A New Global Plastics Treaty Is Coming For Your Bags and Bottles (qz.com) 166
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: The world is choking in plastic trash, and the UN wants to do something to fix it. A weeklong meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) on Plastic Pollution in Punta del Este, Uruguay, ended last Friday (Dec. 2). It was a first, formal step towards a legally binding international treaty to deal with the global plastics problem. Such a pact would be the most consequential environmental treaty in years, on par with 2015's Paris Agreement on climate change. The INC will spend the next two years negotiating how binding the regulations will be. While most of the 1,800 attendees in Uruguay ostensibly support ending plastic pollution as a baseline, competing motives have factions pulling in different directions. Hardline countries and campaigners are pushing for outright bans on "problem plastics" and certain chemicals, as well as internationally set regulations and strict production monitoring. Plastics industry coalitions -- which include the world's largest plastic producers, like Nestle and Unilever -- are calling for a focus on recycling and global targets defined by national priorities.
Details of the treaty will have to be negotiated over the next couple of years. The High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, made up of 45 countries, is calling to restrict the single-use plastics found in packaging and consumer goods. They make up half of the plastic waste produced today, so a restriction would hugely reduce pollution, as well as force a transformation for consumers -- and the companies producing their goods -- in the way they drink bottled water, order takeout, or buy cleaning products and cosmetics. An international standard for monitoring production would also try to ensure that plastics are chemically safe, genuinely recyclable, and durable enough to be reusable. Of the roughly 10,000 chemicals used in producing plastics, more than 2,400 have been found to be harmful, causing a range of health problems from asthma to infertility. Recycling is not currently viable for most plastics, but better production monitoring could shift that. Further reading: Is Plastic Recycling a Myth?
Details of the treaty will have to be negotiated over the next couple of years. The High Ambition Coalition to End Plastic Pollution, made up of 45 countries, is calling to restrict the single-use plastics found in packaging and consumer goods. They make up half of the plastic waste produced today, so a restriction would hugely reduce pollution, as well as force a transformation for consumers -- and the companies producing their goods -- in the way they drink bottled water, order takeout, or buy cleaning products and cosmetics. An international standard for monitoring production would also try to ensure that plastics are chemically safe, genuinely recyclable, and durable enough to be reusable. Of the roughly 10,000 chemicals used in producing plastics, more than 2,400 have been found to be harmful, causing a range of health problems from asthma to infertility. Recycling is not currently viable for most plastics, but better production monitoring could shift that. Further reading: Is Plastic Recycling a Myth?
Talk is cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
It's easy to throw those grand ideas into the air without offering any solutions. The simplest example - the plastic bottle used for drinks. Say you eliminate it from the circulation completely. Now what? What do you replace it with that meets the same usability criteria - being cheap, lightweight and shatterproof?
Re:Talk is cheap (Score:5, Informative)
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Aluminium!
You insensitive clod.
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That gets burned during recycling, so it's less of an issue. It won't end up as microplastics.
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That gets burned during recycling
70% of aluminum cans are recycled.
The aluminum is used three times on average before someone throws it into the trash.
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Public fountains are the endless source of bacterias, viruses and related diseases. No one maintains them, while everyone keeps touching them.
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Some of us don't have a strong immune system. Some of us are immunocompromised, or just unwell or have a long term medical condition which affects their immunity. Some of us are just old, because - guess what - your immune response changes with age. Meanwhile, everyone needs a clean and safe source of water.
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People who drink diet soda are more likely to gain weight than people who drink the same amount of regular soda.
Although several studies have shown this correlation, none have yet shown causation.
To show causation would require test subjects to be randomly assigned to drink one or the other, and no study has done that.
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Around the time I turned 30 (but for other reasons than just turning 30) I decided to lose some weight. Cut out soda entire for a month or maybe month and a half, reduced lunch intake, swapped burger out for salads, basic things. But then I decided to let myself phase in diet soda. I didn't notice it at first, and it didn't happen fast enough to make a clear correlation but after about 2-3 months of daily diet soda consumption, I was having some seriously weird health effects. Fatigue, brain fog, forget
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Some studies [theguardian.com] coming out about artificial sweeteners now. It looks like it's a bit more complicated than we've been led to believe.
