Cheap, lightweight, resistant... The plastic has really good properties, it's normal that we like it. The environmental impact was not that easy to foresee...
Every time I have to buy or use something with unnecessary plastic in it I just feel extreme disgust. There's just too much plastic around us that it would take decades to recycle or decompose them even if we discover the way to do that right now.
First rule of engineering I learnt was: there are always trade-offs. You can't have it both ways. You're right, plastic is cheap, lightweight, resistant, etc. But shouldn't we have asked: "Ok, but what's the catch?"
Plastic itself isn’t the problem. However, there are a lot of manufactured items which are the right shape, but made of absurdly inappropriate materials, like toys. Spatulas that melt in contact with a frying pan, or chrome foil on plastic for the edge of a phone, which scratches and flakes at at the merest touch. That’s not to say that you can’t design a heat resistant spatula, or a phone with plastic edges which will be resilient and won’t mark. The problem is the temptation that plastic provides to sell something which looks just about right but doesn't work at all in the long run. If designed properly plastic materials can last for a long time.
Plastic means you can design in obsolescence, if we take off the metal hinge support here then this bin will break in 24 months and we can sell a new one.
Look at something like the handle on a paint roller. A wooden handle will probably last a lifetime, plastic handle - with carefully measured amount of plastic - can be designed to break the second time you use it: At which point we go to the shop and buy another cheap piece of crap that will do the same.
Honestly I think a cm more metal in the handle, and a few grams more plastic and they'd last a lifetime ... but what capitalist company wants to make goods that last a lifetime, that harms profits.
I think there are very few cases of companies actually doing planned obsolescence intentionally. It's always about the price: if I can get a paint roller frame on the shelf for 50¢ less than my competitor's product, I'm going to capture some market-share—even if my product will last half the time as theirs.
The difference in cost cutting and planned obsolescence seems to be semantics. If you go the cheapest route its obvious you arent planning on the product lasting and you will get to sell another to replace it.
I have no doubt that both are large factors in the boardroom. Easy sale, easy repeat sale. It would be un-capitalistic to do anything else?! Consumers will probably choose the cheap option for the few jobs they have. Professionals will choose the high end option. How else would Harbor Freight exist?!
I think a good system of borrowing high end equipment within your local community would be far more environmentally friendly, but that doesn’t really fit the macho all American DIY persona very well.
It still doesn't make sense though. You buy a spatula, it breaks immediately, and you go out and buy the same one again? Nah, I don't think so. You buy a better one, or if you're poor, you buy one from a charity shop. Not many people will be repeat customers of stuff that breaks.
First time you use it, sure you'll get a different one. Only lasts two years instead of a lifetime ... people just think "oh things break" and buy whatever the supermarket has.
Actually a spatula is one of my growing list of "there's no way that wasn't designed to break". Wooden-handled spatula with silicon head, the spatula handle looked like it went in to the silicon and provided a strong head. But instead the silicon was designed to look as if the wood continued in to it, but instead there was a very narrow wooden extension a couple of millimetres thick. This was an expensive branded spatula from a specialist store.
The spatula snapped at the interface of the head and handle; you could make it much stronger _and_ use less material.
I'm convinced that type of spatula isn't designed to last anyway. Even if they don't break, moisture gets into the joint between the wood and the spatula and develops mold. Sometimes I've discovered this when the mold spreads to the visible part of the handle; other times it's only been apparent when the moisture weakens the adhesive and the moldy black handle pulls out in the middle of being used. It's just a lousy design to begin with.
>that type of spatula isn't designed to last anyway
Hmm, same amount of material constructed in an equally difficult manner will last decades (until the silicone degrades) or last a couple of years if the wooden handle is designed with a super narrow breakable section conveniently hidden in the head ... I'm happy if the survive long enough to need scrubbing with bleach and putting in the microwave for a minute to kill any bacteria/mold on them.
I have a cast iron skillet that was my great grandmothers. I imagine a small herd of cows has been cooked on it as well as a large flock of chickens / eggs.
I have paid for and thrown away several cheaper skillets during my lifetime.
You tell me the difference in cheap and planned obsolescence ?
>Look at something like the handle on a paint roller. A wooden handle will probably last a lifetime, plastic handle - with carefully measured amount of plastic - can be designed to break the second time you use it: At which point we go to the shop and buy another cheap piece of crap that will do the same.
I'm skeptical of this, at least to this extent. What company is going to invest the engineering resources to reliably design a particular failure mode in something as inconsequential and cheap as a paint roller?
It's probably far more mundane. Aim to reduce cost/increase profit > use less materials, or use cheaper materials, or use a cheaper-to-make design.
>but what capitalist company wants to make goods that last a lifetime
Rather than questioning its seriousness, one could have answered the question by providing an example of such a firm. To effectively question its seriousness, one could have provided many examples.
I've heard of a couple of examples of companies that will replace goods at any age, but they don't appear to be any good as capitalist entities as they're not profiting rich owners to the optimum extent.
for example. But then The North Face is on there, and I'd never heard that offered a lifetime warranty (my jacket lost its waterproofness and needed replacing), and they also only give 1 year warranty on several items (half the statutory warranty in the EU).
IIRC Dr.Martens limit their free repairs to a particular sub group of their boots?
Could you give examples of companies with lifetime warranties that you consider successful examples of capitalism? I'd guess to qualify they'd at a minimum have public share ownership.
You're putting a lot of strange qualifications on whether you consider a company to be a capitalist entity. Why must it be publicly traded? Why must "rich owners" profit to the optimum extent (and how do you quantify that)?
I don't agree with your criteria. And asking for "lifetime" warranties is not what you originally claimed.
But, looking around at some of the "highly durable" objects I have that were made by profit-seeking companies:
Luxury brands (watches on the order of Omega, for example[0]) and makers of professional tools routinely use the longevity of their products as a marketing point.
[0]:"You never actually own a Patek Philippe – you merely look after it for the next generation."
I'm not sure what you intended, but I read that as helping make pbhjpbh's point about planned (or studiously not avoided) obsolescence, i.e.:
Longevity is a luxury. It is not to be expected in ordinary goods; they are expected to last for a short time and then get junked, soon to be replaced with new items.
Yes, but the longevity doesn't effect the market because they're things rich people collect. People buying them on the whole won't buy fewer because "this one still works", so the rarefied market changes the market forces considerably.
