
Asian countries take a stand against the rich world’s plastic waste - ilamont
https://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-asia-plastic-waste-20190617-story.html
======
butisaidsudo
From what I understand, shipping containers are sent out from Asia stuffed
with goods, but there isn't nearly as much going in the other direction. The
containers need to go back whether they're full or not, which is why it ends
up being so cheap to ship plastic. And the CO2 caused doesn't really change as
a result.

To the rest of your point though, I agree. My wife is a hardline recycler. I
generally am too, but I have a hard time seeing the benefit in recycling soft
plastics.

~~~
shados
Is there really much of a point in recycling anything but reasonably clean
paper/cardboard (I know stuff like greasy pizza boxes won't get recycled), and
clean metals (like aluminum cans). Like, aside for those, will much
realistically get recycled?

Aside for the insane amount of amazon boxes I toss in recycling, so very
little of my trash fits the bill of things that will reasonably get
recycled...

~~~
LeifCarrotson
Glass is another (the other?) material which is worthwhile to recycle. Like
plastic, glass never decomposes. Unlike plastic and unlike paper/cardboard, it
can be endlessly remelted and remade into new products without a loss in
quality. It's a huge savings in material and energy cost to use recycled glass
in the manufacture of new glass.

If you have a recycling bin labeled "glass", absolutely do throw (place) glass
bottles into it. It will almost certainly be valued and reused. If you have a
single-stream recycling output - just one bin labeled "Recycling", there's
less of a case...processing and separating is more expensive and less
successful, and a small fraction will actually get recycled.

~~~
taneq
Everything I've read recently indicates that "recycled" glass is generally
just crushed and used as road base instead of being melted down and re-used as
containers etc.

~~~
nosianu
I grew up in the GDR (East Germany).

We only had a few kinds of bottle designs, standardized across the whole
country. I worked in a brewery over the summer, in the filling section. The
whole day trucks would arrive full of empty bottles collected from various
stations. They would go through a large washer, with a visual inspection
afterwards (the most boring job there was, that was before that could be
reliably automated, 1980s). Occasionally new bottles were fed into the system,
but very few, <10% I would say.

I also had a relative who owned a recycling station where people brought paper
(mostly newspapers and magazines), cardboard, and lots and lots of bottles,
and got money for it. The amount (of money) was significant enough that those
shops were pretty busy, and especially the young (like me) could quite
significantly add to their pocket money.

The main point was the standardization. Germany today also has lots of
stations to receive cans and plastic and glass bottles in exchange for a bit
of money - but it is a PITA because not just have the bottles to fit, but even
the labels!! The machines at the retailers only take back bottles of brands
that they sell. Crazy!

~~~
gambiting
This seems like something that could be brought back through legislation
instantly, and I cannot understand why we're prioritizing the freedom to make
your own unique bottles over this. There is 0 reason why all beer cannot be
sold in identical bottles - after all, the label can still be unique and
identifying your brand. Then the bottles just get washed and reused.

------
chrisanthropic
The first time I really started thinking about this was years ago after
watching the recycling episode of "Penn & Teller: Bullshit" where they
essentially warn that many recycling programs consist of shipping our waste
elsewhere for someone else to deal with and that some day the countries we
send our "recycling"/waste to will likely get sick of it and start rejecting
it and we'll be fucked.

That was almost 10 years ago

~~~
Scoundreller
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong in sending materials elsewhere
for cheap sorting or re-manufacturing.

Especially when ships and containers are going that way empty anyway.

~~~
gwbas1c
The problem is mis-representing what's in the shipment.

(There's probably a lot of plausible deniability in the system. People throw a
lot of _trash_ into recycling bins for lots of reasons, including ignorance or
laziness. Trash companies don't take responsibility to make sure that's what's
in the bin is actually what's supposed to be there.)

Read the article. There's dirty diapers mixed in with so-called "recyclables."

~~~
usrusr
It's a whole bidirectional cascade of misrepresentation I think: every time
the materials change hands, the output side passes on the quality/purity
promise from upstream, but more optimistic within an almost reasonable error
margin. In the same transaction, the input side passes on the responsible
handling promise of their downstream partner, but more optimistic, within an
almost reasonable error margin.

