938 karma · joined April 12, 2021
Contaminated recyclables are just garbage. Countries are getting fed up with the EU and US sending supposedly separated recyclables because it's pure garbage falsely labeled as usable plastic. [1]
> Upon implementation of the policy in 2017, plastic imports to China plummeted by 99%.[9] This led to waste stream backlogs across Europe and North America.[9] When they could find buyers, most European plastic was diverted to Indonesia, Turkey, India, Malaysia, and Vietnam.[9]
Western governments are sending trash to these places knowing it's finding its way into rivers just so they don't have to spend money processing it themselves. These impoverished countries are overwhelmed with trash that isn't theirs. It's a problem because Western countries are selling trash that they claim is recyclable and a valuable resource, but is literally useless trash. The moment one country bans the system (such as China), the EU and US find another place to dump it instead of processing it on their own.
I'm seeing mainly trash from Japanese companies that are Japanese products with Japanese labels. It's easy to recognize. Externalizing blame isn't the solution because it's not the problem.
Currents likely help carry trash away from certain regions. Japan's east coast isn't really being affected by trash that would be coming from, say, China, because currents don't carry most of it to our beaches. It's stuff being washed out locally and brought back by waves here. Much more is likely being passed out into the middle of the ocean.
Japanese beaches that aren't ultra popular tourist destinations are currently flooded with trash. Going through Shizuoka, Aichi, and islands of Kagoshima, they're increasingly looking like dumps. Some are completely covered in pieces of trash, and most of it isn't Chinese. It's washed up laundry detergent bottles and toys and stuff all from here. Some places like Okinawa and Kamakura beach are generally cleaned, but having visited Kamakura 4 years ago and again a year ago, it's noticeably filthier.
Major beaches are maintained and cleaned daily. Walk a few hundred meters beyond the crowds and there's a good chance you'll see trash everywhere. Two weeks ago I visited a beach I last went to a couple years back, and it was depressing seeing the state of it. The beach used to have crabs and isopods roaming the sands and crawling around the rocks. Now it's covered in shards of plastic and washed up tires and other things. Not a crab to be seen.
I don't live in the US but it's certainly not a developing country. Beaches are absolutely covered in plastic waste and it's noticeably worse each time I go. Forests are steadily becoming filled with plastic that either gets tossed there or blown there. Animals eat garbage and die. It's horrible. Assuming I live a very long life and die in 70 years, that plastic will still be there. New plastic will be there as well.
America and the EU "manage" their plastic waste by literally shipping it to other countries, then blaming them for mismanaging it. Most was sent to China, then it was banned by China.[1] Now the EU and US ship it to other countries, claim they manage their plastic, and blame new countries. The US and EU have yet to manage their plastic, though. They're just dumping it on their neighbor's property.
My worry about paper bags is that, corporations doing what they do and going for the lowest bidder, they'll be made with clear-cut rainforest wood from Indonesia and Malaysia instead of sustainable sources. I'm sure a lot are.
I just reuse bags and never use paper or anything unless it's forced upon me. I bought some durable bags 5 years ago. I keep a couple in my vehicle, a few at home, and others in other places so I almost always have a bag with me.
Unless you restrict the number of houses private individuals can own and massively restrict what corporate owners can buy, not much will change.
The situation is the same in China.
I also specifically said people wear them outside of the pandemic.
I think you’re very confused because you’re angry. Calm down. :)
People here also walk around with masks during allergy season, or doing flu season even when they’re not sick. In Taiwan and Vietnam I saw (and wore) masks on days when the air was particularly dirty.
People who are screaming about the vaccine being a bigger risk than the virus are the ones being fed info by outrageous media reporting.
Just keep burning through investor cash until you're acquired by a bigger corporation. Then a year later they announce that they're killing your company because, surprise, it couldn't turn a profit.
Somewhere a rich stock owner makes a huge profit. Everyone's happy.
Depends what you're defining as young people. Under 5 as in those quotes, maybe virtually no risk. But I know otherwise healthy people in their 20s who got sick over a year ago. Their sense of smell and taste is still completely fried with no sign of recovery.
Maybe that can happen with a bad flu sometimes, but it seems way more common with covid. It seems like there's some nerve damage resulting from the virus that we don't yet fully understand.
The vaccine seemed like a safer gamble than potentially forever losing my ability to taste, or worse.
Just comparing these two, they say the US is below the OECD average lifespan while Japan is significantly above. Yet Japan is near the bottom end of the health chart and the US is near the top. Japan and Korea are below Brazil and Mexico in health. I find that... questionable, to say the least.
Also interesting how Japan has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world (possibly only Singapore is safer), yet Japan is in the middle of the chart and not far above the US. Somehow the UK is considered safer than Japan.
Makes me wonder how exactly they calculate everything. Loads of wonky results there.
That lucky, smart, hard working, genetically gifted, handsome, strong, virile, well-endowed, wrinkle-free, and blessed by all the gods billionaire would still be able to go to space and give mindblowing amounts of cash to anyone they want even with 1/10th the wealth they have now.
Otherwise, society is going to reach a breaking point as it always has and will again. But that's just life.
I'll still take a couple sips before bed, but it's just enough to keep my mouth from getting dry and no more.
At which point you just stop using the straw and drink normally.
The straw controversy was bizarre to me. I can't remember when I last used a straw and it's not often that I see them, aside from chain restaurants selling overpriced novelty drinks (e.g. starbucks).
Gullible people exist. I mean, it's such a well-known phenomenon that the term "gullible" exists to describe people who fall for what should be obviously false information and lies. We all have our instances of gullibility, and we all have domains that we know nothing about, and there are countless people who prey on people with lack of knowledge in some area.
If people go around in real life deceiving people, someone might step in and tell them to watch out for the scam. There'll be signs in tourist areas where scammers frequent. Banks will send out notices on how to help their customers avoid financial traps. Schools teach kids to look out for bad information and misleading conclusions. Signs are posted in parks warning people not to venture out to certain areas because they're likely unprepared and could die (and people still die anyways).
This is all generally accepted as good.
But flag a post on some social networking site with a "This might be fake. Be careful", and people go wild saying the elite are trying to police us and they're destroying our freedoms.
It'd be like Hawaii saying "Go on, Botswana. Our ocean is all yours."
If it worked that way, my job would be much easier.
Some people really do get stressed out with too much human interaction, just like there are people who suffer when they don’t get enough. And there’s a whole spectrum in between and going in various other directions.
There’s literally no way there aren’t enough workers to make pizza so long as unemployed people exist. This is a problem with their hiring practices. Maybe there’s a squeeze on illegal immigrants working for sub-minimum wage and slave hours, but there’s a bunch of Americans willing to work if you actually pay them.
So if what this is doing isn't any different than a bucket shop... I think we'll see the same outcome.