Twenty Firms Produce 55% of World's Plastic Waste, Report Reveals (theguardian.com) 150
Twenty companies are responsible for producing more than half of all the single-use plastic waste in the world, fuelling the climate crisis and creating an environmental catastrophe, new research reveals. From a report: Among the global businesses responsible for 55% of the world's plastic packaging waste are both state-owned and multinational corporations, including oil and gas giants and chemical companies, according to a comprehensive new analysis. The Plastic Waste Makers index reveals for the first time the companies who produce the polymers that become throwaway plastic items, from face masks to plastic bags and bottles, which at the end of their short life pollute the oceans or are burned or thrown into landfill. It also reveals Australia leads a list of countries for generating the most single-use plastic waste on a per capita basis, ahead of the United States, South Korea and Britain.
ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tonnes to the global waste mountain, concludes the analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. The largest chemicals company in the world, Dow, which is based in the US, created 5.5m tonnes of plastic waste, while China's oil and gas enterprise, Sinopec, created 5.3m tonnes. Eleven of the companies are based in Asia, four in Europe, three in North America, one in Latin America, and one in the Middle East. Their plastic production is funded by leading banks, chief among which are Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.
ExxonMobil is the greatest single-use plastic waste polluter in the world, contributing 5.9m tonnes to the global waste mountain, concludes the analysis by the Minderoo Foundation of Australia with partners including Wood Mackenzie, the London School of Economics and Stockholm Environment Institute. The largest chemicals company in the world, Dow, which is based in the US, created 5.5m tonnes of plastic waste, while China's oil and gas enterprise, Sinopec, created 5.3m tonnes. Eleven of the companies are based in Asia, four in Europe, three in North America, one in Latin America, and one in the Middle East. Their plastic production is funded by leading banks, chief among which are Barclays, HSBC, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase.
Whoever shits in the pool should clean it (Score:4, Insightful)
This is basic, taking responsibility for one's actions. Most of us learned by kindergarten, if you make a mess, you clean it up. The owners of these companies should pay to clean up their mess. No, it's not up to individuals. We were all fine using recyclables and biodegradable packaging before these big companies forced plastics on us. We were told recycling would fix things, but most plastics are not actually recyclable, and just get tossed into the waste stream, whatever the end user's intentions.
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We were told recycling would fix things, but most plastics are not actually recyclable, and just get tossed into the waste stream, whatever the end user's intentions.
I recycle everything. But my non-recyclable plastic waste skips the waste stream and goes straight to the end. Fed to a baby seal that I keep in my basement just for the purpose. I do NOT want that stuff going to a landfill.
Re:Whoever shits in the pool should clean it (Score:5, Informative)
You don't recycle everything. You "recycle" everything. And then, some other folks take your recycling and dump it in the trash. Most recycling never gets recycled. It's "too expensive" so we just ship it to someone who ships it to someone who promises, cross their heart, to recycle it. They then dump it in the ocean instead. But hey, we did our part so we get to feel good.
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See if you stop being a bleeding heart for a few seconds you realize we've already got the answers to sustainable living and sequestering carbon at scale.
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That is quite sensible. Might I suggest breeding the seals and tossing them in bogs periodically as they get sick. This is actually a fairly fast path to putting all that oil back in the ground.
This. But I propose taking it a step further.
All this recycling is a disservice to future generations. We should be burying everything in a common location. When we have finally exhausted all the earth's natural resources, future generations would have a convenient centralized location to find new resources. Instead they'll just have a bunch of stupid plastic park benches and nothing to carry their groceries home in from Walmart.
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Fine. I propose dumping the trash from the entire metro area you personally live in on top of where you live.
Let's see if your heart bleeds.
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typical republican, "if you disagree with me I will take you voting rights away"
Re:Whoever shits in the pool should clean it (Score:4, Informative)
These companies give fuckall about selling plastic vs something else. They are just meeting demand and there is no shortage of one time use plastic which isn't replaceable in any case.
Take accountability for YOUR OWN choices. If you are fine using recyclables then choose products which use them, point out alternatives to vendors who don't and opt not to use them in your own business.
Re:Whoever shits in the pool should clean it (Score:5, Insightful)
Your line of argument has a pretty serious flaw though: It assumes that humans actually have full control over their "choices". Quite a bit of research suggests otherwise.