Re:Talk is cheap (Score:4, Insightful)
being cheap
Wanting cheap containers is what got us into this mess in the first place. The result is toxic litter. We, as a civilisation, have to grow past disposable goods. Disposing of plastics in our environment is even bad for the plastic industry, though they don't acknowledge it yet. The chemical bonds in plastics are high-energy enough to present a tempting target for bacterial metabolism, which has already started to evolve in the Pacific garbage patch. A future world where bacteria rot all plastics is not a good one!
For the specific problem of drinks, relying on aluminium (although plastic-lined [youtube.com]) already offers superior longevity for carbonated beverages; at my local grocer, it's about a 10-20% markup over plastic to get Coca-Cola beverages in cans instead of plastic bottles, depending on how generous The Man is feeling on a given day. If those prices are somehow subsidized by the insane cheapness of fully plastic containers, then by all means it's time to raise them higher.
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Re: Talk is cheap (Score:2)
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Glass is heavy, fragile, and lets light in. These factors cause additional shipping costs, breakage, and spoilage (depending on the contents).
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Once an aluminium can is opened, it can't be refilled.
Then don't make the aluminium into cans, make it into bottles. There is no rule that states that all bottles must be made of only glass or plastic.
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The coating that is applied to the inside of a aluminum can is insignificant compared what goes in to a plastic bottle. An as stated before that plastic is burned off when the can is recycled and does not enter the environment to form microplastics.
One more thing that we will need to accept is that we never be 100% free of plastics. We just need to use them more responsible.
Re:"We" do not (Score:5, Interesting)
Why?
Here are some scenarios:
The best case. Humanity gallivants around the galaxy leaving landfills in our wake, with habitable worlds in a rim around a giant low-energy wasteland that's too expensive to travel through, like a phage plaque [sdsu.edu]. Eventually we end up in segregated pockets.
The second-best case. Humanity gets as far as colonizing the solar system. The poorest people never escape Earth. The second-poorest people live in Earth orbit, throwing their trash out an airlock. Eventually, an ablative cascade [wikipedia.org] is triggered, making it impossible for anyone to leave the surface.
The third-best case. China's reckless habit of dumping rockets [spacenews.com], an attitude that seems to have resulted from the rapid spread of abundance, and therefore what you might call "true civilization," causes an ablative cascade all on its own, and we never get into space in large numbers. Obsessed with extracting what resources we can still access (but still refusing to recycle anything), mining out the planet becomes our only option. The whole world eventually looks like BaoGang [youtube.com], which I can't stress enough is a real place that already exists.
The fourth-best case, if you think we'll slow global warming but not avert it. The ongoing ecological collapse (particularly in insects [pnas.org], predators [latimes.com], and biodiversity reservoirs [unep.org]) removes all barriers to rampant herbivory, leading to severe erosion, yet more heating, weather events so extreme that parts of the planet become uninhabitable. Eventually, the spread of plant and herbivore diseases brought on by migrations and loss of biodiversity might make it unsafe to grow crops outside or hunt, potentially starving billions of people.
The fifth-best case is textbook global warming, where the planet survives our recklessness but we have to spend a great deal of our precious abundance on fleeing from the consequences of our own actions, which very much include petroleum extraction. The equatorial regions become basically uninhabitable, large land animals survive only in domesticity, the real estate market in Canada continues to get more vexatious, New Zealand has more billionaires than citizens, et cetera. We could have just tightened our belts, but SuperKendall said any show of restraint is tantamount to going back to our caves, so the entire state of West Virginia collapses into a giant sinkhole following a fracking incident.
And even worse than all that is what happens if we continue treating plastics the way we currently do. As I said in my first post, there are already species of bacteria that can eat polyethylene terephthalate, the plastic in disposable water bottles, polyester fabric, and magnetic tape. Ideonella sakaiensis [wikipedia.org] was discovered in 2016 at a Japanese recycling plant, and at least two species have been identified [biomedcentral.com] in the Pacific garbage patch. These locations are both very much destinations for the flow of material—what evolves there probably doesn't travel far—but that only means the time bomb is ticking a little slower. Here's the breakdown:
1. Humans are, at all times, covered in and filled with many thousands of species of bacteria, including members of the Bacillus genus.
