EU To Ban Plastic Plates, Cups, and Cutlery by 2021; Will Require Plastic Bottles Be Made of 25% Recycled Content By 2025 (fastcompany.com) 261
The European Union has decided to ban plastic consumer items including plates, cutlery and straws as of 2021 to help clean up oceans. The prohibition on single-use plastics approved by the European Parliament this week in Strasbourg, France, also applies to beverage cups, food containers and cotton bud sticks. A report adds: The new legislation also states that by 2025, plastic bottles should be made of 25 percent recycled content. The new legislation also sets an admirable target of recycling 90 percent of plastic bottles by 2029 -- as well as a goal of making them out of 30 percent recycled material by 2030. Parliament originally rolled out its plan at the end of 2018 and have now made good on the ambition directive.
Hypocrisy - and the trees die again. (Score:3, Insightful)
This emotionalist and irrational (yes, irrational) response to a problem could easily be handled by better pollution monitoring, regulation and better recycling. But that would require a government that actually did its job and not just run to ban things because it makes them feel better to assuage a 12 year old's shoddy science fair paper.
Re:Hypocrisy - and the trees die again. (Score:5, Insightful)
We didn't realize back then that plastics were slowly making their way into our food supply [npr.org]. Do you think that "better pollution monitoring, regulation and better recycling" is enough to fix that without also banning single-use plastics?
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That is actually really insightful.
Comparing a planet with tonnes of non-recycled paper in landfills vs. one without comes out very much in favor for the former with regard to CO2 sequestration. Are there any downsides to this approach?
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Things are different now. Back then sustainable forest management wasn't a thing, the trees were dying due to the acid rain and the wood usage used to be far more wasteful. Nowadays in the developed countries acid rain is a thing of the past, all forests are managed and thanks to the widespread usage of fibre boards and paper recycling the wood usage is far more efficient and nothing is wasted.
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I'm curious... how practical are disposable utensils made of wood, anyway? I've never seen anyone using them in the US.
Are they as bad as the paper straws that everyone seems to be switching to?
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I'm curious... how practical are disposable utensils made of wood, anyway? I've never seen anyone using them in the US.
I have seen them many times in the SF Bay Area. They work fine. Many are made from bamboo.
The problem is cost. They are several times the cost of plastic.
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Ordinary wood sucks because it's very unpleasant to slide your tongue or lips over it.
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No, he covered it quite nicely with the observation it was about connected cronies.
That is the guiding factor behind economy-crushing corruption for over half the world's population. They just have to hide it better in the west.
Here's what will burst your noodle, as the Oracle might say. "If the regulation is mildly useful, so much the better."
Re:There are better ways, people learn over time (Score:5, Insightful)
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As someone who owns a managed forest,
Do you really?
I must point out that a) wood is a renewable resource
So what are you doing to maintain the soil?
and b) growing saplings fix a lot more CO2 from the atmosphere than mature trees do.
What? No, it most certainly does not. Old trees store carbon more rapidly [pacificforest.org] than young trees. (And while we're here, they don't absorb more CO2 as atmospheric CO2 concentration rises [nature.com], either.
I don't think you're managing a goddamned thing. You certainly don't know what you're talking about.
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Interesting links.
Increased carbon dioxide levels do increase plant growth for some plants grown in greenhouses. CHP generators are used for hot water and carbon dioxide production for heating and enhanced plant growth and the Power gets sold to the grid. The CHP runs during daylight hours, running on natural gas.
On the positive side at least some chp's are used to help enable a greater percentage of Wind Energy to the grid, they can be started and stopped within a few minutes. Supply and Demand for the gri
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You don't need wood, you need a biodegradable fibre source and a binder. The most logical fibre, should be obvious to everyone, hemp, low water use and easy to grow and it only takes one season to produce the crop. You plant trees for timber and not for fibre due to slow growth, it requires a premium price, that timber but not fibre can provide.
So hemp based product, bound with a biodegradable binder, that preserves, protects and binds the fibre but breaks down under UV light. Slow to break down in the dar
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So they'll be handing out real steak knives at (Score:3)
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Go back to Russia, Ivan.
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Fly first class. You get a real steak knife.
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I've been enjoying proper metal cutlery on economy flights for a decade now.
Straws (Score:2)
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Ban ALL plastic? (Score:4, Interesting)
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So Microsoft will buy them, shut down the gaming division and have all the devs cranking out plastic sporks.
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Here at Microsoft, we have BioWare. Apparently it's not just the name of a game, it's all the name of biodegradable "plastic" utensils, which we're told to dispose of in the compost bin. Other places are using a corn-derived plastic substitute that is biodegradable.
