'Bill Nye, the Sellout Guy' (gizmodo.com) 278
An anonymous reader shares a report: Bad news for everyone who loved watching Bill Nye the Science Guy during middle school science class: your fave is problematic. This week, Coca-Cola, one of the world's biggest plastic polluters, teamed up with TV's favorite scientist for a campaign to create a "world without waste," a joke of a corporate greenwashing campaign. In a video innocuously titled "The Coca-Cola Company and Bill Nye Demystify Recycling," an animated version of Nye -- with a head made out of a plastic bottle and his signature bow tie fashioned from a Coke label -- walks viewers through the ways "the good people at the Coca-Cola company are dedicating themselves to addressing our global plastic waste problem." Coke, Nye explains, wants to use predominantly recycled materials to create bottles for its beverages; he then describes the process of recycling a plastic bottle, from a user throwing it into a recycling bin to being sorted and shredded into new material.
"If we can recover and recycle plastic, we can not only keep it from becoming trash, but we can use that plastic again and again -- it's an amazing material," quips Shill Nye the Plastic Guy. "What's more, when we use recycled material, we also reduce our carbon footprint. What's not to love?" What's not, indeed! The video is, on the surface, an accurate depiction of the process of recycling a beverage bottle. The problem lies in what recycling can actually do. Nye paints a rosy picture in the video of plastic Coke bottles being recycled "again and again" -- but if everything worked like he's said, we wouldn't be facing plastic pollution that has grown fourfold over the past few decades. Thanks to concerted lobbying efforts, the public has been led to believe that recycling is the cure for our disastrous plastic addiction. What it does in actuality is place the burden of responsibility on the consumer and allow companies like Coca-Cola to get away with no repercussions for their waste.
"If we can recover and recycle plastic, we can not only keep it from becoming trash, but we can use that plastic again and again -- it's an amazing material," quips Shill Nye the Plastic Guy. "What's more, when we use recycled material, we also reduce our carbon footprint. What's not to love?" What's not, indeed! The video is, on the surface, an accurate depiction of the process of recycling a beverage bottle. The problem lies in what recycling can actually do. Nye paints a rosy picture in the video of plastic Coke bottles being recycled "again and again" -- but if everything worked like he's said, we wouldn't be facing plastic pollution that has grown fourfold over the past few decades. Thanks to concerted lobbying efforts, the public has been led to believe that recycling is the cure for our disastrous plastic addiction. What it does in actuality is place the burden of responsibility on the consumer and allow companies like Coca-Cola to get away with no repercussions for their waste.
All or Nothing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)
No. That isn't the issue at hand. It's the fact that giants like Coca Cola can profit massively off of pollution, while putting the burden of cleaning up their mess onto external recycling programs. There's no incentive for them to cut waste other than to improve their public image. And in the case, it's cheaper to pay a popular TV figure than to actually putting an effort into solving the problem. They need to be compelled, not encouraged.
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And in the case, it's cheaper to pay a popular TV figure than to actually putting an effort into solving the problem.
OK, so what is the actual solution to the problem?
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Return to glass bottles and metal cans with a deposit high enough to pay for the reuse or recycling process
Why not do the same for plastic bottles? Many jurisdictions require deposits on plastic soda and juice containers.
In America, plastic bottles require a deposit in California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont.
Yes, these states have much higher recycling rates. Incentives works.
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Most of this is with the 2 liter bottles. There never was a glass 2-liter size. Cans are still used for the most common small size, the pastic size that's slightly larger does match the common glass bottle size from the past. However I think these might be less common than the can sized or the 2 liter size.
Personally, I get the 2 liter size because it's the least amount of waste. I do put them in the condo's recycle bin, but I don't them take them to a recycling center for a deposit refund. (this isn't
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There never was a glass 2-liter size.
Are you sure about that? [google.com]
I remember those things from when I was a kid, they were freaking heavy.
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Or, can be recycled... but far too often isn't.
Most glass and cardboard isn't recycled either, and only 65% of aluminum is recycled.
