Yet Another Problem with Recycling: It Spews Microplastics (arstechnica.com) 122
"An alarming new study has found that even when plastic makes it to a recycling center, it can still end up splintering into smaller bits that contaminate the air and water," reports Wired:
This pilot study focused on a single new facility where plastics are sorted, shredded, and melted down into pellets. Along the way, the plastic is washed several times, sloughing off microplastic particles — fragments smaller than 5 millimeters — into the plant's wastewater. Because there were multiple washes, the researchers could sample the water at four separate points along the production line. (They are not disclosing the identity of the facility's operator, who cooperated with their project.) This plant was actually in the process of installing filters that could snag particles larger than 50 microns (a micron is a millionth of a meter), so the team was able to calculate the microplastic concentrations in raw versus filtered discharge water — basically a before-and-after snapshot of how effective filtration is.
Their microplastics tally was astronomical. Even with filtering, they calculate that the total discharge from the different washes could produce up to 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater. Depending on the recycling facility, that liquid would ultimately get flushed into city water systems or the environment. In other words, recyclers trying to solve the plastics crisis may in fact be accidentally exacerbating the microplastics crisis, which is coating every corner of the environment with synthetic particles.
"It seems a bit backward, almost, that we do plastic recycling in order to protect the environment, and then end up increasing a different and potentially more harmful problem," says plastics scientist Erina Brown, who led the research while at the University of Strathclyde.
"It raises some very serious concerns," agrees Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former US Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, who wasn't involved in the paper. "And I also think this points to the fact that plastics are fundamentally not sustainable."
Wired ponts out that more than half the microplastics can be captured with a filtration system. "Without it, the researchers calculated that this single recycling facility could emit up to 6.5 million pounds of microplastic per year. Filtration got it down to an estimated 3 million pounds."
But one of the paper's co-authors shared their discouraging conclusion. "The recycling centers are potentially making things worse by actually creating microplastics faster and discharging them into both water and air. I'm not sure we can technologically engineer our way out of that problem."
Their microplastics tally was astronomical. Even with filtering, they calculate that the total discharge from the different washes could produce up to 75 billion particles per cubic meter of wastewater. Depending on the recycling facility, that liquid would ultimately get flushed into city water systems or the environment. In other words, recyclers trying to solve the plastics crisis may in fact be accidentally exacerbating the microplastics crisis, which is coating every corner of the environment with synthetic particles.
"It seems a bit backward, almost, that we do plastic recycling in order to protect the environment, and then end up increasing a different and potentially more harmful problem," says plastics scientist Erina Brown, who led the research while at the University of Strathclyde.
"It raises some very serious concerns," agrees Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics and a former US Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator, who wasn't involved in the paper. "And I also think this points to the fact that plastics are fundamentally not sustainable."
Wired ponts out that more than half the microplastics can be captured with a filtration system. "Without it, the researchers calculated that this single recycling facility could emit up to 6.5 million pounds of microplastic per year. Filtration got it down to an estimated 3 million pounds."
But one of the paper's co-authors shared their discouraging conclusion. "The recycling centers are potentially making things worse by actually creating microplastics faster and discharging them into both water and air. I'm not sure we can technologically engineer our way out of that problem."
It's all about energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Plastics are extremely stable molecules. It therefore takes a lot of energy to break them up - but that's what we should be doing with them.
Put in a LOT of energy and break them into the elements they're composed of. Crack' em.
And the cost of doing that should be calculated and included in the manufacturing process as a tax on plastic production. Plastic is NOT as inexpensive as we treat it, we just ignore all the costs after it comes out of the first production plant.
Re:It's all about energy (Score:5, Informative)
And/or looking for better [bbc.com] sustainable [earth.org] options [noissue.co].
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Well there's important differences besides the fact that those materials actually don't biodegrade at all; namely that they're heavier so their particles don't become "part of" the ecosystem; they settle to the ground. They also are basically all made of what was already on the ground to begin with, so they don't introduce any new variables into animals' respiratory or circulatory systems that weren't already there since the beginning.
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Re:It's all about energy (Score:5, Insightful)
Only the really stupid ones that don't understand how civilization works. I doubt that's as high as 80%.
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Only the really stupid ones that don't understand how civilization works. I doubt that's as high as 80%.
That's very optimistic! The good news is that they'll probably distract themselves with some other dumb culture war shit like gas stoves.
