Microplastics in Arctic Ocean

[Peter McLennan]

Wonderful solution. How do you plan to get outfits like China and, say, Russia to join in this effort? You guys sound like Californians.

Comments like that leave me speechless.

Maybe that's a good thing...

[RSL]

Yes, Peter. That's a good thing.

[Farmer]

Can't we send boats with fishing nets to collect the floating garbage? This is a serious question, no sarcasm, politics or anything else intended.

I think that this can be done - certainly we see ships and boats being used for numerous maritime environmental issues.  I suspect, and I'm in the middle of writing a paper on international business so I don't have time to research this right now beyond this quick procrastination, that part of the issue is finding it reliability - it's hard to track when it's sitting under the water and the oceans are big, and there's the underlying cost and then the processing after recovery.  There are some technologies around this idea, though, including this one http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-12-20/seabin-designed-by-australian-surfers-to-start-cleaning-up-ocean/7044174 but the scale doesn't seem to be right as a single solution.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

If we stop using plastic bags and use paper bags instead, isn't that going to cut even more trees?

[digitaldog]

Yes, Peter. That's a good thing.

Maybe you should give it a try if it's such a good thing.... 

[digitaldog]

If we stop using plastic bags and use paper bags instead, isn't that going to cut even more trees?

Perhaps but that's renewable, far more recyclable, far easier to and faster to decompose etc.

[tom b]

"Across the U.S., communities that relied on recycling to divert waste away from bloated landfills are now being forced to rethink how they deal with trash. Americans shipped more than US$5.6 billion of scrap commodities like plastic and metal to China last year, according to the Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries. About half of what gets collected by U.S. recyclers is paper, which accounted for 13.2 million tons of scrap exports."

Yep, the good times are over. China has given up on four decades of recycling the world's waste and is now working on reducing its very high pollution levels. The sh*t is about to hit the fan. Damn you selfish commie b*stards, expecting the western world to clean up it's own mess.

Cheers,

[LesPalenik]

Maybe you should give it a try if it's such a good thing.... 

That was one of the most constructive coments today. OTH, without Russ, we wouldn't get so many interesting answers and useful links.

[tom b]

Perhaps but that's renewable, far more recyclable, far easier to and faster to decompose etc.

Depends on the scale of the problem, recyclable chopsticks China:

"China uses 20 million trees each year to feed the country's disposable chopstick habit, Bo Guangxin, the head of a major forestry group, told Chinese parliamentarians on Friday according to Chinese state media. At 4,000 chopsticks per tree, that's roughly 80 billion chopsticks per year -- far more than the 57 billion estimated by the country's national forest bureau."

Scary, huh…

[digitaldog]

Disposable chopsticks; there is a major part of the problem. How many is us only eat with disposable (worse plastic) utensils?

[Peter McLennan]

That was one of the most constructive coments today. OTH, without Russ, we wouldn't get so many interesting answers and useful links.

Right wing trolls expose the truth from all the dissent they enable.
They don't realize this yet.

[David Sutton]

If we stop using plastic bags and use paper bags instead, isn't that going to cut even more trees?

This is a deeper question than it may appear on the surface.
You could send the paper manufacture off to a third world country and have them decimate their forests and fill their waterways with dioxins and other organochlorines. Then move on to the next candidate for development.
Or you could establish a renewable forest industry on land that may be marginal for existing farming. Then local paper mills using chlorine-free bleaching. The benefits are jobs, an enlarged tax base, an export industry and carbon credits if they still exist.   
I doubt the second option would happen without an interventionist government. You see where this is leading...
Paper is not 100% free of environmental cost, but at least you can put the waste in your fireplace or send it off to be turned into packaging.

OT, wood is an underrated resource. Here in NZ we were no better than anyone else in decimating our native forests. But the renewable plantings are being used for things like laminated structural beams in earthquake zones to replace steel in multi-storey buildings, and the waste turned in to pellets for heating. Then end result is better quality stuff and multiple income streams for the suppliers and manufacturers. Again, the tax base gets enlarged.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Disposable chopsticks; there is a major part of the problem....

Yes. Solution? Plastic ones!

[digitaldog]

Yes. Solution? Plastic ones!

Like straws, reusable ones.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Right wing trolls expose the truth from all the dissent they enable.
They don't realize this yet.

What exactly was "right-wing" or trolling in what Russ was saying? He simply pointed out the elephant in the room in this debate, which then David referenced as 90% of ocean plastic pollution coming from China and several other developing, Asian and African countries. So, our valiant and noble effort to stop using plastic bags in supermarkets and plastic water bottles is but a drop in the ocean (pardon the pun). Doesn't solve the problem, but makes us feel good like we are doing something. Replacing plastic with paper causes another problem, deforestation.

In other words, there is no easy solution, and going for the naive, feel-good ones only distracts from searching for lasting solutions. Exposing the feel-good ones as such is not right wing or trolling.

Finding better ways to collect, recycle, or destroy plastic is the only solution. Yes, it helps to reduce the use of plastic in the future, but the existing quantities are so huge that it dwarfs any future savings. We ain't gonna stop using plastic any time soon, simply not realistic.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Like straws, reusable ones.

I can already see a billion Chinese carrying their metal chopsticks everywhere they go.

Cafeteria of one of the major American corporations I worked for replaced some months ago metal cutlery with plastic ones. There were even signes notifying us how it is actually more environmentally friendly. Something about water, electricity, and detergents needed to wash the metal ones. I do not know how much truth is in that, but would be interesting to hear from some of you who know more about the issue.

[digitaldog]

I can already see a billion Chinese carrying their metal chopsticks everywhere they go.

I don't think you really can! Why can't they, why couldn’t they be made of Plastic but reused like so many of the rest of the world does with their utensils? I don't know why I'm asking you such simple questions, or why I believed what you wrote below was to be taken seriously:

This is a serious question, no sarcasm, politics or anything else intended.

I have to wonder if you eat daily with disposable utensils or have any plastic product you own that isn't a one use, disposable product, but your reply would probably be filled with non serious answers, sarcasm, perhaps politics among anything else.

Cafeteria of one of the major American corporations I worked for replaced some months ago metal cutlery with plastic ones

And if the plastic can be reused over and over again, so what?

There were even signes notifying us how it is actually more environmentally friendly. Something about water, electricity, and detergents needed to wash the metal ones.

If one use products, and you believed that, you were well fooled!

I do not know how much truth is in that, but would be interesting to hear from some of you who know more about the issue.[/quote]

Enough said!

[digitaldog]

In other words, there is no easy solution, and going for the naive, feel-good ones only distracts from searching for lasting solutions.

There's nothing hard, naive or simply feel good about reusing, recycling and rejecting (the later being items like one use plastic straws as an example) to do your part to aid the problem! All are lasting solutions; you should consider trying them before knocking those of us that do.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Are you seriously suggesting that plastic utensils can be, should be, and are reused in restaurants!?

[digitaldog]

Are you seriously suggesting that plastic utensils can be, should be, and are reused in restaurants!?

I’m suggesting you learn to reuse, recycle, reduce. Think!