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Comment by pbhjpbhj | Hacker News Reader

>All that hardware must surely be worth more than half the value of the actual product!

I'm constantly struck at how bread (a pastry, say) in a plastic tray, wrapped in plastic, is so crazy to me. The effort and technology that went, and goes, into oil extraction and such - only to throw the packaging away immediately that I get home ... it's just so unsustainable.

I wonder when in the West we'll start mining rubbish dumps ('refuse sites' where household waste is buried)? Maybe we already have? I know in developing countries people spend their days manually picking over such places.

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> I wonder when in the West we'll start mining rubbish dumps

Never, because we have virtually unlimited space for landfills, and landfill tech has quietly been improving over the last few centuries, to the point that landfills are cheap, non-polluting, and entirely carbon neutral. Countries with less land mass (Europe et al) prefer incineration (mainly to save space, despite it being significantly worse for the environment and much more expensive (although with the newer energy reclamation efforts this is getting better)).

IMO it's not worth worrying about landfills too much. Household waste makes up about 3% of total landfill waste (when you add commercial/industrial/agricultural) in North America. You and your bun wrapper are truly irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

This is backwards, it's not about eliminating the landfill, it's about recovering the materials which were previously not scarce but now are or will be soon.

Oil-plastics will increase in cost as it becomes more scarce.

Bioplastics are increasingly popular, research is making it better and easier to produce, etc.

I don’t fret over a plastic wrap. For one, if it’s bread in a supermarket, I want it wrapped, I don’t want someone’s sneeze on it.

Plastic for fruits and veggies that you rinse, that’s absurd.

Landfills are likely chock full of Aluminum, Nickel-Cadmium, Lithium, copper, brass, and all sorts of useful metals and chemicals.

Sure, the grand majority is going to be food waste, but if you threw it all into an incinerator and melted down the ashes there is probably a decent blend of valuable material mixed in with the waste.

You don't have separate collection for food (bio) waste?

In the states it depends on the city/county/state and their legislation.

Some places do, some don't.

I think it’s less about managing the environmental impact of landfills and more about eventually the concentration of desirable materials in landfills may end up higher than in known natural deposits. Or at least easier to refine and separate.

> carbon neutral

No. Poorly separated wastes in landfill cause non-trivial methane emissions and other VOCs [0]. While leachate _may_ be captured, most of the time methane is definitely not.

[0] - https://www.epa.gov/lmop/basic-information-about-landfill-ga...

For historic, sealed landfills, perhaps. Modern regulations require methane (LFG) capture for all non-trivially-sized landfills. In 2015, 74% of US household waste ended up in a landfill with a system to capture methane and convert it to energy[1], I suspect the number has increased over the last decade.

[1] https://ensoplastics.com/theblog/?p=2557

Not sure how those are related. We only eat food coming in packaging comparable to transplanted organ because companies can't afford poisoning lawsuits because humans are so expensive.

Lots of people especially those generally "up north" undermine risks and therefore costs of food poisoning, but it's real. Haven't those people seen things growing molds?

How is plastic on bread related with food poisoning? Here in France baguettes are wrapped in paper and are eaten within a day or two of being made (or else they get dry). if you keep them for long enough, molds will grow on it, then you see them and don't eat that old bread (even though it's unlikely to be too bad for most people, the taste is certainly not great). I'd be surprised if anyone ever got food poisoned with bread.

> I'd be surprised if anyone ever got food poisoned with bread.

I'm about to blow your mind. It was and is one of the most common food poisoning types, especially B. Cereus and everyone's favorite religion-creator, C. purpurea / ergot.

Gross image warning (not sure why it's the first thing on the page but...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ergotism

>Changes in agricultural practices and the introduction of disease-resistant crop varieties have largely eliminated ergotism in modern times

Correct, but B. Cereus is essentially the most common food poisoning bacteria, depending on what sources you look at.

Right, I was really focusing on the bread itself, given the discussion was about the wrapping, rather than previous poisoning of ingredients (unless I'm mistaken, plastic wrapping would not help against ergotism). I'm sure people also get poisoned with chemicals they might put on the crops as well...

Bacillus Cereus is the major modern issue, and it largely comes from soggy bread/rice/pasta, so plastic is a significant factor.

I completely agree with you that we should, in general, phase out plastic as much as we can, but we have to be realistic about the benefits and drawbacks. I don't think it's anything that couldn't be replaced with oiled paper, but plastic is used for some good and bad reasons.

Not strictly food poisoning, but my wife is extremely allergic to one of the types of seeds commonly put on bread. The plastic packaging virtually eliminates contamination between breads stored adjacent to each other. Since marrying her, I've stopped taking home bread in paper bags or bread lying in the open.

As soon as there is demand, I'm sure they'll start mining. Provided it doesn't leave the planet, everything is recycled on a long enough timescale.

The cheapness of plastic just to speaks to the enormous demand for all the other oil products sold, it's practically a byproduct.

What will happen to the price of plastic when demand for oil starts reducing for mobility and heating with the move to electricity energy?

Flying pigs will deliver our food directly from the production point, no more need for packaging.

Not much; I used to think the same thing. But there are many ways to make the same chemicals from bio sources, either directly grown (corn or soy as feedstocks) or more processed, or bioengineered so bacteria convert some bio input to the desired chemicals

somebody once said oil is too valuable to burn for fuel. the important part are the petrochemicals, but the demand for fuel is so high that's where the money is

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