Another example is high-fashion, where things aren't necessarily made any better than low end goods, and it probably doesn't matter because rich people (women mainly, it seems) will wear an item once. So again longevity isn't really a factor as long as it appears to be well made.
There's an obvious cost/benefit analysis that people do when they purchase products. Unless you're a professional painter, chances are you don't need a roller that will last a lifetime...you just want to paint your kid's bedroom with the little money you have and then not think about painting for a few years until you get that promotion and move to a new place. It's not a conspiracy.
Hmm. Yes, but the alternative is you pass the roller on to your neighbor, or you use a roller from a tool bank, or sell it on second-hand, which things work better if the quality is better.
FWIW I inspected several rollers, not just the cheapest and they all appeared to have the flaw of very short metal "tang", and hollowed out plastic handle, just that bit too thin meaning it flexes too much. If the "tang" was a cm longer then they'd be fixable with a bit of old broom handle (drill hole, add epoxy, ...).
I'm not suggesting it's a conspiracy, just a natural part of the race to the bottom that Western Capitalism creates.
It's the same pressure that leads to reducing the food volume and keeping a packet the same size - "hey boss, we can reduce ingredient costs 2%".
So, "we want to reduce material volume", so the 'tang' is shortened until the thing just holds together, and the plastic is thinned so that as the plasticiser leeches out, and the extra pressure of the shortened tang acts on it, then it snaps. "If we reduce materials this much it'll break within 20 hours of use", which the boss thinks is perfect because they're optimising locally for profit and not globally for "keeping the planet livable".
Time is money. Nobody has time to go around finding someone who needs a paint roller when the roller costs $10. I just moved to a new apartment, I don't even know any of my neighbors.
The argument for some kind of business that provides this durable goods and tools swapping service is interesting. It might be worth tackling with a start up. But ultimately users would have to validate that idea. No idea if it's viable.
This is very true to me because I just painted over the weekend. I got the nice roller pads (purdy brand) and cheap rollers (Lowes), both of them snapped at the handle and rotate around 360 degrees now. This was the second room using them and eventually got the job done, but with lots of frustration. The worst part is this happened the last time I painted. The problem with things that last a lifetime is finding a place to store them.
It all depends on the local waste management. In most of western Europe, plastic is either recycled or burned in a waste management facility to recycle energy.
The impact of plastic bottles is probably lower than for alternatives like glass. Glass is heavier and causes more CO2 emissions because of the increased energy use for transporting them.
> The impact of plastic bottles is probably lower than for alternatives like glass. Glass is heavier and causes more CO2 emissions because of the increased energy use for transporting them.
I'm curious about this, any chance you have references?
60% recycling rate for PET bottles sounds very low compared to the 90% in Finland [1]. The deposit we have on plastic bottles ranges from 0.10€ to 0.40€ depending on the bottle size (the most common 0.5 ltr bottle has a deposit of 0.20€). Cans are recycled at an even higher rate of 95%.
> According to this paper, glass bottles need to be recycled 20 times in order to reach the same CO2 footprint as a PET bottle
This does not support the OP's case that "Glass is heavier and causes more CO2 emissions because of the increased energy use for transporting them."
There is going to be plenty of transport taking place during those 20 cycles of use and recycle. If the main energy cost of glass is in transport, as he asserted, that's only going to make it less competitive vs. plastic as the number of cycles increases.
The quote is inaccurate. The paper talks about glass bottle _reuse_.
As long as transport + washing cost of glass bottles are less than production + transport cost of plastic bottles there will be some number of reuses that make glass the winner.
60% is pretty low for PET, Glass isn't recycled perfectly either, but is generally better than PET.
In Switzerland 82% of PET is recycled. (Note that this number is the percentage that is really reused. Not the percentage that is collected.) The same number for glass is 96%. That means only 44% of glass gets recycled 20 times.
However, this is for reuse, not recycling. Not many glass bottles get reused, most get recycled. Recycling glass is less energy efficient than reusing.
In the UK we used to have electric milk floats with milkmen that would deliver milk in glass bottles. The dairy would be local. The cows would be local. Big cities had trains to get the milk in. Or the milk would travel in tankers.
The bottling plant would be for local distribution. The empties would be carried back on the milk float.
Moving on we now have dairies many, many miles away. They are not a common sight. The milk goes into single use plastic bottles and gets sent to supermarket depots. It then travels by road vast distances to supermarkets and convenience stores. People then drive to the supermarket and buy the milk.
I personally preferred the way milk was delivered. I liked the community value of having a milkman. I liked washing the bottles and putting them out for collection. The milk wasn't homogenised then, it had not the same shelf life.
I don't believe that having four pints (2 litres) of milk driven over two hundred miles of roads is that efficient. Particularly when I can see cows out the window. Then, since it is the EU, milk can be driven from Germany. Or in yogurt form over the Alps in a 1000 mile journey.
So at one level the CO2 emissions of glass are higher but driving milk hundreds of miles is where the CO2 problem really is.
From a capitalist perspective everything is now really efficient and the market is working. But when milk was government and cared for that way, there was a lot more employment going on. We could have kept it all local with solar and other renewables powering the milk floats instead of coal. But when those former dairies have been shuttered and sold for housing developments there is no goin back. We are stuck with mega dairies.
Water is even worse. There are lorries driving from the Alps with bottled water. This is plain absurd. There was a time when tap water was as good as it could get.
Beer is different, as are spirits and wines. Beer should be brewed locally and served in glasses that get washed in a public house. But widgets in cans and other tricks have made canned beer fine, what most people drink.
Anyway, saying that plastic is less CO2 than glass is just not fair to all the issues of globalised food.
You forgot "I can't believe it's not butter" mechanical properties so it lends itself well to almost every sort of manufacturing process you can think of (well, maybe not forging).
The United States culture has evolved around convenience and not around excellence, and this culture spread into many parts of the world one way or another, but some places are more resistant. Cheap, lightweight, convenient, fast, easy - these are the main factors that drive peoples actions, which now manifests in environmental and also health problems (obesity). Take Americans vs. European cars as an example. European cars have always been more performant while being more fuel efficient. American car manufacturers would simply put bigger engines as a quick and easy way to make more powerful cars. This has changed in the last decade when fuel prices went up.