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Of course my reasoning isn't saying individuals should only change themselves but rather they should change their own CHOICES. Companies are actually just groups of people as well. As the people working in those companies make these choices (including fiscally justifi
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Your money. Stop making it profitable and/or start thinking of other ways that are more profitable. Nobody offers the choice? Stop being a consumer and provide them a choice.
Consumers are flush with cash, throwing it away on junk sold at 800%+ markup online, digital goods, and cell phones at 10x the out of pocket they would have paid 10 years ago.
There might not have been anything you personally could have done to cha
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Except that when push comes to shove, people like you can't tell the difference between "slightly anarchist hippies" and communists. And you can't tell the difference between fascists, and patriots. And you'd much, much rather have fascists than communists.
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This seems like an attempt to confuse others with word choice.
A slightly anarchist hippy or libertarian can be a communist. Thousands tried small scale communism back in the day and no shortage of preppers are libertarians preparing with a group for exactly that sort of lifestyle in a societal collapse. Both support individual choice, including the choice to step back and check out to form a small community and mostly live how they see fit.
Fascist and patriot al
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How in the world do you take what I wrote as an angry attack? Man, I'm all for unity. I was literally raised by anarcho-communist hippies who bought their own land and formed a commune in Connecticut back in the seventies. I just don't trust you, or your judgement. For example, you think Fascism is a leftist ideology. How in the world do you come to that conclusion?!?
You seem to be fervently anti left, not anti-authoritarian. But maybe I'm just confused. What does Fascism mean, in your world view, and what
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Oh no. You can't be that oblivious. Tell me, am I a slightly anarchist hippie? Why or why not? What evidence do you use to reach your conclusions?
Re:Whoever shits in the pool should clean it (Score:5, Insightful)
For sure, taking responsibility for one's actions should be paramout; however, in the world of plastics, it's not quite that simple.
1. the plastics industry is selling their product on the basis that it is recyclable, the problem is that may of those plastics are not being recycled.
a) it's not cost effective
b) the region does not have the means to recycle that kind of plastic
c) that plastic is not easily identified by the processor
2. not all plastics are recyclable (mixed plastics)
a) they're included with many products
b) the consumer doesn't know what plastics they're getting until they've arrived
3. not all recyclable plastics get recycled
a) consumer directly throws them in the trash
b) processor discards the plastics (see point 1)
Back in the old days, before plastic was used in all kinds of packaging, we used cardboard and glass. Cardboard really can be recycled, glass can too, but glass has another neat trick: it can be disinfected and reused. Cans are great too, they can be recycled. In Europe, they use steel cans which can be sorted magnetically. In the US, they're aluminum which has to be separated manually.
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That is your part. Do it. Embrace the idea that you have power rather than the idea you are powerless simply because you don't have MORE power. This gives others permission to do the same. The people choosing to perpetuate recycling of plastic are people, people with children
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In Europe, they use steel cans which can be sorted magnetically. In the US, they're aluminum which has to be separated manually.
Aluminum pop cans are pretty common in Europe, at least the parts of Europe that I know of. Aluminum can be separated from nonmetals and steel very easily, using eddy current separators. For example here: https://youtu.be/2yRWCanU0kM [youtu.be] at 1:30.
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What would you have my plumbing made of instead? Copper? Lead? What about the inside of my refrigerator? Should it have heavy glass or metal drawers for my meats and produce? What should the interior lining be made of? Am I going to have to reinforce my kitchen floor to bear all the extra weight?
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There are no reasonable alternatives. The demand is not for plastic, it is for packaging. The problem is not the end users. The problem is the source. Fine the source, and suddenly, more recyclable packaging becomes the cheaper option. Simple.
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You totally do not understand your own argument.
I do not decide which plastic to get when I go to McDs. I decide which food to buy. McD decides which plastic to buy and which to sell.