We need to do better, which is what Bill Nye is saying, yet TFA is attacking him.
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Recycled glass is not food-grade, so can't be used for bottles.
Not according to these articles.
https://coloradosun.com/2021/0... [coloradosun.com]
https://cen.acs.org/materials/... [acs.org]
https://www.gpi.org/glass-recy... [gpi.org]
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder what the added weight of glass is over plastic. The added weight per beverage might drive up transportation costs, which typically uses oil also.
It's a hard problem to solve really. Not enough aluminum for all drinks to be that way and people still need to recycle. The other options is to forego recycling altogether and try and use a material that is the least carbon-outputting as possible.
Also, how much energy is used in melting down the plastic versus using glass? Glass you would have to clean but maybe that's overall better then plastic.
I would need a lot more data. Pepsi and Coke have likely done the math.
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For Coca-Cola specifically? Go back to the system of glass bottles that are collected, sanitized, and refilled.
Aluminum containers are also an option, for weight and durability. It *is* possible to make a resealable aluminum containers...
=Smidge=
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For Coca-Cola specifically? Go back to the system of glass bottles that are collected, sanitized, and refilled.
Aluminum containers are also an option, for weight and durability. It *is* possible to make a resealable aluminum containers...
Even if not resealable/reusable making new aluminum can from existing cans uses less energy and resources than making them from raw materials. As far as I know, glass and aluminum can be recycled indefinitely -- or at least *way* more than plastics -- and back into usable bottles/cans, whereas most plastics are quickly "down cycled".
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This mostly works well, though I recall in Mexico in the mid-90s where this was still the system (with nary a plastic bottle to be seen), it was common to get soda "en bolsa" to avoid paying the deposit. Basically, the vendor would open the bottle, pour the contents into a small plastic bag, put a straw in it, and tie the bag around the straw, putting the glass bottle into the rack for the distributor to pick up for sanitization/re-use. If you wanted to keep the bottle, you had to pay a pretty significant
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:4, Informative)
If they're going to try and take credit for recycling, then need to own the full trip of a plastic bottle from their factory, to consumers, and back again.
There is a small but significant amount of plastic waste generated when manufacturing and wasting plastic bottles. In many regions the run off is not regulated and full of microplastics and solvents.
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Re:All or Nothing? (Score:4, Informative)
Except it's not Coke doing the polluting - it's their customers.
Which is exactly the propaganda that the plastics, soft drink, and fast food companies have been pushing since the 70s when it looked like the government was going to impose regulations on disposable packaging. Woodsy the Owl and the sad Indian were corporate shills.
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The other part of the problem is that very little plastic ends up getting recycled in practice, so painting recycling as a done-deal solution to plastic waste rather than the footnote of a mitigating factor that it actually has been so far is highly misleading. It's like an oil company saying it's fine to burn gas because atmospheric carbon capture exists.
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:5, Interesting)
And, what is wrong with Coca-cola trying to promote recycling? Nothing. Fuck this story. It is trying to bash a massive enterprise for trying to be more responsible with its operation, which is exactly what it wants. Bill Nye the sellout guy? Maybe, but not because of this instance. This is just a hate-article trashing one cultural icon because of hate for another cultural icon. Coca-cola, btw also make cans, which are highly recyclable. They produce a massive benefit for their consumers who enjoy their beverage, and are often the key drivers in improvements in major third-world areas, as supplying and selling Coca-Cola is typically one of the first break-through economic activities that enters a region that ends a war. The infrastructure gains to get Coke everywhere are positives for those regions.
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is that recycling plastic is not going to solve the problem. It's a little bit better than throwing it in a landfill, but we really need to start making a lot less single use plastic to begin with.
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing the context. Since at least the early 80s, the beverage industries have been promoting the idea of recycling to consumers while doing very little to actually leverage it. The whole concept has been a shell game by the beverage industry to move blame for plastic waste to consumers and away from the producers of the products. Bill Nye actively participating in that process is problematic. All you have to do is spend a little bit of time looking into the history of promoting plastics recycling promotion and you'll understand. Here's a slide deck that happened to be the first google result when I searched: https://talking-trash.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TalkingTrash_FullReport.pdf
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, what is wrong with Coca-cola trying to promote recycling? Nothing.