The environmental impact is not hard to foresee if you think about it, but most people don't. Reasoning about the long term impact on the actions you do today on your health and environment has to be part of education. We have to teach kids to care about the environment from an early age. It will not be easy to change the culture of convenience because now it is almost in people's genes.
I've heard this about European cars forever. I haven't driven many, but I haven't been impressed. My buddy had a Renault that was impossible to shift into reverse. When my parents bought a new VW, the engine failed within 5000 miles. No dealer in the state could fix it. They trailered the car to a dealer in a different state and traded it in.
VW blasting its dumb "Sounds of Silence" commercial multiple times an hour led me to watching most of the Stanley Cup final on a time delay. Haha VW that joke was funny the first time. Yeah it was a real misfortune for you that you cheated on emissions tests and killed lots of urban children with your noxious diesel fumes.
Of course, you can find sloppiness and bad examples everywhere, but you don't prove the theory by a few examples. Perhaps cars was a bad example. My point was that the Japanese and European carmakers always tried to get better performance out of engines without scarifying fuel efficiency. I am not a European nor an American, but I lived on both continents. Visually ( I don't have a statical proof) Americans use much more plastic and produce more plastic garbage than Europeans. A lot of people in Europe genuinely care about the environment and are ready to sacrifice convenience for the environment, but very few people in the USA are willing to do so. Our office produces several large bags of garbage, and we don't have that many people. I am the only person on the whole floor who uses a glass cup for tea, coffee, and water. A reusable glass cup good for my hormones, good for the environment, and also much more pleasant to drink from. I have to wash it from time to time, which some people may find it inconvenient, as it is a lot easier to fill a plastic cup with water, drink it and throw it in the garbage.
I number of plastic items I have from the 60's to 90's have degraded. The plastic has become brittle and has taken on an ugly yellowish hue.
I replaced a damaged shingle on my roof with a piece of plastic, thinking the plastic was indestructible. Within about 3 months, the plastic had disintegrated under the onslaught of the sun.
I suspect the plastic has only disintegrated into smaller pieces, which BTW, could very well find their way into our drinking water, farms, etc. In fact, I fear this sort of plastic disintegration poses a greater threat than plastic not being decomposed easily. We already have difficulty coming up with ways to decompose plastic. Fighting tiny pieces of plastic would then be a nightmare.
The sun is clearly breaking it apart, and will continue to do that down to the molecular level. Plastic isn't as persistent as most of these articles say it is, if it's out in the sunlight.
Look what happens to plastic lawn furniture after a while.
Clearly, though, we are producing plastic much faster than it breaks down. Stuffing it into landfills ought to work.
>> The sun is clearly breaking it apart, and will continue to do that down to the molecular level.
You are assuming that the fabric of the plastic is consistent in all levels. In reality tho, most stuff demonstrate different characteristics in lower (molecular) levels.
> I replaced a damaged shingle on my roof with a piece of plastic
Huh, this is kind of interesting. I was taught in school as a kid that plastic degrades under the influence of UV light, so would never have even considered doing this. I guess that this fact isn't the common knowledge I thought it was.
It depends on the type of plastic. Materials such as ABS (which is what most plastic parts on a car are made of) are going to take a long time to break down in the sun. After 15 years in the sun it may look a bit faded, but structurally will be fine.
That might be bromine, which was used as a flame retardant back in the days (and probably still is, but I'm not sure).
A lot of retro gamers are dealing with this issue, giving their beloved Game Boys, C64s or whatever a yellowish look.
Some folks got together and created a mixture they call "Retr0bright" [1], which consists of hydroperoxide, Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) as a catalyst, and finally uv light. It "reverses" the effect, though it might reappear after time.
Actually it is an evolving game. It is just the UV that restores the whiteness back in most cases.
Restoring molecules is not necessarily it, the TAED catalyst sounded plausible, but a lot of retrobrighting goes on with just the peroxide solution and sun.
But even then the peroxide was found to not be it. Indoors you don't get the same UVA/UVB as outdoors, so it initially seems counter intuitive to think that that yellowed computer case would go white again if put out in the sun. But it works. No voodoo chemicals needed.
It comes down to bones and how they always end up white, bleached from the sun. Try it.
Most plastic is photo-degradable. Left in the sun, it will disintegrate as you saw. [0]
Most plastic ends up in a landfill or deep in the water or burred under more plastic where it is not touched by the sun and does not degrade.
Plastic on the surface of the ocean breaks into smaller pieces which end up deeper in the sea, and does not degrade further. The ocean is filled with tiny plastic bits. [1]
Medical use of plastic is convenient for infection control. Alternatives [1] were sought-after even back when plastic was introduced into the medical field. It was thought back then we would "figure it out before it becomes a problem".
I think our mental model around the deployment of plastic is flawed. The logistical tail of plastics use falls upon an externalized public commons, while much of that logistical tail cost is embedded into alternatives like glass. No one accounts for the cost of disposal management of plastic syringes to the point that microplastics don't end up in our biosphere, while autoclaving glass syringes and recycling chipped glass syringes is tallied up against glass. An apples-to-apples cost comparison can be more closely approached if mostly-closed loop systems were built for all uses, and some kind of target virgin feedstock utilization percentage was set, and microplastics as an acceptable outcome was denied the plastics industry.
> Most Americans’ daily routines depend on single-use items and throwaway plastic packaging, much of it flowing into streams and oceans, polluting our ecosystems.
This is unsubstantiated sensational bs. Plastics do end up in landfill or incinerator, but the US does not have waterway pollution problem.
Sure there is, but there is a huge difference between dumping plastic waste into rivers like it happens in India, Africa etc and then being able to measure trace amounts of microplastics in the environment. Of course plastics left in nature will eventually find its way into the water streams.
Most American and European plastic waste finds its way into landfills.
"In the chart below we see the global distribution of mismanaged plastic waste aggregated by world region. The East Asia and Pacific region dominates global mismanaged plastic waste, accounting for 60 percent of the world total.
There is a wide gap between East Asia and the other regions — South Asia ranks second but contributes around 5 times less with 11 percent of the total. This is followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (9 percent); Middle East & North Africa (8.3 percent); Latin America (7.2 percent); Europe and Central Asia (3.6 percent) and North America (1 percent).