THEY MADE THE DECISION, THEY HAVE TO PAY FOR IT
Trying to shift the decision downstream to the people that a) have no information and b) have no method of communicating the reason for their 'decision' upstream (i.e. can not call up McD and say "I went to BK because you bought styrofoam) is a liars way to avoid taking respons
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It's the bullshit that talks people into believing something is harmless. In this case Exxon put a lot of effort into convincing people plastic was easy to recycle so ideal to use. Exxon has been doing similar shit for at least a century when they trotted out their "experts" to reassure the people that adding 6 or 7 grams of lead to a gallon of gasoline was harmless and those chemical warfare people who said otherwise were a bunch of liberal hippies who hate progress.
Now that the truth is slowly coming out,
Wrong list of companies (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, this is the wrong list of companies. While they certainly aren't blameless, they are just supplying the raw materials and have nothing to do with the actual use of plastic. Have you ever bought single-use plastic from Exxon or Dow? No, you get it from McDonald's and Walmart. Those are the companies that should be on this list, since they are the ones whose decisions give individual consumers no other options.
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Unfortunately, this is the wrong list of companies. While they certainly aren't blameless, they are just supplying the raw materials and have nothing to do with the actual use of plastic. Have you ever bought single-use plastic from Exxon or Dow? No, you get it from McDonald's and Walmart. Those are the companies that should be on this list, since they are the ones whose decisions give individual consumers no other options.
What are you talking about? Those companies give consumers plenty of other options. Anybody can buy a reusable cloth bag if they want to. Similarly, anybody can reuse their "single-use" grocery bags as trash bags in their house. And all of those companies like Walmart provide recycling bins where you can bring back bags full of bags and discard them for proper recycling.
The companies we need to hold responsible are the garbage haulers and the city governments. They cut corners by putting only one perso
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Unfortunately, this is the wrong list of companies. While they certainly aren't blameless, they are just supplying the raw materials and have nothing to do with the actual use of plastic. Have you ever bought single-use plastic from Exxon or Dow? No, you get it from McDonald's and Walmart. Those are the companies that should be on this list, since they are the ones whose decisions give individual consumers no other options.
Agree. The article gave no examples of single-use plastics made by Exxon.
It is just another Guardian article attacking Exxon for producing oil.
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Man, I thought your last line there was wrong. Then, I called Walmart. I don't actually have another choice. They said I had to come there and buy single-use plastics from them. Bummer.
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I'd even assert that retailers have a larger responsibility than the suppliers.
Quick vocab
* Supplier: The plastics manufacturers.
* Retailer: Restaurants and markets selling products that use/are plastics
* Customer: The person who buys plastic-lined take out boxes, soft drinks with plastic straws, etc.
Suppliers only produce what is ordered or what is anticipated to be ordered based on prior sales. If no one orders plastic clam shell takeout containers, they'll stop producing them.
Retailers are the MOST power
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That worked brilliantly with Union Carbide.
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You mean Union Carbide India Limited? The Bhopal disaster guys? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I think you'll need to explain your analogy. I'm not seeing quite how it fits.
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Hell, you aren't even following your own analogy. You aren't targeting "whoever shat in the pool", that would be the consumer. You're going after the guy who fed the consumer the lunch that they shat out into the pool. If someone throws an empty water bottle out of their car window, is it the bottler's fault? Is it the fault of the company that made the plastic? The company that extra
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We should be going after the folks who created it first. But also the country that dumps it in the ocean. Yes, country, not plural. It's China.
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China and its neighbors... If you want to name a single country, Philippines, all by itself, dumps 30% of the global total. I believe this article [ourworldindata.org] was on the front page somewhere.
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Absolutely agree, the dumpers carry a lot of the blame. And yes, it is mostly China and its neighbors. But focusing on the end of the garbage chain won't change anything. The people who started the problem need to pay. The only reason that China et al. are dumping this crap is because the whole "recycling initiative" is a scam. Plastic is simply not recyclable, economically. People may think they are being responsible, and recycling plastic. Cities might think they are being responsible, and selling their
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There is NO demand for the product. There is a demand for the category the product fulfills: packaging. Honestly, what do you think people did before plastic? We wrapped stuff in paper. We used glass, which can be recycled an infinite number of times. Nobody is out there going "Man, you know what I need today? Some single use plastic packaging." No one.
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And you've just proven my point for me. If we fine the overloving shit out of ExxonMobile and their polluting ilk, and make them pay the real, actual costs associated with their products, then those products won't be cheaper anymore and the market will choose cheaper, more environmentally sound alternatives. Yay! Sensible regulation, legally enforced corporate responsibility, and the free market all working together for a brighter tomorrow!
