Plastic ban

[rlock]

The government wants to ban plastic bags and cutlery, yet so many products have a ridiculous amount of plastic packaging that isn't needed, or wanted.
I now buy plastic garbage bags for my homes small garbage cans, where i used to use the grocery bags, so no plastic is saved.
Banned plastic straws, which rarely got thrown out on the street, but i see those stupid masks all over the place while driving around, but they don't ban them.
The government doesn't give a shit about the environment, like Trudeau flying on a private jet to the climate talks, they just want to tell us how to live, while they waste our money, and live like hypocrites.

I sometimes see cutlery at garage sales, really cheap.
I'll buy some, wash it in the dishwasher and leave it in my car...if i need it, use it, and then just leave it on the table wherever I ate, be it a food court or some other place.
The dollar store still sells plastic cuttlery, and straws, so I bought some recently, and they even gave me a plastic bag to put it in.

I count myself an environmentalist, but a real-world one. A lot of the measures being done seem like knee-jerk reactions, for optics rather than really making a dent in the overuse of plastic which still goes on unregulated.

Like the absolute ban on plastic grocery bags. Encourage the use of reusables? Sure, great. I already use those. Like you, I also use the plastic bags I (rarely) get as garbage bags for my bins at home - I have not bought any small sized garbage bags in many years.

There is a lot of single-use and unnecessary plastic out there in grocery land, and if you ever do a real audit of the groceries you buy, you'll see how much packaging (outer and inner) is plastic, and not likely to be the reusable or recyclable kind.

But look at it this way: we all still get those fucking envelopes with little plastic windows on them so it can show your address from the document inside. Sure sometimes they use recycled & unbleached paper (for government cheques), but the envelope still contains fucking plastic. And nobody recycles that kind, ever.

Try recycling that paper part alone. I have to tear out the plastic part (and some paper surrounding it). So while they were busy banning grocery bags and plastic cutlery, why did they overlook this ? Because banks and corporations and the government itself want the cheapness of not having to use a paper-only envelope (which would mean needing to match the address outside to the document inside).

And while we're on the subject, why do they allow the use of plastic parts (including glitter and foam) on greeting cards, birthday cards, Xmas cards, etc. ? Renders it unrecyclable, and that shit is definitely used one time only.

The point is: they need to re-think what's the problematic part, and put the onus on the corporations and designers of all this cheap disposable shit.

 

[robi]

View attachment 58622

Brilliant!

 

[80watts]

Advanced options in recycling.
In the 1970, recycling was crushing or burning the plastic or burying the plastic.
Today plastics can be recycled by crushing and density selection (water), or add heat and pressure (like crude oil refinement)
Another option is to rehydrate plastics to make into base supply plastics.
In the past plastics and other wastes are shipped overseas or dumped into the oceans.
The problem is that it is way too expensive to recycle most plastic (no profit in it).
Any plastic recycling plant would have to have its own self contained water supply, due to micro plastics in the water.

 

[oktrythis]

I live in a condo complex whereby we dump our garbage in blue bins in our parking lot. Yes, prior to the banning of the grocery store bags there were many single use bags in the bins being used for their trash. But now our bins are filled with many black thick plastic bags that don't seem to be environmentally friendly. It's kinda looks like we're not gaining all that much in our building.

OTT.

 

[80watts]

The problem with recycling plastics is that it is very expensive and no profit in it.
Although most people would like plastics to be recycled, economically its not possible.

So the problem is ignored at the federal, provincial and local level. Why ?If the governments were serious enough they would have to invest (use tax payers money) in a system where all plastics are recyclable. This is too much infrastructure to invest in. All cities and towns do not have the land or supply of water it will take to recycle the plastics (It would take up several blocks or acres for the volume). As for transporting it somewhere, that is too expensive in terms of organizing transport and fuel to transport plastic where they could be recycled.

It is much simpler to melt the plastics into a puck and throw it into the landfill. (this process really stinks and is very unpleasant).
And with plastics you are not even getting into the types of plastics, which is a guess at what is in them . You know the triangle 3, triangle 4 etc....

If you were going to organize a system.
Every city would have to have a place to separate the plastics, and then melt the plastics in pucks by triangle numbers. And then ship them to a place that could better refine the plastics. The hard part is who pays for the labour of separating plastics (bagel container, fruit container etc). Or where they will bury the plastics if melted into pucks.