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Maybe, but if we're talking that dumb, it looks to be around 30%
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How are gas stoves related to "culture war"s of any kind? The gas stove controversy is about driving nat gas out of markets as aggressively as possible without outright banning it.
Re:It's all about energy (Score:5, Informative)
Only the really stupid ones that don't understand how civilization works. I doubt that's as high as 80%.
The've been made deliberately stupid. There were a bunch of campaigns from the industries that produce waste to blame the consumers for the inevitable mess they cause. There are campaigns like the "taxpayer's alliance" and "Americans for Prosperity" which are run by precisely the people that avoid taxes and steal from their own countries, the aim of these being to make people vote against their own interests.
The logic of Leninist 'democracy' (Score:3)
The people are too stupid to know what is good for them, so we'll have to make the decisions for them. Of course the problem is that it's probably accurate if large parts of the world's population isn't going to die of the effects of pollution, broadly defined to include CO2 as well as plastic...
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Q: Who's responsible for informing the electorate so that they can make well-informed lobbying & voting decisions so that democracy can work?
A: Ah, right, the corporate sponsored media.
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They're not stupid, just poorly informed.
There's some truth in that. Everybody needs at least enough judgement to understand the judgement of others. You don't need to know engineering, but you do need to know about the Tacoma Narrows Bridge [wikipedia.org] and understand that a) it happened despite everyone trying their best and b) there's always uncertainty that we have to learn from.
The big thing, though, is that people seem to have stopped understanding how to work with and use experts. That has to be based on reputation and past experience. That also has to
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Hmmm... (Score:2)
The people are the source of all wisdom - which is why we are supposed to obey what they choose in elections. Strictly speaking the voters should inform themselves to the best of their ability. Yet most of us haven't got enough knowledge to make the decisions we are responsible for. You're right that these days media have most of the power in this field, though social organisations such as churches and trade unions can also do some informing as well.
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The people are too stupid to know what is good for them, so we'll have to make the decisions for them.
Yeah, and? I mean, it's not exactly correct, they're too ignorant and not necessarily stupid. The stupid comes in when they refuse to let the people who know more than they do make the decisions, or to learn more so they can make a contribution.
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The people are too stupid to know what is good for them, so we'll have to make the decisions for them. Of course the problem is that it's probably accurate if large parts of the world's population isn't going to die of the effects of pollution, broadly defined to include CO2 as well as plastic...
The problem is, they think everyone else is too stupid to know what's good for them, so they'll have to make the decision for them. And they're willing to go to extremes to do it.
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They will just jack up prices of their products, so YOU, the consumer, end up paying the taxes,
Typical fucking commie that believes that price is based on cost instead of the free market. Of course, sometimes that's a protectionist big company commie, bit it's still a person who doesn't understand and accept the idea of competition. When there's competition, you sell your product for no more than the market will bear and if you try to pass on unreasonable costs then your competitors sell instead of you.
Re: It's all about energy (Score:1)
Why not just print money and use indexation to make nominal inflation irrelevant?
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Why not just print money and use indexation to make nominal inflation irrelevant?
If the government can do this with the magical power of "indexation".
Why bother with money at all then? Just have the government make all the other stuff for free too.
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Yeah, I'd say it's only about 55%.
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Few people want to take responsibility for their own actions, let alone the actions of the community. We have a very "what's mine is mine, and what's yours should also be mine" society.
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Considering that most people are fucking idiots who can't even do basic math, I'd say it's probably as high as 137%.
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Only the really stupid ones that don't understand how civilization works. I doubt that's as high as 80%.
Right.... All those taxes collected by the government are used for what they're supposed to be used for.. And we're the dumb ones?
All those societies who don't collect taxes are doing so much better...
You clowns are a parody of yourselves..
indeed
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You can't "abuse" the child tax credit or child support. WTF is wrong with you?
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Child support is intended as financial support for a child. It should, ideally, reflect both parents supporting the child. It is, IMHO, abuse if a custodial parent uses this money to pay the majority of their living expenses such that they do not have to provide for their own support. In this scenario, the child is supporting the parent, and it's not supposed to work that way.
To "abuse" the child tax credit and EIC without working you would claim "other income" to maximize the benefits you receive from the
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That's certainly a perspective, but not one to which I think you'll find most people agree with. What makes sense and what is fair is very much dependent on the situation.
To "abuse" the child tax credit and EIC you would claim "other income" to maximize the benefits
Committing tax fraud is not "abuse", it's tax fraud.
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Aaaand with the word “tax” you lost approximately 80% of the voters.
