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As the world strives to wean itself off fossil fuels, oil companies have been turning to plastic as the key to their future. Now even that's looking overly optimistic.
The global crackdown on plastic trash threatens to take a big chunk out of demand growth just as oil companies like Saudi Aramco sink billions into plastic and chemicals assets. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc, Total SA and Exxon Mobil Corp. are all ramping up investments in the sector.
Renewed emphasis on recycling and the spread of local bans on some kinds of plastic products could cut petrochemical demand growth to one-third of its historical pace, to about 1.5% a year, said Paul Bjacek, a principal director at consulting firm Accenture Plc.
Maybe they can convince consumers to accept clamshell packaging for everything.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Tokolosh on Thursday June 06 2019, @03:00AM (11 children)
We are supposed to be rational and scientific. Where is the evidence that plastics are worse than the alternatives? Because it appears that economics is telling us that plastic is fine.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06 2019, @03:28AM (4 children)
Sure. Let's start with "if you care about sea turtles, some of which - the leatherbacks - are among the 'living fossils' - then plastic use and disposal is a direct threat to those species"
https://www.globalanimal.org/2013/09/26/sea-turtle-populations-plummet-due-to-plastic-pollution/ [globalanimal.org]
It's gotten worse since that study; one from this year found plastics in 100% of about 100 necropsies of bycatch turtles.
There's lots of other trivially accessible data. Look up the Sargasso Sea and so on.
Economic is showing us that water runs downhill, and that mercury-tainted water does too.
Shame that a 3-digit user like you is apparently a troll or a shill, because claiming "dur I don't believe plastics are impacting the environment without evidence" is ignoring media and scientific output of the last >40 years. Disappointing, and shameful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06 2019, @05:19AM
But if you ban plastics, what will the turtles eat? Won't somebody please think of the turtles!
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday June 06 2019, @10:24AM (2 children)
So how does the leatherback get into landfills hundreds of miles away from any ocean? Just curious how that's supposed to work.
Meanwhile I bet we see far more plastic in the oceans from failed recycling efforts (such as the US and Europe shipping via water their waste plastic to the developing world in order to check that box).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 07 2019, @06:12AM (1 child)
Believe it or not, landfills sometimes slide into the sea. There's a particularly picturesque area in Bolivia where there's a big splash of colour on the shore of Lake Titicaca, and if you get close, it turns out it's a 100 year old midden that then got the last 50 years of trash piled on, and the latter trash is jam packed with colourful plastic, and the whole shebang slid down to the water's edge.
Then there's leeching, were eg. downstream water tables from older landfills will be unsafe for well water due to lead and mercury (and other stuff), and generally those flow out to the ocean over time (more for the hydrocarbons which float, but whatever).
Then there's birds. Did you know that seagulls love to pick up trash and move it? There was a hilarious article about some bald eagles doing the same in the NW USA.
I could go on.
> Meanwhile I bet we see far more plastic in the oceans from failed recycling efforts
Meanwhile I see you provide no evidence whatever for this idea. Cool idea! But you're bullshitting and looking stupid.
Your inability to imagine things (eaily imagined things!) doesn't make those things impossible, or untrue.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 07 2019, @02:27PM
And what evidence really needs to be presented to support the claim that the developed world ships a massive amounts of waste plastic elsewhere via boat? Well, there's the recent story [soylentnews.org] about US recycling so deeply impacted by China ending the receiving of US plastic waste (all shipped by boat BTW) that a bunch of urban recycling programs outright ended. That indicates both problems I claimed, that lots of plastics for recycling were being shipped by boat, which is a significant source of ocean-based plastic and then gets dumped in China or elsewhere in the developing world, which is another significant source of ocean-based plastic.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday June 06 2019, @03:28AM
not recyled [nationalgeographic.com]
then ends up in the ocean [wikipedia.org]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06 2019, @03:33AM
wtf who upvoted this trash? parentposter literally was too lazy to google, and then said economics are proscriptive - which is, literally in the literal sense of the word literally, one of the arguments that was (is, apparently) used to justify slavery. Literally.
whoever upvoted - use some brain cells and stop polluting the discourse here by floating turds like this to where others will be exposed to the stench.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 06 2019, @09:19AM (1 child)
Economics also tells us that slavery is fine: Slave traders did make profits, or else they would have stopped that trade without being forced to by law. I hope you agree that slavery is not fine.
Economics is not the answer to everything.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Thursday June 06 2019, @10:33AM
Given that law forced slaves to be slaves in the first place, what point are you really making?
I'd say rather that the economic success of free societies over those of slave societies (such as the Communist and Fascist societies of the 20th century) indicates that economics came to a different decision than you thought.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Thursday June 06 2019, @02:54PM
According to economics, slavery is fine.
According to economics, Hitler did a great job.
If you rely on economics as a basis for moral code, health, survival, etc, you scare the living f__k out of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 12 2019, @11:09AM
Ivo, is that you?