EU Commission presents draft directive to ban some plastic waste
dw.com
dw.com
Summary: China and India.
We can and should curb our plastic use in the West, but there are 2 billion+ people on the other side of the world that don’t give a flying fuck. (Yeah yeah, we polluted when we were developing too. But we barely had 100 million people when that was happening. And no plastics)
I wonder what this will mean for events & festivals. E.g. Amsterdam has made it a policy that big events (including normal bars when the event is going on) must issue plastic cups to curb broken class everywhere. Will we have to go back to glass, or drink our beer out of paper cups?
> as well as plastic food containers, such as the ones used for take-away.
I'm open to this, it sucks to have to throw so much crap away after ordering take-away, but I haven't seen a container yet that would be suitable for e.g. 80 degree centigrade soups, stews etc. What are the alternatives that are cheap enough for disposable take-away use?
> Producers of fishing gear — which accounts for 27 percent of beach litter — will be required to cover the costs of waste collection in ports.
I'm worried about how making manufacturers pay for something like this will produce unintended externalities. I can also buy thin plastic lines that wink wink totally aren't intended for fishing. Won't it be trivial to avoid these taxes?
> Each member state should use a deposit system or other measure in order to collect 90 percent of plastic bottles used in their country by 2025.
I wouldn't mind such a system where you e.g. get 1 EUR back for each bottle, but it's going to have to be something like that. The current deposit fees on plastic bottles are too low, once you're earning enough money it doesn't make any financial sense to return them.
I think in some countries if you don't want to get your money back you leave the bottles and cans near the garbage bin or other places and a kid or a poor person will return it and make some money.
Indeed. Personally I do this because it's not worth it for me to recycle it on my own, but I still care about the environment and my fellow man.
But what I'm pointing out is that it's an economically irrational decision on my part, and if someone doesn't give a shit about the environment to the point of not bothering with recycling unless it's costing them money not to do it, they probably don't care that much about their fellow man either.
So in some sense it's a regressive tax (although short term), but I'd be for a policy where drinks cost a bit more to make it economically worthwhile for more people who aren't going to do it because they're nice, but for profit.
> But what I'm pointing out is that it's an economically irrational decision on my part,
It's not economically irrational; as obviously the condition of “the environment and your fellow man” play into your personal utility function.
When people (including myself) say that something is economically rational it's commonly understood to mean that any given person wouldn't make the same choice if given the choice, not that you can't find an example of someone who'll do otherwise.
In other words talking about something being "economically rational" is the other side of there being an "economic incentive".
In this case the economic incentives of not just throwing away plastics aren't aligned with the desired effect. This is a classic example of an externality coupled with the tragedy of the commons.
It's the standard definition underlying rational actor theory, and exactly what rationality means in economics.
But of course I forget about it and just buy a new one at the same festival next year, and each festival will only accept their own branded cups.
So now I have a pile of these things sitting in my shed, there really needs to be some ISO standard for these plastic pints and it be made illegal to not accept ones from other festivals. I now have like 20 EUR worth of otherwise worthless plastic crap I can't exchange or sell except once a year at specific locations.
A quick search for recyclable cups and plates returned plenty of results. And are paper cups bad for beer?
More seriously there needs to be some compromise between the ecological impact of the container and undoing some of the cultural value associated with it, in this case a red wine glass or a beer glass.
With a plastic beer or wine glass you can at least propose some sort of toast and hear some sort of "clink" when you bring the glasses together, the same's not true of paper. People are going to resent the EU if bureaucrats are seen to take away the simple pleasures of life.
What we need is a cultural change in places like china. They need to stop dumping plastic waste into rivers and instead put it in landfills. Landfills are evil, but not nearly as evil as what is happening to our rivers and oceans. So rather than spend our money/energy on reducing plastic use in Europe we should address our attentions to the much larger issue in Asia. The good news is that we already know how to solve the problem, it doesn't cost that much, nor does it require radical changes to behavior. We just need to convince a handful of countries to do what a great many have already been doing for decades: landfill the plastic.
Reducing the total amount of plastics disposed into the oceans is a worthy but orthogonal goal, by the time it makes it to European shores it's mostly pulverized by ocean activity.
The EU also stands to impact world production by its choices. A factory in Asia that's making plastic cups now for the domestic market and for exports might switch entirely to making paper cups if the EU only buys paper cups.
Reusable containers that come with a refundable deposit? Ie. when the guy delivers your soup, he takes back the container from the last time around? Just an idea.
I'd say multiple-use polycarbonate is a better substitute. It has the rigidity of glass without the brittleness. What it lacks is hardness (it scratches rather easily) so these containers probably won't last as long as glass ones before they need to be replaced.
> ...The current deposit fees on plastic bottles are too low, once you're earning enough money it doesn't make any financial sense to return them.
Then thrash them, fine. As long as you don't toss 'm out of your window but put them in the bin when done with them they should end up in some recycling process, paid for by the deposit fee you waived. This does imply that the deposit fee balance should go to these purposes instead of ending up as a profit statement somewhere.