So, it's a marketing problem? How about we privatize the recycling and have the private company tax the people directly, ... uh I mean charge the people a fair price for their invaluable service in the natural economy by competing with a government-enforced monopoly policed by a government committee comprised of former executives.
Basically the difference is that we replace the lazy indifference-based inefficiency of the government with the profit-driven inefficiency of the private company.
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Sounds good to me.
I don't recycle...never have and it would be nice to not be charged a fee for what other people do.
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Voters only really care when the tax comes out of their wallets. However, people would really dislike the immediate increase in price of consumer products along with the shortages that would be induced by companies being unable to obtain packaging for their products.
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In theory it should work to just announce that a tax will take effect in 5 years - the market will "figure it all out" and get right to work on developing alternatives and putting them into production to avoid the upcoming tax. But in practice, producers will just spend the 5 years doing nothing and then, when it hits, jack up prices by the amount of the tax plu
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Plastics are extremely stable molecules. It therefore takes a lot of energy to break them up - but that's what we should be doing with them.
That, or reserving them for long term use items that won't need to be recycled for years. Compostable materials for anything single use and proper composting of organic waste could solve a big part of the problem.
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I know how to solve the problem of microplastics.
Burn the plastic for energy. It is made of oil. We are still extracting oil for energy. Burning used plastic makes sense. It's like using gasoline to store ketchup and then putting it in your car afterwards.
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A massive amount of plastic is burned for cement manufacturing.
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My chemistry's a bit weak here, I understand you can indeed burn plastic to extract energy which in my ignorance seems at odds with the stability of the average plastic at the molecular level.
HOWEVER, I do know that plastics tend not to break down well at temperatures we generally burn them at, and release an awful lot of nasty new chemicals when you burn them with less than enough heat to break them apart completely - which I assume is hot enough that you're adding energy to the process, not extracting it
Re: It's all about energy (Score:2)
I am not a chemist. But, based on the understanding that I have achieved through my investigation into Russian Stoves aka Thermal Mass Heaters, it should be relatively simple to superheat the off gasses generated by the initial burn in a secondary burn chamber, and produce a system that releases only carbon dioxide and water. Plastic is just hydrocarbons.
Re: It's all about energy (Score:2)
I don't consider that relevant. No rational person should. We are still pulling oil out of the ground and burning it. Until we can provide for the energy needs of the human race without burning things, it's foolish to bury plastic and mine coal.
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Plastics are extremely stable molecules. It therefore takes a lot of energy to break them up - but that's what we should be doing with them.
Put in a LOT of energy and break them into the elements they're composed of. Crack' em.
And the cost of doing that should be calculated and included in the manufacturing process as a tax on plastic production. Plastic is NOT as inexpensive as we treat it, we just ignore all the costs after it comes out of the first production plant.
Why bother spending the energy? We're already constantly extracting more petrochemicals, take the plastic and compress it into tidy bricks and bury it underground. If it's extremely stable as you say and we need it later we can easily dig up the burial sites for a nice neat cache of plastic, and if we don't need it then we've sequestered the plastic without using unnecessary energy.
Probably much better for humanity than having a bunch of microplastics in our drinking water, and in reality glass and metal
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>take the plastic and compress it into tidy bricks and bury it underground. If it's extremely stable as you say and we need it later we can easily dig up the burial sites for a nice neat cache of plastic,
It's stable at the molecular level. At the macroscopic scale it breaks down into tiny little bits that turn into dangerous pollution in our water table.
You'd kind of have to treat it like nuclear waste - obviously not AS dangerous, but it would have to be sealed up so that it could break down as much as
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Can we fill the bottles with carbon dioxide before we bury them? Synergistic plastic and greenhouse gas sequestering? <smile>
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Plus, while the plastic polymers themselves are relatively stable/robust, they're only one component in what we call "plastic." Another major ingredient is the plasticisers, often volatile, harmful compounds, fam
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Lots of places are already going back to cutting down trees.
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Cutting down trees is FINE, so long as you always plant as you cut. The aim would be a dynamic equilibrium, where new trees are storing as much carbon as you're releasing from old ones.
The problems humanity has with pollution are pretty much entirely due to failing to account for the entire life cycle of the materials we use. There are too many of us making too much stuff - much of which is very long lasting - for us to just throw it on a pile and let nature handle it.
If we followed a rule of "put it back
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That process has been tried. The brand name was, I believe, "Thermoselect" and it was an abysmal commercial failure. No idea whether some new tech could fix it, but I think at the moment there is no economically viable solution to do it.
