the world, it estimates.
"Plastic pollution globally is at crisis level," says Nick Mallos, senior director of the nonprofit Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program and co-author of the paper published today in the journal Science Advances. "Most problematic is that rather than looking the problem in the eye, for more than 30 years, [the US] outsourced our waste problem to developing countries," Mallos says.
[...] Plastics remain a huge environmental problem, and recycling isn't powerful enough to solve it. Just 9 percent of the world's plastic waste has ever been recycled, according to a 2017 study. The vast majority of it will languish for hundreds of years to come in landfills or in the environment — unless the countries at the heart of the problem start to clean up their act.
Journal Reference:
Kara Lavender Law, Natalie Starr, Theodore R. Siegler, et al. The United States' contribution of plastic waste to land and ocean [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd0288)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:28PM (21 children)
Remind me what's wrong with landfills again?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:46PM (7 children)
Stuff in landfills don't necessarily stay in landfills.
http://extoxnet.orst.edu/faqs/safedrink/dumps.htm [orst.edu]
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:52PM (6 children)
Plastics don't tend to percolate down into the drinking water.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:13PM (4 children)
Plastics have not been documented to percolate out of landfills, at least.
A quick search on the subject suggests that microbeads and microplastics are escaping, and terms like "secured" and "unsecured" landfills show up. I'm not finding anything authoritative, but I question the concept of "secured" landfills. Any place where water can flow into and/or out of former landfills, you have the potential for the contents of the landfill escaping.
Granted, the plastic swimming pool isn't going anywhere for a long, long time after it has been buried in a landfill. But we can't be so sure of all that micro stuff from little scraps of single use wrappings, or those tattered plastic garbage bags and shopping bags.
I think it's important to remember that a landfill doesn't entirely remove the contents from the biosphere. The stuff is still there, and Mother Nature may or may not leave it where we put it.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:54PM (1 child)
I figured since they were particles and not dissolved they would be filtered out but I guess not. They have found microplastics in landfill leachate.
Municipal solid waste (MSW) landfill: A source of microplastics? -Evidence of microplastics in landfill leachate [sciencedirect.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:08PM
Good find.
I think it safe to say that ANYTHING dumped into a landfill will eventually be found downstream from the landfill. There isn't much (aside from glass) that remains inert for extremely long periods of time. There is a reason that biological waste from hospitals and other sources are handled differently than general waste. Various "hazardous" wastes are handled in different manner than regular household garbage.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:28PM (1 child)
some landfills are covered
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:53PM
Yes, landfills have "evolved" in the last half century. There was a time when any gully or hole you could find could be used as a "landfill". I recall riding along with my father to dispose of stuff that wouldn't fit into garbage cans. Basically, there was close to zero regulation. The "official" landfills have always been "regulated", to some degree. An ordinance that the odoriferous contents be covered with earth before the weekend might be all the regulation that existed, way back when. Regulations didn't evolve at the same speed throughout the country, either. What was acceptable in Backwoods Arkansas 30 years ago was completely unacceptable in Virginia Beach 70 years ago.
Summarize to say that we need to be concerned about landfills that were closed long ago, because they didn't measure up to current standards.
BTW - you specifically mention "cover". You don't mention the bottom of the landfill. A landfill located over top of an old sand quarry with no liner of any type would mean that EVERYTHING is free to percolate freely. Any water at all that finds it's way beneath the cover will be free to percolate away in any direction at all, including into the aquifer that supplies your drinking water.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday November 04 2020, @04:55AM
I've walked around the bush beside the local landfill, an amazing number of plastic bags laying around. Driving by on a windy day shows why, with bags blowing every which way.
It has improved in the last 20 years but is far from perfect, and there is still the crap that escapes from uncovered trucks heading to the landfill.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:59PM (8 children)
They take up space. A lot of it. So much that the largest man made object on Earth in cubic volume is a landfill (the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island). That's just one landfill.