Splutter ... splutter ... you can't just go and make plastic that isn't bad!
Where would we get our moral superiority then????
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Here at Microsoft, we have BioWare. Apparently it's not just the name of a game, it's all the name of biodegradable "plastic" utensils, which we're told to dispose of in the compost bin. Other places are using a corn-derived plastic substitute that is biodegradable.
A few small restaurants around here use the same kind of thing. I like the goal of the legislation (assuming that the ban doesn't cover those compostable/biodegradable substitutes), but I think 2021 is a bit too aggressive of a deadline to allow those substitutes to be available widely enough.
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Best thing is to avoid disposable utensils as far as possible.
Japan used to use a hell of a lot of wooden disposable chopsticks. First they started using recycled wood where possible. Now they switched to reusable ones and just wash them.
Bamboo (Score:3)
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It's a matter of the labor involved in farming and processing bamboo. If it takes more labor, it's more-expensive. Expense flows downstream to the consumer, which means people are poorer (you use more labor to make things, thus all human labor makes fewer things, thus people cannot buy as much because they cannot trade their labor for as much because of the laws of physics).
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I suppose the main problem people have with these is their price. Most bamboo products are more expensive than single use plastic equivalents.
Important (Score:2)
Efficient Regulation (Score:2)
I agree in principle that we should not needlessly waste oil or produce trash. But an outright ban has a habit of giving you unforeseen consequences in corner cases. We have market-based regulations available that produce the desired outcome at a lower cost. Place a Pigouvian Tax on manufacturing these items. Bonus: you can marginally lower some other tax or decrease deficits.
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has a habit of giving you unforeseen consequences in corner cases.
Worried about the real-world consequences of a feel-good measure? if you're not conservative already, you're well on your way.
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has a habit of giving you unforeseen consequences in corner cases.
Worried about the real-world consequences of a feel-good measure? if you're not conservative already, you're well on your way.
You know, I used to consider myself a social liberal and economic conservative because of your point. But I have gone the other way. No I consider myself a fully blown liberal because they will at least recognize that a market failure needs fixing.
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You seem to be confusing conservatives with anarchists, or perhaps with DC politicians. Funny how the two overlap.
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I agree in principle that we should not needlessly waste oil or produce trash. But an outright ban has a habit of giving you unforeseen consequences in corner cases. We have market-based regulations available that produce the desired outcome at a lower cost. Place a Pigouvian Tax on manufacturing these items. Bonus: you can marginally lower some other tax or decrease deficits.
I just want this plastic crap eliminated the mechanism why which that is achieved is immaterial if it works. Going the banning route just forces innovators to find better alternative solutions that are easier to dispose or recycle. I have every confidence in industry's ability to come up with new and better tech if they are forced to.
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I agree in principle that we should not needlessly waste oil or produce trash. But an outright ban has a habit of giving you unforeseen consequences in corner cases.
I'd be happy if they would just write laws in ways that avoid the easily foreseen consequences. Sometimes, I think the average politician lacks the foresight of a goat. Other times, I'm sure of it.
Not exactly correct (Score:4, Informative)
You can still make "plastic" plates cups and cutlery that are derived from:
seaweed (in fact the basic science for this has been known for a decade) - this composts naturally, and is usually coated with a thin film that is not water soluble, but will eventually biodegrade if exposed to sunlight (will take longer if kept in landfills)
vegetable fibers (we've used these in entire countries, and at most major universities - anyplace that you see the compost bin says "university plates, utensils and food containers are compostable") - made in large scale, these are fairly close to the costs of plastic.
The early ones from around the 1990s melted too fast, the 2000s were a bit better, but the 2020 version is fairly good - the only exception is if you leave it in your hot (not warm, hot) drink for more than an hour. Why are you taking up a seat for that long? Use a biodegradable ceramic or metal or glass container if you're taking that long, slacker!
Wrong Problem - distraction (Score:2)
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No, that's because of tar sands and long commutes in low mpg trucks.
You can fix both. You can't even make a profit on tar sands below $70, of course, so massive subsidies are part of the economy.
Beer and Wine (Score:2)
Nothing better than a beer in a paper cup!
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When you are in a festival, concert, hockey game, ... they give your beer in a plastic glass.
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Virtue signalling at it's best (Score:2)
THis will without doubt, fuolly and certainly cure thed problem. Plastics will disappear from th eoceans overnight, never to plague thte world again.....
