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Comment by supernova87a | Hacker News Reader

I mean, this is all very disheartening.

First we find out that we haven't been recycling, we've been burying our waste because it's too expensive to reclaim the plastic. Then we find out that 80% of the plastic isn't even ever recyclable, and was a lie from the plastic companies to make us feel better about buying plastics.

Now we're shedding more of it into the oceans.

This is what happens when it's too cheap to pump oil out of the ground and put it in everything you consume.

What do we do about all this?

https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-... https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...

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>What do we do about all this?

There is no solution other than reducing consumption. Which can most easily be accomplished by increasing taxes on the consumption you want reduced.

Or maybe hold companies accountable for the damage their products do to the environment and stop allowing the blame to be shifted to individual consumers?

>hold companies accountable for the damage their products do to the environment

What does this mean? The environment is damaged because so much plastic is consumed. It then follows that to reduce damage to the environment, less plastic must be consumed.

So we have come to the conclusion that we need less plastic to be consumed, the question is how. Obviously no one wants to consume plastic, since plastic is nice and convenient and most importantly, cheap.

Therefore, if you make plastic more expensive, people will consume less of it (since they have limited amounts of money). Also known as a tax.

Nearly everything in American grocery stores is packaged in plastic. How do we ensure that the companies producing consumer staples find better solutions for packaging and distribution, rather than just continuing to use plastic and passing the tax on to the consumer?

If wrapping something in plastic makes it so expensive (through taxes) that it causes the end product to lose competitiveness with something not wrapped in plastic, companies will be incentivized to not wrap their product in plastic.

Make the tax so high that the only feasible use of plastic is medical supplies and (very) durable goods.

Also, plastic is not one material. Taxes can be based on the re-usability of the plastic in question. So very durable goods could still be made of plastic and not have restrictive taxes. This could make it easier to achieve because we can re-purpose the existing plastic manufacturing industry without having to build up entirely new production techniques.

>rather than just continuing to use plastic and passing the tax on to the consumer?

Keep increasing the tax until the alternative becomes a more affordable option.

If the tax is high enough, at least one company figure out better packaging solutions to avoid the tax and offer cheaper products. Customers will prefer the cheaper product. Other companies will be forced to follow suit or lose market share.

Why not both? There's also a big difference between one time usage of plastic and reusable/reused plastic. For example, used in packaging, its almost all one time usage. However in say a laptop or smartphone, the product gets used for years.

That would be silly - most of the products we create can harm the environment.

Probably 95% of what I have at home (plastics, electronics, furniture's paint and glue, chunks of relatively special metal like aluminium, chemicals used to clean anything, etc...) would harm the environment if I would just dump it anywhere without control => if you would want to hold companies acountable for all that stuff then we would be back to the stone age => in my opinion a combined organized disposal by endusers + more taxes on products which are "difficult" to dispose of (difficult to implement? most taxes target "consumption" and not "production") + a general "push" (by media & social) to be aware of problems related to such products are the only option.

Well you kinda are. Let's say a $4 item that normally is packaged in plastic now is required to cost $4 + $25. I think a lot of companies would quickly migrate packaging.

That only reduces the problem a bit though, it's not a sustainable solution. We also need to produce plastics that can and will be recycled. Taxation and legislation could be drivers for improvements.

> That only reduces the problem a bit though, it's not a sustainable solution.

Why not? We lived quite happily with a fraction of the plastic usage 60 years ago. It's possible to continue using plastic for critical use-cases like medicine, or engineering uses like aircraft or automobiles where there are no good substitutes, while phasing out consumer usage.

I'd happily take my refillable shampoo bottle, soy sauce bottle, and milk bottle to be filled at the store.

I actually want to do that. I do purchase refills whenever possible, and I hope such mechanisms are more accessible.

It's ridiculous how many things are thought of as "disposable" today.

For instance, any hand wash comes with a pretty good and durable dispenser. But rarely do I see refills being sold, except when you specifically search for it online.

