the price of plastics that we pay is not the TRUE cost in my opinion. The solution would be to address this. Then i bet you plastic won’t look as competitive anymore…
For example, are plastic producers mandated to pay for plastic cleanup efforts? No. Well…why not? All the garbage ends up in the ocean and then destroys the food chain slowly. And then new companies like the “ocean cleanup project” have to scrape by and beg for donations to fund their ocean and river cleanup efforts.
Increased plastic prices would also encourage research into alternatives.
I live on an ocean front property in Nova Scotia, and spend an inordinate amount of time at the waters edge. And there is massive amounts of plastic washing up, and a lot of it is not from here, its mericun plastic.
The major current (gulf stream) brings it from the US, everything, and I mean everything that will float, and some that doesn't.
I have a growing collection, of, hats, just the nice ones mind, and as anything that has spent days, weeks ,or years in the ocean, is more ir less sterilised, I am happy to keep, pass on, or use.My favorite pillow case, which started of as a lucky find, used to bring MORE, treasures home
is just one thing amongst many.
That does not mean that I dont find eagle feathers, agates, fossils, perfect walking sticks
stripped, sharpened, and lost by beavers, but there is a lot of plastic and sundry junk.
Some of the plastic is admitedly beautiful, fragments of lost toys, polished and worn smooth
by the wind, waves, and sand.
And historical plastic, mint shape, that must have been dumped, burried somewhere and then floated anew, and washing up now.
Which is what cities tell you to do (Seattle is relatively specific about what kinds of plastic to put in the landfill vs to recycle), but that makes it complicated for consumers.
I went deep sea fishing in Mexico a few years back, and the number of water bottles floating out in the ocean was very alarming. That’s not fishing industry waste, it’s definitely consumer plastics, and it was the only visible waste.
Water bottles floating in the ocean definitely sounds like fishing industry waste. Or whoever is boating and just chucking bottles off the side. I mean think of consumer recycling; only a little fraction of it is probably plastic bottles yet thats all you see in the ocean? Seems hard to believe. There are people who go out and collect seaglass, an industry that exist because boaters throw just that many green brown or blue bottles of beer off the side of the boat to lead to appreciable yields on shore.
No, you’re misunderstanding the scale and making assumptions. It’s widely reported and well known that water bottles polluting the ocean is coming from consumer goods - the volume of plastic trash in the ocean is far far bigger than the entire fishing and all boating industries combined globally. https://plasticoceans.org/the-facts/
“An open access study published in 2022 concluded that 75% up to 86% of the plastic pollution is from fishing and agriculture“
And also in that article it mentions you can’t really see or detect the patch yourself without specific tooling for it as the fragments are often quite small and dispersed. You can’t use satellites to see it either as such.
The preceding paragraph says the exact opposite, but I can take the point that multiple sources are saying fishing trash is significant. It doesn’t sound like the trash visible near Mexico is the same as what they call the Pacific Garbage Patch. Either way, I cannot believe that what I saw was fishing boat trash, there was far, far too much of it. Maybe it’s beachgoer waste, maybe it’s industrial waste. Anyway, you should go look yourself before forming an opinion!
The amount of plastic produced, shipped, and dumped is simply staggering. You can ship 99.9 pct of it to SE Asia and still have enough to pollute all the beaches and snorkelling areas at alarming levels.
I get that but I mean they are talking about plastic bottles floating in the ocean they are observing. Like intact bottles not stuff broken down into microplastics like most of that "run off" plastic waste. Assuming they aren't boating around the mekong delta I'd guess what plastic trash they do see boating (probably near shore not far from a recreational marina with a lot of other recreational traffic) is probably from other boaters just pitching it over the side. Occams Razor and all.
I don’t know where the trash came from, but it’s frustrating to have someone who doesn’t know anything contradicting my observations. Why are you speculating wildly about where I was, and making assumptions about something you haven’t seen in order to contradict an actual observation? All you’re saying is you don’t believe me, but based on imaginary made-up reasons. You should really go see it first. Occam’s Razor will support observations. What I saw was many many miles from a marina (deep sea fishing), lots of samples over several days of more or less constant density trash covering thousands of square miles. Trash from boats does not explain that. Occam’s Razor and all.
> In a 2014 study researchers sampled 1571 locations throughout the world's oceans and determined that discarded fishing gear such as buoys, lines and nets accounted for more than 60% of the mass of plastic marine debris.
that’s true. But IMO it doesn’t really matter where it comes from. once it’s in the ocean it travels and affects everyone eventually.
Having people in north america pay less for plastic just because we do a better job not throwing it out isn’t fair either. That would basically be north america “outsourcing” our problems to the poorer countries that don’t yet have the infrastructure in place to properly deal with garbage.
Much of Europe seems to do fine orienting their consumption and recycling around glass (including wash+reuse). I was surprised I didn’t even see aluminum recycling because it was so rare to see a can.
most plastic i see daily is completely unnecessary. it’s simply cost savings for the manufacturer.
I’m all for using plastic where it actually makes the product better. Like a silicone spatula for example, or in medical industry where plastics are used to keep needles, etc sterile.
Is society vastly better compared to 50 years ago? No not really, aside from improved vehicle safety and a few other tech improvements. Yet plastics were used SO much less back then. Maybe i’m missing something.