How many intermediate subcontracting steps would it take to allow the original
source tho pay for (supposedly) perfectly clean full reuse recycling of a
toxic mess, and the final sink to dump (supposedly) perfectly harmless
materials into the sea?

------
pen2l
This might be a dumb question, but: why don't we do glass-style bottles? I
live in America now, but when I used to live in Pakistan 20 years ago, I
remember that I would buy pepsi or coki in a glass bottle... and if I wanted
to buy a second one, I would go back to the store and give them the old empty
bottle, and they would compensate me a few pennies for it -- and the bottle
then is presumably washed and reused. It's simple, fun, and environmentally
friendly. Why don't we do this with... milk, juice, etc.? Why not do this with
everything really?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
The US was gearing up nicely to require deposit and reuse schemes in the 50s
or 60s. Vermont was about to require drinks be in reusable bottles.

Pepsi, Coke, Budweiser, Philip Morris and others got together, conceived the
idea of, funded and launched "Keep America Beautiful". Vermont was lobbied and
the deposit scheme died, consumers were blamed for the whole problem via
campaigns on littering, and industry could do whatever the hell they liked.

Greenwashing was born.

~~~
hexis
Bottle and can deposit has been going on in Massachusetts since at least the
80's (when I was growing up there) - [https://www.mass.gov/deposit-bottle-can-
recycling](https://www.mass.gov/deposit-bottle-can-recycling)

~~~
siberianbear
I'm putting words in NeedsMoreTea's mouth here, but I think he was referring
not to deposit schemes, but deposit and _reuse_ schemes.

In the 70s and 80s, soft drinks (at least in California where I lived) were
packaged in _really_ heavy, thick glass bottles. You paid a deposit on
purchase, and a refund on turning it back in, and then _the bottles were
cleaned and reused_.

These schemes have seemingly all disappeared. Many or most states still have
deposit programs, but the intent is to _recycle_ the glass, not to _reuse_ the
original bottle.

~~~
rurp
I like to explore ghost towns and old mines, and one of the things that always
strikes me about the leftover trash is how thick and sturdy bottles were 100+
years ago. It's a nice visual reminder of just how disposable most products
are in the modern west.

------
nitwit005
Other than the diplomatic issue of sending it back, "Asian countries take a
stand against their own recycling industries" seems more accurate. There was
someone buying it on the other end.

~~~
Spooky23
It’s also a good PR hit after the discovery that oceanic plastic pollution
comes from a few rivers in Asia.

~~~
doomjunky
How can we find out whose garbage is it?

------
cortesoft
There is this strange belief that landfills are taking up a ton of space and
we need to reduce landfill usage because of it.

This is simply not true. Landfills don't take up much space, we have plenty.

~~~
sgustard
I want to believe that, but then we have this 65 meter trash pile in Delhi.

[https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/india-trash-
mo...](https://bigthink.com/politics-current-affairs/india-trash-mountain)

~~~
jjeaff
That's not a space issue. That's an improper handling issue.

------
opportune
As far as I can understand it, the recycling industry is a well-intentioned
waste of resources. It would be much better for the environment for all this
waste to be sequestered in a landfill than for people to pay to ship it around
the world only for most of it to be dumped or rejected (which, even when the
Asian countries in question do accept it, they are likely to do anyway). These
materials (plastics) are so cheap to produce that it will probably never be
economical to recycle them, unless recycling them entails cleaning them and
reusing them in their original state.

I think a lot of people have undeservedly negative emotional reactions to the
concept of sending waste to landfills. Waste in landfills is waste that won't
find its way into the rest of the environment. Plastic not decomposing is bad
in that it ties up resources for a very long time, but it's good in that it
doesn't even produce methane waste in landfills. And I'm guessing it takes
less CO2 to ship X kilos of plastic around the world and reprocess it than to
dispose of the plastic close to its source and produce X new kilos of plastic.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
Well-intentioned is a stretch. We really just shouldn’t be using plastic for
disposable products, and corporations take advantage of peoples’ lack of
knowledge of recycling to neglect their responsibility of proper disposal and
pricing. Given the effect of plastic on the environment single use plastics
should be priced higher than their (eg) metal counterparts. (This is assuming
those have priced in externalities, so I realize this is reductive, but I
believe my point is clear.)

I’m staring at a unilever plastic container with cute recycling logos on the
side, and I have no consumer option to price compare with a more sustainable
option, let alone vote with my wallet. What a waste of materials.

Granted, lighting the materials on fire so I can drive around the countryside
isn’t much better.

