
2018 statistic of the year: Plastic waste fact tops list - carlosgg
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-46602969
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andrewstuart
That's because "recycling" is just the packaging industries way of avoiding
blame for manufacturing infinite garbage.

One day the world might realise that we live in an infinite garbage world
because we pay the packaging industry to make infinite garbage.

Recycling is not meant to work, it's meant to keep attention away from the
packaging industries role in destroying our beautiful planet.

It's all about the money.

The solution isn't to clean up/recycle the garbage - it's to stop making it.

Turn off the tap.

It's like the sugar industry - for decades everyone thought that obesity was
caused by fat in food and the solution was to eat less fatty food and to lose
weight by exercise. This suited the sugar industry extremely well because it
turns out that obesity is caused mainly by sugar, but they no doubt big sugar
was very happy that everyone was pointing the finger at fat as the problem and
exercise as the solution - that lets the sugar industry off the hook very
nicely.

The packaging industry must laugh behind its hands at all the people trying to
recycle and clean up all the garbage that it makes, when the real solution -
which no-one currently proposes - is just to stop manufacturing garbage in the
first place. Everyone is focused on how to deal with the garbage - there's no
problem to deal with if you stop making it.

If you read all the comments in this thread you'll see how the number one
focus of most people is to work out how to handle the packaging - there's no
questioning at all of why it exists.

~~~
__blockcipher__
This is a great point. I’ve been told that in my local area you can’t even
recycle thin film plastics. Which is probably at least half my plastic waste
if not way more since I don’t buy disposable water bottles...

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maxxxxx
When I read something like this I really wish the people who use all their
smarts for selling more ads to sell more crap would instead work on figuring
out trash separation and recycling. It's a very interesting problem:
Recognizing different items, handle it, and recycle it. It has it all: AI,
computer vision, robotics. It would make the world a much better place.

~~~
TaylorAlexander
I still think consumers need to take responsibility for what we buy. I can
complain that someone else isn’t fixing our problems, but then I go to the
store and I buy detergent that comes in a plastic tub. Why can’t they dispense
detergent in to a reusable container? Why do I buy all this plastic crap? Can
we form a collective that researches options and bulk buys products in a low
waste manner?

~~~
deogeo
Consumers aren't just consumers - they're also voters, and can take
responsibility by voting/demanding better environmental regulation.

Great change is rarely brought about with merely individual action.

~~~
Reedx
They're also voting with their wallet with every purchase. Not buying plastic
crap that gets thrown out after one use would help.

~~~
deogeo
Companies would love nothing more than to convince consumers that's all they
should do. But it wasn't voting with wallets that got us food and electrical
safety standards, the 40 hour work week, or banned leaded gasoline.

And markets carry no detergents in reusable containers you could 'vote' for in
this manner.

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FooHentai
Why is plastic pyrolysis not being employed to recycle on a massive scale?
Seems all that is needed is to site them near oil refineries, and you have a
clean, self-powering means of recycling plastic into oil/fuel.

~~~
ars
It's because we insist on recycling glass, requiring it to be separated, which
is expensive: Glass is heavy, worthless, and breaks into tiny shards.

If we removed glass from recycling then you could have two streams: Metal, and
burn. Where we would burn paper and plastic for their energy, requiring less
energy to be extracted from the ground.

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Waterluvian
Wow the stat about Russia shocked me. So I looked it up [1]. Some rough
reference points for men living to 65: Canada is 88%. U.S. is 82%. Russia is
57%.

[1]
[https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TO65.MA.ZS?view=...](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TO65.MA.ZS?view=chart)

~~~
eloff
Fascinating page. That's unchanged from the 1960's stats. I'm really curious
what causes that (or what people think causes that.) It looks similar for a
lot of the old USSR countries with strong ties to Russia - but that could be
either genetics or culture/lifestyle or both.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
I hear alcohol addiction is rampant.

Wikipedia about alcohol consumption in Russia[1]:

> High volumes of alcohol consumption have serious negative effects on
> Russia's social fabric and bring political, economic and public health
> ramifications. Alcoholism has been a problem throughout the country's
> history because drinking is a pervasive, socially acceptable behaviour in
> Russian society and alcohol has also been a major source of government
> revenue for centuries. It has repeatedly been targeted as a major national
> problem, with mixed results. Alcoholism in Russia has according to some
> authors acquired a character of a national disaster and has the scale of a
> humanitarian catastrophe.

Wikipedia mentions a study in chapter Impact, Demographic:

> A study by Russian, British and French researchers published in The Lancet
> scrutinized deaths between 1990 and 2001 of residents of three Siberian
> industrial towns with typical mortality rates and determined that 52% of
> deaths of people between the ages of 15 and 54 were the result of alcohol
> abuse.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_in_Russi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_in_Russia)

~~~
onetimemanytime
Other things aside, could cold /not "pleasant" weather cause people to drink
more?

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Waterluvian
Iceland, Sweden, Norway, etc. All make it into the high 80s on that site. So
do other cold regions. I doubt their alcoholism is as troublesome.

~~~
swebs
Swedish alcohol taxes are so high that its impossible to be alcoholic unless
you're well off. It's a pretty big problem in Finland with a 30% alcoholism
rate. Finnish alcohol taxes are somewhat high as well, but many people in
Helsinki bypass that by buying from Estonia.

[https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finlands_unacknowledged_p...](https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finlands_unacknowledged_problem_alcoholism/9062483)

[https://nordic.businessinsider.com/alcoholism-
finland-2016-8...](https://nordic.businessinsider.com/alcoholism-
finland-2016-8/)

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Reedx
There's also the fact that it often gets shipped very long distances.

It'd be helpful if we placed much more emphasis on reduce and reuse, so
there's less in the first place. Patagonia is a good example of a company
doing this, but an all too rare one.