People need to stop producing so much trash. I'm astounded at how much trash some of my neighbors put out on garbage day. Recycling programs should be more prevalent and far more rigorously enforced. Composting also works, especially if you garden. You don't have to be fancy about it, take a large trash can, punch a couple holes in the bottom for drainage, and use it to dump all your vegetable waste. Initially you'll have to add some dirt to cover, but after a year or so, once the flora and fauna get established, you'll have a regular supply of rich, organic compost. I reuse any plastic bags I get from stores to save up the vegetable scraps, stick them in the freezer when full for a couple days, then take them out to the compost can and dump the frozen contents into a hole dug in the compost and recover with the compost. Within a few days that is usually almost completely broken down to something resembling the rest of the compost. You can also add reasonable amounts of waste from cleaning fish or shellfish, just make sure the cover is tight and there are no bears around...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:08PM (4 children)
What if the cost of recycling an item, plus a deposit incentive to recycle it, were built into the purchase price of the item?
Imagine if it were cheaper to recycle an iPhone than to throw it
at your neighboraway?What if most of the "trash" could be composted? And politicians composted?
Without the recycling cost built in to the purchase price, you're still paying a certain kind of long term cost.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:35PM
Politicians can definitely be composted [utk.edu].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:39PM (1 child)
Businesses would take the extra money paid for the recycling, give it to the executives as bonuses, and throw the stuff in a landfill anyway, at least until they were caught. They would then "outsource" the recycling to third world countries who just throw it in their landfill and give the executives a new bonus for the efficiency improvements and cost savings.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday November 03 2020, @09:58PM
"what is the free market and how it will solve all our problems?"
Oh..
Oh, dear..
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @01:16PM
Part of the problem is that there's no easy way for normal people to know what can and can't be recycled. You can't just go based upon the number on the container, it has to be certain sizes, with caps on and the like. Many of the plastics in products being sold are a mixture of different plastics with no way of know what the mix is without resorting to chemistry equipment.
Reducing the amount of plastic needs to be the overarching goal, but the plastic that is produced, needs to be labeled in some way that normal people can figure out how to recycle it or they're not going to. I've grown rather burned out by the fact that I often times can't figure out if something is recyclable. I try to figure it out anyways, but it's often just not clear as there are so many rules associated with it. It was better back in olden times before we switched to single stream as you'd know to sort the paper, metal and glass. The plastics would just be limited based upon the number on the bottom and clean. I'm sure it wasn't the best, but it was far easier to know if you were putting the items in the correct place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:13PM (2 children)
If organics were the only waste, then landfills would be industrialised compost heaps just like yours.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:46PM (1 child)
I don't understand where all my neighbors waste comes from (and I'm not really interested in looking that close). My regular garbage would take me 2-3 months to fill up a single bin, I see some families throwing out 2-3 full bins twice a week. Somehow something must be getting done wrong.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:56PM
You're failing to consume as much as you should. Why do you hate the economy, consumer?!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Tokolosh on Tuesday November 03 2020, @09:11PM
https://www.perc.org/wp-content/uploads/old/ps28.pdf [perc.org]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday November 04 2020, @09:48AM (2 children)
They waste space. They leak unpleasant stuff into the groundwater. You're dumping piles of useful resources instead of reclaiming them. Will that do?
Remind me what's wrong with incinerators? You generate energy from your trash (while destroying unpleasant chemicals and biologicals). You can reclaim metals and other valuable elements from the ash. And unlike the horror stories still floating around from the 1950s, modern incinerators do not produce significant pollution.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday November 04 2020, @05:24PM (1 child)
Most of my life I've envisioned that future people would mine in today's landfills.
I somewhat agree about incineration, but it seems a shame to destroy some things that might be recoverable. Not sure what those would be, maybe gold jewelry, coins, etc. Incineration will still produce CO2.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday November 07 2020, @09:06AM
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:28PM
My Captain Obvious action figure is made of all plastic.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:35PM (1 child)
I have a God-given right to not wear a mask and to drink from single use plastic straws. It says so in the Bible somewhere.