They aren't promoting recycling - it's grandstanding and gaslighting, something the plastics industry and corporations that make heavy use of it have been doing it for decades, and I'm sorry to say that you fell for it. By pretending to care about recycling and offering it as a solution to all plastics ills, they wash their hands of all responsibility, pushing it onto consumers who have little choice in the matter when all their products come bottled, packaged, and wrapped in plastic.
Planet Money did a show [npr.org] a couple of years ago that covers the high points. It's absolutely worth a listen if you still think plastic recycling is something that actually has value or is done on any kind of scale. It also exposes how blatant the plastic industry players were in their attempts to con the public into shifting the environmental responsibility away from producers and onto consumers.
Coca-Cola isn't a net benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
This is just a hate-article trashing one cultural icon because of hate for another cultural icon. Coca-cola, btw also make cans, which are highly recyclable. They produce a massive benefit for their consumers who enjoy their beverage, and are often the key drivers in improvements in major third-world areas, as supplying and selling Coca-Cola is typically one of the first break-through economic activities that enters a region that ends a war. The infrastructure gains to get Coke everywhere are positives for those regions.
I'm sorry. But Coca-Cola's flagship product is simply bottled sugar water, so its consumption doesn't produce a "massive benefit" for their consumers. The regular version might actually be one of the major contributors to the obesity pandemic. The "light" or sugar-free version is at best neutral (of no benefit or harm), good for people who can't stand the taste of plain water.
As for Coca-Cola being a driver of economic activity in the Third World, just do a simple search for "Coca-cola cheaper than water",
Re: Coca-Cola isn't a net benefit (Score:3, Insightful)
Coca Cola does produce a net benefit for its customers, which is why they buy it. The worth of a Coca Cola isnâ(TM)t just in calories, but the utility and pleasure those who drink it gain from it. That they are willing to spend as much money as they do collectively shows this benefit.
Now, the fact that it also has some quite nasty downsides is not to be ignored, but those can also be overstated, particularly compared to the obvious benefits!
Re: Coca-Cola isn't a net benefit (Score:4, Insightful)
Plastic recycling is poor (Score:5, Insightful)
The reality is that a large fraction of plastics are NOT recycled, because doing so is inefficient or expensive. Telling us how plastics are recycled does not change that. Getting more people to recycle does not change that.
A far better solution is to not use plastics.
Re:All or Nothing? (Score:5, Informative)
So, if you can't have 100% recycled everything, you're just gonna take your ball and go home? You have to start somewhere.
Yes, but the process portrayed in the video is overly optimistic, at least for recycling PET bottles. From TFA:
Most of those plastics can only be reused once or twice before ending up in a landfill. Nye, for all his talk of science on TV, should know this. Over recycling’s 60-year history, less than 10% of plastic that has been produced has ever been recycled. And while in theory, PET—the type of plastic that makes bottles—can be recycled more times than other types of plastic, that’s not usually what happens. Virgin plastic is, simply put, cheaper to make into things like bottles than recycled plastic. Less than 30% of plastic bottles are recycled in the U.S., and a lot of that stock is turned not into other bottles, but “downcycled” into other things, like filler and fabric. These products, in turn, can’t be recycled again. The plastic ends up in landfills. Even with effective recycling mechanisms, research has shown that stuff like bottles can’t be in use for long and will eventually be delegated to landfills. From there, the Coke bottles that Shill Nye so cheerily shows off in the video will last for so long that their lifecycle lasts beyond human frameworks for time.
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Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
"Bill Nye, the Sellout Guy"
"Shill Nye, the Plastic Guy"
If there's one thing I admire, it's someone who makes cogent, dispassionate arguments in support of his position without resorting to cheap mockery.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Interesting)
+1 insightful. Had points yesterday, but this one deserves it. This summary was written like a hit piece, not to be informative. Coke is doing what they can, and they are working on different ways to solve the problem, it isn't like they are going around dumping toxic waste everywhere and laughing manically.