Maybe a deposit system? The fancy milk I like to buy comes in glass bottles with a $2 deposit. That's enough that I hold on to them and take them back to the grocery store. A similar practice could be used for take-out/delivery restaurants.
They're called cans and they're highly recyclable.
What were once historically prominent rivers that greatly contributed to agriculture and civilization are now disgusting cesspools of trash and pollution.
[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...
0: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plas...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-derbyshire-43879489...
Plastic straws and polystyrene plates are also common materials for arts and crafts.
Whilst pollution is certainly an issue that must be tackled, banning disposable plastic products does have its drawbacks. I'm not saying a ban should not occur, but its implications should be considered.
Plates can be made of paper, also cups can be made of paper.
Banning plastic makes it easy to avoid plastic waste in the oceans.
I hope we also ban all food packaging since a lot of that ends up in the ocean and there is no need for plastic food packaging.
Bisphenol A of plastic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A
That, or reducing spending, or increasing taxation income through other investments.
Per capita the rich consume more, but not as much more as you might think. The typical multi-millionaire or even billionaire does not personally consume 1000X or 1000000X more than your typical member of the middle class. Maybe 10X more at most. Beyond a certain point this is "paper wealth." Diminishing marginal utility of goods and services kicks in pretty hard once you reach the upper middle class to "lower rich" brackets. You just don't get much more value from consuming more because you've hit the value limits of technology and/or human subjective perception.
The rich also derive their wealth largely through poor and middle class consumption. They either run industries directly, invest in them, or profit off rents that could not be paid without other industrial activity to subsidize them.
From all the products that were listed the only ones I think could affect poor people would be the car tires, if the prices for this tires would increase, but plastic straws or sticks for baloons costing more won't affect the poor that much.
I was also thinking that it would be good if we got brakes like the racing cars have, those strong breaks could save some lives, I know there is a log of G force but it would be better then an almost instant stop in a wall.
The problem is when the environmental costs are not included and it must be paid by the next generation.
About energy some countries have special prices for the first X KW of energy used for poor families, so it is possible to have the energy prices increased so people would try turning off things they don't need.
I am not saying that either concern is invalid. Environmental concerns are real. I am simply pointing out a political problem that needs to be solved.
I know that someone could invent now some extremely rare scenario but I am talking about a big majority.
My point was not that environmental concerns are wrong but that they do tend to decrease the economic well being of poor and middle class people more right now vs. the status quo. That in turn tends to anger these classes of people right now, causing them to vote for people like Donald Trump. Trump, a super-hard-right Republican, won largely because of working class traditionally progressive economic concerns.
The poor also cannot afford the luxury of thinking about the future. When you are poor your primary concern is getting out of poverty right f'ing now. Screw the future. The rich on the other hand can sacrifice for the future because they have abundance.
Try some grinding poverty and come back and tell me how much you care about what happens in 100 years. Now try some grinding poverty with children. Tell me how much you care about the great Pacific garbage patch after you watch your kids suffer a bit.
This is why I think what I call "abstinence based" environmental policies are doomed. I draw a deliberate analogy with right-wing abstinence-based sex-ed, which also fails pretty reliably. Abstinence based environmental policy is any attempt to solve environmental problems by preaching and shaming the poor and middle class into reducing consumption for the sake of some future ideal that might as well be heaven-and-hell as far as they are concerned here and now.
The only way we will create a world where we care about the future is to elevate as many people as possible out of poverty. This means we must build systems that create abundance now and try to figure out how to do so as sustainably as possible. If people can't afford the luxury of caring about the future, nothing serious will ever be done about massive problems like climate change.
You can have good environmental laws and have the person that pollutes pay and encourage recycling. I am not from US but I don't think the elections were influenced by environmental politics
That’s a strong argument for ignoring the desperately poor where long term survival is concerned, is that really the argument you meant to make?
We need to consider the real costs of this products, to include the price we need to pay to recycle them.
Plastic culterly can be found in your local supermarket for very cheap, and when you don’t have a car, and can’t received packages from Amazon, it can be truly your unique solution.
That said, is it really an issue? A complete set of cutlery for a family of 3 would cost less than 10USD, delivered (based on a quick eBay search). No doubt plastic "non-disposable" cutlery is or would be cheaply available locally.
In the UK, metal cutlery is available in supermarkets for less than 1USD per utensil. Are you suggesting this is too much?
Or as you suggest use wood or paper based ones.
Stainless steel cutlery for a family costs about 30 euros. This is nothing compared to the cost of living in France.
After 1 - 2 years, it is also cheaper than plastic forks and knives.
We count as quite capitalistic compared to France but just for having children alone you get a compensation that already puts you out of that territory. (Of course we don't take this compensation away for working parents -- everybody always gets its. And from the age of 16 it's actually deposited in the account of the child itself)
And that's not even our (dressed down) welfare system: this is just making sure kids in school grow up in a somewhat egalitarian way.
This has to be an exaggeration. Nobody is that poor in France, right?