But if they do make me wear a mask, then I'm going to wear a plastic one.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:53PM
Make sure it covers both your mouth and nose.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday November 03 2020, @04:39PM (10 children)
You can tell who's in charge of an authoritarian system by seeing who you're not allowed to criticize or even mention the existence of, so we can safely assume the top two are China and Israel without even reading the article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:06PM
We, the Illuminati who shine the light of the Bilderbergs, are watching you right now. Carry on with your busywork life-wasting infighting.
/s (maybe?)
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:10PM (1 child)
No?
Not at all? [sciencemag.org] And it's right there in the open access paper anyone can read?
In terms of the metric they're using to qualify US as #3
Indonesia(by a huge margin), India, US, China, Thailand, Brazil, Philippines, then a bit of a cliff, then Egypt and several others.
The US absolutely destroys every other nation in ocean-bound plastic waste per coastal population though, almost doubling the #2 nation(Kuwait).
It's a more complicated story the more you look at the figures though, because the US has exceptionally low waste rates compared to other nations, but ruined by preposterous and excessive amounts of total plastic consumption.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:45PM
Well you are talking about two separate things.
1: The US is pretty good about domestically handling plastic waste. Even if you think there is too much ending up in the landfill that still means it's not ending up in our streams/rivers and then the ocean. And yes, out stormwater controls, which is what keeps it out of the stream/rivers/oceans are world class. (I take a bit of personal pride in that one since stormwater pollution prevention was a huge part of my job for about 10 years)
What the article is alleging, though, is that we outsource so much of it to places that don't handle it well that it eclipses the domestic control.
I only skimmed the article but it appears to be referring to a 2010 study and China stopped taking our plastic waste since then so I wonder how accurate the numbers are these days.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:57PM (3 children)
It's true. As soon as I say that President Xi looks exactly like Winnie the Pooh I will be promptly disappeared.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:43PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:50PM (1 child)
Hello friend Fnord. Existence of Death Monkey is faithful and honest.
Enjoy patriot paper day and be good citizen.
Sincerely;
Death Monkey
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday November 03 2020, @10:39PM
+1, Glorious.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:01PM (2 children)
I could believe that China, and/or* Russia might be one of the other top plastic polluters.
But Israel? That teeny tiny piece of real estate in the whole vast Middle East? Seriously? Have you looked at the size of Israel in perspective to the region?
*I demand that my CPU have an AND/OR instruction!
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 4, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday November 03 2020, @08:19PM
Of course he hasn't. VLM is the internet equivalent of the crazy hobo on the subway with his dick in his hand ranting about "DUH JOOOOOOOOOOOOOZ!" except he thinks by saying "Israel" or "Zionists" he's fooling anyone.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @01:21PM
This is why it's so important to check both relative and absolute rankings on things like this. Being the #1 whatever when you have one of the largest populations, IIRC, Indonesia is round about the 4th largest by population. Per capita is rather helpful at times in terms of normalizing the numbers to make it more clear whether a country is being more or less effective at something whereas the absolute rankings are helpful in indicating how much focus there should be on that country. A tiny place like the Vatican or Monaco are just not going to contribute significantly even if they try.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:01PM (41 children)
You mean the most advanced nation of any size that came up with most of the types of plastic and figured out how to use them for increased efficiency and utility uses a lot of plastic? Say it ain't so!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:11PM (2 children)
Well, based on the gargantuan economic engine of petroleum, and largely manufactured by Chinese peasants to enhance the Western nations, and made as cheaply as possible to guarantee repeat purchases, yes.
And actually we used to pay the Chinese to haul the stuff away, and of course they were - oops fell off the ship on the way back to China. But it has US labels on it so it's their fault.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:59PM (1 child)
Sorry, that excuse won't fly with me. It's been decades since such an excuse might have worked. Today, corporations are held accountable (for varying degrees of accountability) if they have dealings with "offenders". Child labor, slave labor, pollution, improper political leanings, gender equality, and more.
American companies contracting with shipping companies that dumped trash in the middle of the ocean can be presumed to know what was happening to that trash.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RS3 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:16PM
"plausible deniability" - you should know that one.
