Plastic. It's everywhere. It's in everything it seems. There's so much plastic. Ever walk through your local Walmart and just take in all the plastic around you? I do, and when you think about your Walmart just being one of thousands, who share the same stock, it's a little overwhelming. And then you realize that it isn't just Walmart. There's also Target, Kohls, Bed Bad & Beyond, and 14 different grocery chains, all full of plastic ketchup bottles, water bottles, soda bottles. Lowes and Home Depot have hundreds of pounds of Rubbermaid containers in each store. I mean just take in the Lego isle (full disclosure, I love me some Legos). Just one isle of one store has dozens of pounds of plastic Legos. And these things are distributed world wide.

Sure the US recycles a lot of plastic. But the problem is plastic usually can't be recycled into the same type of product. It usually gets downcycled, so your Deer Park water bottles that are sitting in your recycling bin will end up as carpet somewhere else. Which is ok I guess, at least it is getting used again, but it takes much more energy to make a new plastic bottle when you can't recycle like for like.

Glass is a bit better, but it also has its disadvantages. It's heavier, so companies end up burning more fossil fuels to get it from point A to point B. And you obviously can't make everything out of glass. I remember as a child though, most ketchup and mustard came in glass bottles. Glass can be recycled endlessly though, and always like for like.

I'd like to see some legislation requiring a certain percentage of food containers to go back to being glass.

And just thinking about all of the refrigerators, washer/dryer sets, tvs, computers, dishwashers and microwaves we go through as Americans. Many of those are gonna end up in a landfill someday.

It all just doesn't seem sustainable. Wall-E anyone?

/blog post.

6/4/2017 10:26:48 PM

Doesn't seem sustainable?

The topic of plastic is the obvious one but in addition to that, nothing we do is sustainable. American capitalism is designed around ultraconsumption that leads to massive waste.

6/4/2017 11:07:09 PM

Who gives a fuck? OMG, I saw a plastic bottle littered in a forest! It prevented 4 blades of grass from growing there!



Oh NO! Cute cuddly forest critters kill themselves with plastic nooses! Don't you care about a few animals? I am so outraged about fucking PLASTIC

6/4/2017 11:13:27 PM

^ Thank you for letting us know you have a yard covered in garbage but this is not at all what the concern of the thread is.

6/4/2017 11:21:00 PM

Sustainability is not just an environmental issue. Its a socio-economic issue. The powers that be hate the idea of sustainability though. Why sell a person a good product one time when you can sell them the same one over and over for their entire life? Sustainability is incompatible with modern American Capitalism.

Our economic system doesn't need to be sustainable. When you can no longer extract resource from one source, you move on and find the next source to exploit. Find ways to use resources without having to pay for them.

Cut down all of your trees? cut down someone elses.
Can't steal labor from your own people? Find cheap labor elsewhere
It goes on and on...

[Edited on June 4, 2017 at 11:36 PM. Reason : steal from the poor, steal from our children, steal from our grandchildren]

6/4/2017 11:32:40 PM

Yea, at least with communism nobody would be able to discover, make, sell, or distribute plastic. We would all just starve to death, eh comrades.

6/4/2017 11:36:42 PM

You are the only one advocating for communism. I said "American style capitalism". Capitalism isn't one thing and for the record, I'm in favour of a capitalist economy with government protections for human rights and the environment.

6/4/2017 11:48:58 PM

Of course it isn't.

Developed countries waste a ton of food (40-50% of all food grown ends up in landfills), waste a ton of plastic, discard a ton of electronics and other junk, and then turn around and dump all the discarded electronics on brown and black countries, poisoning their lands and people, not to mention, all the plastic that ends up in the oceans.

That's what Caucasian-style capitalism is: over-consume, over-waste, discard, over-consume, over-waste, discard, over-consume, over-waste, discard.

It is basically development for the sake of development, without regard to what it is doing to people in other countries and to the planet itself.

Quote :

"Ever walk through your local Walmart and just take in all the plastic around you?"

I love you for this.

I do. I do, every time I go to Walmart. It is sublime... most of the food is junk, and is contained in junk (plastic) which will eventually end up poisoning land and water.

6/5/2017 12:44:18 AM

What about lawn furniture? Stacks and stacks of plastic deck chairs, loungers, folding tables.

I wonder how many Crayola markers get thrown away every year by children who aren't tossing them in the recycling bin? Can you even recycle them? I mean they have that fibrous material inside that holds the ink, they don't seem very recyclable to me.

Plastics never break down. The constant exposure to elements might weaken plastic, causing it to break into smaller pieces, but it never breaks down, meaning that even the smallest particles of plastic are still plastic, eaten by animals, filling up langfills, polluting our oceans.