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That process has been tried. The brand name was, I believe, "Thermoselect" and it was an abysmal commercial failure.
Do you mean fluid bed pyrolysis? Who cares about brand names. Such a process works to recycle 100% of plastics, and they can be mixed. Problem is, it's not profitable. At best you break even. But hey, who gives a fuck? I sure don't. What I want to protect is the environment, not corporate profits. If we can't get such a law passed and enforced then we deserve to die. And lo! We are working on that. The dying, I mean.
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No question about that. At this time, every day of delay means a few 1000 more dead.
Digest it (Score:2)
There are microbes which can digest plastic, but they are not very fast at it. Maybe with some lab-assisted evolution they can be bred faster. However, we may end up creating a monster than eats laptops, wire coatings, and guitars. (Cue Blondy's tune.)
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Plastics are extremely stable molecules. It therefore takes a lot of energy to break them up - but that's what we should be doing with them.
Put in a LOT of energy and break them into the elements they're composed of. Crack' em.
WTF? "Put in a lot of energy"? You never tried putting a match to something plastic? They burn, quite well in most cases.
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I think you're right .... but it's interesting to see the lengthy message thread spawned from this proposed answer. Whole thing quickly devolved into a debate over taxation and finger-pointing at conservative groups against taxes, etc.
I mean, wow... really? No wonder America is in such bad shape. We can't suggest a scientific solution to a deficiency in a process without it immediately becoming a political and partisan debate.
IMO, this *really* just helps illustrate the huge flaws in the entire recycling
We need additional context (Score:5, Interesting)
First off - I'm not trying to say this isn't a problem. But it seems like there are a couple different issues that need to be looked at.
1) Data collected in a vacuum is less than ideal. Given that we currently generate a LOT of plastic waste - how does this compare to the level of microplastics generated when plastic is treated as garbage rather than recycled?
2) Can we show that moving away from plastic and over to other materials would have a net environmental benefit? Other materials certainly have their own environmental costs.
Obviously generating less total waste would be the best solution, long-term... but we need to deal with current reality as well.
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how does this compare to the level of microplastics generated when plastic is treated as garbage rather than recycled?
the study implies that the process may be speeding up the creation of microplastics, compared to buried plastic that would degrade much more slowly, so we might have to face levels of microplastic contamination today that would have been offset a few decades (just random guess) if we had simply buried that plastic.
i don't think that's true if the plastic is simply tossed into rivers which also seems to be regular practice, i expect that plastic to fully degrade much faster into particles, being the worst op
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Click here [xkcd.com] and scroll down to the 1960s-'70s when plastics production ramped up.
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Obviously generating less total waste would be the best solution, long-term...
That'd never work. We have a consumption-based economy. We measure our success by how quickly we can dig stuff up out of the ground & turn it into pollution. We've clearly become very, very successful!
Seems like a non-issue (Score:3)
This has to be a drop in the bucket compared to virtually every other source (Clothing 35%, Tires 28%, Cities 24%, Road Markings 7%, Marine Coatings 4%, Personal Care 2%, etc ), and unlike those widely distributed sources these fairly centralized sources are probably very solvable. Even if filtering isn't totally effective a closed/nearly closed system should be possible where "wastewater" from the plant is eliminated/minimized. Namely by an onsite treatment plant that removes removes most of the contaminants from the water which then can be put back into the recycling plant. I think an industrial park in my area does the something like that with the water used in machining equipment.
Overstating just a bit, I think (Score:3, Informative)
not removed by the filtration and subsequently discharged, with 59-1184 tonnes potentially discharged annually.
So.. possibly as little as 118,000 pounds with a huge range (but still less substantially less than the claimed 1500 tonnes).
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Is that a metric ton or a US ton? In metric tons 3,000,000 lbs would be about 1361 tons.
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Is that a metric ton or a US ton? In metric tons 3,000,000 lbs would be about 1361 tons.
Doesn't matter what you call it or how you measure it...it's still a crap-ton of microplastics
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It is that, no doubt.
Nuclear waste (Score:2)
I'm starting to think the best way to handle plastic waste would be broadly similar to nuclear waste. Separate it from everything, secure it underground - possibly forever - until maybe one day we will have a use for it.
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No, pyrolysis is a better answer. Heat plus hydrogen and turn the plastic back into hydrocarbon goo. Then remanufacture what ever new organic compound you want.