If we aim to address the ocean plastic problem, an understanding of this global picture is important. It highlights the fundamental role of waste management in preventing ocean pollution; whilst countries across North America and Europe generate significant quantities of plastic waste (particularly on a per capita basis), well-managed waste streams mean that very little of this is at risk of ocean pollution. "
It's unfortunately not typically discussed. If you really want to solve the problem, being even more careful about plastics in the West really isn't going to move the needle. Knowing this is important.
Ironically, the extra care such as banning plastic bags, straws, etc. in the West does lead to this very conversation becoming normal across lay people rather than just those who "really want to solve the problem," which probably does have significant value as well. Like a raising-awareness event.
Where does your recycling go? To nations with the fewest environmental controls. Where does it mostly come from? From the West. So much it breaks down their ability to cope meaning local waste now doesn't get recycled much any more either.
Now that Asia has mainly stopped accepting recycling - much of which is too contaminated before it gets out of the bale or container to recycle so gets illegally dumped or burned - even more goes to Africa instead. Except all countries that have had some part in recycling and try and stop or restrict it find they have a major problem of illegal imports and illegal processing - which is easier to stop than the containers. See for instance the Philippines vs Canada recently.
so the West is exporting what seems to inevitably become an illegal industry to every country stupid enough to join in.
If we just banned export and dumped it all in landfill again the world would be better off.
I mean they do accurately describe one of the major mechanisms for ocean plastic pollution but it is absolutely innacurate to say that the source of this plastic is from US waterways.
So you're saying _USA_ waterways are not a sink for plastic pollution (and source of ocean plastics)? Or you just think a professor of USA history should point out parallel issues in other countries?
90 percent of all the plastic that reaches the world's oceans gets flushed through just 10 rivers: The Yangtze, the Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, the Nile, the Ganges, Pearl River, Amur River, the Niger, and the Mekong (in that order). [1]
[1] Christian Schmidt, Tobias Krauth and Stephan Wagner (2017), Export of plastic debris by rivers into the Sea
Ahh, the places receiving so much in US, and to a lesser extent other Western imports, their own putative systems for dealing with the waste and recycling it break down completely. Leading to entire towns built on processing the West's waste meaning it's everywhere.
"Their fault, nothing to do with us"
This is blaming the recipient of the bullet for the shooting.
Should we be more specific? Very few cities in my state have ever had recycling programs of any kind, so we can't be blamed for this harm that "coastal elites" have inflicted on China.
Actually I tend to think less specific - it's a global problem of globalisation and global supply chains. That rather makes it everyone's problem - those that created it, bought it, disposed of it and possibly recycled some of it. Recycling aimed to make the problem better and ended up so broken that it's making it worse. Pointing the finger at someone else to escape in each and every piece on the matter isn't particularly helpful.
I've slowly ended up thinking that simply dumping it in landfill is less harmful, but not as good as producing less in the first place. Which is still a point in favour of your state's reluctance to recycle.
Plastic pollution is a general problem for everyone, including in the USA.
If we're talking specifically about plastic pollution in waterways, the USA is nowhere close to the top of the list for that particular problem.
In the USA, we have the means to recycle most plastics, but there needs to be political will to get it done. Merely relying on industries to make a profit off of plastic recycling is not nearly sufficient.
We need to enact more regulations to ensure that more products are make with recyclable materials, that the products themselves can easily be recycled, and provide incentives to actually do the recycling. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and in the current political climate, little political will to get it done. This is a big problem in the USA.
No one ships plastic waste unless you mean E-waste... The OP was about the fact that no western country just throws household plastic waste into the water, it goes to landfills or is very often incinerated, plastic is a pretty good carbon source for combustion you know...
Ok, we apparently still ship plastic waste to India and Malaysia. Though about 85% is incinerated, at least here in Denmark. Crazy really. Most plastics can't be easily recycled, it actually makes sense just to burn it really.
Yup, people in UK carefully wash plastics, use separate bins, special collection trucks .. then the waste is shipped for sorting and recycling, only it's much more profitable to dump the plastics and take the extra money paid to "recycle" it. Richer nations have companies who know what's happening, but the people think "we're recycling, saving the planet", and the companies get more money, and the poor people make much more money than they would have. Everyone wins!
I assume this is still happening but there have been several exposés, leading some people to no longer bother recycling. As a reaction to that some city/area councils will fine you for not separating recyclables; our city vastly reduced the size of our bins (trash cans).
Most of our family waste seems to be unrecyclable plastic packaging.
That washing part always gets me. Its consuming more resources, perhaps more than the bottle or can is worth. My mother in law used to put empty bottle and cans (trash!) into my dishwasher and run it with soap. My god, the waste, the damage to the environment.
It reminds me of eco-tourism. Its fun/satisfying to be part of 'recycling', so folks make up steps they can do to participate more, and end up torpedoing the whole point of it.
We used to ship a lot of plastic waste back to China in what would be otherwise empty shipping containers. The movie "Plastic China" shows what the other end of that looks like:
Most of our plastic "recycling" is shipped. Thousands and thousands of container loads full of milk cartons, bottles etc compressed into bales.
The US exports by far the most. Much is poorly washed or sorted, regardless of which nation sent it, often so it's not suitable for recycling - plastic recycling is very easy to contaminate.
When countries push back and restrict imports they find they have an illegal industry that starts mislabelling containers, and illegal factories spring up.
So you are telling me someone offers recycle services and they just dumb it in 3rd world rivers? How is that not "their fault" ?
Australia ships toxic waste to Denmark, is that problematic in it self? No! Because a danish company offers services for safe disposal. If that company just dumbed the barrels of toxins in the ocean, would Australia be responsible?
They say "much" ("a large amount") of it ends up in waterways, which is substantiated. As one tiny example, look at Mr. Trashwheel. It collects ten tons of trash on a rainy day. If you don't believe me, here is a sped-up video of it collecting plastic, styrofoam, and other single-use trash items[1].
And here are statistics on the trash gathered[2]. 649,236 plastic bags, 880,646 plastic bottles, and plenty of other miscellaneous plastic pieces. All of this disrupts natural ecosystems, and is ingested by animals who then get sick, and later gets into us as microplastics when we ingest the animals. This is the reason nearly all of our food and beverages contain microplastics.
