| ▲ | andrewstuart 18 hours ago |
| I visited a remote island in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. A tiny island, I walked all around the island in the water in about two hours. There were hundreds, probably thousands of plastic drink bottles in the water and on the sand. Every step brought fresh plastic drink bottles into view. Humans don't deserve this planet. |
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| ▲ | strogonoff 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Visible plastic pollution is horrible, and is only part of the problem. This then breaks down and was shown to enter and accumulate in not only animal bodies, including human bodies (soft tissue, lungs, even placenta[0][1]), but individual cells[2]. This includes BPA, a xenoestrogen used in most or all plastic bottles, which in EU is among the candidates for SVHC (substances of very high concern)[3]. [0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202... [1] https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/advance-article-abstract/doi... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_of_very_high_concern (I expect the oil industry to do its utmost to delay this from having any legal effect, as per.) |
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| ▲ | silisili 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| While I agree with the ending statement largely, we have to blame the producers here. If I want water, I'm stuck with what's sold to me. Most on this site are fortunate enough to be able to drink disposables and have it whisked away magically. It's when that doesn't or can't occur that you start to realize how much we all waste. Single use plastics should have been outlawed years ago. Or at least taxed to high heaven. |
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| ▲ | qeternity 18 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > If I want water, I'm stuck with what's sold to me. This is a cop out. It’s cheap and trivial to buy a reusable water bottle and refill it. | |
| ▲ | eru 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm even more fortunate: I have fresh water that comes out of a tap. Very convenient. > Single use plastics should have been outlawed years ago. Or at least taxed to high heaven. Tax, don't ban. And make the tax proportional to the estimated damage. | | |
| ▲ | silisili 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Sure, maybe water was a poor example. Let's look at milk, assuming we don't all have cows at hand here. In most places, you can only buy it in plastic and sometimes paper carton, though that seems to be dwindling. There are no other options, so people just grab the plastic one. There's a local place by me that sells their milk in beautiful glass jugs. They charge $5 a jug, but you get that back if you return it unbroken to buy more. That place sells a ton, it's just that most people don't even have the option. It seems though companies have zero incentive to do such a program. There's no reward for recycling as above, and no punishment for being wasteful. However we change that - either via tax or law, I'd be on board with. | | |
| ▲ | eru 18 minutes ago | parent [-] | | That's an interesting example. Keep in mind that single use items like plastic or paper cartons also only have a finite cost in terms of resources and environmental impact. So you'd have to weigh that against the potentially more annoying logistics of having to go back to the store to return your glass jug; especially if you do that journey by car. (Recycling glass is about as resource intensive as making new glass. And both take a lot more than making a tetrapak.) I grew up in Germany, where re-using glass bottles is widespread, most iconically for beer. So on the consumer side there's unlikely to be extra journeys for that: most stores take bake used bottles. Aluminum and steel cans are widely recycled around the world as far as I can tell. So much so that you can actually get (small amounts of) money for collecting aluminum cans. No extra law or tax required there: if you don't recycle your can, in many places someone else will. |
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| ▲ | throwthrow4567 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| good sentiment, but how did you reach that remote island?
most likely, that 2 hour walk produced quiet a hefty amount of disproportionate pollution. |
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| ▲ | badcppdev 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | I was going to say the same. There is a chance that they sailed to the location. However a 6 hour flight from the closest major city would have given off 1500 kg of CO2 (per passenger). And presumably another 1500kg to get back again. |
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