Plastics pile up as coronavirus hits Asia recyclers | Hacker News Reader

Plastics pile up as coronavirus hits Asia recyclers

asia.nikkei.com

46 pointsvelmu19 comments

8 MILLION tonns of plastic waste EVERY YEAR are dropped in the OCEAN!

man this is scary

Yes, and that's barely 2.5% of the 300 million tonnes of plastic we now produce every year - half of which is single-use, and less than 1/10th of which is recycled at the end of its useful life.

Most of it is trash from undeveloped countries with poor trash service.

People just dump the trash and local rivers wash it downstream.

This can be solved not by changing how plastic is used but simply by pressuring those governments to implement trash collection.

> This can be solved not by changing how plastic is used but simply by pressuring those governments to implement trash collection.

Or both.

The weight of the world's oceans is about 1,450,000,000,000,000,000 tons, so at 8 million tons per year it would take about 18 million years for that plastic to add up to 1/10000th of the ocean's mass, assuming all that plastic is completely non-biodegradable over an 18 million year period.

The problem with that take is assuming even distribution. Nothing in the ocean is. Almost all ocean life is in the top 50 meters. And the vast majority of that is close to a shore, the same shores where the majority of plastics are introduced to the ocean.

True, the actual magnitude of the problem is probably somewhere in between the two extremes. The point of my comment was to battle an increasingly often-used fallacy where people spout numbers that look large out-of-context and then scream about the sky falling based on those large numbers. You could say something like, "Ten MILLION planets get sucked into blackholes every YEAR! This is terrifying!" (I just made those numbers up for illustrative purposes), without looking at what those numbers are relative to this just creates unnecessary panic and motivates people to mis-allocate precious resources that could be spent on more urgent problems.

Sad reality of our times.

We're eating out less but our plastic household waste/recycling has more than doubled due to all the plastic we get through food deliveries.

The market forces for better recyclable/biodegradable packaging just aren't there as plastic is so cheap to produce.

It could be worse. At least plastics are relatively inert, unlike other forms of waste.

My understanding is that the plastic breaks down, is then ingested by small fish, then is concentrated up the food chain. Chemicals that are present or collect in the plastic then accumulate in the fish that we or other wildlife eat. Additionally there are chemicals which affect reproduction in some species (negatively). So. Yeah it could be worse. It still sucks.

If you're comparing plastic to the alternatives, for instance plastic bottles vs glass bottles, I think plastic often comes out worse. Glass is more inert, and when thrown into the ocean gets weathered away into sand in fairly short order.

Adverse situations create more waste in general. Ideally, nurses would be throwing out N95 masks often.

But takeout has been extremely wasteful the whole time. If you're just realizing this now, well, good job?

Restaurants are incentivized to make you feel like you are "getting your money's worth". The best you can do is pickup food that is wrapped (eg subs or burritos), and push off as much of the accessories as possible.

Or obviously reduce, which has always been more important than fauxcycling.

Asian recyclers at work https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeDY3I841q0

Would it be so hard to use less packaging on foods, especially snacks? It's ridiculous, why does a brownie need 3 layers of packaging?

I only drink carbonated water, so I use one plastic bottle that's always with me lol (I do throw them away after a week or so as they get dirty), but it would be nice if more people did that. Not really possible for soft drinks though.

Ever consider a Soda Stream or similar device?

I received one as a gift and it's great. You just have reusable bottles (they do expire as the plastic begins to break down, but they last several years), and reusable CO2 canisters that you return for a refund when you need a refill.

You can also buy syrups to use with them if you like pop flavours rather than mixing with juices or citrus.

There’s also guides on refilling them yourself with dry ice if you want to go that route.

Just use a good scale!

+1, also good the Soda Stream for Christmas and the amount of plastic/glass waste has been reduced quite a lot. On top of the CO2 transport impact of carrying hundreds of liters of water around every year.

After having a soda stream for almost 10 years, someone left a CO2 tank on my property. It's a 10 lb canister, which will supposedly last me literal years at the rate I drink carbonated water, and costs about as much to refill as a soda stream cylinder. Along with a CO2 regular, you can hook this up to a "carbonator" adapter and refill regular bottles.

Might be worth looking into if you are drinking a lot of carbonated water- Soda stream is fine, but I find the bottles to be kind of ugly, even the upgraded ones they offer. The soda stream itself is taller than will fit under my cabinets so we had it in a conspicuous spot that made it stand out in my kitchen. Now I keep this stuff hidden away in the basement and just refill a 6 pack at a time of Pelligrino type bottles. I also brew beer and while I haven't started kegging yet, I can use this stuff for that as well. I find this page to be a good simplified explanation of the parts involved: https://tasteofartisan.com/how-to-make-carbonated-water/

Yours sounds like definitely the way to go. I live in a downtown condo with next to no storage space, so the Soda Stream is a godsend for now. And mine fits under my cabinet at least!

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