If this doesn't seem that bad, the above example is from a single stream into a single harbor in a single city. Now imagine the national scale.
But plastic isn't the only pollutant of US waterways. Bacterial matter, nutrient excess, and industrial toxins regularly find their way through the watershed into main waterways, affecting marine life as well as humans. Waterway pollution is a big issue in the US.
I didn't know I have a plastic addiction. But industry and governments do, because of the easy money it generates. They are addicted to money, I can see that.
Let's call it our plastic habit, or convenience. We do tend to forget reusable bags at home, and then have to take groceries home in a plastic bag. We do prefer plastic straws over reusable ones out of metal or other materials, because they have a number of benefits. We are used to furniture that's durable and easy to clean. Etc.
It's convenient to use plastics. Either lawmakers make it more inconvenient, or someone invent a comparable alternative that's biodegrading or unproblematic. Else, I think nothing will change.
The articles in The Guardian have little to do with fact and instead are primarily a vehicle for environmental / moral hand-wringing and virtue signalling by their readers.
If the effort put into generating all this angst was directed to more concrete action other than getting feel-good bans on token issues like plastic drinking straws we and the world would be a lot better off.
How about some articles on generating real change in the way the packaging industry works? No, didn't think so.
It's definitely not made in good faith but I did say that generating angst was more important than facts not that the articles were based on lies though clearly being economical with the truth clearly helps push the writer's agenda.
Take the quote from the parent comment:
> Most Americans’ daily routines depend on single-use items and throwaway plastic packaging,
What purpose does singling out Americans here serve?
1. It makes readers of The Guardian feel superior?
2. The paper wants to attract more American readers who want to feel they are concerned and environmentally conscious?
It's pushing a sense of 'holier than thou' with a readership who live in countries and cultures whose economic systems make widespread use of single-use plastic on a very large scale. It's a sanctimonious attitude that's great for consumers of these articles but never the driver of real change.
Given that the author is "Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, and Richards Professor of American History Emerita at the University of Delaware" it's perhaps not surprising that the article has a focus on the US?
> 1. It makes readers of The Guardian feel superior?
I think they achieved peak superiority when they organised their readers to send postcards to voters certain counties of Ohio in an attempt to influence the then 2004 Presidential election against Bush. But that was the good type of foreign interference in politics.
Well the thing about foreign election interference which is left unsaid in sound bytes is the "how" matters hell of a lot.
If say BBC or a state newspaper had "interfered" by say publishing accurate stories on say people affected by Hillary Clinton's policies complaints wouldn't have a leg to stand on. If it is a bit greyer if it is mere local advertising violation of truth but when it is local manipulative trickery.
It seems like you're taking this too personally... The article was published in the US News section and covers research of an American historian, so it's not surprising that it focuses on Americans. Of course this is a world-wide issue, but definitely related to the modern culture of consumerism.
The article is written by an American, so it's not so weird that it talks about Americans: "Susan Strasser is an award-winning historian, a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, and Richards Professor of American History Emerita at the University of Delaware. Her books include Never Done: A History of American Housework, Satisfaction Guaranteed: The Making of the American Mass Market, and Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash."
Why wouldn't they then focus on their home US readership?
As a Brit I notice that since they formed Guardian US and Guardian AUS there's a marked growth in local stories, features and investigations for those two countries. Pieces on US and Australian politics and other news that wouldn't meet the usual "of global interest" bar for international reports.
My pet conspiracy theory is that all this media frenzy about plastic straws is purposeful misdirection. Making people feel like they are doing something and exacting meaningful change while ensuring the people responsible can continue lining their pockets off environmental externalities.
I think it’s a case of the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Plastic straws, to me, resemble ideas you’d expect from pre college students. It offers high visibility but delivers low impact on what it tries to achieve. I typically see this coming from progressive candidates (rather than moderates), so I doubt this is misdirection, but opportunistically doing something they think their core constituency will identify with.
It all goes back to Christian Friedrich Schönbein, who invented nitrocellulose in 1845. This became celluloid, used in photography as well as other things like billiard balls. It was the first real plastic.
The other application was nitrocellulose as guncotton, which led to the development of smokeless gunpowder and the family of high explosives, such as TNT.
Christian Friedrich Schönbein also discovered ozone and the electrochemical effects leading to the fuel cell.
It's not a "throwaway culture" that's the problem, that's blaming the victim. It's governments who shield business from dealing with externalities, and the fact that if you're not going to be responsible for the ultimate disposition of those plastics as a business, your only concern is for margin.
We don't have a nuclear waste problem because we have some cultural nuclear addiction, or chrome in the soil because we have a chrome addiction. What we have are weak governments where if their regulatory agencies weren't captured, they wouldn't exist at all; the only regulations that get passed are ones that force small operators out of the market, or allow massive companies to offload liability to subcontractors.
edit: How about stopping all of the sin taxes (which are done because they simultaneously bring in revenue and theoretically cut government health care costs), and introduce some environmental taxes. They'll get passed down to the consumer anyway, and they can make the choice with their wallet. Cutting sin taxes in proportion to environmental taxes would make it revenue neutral, but it certainly wouldn't be environmentally neutral.
Oxidize plastic in a molten salt bath, exothermic reaction, produces synthesis gas. "... destroys all organic materials while simultaneously retaining inorganic and hazardous components in the melt."
The terms 'single-use' and 'throwaway' often confuse the discussion. For example, some plastic components -- those in in a car, in a refrigerator, in a sound-system, in a thick plastic rope -- are 'single-use', but are useful over a long period.
Some short-term forms of plastic use are a very poor energy investment. That's a problem because energy is finite, waste is a long-term threat. This is in part a design problem, in part a problem of ignorance, in part a problem of ignoring/hiding externalities for lower costs and quick profits ... etc. etc.
It's unfortunate that plastic has often become the only available option. I'd be glad to pay more (money, time) for some containers that I don't -have- bring home and -have- to toss into the recycling bin knowing their fate.
It looks as though until enough people are willing to make that choice, this ongoing energy waste (being charged to the accounts of future generations) will never end.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadFirst rule of engineering I learnt was: there are always trade-offs. You can't have it both ways. You're right, plastic is cheap, lightweight, resistant, etc. But shouldn't we have asked: "Ok, but what's the catch?"