Oh...hold on..... No it won't. Because the EU isn't the problem, and the USA isn't the problem.
This won't remotely put a dent in the problem. Because the countries that are the problem don't give a damn other than being really happy t
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"Virtue signalling that accomplishes nothing."
Years ago, we used to have ring pulls. Now, we have ring pushes. No longer are cities and countries covered with ring pulls. No longer do you risk lacerations from ring pulls on the beach.
Do we still have rubbish in our cities? Well, yes. Can you still get your feet cut on broken glass on the beach? Well, yes. But it is better than it was, and this is no nothing, it is a good thing.
Getting rid of plastic cutlery is a small thing also. But, it is probably a good
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"Virtue signalling that accomplishes nothing."
Years ago, we used to have ring pulls. Now, we have ring pushes. No longer are cities and countries covered with ring pulls. No longer do you risk lacerations from ring pulls on the beach.
Do we still have rubbish in our cities? Well, yes. Can you still get your feet cut on broken glass on the beach? Well, yes. But it is better than it was, and this is no nothing, it is a good thing.
Getting rid of plastic cutlery is a small thing also. But, it is probably a good thing, unless it becomes an excuse for not doing other things. But, let's give it the benefit of the doubt. It is signalling virtue, because it is virtuous. Not very virtuous, but a little bit.
Yes - the EU will tidy up their part of the globe, shuffling the papers around, insuring every glass is in place, making it so wonderful, and that everyone will feel sssooooo good, while China and Africa, will continut to do as they will, dumping huge amounts of plastic into th eworld's oceans. Then the hand wringers will wonder and come to the decision "We need to ban more!! We banned all of this plastic, and th eproblem hasn't gone away! Make all plastics illegal - you can't have plastic pollution if th
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Yeah no, I think pretty much you're the dumbest ass on the planet. See what you do is, instead of just looking and seeing someone else isn't doing the right thing and going "well I"m not doing it either", you grow the fuck up and look to your own actions.
There was a guy driving down the street one evening. He saw a man looking around under street light. He stopped and asked the guy what the problem was...
"I lost my car keys".
"Where's your car at"
"Oh, about a thousand feet up the road. They fell out of my pocket up there."
"Well why are you looking down here for them?
The light down here is a lot better than up there!"
You want to fix a problem, you fix it. You want to feel good about yourself, pretend you are fixing it while doing absolutely noth
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Why doesn't America just shoot half the population. I mean that would have a bigger net positive impact on the environment than your suggestion so let's go with that.
Oh...hold on..... No it won't. Because the EU isn't the problem, and the USA isn't the problem.
Indians shit on the street. Which means it's okay for you to go an shit in the street. After all it's Indias fault. We all live on our own little earth and me throwing a plastic cup on the ground is okay because someone else did it too. waaaaahhhhh.
I take it you're a Trump voter. No that wasn't a question.
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The EU introduced RoHS that limited things like the use of leaded solder in consumer products. People would have moaned about "virtue signalling" but the term hadn't been invented back then.
What actually happened is that the rest of the world basically adopted RoHS since it made more sense to build one product for every market than to make a special one for the EU. The lives of people everywhere were improved because the electronics they were buying had less lead and other hazardous substances in them, even
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The EU introduced RoHS that limited things like the use of leaded solder in consumer products. People would have moaned about "virtue signalling" but the term hadn't been invented back then.
What actually happened is that the rest of the world basically adopted RoHS since it made more sense to build one product for every market than to make a special one for the EU.
And yet, for critical systems, Tin lead or silver tin lead are still in use. The solders that don't contain lead have an issue with something called Tin Whiskers. And it affected a lot of electronics. Here's a listing of the EU's improvements with their new solder formulations https://nepp.nasa.gov/WHISKER/... [nasa.gov].
The lives of people everywhere were improved because the electronics they were buying had less lead and other hazardous substances in them, even though it was an EU rule.
Do you have the citations of solder creating health problems? It's a cool story bro, but responsible recycling is the answer, not creating more problems.
Your welcome.
I'll say thank you when the EU pays for al
Big mistake!! (Score:2)
Cutting brownies is impossible without plastic knives.
I like it: Let's go US, our turn! (Score:2)
Yep, I love this idea. Plastic has creeped into everything. My mom recently told me when she was a kid, there were few fast food places, but you could stop by certain places with delis. The delis would give you a glass to go plate... I take it you'd recycle the glass later.
Bovine excrement virue signaling (Score:2)
Plastic straws/knives/plates/etc. make up a tiny portion of plastic waste. Europe (and the US) make up a tiny portion of ocean plastic waste. Almost all is from Asia and Africa.
