Hacker News Reader

Comment by euroclydon | Hacker News Reader

Good stuff, but it's still that (Western?) way of thinking about treating the symptom.

I'm absolutely effing baffled at your statement so forgive me if I seem incoherent. Here's what I assume from your sentence:

You think that, instead of ridding the world of billions of rather large and bulky objects that won't decompose for thousands of years, we should leave those alone and instead focus our thinking on how not to produce any more. I imagine a cartoon of a man standing on the earth with a megaphone screaming,

"Everyone - listen up! This - this thing right here - it's incredibly important and I want everyone (and i mean everyone) to focus exclusively on it!

World - are you listening to me?

Stop trying to do other things! I don't care if thousands of you end up reproducing each others work - it's all in the name of solving this problem!

I said stop trying to multitask - we've got to exclusively solve this one thing!

World?

Hello?"

The man with the megaphone would have a bright future in the Catholic Church. "Put down that box of rubbers, I have something important to say!!"

I love plastic :(

I'd vastly prefer to recycle or decompose it than to never use it again.

Remember plastic is made of oil (petroleum) so people actually die for plastic.

Historically people die over anything desirable. Food, land, water, gold. There's no solution other than fixing human nature itself.

When did the US start the last war about food, land, water or gold?

1) War doesn't have a monopoly on killing people.

2) We've forcefully relocated (and killed!) people for their land several times in the past few hundred years.

3) How much violence in this country is sparked over money? Michael Mann's made some pretty good movies dramatizing bank robberies that result in gunfights.

So what's your point? War over petroleum (and thus plastic) is not that bad because we kill for other reasons too? Come on!

Many common plastics are made from ethylene and propylene, which are byproducts of the refining process and for many years were simply burned in flares.

The fact that those (formerly waste) gases are now turned into useful products is a turn for the better, I think.

Eliminating plastic would have no significant impact on the exploration and production of oil. Things are not always as simple as they seem.

So why lead rising oil prices to higher costs of plastic if it's just trash or a "byproduct"? There is no future for oil based fuels and plastics if you want to keep this planet.

I don't really understand what this means. What is the symptom here, and what is it a symptom of?

The above poster has a valid point. He thinks that rather than making millions of single-purpose plastic bags and then going through an expensive process to clean up after them, we should instead not produce the plastic bags in the first place. For example, we could just keep canvas bags in our cars.

That the parent has been moderated down so much is troubling.

"That the parent has been moderated down so much is troubling."

It's only troubling until you understand why.

No one would reasonably argue against the idea of producing something other than plastic in the first place.

The downmodding was most likely in response to the word "Western". Bash the U.S. (or anyone else, for that matter) and get downmodded. What's so troubling about that?

You can make a logical point on hn without insulting anyone else. The downmodding here is a clue to do just that.

Well, I questioned whether it's a Western phenomenon. I'm not trying to bash the U.S. I like being a citizen. I was actually trying to make an analogy to diet, health and medicine, where Western lifestyles have traditionally been found to be inferior to Eastern ones, because we, on average, eat crappy food, get diseases, then spend a bunch of money trying to fix the symptoms of those diseases.

It's hardly a western problem. I've been to Hong Kong and Taiwan, and they have just as many plastic bags as we ("The West") do, if not more. And they're just as concerned about them as we are.

I just got back from HK, and while I was there I saw a bunch of advertisements warning that many stores will start charging HK$0.50 for plastic bags if you don't bring your own bag. Seems like a good move.

South Australia has banned most plastic bags now and we're Western. When I see someone calling something a Western problem I typically think they are the sort of person who decries Western culture but still indulges in its benefits. That or an angry third-world dictator.

When I was in Western Africa, I got a plastic bag for practically every single purchase I made, even in rural markets.

Yes, I'd prefer Eastern medicine, where I get diagnosed as chi-deficient and treated with the powdered testicles of some rare animal.

I'm only partly joking.

I agree, but you made his point much better than he did and without the insult. I think the point is to be more conscious of what we consume. However, plastic is not going away anytime soon so we should instead encourage people (not mandate!) to attempt to consume less of these materials and at the same time keep innovating on finding replacement materials as well as ways to properly dispose.

"we could just keep canvas bags in our cars."

Or on our bicycles, indeed. Or our trouser pockets as we walk down to the local corner-shop.

"Green" bags have become quite popular in Australia. I think they look pretty horrible [1] though, but even girls carry them around while shopping. And you do not need to keep it in your pocket, just hang it on your shoulder.

[1] http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d8/GreenBag...

They're also starting to do this in Canada as well, at least in Ontario. They're also now charging for plastic bags even though they're just as poor quality as before.

http://www.jpgmag.com/stories/1151 (I AM NOT PLASTIC bags!)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com