2. A Bacillus strain was identified in the garbage patch
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If making things more expensive actually stopped people from being polluting/wasteful, no one would own a gargantuan SUV.
How colossally wrong. How many people own a pencil? How many people own a private jet airplane?
If a gargantuan SUV cost the same as a pencil then many more people would own one. If it cost the same as a jet airplane then far fewer people would own one. But there are people who own private jets despite the cost. You are utterly wrong to say that no one would own a gargantuan SUV if making things more expensive stopped people from being polluting/wasteful.
I am very much in favor of stopping virtually all subs
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Meanwhile, all electric cars will in time become SUVs since small cars can't pack large battery cars due to the range vs weight tradeoff. Some manufacturers, like Ford, for example, already started removing small cars from the market (Focus, Fiesta).
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Say you eliminate it from the circulation completely. Now what? What do you replace it with that meets the same usability criteria - being cheap, lightweight and shatterproof?
Aluminum obviously. Exxon has nothing on those bauxite barons.
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consign (Score:5, Interesting)
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As others have said - aluminum beverage bottles are an obvious option. Cans are already common, and they've been making comfortable scre-top aluminum bottles for years now.
Another is what we used to have - reusable glass bottles. They're not completely shatterproof, but an old-fashioned milk or Coke bottle was massively more durable than what we get today. And for that matter even modern beer bottles are pretty frigging tough when people don't intentionally break them - an issue that could be easily addr
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You picked the one plastic use that we have a solution for. Bottle/can recycling exists and works well. It works so well that homeless people 'steal' the profit that sanitation companies think is theirs.
The real problems with plastic is two fold:
1) Stupid recycling laws. People do things like outlaw one use plastic bags when one use plastic bags make perfect small (4-6 gallon) garbage bags. So now grocery delivery companies charge me $2 for grocery bags that the government thinks I will reuse, but I thr
I was put on this earth to turn it into garbage... (Score:2)
Want to make the world a better place? (Score:2)
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Not all plastic bottles are evil (Score:5, Interesting)
I have two "disposable" plastic bottles I bought from the vending machines at work. When I bought them, they contained snapple. I drank it. After I drank it, I peeled off the labels and rinsed out the bottles. Now, for the 6-7 months, I have been refilling these bottles 1-2 times a day from the water coolers at work. I drink it, I make my morning coffee from it, I water my office plant with it. You know, all those things you can do with portable water. Yesterday, I used one to rinse a large splat of bird poop off my car's hood. They're nice bottles. They hold about a pint, have a nice narrow-waisted shape and oversize lid so when I drink them, they're one or two sips like a pint of water should be for an adult. They don't take on the weird musty flavors or require vinegar rinses like the kleen kanteen they replaced did. They fit perfectly in my backpack's side pockets. They're pretty much a perfected design. I would not like it if I couldn't replace them, if I ever have to.
Re:Not all plastic bottles are evil (Score:4, Informative)
I have two "disposable" plastic bottles I bought from the vending machines at work. When I bought them, they contained snapple. I drank it. After I drank it, I peeled off the labels and rinsed out the bottles. Now, for the 6-7 months, I have been refilling these bottles 1-2 times a day from the water coolers at work. I drink it, I make my morning coffee from it, I water my office plant with it. You know, all those things you can do with portable water. Yesterday, I used one to rinse a large splat of bird poop off my car's hood. They're nice bottles. They hold about a pint, have a nice narrow-waisted shape and oversize lid so when I drink them, they're one or two sips like a pint of water should be for an adult. They don't take on the weird musty flavors or require vinegar rinses like the kleen kanteen they replaced did. They fit perfectly in my backpack's side pockets. They're pretty much a perfected design. I would not like it if I couldn't replace them, if I ever have to.
You do realize that the bottle manufacturers themselves even say not to do this? Reusing disposable plastic bottles greatly increases the amount of microplastics that break off and chemicals that leech into whatever you're drinking. Spend 10 dollars and buy yourself a metal or glass water bottle.