Coke has even recently been working with different plastic formulations to try and make a more sustainable plastic.
https://www.coca-colacompany.c... [coca-colacompany.com]
We already have a more sustainable plastic. (Score:3, Insightful)
Been used for centuries. It's called...glass.
Re:We already have a more sustainable plastic. (Score:4, Insightful)
And if they used glass the same people would be complaining about all the pollution caused by transporting all that heavy glass around.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
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30 re-uses out of a bottle makes up for a mountain of those super thin Costco/Sams/Walmart/Kroger branded bottles that crush before you finish drinking out of them.
Now if all consumers would do that, those thicker bottles would be the far better option. Alas, most people I know truly think of even the Dasani bottles as single use disposables.
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Just because the plastic is made from dead plants instead of dead dinosaurs doesn't aromatically make it better for the environment. I don't know which bioplastic Dasani are using but most of them are not any more biodegradable than PET and some are actually worse as the energy need to recycle them is much greater or don't have an active recycling scheme so always go to landfill.
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No they're not, and the fact you believe this means their PR dollars are working.
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How many brands of water come in plant based bottles produced from corn that are biodegradable?
As far as I know, Dasani, which is a Coke brand.
They are working on different plant based plastic formulations that will help by not using fossil fuels, as the link I gave describes.
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Actually, weirdly enough, I had two five point days so far this week, and one last week. It has been hit or miss though, as I had a months long drought as well.
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Had them constantly when I never posted. Haven’t seen them in probably 4-5 years now.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Informative)
Coke is not doing "what it can." The reality is that plastic is not economical to recycle. It never has been economical to recycle, and it is unlikely to become economical to recycle anytime soon. Because of that almost no plastic actually gets recycled. In fact, in the U.S. almost none of the plastic that gets put into recycling bins actually gets recycled. I can put my two liter bottles in the recycle bin all day long, and the best that I can hope for is that it gets incinerated. That is what my local recycle center does with two liter bottles. At worst it gets out of the system and ends up in the environment.
Meanwhile Coke is selling people on the idea that they should buy their freaking WATER in plastic bottles.
Coke's product delivery mechanism is killing the planet, and apparently we have to be OK with that because people can't go without their sugary goodness.
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If there's one thing I admire, it's someone who makes cogent, dispassionate arguments in support of his position without resorting to cheap mockery.
Fuck you, asshole!
Did I get it right?
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And the fact that I got modded Insightful is a pretty good indication that the wrong people are getting mod points.
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You don't have to be mean about it. We really need to try to be kinder to each other. Eg:
"Is there a way I can help you to fuck off?"
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Came here to say the same. You want to argue against Nye's statements? Be my guest. You disagree with his partnership with Coke? Fine. You start childish name-calling? Sorry, that immediately disqualifies your opinions. Come back after you've learned how to discuss things like a grown-up.
Re: Wow (Score:2)
Yeah, the article is a sizeable wall of text but is ultimately devoid of content.
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Don't blame the company. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't blame the company. (Score:5, Insightful)
Blame the consumer, bottled water accounts for an entire shopping aisle in every store around here. And many of us have personal wells with no such water quality issues. If you didn't buy those bottles in the first place Coca-coala wouldn't be handing more plastic to you.
I really don't get it. Barring a few extreme and rare exceptions, municipal water in the US is clean and safe. Ditto for well water. There are some areas with stronger tasting waters, but a simple brita filter (or reverse osmosis if you're extreme) takes care of that if it's a problem. Where I live, the water is high-quality and neutral-flavored, yet I see people buying cartloads of water all the time.
Frequently (but certainly not always!) it seems to be lower income people buy cartloads of bottled water.
Even at the local hippie cooperative grocery store I regularly see people bringing in giant plastic jugs to fill up with water. I don't get it. Why spend extra money on something that is pretty darn close to free?
