Basically we are using and producing much more plastic and only a small percentage of it is actually getting recycled. Very eye opening.
Just one of the many issues future generations will look back on and say "Wtf was wrong with those people". We simply don't take into account the full cost of pollution, companies don't factor in the cost of environmental and human health when calculating the cost of plastic, and many, many others.
YES I do hope everyone watches both of those videos, and at least tries to use less plastic and recycle other things more. I do hope this isn't total news to everyone...Great Pacific Garbage Patch and whatnot. When you go to the grocery, it is really, really ****ing hard to not buy a bunch of plastic wrapped ****... But you can try. Paper wrapped in the meat/seafood/cheese dept..., reusable/paper bread bags, use your own reusable bags for produce, reusable bags when you're checking out...but the Western shopper has been given (and been trained to use, because of laziness) one real option: a bunch of **** packaged in plastic, then bagged in plastic, and that plastic will be thrown away and blown away. And it ends up all up and down my roads, and highways, and fences, and streams, and rivers, and lakes, and beaches, and everyone else's.
While everybody should do their best, I think this is an issue that will be hard to pin on individual consumption choices. We have to gather as a nation, as a planet, to really tackle a problem this large. No different from many other issues, like the pandemic, like climate change, like biodiversity loss etc
Start with not using single-use-bags at the store. And if you have to, save them, and HEB (not sure about others) has a recycling bin for them in front of every entrance. Various cities in Texas tried to ban them, and the Abbott-State said "You Can't Do That". Local government, my ass.
25 years ago, something an old Econ professor said still resonates: "You can't Change the World, you can only change your part of it and hope that by example others will want to change it too." Whatever happened to the "Don't Mess With Texas" campaign?
Interesting documentary you guys might like, Merchants of doubt. Basically the smoking industry used the same idea, realizing the science was not in favor of them they were able to muddy the public knowledge knowing that if there is some ambiguity towards the conculsion they will veer towards the comfort or convenient. The science came out eventually, but thats still billions of profits in the mean time and time to pivot. I believe plastic is from petrochemicals as well and a way they can use the waste. Recycling was heavily lobbied, manemdemnts used, and most of the things don't work and are sitting on an island somewhere. Almost all our politicians from every side allows lobbyist to join in on the amendments and bills and add contingencies and conveniences, while keeping a popular 'healdine' bill they can still champion. Some would aruge its important to have industry expertise before legislating, which may make sense, but often these amendments and bills are written by them word for word, often unread given the times the leaders release the bills, the voting schedule. Frankly, Congress/senate have terrible approval rates across the board. They deserve it. THey spend more then a majority of their time fundraising. The system is set up that way, another netflix documnetary feating both AOC and Matt GAetz( a little something for everyone if you're religious about one side) features this.
If grocery stores charged people 5 cents a plastic bag I think more people would change their ways and start bringing their own carry bags, that won't be thrown away. A lot of the people who simply don't care about the environment would think twice about throwing their money away. That could eliminate about 15 to 20 bags per average shopper each and every time they stock up on groceries. I also wish companies would go back to glass bottles, with redemptions for returning them. The millions of plastic bottles bought every day is a HUGE problem.
The healthier human beings become the more damage we cause the environment. The bottom line is the issue, I hesitate to use the word problem, is consumerism. Plastics are an awesome product. It reduces dependency on other products that damage the environment. The problem is us. We use too much of everything. Consumerism is not going to decrease because consumerism legitimately makes our lives better. Being able to go to the grocery store, buy storable food, and go about our lives is not going to change. America has an obesity problem because of too much consumerism but not the whole world. We are in human history where we are, we are not going backwards. My solution would be all industrial nations get together, find a place like somewhere in Siberia that's unhabitable and dump our waste there. That way we can work together on avoiding the waste getting into the ocean as well as other places it harms wildlife
The Everyday Chemicals That Might Be Leading Us to Our Extinction NYT article on the book Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, Threatening Sperm Counts, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race By Shanna H. Swan with Stacey Colino More: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/05/books/review/shanna-swan-count-down.html She also did a long interview on Rogan's podcast a month or so ago. Interesting stuff. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6pLW2tMx4Kw5qaeAcxj0Lj Edit To relate this to the topic better, chemicals in plastic (mainly phthalates) are a problem
I volunteered at a recycling plant and pretty much all the common material that is actually recycled is cardboard and aluminum. This was a while ago and I thought things would improve with plastic but I believe they are actually worse because we use so much more. We need a 'USB-C' plastic program because their is so much sorting required for the multitudes of different plastics it will never be economical. There are strange things as well that are a huge problem -- if certain types of plastics and the remnants of what they contained slip through they taint the entire load (ex: quarts of car oil are a big issue).
Most of the plastic that ends up in the oceans isn't coming from the US but Asian countries, but I didn't know we export our trash as we do have plenty of landfill space. I guess it's cheaper to ship it overseas. However that's changing dramatically: https://www.statista.com/statistics...s exported 1.37,plastic waste exports in 2020. The top destination of us plastic scraps is now canada.
Somebody hacked Cheetah? A serious response Just from working at Igloo in Katy I knew you had to keep the plastic separate but I didn't know it's that complicated
To add they did recycle some plastic I think it was a state/fed regulation to have a certain amount, but there was no sorting there was just a really obvious type of plastic and you'd grab a few and throw them in a large bin. Eventually it would fill up and would be sent out -- like 98% of the plastic went to the landfill. Also, this wasn't a corrupt place bending the rules -- it offered recycling where there was none and survived because of volunteers.
This will never work, which is why the plastics industry pushes the personal responsibility narrative. They can pretend to be for recycling while selling tons of non-recyclable plastic and then blaming the end user. Everything we buy should be either 100% recyclable or biodegradable. Then it should be recycled or disposed of properly by a city service. The cost of proper disposal should be priced into the cost of a good. Asking the end user to take care of recycling is like each individual taking responsible for clean water or sewage. It just doesn’t scale or make much sense.
This is all very, very true. All's I was saying is that it is quite possible, and not that difficult, to cut down on the amount of plastics you, personally, use and discard.
Did you watch the video. Not being a jerk. Plastic has separated into different grades and not all grades are economically feasible to recycle. Actually most grades are cheaper new
https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/9979...ic-waste-is-from-just-20-companies-says-a-stu "The study identifies 20 companies as the source of 55% of the world's single-use plastic waste, while the top 100 companies account for more than 90%." talk about privatizing profits, socializing the cost
