Plastic is now a geological phenomenon
zmescience.com
zmescience.com
Plastic… asshole.”
― George Carlin
That's an average of about 50 kg of plastic produced per person per year which is insane but I wonder what the median is and what the distribution looks like. How much plastic does a person in the US go through compared to someone in a developing country? How much of that plastic is used in industrial settings to support our infrastructure compared to plastic we actually touch?
This is horrible but now I really want to add some plastistone to my mineral specimen collection.
At least for me, it’s an order of magnitude easier to throw plastic into a trash bin than to drive down to the river and dump it in.
Waste incineration to create electricity, and also (according to those companies) to reduce emissions from landfills, and the need for land for waste.
Even if you think it's going to landfill, a lot is not.
And when it's burned, plastics are released into the environment, if not immediately then over shorter time than if they were left intact and buried.
It's best in every single possible way, except for one: Emotional people who don't realize it's the best way.
Recycling, who knows. But trash, I know exactly where it goes.
But I totaly undersand your point. For me, it would also be real work to not put waste in the trash bin, but to drive somewhere to dispose it
This isn't the case, at least in the US. Trash from trash bins is almost exclusively dealt with locally, whether in landfills or incinerators. Essentially zero US household trash is shipped internationally.
Recycling is another matter. Plastic recycling frequently does follow the path you mentioned.
For this reason it can sometimes be more environmentally friendly to throw away plastic waste, sequestering it in your local landfill, than "recycling" it into the Pacific ocean.
It's exactly the same in Germany. I was talking about plastic.
In germany we recycle paper and "some" plastic. But all I've seen/read is, it's a miniscule amount. Like greenwashing. Most of it get's just shipped somewhere else with some super shady "we recycle it for you, so you can can wash you hands in innocence" deals. And IIRC it's the same for the US. During Covid there were numerous chinese container ships waiting on the US coast after unloading, to load "recycling material", because waiting was cheaper than driving back empty. (they just dump it somewhere in the end)
Zero trash gets shipped. And any recycling that gets shipped is purchased by the receiver, which means they don't dump it because the want it.
In the woods near me there is so much trash -- caused by wind storms knocking off recycling bins and carrying the stuff until it's "caught" in the trees and other nature
Kinda eye opening
If you care about that, there are ways to get fish that isn’t caught with industrial trawlers like this, but it requires meaningful attention. Be conscious fishmongers will lie to your face, so traceability is critical. They routinely lied to my dad when they knew him personally; they knew he was in charge of fish stocks too, and he wasn’t shy about his ability to differentiate species. And not white lies, like misplacing the species with something equivalent or from the wrong part of the same bay: he was routinely told they were selling fish that was banned from sale after he had pointed out it wasn’t the right species, that species was extinct in that country, and the only stock available was farmed…
All that to say: you can help, but it’s a big uphill battle. I guess that half counts as industrial that you don’t touch.
The other half (of the plastic found in the ocean) is from countries without sufficient garbage collection. There was an effort to collect it around the “Team Rivers” effort (after “Team Trees”) from a couple of YouTubers.
I remember someone criticizing the effort as whitewashing the reality: there were draft laws to collect garbage. However, in budget-constraint countries without an omnipresent tax collection capacity, that depends on financing it by collecting a fee from known brands using plastic packaging. Lobbyists from well-known international brands opposed the laws to protect margins. I couldn’t find that reaction with minimal effort, but I can try harder to track it if you are interested.
There is plastic thrown out by pigs in Western countries. It flies in the wind and gets into rivers and the ocean, but that’s materially less overall. I’d still blame the same well-known brands for not using glass or metallic bottles, though.
So, in that second case, you do touch it and the culprits are well-known sugary water vendors.
1. Car tires. 2. And literally all clothes that aren't natural fibers. Which is a huge, absolutely huge percentage.
Neither of these get any better by preventing littering. Driving and clothes washing and drying is spewing your plastic mist into the air 24 hours a day.
This is very much the answer. The producers of a product must pay the *full cost, including all externalities,* of recycling it. This will incenctivise them to e.g. find packaging which is easier to recycle. Otherwise why bother? Wrap things in plastic inside of paper inside of plastic inside of cardboard, who cares, it's dirt cheap and you don't have to pay for the harmful effects of its improper disposal!
But we'll probably never know, as permafrost is melting under +5°C increase in Arctic regions. Which is a ticking bomb in term of co2 release.