~~~
mehrdadn
> We really just shouldn’t be using plastic for disposable products

Huh... I would've expected to read we very much should be using plastics for
disposables. (Do you want a metal or cloth trash bag?) Rather the problem I
see is disposing so much in the first place.

~~~
SomeOldThrow
I was more implying things like paper, but I see your confusion.

~~~
philliphaydon
Paper cups for coffee and paper containers for food are lined which makes them
difficult to recycle. Despite having a recycle logo on them they are often not
recyclable.

~~~
lorenzhs
You could also drink your coffee out of a cup that can be washed and reused.
Avoiding waste production in the first place is always the best option.

------
olliej
Good for them - until recently it had never occurred to me that many
“recycling” programs were just “send it to another country”.

It wasn’t until someone on HN pointed out to me that even most plastic
“recycling” is just shredding and using for things like carpet.

The long term solution seems to replace most plastics with paper/cardboard and
actually compostable materials (which doesn’t really include the compostable
plastics)

------
throw2016
A lot of assertions here about waste management and relative harmlessness of
landfills.

Do you have experience or exposure to the recycling, waste management and
landfill industry that you can share? Have you spoken to any landfill
managers, have some idea of the volume of plastic waste and the landfill
industry? Or is this just speaking from the gut?

Most articles have experts[1] and researchers[2] expressing grave concern
about waste and microplastics from landfills seeping into the environment and
polluting animal ecosystems and even our own water and food supply that would
give anyone cause for concern. Positioning that concern as 'negative emotional
reactions' without providing any science or evidence about why it is so seems
unscientific in the realm of wishful thinking.

[1]
[https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-03/documents...](https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-03/documents/microplastics_expert_workshop_report_final_12-4-17.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/114539/Kilpone...](https://www.theseus.fi/bitstream/handle/10024/114539/Kilponen_Juho.pdf?sequence=1)

~~~
slavik81
The Tali landfill in the second link must be very old. It seems they designed
it to drain directly into the river. That's definitely not how a modern
landfill is designed, and not just because of plastics.

Wikipedia seems to suggest the landfill was known as "Talinhuippu" and claims
it was in use 1963–1979.

------
tomxor
I'm fed up of sorting and "recycling" plastic, it's such bullshit, it's a feel
good activity for individuals or a check box exercise for governments. If
anything it's damaging to continue pretending to recycle plastics, it makes it
seem ok to continue producing them.

One day in the future it will be banned at the source, packaging will be
replaced with something non-hazardous and efficient to recycle or biodegrade,
and our children will look back at us in disbelief - just like we look back
and scoff at advertisements for healthy smoking, yet it will have longer
lasting effects on the food chain.

~~~
mediaman
As a counter-example, British Columbia recycles its post-consumer waste. There
are state of the art sorting facilities near Vancouver that receive this
material, sort it, grind it, clean it, and pelletize it. It's then bought and
used to produce various industrial and consumer goods.

The recycler receives a subsidy (set through open bid) because the cost of
sortation, grinding and cleaning is somewhat less than the recovery price of
commodity resins. (Post-industrial plastics, or highly sorted plastics, are
much cheaper to recycle and are processed without subsidy.)

The idea that all plastic recycling is "pretend" recycling is false, damaging,
and encourages adoption of environmentally damaging alternatives or use of
virgin plastics. We should either use more bins and pre-sort everything (which
will result in lower recycle rates, but much more economic streams) or
subsidize processors to sort streams out and turn them into useful material to
be re-used.

~~~
mikekchar
The city where I live has 14 sorts of garbage. You have to sort, clean, put it
in clear special bags and write your name on it. If you don't do it right, it
doesn't get removed (and your neighbours gang up to figure out who screwed it
up if you don't write your name). Of course, it's Japan and people are used to
following rules, but the system works quite well.

