Hacker News Reader

Everyone who is against restrictions on single use loves to cite that article to rail against them, but never seems to actually have read or understood the study:

1. While many indicators suggest a dominant contribution of plastics from Asian countries, there is very little data to document these assumptions and thoroughly verify the validity of our model. [0]

2. The study was not talking about all sources of plastic in the ocean, it is referring to plastic concentration in major rivers.

3. A good chunk of "western" waste and recycling is exported to Asia for processing. Yes, it may be mishandled there but it doesn't originate from there. Reducing generation will also reduce contamination.

4. Plastic ends up in more places than just rivers feeding ocean. Plastics accumulate and degrade into microplastics, and end up in lakes, fields, forests, parks - yes, within Europe as well.

I'm also not sure why you even think Europe is a leader here. Many African and Asian countries have been taxing or banning single use plastic for years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_lightweight_plast...

Your reading of "virtue signaling" and colonialism seems to be your own construction. I would bet most of people lobbying for this are lobbying because they want to see less plastic ending up in the environment, locally and globally, not because they care what you think.

What you call virtue signaling other people call a form of morality. Just because not everyone is doing something doesn't mean that it's not the right thing to do. And even though it doesn't guarantee other countries will follow suit, it's disingenuous to suggest it doesn't make ANY difference. It helps normalize these policies in the global mindspace. Plastic pollution is death by a million cuts. Even though any specific action might be negligible, if we continue piece by piece to remove plastics and encourage investigation and investment into alternatives we can slowly make progress. There are also compounding benefits, if we discover alternatives in one niche it could end up having benefits down the line on other, more significant causes of pollution.

I would call it a form of morality to require church attendance, or maybe to outlaw cursing.

You wouldn't want that, I assume? So maybe government should focus on guaranteeing freedom rather than thinking of ways to morally limit it.

Your “freedom” to contribute to the detriment of our natural environment ends at our children’s freedom to enjoy the same clean environment we currently have.

If my local river is full of garbage does it help that some other country has even more garbage? I see this laws helping also with the local plastic problem.

Does your local river actually have a plastic problem? I am not sure thats a problem in western countries with functioning waste management systems. I thought the water problems we had were generally from industrial or agriculture runoffs. Am I wrong?

It definitely is a problem in the US, whether there is awareness or not.

https://www.usgs.gov/news/widespread-plastic-pollution-found...

This is just in water, I would not be surprised if there is a problem of similar magnitude with accumulation in soil.

Yes it has, I live in Romania, in a village, the things got better since the garbage collection was made mandatory(though the locals complain about having to pay), So I am fine with EU forcing "civilization" on us because our politicians are not interested in this things.

Anyway my point still remains, if we can reduce the plastics in our countries by using bamboo,paper,glass,metal or better alternatives why should not do it because some other country is polluting more. Similar if China air pollution is huge then I still care that my local air is clean.

What if .5% is the biggest single chunk of plastic use you can eliminate in your sphere of influence? Should you:

a) Do nothing, because it's "only" 0.5%

b) Eliminate 0.5% because it's something you can do.

> It's just virtue signaling and the so-called 'solutions' lower our comfort

Oh, right, I see. Yeah, I mean you'll be comfortable for the next thirty years. Who cares about the next generation, am I right?

There's a huge problem with unsorted or poor quality recyling or waste electronics being illegally exported from first world countries [1] and ending up in landfills or just dumped in piles, across the world, fix that first, then move on to something else.

Banning tiny amount of single use plastic is low hanging but infinitesimally small fruit however, and the narratives created around it just conveniently distract from much bigger problems.

[1] https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-of-tons-of-uk-plastic-d... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oRQLilXLAIU

Why present it as an either or? Why fix one first? Do both.

I'd not be surprised if the tonnage of illegal or substandard waste exported from first world countries is 1,000,000 times greater the tonnage of improperly disposed plastic straws, plates etc etc.

So why are the EU making a huge deal about the latter and not the former? Sorry but it smacks of greenwashing and narratives to me...

If a given generation is doomed by plastic misuse, going through the big effort that would net in .5% total savings in western countries is hardly going to postpone the calamity to the following generation.

Agreed, mostly.

Money and effort spent on reducing the use of single use plastics, would be better spent recycling plastics in the western world, improving traceability for plastic containing waste exported to the third world, and improving waste management in the third world.

We don't really need to stop using plastic. There are much more urgent problems, including not dumping plastic in rivers and the ocean. Trying to avoid using plastic hardly helps the environment. There are much more useful and urgent things we could be doing instead.

I don't need a study to understand the benefit of what I can observe with my own eyes. I have lived in places in the U.S. where trash accumulates on and around the streets. The plastic trash just sits there. It doesn't degrade under heavy rainfall or years of neglect, it just continues to accumulate. Not every place in the West (or even the U.S.) has ideal sanitation services.

Does this account for the trash that we send abroad for China to dispose of?

No, it does not and since China banned garbage imports last year we will see soon enough if the theory that China is dumping Western plastic in the ocean is correct. If that's the case, we should see a sharp decline in ocean plastics in the coming years.

Only if another country doesn't start doing it for us instead, or we do it ourselves. Though I think your general point holds, and hope the Chinese ban works to our advantage, forcing research into better ways of recycling and maybe even true single stream recycling, not the scam it often is.

Plastic micro-particles are found in tap water in most places around the world:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-...

At some point the problem will become large enough that the UN will have to step up and start imposing sanctions on polluters. But we can hardly take a stand against others without fixing our own problems.

We're just upping our standards, so up yours.

It doesn’t help much! Better do nothing!

Would you spend time and resources making your web page load 1.5% faster?

I've spent time and resources making backups 1% more efficient because cumulatively it reduced expenditure on disks.

It's called Leadership.