
Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950 - prakashk
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/23/all-the-plastic-ever-made-study-comic
======
spodek
Missing from most environmental conversation is how much you can improve your
life avoiding polluting things. What you replace packaged food, flying, and
such with is fresh fruits and vegetables and local community. You learn that
while one flight will bring you closer to a distant loved one, flying in
general is what led to your "community" living where you can't see each other.

When I point out that you, the reader, can make a difference, this community
usually responds that you can't, that only government action will make a
difference or something like that. That's where government action comes from.
Besides, if it improves your life, you personally benefit from reducing your
consumption anyway.

The article's most important point I saw was that recycling hasn't shown to
reduce production of virgin material. Without reducing production, reusing and
recycling only shuffle plastic around. Burning it creates dioxin and other
pollution. My podcast episode 183 describes how reusing and recycling are only
tactical. Reduction is strategic [http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-
monologues-volume...](http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-monologues-
volume-6).

However snarky and cynical people here can be -- I'm sure they consider
themselves practical and realist -- if avoiding buying plastic will improve
your life and reduce demand, why not do it anyway. Besides it will lead others
to change and can lead to politicians realizing voters want regulation.
Legislators and heads of companies are people too and will change when people
around them do, which is you and me.

~~~
nawtacawp
Western society may be a large consumer, but you are educating the wrong crowd
if you want to make a difference. Higher income countries tend to do a much
better job of recycling. This illustrates the problem:

[https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inadequately-managed-
plas...](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inadequately-managed-plastic)

~~~
SomeOldThrow
As pointed out in the parent, recycling is emphatically less important than
reduction of production.

~~~
nawtacawp
If you are interested in stats, this is a great piece that expands on the
overall issue.

[https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-
pollution](https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution)

------
rpiguy
Human beings are astounding! Assuming the Earth is about 5.972 sextillion
(1,000 trillion) metric tons, we've converted .000000000000134 of the Earth
into plastic. No other species could have accomplished this. A testament to
our ingenuity.

~~~
defterGoose
This is a, uhhh, strange opinion to say the least. We've also doubled the CO2
in the atmosphere since the last ice age. Big numbers! Progress! Our destiny
is assured! Success is inevitable!

------
ginko
If my calculations are correct and assuming an average plastic density of
1.15g/cm³[1] that's 7.2 billion cubic meters of plastic. If you pressed all of
that into a solid cube it'd be 1.9km along each side. More than twice as tall
as Burj Khalifa.

[1] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/595434/plastic-
materials...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/595434/plastic-materials-
density/)

~~~
dmurray
That just...doesn't seem like that much? There are individual disused mines
where more earth than that has been removed. Put all that plastic back into
one of those mines, and solve 70 years worth of your landfill problem.

~~~
spodek
The problem isn't the volume. It's the distribution.

Some of it is in your bloodstream. And your children's, messing with your and
their endocrine systems, among other problems. Some of it is in the bellies
animals around the world. How do you plan to get it?

We can't beat the laws of thermodynamics. The stuff is out there and
dispersing more.

~~~
mehrdadn
You had me until thermodynamics. We're obviously not getting every substance
in our bloodstream like we are with plastics so I don't think thermodynamics
is the issue here.

~~~
FlyingAvatar
I think he was referring specifically to entropy in his reference to
thermodynamics. Once we extract the source materials from the earth, turn them
into plastics and distribute them, there is no cheap way to undo it.

~~~
mehrdadn
The following sentence was about dispersion in the world and not about the
chemical reactions in creating plastic, so I don't think that's what was
meant.

~~~
spodek
I meant what FlyingAvatar suggested.

Quoting Wikipedia: _In statistical mechanics, entropy is an extensive property
of a thermodynamic system. It is closely related to the number Ω of
microscopic configurations (known as microstates) that are consistent with the
macroscopic quantities that characterize the system._

and

 _The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated
system never decreases over time._

Applied here, when plastic breaks into pieces, the number of microstates --
ie, the entropy -- increases.

It's not the same as the ideal gas law, but similar.

------
ianai
This underscores the sadness in burning oil. Plastics allow us to do and make
so many useful things. We should be stockpiling oil for this sort of use and
only burning it when no other option exists.

~~~
mc32
We can make plastics from other raw materials, plants included. Interestingly,
bioplastics can be mfg with CO2.

~~~
ianai
Very cool! Just another reason I love plants.

~~~
soulofmischief
“Well, what would you say if there was such a plant that could substitute for
all wood pulp paper, all fossil fuels, would make most of our fibers
naturally, make everything from dynamite to plastic, grows in all 50 states
and that one acre of it would replace 4.1 acres of trees, and that if you used
about 6% of the U.S. land to raise it as an energy crop, even on our marginal
lands, this plant would produce all 75 quadrillion billion BTUs needed to run
America each year? Would that help save the planet?”

...

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Hemp.”

...

“Well, Mr. Herer, did you know that hemp is also marijuana?”

“Yes, of course I know, I’ve been writing about it for about 40 hours a week
for the past 17 years.”

“Well, you know marijuana’s illegal, don’t you? You can’t use it.”

“Not even to save the world?”

“No. It’s illegal”, he sternly informed me. “You cannot use something
illegal.”

[https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/chapter-2/](https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/chapter-2/)

~~~
ianai
In the US, all I can say is write your senators, house representative, and
donate to campaigns with sensible policies. It does seem closer to reality now
than ever before now.

------
mrfusion
Why is this necessarily bad?

~~~
titzer
Because a large portion of it ends up as both macro and microplastics in the
environment, which has a severely negative effect on ecosystems.

------
foobar_
The problem with capitalism is waste management and producing good and
services in excess.