And pens, especially ball pens. The outfit is perfectly reusable, while rarely do I see the refill being sold. Instead, it's just 20 ball pens sold in a giant bundle. It's like they want to encourage you to throw away everything.

Target sells refills for many of the brands of hand soap they carry right on the same shelf next to the small dispensers...

Which come in large plastic bottles...

but the volume to surface-area ratio increases as the size of the object increases, bigger is better

I'd like the fresh-ground coffee model for soap, shampoo, detergent, cleaning products, food products. Aisle filled with dispensers that I can fill my own bottle with, have it weighed at checkout. That's way less waste.

I've seen pen refills, but they end up having as much packaging as cheap throw away pens.

Buy expensive pens like Parker. They have refills. Of course the refills cost more than an entire cheap pen, but you want refills, not cheap.

I want cheap and refills. Reuse should be cheaper than buying new everything. Pricing today is backwards because it externalizes the costs of throwaway everything. We collectively pay the price of cheap, unrepairable, unrefillable, un-re-usable goods.

Using a fountain pen, refilled from an ink bottle, is not too expensive. Buy a $20-30 Lamy Safari as a good first pen (the shape of the grip helps to ensure you hold it correctly). Unless you're writing novels by hand, a smaller ink bottle will last a long time. I've not had to buy new pens or new ink for a couple years (I'll need to buy more ink soon). I keep a couple ballpoint pens around for random things where that's easier (what they can write on, not all papers take fountain pen inks very well). I don't buy those, they're usually the freebies given away by car dealerships, doctors, banks, whatever. I use them until they stop writing.

Forget pens. What about the other day-to-day consumer goods? Toiletries, food products?

> We also need to produce plastics that can and will be recycled.

We need to use recyclable and biodegradable materials or at a minimum, just biodegradable materials (Or relatively bio harmless materials like glass). Even in the best cases, some percentage of material won't get recycled. In many cases, plastic should be replaced by something other than more plastic.

It's a pain but we could switch to glass containers or wax-lined cardboard for a large portion of things that come in plastic containers almost overnight.

That's ignoring things as basic as: if I need a plastic shampoo bottle... let me refill it? Why am I throwing that away after one use? For that matter why is it plastic instead of stainless steel?

Convenience. It's easier for people to throw away the plastic bottle, green wash it because it gets "recycled", then buy another one.

On an individual level, one can reduce their plastic consumption by using things that are not packaged in plastic (eg. powdered laundry detergent, bar soap, powdered shampoo, and so on). It's a bit trickier for many perishable foods in the US (eg. milk, yogurt, frozen foods), since many things are not available in non-plastic containers, but this could be solved by regulation.

Isn't synthetic wax petroleum based?

I prefer to think of plastics that break down easily. Some plastics can be composted. Landfills already capture methane emissions, so a plastic that breaks down to methane and other simple (safe) things in a landfill is ideal: we get energy out of waste. (Breaking down in a landfill is a tricky problem)

>> What do we do about all this?

> There is no solution other than reducing consumption. Which can most easily be accomplished by increasing taxes on the consumption you want reduced.

The ocean pollution in the article is due to shipping plastic waste to other countries, who subsequently let it shed into the ocean.

Couldn't this problem be eliminated in a near instant by disallowing export of that low value plastic waste, and landfilling it in the US? It doesn't solve the oil / carbon problem, but neither does exporting it. It does solve the ocean pollution aspect pretty completely though.

I'm not saying it's the best solution, but it does seem like a stepping stone.

That step cannot realistically be taken apart from the previous suggestion of taxation though, since someone has to pay for landfilling...

My understanding is that in the past decade or so costs to recycle have exceeded costs to landfill for most cities, since the value of the plastic has dropped and China became unwilling to accept it.

> Which can most easily be accomplished by increasing taxes on the consumption you want reduced.