Certainly JCE has seen and read enough to learn about the plastic islands that are floating around in several of the oceans. Unless he's just being purposefully ignorant.

Conservative or liberal, no matter what party you belong to, these things will most definitely affect our future generations. If you love yourself and don't really care, then it's ok to make comments like

Quote :

"Who gives a fuck? OMG, I saw a plastic bottle littered in a forest! It prevented 4 blades of grass from growing there!"

But if you plan on having children, you should at least take a small vested interest in their future. Sure they probably won't feel the affects of all this mess since it will take several more generations, and as Americans I'm sure we have many many more years of shipping all of this waste to "Brown or black" countries so we can easily forget about it. But what about when those countries say "No more?" One of these days they'll need to get cleaned up as well, and we won't be able to send them our computers and TV's to be broken down.

While I mention that, is everyone here aware of the dangerous and toxic methods that are used to reclaim precious metals from electronics?

Quote :

"But there's also the human cost of e-waste management to consider. The crude recovery methods used at developing world recycling facilities expose unskilled workers, who are often children, to a host of toxic materials and contaminants also used in the manufacture of electronics. The health and environmental hazards linked to crude e-waste recycling practices are well documented. For example, the widely-reported practice of burning cables and printed wiring boards to recover the metals they contain is known to release polychlorinated dibenzodioxins and furans (PCDDs and PCDFs) that can be toxic in even small doses. The combustion can also lead to the release of dust and fumes from the beryllium present. Inhalation can cause the incurable pulmonary disease berylliosis, the symptoms of which can in some cases begin to appear years after the last exposure. https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/toxic-trade-why-junk-electronics-should-be-big-business/ "

The earth is a big beautiful place, and we're poisoning it.

And JCE, no, I'm not a Democrat. No I'm not a tree hugger, I don't smoke pot in my basement at my parent's house, I'm not a communist, I vote Republican when it makes sense to me. So whatever stereotype you try to drudge up, it really won't apply.

6/5/2017 8:44:30 AM

Quote :

"That's what Caucasian-style capitalism is: over-consume, over-waste, discard, over-consume, over-waste, discard, over-consume, over-waste, discard."

This is what happens when you only read Marxist/leftist propaganda presented to you as "news".

This brainwashed fool is actually blaming not just capitalism, but "white capitalism". What a fucking joke.

6/5/2017 10:05:54 AM

Perhaps because there are a higher percentage of caucasians that have more disposable income to buy more shit they don't need?

6/5/2017 10:18:56 AM

The troll must have really been bored the last few days. The fact that he uses the phrase "Al Gore bullshit" in his "argument" is reason enough to ignore the hack's strawmen.

6/5/2017 10:24:09 AM

Quote :

"But what about when those countries say "No more?""

Then the market will find another solution. But until it is actually a problem, nobody gives a shit about a few landfills.

Quote :

"The earth is a big beautiful place, and we're poisoning it."

Key word: Big

Plastic bottles are small.

6/5/2017 11:01:30 AM

That is my whole point of this thread. The plastic bottle you're holding right now is small. Sure.

Scale bro. Scale. Look how many bottles are on the shelf at Walmart, because if we can take away anything from your posts, it's probably that Walmart is one of your favorite stores. Now you see all those bottles? Their small. Especially the ones for the kids. Really small. But when taken in total:

Number of stores:

Walmart: 4100+
Target: 1800+
Harris Teeter: 243
Food Lion: 1000+
Wegmans: 97
Kroger: 2700+

Now lets say each store has 10 cases of Deer Park in stock today. This doesn't include what's currently en route, or currently manufactured. Just what's sitting on the shelf today. All those stores add up to at nearly 10,000 stores.

10 cases * 24 bottles = 240 bottles.

240 bottles * 10,000 stores = 2,400,000 tiny, small bottles of water.

And that's just Deer Park. There's also Dasani, the store brand, Nestle, etc. And that is just for what is sitting on the shelf today.

Tell me how that is sustainable.

Granted, there may not be 10 cases on the floor at a time, but I can guarantee you there are more in the back.

[Edited on June 5, 2017 at 11:21 AM. Reason : salefloor]

6/5/2017 11:19:12 AM

Have you ever heard of a landfill?

6/5/2017 2:06:06 PM

Blast it into the sun!

6/5/2017 2:37:43 PM

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/2suzan/eli5_why_dont_we_dump_our_trash_in_volcanos/

6/5/2017 3:20:48 PM

Don't pollute the lava! Earth's magma is beautiful, we can't afford to litter in nature's beautiful volcanoes!