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I've never been anywhere in the US where the tap water didn't taste absolutely horrible.
Where I am, that's mostly resolvable with a two stage filter. In the Phoenix area, the only thing that works is reverse osmosis or distilling.
And of course water NEVER has a "neutral" flavor. Even distilled it still tastes like water, which isn't a pleasant flavor. I'd rather have a Coke any day.
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I really don't get it. Barring a few extreme and rare exceptions, municipal water in the US is clean and safe.
Since we're talking about Coca-cola, where do you think Coca-cola gets their water from when bottling Dasani?
The answer: The local municipal water supply.
The first step for any Coca-cola bottling plant is essentially filtering municipal water to get ready to carbonate it before they add the soda syrup. With Dasani, they just skip the carbonation and syrup steps and send it straight to be bottled. (Same with Aquafina, just Pepsi bottlers.)
Which means a lot of people buying bottled water are literally buying
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I specifically refill my 5 gallon jugs for drinking and cooking water. The store across the street has a city certified filter system with numerous stages and I enjoy the taste of the water. We have personal water bottles we just refill and carry around with us. Mine keeps the temperature nicely.
I suppose I could of bought a filter system for the home and clean up the city water a bit more, but I'm happy this way.
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Even at the local hippie cooperative grocery store I regularly see people bringing in giant plastic jugs to fill up with water. I don't get it. Why spend extra money on something that is pretty darn close to free?
I can explain this to you. It seems you have simply never encountered these people closely, but there are people who are obsessed with water quality. Far too obsessed. They have filters on their faucets at home and think that the majority of us who don't worry about water and drink from the tap are insane, stupid, or both.
In the previous decade I had a co-worker who was like that. He was convinced if he drank tap water that he was drinking poison. He used to buy Fiji Water and bring the bott
Re:Don't blame the company. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think you can hold the consumer responsible, to that big an extent? I mean, you could if drinks like Coca Cola were readily available in options like glass bottles, at prices equivalent to the plastic, and you kept choosing the plastic containers voluntarily.
But my experience w/Coke is that you can only find it these days in recyclable glass bottles when you buy the "Mexican Coca Cola" at inflated prices. The most economical way to buy the drink is in plastic 2 liter bottles.
The bottled water thing is complicated. Sure, a lot of people are ridiculous to buy them when their tap water at home is just fine and they could fill their own containers to take it with them. But most of it I see people purchase is due to concerns about their water out of their faucet. I lived in a town where the water would at least occasionally run brownish-yellow for a while, despite the water plant insisting they exceeded all government standards for clean water. When the pipes are all 100 years old and corroding badly underground, all bets are off as to what comes out of your faucet. So yeah, many residents relied on bottled water to drink and used the tap water only for bathing or washing dishes.
Re: Don't blame the company. (Score:5, Interesting)
Aluminum bottles exist and are cheaper/safer than glass.
Sure, they're a tiny bit more expensive than plastic, but not much.
I'd like to see aluminum replace the plastic personally.
Re: Don't blame the company. (Score:3)
Re: Don't blame the company. (Score:3)
If it's all recycled I'd think so.
Aluminum is super recyclable.
Probably would require a high deposit though.
In Belize they successfully direct recycle glass bottles many times over (the bottles are worn around the edges from so much reuse), but the deposit is the PPP per Capita equivalent to about $0.50 /bottle.
Restaurants and bars keep close watch on their bottles and make sure they get back.
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if drinks like Coca Cola were readily available in options like glass bottles, at prices equivalent to the plastic, and you kept choosing the plastic containers voluntarily.
I would. I don't like glass bottles, for a lot of reasons.
No you blame the company (Score:2)
As for your personal well, they're contaminating ground water all over. The supreme court just used their "Shadow Docket" to uphold a Trump era EPA rule that more or less guts the clean water act. Also Arizona has big problems with agribusiness tapping into ground water reserves.
You're not nearly as safe as you think you are. Ask the folks at Flint, MI about the bottled water aisle some
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making this voluntary is the problem.