So the net change to this is near zero. This is all virtue signaling and will have no real change to pollution.
Meanwhile, it will inconvenience hundreds of millions of people.
Absolute bovine excrement.
Bullshit (Score:2)
Well, that's certainly the most important thing, isn't it? "Convenience". You must be American. I've only heard Americans spouting, "I don't want to help save our environment because it will inconvenience me." Jesus Christ, that's a level of selfishness that you must be proud of.
Don't stress (Score:2)
They banned plastic stuff in my part of California, and I have to tell you, nothing has changed except less wasted plastic. When you go to a restaurant or fast food, instead of dropping a straw in front of you that you ignore and ends up in the trash, you have to actually say, "I'll take a straw, please" (and the please is only required if you happened to have been raised right, which leaves out Trump voters, but to be honest, we leave out Trump voters generally here in California). It's absolutely no big
Blexit (Score:2)
Then...
Frexit
Grexit
Itexit
Spexit
etc...
Use glass (Score:2)
It can be recycled infinitely, and if you want you can reuse the bottles and plates.
How will you throw USA-themed parties? (Score:2)
Where will you get red Solo cups? Perhaps you can import them...
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Re:Good, but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Complete fabrication. It's well documented that approximately 90% of garbage is sourced from major Asian and African rivers.
Since we're talking about EU policy, here's a citation from German national broadcaster on the topic:
https://www.dw.com/en/almost-a... [dw.com]
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Well, fair point, I was talking about how western plastic gets into the water. As you point out, that's a tiny part of the problem to begin with.
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It's well documented that approximately 90% of garbage is sourced from major Asian and African rivers.
It's well documented in the headlines of news articles which didn't actually read the study. No the reality is that the amount of garbage entering the oceans through rivers is tiny. The amount of plastic waste is between 5-15% depending on the study.
And when you go back to your news article that shows that 90% of plastic in the oceans goes through a couple of major rivers read carefully and you'll notice the quote is that 90% of garbage in the ocean *that comes from rivers* does so through only a couple of
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Ah yes, the virtue signalling path. "If we are good, virtuous, self-flagellating idiots acting against their interests to purportedly benefit others, others will respect us and act like us".
In reality, Chinese now have a derogatory word for people who act and think like this, which literally translates to "white leftie". Chinese do not care at all about pollution that isn't immediately impactful. That's why it's been such a challenge to get them to commit to anything at all on CO2. That's not the pollution
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I will continue to insist that me fucking you in the ass over your science denial in the original talk was a strictly one night stand, and no matter how desperate your stalking becomes, I will not be calling you back.
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Obligatory Yes Minister - https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Re:Thats communism (Score:5, Informative)
I want my stuff made of new virgin plastic.
There are several bioplastics [wikipedia.org] made from starch or cellulose that are good substitutes for petro-plastics in many applications. The biggest drawback is cost. We need more R&D to bring the price down.
Some of the starch-based plastics are edible. Where I work we bought a big box of bioplastic packing peanuts. We soon had an infestation of mice in our warehouse. They were munching down on the peanuts, and had chewed through the cardboard boxes they came in. That was over a year ago, and the warehouse still smells like mouse poop.
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Shades of Willy Wonka!
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I have,, I have three in my yard, plus the "trash" bin.
Glass containers 2 corners away. On top of that paper collections once a month roughly.
Re:Sure, just wait a few million years. (Score:4, Informative)
Have you ever actually seen a recycling bin that was sorted correctly? I haven't.
I see you've never been to Japan.
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Why not pay unemployed people minimum wage to sort though your perceived social problem while at the same time fixing another ignored social problem?
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I have, but that was in EU.
That is because they have a Garbage-Gestapo going around checking everyone's bins, and issuing fines.
This, of course, raises the cost of already uneconomical recycling even more.
It is better to just not use so much plastic crap in the first place.
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Little known fact: not all tree knots are assholes!
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Re:good job (Score:4, Informative)
Instead, perhaps we could focus on reducing our practice of shipping raw materials via cargo ships to countries without environmental regulations or labor laws. Currently, these countries manufacture many of our goods at a much lower cost - by dumping waste into the ocean, employing children, and using components that are known by the state of California to cause cancer.
Then they burn even more oil to ship the finished product back to our country.
Here's an extremely understated introduction to the problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (all the statistics cited are from the International Maritime Organization, and are substantially lower than what is now (12 years ago) known: https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com] )
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The shipping is not the issue. Large ships are astonishingly efficient per ton shipped. The rest of your rant makes sense though.