Or you could make monetary changes to prevent constant inflation. Hyper-consumerist culture with cheap disposable plastic garbage is largely caused by constant inflationary monetary pressure.

You can ban or tax (heavily) single plastic use production, simple as that.

It's also possible to simply ban some forms of products in the event taxes are not enough to destroy demand. I hear lobbying is cheap and has a great ROI.

Or perhaps we figure out how to make recycling more valuable to be done.

That would just increase consumption. Plastic is really cheap to make relative to how expensive it is to recycle, energy wise.

> This is what happens when it's too cheap to pump oil out of the ground and put it in everything you consume.

Sort of. Why is oil cheap now?

Oil is cheap now, fewer people will extract it. Exxon is reporting historic losses. Occidental went bankrupt. Shale extraction and deep sea exploration both are suddenly uneconomical. Isn’t this a positive?

Was there a reduction in demand? Sure. There was a huge reduction in speculation! People are still buying plastic, but dumb money (like USO and Chinese hedge funds) actually sent oil prices negative. Something inconceivable from a reduction in demand alone.

Do you have to burn the oil you buy? It is toxic waste that belongs in the ground. You could buy oil resources (extraction) relatively cheap right now and simply leave the oil in the ground.

People hate this line of argument, they hate it a lot more than recycling, like who’s going to go and buy oil futures, take delivery and not burn the oil?

People already do this with e.g. rainforests and land conservation and it’s basically the only 100% market-based, bulletproof land conservation process - buying land and like, not chopping the trees down or mining it. Maybe the same people who hate buying oil and not burning it also hate land conservation. Maybe they hate that forest protections make natural resources more valuable, thereby enriching the bad guys. It certainly feels shitty, giving these oil bastards free money. No simple answers here.

Besides what would happen to prices if people bought more oil than they need? Prices would rise, encouraging people to extract. Or prices would not rise, simply because speculators are terrified. Who knows! Lumber prices rise and fall all the time, despite forest under legal conservation having increased over time.

Anyway, if you know where prices will go, trade oil futures and become a billionaire. Also it’s only cheap for Saudis and Russians to extract oil. What do you want to do, invade?

I’m just trying to litigate the #1 misunderstanding: the relationship between oil prices and pollution. It is impossible to predict how oil prices alone will affect pollution. Prices are both cause and effect.

>People hate this line of argument, they hate it a lot more than recycling, like who’s going to go and buy oil futures, take delivery and not burn the oil?

wouldn't it be more efficient to just buy the mineral rights to those oil, and leave it in the ground?

>What do we do about all this?

Don't recycle for the sake of recycling. Tax any externalities associated with virgin plastic manufacturing and plastic recycling. Let the market figure out what's the most efficient. This weird obsession of recycling-for-the-sake-of-recycling is what led to this problem in the first place.

This right here. Taxes can have a huge impact on behavior. However, corporation's ability to lobby can delay or stall any efforts to make meaningful changes quickly. I think we'll get there, but it'll take far longer than it needs to.

> Let the market figure out what's the most efficient.

The idea of using the market, which has only ever been good at figuring out how to rape mother earth as thoroughly as possible, to solve environmental issues gives me calling-upon-Hannibal-Lecter-to-solve-your-serial-killer-case vibes.

Markets respond to incentives. If the incentive is towards raping mother earth (eg. if polluting is more productive than not polluting, and pollution isn't punished), then that's the behavior you're going to get.

I think you're still caught up in the lie about recycling. Part of that lie included indoctrinating people with the belief that landfills were bad. They're not. The US has unlimited space to create landfills and they can now be made so they don't leach chemicals into the water table or erode into the sea. The problem with plastic is it getting into the ocean. It gets into the ocean (from the US) because of failed attempts to recycle it. So put it in landfills where it's harmless.

I agree, but with the caveats that indescriminate use of landfills (as we have today) is not good, and they are not maintenance-free in future although considering them 'dump and forget' is very attractive. I expect historical landfills being compromised, especially due to increased sea levels and extreme weather events, to become an increasingly common topic in the next few decades.