I totally agree with you, but the problem is you get into a very legally murky area of international waters, shipping companies who are based in who-knows-where, and the American companies may not have the legal right to investigate the shipping companies, and the shipping companies might be lying anyway. At some point, you apply enough regulations to an industry like trash collection and you drive them out of business. Which just shows that the whole thing is an economic house of cards to begin with.
One interesting advancement I saw somewhere (here?) months ago was where in Germany in supermarkets you bring your empty laundry detergent container, place it on a platform in a dispensing machine, select the brand / detergent you want, and the machine refills your container. THAT is a great solution.
Food packaging tends to be the bulk of consumer trash, and food stuff contaminates paper and plastics that would otherwise be recyclable.
Most plastic bags are very recyclable as long as they're clean.
A township near me picks up recycling curbside, but non-recyclable trash must be in township-marked plastic bags that you have to buy- I think it's $2.50 each. The idea is to encourage recycling. Problem is: people put non-recyclables in the recycling bins (with or without the purchased bag program) and the non-recyclables contaminate the loads, and it's very costly to have humans pick out the contaminants, which just ruins the whole program. They should force offenders to spend 2 weeks (or something) at the recycling plant picking through the stuff- maybe they'd change their behavior? Fines exist but are very rarely levied.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @05:21PM (3 children)
Some people like to gripe about people hating America, but they are actually patriots trying to improve their country and protect victims of abusive systems.
The better question to ask such Murrica Lovers is "why do you hate everything different from yourself?" As we have seen for.decades now it is the Murrica Lovers who assault and persecute others. No amount of manwhining is going to make people disbelieve objective reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:45PM
I agree in principle, but they do much more than "gripe", and even the griping detracts from their otherwise good cause.
Want some examples? Go to youtube and search for "Karen". Those people freaking out often have a legitimate gripe. And I fully understand how they've gotten so upset. But the net result is they usually scuttle their cause by their behavior.
BTW, if you say you "hate America", how do you expect to attract everyone? You're just setting yourself up to have enemies.
There are much more organized constructive ways to effect change.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 03 2020, @08:18PM
You don't see that very much. You do see a whopping shitload of folks hating things that directly conflict with the principles that made America a home to be proud of though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday November 03 2020, @08:34PM
Bank on it: the ones yelling at others for supposed "hatred of America" are the ones who most want to burn the Constitution and replace it with a theocracy and/or dictatorship. It's transparent as glass, and rather insulting that they think we're too dumb to figure out what they're doing.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:11PM (1 child)
It is so. Plastic is useful and ingenious. Just ask a duck that gets its neck stuck in the plastic that holds six plastic diet coke bottles together.
A nation that is 4 % of the world population is creating one (or many) of the world's biggest problems. Say it ain't so.
Maybe the other 96 % should take notice?
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 03 2020, @08:19PM
The thing you just bitched about plastic use on is made largely of plastic.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:35PM (27 children)
Only you can prevent forest fires.
Give a hoot, don't pollute.
Save oil by driving 55mph.
All of these brainwashing campaigns were designed to shape public perception that big industry has no responsibility for what their individual customers do with their products. It worked all too well.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 03 2020, @08:23PM (26 children)
Oh do fuck off. Those campaigns were to try to get individuals to take personal responsibility for how their own choices affect the world. I know personal responsibility is something of an anathema to progressives but nothing you do to escape it will ever amount to anything but hiding your heads in the sand.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday November 03 2020, @09:09PM (20 children)
The delusion that 8 billion people in all types of life-circumstances will take (or even be able to attempt) personal responsibility for pervasive conditions like pollution is a conservative peculiarity right up there with their teenager's children born after repeated abstinence lectures.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @10:53PM
I'll sell you some corks- they can be used in various ways to solve all of the aforementioned problems. :)
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday November 04 2020, @06:24PM (1 child)
As in, no person should be held accountable for polluting the environment? Only countries and/or companies? Yeah, that'd turn out great.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday November 04 2020, @07:10PM
As in: "solutions" that focus on unenforceable personal responsibility are doomed. "Fear of God" doesn't work and apparently neither do $1000 littering fines, particularly when the cops are too busy doing "real work" to bother with them.