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Obvious solutions. (Score:3)
Use the damn plastic more than once. We have kitchens full of stoneware we use over and over again, but we use a lighter, cheaper, and more durable plastic bottle one time and throw it into the sea. It's madness- and it's the easiest thing in the world to stop doing.
I don't throw away my fuel tank every time I run out of gas.
Good (Score:2)
First of all (Score:3, Insightful)
Second - this should have been done 20 years ago. One day, maybe even in my lifetime, we will look back on "single use plastics" kinda like we look at asbestos now.
UN wants to do something to fix it. (Score:3)
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The UN has become a a compromised, mostly corrupt organization. It's become worse over time.
Carbon capture (Score:2)
think about plastics starting from your 3D printng (Score:2)
If you've done 3D printing, and I know many of you have, you start to realize how useful plastics are. You also start to realize the wide variety of compositions, qualities, quirks, and special 'tricks' needed to get things to work right. We've been intensively using plastics for what, 75 years now? Lots of knowledge and skill has been acquired, as much as great appreciation for the utility and efficiency of their use. Sure, you can curse at cars being mostly plastic now; and get frustrated that soda bottle
A little perspective (Score:2)
Say what you want about plastic recycling not being a thing but that's not because it isn't technically feasible. If "we" subsidized it and outsourced it to countries with cheap labor just like we do with solar panels, the problem could be solved.
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You're right - the problem isn't that it's not feasible, it's that it's not profitable. A considerably more intractable problem in a capitalist economy.
And we *have* been shipping it to countries with cheap labor to recycle, ever since the oil companies began their "plastic is recyclable" greenwashing campaign. Perhaps you remember the hubbub a few years ago when China stopped accepting our plastic trash? Because even with dirt-cheap labor it's no longer worth sorting it properly after the fact. Especia
of course the manufactures are ppushing for (Score:3)
Not my bags - They are for the ages! (Score:2)
I'm a bit biased (Score:2)
Admittedly, I'm a bit biased. I make a living building plastics recycling robots.
Yes, I've heard the abysmal recycling numbers. But this is a question of apathy, not capability. We have the technical means to separate out just about any kind of plastic from another, but the problem is that so many people are willing to just throw their plastic in the trash.
The question isn't, "Can we recycle plastics?" but "Why aren't we mandating it?" Some governments, like Switzerland, require their residents to
UN reasoning (Score:2)
UN reasoning:
Most plastic pollution is coming from Asia, therefore US has to stop using plastic.
Most GHG emissions are coming from Asia, therefore US has to stop using fossil fuel.
Re:So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying that all plastic is useless. Plastic packaging allows food to be stored in a protective atmosphere, and kept way longer than otherwise possible. Saves on preservatives (most of which are bad for us), food waste, and adds a lot of convenience. It would be nice if that packaging could be made reusable or at least made from one one type of plastic so that it can be easily recycled. Plastic can be recycled very well, but only if it is not contaminated too much with other plastics. That is the biggest challenge in recycling it.
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at least made from one one type of plastic
This. One type of plastic.. say 5 colors max. Fucking deal with it.
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Plastics also degrade in quality each recycling cycle.
Alternatives exist, for packaging too, some are already in production https://www.sourcegreen.co/foo... [sourcegreen.co]
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Fuck you and your endocrine disruptors.
Re:So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yep.
I've tried to get into the habit of is buying higher quality bags and washing them for re-use. Kinda a pain in the ass though, and I never end up keeping it up.
I've had more success weaning myself onto lots of tupperware. Glass or plastic, depending on usage - I figure even plastic is a huge improvement over bags if I use them for years. There's lots of options in sandwich and snack sizes, and up to at least quart sizes. Larger half-gallon to gallon sizes are less common, but do exist. One tip: hea
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A local farmer started selling their milk in glass bottles at my grocery store. I love it it. It costs about $3 more a gallon, but you get the $3 back when you bring back the bottle. Way less plastic waste (just the lid is plastic and disposable) and I get to support a local vendor. They are now also doing sour cream and cottage cheese in cardboard containers with plastic lids.