Sequestration of plastic in landfills seems to be the best option we have right now for plastic waste disposal. Even then, more focus on proper encapsulation before it goes in is needed. Even simple initiatives like EcoBricks (https://www.ecobricks.org/) helps ensure more permanent sequestration in ways that look likely to reduce the risk of eventual environmental damage.

We also need more focus on diversion of materials before landfill. Right now an enourmous amount of compostible organic waste, e-waste, and metals are sent to landfill because nobody is willing to bear the cost of diversion. IMO material disposal cost should be borne by the original producer (see the EU WEEE regulations for a good starter on how this can work). This incentivises sustainable choices from the very start of a goods life cycle, rather than how it currently sits as an afterthought.

Rising sea levels should not be a concern for nearly any landfill, except perhaps those of island nations. Building a few meters above the present sea level will keep you out of the ocean even if everything melts.

But there are many such island nations and the consequences are global - In England and Wales, for example, there are at least 1700 coastal landfills in the coastal flood plain and at least 60 threatened by erosion ( Coastal Landfills, Rising Sea Levels and Shoreline Management: A Challenge for the 21st Century - Nicholls, 2019). Last year a landfill on the south west coast of NZ busted open due to unprecedented high rainfall, sending hundreds of tonnes of waste matter down the Fox river and out to sea. Inthat region alone another 12 historic landfill sites are at risk, and remediation for the already-busted one to ensure no further spillage is a multi-million-dollar project that the region can't afford.

It's not just island nations either - A great portion of humanity lives close to a coastline and waste is generally interred in proximity to where consumption occurs. Physical damage is not the only consideration - Any situation that prompts power interruption, water damage, or reduced access to the site puts a landfill site at risk of incident. In the US the EPA considers there to be significant risk of these events and has had it in their sights for at least a decade: https://semspub.epa.gov/work/11/175853.pdf

Assuming that sea level rise is just a matter of adjusting the shoreline in accordance with topography is also a huge mistake - Erosion increases rate and begins occurring in places it didn't previously. Storm surges and king tides bring surge water to higher points that ever before, and intrusion of saltwater into landfills poses far higher risk of leaching than rain, river, or aquifer.

The underlying problem is a changing risk management landscape - A decision to site a landfill on a once-in-300-years flood site may be taken, but when that assessment is later revised to once-in-100 years, you're faced with either rolling the dice each year or pulling funding out of your ass to relocate. Repeat the gamble at a global scale at many thousands of sites, the overall odds look very bleak.

This is a problem for some extant landfills, but not the premise of landfills themselves. Most nations do not have a shortage of land a long way away from and above the ocean.

If you are not more than a few meters above sea level, then you are probably on valuable coastal lands and should move inland anyway.

Agreed. Off the coast of LA, I just learned that companies were dumping thousands of DDT barrels for decades.

"Landfills could hold only so much, and people were concerned about burning toxics into the air — but the Pacific Ocean seemed a good alternative. Explosives, oil refinery waste, trash and rotting meats all went into the ocean, along with beryllium, various acid sludges, even cyanide." [1]

Companies were dumping and putting out of site. Much harder to burn it and avoid getting caught.

Third world countries are also taking first world trash and then dumping massive amounts into rivers and the ocean.

Cleaning up the ocean is a hell of a lot harder than cleaning up the air or the ground.

[1] https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-coast-ddt-dumping-ground...

It's quite clear we need to make it illegal.

Canada has just banned single use plastics [1], which is a start but doesn't go nearly far enough.

If we were actually serious we would make single-use plastic bottles and many, many other things illegal too.

It will come, I just fear it will be too late.

[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48477087

There's no reason to ban single-use plastic or even multi-use plastic as long as your electricity infrastructure contains oil plants or gas burner plants.

Simply burn the plastic waste.