Everyone should care about pollution and do what they can, but many many people are in positions where they can't realistically say dispose of hazardous wastes - or aren't educated in the ways that they can do it cleanly. Many more just don't care enough to do the right thing and no amount of "character building" is going to change that. Meanwhile, in Houston for instance, the chemical processing plants are belching more and nastier pollution per hour than I as an individual could ever afford to generate in the course of an ordinary lifetime - leading to further ennui and demotivation.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @04:17AM (16 children)
Nobody said anything about that, that's your imagination. Those campaigns were to get people to take responsibility for their own actions making shit worse. You going to tell us that the crying indian commercial about littering was some big corporate scam next?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 05 2020, @11:38AM (15 children)
I guess they worked on you. The campaigns were paid for by the industries that were putting polluting products in the hands of people, rather than developing non-polluting alternative products and systems that meet the same needs. I'd say the players paying for the ads are the ones attempting to benefit from them, so, yeah, the crying Indian was paid for by "big plastic," to give them political leverage - from people like you - to argue that it's not their fault that the oceans are filling up with plastics.
Actually, back in the day, nobody was even concerned with the shit in the oceans, they were mainly focused on "unsightly waste" in their cities, which they have managed to brush down the sewers and into the oceans now.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @01:49PM (14 children)
You know who else benefited from people not accidentally starting forest fires, dumping their used motor oil in the ditch, or throwing their styrofoam McDonalds packages out the window? Everyone, jackass. WTF is wrong with you?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 05 2020, @02:51PM (6 children)
Why are you so desperate to defend shifting the blame for what corporations do onto the public? Shouldn't you oppose limiting liability at all, Mr. Personal Responsibility? No amount of littering can come close to matching the effect of (often completely legal) organized dumping and outsourced "disposal" carried out for profit. Your elitist anti-worker shit just feels good because it confirms your biases, not because it has any connection with reality.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @03:17PM (5 children)
That's exasperation not desperation. It happens when people find something that's actually a Good Thing and create some fucktarded chain of absurd reasoning to let them say their enemy of the day is Literally Hitler.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 06 2020, @01:30AM (4 children)
Polluting industry is a multi-generational enemy of my family, the 'rents were eco-hippies in the '60s.
And, frankly, 500 years from now the world will be thinking that Hitler did far less damage than the Plastics industry and all the mindless shills who supported them.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 06 2020, @02:45PM (3 children)
Dude, let's be clear here. You've lost your damned mind over this issue. You're looking at "Good Thing"s and calling them "The Worst Thing Evar"s. Are you doing it because you're making perfect the enemy of good or do we need to coin a new Derangement Syndrome term?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 06 2020, @02:59PM (2 children)
Teaching people to not pollute is a good thing, no doubt.
Indians crying on TV did more to convince authoritatians that pollution is a 100% personal responsibility problem than it did to convince people to take personal responsibility. That's the issue.
Twist my words however you like, you're only convincing yourself of your own fantasies.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 07 2020, @01:50PM (1 child)
You might wanna check the stats on the efficacy of those campaigns before you spout off.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 07 2020, @08:49PM
Whose stats would those be?
Liars, damn liars, and statisticians who know who is paying their salaries... in exponentially decreasing order of reliability.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 05 2020, @03:14PM (6 children)
WTF are you defending McD's styrofoam packaging?
How long after the crying Indian before we finally got a way to dump the used motor oil somewhere better than the ditch? (about 20 years, around here)
Forest fires? That shit's just off the hook. People start them on purpose, they start naturally, they burn more destructively due to bad management practices, and climate change is making them worse too. Smokey Bear should just go back in his cave and spark a doobie, 'cause campers starting forest fires is about as important in the big picture as pissing in the pool is to ocean pollution.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @03:18PM (5 children)
I'm not, dumbass. I'm saying not littering is a Good Thing. And you're attacking a very successful campaign against it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 05 2020, @03:40PM (4 children)
Successful how, chief? I still see rednecks opening their car doors to toss trash on the highway at speed.