Or toss it into the incinerator. It's processed oil, burn it.
Recycling the stuff sounds good but doesn't work.
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Recycling the stuff sounds good but doesn't work.
You are actually describing a kind of recycling. Turning it back to hydrocarbon goo and using that to remanufacture to whatever new organic compound you want would be recycling. It's complicated a lot by all the additives to plastics. There's a surprising amount of metals like tin in a lot of plastics, for example. Compared to regular oil, your hydrocarbon goo would be considered heavily contaminated. Still, probably not impossibly so. I think you're probably onto something, we just need to have more sophis
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I've said this forever. Also, the total lifecycle impact of additional carts, trucks driving to every house for an extra trip/etc make it very environmentally painful to recycle.
We should recycle aluminum, steel/tin and mayble glass and cardboard from homes.
In reality, if we incinerated household garbage, they could collect the tin and aluminum and the plastics and papers would go to add energy that would spin the turbine.
I truly wish recycling plastics worked, but it really doesn't seem to have a better l
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"One garbage stop per house each week, done."
That's all I get now. "Insert scratching head emoji here"
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I'm starting to think the best way to handle plastic waste would be broadly similar to nuclear waste. Separate it from everything, secure it underground - possibly forever - until maybe one day we will have a use for it.
What the actual fuck? NUCLEAR WASTE?! No, you just burn it. And in future, if we need plastics and have run out of hydrocarbons, just run Sabatier reaction off atmospheric CO2.
Too much drama (Score:1)
increasing a different and potentially more harmful problem
and
... And I also think this points to the fact that plastics are fundamentally not sustainable ...
They do not know if this is a problem, but they are super hungry for attention. This is the problem with modern science, they need grants and the best way to get one is to scare everybody around. This is what they do. In reality, round particle of relatively inert substances such as plastics should not pose a significant threat. And even if they do generate some risks, it may be well justified considering the benefits we are getting from them. Thing about plastic versus glass bottles, can you imagin
Re:Too much drama (Score:5, Insightful)
They do not know if this is a problem, but they are super hungry for attention. This is the problem with modern science, they need grants and the best way to get one is to scare everybody around.
This is the problem with idiots. They don't know if something will be a problem, so they do nothing and wait until it's already a big problem. The people trying to figure out if it's a problem or not are the bad guys to these people.
Just be calm and think about it.
You want to think about it, but you're denigrating the very people who are finding the facts and data to support those thoughts.
What it seems like what you really want is to do nothing and carry on. Claiming to be thinking about it is just your excuse to do nothing.
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OK, what are you proposing? Let us ban all plastics? Let us change everything just because some graduate students found a remotely possible risk? And... later on we will find out that there was no danger. ... Right. What about more real threats? Many things are "... potentially more harmful... ", which ones are you proposing to address first? Global warming? Pandemics? Plastics? Farting cows? Milk production? Forrest fires? Remember cell phone potential danger of brain cancer? We should just had banned them at that time.
And... I did not say it is not true. I said, it is too much drama. Let us not over react here.
You're right that does look like a lot of drama.
Lucky there is more than one scientist to deal with all those things.
You carry on "thinking about it". Try not to get in the way of people actually thinking about it though.
So I went and skimmed through the research paper (one of us had to) and didn't notice any drama. Lots of possibly, might, can, potential. The "journalist" or article writer has added their bit of drama with things like astronomical, alarming, fundamentally not sustainable, plastic crisis
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If they just stated that plastic recycling process results in some specific emission of fine partic
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Sure, I mostly agree with you here.
Yes. The article was written for clicks, as you realize. The research paper was written for learning/informing. Which you should have known all along, since...
I know how research is done from inside, so.. I am not neutral.
You originally said...
This is the problem with modern science, they need grants and the best way to get one is to scare everybody around.
Did you find any evidence from the paper of an attempt to "scare anyone". Or was it all coming from elsewhere?
This is the problem with modern/popular science journalism, they need eyeballs and the best way to get one is to scare everybody around. could be a version to use next time.
If they just stated that plastic recycling process results in some specific emission of fine particles into the environment, I would have had no problem with it.
Totally agree. They could have mentioned the pr
An ode to the modern landfill (Score:3)
Modern landfills are technological wonders -- current environmental protection requires significant isolation and monitoring. At this rate, throwing your plastic bottle in a landfill will be better for the environment than trying to recycle it.
Ok, so... (Score:3)
We develop a new system of washing that includes drying out the wastewater and processing the solids left behind. That should help with the water portion.
