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Comment by x38iq84n | Hacker News Reader

So why are western countries punishing themselves by putting a ban on certain plastic items such as straws, single-use bags or creating deposit schemes for bottles etc? Sure it would be more effective to call up poor Asian countries and offer to help them clean up that mess. The effect on environment, per dollar spent, will be orders of magnitudes larger than engineering any kind of change in the said western countries.

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As has been noted by several other posters, western countries have exported their recyclable trash to China for years. That has pretty much come to a halt, and I don't think it will be long before countries like the US realize just what a mess they have on their hands. Getting rid of single-use plastic now is the best thing we can do.

>Getting rid of single-use plastic now is the best thing we can do.

Is it really? Single-use plastic from western countries is mostly not the plastic found in oceans. So while they were busy implementing these measures, they do not even scratch the surface of the issue. Do the proponents of these ideas care about the environment at all?

Single use plastic bags are the ones that end up on my porch. And on my street. And the lake at the end of my street. And in my local parks. And in the creek down the block. And in the river running through town.

Single use plastic is an eyesore. It's garbage that doesn't stay where it's supposed to.

Consumers won't notice a difference. They'll continue putting their plastic into recycling bins, so it will continue to not end up in the rivers. Unless there are rogue recycling operators who illegally dump the plastic. But that is not in the hands of the consumers.

So the public doesn't have to absorb other externalities like landfills, cleaning storm drains, emissions from manufacture and extraction, etc.

I agree that supporting developing countries develop better waste management practices would be money well spent, like efforts to support their health systems. Poverty, weak governance and lack of prioritization, in that order, are probably the main impediments.

I don't think efficiency, efficacy or even have effects on the correct direction enter on the making of those ideas.

Imho: because Western populations care about environmentalism and don't like to use their power to compel others, even if that would be more efficient. They can do something while not feeling bad when they restrict it in Western nations. I do believe that there's a culture thing as well, the predominantly protestant nations appear to be more eager than the catholic ones.

Projects focusing on the developing or third world will likely be regarded as colonialism, lecturing from a position of power etc, and perception has become more important than correctness or efficiency.

> Imho: because Western populations care about environmentalism and don't like to use their power to compel others, even if that would be more efficient.

Do you really believe western nations don't use their power to compel poorer countries to act in a given way?

I was talking about populations, not nations. The governments very much do, but often not with popular approval (see military engagements to secure economic interests). There's no popular support to pressure poor countries on climate change or pollution. If that existed, I'm sure that Western governments would have no second thoughts about applying pressure.

Because solutions in the form of alternate materials developed to meet Western regulations can then be implemented across the entire world.

Why do western countries try to reduce plastic waste? Because they want to take their responsibility in reducing the amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans. Of course other countries should do that too, with help if necessary, but only pointing at other people isn't going to fix this; you need to do your own part too.

I think the parent post's argument was that instead of stopping the usage of plastic straws locally, take the effort spent on that and spend it on helping China, etc. manage their plastics disposal.

I believe it would be more economically expensive to help another nation recycle than to pass a law domestically and ban/fine for certain disposable goods, but as far as work-effort expended, I think you'd get more bang for your buck to work with those that produce the most plastic. Of course, international processes are always harder than domestic ones, and this isn't an exclusive-or style problem.

I think we can do both. There's no reason to consider these things mutually exclusive.

Because per capita consumption of plastic is 5 times higher [1] in the west compared to to other regions and this waste is then exported to poor countries.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

It's a case of solving the problem where you can. Reduce your waste because you can't force other countries to do it or to accept your help cleaning up their own. Also bans don't count towards budgets where cleanup programs would.

A municipal government doesn't have a way to impact anything China does. They're stuck between either doing ineffective things like drinking straw bans, or just admitting their helplessness.

On the national politics level it's only almost that bad: we (the US) have very little way to influence what China does with their trash. It might take Trumpish levels of confrontationalism from a Democrat administration to have any impact at all. Sad that candidates aren't taking on this reality... it's much easier to sell a rosy narrative to voters that we can fix everything by making sacrifices at home ala the Green New Deal or somethimg similar.

Only some ecologically responsible cities and states have done this. Everywhere else in the US it is a plastic party!

Virtue signalling, that's why.

Countries aren't really "punishing" themselves. First, it's mostly cities/local groups banning certain plastic. Second, it's not a punishment to get rid of single-use plastic; we haven't had it for thousands of years and we don't need it moving forward. Third, Western countries have little power compared to corporations here; do we need to go over all the abuses of corporations vis a vis Asia?

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