Assholes will always be assholes, they knew they were being assholes before the campaign and if anything the campaign reinforced that "bad boy" rush they get from flicking the butt out the window.
What I'm attacking in those campaigns is that they frame the argument in terms of personal responsibility only: "Here's a ki of coke kids, don't blow it all at once." as opposed to: "we're distributing our cocaine in convenient 1 gram packages for your enjoyment, and make it difficult to obtain too many at once for everyone's safety."
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 06 2020, @02:47PM (3 children)
Yes, you're attacking successful partial solutions (that were never meant to be anything else) for not being perfect, complete solutions. Why?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 06 2020, @03:08PM (2 children)
Because the "partial" solutions intentionally neglected the more effective approaches.
Ever hear of Poka-yoke? It means: "Prevent the problem." Don't put up signs and educational campaigns telling people to not do something bad - make it difficult, or impossible, to do the bad thing in the first place. Implement better alternatives.
If leaded gasoline were still an option at the pump, people would still be burning mass quantities of it. It's not necessary (except for some antique piston aviation engines), and boo fucking hoo for the lead processing industry that took a financial hit in exchange for universal improved neurological health, reduced violence, etc.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday November 07 2020, @01:55PM (1 child)
So? You seem to have this idea that a partial solution being implemented means you can't do anything else as well. This is not the case. Low hanging fruit should always be gone after first because it's an easy, if incomplete, win and there's zero reason to put it on hold for a complete, comprehensive solution that will absolutely take longer.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday November 07 2020, @09:09PM
It's not my idea, it's how the world operates. Do we need to address saltwater intrusion into Florida's aquifers? Oh, yes, we are working on that with educational campaigns, fancy rotating schedules of days when you can water your lawns and wash your cars, building code restrictions on how much water can spray out of shower heads and faucets, even gallons per flush on the toilets - it's a work in progress, but we're working very hard on it and our statisticians can show you a projection about how reduction in personal responsibility water consumption is trending in a good direction, yessirree... working hard we are.
Meanwhile, Sarasota County Florida, population 430,000, the fucking tomatoes are consuming more water than the entire residential population because nobody has the balls to stand up and tell a couple of wealthy land owners to back the fuck off with their flooded field irrigation that not only is causing saltwater intrusion along the coasts, but up in Lakeland it's actually leading to widespread sinkholes formation in dry years (strawberries up there, not tomatoes) putting holes in I-4, random minor roads and the middle of dozens of homes per year. Same flooded field irrigation is running off into "nature preserves" and destroying the seasonal wet-dry cycles, killing the trees and pretty much fucking the entire ecosystem into oblivion. There are other ways to grow tomatoes and strawberries, ways that might cost a little more or reduce yields a little bit, like 10-15%, which would reduce water consumption and runoff by 80% or more - but those changes would have to be imposed on a small number of powerful people instead of a bunch of eye-wash busy work to supposedly influence the behavior of a large number of less powerful people. Voters? Voters think we've already got too much water conservation regulation and they are 98%+ oblivious to who and what is actually consuming the bulk of the fresh water out of the aquifers. And politicians, who are the ones that approve the rules, they aim to please the voters, so they go back and forth about proposals for whether we should allow car washing on 2 or 3 days a week, and whether or not we should be using even-odd license plate rationing. They spout the statistics about the millions of gallons that each proposal is projected to "save" while completely burying the story about how agriculture and industry are using 100x as much water in very loosely regulated fashion. Even in California where "agricultural water use restrictions" are the most severe in the nation, on a 10 acre olive farm you are limited to so many dozens of acre-feet per month of water use. One acre-foot = 326,000 gallons.
Harris county auto emissions testing, oh so very important, yes. Meanwhile, on the way to the tailpipe sniff test, I drive past a large number of chemical processing plants which are belching more tons of unburnt hydrocarbons into the air per day than my car will consume total fuel in 200,000 miles of driving.