Look at something like the handle on a paint roller. A wooden handle will probably last a lifetime, plastic handle - with carefully measured amount of plastic - can be designed to break the second time you use it: At which point we go to the shop and buy another cheap piece of crap that will do the same.
Honestly I think a cm more metal in the handle, and a few grams more plastic and they'd last a lifetime ... but what capitalist company wants to make goods that last a lifetime, that harms profits.
I think a good system of borrowing high end equipment within your local community would be far more environmentally friendly, but that doesn’t really fit the macho all American DIY persona very well.
Though they don't necessarily have high-end stuff; the one here has mostly middle-of-the-road items.
Actually a spatula is one of my growing list of "there's no way that wasn't designed to break". Wooden-handled spatula with silicon head, the spatula handle looked like it went in to the silicon and provided a strong head. But instead the silicon was designed to look as if the wood continued in to it, but instead there was a very narrow wooden extension a couple of millimetres thick. This was an expensive branded spatula from a specialist store.
The spatula snapped at the interface of the head and handle; you could make it much stronger _and_ use less material.
It wasn't this one, https://cdn.cutleryandmore.com/products/large/35515.jpg, but same exterior appearance where the handle appears to extend in to the silicone.
Hmm, same amount of material constructed in an equally difficult manner will last decades (until the silicone degrades) or last a couple of years if the wooden handle is designed with a super narrow breakable section conveniently hidden in the head ... I'm happy if the survive long enough to need scrubbing with bleach and putting in the microwave for a minute to kill any bacteria/mold on them.
I have paid for and thrown away several cheaper skillets during my lifetime.
You tell me the difference in cheap and planned obsolescence ?
I'm skeptical of this, at least to this extent. What company is going to invest the engineering resources to reliably design a particular failure mode in something as inconsequential and cheap as a paint roller?
It's probably far more mundane. Aim to reduce cost/increase profit > use less materials, or use cheaper materials, or use a cheaper-to-make design.
>but what capitalist company wants to make goods that last a lifetime
Serious question?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/30sand40s/32-brands-with-lif...
for example. But then The North Face is on there, and I'd never heard that offered a lifetime warranty (my jacket lost its waterproofness and needed replacing), and they also only give 1 year warranty on several items (half the statutory warranty in the EU).
IIRC Dr.Martens limit their free repairs to a particular sub group of their boots?
Could you give examples of companies with lifetime warranties that you consider successful examples of capitalism? I'd guess to qualify they'd at a minimum have public share ownership.
I don't agree with your criteria. And asking for "lifetime" warranties is not what you originally claimed.
But, looking around at some of the "highly durable" objects I have that were made by profit-seeking companies:
- books
- furniture (Møller teak chairs from the 60s)
- All-Clad pans, Le Creuset enamel dutch oven
- Wüsthof chef's knife
- Barbour waxed cotton jacket
- Iron Heart denim
- Good, repairable shoes (Crockett & Jones, Oakstreet Bootmakers)
[0]:"You never actually own a Patek Philippe – you merely look after it for the next generation."
Longevity is a luxury. It is not to be expected in ordinary goods; they are expected to last for a short time and then get junked, soon to be replaced with new items.
Another example is high-fashion, where things aren't necessarily made any better than low end goods, and it probably doesn't matter because rich people (women mainly, it seems) will wear an item once. So again longevity isn't really a factor as long as it appears to be well made.
FWIW I inspected several rollers, not just the cheapest and they all appeared to have the flaw of very short metal "tang", and hollowed out plastic handle, just that bit too thin meaning it flexes too much. If the "tang" was a cm longer then they'd be fixable with a bit of old broom handle (drill hole, add epoxy, ...).
I'm not suggesting it's a conspiracy, just a natural part of the race to the bottom that Western Capitalism creates.
It's the same pressure that leads to reducing the food volume and keeping a packet the same size - "hey boss, we can reduce ingredient costs 2%".
So, "we want to reduce material volume", so the 'tang' is shortened until the thing just holds together, and the plastic is thinned so that as the plasticiser leeches out, and the extra pressure of the shortened tang acts on it, then it snaps. "If we reduce materials this much it'll break within 20 hours of use", which the boss thinks is perfect because they're optimising locally for profit and not globally for "keeping the planet livable".
The argument for some kind of business that provides this durable goods and tools swapping service is interesting. It might be worth tackling with a start up. But ultimately users would have to validate that idea. No idea if it's viable.
Would you not go to a tool library? You wouldn't need to talk to anyone, just like checking out a book, check out a tool, pay a hire/membership fee.
The impact of plastic bottles is probably lower than for alternatives like glass. Glass is heavier and causes more CO2 emissions because of the increased energy use for transporting them.
I'm curious about this, any chance you have references?
[1] https://www.palpa.fi/beverage-container-recycling/deposit-re...
This does not support the OP's case that "Glass is heavier and causes more CO2 emissions because of the increased energy use for transporting them."
There is going to be plenty of transport taking place during those 20 cycles of use and recycle. If the main energy cost of glass is in transport, as he asserted, that's only going to make it less competitive vs. plastic as the number of cycles increases.
As long as transport + washing cost of glass bottles are less than production + transport cost of plastic bottles there will be some number of reuses that make glass the winner.
In Switzerland 82% of PET is recycled. (Note that this number is the percentage that is really reused. Not the percentage that is collected.) The same number for glass is 96%. That means only 44% of glass gets recycled 20 times.
However, this is for reuse, not recycling. Not many glass bottles get reused, most get recycled. Recycling glass is less energy efficient than reusing.
http://www.swissrecycling.ch/wissen/kennzahlen-und-quoten/
In the UK we used to have electric milk floats with milkmen that would deliver milk in glass bottles. The dairy would be local. The cows would be local. Big cities had trains to get the milk in. Or the milk would travel in tankers.
The bottling plant would be for local distribution. The empties would be carried back on the milk float.
Moving on we now have dairies many, many miles away. They are not a common sight. The milk goes into single use plastic bottles and gets sent to supermarket depots. It then travels by road vast distances to supermarkets and convenience stores. People then drive to the supermarket and buy the milk.
I personally preferred the way milk was delivered. I liked the community value of having a milkman. I liked washing the bottles and putting them out for collection. The milk wasn't homogenised then, it had not the same shelf life.