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Yep. We get the government we deserve.
Damn, now I made myself sad.
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Well, I humbly disagree. People were paying China to take recycling, and China was dumping it at sea. Nobody was just dumping their shit in China, they were paying China to handle their waste and China was doing it in an irresponsible fashion.
But before we go any further, I found this little conversational trick that works to get rid of Chinese shills, so just humor me and tell me what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 3rd, 1989? Paid Chinese shills will always disengage when I ask that question, so it h
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Tell me, what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 3rd, 1989?
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Nobody specifically asked for the shit. They just wanted a sandwich. The companies who make the shit sold it to the sandwich guy, who bought it because it was cheaper. You, being a responsible individual, threw the shit in the recycling. Your city then picked it up, and sold it to a guy who sold it to a guy who sold the shit to some guy in China, who dumped it in the ocean instead of recycling it.
I do not blame you. I do not blame the sandwich guy. I do not blame your city. I blame the guy who made the shit
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Before ExxonMobile started pushing plastic like a drug dealer, people used recyclable packaging like glass and paper. ExxonMobile and other petro-dealers are the root of the problem. Now, they are trying to push the narrative that we, the people who have no choice but to use their product, are to blame. Don't help them push that narrative. It is their fault, they made money off of it, and they should pay to fix the problem.
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So I should sue the Morton's Salt for my high blood pressure?
These plastics have many legitimate one-time uses, like in hospitals where you're not going to recycle an IV bag, the tubing or needle it uses. Trying to punish a raw materials supplier for how the product is used is like blaming Home Depot for an axe murderer.
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No, the problem with the suppliers is that they use their extreme wealth to push propaganda and false advertising to people. Look at it this way. Salt's been around forever. Now suppose someone came along with an alternative to salt, that was worse for you, and harmed the environment. Well, maybe being an informed consumer, you'd choose just to keep using salt. But these faux-salt pushers use their wealth to push their faux salt, and pretty soon, there are no alternatives left.
Then it comes out that the fau
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CO2 is bad when you dump it into the atmosphere but we're not bringing lawsuits against gas companies that sell pure CO2, not are we blaming sparkling water companies for climate change.
I'm sure that if we started dumping massive amounts of paper, steel or aluminum (other recyclables) into the ocean they too would cause environmental damage.
The solution here isn't vilifying companies that produce raw materials, it's to ensure that the consumer cost of using such products is representative of their true cost
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Nah, we can certainly vilify petro companies. They used their power and money to lie to the public about their products for decades, while feeding off the public teat in the form of subsidies and tax breaks.
Solar panels are not toxic. You are thinking of the manufacturing process, which, yes, produces some toxic waste. Which can be contained and disposed of properly. But the panels themselves pose little risk to the environment. Yes, they contain small amounts of cadmium, but it does not leach out of the pa
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In 20ish years, we're going to have a lot of toxic solar panels to deal with in the US.
What do you mean, "to deal with"? They'll be sitting around generating power. What's to do with them other than use the power they're generating, which has been paid for multiple times over?
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Solar panels don't last forever.
https://www.discovermagazine.c... [discovermagazine.com]
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Exxon and friends convinced Pepsico and Coke that plastic was fine because it was so easy to recycle when they knew it wasn't. It started with a huge disinformation campaign for the purpose of those 20 or so firms to make more money.
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Might be better to target them for fraud. They're the ones who fraudulently claimed plastic was so easy to recycle and fraud is supposed to be illegal.
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Oh, and it isn't pollution until someone throws it in the ocean. Before that it was just a desired product. Perhaps even one selected because the consumer preferred that trees stay in the ground instead of being pulped to make cardboard. You wouldn't know, you're too busy blaming the wrong people.
Lack of econonomic diversity. (Score:2)
Being that there are only a handful of companies in every sector that handle the bulk of the products we get, this is a huge problem overall.
Chicken Prices are high, not because of the Pandemic or what Biden is doing, or what Trump has done. But because a major Chicken Producer tried a different breed of rooster, who doesn't produce as many chickens.
