Scientists find ‘plastic rocks’ on remote island | Hacker News Reader

Scientists find ‘plastic rocks’ on remote island

phys.org

57 pointswglb44 comments

The amount of plastic we use is sad. When I go to the grocery store, the apples are wrapped in plastic, broccoli wrapped in plastic, baked goods are in plastic, plastic everything.

Why do they do this? I'm going to wash the produce when I get home, I don't need a plastic wrapper on my broccoli just to throw it out immediately and then was the vegetable anyway.

Plastic is cheap, durable, and water-resistant, that's really all there is to it. When individual items are all packaged like this you can cut corners in a lot of other places.

Until there's an equally cheap equally effective alternative plastic will be used unless we regulate against it, it's simply too convenient.

>cheap

More like not properly priced.

I was going to write a witty intellectual comment about capitalism at work but with further reflection it needs to come from "both sides".

The economically disadvantage use plastic in their everyday life and an arbitrary tax on it would negatively effect them and make their lives harder.

At the same time they can see through the income gap that those who could afford an increase of plastic still shit all over the environment and would further lead to a divide in the issue.

The most recent example of this is people complaining about plastic straws whilst private jet use in unabated.

You say tax and that's how the policy should be implemented, but the real thing the tax would try to capture is externalities. Some of the bad stuff plastic does (I guess most of it, actually) is not included in its price. This is not at all capitalism.

This is not done at every grocery store. It can preserve freshness and prevent some types of damage during shipping and handling (getting dirty, etc.)

True not in every store, but at least in the UK I see it in most stores, for a large selection of produce.

I found an article stating that it actually increases food waste:

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/business/ulstergrocer/ret...

Obviously I cannot verify these claims, but it seems like could be one of many easy wins to reduce our plastic consumption.

And getting dirty should be expected, these things come from the ground most of the time, that's why you wash your vegetables at home before eating them.

By now brocolli and fish are also wrapping plastic. Which themselves are wrapped in plastic.

If there wasn't a wrapper I'd pack it in a little baggie to not have to deal with broccoli bits at the bottom of my backpack. Also washing won't get rid of everything and that way a sick cashier has a lower chance of smearing something onto the produce (especially relevant if I'm not going to cook it). But why do those wrappers and baggies and whatnot need to be non-biodegradable? This stuff needs to survive for a week or two at most, they should make it rot away afterwards.

Is this something that a paper bag could solve for?

Paper is heavier and bulkier, production is pretty resource intensive, recycling doesn't work all that well, it's not transparent, and you may have to line it with something else to make it hold up to moisture. It's better than plastic I guess but a non-fossil-sourced and easily biodegradable plastic would be kind of perfect for this, even if it was a little less sturdy than the current mainstream options.

> It's better than plastic I guess but a non-fossil-sourced and easily biodegradable plastic would be kind of perfect for this

It would be, but plastic like that that is also suitable for use as a bag doesn't exist.

> It would be, but plastic like that that is also suitable for use as a bag doesn't exist.

There is quite a bit of R&D in the biodegradable plastics space and the EU is banning more and more single use plastics so I'm hopeful that will change. One store around here piloted corn-based ones and while they weren't quite as sturdy and certainly very expensive, they worked ok-ish (and apparently biodegraded within years).

Yes, the current biodegradable plastics are, basically, PLA -- the same stuff commonly used for 3D printing.

And they are technically biodegradable, but won't do so in a reasonable period of time outside of industrial facilities. They're better on that count than more traditional plastic, but I'm not sure they're better enough to actually matter.

Hopefully, there will be some advance in the future but, as they say, the future isn't here yet!

And then at some point you have to weigh the carbon cost of transporting the extra mass vs the impact of the plastic itself (I'm not making this up, it's a thing that came up when some cities started requiring the thicker, more durable plastic grocery bags)

There's no easy win

Because it reduces food spoiling. Without some deeper research, it's not clear cut whether the benefits of plastic packaging reduction outweigh the costs of extra spoilage. IIRC analysis from Wageningen University suggested that they don't.

I assume this is only a concern because in America you're forced to make grocery trips once a week because of the suburban layout and car-centric development instead of getting fresh food off the corner store every other day like most countries.

But in the US (or at least my part of it), it's not common to find produce individually wrapped in plastic. I always thought that was more of a European thing.

Stuff like cucumbers, yes, because otherwise they would have much too short of a shelf life. Otherwise I don't think I've ever seen individual fruits or vegetables wrapped in plastic here in Canada, and I didn't think that grocery stores in the USA are very different from ours. Bulk bags of apples, carrots, grapes, lettuce, spinach, etc., certainly, but individual apples wrapped in plastic seems ridiculous.