One of the things I don't like about these kinds of issues is the lack of
understanding that garbage is as much a social problem as it is a technical
problem. We assume that people can't/won't do things and evolve a culture
where it is true.

~~~
mediaman
I agree. In the States, we largely adopted "blue bin" recycling that
encourages people to dump everything they think might be recyclable into the
same blue bin. The idea was that this would encourage high recycling rates,
and eventually technology would catch up and figure out how to efficiently
sort everything.

So far, that hasn't happened, so we just got high recycle rates but terrible
streams of material that are not economic to recycle.

I agree that the Japanese approach would be a better one, even though it would
take large social change, and would result in lower recycle rates for quite a
while.

------
rishav_sharan
This is simply a political issue at this point. If there is political will,
then we can ban all consumer plastic. We used to live fine without them 40
years ago. We can do so again.

Damn the inconvenience. We must plug this at both source and disposal.

~~~
protonfish
If you made a case that this would be better for the environment, which I have
yet to see. Plastic waste is not toxic, nor does it use a lot of energy to
produce.

~~~
dflock
> Plastic waste is not toxic

It absolutely is. It breaks down into micro-plastics, which are sub-celluar
sized plastic particles. These have a large surface area and are easily
absorbed into tissues and cells. They then leech out whatever additives are in
that particular piece of plastic - plasticizers, colourings, etc...

Some of these are directly toxic/harmful when released into tissues and cells
- and lots of them are endocrine disruptors: molecules with a very similar 3d
shape to hormones:

> Endocrine disruptors are chemicals that can interfere with endocrine (or
> hormone) systems at certain doses. These disruptions can cause cancerous
> tumors, birth defects, and other developmental disorders.[1] Any system in
> the body controlled by hormones can be derailed by hormone disruptors.
> Specifically, endocrine disruptors may be associated with the development of
> learning disabilities, severe attention deficit disorder, cognitive and
> brain development problems; deformations of the body (including limbs);
> breast cancer, prostate cancer, thyroid and other cancers; sexual
> development problems such as feminizing of males or masculinizing effects on
> females, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endocrine_disruptor)

> The toxins the microplastic leaches into seawater inhibit the growth and
> photosynthetic efficiency of the bacteria Prochlorococcus, which is
> responsible for producing an estimated 20 percent of the oxygen we breathe.
> That means Prochlorococcus is also responsible for 20 percent of carbon
> capture on this planet (one molecule of carbon goes in, one molecule of
> oxygen goes out), theoretically spelling trouble for humanity’s quest to
> keep CO2 out of the atmosphere. This is early research that comes with
> several big caveats, and also exposes the challenges of studying a threat as
> new and omnipresent as plastic pollution.

[https://www.wired.com/story/ocean-plastics-
bacteria/](https://www.wired.com/story/ocean-plastics-bacteria/)

Etc, etc, etc...

~~~
protonfish
That's why you should dispose of them in a landfill and not the ocean. Problem
solved.

~~~
dflock
Then it just leaches out into groundwater - albeit more slowly.

------
evancox100
The move to single-stream recycling probably represents the single largest
setback in the U.S. to the cause of waste reduction.

------
raviolo
It’s sad how the costs of dealing with used plastics - whether recycling,
landfill, or something else - are usually presented as a problem. Like, “look,
it’s getting too expensive to have country X take it” or “it’s not
economically feasible to recycle”. I wish the costs of dealing with plastic
trash went up 10 times and there was absolutely no way for anyone to avoid
them. That’s the only meaningful way to get people’s attention and stop
consuming 400 million tons of plastic per year.

The amount of plastic bags is ridiculous. The packaging for many products is
ridiculous. I feel good about being able to put groceries into my backpack
rather than plastic bags. Unfortunately I don’t have an option to take other
products of their crazy layered plastic packages and put those into my
backpack as well, all that packaging going straight to garbage as soon as I
get home. This makes me sad.

------
exabrial
Asia is not "taking a stand", that's quite the spin on reality. It was never
economically profitable, and they tightened import controls as a pawn in the
current trade war.

Coincidently: [https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-
polluti...](https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-
our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers)

It's not to say that the move will undoubtedly benefit the environment, but we
should call a spade a spade.