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Instead, perhaps we could focus on reducing our practice of shipping raw materials via cargo ships
Why "instead"? Why not do both? The two actions would be independent, and in no way whatsoever are they alternatives.
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emission equivalent of 50,000,000 cars
In sulfur, dust/soot, yes. CO2, nope!
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In sulfur, dust/soot, yes. CO2, nope!
... and the sulfur, dust, and soot don't matter, because they quickly settle onto the surface of the ocean. The ocean already contains trillions of tons of sulfur. The amount added by cargo ships is negligible, and not harmful anyway. These pollutants are only harmful if you inhale them, or if they settle on leaves or exposed metal. Terrestrial sources are a problem, oceanic sources are not.
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Why focus on CO2? The main issue here is plastic pollution.
Cargo ships create very little plastic pollution compared to disposable drinking straws.
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Seriously. Want to fix plastic in the oceans? Simply enforce litter laws, and actually monitor that that garbage hauler the city pays doesn't simply dump the trash as sea.
But those measures would cost the government money. Why do that when you can instead cost your subjects freedom?
Re:what a waste (Score:5, Interesting)
Want to fix plastic in the oceans? Simply enforce litter laws
Good luck. Nearly all the plastic in the Pacific come from Asian countries that have no cultural tradition of caring about things like litter. More than half of the plastic comes from a single country: China. And most of that enters the sea from a single river. That is why schemes to clean up the ocean are so misguided. It would make much more sense to just clean up the Changjiang (Yangtze) River.
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And most of that enters the sea from a single river.
*sigh*. Another person who read the headline rather than the report. I hate to break it to you but no where near that ... little ... plastic enters the oceans through rivers. Now do yourself a favour, find the news article with the headline you looked up and actually read the report behind it. Look at the conclusions, then look at the study (notice how it was a study of only plastic that goes into rivers), and then look at the references to find a link to how much plastic actually goes in the ocean through
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These measures do a grand total of about zero to plastic waste in oceans. About 90% of it comes from major Asian and African rivers. Most of the rest is from the various coastal nations on the same continents. Which in turn overwhelmingly come in large part from single use packaging of single portion perishables which don't even exist in wealthier countries. Packaging which notably in turn is responsible for massive reduction of human death and suffering from various poisonings due to perishables actually p
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I don't know about the EU, as I don't live there, but here in the USA I see plenty of Joe Blow pieces of shit littering on a regular basis. The mayor of my city even ran on a campaign a few years back of enforcing litter laws and whatnot. When I tried to call and report littering that I had seen I got laughed off the phone line. Each offense is supposed to be a $500 fine, which you'd think the municipal government would be tripping over themselves to collect, but nope. Around here it definitely isn't an imm
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That because related numbers in US while significantly worse than in most of EU, are also quite irrelevant, especially because if the trash annoys you, it's probably not in the waterways but on the streets. Which in turn means it's going to get cleaned off the streets and burned. So it's not going into the oceans.
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And use the spoons to dig ditches. That'll create the hell of of some jobs.
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And use the spoons to dig ditches. That'll create the hell of of some jobs.
That is just silly. Metal spoons would work far better than plastic for digging ditches.
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The science behind paper has improved tremendously in the past 40 years. Enough that paper is actually a sustainable renewable resource, when coupled with sustainably managed forests. And North America is full of sustainably managed forests - the trees we use for paper grow quickly, are replaced quickly (we often overplant, so one tree cut down will be replaced by more than one sapling later on).
We've stopped using old growth forests for stuff like paper decades ago now.
Everything
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Good point about this "youthful" mindset polluting institutional decision making. I kind of wonder, if the government *must* intervene (which, arguably, they shouldn't, but that's my American mindset), why the only tool at their disposal seems to be *banning*? Why can't they do something like offer grants to incentivize inventing a better alternative to these polluting plastics? Or give tax breaks to restaurant chains that use non-plastic stuff? Or give tax breaks to companies who package things with materi
AC snowflakes! (Score:2)
Oh, you delicate little AC snowflake you. Heaven forbid you have to use paper or glass or aluminum.
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We've just switched to using compostable, biodegradable materials, either plastic like materials for the knifes and forks, and paper based materials for the plates. They are different in feel, and touch. They last as well for the duration of the meal and they get the food into your mouth. It all works perfectly well.
Is it window dressing? A little. It's drinking bottles are the real problem. But, still, it is better than nothing and big things are made of lots of small things.