Other than that, didn't we find a bacteria or something that ate plastic? Figure out a way to use that to help.
Julike producing facilities (Score:3)
Our generation's asbestos (Score:2)
With every article coming out about the dangers of plastics, I become more and more convinced that plastic will be the asbestos of our generation, except with how much of it is in our environment, cleanup will cost trillions and will cause untold damage to us and the environment.
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We are better than that, we don't have one asbestos, we have many.
Microplastics? Yes.
PFAS and other "forever chemicals" including PTFE itself, which is now put into lubricants (some of which are liberally sprayed into the environment regularly, like PB Blaster)? You betcha.
Synthetic lubricants, which are orders of magnitude more stable than the natural ones, and therefore persist orders of magnitude longer times in the environment? Oh yeah.
Carbon nanofibers? Definitely.
Pharmaceuticals, some of them are so s
Sure we can engineer our way out of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing to see here sheeple!! (Score:1)
Just burn it (Score:2)
There are recycling options. (Score:1)
It's a problem (Score:2)
I'm playing with recycling plastics for 3d printing and it's a problem.
Background data:
There are two approaches for home plastic recycling for printing. One approach involves removing the labels and adhesive, heat-deforming the bottle to a smooth cylindrical shape, cutting off the bottom, slicing it into a long continuous strip, drying that, passing it through a heat block to get it the right diameter, and finally splicing together the filaments to get a usable length. The labor cost on this is completely
wastewater (Score:2)
"ragments smaller than 5 millimeters" Half a centimeter. Really? They never heard of filtering and backwashing. What a load of hooey. Plants are unregulated apparently, so we need to ban all life in North America.
Non sequitor (Score:2)
With the utmost of respect to Ms. Judith Enck, it's not a reasonable logical jump from "Our current recycling systems have issues with efficiency and waste" to "plastics are fundamentally not sustainable."
Cheap plastics made from oil used once and then buried in a landfill are fundamentally not sustainable, but that's not all plastics. Those plastics are only the cheapest option today because they are allowed to externalize the cost of their disposal. Force manufacturers to actually bear that cost and the
We've been conditioned (Score:1)
Re:Yet another problem with academia (Score:4, Insightful)
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They did discuss filtering, but it seems that it only removes about half of it. Of course, as you point out, that raises questions of why they don't try engineering solutions, like just filtering more. This article raises questions about problems with the process, but it seems like it concludes that we should just throw up our hands and give up. Instead, how about using a couple of holding tanks and cycle the water from one to the other through a filter, flush the first tank into the second, then filter the
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Re:Cmon say it with me: no more plastics (Score:5, Informative)
The point of the paper is to assess the effectiveness of existing filtration systems, which they found does not filter particles smaller than 10 micrometers. Environmentalists groups can use this paper to ask governments for tighter filtration specs applying to these recycling plants. The recycling plant being a central system, it's easy to solve this concern there. Of course, no plastics would be better, but this is much harder to push for that.
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They won't be my problem anyway! #trump2024
Great idea. Make the little problem go away by creating a much bigger one to worry about instead. #trump2024
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I am not sure to what degree you're trolling or if this is actually an opportunity for a teaching moment. You seem to have an unrealistic idea of how airborne virus transmission works. Generally, when people sneeze or breathe out and they are infected with a virus, they are not spewing out a cloud of singular virus particles that float around in the air. Rather, the virus particles are carried in droplets of fluid. These droplets can vary in size. If you're watching, you can usually see them. Not all of the
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https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/... [ucsd.edu]
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That is some interesting information. We can see from that that there are significant numbers of particles below 5m. Fortunately, N95 masks can filter particles down to 0.1m and potentially smaller. As it happens, the Sars-Cov 2 virus particles are something like 0.07 m to 0.09 m. Technically, the pores in an N95 mask are about 0.3 m, which is where the thing about the Covid virus supposedly being able to slip through comes from but the reality is that the virus particles will be embedded in the aforementio
Re: Obvious solution (Score:2)
Also, no need to compare filter permeability with the size of the virus, a silly argument anti-mask folk often make, since a virus never floats on its own through the air. It's always in droplets, which are notably larger than the virus within. So masks just aim to filter the droplets instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Obvious solution (Score:2)
Also, no need to compare filter permeability with the size of the virus, what anti-mask folk often do, since a virus never floats on its own through the air. It's always in droplets, which are notably larger than the virus within.