You can reclaim more than 90% of the energy, and you're simply offsetting the use of power plants that burn the oil directly. If you instead use the oil to produce plastic, use the plastic for something good, and then burn it, you've gained more use out of it than you normally would, and you're co2-neutral.

... except for the toxic gasses that are released when burning plastic. Dioxins are no joke.

Modern trash incinerators don't have that problem. A friend of mine works in the industry, and they're starting to build co2-traps as well, which makes it an even better choice.

I know the US is severely behind on trash incineration compared to for example Sweden, but the knowledge and technology exists, it's just a matter of building the plants at this point.

Isn't that a non-issue with high temperature incinerators?

Why not just make the export of plastic waste illegal? That's how it gets into the sea.

I agree. The only thing that gives me hope is this:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2016/01...

So what are you doing?

Force your local community to build clean waste burning power plants instead of commissioning new landfills and recycle what can be reprocessed locally. Additionally put a tax on each bag of trash to encourage recycling and ban private burning of trash.

Pass a law that requires all vendors of electronics to take back any e waste which then goes to recycling.

Also pass a law that food plastic packaging can be disposed of at the supermaket for free.

A landfill sequesters the carbon. Burning the plastic puts it into the atmosphere. That's a bad idea.

If the problem is that "recycling" programs don't always recycle, then just landfill it all. Problem solved.

Modern trash burning plants capture emissions and turn them I to solids which get buried.

I was not asking what could be done, I was asking what he was doing besides commenting on HN.

> we've been burying our waste because it's too expensive to reclaim the plastic.

Good. That's literally the most correct thing that can possibly be done with this waste. It's _never_ going to be recycled, at least not with current technology, because it takes more energy to get usable plastic out the other side than does sourcing new plastic. It's simply not worth it.

Bury it.

You think we're going to run out of space? You think we can't handle preventing runoff into the ocean? These are solved problems - all we have to do is to admit to ourselves that we're going to be burying a ton of plastic waste, and then ensure that every single unrecyclable scrap of it actually does get buried. We need to export our best practices for waste management to help other countries bury their plastic, and sell some of our gargantuan amounts of land space to bury plastic for smaller countries that don't have the space. It simply is what it is.

We don't have to give up plastic in order to prevent it from going into the ocean. What we do have to do is to understand that plastic, as an artifact of an advanced civilization, rests on the fundamental requirement of having implemented of all the waste management infrastructure also. If you don't have that, you're not ready for plastic!

Yet, we've exported tons of it to the third world where waste management is simply not a thing - sewers aren't even a thing - and then we act surprised when they throw useless plastic into the river, until you end up with this:

https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=garbage+river

We do not see this in the first world! Nobody is doing that here, which is why I vehemently reject the guilt trip people want to put us on with regards to plastic. We have this amazing technological invention, the "garbageman", who with his truck is able to keep our civilization pretty damned clean. Remember to thank yours.

How do we export this incredible innovation to Africa, India, etc. so that their garbage rivers become livable homes for aquatic life once more? Seems to be a lot more difficult than it should be, but I am really lacking in any kind of understanding of why that would be.

having garbage trucks that come reliably costs money and infrastructure that often isn't there.

Sure, sure. So how was garbage dealt with here before we had trucks? I suspect horse-drawn wagons wouldn't be the worst idea in the world....

not sure how common horses are in africa, even before colonialization. garbage wasnt as plentiful back then either.

That's exactly the point.

Pains me to do it, as I'm not a gamer, but it's like in a video game when you get a weapon or item your character is not skilled enough to wield. Try using it and it won't work as well as something simpler. You need to level up, ostensibly building your fundamental skills up to the point where you can make use of it.

Same is true here: plastic is an artifact of an advanced civilization and it's being dropped into a developing one that simply doesn't have the infra or the cultural values of proper waste management needed to handle the problem.

Solution: we keep using plastic, they stop and focus on things that work better in their situation, using local materials that fit their lifecycle well into the mindset of the people.

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