I think what is missing is the assumption that the replacement product would be better for the environment. Like before we had plastic crap we had steel products. And we know very well the damage that industry causes back when we had a local steel industry polluting the rust bet cities for decades. Maybe you use wood well a lot of the wood they used back then wasn’t really sustainably harvested either.
What we are left with is plastic. Cheap yes but also perhaps the least bad of the other things.
As long as we engage in rampant consumerism we will run into similar rampant consumerism issues no matter the materials used.
Banning plastic for unnecessary goods may rein in consumerism a bit. Consider cheap plastic toys. Without plastic, those toys would cost more, and people would buy fewer of them. I doubt the priciness would cause real harm poorer families, considering how manufacturing has lowered the price of even wooden toys so much. Plus so many stores sell used toys.
I'd only worry about the affect of a plastic restriction on food prices. But, again, it might be a blessing in disguise by steering people towards fresh produce and meat.
I feel like size of the home is the limiting factor more than anything. Before plastic funkos it was little ceramic cherubs grandma was filling all the available shelving with.
This is a bit racist imo, or at the least lacking empathy.
It’s a systems problem. Sounds like you (like me) grew up in the 1st world where your country has the proper trash infrastructure. Additionally, the government and schools provided the basic education about why littering is harmful, and society at large understands it in your country. That’s great.
Just because we grew up with this knowledge ingrained into us doesn’t make us “better” people, or better than a filipino person.
Some poor countries have poor trash infrastructure, and they do a poor job teaching the ills of littering to their people. That’s unfortunate, but doesn’t make us “better” than them imo. It just means they are poor and uneducated on certain topics.
Now to answer your actual question, why should someone in oklahoma pay more. I don’t think it’s ethical or even fair for someone in oklahoma to pay LESS for plastic simply because they do a better job throwing out their trash. Cheap prices for plastic encourage additional plastic use. And additional plastic use means more and more plastic will be entering rivers and oceans around the world, which affects ALL of us, including the person in oklahoma. Plastics enter the food chain, via fish eating them, and even through rainfall once they become microplastic in size. Basically, i’m arguing that “outsourcing” the issue to poor countries won’t solve the problem and is just pushing a cost burden onto already poor countries.
A proper solution IMO would discourage plastic production globally, or at least enforce cleanup by the producers of plastic (make them pay for efforts similar to the Ocean Cleanup Project).
If an educated populace isn't better than an uneducated populace why bother with education? It costs a lot and ties up a portion of your potential work force with what would be a useless waste of time. I think you are conflating the inherent value of a human life vs. the relative value of different things we can do as people to improve ourselves. Education "improves" people, it makes them better. Having proper garbage disposal improves countries (groups of people). This is why we value and promote these things.
And following you to circle back to the original point... Raising the price of plastics for everyone does place the majority of the burden on poor people/countries. If everything costs $0.05 more due to more expensive packaging, that is statistical noise for most people in a 1st world country but would make things unaffordable in poorer countries. But I agree that the only way to do it successfully would be to force a higher cost on the manufacturers no matter where they are located, otherwise they'd just shift manufacturing to the lower cost areas. Pretty much anything that raises the cost of goods will disproportionately impact the poor.
i meant “better” from a moral perspective. This hypothetical person in the Philippines likely doesn’t realize their impact on the environment - and it’s not their fault that trash collection infrastructure is lacking either. If we grew up in that environment we’d probably behave the same way! If all you ever knew was your friends, neighbors, and role models littering.
That's a highly patronizing view that because someone is from the Philippines they are incapable of knowing the impact of littering. They have the same access to information we do, don't they?
it’s a generalized statement. Obviously a curious person can read and learn as much as they want on the internet.
did you read hacker news before you became a nerd (like myself)? probably not. I didn’t even know it existed! Why? Because nobody told me about it and my social circle growing up was mainly into video games and reading books. I only heard about it after i branched out in college and studied computer science, and eventually got my first job in tech. A colleague recommended it to me.
Nobody is going to randomly search “how to properly dispose of trash” lol. People typically get into an echo chamber so to speak, limited by their social circle. If nobody else around you cares about trash disposal growing up, what are the chances you will randomly show an interest in that? Very slim IMO. ESPECIALLY if the main thing on their mind is putting food on the table for their family.
Worrying about garbage disposal best practices is a LUXURY not every society has and i think you forget that. I’m not criticizing individual people at all here.
How is it racist? He just picked a random landlocked first place area and a oceanfront 3rd world place? He could have just as easily chosen South Korea and Brazil or whatever other comparison.
I will agree that littering is very much cultural.
because much of the worlds plastic will be produced useing pattented processes and specialty machinery and components, invented and owned by americans.Plus american natural gas as the major feed stock is sold to make that plastic.
America proffits at every step, so bears a responsibility.
Or, we can get into the idea of "exporting contradictions", and the eventual reconing that will happen, later.....
I should add, that I know a good many rural people who have no issue with taking responsibility for problems that others created,
so unless you are an actual born bred okey, then
perhaps you need to get out there and ask some dirt farmer what they think.
For example, are plastic producers mandated to pay for plastic cleanup efforts? No. Well…why not? All the garbage ends up in the ocean and then destroys the food chain slowly. And then new companies like the “ocean cleanup project” have to scrape by and beg for donations to fund their ocean and river cleanup efforts.
Increased plastic prices would also encourage research into alternatives.