Point: low hanging fruit is more often a distraction from the real problem than it is an actual addressing of the real issues, a psychological game of misdirection and a way to refocus the narrative off of the problem and get people bogged down in how much trivial progress they can make in their own communities, to get them to forget about the 800,000lb gorillas next door that are the bulk of the problem.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday November 03 2020, @11:06PM (4 children)
I don't know why you think that?
I'm curious. In what way would you think that I might not take personal responsibility? Or progressives in general? Just curious.
Incomplete list:
* recycle
* save energy
* give >= $20 when I see homeless person
(not virtue signalling, just saying I put some small bit of action into what I believe)
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @12:55AM
Yeah but you don't pray to the Sky Man and get reborn free of responsibility. That's your problem.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @04:28AM (2 children)
Progressives' primary means of recruiting support is to tell people they are victims. If you're a victim, you bear no responsibility for your situation; it's someone else's fault.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 05 2020, @04:25PM (1 child)
Some people really are victims. Not everyone. Not even most.
Whether you are a victim or not, everyone should strive to make the most of themselves and their opportunities. I don't think we would disagree about that.
Now, that said. I think it is in all of our best collective interest (including economic interest) to help those who really are victims.
Beyond that, it would be nice if there could be no victims at all. Wouldn't that be nice. An unrealistic ideal. But still, it would be nice.
Why is it so difficult to break a heroine addiction?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 06 2020, @02:55PM
Nope. If you have to be sold the idea that you're a victim by a political party, you're not one.
Everyone has a choice when bad shit happens. They can either act like a victim let the bad shit become an excuse or they can refuse to be a victim and put the bad shit on the list of things they'll have overcome when they do succeed.
That's assuming the bad shit is actually true or even real, which is often not the case with the bullshit the Ds are brainwashing folks with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:13AM (3 children)
Fair enough, but: plastic is vastly overused. How many grocery articles are packaged in multiple layers of plastic? Why?
An example that I've seen just recently: A piece of meat is vacuum-packed in plastic. Then it is wrapped in typical meat packaging: the little styrofoam tray with transparent plastic over the top, even though this serve no purpose. Then the item goes on sale ("buy 3" or whatever), so they shrink-wrap multiple packages together, because they don't trust their customers to count to three. So you have three layers of plastic, two of which serve no useful purpose.
Another example: There's a brand of yogurt drink (Yakult) trying to make inroads on the market here. It comes in a tiny 65ml plastic bottle. Obviously, they don't want you to buy just 65ml, so they pack the little plastic bottles together in a bigger plastic pack. The ratio of plastic to yogurt is ridiculous.
Do you blame the manufacturers for being stupidly wasteful? Or do you blame consumers for buying wastefully packaged products?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @04:37PM
Both? [xkcd.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @04:48PM
this is a good point. but you only need to drink a yakult every other month ...
anyways it's sad to blame the "consumer". manufacturer use plastic containers to great success. like potatoe chips in a plus athmosphere pressure bag to make it look better/bigger.
i wish someone with money would one day buy a whole store of all items and then make two piles: one with all the stuff that gets used and another with all the stuff that is just "container".
i am AMAZED at the ailes if diverse potatoe chips and other starchy asortments that when crushed yield a tiny sad pile of potatoe chip powder but a glizzy and proud "container" bag.
anyways, the solution is simple: if the container is not recycled by manufacturer no colors are allowed and only 16 letters in 8 fomat size is allowed on container ^_^
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 05 2020, @04:34AM
S'all I was saying. I wasn't making a judgment either way, just stating a fact. We didn't invent it but we damned sure took it and made every possible thing out of it that might be useful. So, not really surprising we have a lot of plastic waste. The headline was kinda like saying the nation with the most coastline is #3 in number of sea ports.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @06:02PM (1 child)
Ah never as easy as it sounds
https://cen.acs.org/environment/sustainability/Plastics-recycling-microbes-worms-further/96/i25 [acs.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @12:56AM
I'd guess given the choice the plastic eating bacteria will eat something better.