This with a small number of major producers of items that we need or want, creates a lot of problems where a single company has A. a lot of political power, be
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I am pro-business, but they are some businesses out there that are too large, and prevent other businesses from growing and flourishing, where their interests combined with their size pushes policy, and keeps alternatives down.
Before reagan, we used to have a competitive business environment in the west. Starting with reagan, we have dismantled many of our laws and regulations that prevented monopolies. Sadly, trump wanted to use them, but only against companies that he hated, not for the right reasons.
We need to restore that and break up companies. A great example, was when we bailed out GM, Chrysler, and Ford, we should have broken up GM and Chrysler. That way, we would have not just 2 badly mismanaged companies here, but
Look on the bright side (Score:2)
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Re: Fueling the climate crisis. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not only dubious but wrong. Replace every bottle with glass, youâ(TM)ve now increased fuel emission in both production, transport and recycling by an order of magnitude as well as aggravated existing shortages in sand (yes, that is a thing, look it up).
People have this idea that the 1800s and early 1900s were this boon for nature and progress, but the 1970s have a different opinion about that, driving over dirt roads to deliver your milk on your front porch in a glass bottle, turns out to be really energy intensive. Plastics and other refined fossil fuels reduced a lot of that.
That doesnâ(TM)t mean theyâ(TM)re not problematic, as with democracy, it may be bad but itâ(TM)s better than everything else weâ(TM)ve tried. We need to refine our processes through natural market pressures (primarily cost), not incentives that only benefit the status quo.
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The only reference to climate specifically in the article is "“Since most plastic is made from oil and gas – especially fracked gas – the production and consumption of plastic are becoming a significant driver of the climate crisis,” said Gore."
And coming from Al Gore I'll take that with a bit of salt. I can see the fracking process being leaky and letting methane and other GHG into the atmosphere as well as carbon from the power to drive manufacturing processes but metal/glass/pape
Dumb claim (Score:5, Insightful)
They say these companies produce the "plastic waste," when they actually mean "these companies produce plastics, so we're going to blame them for each time someone discards a plastic item."
Re: Dumb claim (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. The companies to highlight are the ones sending the finished product out into the world (e.g. Coca-Cola). The companies selling to consumers are far more susceptible to consumer pressure and bad PR than a company like Dow or BASF.
Re:Dumb claim (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, neoliberalism is a scam. I can NOT litter all day long and try very hard to 'recycle' my plastics despite the fact that most of them aren't recyclable and never have been, and I will never make a dent in the total plastics dumped into the environment. I can take all the personal responsibility that I like, but individual actions on a scale like this are meaningless. It's part of the lie that the oil companies have sold us: if the world is burning, it's YOUR fault as a consumer. You could CHOOSE not to e
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They say these companies produce the "plastic waste," when they actually mean "these companies produce plastics, so we're going to blame them for each time someone discards a plastic item."
It's the dinosaurs' fault.
Stupid dinosaurs.
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Made from dinosaurs. https://what-if.xkcd.com/101/ [xkcd.com]
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They say these companies produce the "plastic waste," when they actually mean "these companies produce plastics, so we're going to blame them for each time someone discards a plastic item."
Single-use plastics, are waste. Period.
Yes, perhaps in limited cases (such as the medical industry) it may be necessary for safety reasons.
Making it legal to wrap a fucking orange in plastic at the grocery store, is the idiotic bullshit we need to address, because society is obviously damn good at building a better idiot.
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They say these companies produce the "plastic waste," when they actually mean "these companies produce plastics, so we're going to blame them for each time someone discards a plastic item."
Single-use plastics, are waste. Period.
True, but sometimes, they're really useful waste. For example, trash and garbage bags prevent trash and garbage from blowing out of the garbage truck and ending up on our streets, from which it then ends up in our rivers and streams, and subsequently in our oceans. And those single-use grocery bags, assuming consumers are properly educated, actually do get reused once as trash bags, i.e. they're useful waste, at least up to a point (quantity-wise).
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Plastic Generators, not plastic waste producers (Score:2)
Fucking environmentalists, always trying to pervert the language to their own ends.
