So, you want any manufacturer that uses plastic in their products to add some form of tracking mechanism to their products and continue tracking each item until what? How do they determine when it is ready for disposal? How do you propose they collect it for disposal? Yep, I think we have the winner of the 'Most Asinine Idea of the Century' award.
I am more interested in the company that is manufacturing the plastic, not the company that is using the plastic in their products. The manufacturer of the plastic should be more involved in the disposal and recycling of plastic.
I'm not trying to be funny or sarcastic, this IS an issue that keeps me up some nights. Its everywhere. I even saw one documentary where these people ran a plastic recycling plant and even with all of their equipment they said its impossible to not have runaway microplastics. Here are my suggestions: - plastic magnet - if such a thing exists, some way to have things floating in the ocean that pick up plastic bits (I believe something like this exists but i have not researched it enough) - BAN plastic bottles. Encourage use of glass instead. Who care's if it costs more. I'll pay a few more cents to not kill a whale. - perhaps change the whole system? You know those huge poland spring bottles people buy that you turn upside down? I don't know the math but its something ridiculous of how much more plastic it would have been if all that water was instead inside of individual 12oz bottles. Perhaps this business model can be pushed? after all, we used to have a milk man. Why can't there be a snapple man or coca cola man? Maybe i'm pushing it too far, but why not encourage buying these things in larger quantities so its more eco friendly? I believe there are lots of things that can be done about this problem. Its way more solvable than global warming, but, and I'm sure the numbers are small, it would help with that given how plastic is made. We CAN change! We actually have changed. Remember when nobody wore seatbelts? I do! Remember when flicking ciggarette butts on the ground, or any kind of small litter never got even a 2nd glance? I do! Why are there no more woodsy owl commercials anymore? because people finally do GIVE A HOOT and don't POLLUTE (as much) Also,l if anyone is so into this cause that you are part of some organization or something please let me know. I wouldn't mind making a small donation to one of those clean up projects or spreading the word somehow Cheers and salute! here's hoping to a clean Earth!
As someone who smoked for 15 years and vaped for another 10, there is a HUGE difference. I'm not trying to prop it up. Its trading one bad thing for one slightly less bad thing, but I can say from experience, there is a difference. I no longer was coughing up nasty things in the morning. I was not breathing heavy after small physical activities. I didn't smell. My walls stopped being yellow. My teeth went back to normal white instead of lemonade white. Then again, the long term effects haven't even been able to be studies. High chance of me having a 3rd testicle in a few years. i'm free of all of it now but I must say, way less side effects (that I could see for myself, not long term) with the vaping.
No but a proportion of the profits should go to recycling/reuse of plastics. Sort of like the old milk bottle, heck here we have states that still require 5c recycling on each bottle - and does THAT clean up the environment locally but then what happens to those bottles - are they just sent to some third world country to be dumped into the oceans. https://www.motherjones.com/environ...waste-plastic-exports-chemical-contamination/
Because the the problem is worse than ever. The industry is lying. The Plastic Industry has duped Americans (and the rest of the world) for way too long! https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131...y-impossible-and-the-problem-is-getting-worse Recycling plastic is practically impossible — and the problem is getting worse The vast majority of plastic that people use, and in many cases put into blue recycling bins, is headed to landfills, or worse, according to a report from Greenpeace on the state of plastic recycling in the U.S. ... Greenpeace found that no plastic — not even soda bottles, one of the most prolific items thrown into recycling bins — meets the threshold to be called "recyclable" according to standards set by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation New Plastic Economy Initiative. Plastic must have a recycling rate of 30% to reach that standard; no plastic has ever been recycled and reused close to that rate. ... Waste management experts say the problem with plastic is that it is expensive to collect and sort. There are now thousands of different types of plastic, and none of them can be melted down together. Plastic also degrades after one or two uses. Greenpeace found the more plastic is reused the more toxic it becomes. "We had to re-educate individuals that a great deal of that material is ending up in a landfill," Carpenter said. "It's not going to a recycling facility and being recycled. It's going to a recycling facility and being landfilled someplace else because [you] can't do anything with that material." ... Similarly, the National Association for PET Container Resources, an industry trade group, found in 2017 that only 21 percent of the plastic bottles collected for recycling were turned into new things. The low reprocessing rates are at odds with plans from the oil and gas industry. Industry lobbyists say they plan to recycle every piece of plastic they make into something new by 2040. In interviews with NPR, industry officials were unable to explain how they planned to reach a 100 percent recycling rate.
That might be a start. From my link in the previous post, everything that is attempted is met by resistance from the big money of the plastic and oil industries. Environmentalists and lawmakers in some states are now pushing for legislation that bans single use plastics, and for "bottle bills" which pay customers to bring back their plastic bottles. The bills have led to successful recycling rates for plastic bottles in places like Oregon and Michigan, but have faced steep resistance from plastic and oil industry lobbyists. This needs to be a 1970s or 1980s type grassroots effort that most Americans (and the rest of the world) get behind - similar to Ozone Deplection laws that were FORCED ON INCUSTRY.
The Montreal protocol WORKED The hole in the Ozone layer is healing and has ever since we banned the CFCs. It proved it can be done x we just have to turn the clock back to the seventies and eighties when it was “peace love and save the environment”. Todays kids a wusses - they don’t know how to hold a decent sit in
Errrr yes it is. At least in countries whose leaders have not been bought wholesale by rabid greedy capitalists. Let’s go back to the days of the milk bottle - the recycling of the bottle was built into the price of the milk
That's because the milk bottle was reused, not recycled. The result was a cost savings for both producer and consumer.
I can tell that you didn't even bother to read the link. I even posted the lead-in to the relative paragraph, and you obviously didn't even read that. "We had to re-educate individuals that a great deal of that material is ending up in a landfill," Carpenter said. "It's not going to a recycling facility and being recycled. It's going to a recycling facility and being landfilled someplace else because [you] can't do anything with that material."
most of it is not recycled and most big companies use cheaper new plastic as opposed to recycled variety. Its also packed with chemicals. The only real solution is to eliminate unnecessary uses of it (like bottles).
You are the one that said the plastic manufacturers should be responsible for disposing of their product. How do you propose they do that if they don't know where it is when it needs to be disposed?
I don't think he said he wants special microscopic tracking devices in plastic, he wants a part of the profits to go towards recycling. I think that's a nice idea actually but plastic recycling is a JOKE. Barely 10% of plastics are recycled and the ones that are mostly have many by products. Much of it is actually burned (horrible for the atmosphere). BAN PLASTIC BOTTLES smaller than 1 gallon (to start). We can go after the bigger ones later. The problem is billions of people going through 4-5 plastic bottles of drinks a day. I don't know the math but I bet that accounts for a pretty large number.
Question - why should I pay extra on my rates for recycling? Should that money not be paid by the plastics manufacturers?
“Bottled water” is the biggest scam around. I somehow we have managed to convince people that putting the SAME substance that comes out of your tap into a bottle is somehow “superior”. Now I accept that some places have problems with their water supplies but who is doing quality assurance on bottled water? https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/plastic-particles-bottled-water#:~:text=The researchers found that, on,mostly focused on larger microplastics. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389420302594 Given that many of the compounds have limited research on long term effects I do challenge part of the above conclusion Btw “he” is a “she”
Yep! And it was a system that worked with little impact on the environment. Having said that glass bottles became a deadly weapon for idiots who wanted to mess the environment. Ie groups of drunken louts throwing beer bottles into swimming holes so they broke and became hazardous to kids. Plus I get banning bottles from sporting venues but there really is no reason to use plastic bottles of water