(Score: 5, Informative) by IronClad on Tuesday November 03 2020, @07:11PM (2 children)
The following 2017 study determined most ocean plastics enter via rivers, and no US rivers are even on the top 10.
Is TFA obfuscating pollution with consumption, or just trying to share the blame away from the big panda in the room?
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368 [acs.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 03 2020, @08:17PM
They're saying there's no plastic in our rivers because we send all our plastic waste overseas.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @08:50PM
I think that study may be misleading. In North America, the PDF shows that three catchments were studied. Two of those were upstream of Chicago, and the third, larger, catchment seems to be streams and rivers feeding into Lake Erie. The net effect seems to me to be, the flow of plastics into the ocean isn't being measured at all. What they are measuring is how much plastic might be present in a fresh water body which is continuously flushed, thoughout the year. Obviously, neither Lake Erie, nor any of it's upstream contributaries, are going to accumulate plastics in the same manner as an ocean or sea.
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/suppl/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368/suppl_file/es7b02368_si_001.pdf [acs.org]
Note that none of the United State's major rivers are sampled where they flow into the sea.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Informative) by istartedi on Tuesday November 03 2020, @09:09PM (1 child)
Californians care about the environment, right? Yeah. I'd like to sell you the Golden Gate Bridge.
Aside from the obvious problem of bottles by the side of the road, let me tell you what ordinary gardening and yard work is like here.
It's trash pickup all the time. I never start out to pick up trash, but if I'm outside long enough that's where it goes, and most of it is plastic. How does it get here?
At first I just attributed it to former occupants being sloppy, and the fact that because we're in a somewhat rural area it wasn't that long ago that "burn barrels" and "haul it yourself" were the standards. This no doubt led to some "archaeology" in the yard, but that's not the whole story.
For the longest time, I was digging out those dang blue tarp strands in one part of the yard. I figured I'd eventually filter it all out. Then a few weeks ago I realized they might not have been legacy. They could have been more fresh. The wind picked up, and I found some new strands of plastic tarp in the yard.
That's it. The wind. It blows the plastic in from neighbors. Your yard is only as clean as your neighbor's, and lots of them are sloppy. There's also various wild animals, mostly birds I guess, that pick up light plastic and drop it. I find that all the time, along with the more benign peanut shells. Somebody nearby is putting out peanuts, and critters are leaving the shells in my yard.
It might not rain for several months here in NorCal; but it's always raining plastic.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Tuesday November 03 2020, @10:51PM
An occasional occurrence is plastic shopping bags, which float around more than tumbleweeds, find their way around a vehicle exhaust system. It's rarely a real problem, but they stink and most people are alarmed that their car will "blow up" and drama ensues. Some wire screen might shield the underside. More and more cars have underbelly pans which will stop the problem.
When I was a kid we lived fairly rural, farmette- 10 acres or so, and we had a burn pit.
The shells are the critters' way of telling you to FEED THEM. :)
Today, windy day, I had to pick up several pieces of plastic- some kind of foam food box, some other wrapper, a plastic bag, that blew off of a neighbor's trash can, which was overly full such that the lid didn't close. Frequently these (stupid!) very top large and heavy trash bins tip over in the wind, or because someone put something quite large like a roll of carpet, they tip over, dump out, wind blows the light plastics around...
Your blue tarp is probably where you buried that body but forgot about.
(Score: 2) by Username on Tuesday November 03 2020, @09:22PM (4 children)
Is there any environmentalist talking point that isn't at crisis level?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2020, @10:30PM
Nope, unless you consider the ones that are past crisis level into "way too late to even think about caring".
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday November 03 2020, @10:47PM
Is noticing that some things are bigger than others a crisis?
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday November 03 2020, @10:47PM
There's like seven color-coded ones [wikipedia.org], if anyone wants to talk about them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 04 2020, @01:01AM
Kind of like the Doomsday Clock which started at 11.59 and has never dropped below 11.58 in over 50 years. Time to recalibrate the clock, guys,
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 04 2020, @10:05AM
In other words, other countries are doing it, but we're going to blame the US instead.