A big plastic that just goes into the dumps is styro-foam for packaging items.(so does any product packed that way get charge extra for the recycling of that styro-foam). If the government charged for that, products become more expensive.

The separating place in a town/city will take up blocks of space. And has to be situated near a windy place to blow the smell away....unless you have a really tall chimney to suck the air/smell and blow the smell high into the atmosphere....but eventually that smell (with little plastic particles and molecules) will come to rest on the ground level....

Another concern is the replacement of plastic bags, means cloth bags and paper bags. I would reconsider the use of paper bags because of the amount of trees they would need to replace the number of plastic bags.

My other pet peeve is the ridiculous propaganda about straws ending up in the ocean, when most of the plastics in the ocean are from fishing nets , lost by boats losing fishing nets.
Ban the fishing nets, go line fishing, that way you don't over fish an area and/or return dead unseasonal fish back to the water (they get squished in fishing nets), because they don't have a license for them.
Ban clearcutting of forests, go back to a supportable selective logging only trees that are 80-120 years old or damaged trees. Create better forest by selective logging. Look at Sweden it has a sustainable forest industry and its country side is not denuded of trees like Canada is (because it allows clear-cutting). Unfortunately growing a forest is not a fast and profitable business, so nobody goes into it, but a virgin forest with trees 200 years old gets clear-cut for mass profit by international companies here in Canada....

You see man has overfished Canadian waters, Clear-cut all the forest that are not protected, and mined out minerals and left toxic wastes behind, because there were no rules at the time. The state of Colorado has new rules that mines have to put up a bond for any type of mining, due to the toxic waste left behind by mining companies from the 50s to 80s. Profits were hidden and or dummy companies set up in other states were able to hide the profits made from these mines. So the state government could not go after the companies hidden behind shell companies and in other states. So the tax payers of Colorado have to pay up.

These companies made their vast profits and left a mess of toxic waste and arguments among locals as who pays for the cleanup of toxic dumps.

The Canadian Federal government should go after those profit mongering companies (that company that left mercury near a stream near a Indian Reserve)... But will not do so because the civil service employees will be a major stumbling block. People are connected to all sorts of things...

The future needs energy. Energy comes form solar or windmills. Canada does not produce most of its solar cells. Canadian have stopped wind farms from being developed because of "not in my back yard" attitude, too much noise, and you'll kill birds.... Canadian government have to come down with BIG FUCKEN HAMMERs on these fucked up social elitists environmentalist shitheads...

 

[masterpoonhunter]

The problem with recycling plastics is that it is very expensive and no profit in it.

This statement is not true.

Multiples of companies are investing big in advanced imaging/sensing systems to sort recycled plastics, bin them into their material categories and provide them to as many or more multiples of companies making product from the specific material. The result is material of the same quality as the raw material. In the great scheme of things the current recycled plastic market place supports ~~40+B USD with growth projected.
These are not the blue box pickup places, these are the receivers of what is put in the blue box and taken to recycling depots.

 

[80watts]

You got a reference to that, I working off the fact that most plastics are not recycleable and are just dumped in the landfill.

 

[worldshaker]

I sleep heavily, So I need two alarm clocks. One is an old digital clock, made of plastic. The other is my cell phone, I don't know what it's made of, but the protective cover is plastic

By my side table, where i eat, there's a ketchup and mustard bottle, both plastic.

When I go to Wendy's and order a chocolate frosty, they give me a plastic spoon in a plastic wrapper. If I order a Coke, it comes with the annoyingly useless "paper" straw. A paper straw, something like a screen door on a submarine. And by the end of the drink, all the skin on my lips are stuck to the straw, making me look like a freshly fed vampire.

I had to get oil, transmission fluid, windshield washer and one of those pepperoni sticks that come enveloped in a cheese bun. Plastic, plastic, plastic and plastic. Oh yeah, the well for the windshield washer goes into a plastic reservoir.

Sometime during all this excitement, I had the urge to jerk off. Who wouldn't? I'm gettin' old now and often use a silicon cock ring for maximum hardness. Silicon is an element, right? Here's a quote, "silicone is something of a hybrid between a synthetic rubber and a synthetic plastic polymer." I guess that may be nit picking.