6/5/2017 6:02:57 PM

Plastic can be made from any hydrocarbon, such as corn. The fact is, we have plenty of fossil fuels, the stuff is friggin' cheap. If you are so convinced that peak oil is coming, then go buy some futures contracts. The more you buy, the more they will cost, and the sooner society will adjust to expensive oil. Oh yes, also, you get filthy rich in the process. Everyone wins!

Unless you're wrong, at which point you'll lose your shirt.

My point is, I don't know what the scarcity of oil will be in the future (Hence why I neither buy nor sell futures contracts). But, I don't have to because we have systems in place to manage the future supply of resources. It isn't perfect, but it is deploying an army of engineers and workers to discover and deliver the future supply of oil and all other resources.

[Edited on June 11, 2017 at 10:09 AM. Reason : .,.]

6/11/2017 10:06:35 AM

If we ever run out of oil, our planet will already be fucked over.

6/11/2017 1:10:29 PM

Elementally, plastic is basically Carbon and Hydrogen. Coincidently, this is also what hydrocarbons consist of.

We emit way more Carbon and Hydrogen into the atmosphere than what we bury from thrown away consumer products. If we got so desperate for raw materials, we could literally sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into plastic. Landfill scaling might concern you, but it's not actually a constraint in any meaningful form. We need to stop putting plastics into the Pacific Ocean because it's destroying marine ecosystems.

But for the next 1,000 years, we've got a lot bigger problems to worry about than throwing away plastics.

6/11/2017 1:48:32 PM

we need to stop making plastic in the first place. why would you make something over and over when it lasts forever?

6/11/2017 2:45:04 PM

I will admit when I went to the Lego fest thing in Charlotte last weekend this same thing crossed my mind when I thought about just how much plastic goes into simple Legos haha

6/12/2017 12:24:02 PM

Great one for JCE, eh comrades?

6/13/2017 12:46:47 AM

Wow. I make a pro-environment thread talking about plastics and people come in here and prattle on about CO2 emissions. We get it, it's bad. This thread however is about the physical trashing of the environment.

And nowhere am I concerned about running out of fossil fuels to make more plastic. I'm concerned about the plastic we're making today, and where it's going to end up. The scale just seems overwhelming.

And diapers. The amount of landfill space diapers take up. For the record, we used cloth diapers with our daughter, so here I can actually walk the walk (cookie plz). A child goes through approx 2500 diapers before being potty trained. How many babies are born in the US every day? They take an estimated 500 years to fully decompose. That would be like heading over to Roanoke and digging up Virginia Dare's dirty diapers, because they'd still be there.

Quote :

"Disposable diapers are a popular consumer product, especially in the U.S. Although they offer convenience, they do have several dangerous environmental drawbacks. Not only do disposable diapers account for a lot of the trash taking over the nation’s landfills, but they also pose serious risks to the environment and people alike. The Environmental Protection Agency reports that about 20 billion disposable diapers are dumped in landfills each year, accounting for more than 3.5 million tons of waste."

http://www.livestrong.com/article/149890-environmental-impact-of-disposable-diapers/

6/13/2017 7:59:32 AM

How is continuously pumping shit into the air to power the creation of more plastic not the "physical trashing of the environment"?

If you care about the plastic stuff why wouldn't you care about the air too?

6/13/2017 9:58:35 AM

I never said I didn't care, but isn't there a 23 page long thread that basically comes down to carbon emissions?

But you can make anything about carbon if you try hard enough. Proponents of plastic will tell you that glass is bad because it's heavier and ends up letting more CO2 in the environment. Is that true? Sure. Is the benefit of saving a few MPG carting plastic over glass worth it? I don't know. That's kinda why I made this thread.

6/13/2017 10:37:45 AM

Its not true and this plastic thing is so easy and so simple the problem and solutions have been spelled out at every middle school science fair for at least the last 10 years.

Stop buying plastic. Stop shopping at walmart. Use your own containers to purchase bulk groceries. Buy a shopping bag and reuseable water bottle. Vote for your state to ban or tax single use plastic items.

6/13/2017 10:48:41 AM

i like how you say "stop buying plastic" like its just a trivial easy thing to do

6/13/2017 12:18:54 PM

Quote :

"That's what Caucasian-style capitalism is: over-consume, over-waste, discard, over-consume, over-waste, discard, over-consume, over-waste, discard."

Ah yes, blame the white people. Meanwhile in the Middle East, building large cities in the desert is the paradigm of conservation and sustainability. Not saying there aren't problems everywhere, but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

6/13/2017 12:51:23 PM

Caucasians!

6/13/2017 3:46:49 PM

"Caucasian Capitalism" sounds like something a fat, blue-haired, cat-lady barista would be talking about.