~~~
dcx
Well yes, that may have been part of the calculus for China banning garbage
imports. But the resulting unmet demand for garbage dumping then spread to the
rest of Asia, and we absolutely are taking a stand on rejecting it for non-
trade war reasons. [1]

[1] [https://www.businessinsider.my/malaysia-town-plastic-
waste-c...](https://www.businessinsider.my/malaysia-town-plastic-waste-china-
photos-2019-2/)

------
cybersnowflake
The real story, is not that China is simply refusing waste, what nobody is
really talking about is how the omnipresent dogma we've been indoctrinated
with since childhood, that all this recycling is doing all this good is a
flatout lie. And its mostly just been going to dumps in China.

I mean it would be as if the whole world suddenly discovered one day that
Santa wasn't real. At the bare minimum this angle deserved a few months at
frontpage billing but it just passed by without any notice in favor of
continuing 24hr coverage of the latest mean Trump Tweet.

------
carapace
For a fascinating (and less sensational) read on the global recycling trade I
recommend "Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade" by Adam
Minter

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286721-junkyard-
planet](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17286721-junkyard-planet)

------
eschaton
The fundamental problem here is that the cost paid for a good does not
directly include the cost to reclaim and/or sequester it. That cost is
externalized, and so it winds up seeking a local minima, with serious adverse
effects on the total system. If these costs are incorporated, everyone’s
incentives are aligned and solutions will be found.

------
gtgtgthyhy
The water from my well is not very good, but ever since I got a reverse-
osmosis filtration system, I probably reduced our one-time-use plastic
consumption by about 95% (mainly water bottles)... and this system will pay
for itself in less then one year... but of course they need to fix the
packaging of many items.

------
devoply
Replace with glass and aluminum, with what's left over burn it. That way it
has no way of creating any other problems in the future. If you are efficient
with burning it you could even capture the greenhouse gasses produced as a
result and sequester those.

~~~
anon_cow1111
As someone who rides a bicycle and hikes, glass bottles are the bane of my
existence.

~~~
arcticbull
Are aluminum bottles problematic? Sigg makes some great ones.

~~~
fooblitzky
Aluminum bottles/cans are lined with plastic, to prevent the liquids acquiring
a metallic taste. Beer cans are usually lined with BPA - which is bad news for
your endocrine system. Sigg bottles have recently moved to a BPA-free lining,
but it's still plastic.

------
pushedx
I would prefer to see plastic and styrofoam containers outlawed entirely.

------
sn41
India is now having a plastic recycling problem of its own. Most cities in
India do not own landfills, and their surrounding villages do not want a
landfill in their backyard, even if the city wants to purchase it. What's the
alternative to landfilling? My ignorant guess would be to use an abandoned
mine or something of the sort. Is there a sustainable waste management
technique?

------
tomc1985
Why can't the US develop domestic waste-processing capabilities? We could be
generating power from incineration plants.

~~~
Scoundreller
Pollution control standards make incineration expensive.

It’s not like the US is going to run out of land for landfills.

~~~
tomc1985
Yes but can't you have a closed system that compacts the exhaust into solid
matter?

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's hard to convince the upscale NIMBY crowd that the .00-whatever parts per
billion of nasty stuff that get past the filter system of a modern incinerator
plant isn't gonna give everyone cancer and make the frogs bi-curious. Then you
have to figure out what to do with the waste and you'll face the same problem.

~~~
tomc1985
If its a closed system there are no emitters. Just solid waste, to be trucked
off to a landfill or something

------
jwillmer
I watched this documentary about the world leading company in sorting all kind
of waste. I'm afraid it's only available in German:
[https://youtu.be/6g1KNlXPbDo](https://youtu.be/6g1KNlXPbDo)

------
Shalle135
Sweden has been importing more and more trash the last decade since it ran out
of it's own.

[https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&ar...](https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=5788020)

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/x8kNK](http://archive.is/x8kNK)

------
iamsb
Main issue with recycling is sorting. Perhaps there are ways to solve this
using technology.

------
tomohawk
Seems relevant:

[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64430.Bill_the_Galactic_...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64430.Bill_the_Galactic_Hero)

------
superflb
Less plastic consumption means less dependency on oil. Generally a good idea
for all human beings. But, dominant oil companies will do anything they can to
stop it.

------
tartinipaolo
Scary! So bad plastics are so cheap that no one wants to substitute them.