So because we ruined most of nature, we think we're going to restore it. George Carlin famously said, "Save the planet? We can't even take care of each another!"

Have look around and see how well the world is getting along with each other. There are civilizations that have been warring for thousands of years, that's never going to change.

I get my plastic straws on Amazon. Plastic cups are easy to find, and I use these things 100% guilt-free.

 

[rlock]

I sleep heavily, So I need two alarm clocks. One is an old digital clock, made of plastic. The other is my cell phone, I don't know what it's made of, but the protective cover is plastic

By my side table, where i eat, there's a ketchup and mustard bottle, both plastic.

When I go to Wendy's and order a chocolate frosty, they give me a plastic spoon in a plastic wrapper. If I order a Coke, it comes with the annoyingly useless "paper" straw. A paper straw, something like a screen door on a submarine. And by the end of the drink, all the skin on my lips are stuck to the straw, making me look like a freshly fed vampire.

I had to get oil, transmission fluid, windshield washer and one of those pepperoni sticks that come enveloped in a cheese bun. Plastic, plastic, plastic and plastic. Oh yeah, the well for the windshield washer goes into a plastic reservoir.

Sometime during all this excitement, I had the urge to jerk off. Who wouldn't? I'm gettin' old now and often use a silicon cock ring for maximum hardness. Silicon is an element, right? Here's a quote, "silicone is something of a hybrid between a synthetic rubber and a synthetic plastic polymer." I guess that may be nit picking.

So because we ruined most of nature, we think we're going to restore it. George Carlin famously said, "Save the planet? We can't even take care of each another!"

Have look around and see how well the world is getting along with each other. There are civilizations that have been warring for thousands of years, that's never going to change.

I get my plastic straws on Amazon. Plastic cups are easy to find, and I use these things 100% guilt-free.

Like I said, I am a realist - plastic grocery bags being banned, while all the other packaging and whatnot you mentioned remains the same, is just optics. Much of the need when it comes to food wrapping is to have something impermeable to water/moisture, to keep it clean and prevent rot. However, that's not true in every case, like buying bulk bin stuff (including bread rolls and so on) - that could be in paper bags, but what does the clerk need? To open it up and see what you bought. Sure, they could have a clerk do that and stick a price sticker on the outside, just like at the meat/deli counter, but that means more staff and staff costs money.

For those wondering, the amount of plastic in the ocean from straws and cups pales when compared to the particles of synthetic fibers that comes off laundered clothing and gets into everything (soil, water, and living creatures). Every time you clean the lint trap in your dryer, think about that, multiplied by 8 billion. That's when you see the reason why landfills and storm sewers can't be considered a real solution to the problem. We already have almost all the materials we would ever need to use, if we could put some research effort into finding a way to reuse it. They already put in billions to swarm people with shitty products and fake services nobody needs, or lobby & squabble over slight differences that do not actually matter, so believe me - the money is there.

"They" could find a better way for all this to work, find those technical solutions and might get us all out of the trap, but the truth is they just can't be bothered. Easier to cultivate private armies of ignorant conspiracy goofs, to protect themselves from being held to account by the rest of us.

 

[Larry's Torch]

And then there's this:

https://sustanetech.com/

Their YT.

 

[ploplayer228]

I am all for a small step towards saving the planet and all but

everytime I travel to China, Thailand, Vietnam, etc. I am amazed by how much plastic (bags) they use for every single possible things

makes you wonder if we are doing anything for any reason at great inconveniences

(I might be ranting a bit after my drinks through UberEats came half spilled on to a paper bag with already soggy paper straws last night 😤)

 

[ploplayer228]

another head scratcher on this one

"Kiju's Recyclable Juice Boxes Come with Bendable Paper Straws"
Ya ... paper straws wrapped in plastic packaging 🤷‍♂️

 

[bigballs55]

I found an interesting website that has a collection of data regarding plastic pollution around the world - https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-...ies-produce-the-most-mismanaged-plastic-waste

Some interesting takeaways are that over 95% of the mismanaged plastic (plastic that is either littered or inadequately disposed) comes from Asia (65.6%), Africa (22.2%), and South America (8%). With countries like India, China, and Brazil being some of the worst offenders.
I'm not suggesting we are saints in the west as this is just one metric of measuring pollution.