Commies?

IN MY TWW?

6/13/2017 8:50:50 PM

You don't have to be Chinese to eat Chinese food.

All those rich Arab countries are running after Caucasian-style capitalism like it is the best thing for their countries.

Many of their youth eat Caucasian-style food (burgers, pizza, fried chicken) daily. And look where that has gotten them? All those GCC countries are in the top 10 for obesity and diabetes.

6/13/2017 10:56:37 PM

Quote :

"i like how you say "stop buying plastic" like its just a trivial easy thing to do"

Although it may not be easy to completely eliminate plastic, it is very easy to cut back about 90% of the plastic packaging you buy. You can cut out all of the single-use plastic items overnight. I can't remember the last thing I bought that had throw-away plastic.

(ok it was a charger i ordered from amazon 2 weeks ago)

6/14/2017 12:43:37 AM

Plastic packaging is a small fraction of the plastic you consume

6/14/2017 5:35:17 AM

......

[Edited on June 14, 2017 at 6:05 AM. Reason : .....]

6/14/2017 6:01:25 AM

Don't tell me what I consume. You don't know anything about me. Care to elaborate about the plastic you consume?

we are talking about throw away plastic which is mostly the single use stuff. I have a plastic computer case but that is something I buy once every 4 years.

A plastic long-term water bottle I've had since 2013 is plastic consumed but I don't plan on throwing it away anytime soon. Thats not the problem

Thats not the plastic ending up in the environment. Its really the food and household item packing/containers generating most of the waste. I work river cleanup and most of what we find is food packaging and bags.

We are talking about-
-bottles and lids
-bags
-food containers
-food wrap
-eating utensils
-packaging

'Then there are the long use plastic items that are hard to eliminate but easy to stop buying
-clothing
-home hardware (pvc pipes, light switches), stuff i never rebuy
-toys

The only things difficult to cut out are things you can buy once and rarely need to replace. everything else can be cut out completely and instantly.

6/14/2017 10:08:23 AM

... and maybe one day, when concepts like LANDFILLS no longer exist, we may need to be hippies too. Until then, nobody gives a shit

6/14/2017 10:11:15 AM

^So you would be fine with society using your backyard as a landfill?


Still waiting on dtownral to give some context to his one line posts.

6/15/2017 2:38:42 PM

You like _____ .... so you would be fine if _______ was in YOUR YARD?

yawn

6/15/2017 2:51:11 PM

Thats the point of bringing up environmental justice. You have no problem with creating toxic environments just so long as is in someone else's backyard poisoning someone else's children.

also:
its been 2 days dtownral still hasn't come up with a response

6/16/2017 4:44:11 PM

A landfill is a designated area, it is not someone's back yard. Your appeal to emotion with "think of the children" is a pathetic attempt to use emotion to override logic. You're also stupid.

6/16/2017 9:02:52 PM

^I bet you also flick cigarette butts out your window, don't you?

6/16/2017 9:45:22 PM

Landfills don't exist in a bubble. What a fuckin dope.

6/16/2017 11:35:52 PM

I don't understand the thinking behind him. I mean, yea, we have a lot of land right now, sure. If you drive anywhere in eastern NC, you can go for miles without encountering civilization. But how long? How long can we keep it up

6/17/2017 12:27:45 AM

Literally all of the land out west is empty. You can drive 300 miles in any direction and see nothing.

Probably won't run out if land soon.

6/17/2017 12:49:32 AM

True but the cost of driving garbage out into the desert is not a cost people will deal with. They'll just dump it in the water.

6/17/2017 8:01:27 AM

There is a county convenience site 3 miles from our house. There's also a secluded dirt road about a block away. Guess where you can find, at any point in time, at least 2 trashed tube TV's, a couch, and bags and bags of trash?

And the convenience site doesn't charge!

People are lazy.

6/17/2017 8:55:54 AM

Talking about E-waste would be a much more productive discussion because it's not so cut and dry as far as being easy to eliminate.

Plastic waste is really just a couple of simple decisions in your personal life. (unless you're like dtownral, who is the Roanoke colony of users.)

E-waste, on the other hand, is hard to avoid because electronics are produced to break in a certain amount of time and parts are made to be invaluable. Waste mining is still only worth a few dollars per hour so it gets done in the developing world without proper safety considerations. Those workers are exposed to nasty stuff every day.

I posted a thread about the fair phone in tech talk but no one was interested. I don't see a real solution to e-waste coming anytime soon unless precious metals start running out.

[Edited on June 17, 2017 at 1:28 PM. Reason : usre]

6/17/2017 1:27:11 PM