I don't believe that having four pints (2 litres) of milk driven over two hundred miles of roads is that efficient. Particularly when I can see cows out the window. Then, since it is the EU, milk can be driven from Germany. Or in yogurt form over the Alps in a 1000 mile journey.
So at one level the CO2 emissions of glass are higher but driving milk hundreds of miles is where the CO2 problem really is.
From a capitalist perspective everything is now really efficient and the market is working. But when milk was government and cared for that way, there was a lot more employment going on. We could have kept it all local with solar and other renewables powering the milk floats instead of coal. But when those former dairies have been shuttered and sold for housing developments there is no goin back. We are stuck with mega dairies.
Water is even worse. There are lorries driving from the Alps with bottled water. This is plain absurd. There was a time when tap water was as good as it could get.
Beer is different, as are spirits and wines. Beer should be brewed locally and served in glasses that get washed in a public house. But widgets in cans and other tricks have made canned beer fine, what most people drink.
Anyway, saying that plastic is less CO2 than glass is just not fair to all the issues of globalised food.
VW blasting its dumb "Sounds of Silence" commercial multiple times an hour led me to watching most of the Stanley Cup final on a time delay. Haha VW that joke was funny the first time. Yeah it was a real misfortune for you that you cheated on emissions tests and killed lots of urban children with your noxious diesel fumes.
I replaced a damaged shingle on my roof with a piece of plastic, thinking the plastic was indestructible. Within about 3 months, the plastic had disintegrated under the onslaught of the sun.
Look what happens to plastic lawn furniture after a while.
Clearly, though, we are producing plastic much faster than it breaks down. Stuffing it into landfills ought to work.
You are assuming that the fabric of the plastic is consistent in all levels. In reality tho, most stuff demonstrate different characteristics in lower (molecular) levels.
Or maybe just no more plastics but cellulose based :)
Huh, this is kind of interesting. I was taught in school as a kid that plastic degrades under the influence of UV light, so would never have even considered doing this. I guess that this fact isn't the common knowledge I thought it was.
(I'm talking about unpainted plastic of course)
That might be bromine, which was used as a flame retardant back in the days (and probably still is, but I'm not sure).
A lot of retro gamers are dealing with this issue, giving their beloved Game Boys, C64s or whatever a yellowish look.
Some folks got together and created a mixture they call "Retr0bright" [1], which consists of hydroperoxide, Tetraacetylethylenediamine (TAED) as a catalyst, and finally uv light. It "reverses" the effect, though it might reappear after time.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retr0bright
Restoring molecules is not necessarily it, the TAED catalyst sounded plausible, but a lot of retrobrighting goes on with just the peroxide solution and sun.
But even then the peroxide was found to not be it. Indoors you don't get the same UVA/UVB as outdoors, so it initially seems counter intuitive to think that that yellowed computer case would go white again if put out in the sun. But it works. No voodoo chemicals needed.
It comes down to bones and how they always end up white, bleached from the sun. Try it.
Most plastic ends up in a landfill or deep in the water or burred under more plastic where it is not touched by the sun and does not degrade.
Plastic on the surface of the ocean breaks into smaller pieces which end up deeper in the sea, and does not degrade further. The ocean is filled with tiny plastic bits. [1]
[0] - https://www.rsc.org/Education/Teachers/Resources/Inspiration...
[1] - https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/01/26/our-oceans-a-plasti...
I think our mental model around the deployment of plastic is flawed. The logistical tail of plastics use falls upon an externalized public commons, while much of that logistical tail cost is embedded into alternatives like glass. No one accounts for the cost of disposal management of plastic syringes to the point that microplastics don't end up in our biosphere, while autoclaving glass syringes and recycling chipped glass syringes is tallied up against glass. An apples-to-apples cost comparison can be more closely approached if mostly-closed loop systems were built for all uses, and some kind of target virgin feedstock utilization percentage was set, and microplastics as an acceptable outcome was denied the plastics industry.
[1] https://www.standard.co.uk/futurelondon/theplasticfreeprojec...
Externalities, and zero-basis natural resource inputs, are not presently accounted for. Most economic theory fails to even consider them.
This is unsubstantiated sensational bs. Plastics do end up in landfill or incinerator, but the US does not have waterway pollution problem.
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
Most American and European plastic waste finds its way into landfills.
"In the chart below we see the global distribution of mismanaged plastic waste aggregated by world region. The East Asia and Pacific region dominates global mismanaged plastic waste, accounting for 60 percent of the world total.
There is a wide gap between East Asia and the other regions — South Asia ranks second but contributes around 5 times less with 11 percent of the total. This is followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (9 percent); Middle East & North Africa (8.3 percent); Latin America (7.2 percent); Europe and Central Asia (3.6 percent) and North America (1 percent).
If we aim to address the ocean plastic problem, an understanding of this global picture is important. It highlights the fundamental role of waste management in preventing ocean pollution; whilst countries across North America and Europe generate significant quantities of plastic waste (particularly on a per capita basis), well-managed waste streams mean that very little of this is at risk of ocean pollution. "
Now that Asia has mainly stopped accepting recycling - much of which is too contaminated before it gets out of the bale or container to recycle so gets illegally dumped or burned - even more goes to Africa instead. Except all countries that have had some part in recycling and try and stop or restrict it find they have a major problem of illegal imports and illegal processing - which is easier to stop than the containers. See for instance the Philippines vs Canada recently.
so the West is exporting what seems to inevitably become an illegal industry to every country stupid enough to join in.
If we just banned export and dumped it all in landfill again the world would be better off.
If a country sends plastic waste to Asia and then it's mismanaged there, what country gets the blame for mismanagement in those statistics?
[1] Christian Schmidt, Tobias Krauth and Stephan Wagner (2017), Export of plastic debris by rivers into the Sea
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.7b02368
Us: You need to clean up the Yangtze.
Them: Well what are you doing about your plastic waste
Us: We're shipping it to you!
"Their fault, nothing to do with us"
This is blaming the recipient of the bullet for the shooting.
I've slowly ended up thinking that simply dumping it in landfill is less harmful, but not as good as producing less in the first place. Which is still a point in favour of your state's reluctance to recycle.
If we're talking specifically about plastic pollution in waterways, the USA is nowhere close to the top of the list for that particular problem.