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Glass only for single use (Score:3, Interesting)
There are several advantages to mandating glass for single use products like drink bottles:
1. More expensive, so deters the poor and middle class.
2. Easier to reuse and recycle.
3. Better for the environment on every front that matters.
Even libertarians would be hard-pressed to make a coherent argument for why single use plastic should be tolerated given the dangers associated with it and how it creates more of a demand for future government services (cheaper coke = more Medicare and Medicaid)
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1. More expensive, so deters the poor and middle class.
Now I understand why environmentalists mostly come from the upper class. Because environmentalist policies have the effect of impoverishing and controlling the lower and middle classes. And according to you this is not incidental, it is intentional.
Everybody's a libertarian until... (Score:2)
Everybody's a libertarian until they do something like screw up their health with their lifestyle and suddenly decide that they need outside help. Usually help in the form of generous government assistance to repair the damage they inflicted on themselves.
Besides, there's an easy solution to this: drink water, coffee, tea and other products that lend themselves to reusable containers. Those drink
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Re:Glass only for single use (Score:5, Insightful)
There are several advantages to mandating glass for single use products like drink bottles:
1. More expensive, so deters the poor and middle class.
The one cent difference between the cost of a plastic and glass bottle won't make any difference. Remember that bottles made in less wealthy countries tend to be made of glass.
2. Easier to reuse and recycle.
Easier except for transporting it.
3. Better for the environment on every front that matters.
16 ounce plastic bottle (empty): 19 grams
12 ounce glass bottle (empty): 458 grams
Each Coke truck currently carries 600 cases of 24 bottles, for a total of 14400 bottles. So the difference between plastic and glass bottles is 6,321,600 grams, or about 7 U.S. tons.
Back in 1998, there was a study of heavy trucks that showed that every ton that you can reduce the weight of those trucks decreases fuel consumption by 3%. Doing the math upside down ((1 / 0.97)^7), moving to glass bottles translates to a 24% increase in fuel consumption and a 25% decrease in capacity, for a total of a 65% increase in the fuel used per fluid ounce of soda transported.
I don't know about you, but I don't think that increasing the fuel consumption of beverage delivery *and* recycling by up to 65% qualifies as being "better for the environment on every front that matters".
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16 ounce plastic bottle (empty): 19 grams
12 ounce glass bottle (empty): 458 grams
Did you miss a decimal point? 458 grams is almost half a kilogram. It's more than a pound! An empty glass bottle does not weigh this much. A full one probably doesn't weigh this much!
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Identifying plastic makes doesn't change anything (Score:2)
So, this report identified the major plastics manufacturers. Not sure what it really changes.
What we need is another type of container with similar properties as plastic but which is bio-degradable. Even bio-degradable plastics only degrade to smaller particles, they don't really fully degrade to dust. There has been work on plastic eating bacteria and using seaweed as replacement containers, but both still seem to be decades out.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/s... [forbes.com]
Patriotism and national pride (Score:2)
Over my many decades of "recycling", I can say that every human-caused problem in any community has one very simple first-step solution: responsibility.
I'm Canadian, and I'm proud to be.
I'm Canadian, and I'd like to be proud of our waste management.
>>>>>>> To me, that means one thing: we shouldn't be shipping it to anyone else.
Start there. As a country, state, county, region, city, whatever, agree to handle your own waste. I believe that would be enough to shift the focus from "what d
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Canada isn't some world leader. In anything, really.
I am Canadian, and not proud to be. Why should I be? I didn't actually do anything to be Canadian, I was just born here. I don't understand your sentiment.
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No idea how old you are. I pay a lot of taxes, and I'm proud of what I get for them. I own a house, and am proud of how easy it is to own one. I own a business, and never needed to jump through hoops to build it.
I live a life of no real worries. I don't worry about missiles/rockets/bullets flying overhead. My roads are good. My schools are good, my post-secondary schools are fantastic. My food is outstanding, I shop at farms directly. We give medical care and unlimited food to anyone who asks for it
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As for actual solutions, my personal opinion is this: trash should be throwable into either a) the nearest forest; or b) the nearest ocean. Doing so should a) decompose within a week; or b) provide actual nutrition to animals eating it.
Why the hell would you assume our food, would provide nutrition for animals? Have you seen the average human these days? Rates of heart disease, obesity, and cancer?
WE shouldn't even be eating that shit.
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Actually, I wasn't talking about the food. I was talking about the trash.