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Ban advertising and put marketing executives in prison. They've been manipulating consumers habits with psychological tricks for decades. To the degree that I'm not confident consumers have much individual responsibility for their behavior.
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I bought a glass jar of mustard ($2.00) and it cost less than a small bottle of water ($2.19). I'm guessing that the profit margins on water are way better than on mustard, but the materials and ingredients are clearly more pricey for mustard.
Opinion piece not a story (Score:2)
Opinion pieces like this should not be here
Enough already (Score:3, Interesting)
Vengeance is not justice. We don't need a pound of flesh from the wrongdoer, we just need to do better today and tomorrow. The thing about microplastics is they are helpfully collected and concentrated by water systems and we have ways to clean them which work on much faster time frames than it took to saturate the world with microplastic in the first place.
Instead of focusing on getting a pound of flesh from Coca-Cola who almost certainly didn't travel back in time and decide to switch to plastic purely for evil we should focus on standardizing cleanup and filtration in the pipeline as well as cleanup efforts in the Ocean. These companies in the US and the rest of the western world have been paying someone (mostly China) to process this plastic for decades and they were just shredding it and dumping it into the ocean instead... now they need to clean it up.
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These companies in the US and the rest of the western world have been paying someone (mostly China) to process this plastic for decades and they were just shredding it and dumping it into the ocean instead...
Quit letting the invisible hand of crapitalism fix pollution problems, hint Public Relations is not a fix. Shame on Bill, maybe burn him as a witch, thats the PR thing to do. Plastic should be treated like lead, never disposed of always reused even if its just park benches. Every other solution is just more masturbation from the press and politicians.
Coke should pay for it (Score:2)
This is similar to how Walmart is the world's biggest welfare queen (never mind the problematic origin of that term).
If we made these companies actually pay the broader costs incurred by their actions they would c
I really prefer articles (Score:5, Insightful)
without the author's opinion in them.
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Good (Score:2)
Bill Nye has always been garbage (Score:5, Informative)
Bill Nye was always a corporate puppet.
The real science guy you should have been worshipping all along was Beakman [imdb.com] (and friends).
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I always found him more engaging and more interesting than Nye.
stop telling us how to think (Score:5, Insightful)
Approved Sources (Score:2)
To be fair, it's an article from one of the five sources Slashdot links to (The Verge, WSJ, etc...) So, you know, you have to post it.
It's become somewhat of an amusing pass-time. Spot the errors in the Verge version of the article vs. the original they link to. Those writers must churn stuff out while watching TV.
Virtue Signaling? (Score:2)
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It's not news. It's Gizmodo.
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Why are we posting hit pieces (Score:5, Interesting)
This is hands down the lowest quality bait I've ever seen in my life. For shame editors for greenlighting this bullshit.
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Consumer Demand (Score:2)
Greenwashing is all about making feel good about the choices they make. So we attack windmill and solar panel farms that kill a bird or two a month as the ultimate
The creators of the problem won't solve it (Score:5, Informative)
I hate to sound like a crusty old fart here (I'm 48, for what it's worth), but I feel like the younger generation who have only ever known disposable plastic, including many of the commenters here, don't realize it was never an inevitability, and that these companies, not the customers, chose to start packaging everything in single-use plastic.
In high school in the early '90s I worked in a grocery store. The only single-use plastic soda bottles that existed were 2-liter bottles. Aluminum cans were big, but most soda was sold in reusable glass bottles. You'd pay a deposit when you bought an 8-pack (16 oz glass bottles, in a cardboard tote), and you'd return the empty 8-pack to the store to get a refund of the deposit. We had a big bin at the front of the store where we'd drop the returns, and the delivery drivers from the soda companies would take the bottles away to be washed and reused.
This was normal, for decades, until it became *cheaper for the soda companies* to just start putting everything in single-use plastic.
See also: how all toys and household goods are now sold in impossible-to-open blister packs, mylar chip bags, etc. None of this existed in the '80s, and even though we didn't have recycling, we also didn't produce nearly as much single-use plastic waste as we do now.