The closer we can get to the source of our food, the better our food is. I live in a farming community, why can't my food come mostl
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Glass bottles weigh a crap ton more than plastic bottles. I'd bet that the shipping costs (ie emissions) of transporting those things back and forth relative to their plastic counterparts are not negligible.
No worries, they will be transported on the backs of electric unicorns. And the washing and sterilizing between uses will be done by fairies.
Not at all like the old days when we stopped doing that for a good reason.
Re:So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:4, Interesting)
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We stopped doing it because it cost more money and was more labor intensive. We didn't switch to plastic bottles out of environmentalism.
Yes. It used more energy, water and labor as well as obviously costing more. And yes, cutting those things is better for the environment. Plastic also replaced paper and carboard to save the trees, also out of environmentalism. Maybe before your time, but don't think going back to the old ways won't still come with the old costs.
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Also, recycling plastic uses either heat or toxic solvents to dissolve the plastic - hardly environmentally benign.
Surely using heat is entirely benign - or at least could be if the power is generated properly. If not then switching to glass is going to be bad since it will take a lot more heat energy to recycle a glass bottle.
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I worked at a dairy bottling plant for a few months. It was mostly plastic, but we did have a line that used recycled glass bottles. The "wash and sterilize" was generally one step - shoot hot water with a little detergent into the upside down bottles as they passed on the assembly line, followed by plain hot water to rinse out the detergent. The whole process took a few seconds. I suppose
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I've used the same 4 cases of glass bottles for 10 years in homebrewing.
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Energy isn't really a problem if you have a grid powered by renewables (and nuclear, if the voting public aren't a bunch of scientifically ignorant cowards).
Congratulations, not only was what you just said complete bollocks, but it also runs directly counter to the goal of getting people to listen to what you have to say. A failure on all levels.
Re: So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:2)
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" It used more energy, water and labor "
What's the energy comparison between transport and cleaning a glass bottle, and everything that goes into making a new plastic bottle.
Re:So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:4, Interesting)
False dilema my dude. They aren't saying ban all plastics. They want limitations on *specific* plastics known to cause trouble.
There are literally thousands of types of plastics, some of which don't have those problems whilst still having MOST of the benefits of the ones in question.
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Exactly.
Heck, if we banned all but one or two of the most easily recyclable plastic formulas for disposable use, and only allowed those in, say, clear and maybe a single opaque color, we could actually make recycling plastic a genuinely profitable endeavor.
Actually glass would be another one that banning colors on disposable containers would be a huge boon to recycling. Of course clear is already fairly common, but there's a huge variety of other colors in use as well, especially among alcohol containers,
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The energy costs of plastic are massive compared to alternatives, and typically tied to non-renewable forms of energy because they tend to be derived as byproducts of fossil fuel production. That energy is also completely wasted when it isn't recouped. Plus, labor is not just a cost, it's also a benefit: The economic value of the energy put into plastics is wasted every bit as much as the plastic itself.
You'
Re:So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:4, Informative)
Glass weathers into common sand. It's recycled relatively quickly by nature even if nobody does anything.
Actually, most glass doesn't decompose over time by itself. There have been plenty of archeological finds from Roman and Egyptian tombs with glass jewelry inside.
Beach Sea Glass is another example of the slow weathering of glass. It takes about 30 years to smooth the edges of broken glass on the beaches which leaves beautiful pebbles of colored glass that look like they have spent time in a rock tumbler. https://www.farandwide.com/s/b... [farandwide.com]
Relatively speaking, you are correct. Glass wears away back to silica without the environmental problems that plastics present. The black sand beaches around the world are a great example of the weathering effects of volcanic rock back into sand. Entropy at its finest.
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That carbon didn't come from the atmosphere though, it came from oil wells, and it wouldn't have been pumped in the first place except to make the plastic.
There is no angle whatsoever from which plastic is an environmentally friendly option. The best thing you can do with it when it's reached end-of-life is burn it as a fossil fuel rather than freshly pumped oil - of course that assumes it's not PVC or some other poison-rich formula.