Packaging, like wrappers, could be nutritional gels. If you've ever seen cardboard impregnated with wild flower seeds, designed to decompose and grow flowers wherever you toss them.
Certainly coconut husks are another excellent example of a packaging material that would be nutritious to all sorts of flora and fauna, even just in the bluffs at the end of your residential roads.
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ALL of the larger nations need to pass laws to require no more exporting of trash to other nations. Seriously. All nations really need to do their own recycling, or at least be held responsible for it.
I can understand small nations sending their trash elsewhere to be recycled, but not large ones.
Real problem is the variety. (Score:4, Insightful)
You know those numbers for 'recycling' plastics? They divide it into 7 types:
1 PET/PETE: Soda bottle plastics
2 HDPE: Most other 'bottles', such as milk, etc.
3 PVC: Soft, flexible plastics. Tubes, toys, etc.
4 LDPE: Bags and wrappings
5 PP: Food containers, carpets,
6 PS: Styrofoam
7 Other: anything else.
For practical purposes (i.e. after sale), only 1 and 2 are actually recycled. Either of those can easily go into a plastics recycling bin. 3 can never be recycled, and 4-7 are basically only recycled by manufacturers (i.e. if you get pellets and make stuff, you might take a failed product and recycle it before it leaves your doors).
The real question is why any non-permanent object is allowed to be made from 3-7. I think they should be taxed to near death.
YES! (Score:2)
Instead competing in bribing and conning people they can compete at driving costs down that finally involve the REAL costs!
Re: (Score:2)
Or you could ask yourself why the manufacturer should have to bear the costs of all the externalities from the use of the product when everyone enjoys the benefits. It's not like they wouldn't pass the cost down to consumers anyhow, but so long as you get to feel like someo
Re: (Score:2)
worthless study (Score:2)
The real question is, what happens with the waste? We already know that the vast majority of what is in the ocean comes from 2 nations (China and Viet Nam).
In addition, in Northern Europe, they just burn it, and call it bio-waste.
In America, mostly buried though we export some 10-20% of it, where it was either recycled, though these days, mostly just heaped.
What needs to happen is burning it better than doing nothing with it.
The other choic
If people didn't buy that stuff... (Score:2)
Company list (Score:2)
Just in case this hasn't already been posted, here's the list of the top 20 (total 2019 single-use plastic waste in million metric tons):
ExxonMobil (5.9)
Dow (5.6)
Sinopec (5.3)
Indorama Ventures (4.6)
Saudi Aramco (4.3)
PetroChina (4)
LyondellBasell (3.9)
Reliance Industries (3.1)
Braskem (3)
Alpek SA de CV (2.3)
Borealis (2.2)
Lotte Chemical (2.1)
INEOS (2)
Total (1.9)
Jiangsu Hailun Petrochemical (1.6)
Far Eastern New Century (1.6)
Formosa Plastics Corporation (1.6)
China Energy Investment Group (1.5)
PTT (1.5)
China Resou
Lacking evidence (Score:2)
Where is the evidence that all these polymers are used to produce single-use plastic that ends up as pollution?
I'm sure a bunch are used in things like PVC and ABS pipes in your home, in car parts, guttering, clothing, wiring, etc.
Should we go back to copper pipes? That's expensive, resource intensive and not to mention the global shortages of copper.
Or animal hides for clothing? That'll piss off the vegans.
So, they identified the top plastics companies? (Score:2)
How about we just call this what it is - a list of the top players in the chemical industry reframed as a list of naughty people who need to be shamed because of a bug up some fake researcher's ass.
Re: (Score:2)
That's less than 3% per company, on average. And these are all VERY, VERY large companies.
Yeah. Delivering a VERY, VERY large amount of product.
Don't try and dismiss a "mere" 3% when you're talking plastic produced by the metric fuckton daily. It tends to make you look like someone justifying a sale. Or the lawyer defending it.
Re: (Score:2)
You are right. (See for instance https://www.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.org] )
But the question is much more complicated than purely a question of energy and how their use related to climate change.
One question is the down cycling of these product. We still don't fully understand the impact of micro plastics in our ocean and rivers. But it seems pretty clear that it is not a good thing. Meanwhile, paper bags or cotton bags are (quickly) biodegradable.
An other question is long term sustainability. Paper bags for instan