------
agumonkey
With the recent trend of stopping plastic usage, and using compost for organic
waste and maybe shared glass containers too. What would still remain to
dispose ? (honest question)

------
Barrin92
For a great fiction take on the issue _The Waste Tide_ by Chen Qiufan and
recently translated into English by Ken Liu is well worth a read.

------
deanCommie
I understand the pro landfill arguments because landfills are certainly better
than lugging plastic across half the planet, burning bunker fuel the whole
way, only for it to get dumped into a river, and wind up essentially all back
in the ocean.

But let's not pretend like landfills are an indefinite solution for humanity's
problem either. Space is still finite.

~~~
BurningFrog
The trash _comes_ from earth. We don't create it out of nothing. We can't
overfill earth with itself.

------
baxtr
Is there a good reason not to burn all the plastic instead of shipping it to
foreign lands?

------
saravana85
Actually we are too late to act on this. But its a good initiative to begin
with and need more actions to save the earth.

Recently heard that Philippines govt has announced that students should plant
10 trees before they could get a degree. Creative steps like these will take
us closer to create great awareness.

------
thtthings
No one's talking about the point that Western countries are exploiting poor
Asian countries. They consume a lot, are a big burden on the planet and this
selfishness is going to end the world

------
gingabriska
I just bought 5 new Prusa i3 MK3 and I print lots of ABS and PETG parts, am I
contributed to the plastic problem?

Over last 1 month, I ended up using roughly 25KG of plastic.

~~~
rlpb
IMHO, while in the short term using a 3D printer may mean more plastic parts
everywhere and therefore more waste, in the long term you're promoting a world
of Just In Time part production where it is needed, and that future world will
produce less waste.

~~~
Godel_unicode
You're forgetting that just in time means a much lower barrier between desire
and realization. This can lead to a significant increase in overall
consumption.

------
BurningFrog
Controversial but technically true point:

Plastic and paper in landfills are a form of carbon sequestration.

Discuss.

------
steve_taylor
China ships us tons of plastic rubbish and we actually buy the crap, because
it's cheap.

------
Tsubasachan
What happened before the recycling movement was that Western waste was burned
in Western waste disposal facilities. This created a ton of toxic shit.
Shipping it off to Asia or Africa kept our skies clear. So the recycle lie was
created.

~~~
abakker
What is actually produced when we burn a plastic water bottle at high
temperature? I've always wondered this but never seen a great answer - are we
just releasing gasses, or is the resultant ash toxic?

~~~
sitharus
If the incineration happens at over 1000°C and the facility has operation
exhaust gas scrubbers then not much. You'll end up with bromine, chlorine and
fluorine salts in the ash.

If it's below 400° (as happens if you burn plastic in your backyard or
fireplace) you'll release dioxins, which are persistent fat-accumulating
toxins, and fluorine and bromide compounds which are typically bad news to
anyone downwind.

It does depend on the plastic you burn though. Some are worse than others, but
1000°+ controlled incineration is typically fine for all.

~~~
abraae
We watched a documentary on people living with minimal waste, which highlight
an elderly couple who managed to live with less than one rubbish sack of waste
per year.

I was admiring their efforts until I noticed a smouldering rubbish heap in
their back garden. Sure enough, they burned all their plastic and other waste.

~~~
90minuteAPI
I don't think that really counts as living with minimal waste then.

------
gesman
“This is rubbish that you know cannot be recycled, and it makes me really
angry that our country has to endure this,” she said in an interview.

Were they ever forced to accept this with no say into this?

Or it's just change of mindset to stop selling their own country as a garbage
dump?

------
throw2016
Whenever it comes to issues of environmental concern there is always an
'authoritative' comment hand waving away objections and pretending to be on
the side of 'science' but offering no scientific evidence, rationale or
reasoning.

The entire comment essentially says 'nothing to see here' and positions any
concern as 'unscientific' and overreaction.

You see this on HN every time in cases of nuclear power and the environment
externalities. This may benefit people who make money from it but no one else
and actively derails discussion and environmental concerns.

------
babyslothzoo
Interesting.

Meanwhile, apparently Asian countries dump more plastic into the ocean than
the rest of the world combined.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahleung/2018/04/21/five-
asi...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/hannahleung/2018/04/21/five-asian-
countries-dump-more-plastic-than-anyone-else-combined-how-you-can-help/)