In the USA, we have the means to recycle most plastics, but there needs to be political will to get it done. Merely relying on industries to make a profit off of plastic recycling is not nearly sufficient.
We need to enact more regulations to ensure that more products are make with recyclable materials, that the products themselves can easily be recycled, and provide incentives to actually do the recycling. We have a lot of work ahead of us, and in the current political climate, little political will to get it done. This is a big problem in the USA.
Or ordering from. Their pollution is funded by you.
Yes. Unless we do. Which we are. And it ends up in the water. And we remain responsible for the foreseeable consequences of our actions.
I assume this is still happening but there have been several exposés, leading some people to no longer bother recycling. As a reaction to that some city/area councils will fine you for not separating recyclables; our city vastly reduced the size of our bins (trash cans).
Most of our family waste seems to be unrecyclable plastic packaging.
It reminds me of eco-tourism. Its fun/satisfying to be part of 'recycling', so folks make up steps they can do to participate more, and end up torpedoing the whole point of it.
https://www.amazon.com/Plastic-China-Jiu-liang-Wang/dp/B06XT...
TL;DW: The producers find the cutest little girl in all of China, living in abject poverty amid toxic squalor.
The US exports by far the most. Much is poorly washed or sorted, regardless of which nation sent it, often so it's not suitable for recycling - plastic recycling is very easy to contaminate.
When countries push back and restrict imports they find they have an illegal industry that starts mislabelling containers, and illegal factories spring up.
Now it's "their fault".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-46566795
Australia ships toxic waste to Denmark, is that problematic in it self? No! Because a danish company offers services for safe disposal. If that company just dumbed the barrels of toxins in the ocean, would Australia be responsible?
And here are statistics on the trash gathered[2]. 649,236 plastic bags, 880,646 plastic bottles, and plenty of other miscellaneous plastic pieces. All of this disrupts natural ecosystems, and is ingested by animals who then get sick, and later gets into us as microplastics when we ingest the animals. This is the reason nearly all of our food and beverages contain microplastics.
If this doesn't seem that bad, the above example is from a single stream into a single harbor in a single city. Now imagine the national scale.
But plastic isn't the only pollutant of US waterways. Bacterial matter, nutrient excess, and industrial toxins regularly find their way through the watershed into main waterways, affecting marine life as well as humans. Waterway pollution is a big issue in the US.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=GgnTBxSMo3g [2] http://blogs.ubalt.edu/ubmag/the-problem-of-plastics/
I didn't know I have a plastic addiction. But industry and governments do, because of the easy money it generates. They are addicted to money, I can see that.
It's convenient to use plastics. Either lawmakers make it more inconvenient, or someone invent a comparable alternative that's biodegrading or unproblematic. Else, I think nothing will change.
If the effort put into generating all this angst was directed to more concrete action other than getting feel-good bans on token issues like plastic drinking straws we and the world would be a lot better off.
How about some articles on generating real change in the way the packaging industry works? No, didn't think so.
Apologies for the rant.
That's a very strong claim that I don't believe is made in good faith.
Take the quote from the parent comment:
> Most Americans’ daily routines depend on single-use items and throwaway plastic packaging,
What purpose does singling out Americans here serve?
1. It makes readers of The Guardian feel superior?
2. The paper wants to attract more American readers who want to feel they are concerned and environmentally conscious?
It's pushing a sense of 'holier than thou' with a readership who live in countries and cultures whose economic systems make widespread use of single-use plastic on a very large scale. It's a sanctimonious attitude that's great for consumers of these articles but never the driver of real change.
I think they achieved peak superiority when they organised their readers to send postcards to voters certain counties of Ohio in an attempt to influence the then 2004 Presidential election against Bush. But that was the good type of foreign interference in politics.
If say BBC or a state newspaper had "interfered" by say publishing accurate stories on say people affected by Hillary Clinton's policies complaints wouldn't have a leg to stand on. If it is a bit greyer if it is mere local advertising violation of truth but when it is local manipulative trickery.
Indeed. I guess we can't know. But it is funny to imagine.
> was the "Guardian Effect" to blame for the pro-Bush swing in one Ohio county?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3981823.stm
In other words, it's her academic speciality.
https://www.theguardian.com/info/about-guardian-us
Presumably intended for their growing US readership
https://www.theguardian.com/us
Why wouldn't they then focus on their home US readership?
As a Brit I notice that since they formed Guardian US and Guardian AUS there's a marked growth in local stories, features and investigations for those two countries. Pieces on US and Australian politics and other news that wouldn't meet the usual "of global interest" bar for international reports.
The other application was nitrocellulose as guncotton, which led to the development of smokeless gunpowder and the family of high explosives, such as TNT.
Christian Friedrich Schönbein also discovered ozone and the electrochemical effects leading to the fuel cell.
150th Anniversary: Death of Christian Friedrich Schönbein https://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/11085246/150th_...
We don't have a nuclear waste problem because we have some cultural nuclear addiction, or chrome in the soil because we have a chrome addiction. What we have are weak governments where if their regulatory agencies weren't captured, they wouldn't exist at all; the only regulations that get passed are ones that force small operators out of the market, or allow massive companies to offload liability to subcontractors.
edit: How about stopping all of the sin taxes (which are done because they simultaneously bring in revenue and theoretically cut government health care costs), and introduce some environmental taxes. They'll get passed down to the consumer anyway, and they can make the choice with their wallet. Cutting sin taxes in proportion to environmental taxes would make it revenue neutral, but it certainly wouldn't be environmentally neutral.
Two promising technologies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization
Heat and pressure turn plastic back into oil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation
Oxidize plastic in a molten salt bath, exothermic reaction, produces synthesis gas. "... destroys all organic materials while simultaneously retaining inorganic and hazardous components in the melt."
Some short-term forms of plastic use are a very poor energy investment. That's a problem because energy is finite, waste is a long-term threat. This is in part a design problem, in part a problem of ignorance, in part a problem of ignoring/hiding externalities for lower costs and quick profits ... etc. etc.
It's unfortunate that plastic has often become the only available option. I'd be glad to pay more (money, time) for some containers that I don't -have- bring home and -have- to toss into the recycling bin knowing their fate.
It looks as though until enough people are willing to make that choice, this ongoing energy waste (being charged to the accounts of future generations) will never end.