Responsibility.. (Score:5, Insightful)
What it does in actuality is place the burden of responsibility on the consumer
Yes, and if there's one thing you should understand about the modern zeitgeist it's that nobody will take fucking responsibility for anything. It's not our fault we buy coke products hand over fist and toss the plastic in the garbage! Coke should have done something!
It's not our fault we burn oil on joyrides and commuting with one person, why it would be an inconvenience to carpool or use a fucking bus! It's not our fault we buy all sorts of frivolous shit we don't need and need to have it delivered across the country! It's the big bad evil oil companies for selling us that oil, damn them!
And don't get me started on the "oil companies are gouging us!" line of reasoning where liberals are a) pissed that we use so much oil (rightly so) and b) pissed that oil isn't cheaper so we can all just buy it for a nickel a gallon and burn it like it's nothing.
Then we get to fat people. It's not my fault I'm fat! They make the food taste so good! Or even, hey, it's not my fault that I weigh 400lbs and use up a massive amount of tax dollars and insurance/medical resources, in fact it's a good thing! These rolls of blubber and the fact that I can't waffle my way up a single flight of stairs without wheezing isn't bad, it's beautiful!
We could always go back to glass (Score:2)
Which was recycled quite a bit 30 years ago. But what Bill is saying is true... plastic is recyclable. But no one does it. It probably doesn't matter what material you use, people will abuse it. People used to talk about broken glass bottles everywhere. The best solution isn't to fix the material, but to fix what people do with it, and that means penalize people for leaving the bottle on the street with a tax. Throw a hefty tax on the bottle, like 25c or 50c. Something that will make people hurt if they thr
"Bill Nye Saves the World" Video: "My Sex Junk" (Score:2)
His record includes ups & downs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Plastic -- the least recyclable recyclable (Score:2)
If you want to do something genuinely green, don't buy what Bill Nye is selling -- oh, and don't buy "disposable" plastics. Aluminum, cardboard and glass are all dramatically more recyclable than even the most eco-friendly of plastics, and most plastics aren't actually recyclable at all. There are dozens of videos on YouTube that talk to the myth of plastic recycling, but one of my favorites is still this one, from Climate Town [youtube.com].
Coke USED to totally recycle its GLASS bottles... (Score:3, Insightful)
Coke USED to use glass bottles, cleaning them and using them over and over (with nothing disposable but the caps, which were a tiny bit of steel {recyclable, separated from the trash stream by magnets} and cork {renewable} - or later a thin plastic disk that would burn off when the cap was melted down).
Then the government BANNED that, claiming it was a public health measure (rather than, say, in response to graft from sellers of material for disposable containers.)
Government: A problem masquerading as its own solution.
1. Ban something that ain't broke, mandating or otherwise driving its replacement by something that is.
2. BRIBES!
3. Rail against the brokenness of the substitute.
4. Rinse and repeat.
The problem with Earther (Score:3)
The Earther section of Gizmodo is constantly churning out drivel like this clickbait. It dramatically dehydrates the waters when it comes to Climate Change. When you want to get a message across do you:
A) Write an article filled with facts and evidence?
B) Write an article filled with invective and vitriol?
C) Write an article with catchy headlines and lazy name calling?
Earther constantly chooses option C. Option B happens on rare occasion. Have yet to see them choose option A. It's the bottom of the barrel of climate change discussion/reporting.
If you buy that plastic bottle (Score:4, Insightful)
Literally Rubbish (Score:3)
Yet another absolute crap, mocking, pressure-group-twitter-post articles posted on Slashdot.
Honestly this site is utterly fucked.
Re: (Score:3)
Glass is but one option that would likely be better for you in the long term, than the shit we're now finding in our lungs.
Re: (Score:2)
Use PV and wind to make glass bottles out of the most common element in the crust of the Earth.
Re: Aw shucks (Score:3)
..can we at least burn the designer of the cartoon character? Pretty please?