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The energy costs of plastic are massive compared to alternatives,
If that's true then problem solved. Energy is expensive. Anything with massive energy costs compared to alternatives is going to be rare compared to the alternatives. Some people will spend money conspicuously on a more expensive option instead of a functionally equivalent less expensive option in order to demonstrate their affluence, but most people will not. The vast majority of people will choose the less expensive of equivalent alternatives. Though it is true that many people will choose the more expens
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Milk delivery in the US has never been a thing in my 50 years, but when my family moved to England in the mid-'80s, they were still delivering pint bottles in the wee hours. We usually bought two pints daily, unless there was a reason to order more or less...you set a dial on the basket that you put out with the empties that said how many you wanted. Given the slow rate of change over in that part of the world, it wouldn't surpri
Re:So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:4, Interesting)
Depends where in the US - neighbors had a milk delivery (in suburban NYC in the late 1990s).
Interestingly, in England, they used electric light trucks (known as "milk floats") to deliver the milk ... perfect application for an EV since it had to stop and go constantly.
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I'm guessing, then, that you are simply too young to remember it. While it may have been on the way out by then, it definitely lasted well into the 70's. I remember my parents still getting milk delivered to their home at least as late as 1975... I know the year because I remember what grade I was in when I wanted to borrow a milk bottle from home for a project I was doing at school, and my mom telling me that if I broke it we would have to
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Now, you can get all your groceries delivered... :-D
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Re:So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: So they want us to be as poor as back before (Score:2)
You have to chuck a milk bottle pretty hard to get it to shatter. Those things are pretty fucking thick.
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Yeah - old reusable coke bottles were pretty tough too.
I think when things went disposable everyone shifted to making them as thin as possible to reduce costs. Better to have a few bottles break along the way than pay for the added glass and shipping for billions of disposable containers per year.
I'd really love to see a return to those days - re-use is the best form of recycling, even if it means shipping containers across the country back to the bottling plants. If we standardized on just a few containe
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Probably gallon and half-gallon bulk liquid bottles for milk, soda, wine, etc. as well. Don't know how I forgot those, and they're pretty important without local deliveries.
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Most food doesn't need the packaging to survive for years.
The newer properly compostable plastics (so not PLA) together with an inorganic barrier layer should suffice for most packaging, for food too.
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Heck, waxed paper used to be the norm for a long time, and for most things worked just fine. It can even make an airtight seal with a quick pass of a hot iron.
Not sure if that's actually any better from a recycling/environmental perspective, especially with most modern wax coming from petrochemicals, but it's not like plastic was some miracle product for all that much beyond corporate profits.
Re: So they want us to be poor (Score:2, Troll)
Nevermind, it's all giggle and fizz. Greenwashing. These targets are rarely met. Most organic, plastic and glass waste we generate gets burnt at high temperatures to eliminate the volume. Even in jurisdictions with coloured bin recycling programs. The future generations can worry about the consequences of that.
Continue on as you were.
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Except that it's no longer future generations. *Current* generations are beginning to feel the impacts.
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Milk bottles: milk bottles are made of HDPE which is one the easiest plastics to recycle, do some research before blabbering all over yourself.
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How about using a reusable metal drinking bottle instead? Keeps your drinks cold too!
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Bui... [walmart.com]
I'm a sucker for straws my self, but I've had to change. We have some glass and metal straws that we use (the larger glass ones are great for shakes), but mostly I've stopped using them and instead use a reusable steel bottle.
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I think my favorite so far are the reusable silicon straws. They're even more flexible than the disposable plastic, so never jab you in the teeth or gums when you're distracted, and can be crumpled up to fit in odd places when not in use. I'd be a little concerned about their milk-shake suction potential, but the (extra wide) ones I've got haven't had problems.
But yeah, there's not actually many situations where I want a straw.
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Hear, hear.
The irony with cars is that lighter cars are generally safer in a crash, unless it's with a much heavier vehicle. We don't need to lower safety standards, we just need to strenuously discourage buying heavy vehicles for safety and ego reasons. Personally, I like the idea of having registration fees scale with the 4th power of weight, proportional to the damage done to the road. Insurance should scale at least linearly with weight as well.
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Mask-NAZI
So you saw Alex Jones' Kanye interview too? What did you think?