That's a sort of stereotype, though. Japan is one of the most urbanized countries in the world, if not the most urbanized, and it has some of the most disproportionate plastic use.

As someone who has worked with many businesses, there is an unfortunate bit of psychology I can share:

Many customers are more comfortable buying items in plastic packaging because they associate plastic with clean/sanitary/professionally produced.

> Why do they do this?

Plastics are made in huge quantities from by products of oil, gas, and coal.

Petroleum is decomposed under heat into gasoline, kerosene, naphtha, light oil, heavy oil, etc. Most plastics use naphtha as main raw material. Naphtha is further decomposed thermally and separated utilizing the difference in the boiling point (temperature at which the phase change from liquid to gas occurs) to form ethylene and propylene, which are the raw materials for plastics.

Chances are the electricity that you're using to read this was generated by oil / gas / coal; the world runs on oil.

Plastics are essentially a convenient by-product, which can be made cheaply and in bulk, and they do a good job preserving foods.

That doesn't answer the why question.

Plastics are essentially a convenient by-product, which can be made cheaply and in bulk, and they do a good job preserving foods.

What’s so disturbing now?

We’ve been polluting the planet with plastic for half a century. How bad does it need to get?

https://www.democracynow.org/2023/3/13/east_palestine_plasti...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

     What also floats in water?
     Bread
     Apples
     *Very small rocks*

Discussed last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35180230

I'm just playing games. I know it's plastic rock

Next up on the playlist, plastic beach (Gorillaz, 2010)

stuff like this makes me question how accurate our general model of the world is.

If plastic rocks can form (plastic being <100yrs old) how rapidly does geography change?

I have a farm and the land will change FEET in elevation from year to year. We have a lot of rain, but it’s hard to wrap my head that geography move slowly when my hillside has changed so rapidly.

>the land will change FEET in elevation from year to year

As far as I am aware that is not natural, people are pumping water out of the ground fast enough to make the of elevation change. If it were naturally occurring it would take hundreds of years of drought to do that.

Lol quite an assumption there. Definitely not human, this is common amongst neighbors too

There is no process to 'lithify' bits of plastic in place on a beach. This is probably the result of someone partially burning/melting a pile of plastic(nets) on the beach. The resulting slag washed into the ocean , broke up, and became rounded 'rocks' by wave action.

>There is no process

You just described a process to make plastic that looks like igneous rocks, which seems to be all the paper is claiming.

The abstract mentions "plastic debris forms are rock synthetic equivalents in which humans act as depositional and post-depositional agents," so I suspect the authors are thinking the same thing. I can't see the full text however.

Spicy take, but isn't this kind of a blessing in disguise? Plastic in this form wouldn't be disturbing the ecosystem as much. This is better than microplastics being found in fish or choking turtles.

Just like rocks become sand, these will erode into microplastics

No because a lot of microplastics start out as larger pieces that degrade over time

> Microplastics come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces.

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html

Given enough time, nature will evolve towards a more plastic accepting genome. Hopefully it will be fast enough!

As George Carlin once said, for all we know, humans are nature's way of manufacturing plastic.

Now I imagine a group of aliens evolved on a level that we are no more than bacteria to them observing us, marvelling over our lifeforms ability to produce plastic. "First alien life form synthesising plastic from their ancestors liquified dead remains discovered.", their tabloids tell them.

Trees did not decompose for millions of years and just piled up, since there were no fungi or bacteria that evolved to decompose wood. I'd rather not wait millions of years to see plastic decompose.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal

There are already organisms that feed on plastic, albeit slowly. See this fascinating 2013 article for an introduction:

"Life in the “Plastisphere”: Microbial Communities on Plastic Marine Debris"

https://eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/branco2014/files/2014/...

Plastics also break down to simpler hydrocarbons and carbon dioxide with prolonged exposure to sunlight. Unfortunately, these gaseous small molecules are greenhouse gases, but they don't persist for millions of years.

"Production of methane and ethylene from plastic in the environment"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Its slowness is what I really hate about evolution. With sufficient energy, humans can make almost every environment habitable. Corals, butterflies and fish really need to step up their game. "Aeiouuu!!! The seas temperature increased by 2 degrees celsius over 50 years -I guess I will just surrender and die." just doesn't cut it in 2023 anymore. Bad attitude.

Welcome to the world of the plastic beach

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