Single-use cutlery and plates to be banned in England | Hacker News Reader

Single-use cutlery and plates to be banned in England

bbc.co.uk

21 pointsedward24 comments

My understanding is that 81% of ocean waste comes from rivers in poorer Asian countries. And the rest is from marine sources (fishing nets, lines, ropes, and abandoned vessels) [1]. Not much seems to come from wealthier nations, let alone plastic straws/plates/etc.

I'm no expert, and I do think ocean waste is a problem that needs to be taken seriously. But it seems to me that all I hear is politicians talk about banning straws (to very little effect on ocean plastic) in, say, Australia, rather than helping a country like the Philippines (responsible for one-third of global ocean plastic) improve waste management.

As I said I'm no expert, but is helping poorer countries improve waste management such a monumentally difficult task?

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics

Most wealthy nations export a large chunk of their plastic and other waste to poorer countries. The conclusion that article came to is very strange.

That's interesting. This article takes a further look at the issue. https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade

I estimate that a few percent – possibly up to 5% – of the world’s ocean plastics could come from rich countries exporting their waste overseas. That could bring the total up to 10%: 5% directly from rivers in these regions, plus a further 5% from trade.

And

The world generates around 350 million tonnes of plastic waste per year. That means that around 2% of waste is traded.

The remaining 98% is handled domestically. It’s sent to a landfill, recycled, or incinerated in the country where the waste was generated. The idea that most of the world’s plastic waste is shipped overseas is incorrect. One reason why this figure is so low is that it’s mostly recycled waste that’s traded, and only 20% of the world’s plastic is recycled.

Over the last decade, we’ve seen a large decline in the amount of plastic waste traded. Rates have fallen by two-thirds since 2010.

So I suppose you can say some of that waste is ours, but the majority doesn't seem to be.

The article implies the motivation for this ban is reducing landfill (and downstream impacts of landfill) not direct ocean waste.

This is a feel good leftist political scheme to make people feel better while the 99% problem lingers. The problem ain't plastic based plates and cutlery

It's always some other problem that should be solved, it's exhausting...

It's unsustainable to wrap stuff in plastic only for that wrapper to be thrown away and buried in a mountain of other garbage. Same with cutlery. When have we become so fucking lazy that banning single use plastics is a controversial thing? Even if it's not important in the grand scheme of things, how are other things ever supposed to change if we keep normalizing that kind of unsustainable behavior.

I'd feel much more accepting of the small, near meaningless, changes if the large, most impactful, changes weren't being deliberately ignored.

As long as very low impact changes are pushed on the masses to deflect from failures to make genuinely impactful change people are going to resent them, even when ultimately they're not entirely bad ideas on their own.

I get what you're saying but there's also progress being made, I'm assuming you're in the US, have a look beyond the borders.

I'm not sure it'll lead anywhere if we keep pointing the finger at others and expecting others to change before we accept changes that affect us. There are 8 billion people on this planet and we have to start being more respectful to the environment as individuals. Our lifestyle is not sustainable and the sooner we understand that as individuals and the sooner we make changes, the sooner those changes will be expected from politics, industry, etc. I just don't believe meaningful change will happen top down but bottom up.

I'll believe the environmentalists when they give up air travel.

It shouldn't be necessary to abandon aviation technology entirely. I'm sure there are a lot of optimizations that could help reduce the number of flights in the air for military, passenger, and freight/cargo as well as advancements in the technology that would make the planes in the air even less harmful.

While I do think we'll need to face some lifestyle changes, I don't think extremes like giving up cars for horses, abandoning aviation, or going back to candles and fires for lighting and heating are needed. We can do better and still enjoy the benefits of technological advancements even if the way we enjoy them changes.

This mindset achieves nothing.

My understanding is that waste doesn't seem to come from wealthier nations because they pay poor nations to "properly dispose" of it, who in turns just dump them in their rivers.

That's terrible for those countries to take the money to dispose of it and then just dump it in the ocean.

It's also terrible to pay the absolute lowest bidder to "properly dispose of it" when you know they are unlikely to do any such thing for the amount you paid.

Not if they also ban plastic straws (that mostly get responsibly disposed of) for their own citizens!

But no, the whole "rich countries are causing the problem by exporting plastics to the poors" thing is misinformation https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-waste-trade.

The article is not very well written as it seems that the ban will actually apply to plastic items, not single-use cutlery and plates in general. I.e. everything will most likely become paper-based.

I had a McDonald's salad today and the cutlery was made from paper and was actually not bad, certainly much better than the paper straws they give and that are awful.

What worries me is that these “paper” items are increasingly being coated with PFAS and related compounds. I’d like to know that my paper doesn’t contain those long-lived chemicals.

The problem is that paper generally needs to be coated with something in order to do the same job as the plastic version.

The coating currently is almost always a variant of PFAS--which is likely worse than the plastic version being incinerated at an industial facility.

>Single-use cutlery and plates to be banned in England

Headline is unnecessarily sensationalist. In fact the ban is about plastic.

If it just concerns single use plastic cutlery I won't miss it.

Odd. Paper plates can be as efficient as washing reusable ones?

And what on earth will that takeaway vindaloo be packaged in now?

If we're talking about the "reusable" cutlery that we see on the picture in the article linked, no one in England washes those, I can assure you. In fact it's not uncommon to see them literally thrown on the ground in London.

I agree. I meant "ceramic, porcelain or the like". You know, real stuff.

Maybe takeaway food packed in styrofoam, wrapped in plastic, that you then eat on the street using single use utensils isn't a sustainable business model then and maybe isn't something we should accept as a society.

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