Just FYI:
Single-use plastic products are used once, or for a short period of time, before being thrown away. Under the EU’s rules on single-use plastics, the EU is tackling the 10 single-use plastic items most commonly found on Europe’s beaches and is promoting sustainable alternatives. The 10 items are
Cotton bud sticks Cutlery, plates, straws and stirrers Balloons and sticks for balloons Food containers Cups for beverages Beverage containers Cigarette butts Plastic bags Packets and wrappers Wet wipes and sanitary itemshttps://commission.europa.eu/news/less-plastic-waste-means-cleaner-beaches-2024-08-14_en
So yeah, nets are bad, but straws, plastic bags, cigarettes and packages are also a problem.
People want to pretend just the things that are convenient to them are an issue. They say government and companies need to take action, then complain about actions taken. It’s really wild to see.
Hmm. Perhaps the beaches shouldn’t be the prioritized focus for developing alternatives to plastic.
If it’s on the beach, it can be picked up. Today, tomorrow or eventually.
I think the plastic that can’t be as easily be collected ought to be replaced by alternatives first.
If it gets swept up on the shore, it’s in the ocean. So it totally makes sense to prevent it from being there.
Not saying they are not but from what you posted it could still be 99.9% nets, what is in the article is just a list of the most common found items in beaches.
Yeah, I simultaneously want to comment that the left panels are a wild fantasy, as I’ve never seen an actual human say that we should focus on plastic straws. As far as I can tell, that’s propaganda put into the world by companies trying to discredit genuine efforts.
But at the same time, it’s not even like you have to focus on straws. You can simply not use them, because it is just a stupid concept to produce something that’s immediately trash, and then also go and do other things in life. Believe it or not, most activities in life don’t involve straws.
Straws become the focus because people like them and find them useful and make them a part of their culture and then proposed bans threaten to take them away. People do focus on them, I’ve seen plenty of online arguments about straw bans and the ethics of straws, which happens because they are a part of the lives of the people arguing about them, unlike fishing nets which they never use or see.
There is a side of environmentalism that comes off as being smugly superior about your lifestyle and disparaging and seeking to shame and control in small ways (usually poorer) people who don’t live that way, with the pretext that it’s about saving the planet. To me that sort of thing seems like it’s mainly just a dumpster fire of political capital, purely counterproductive.
There’s a smug side to anti-environmentalists where they like to pretend they can’t do anything because they’re a little bit poor. And that it they couldn’t possibly do anything.
Have they not seen the turtle video?!
That was not a single-use plastic straw. It was a reusable straw like the one people started buying to avoid single-use ones.
Plastic Recycling is Largely A Myth.
The world produces an average of 430 million metric tons of plastic each year. The United States alone produces tens of millions of tons of plastic waste annually. Yet on average, only about 5 to 6 percent of plastic in the U.S. is recycled.
Basically, the vast majority of plastic either literally cannot be recycled, at all, or would be astoundingly expensive to properly seperate according to it’s different types and run through the recycling process.
… So, in most cases, it isn’t, and just ends up in a landfill or being directly dumped into nature.
Oil companies have known this for decades, and, as with other issues surrounding pollution … they’ve promoted anything that makes an individual feel guilty when they know that even if all individuals followed the suggested course of action, it would have a negligible impact.
Oil companies have known this for decades,
fun fact: BP created the carbon footprint to turn the guilt onto the end consumers, and away from them.
Lol at “landfill” being different from “dumped into nature” in your brain
A proper landfill is a set aside, contained area, that has systems in place for things like managing pollutants from leaking into the water table, keeping people and animals away from it so as to not infect or injure themselves, monitoring and mitigating the temperature and emmissions of the landfill, etc.
They aren’t all so advanced or well staffed, but a whole lot of landfills are, and they are better for the environment and human and animal populations than just letting trash pile up everywhere, willy nilly.
They obviously are not perfect, but they are certainly better than nothing.
EDIT:
… Where do you think all the mangled fishing nets and what not that environmentalists fish out of the sea… end up?
Do… they just throw them back into the ocean?
Or maybe a contained and secure hazardous waste site?
Your explanation doesn’t make me less amused but is interesting
You clearly have no clue about how waste disposal and managent works then, maybe learn some of the basics before publically embarassing yourself next time.
As the saying goes:
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
You’re being extremely hostile for no real reason. I’m allowed to be amused that two concepts that are similar to me are distinct in your head. You have zero reason to be offended right now, but you’ve decided to take up arms and be an ass.
I’d suggest you wait a day until your panties are no longer in a bunch and reread the actual words and see if you still feel butthurt. Then I’d suggest you spend some time thinking through why something completely innocuous and generally positive made you so upset. It will probably make you a better person and is cheaper than therapy.
Sometimes I wonder if people are too scared of misinformation and quick to “correct” any perceived misunderstandings without stopping to think perhaps those comments were not made in ignorance deliberate, or otherwise.
Its hard to have a discussion.
I don’t agree with your comments bashing people for arguing that landfills don’t necessarily work better than any other piece of land. There is a genuine case to be made that what you describe is idealistic and reality might be more bleak. these perfect landfills might as well be as sophisticated as the perfect “clean coal” plant or even a “carbon credit” plant that billionaires use to launder their wealth.
With the kind of corruption I have seen in government across the world I think you’re naive thinking advanced tech works really well in a system known for corruption and inneficiency.
From my understanding, this is basically the case for all recycling aside from aluminum and glass
But aside from donating to NGOs dedicated to cleaning up ocean litter, the average person has very little way to reduce the number of plastic nets in the water. It requires lifting fishermen out of poverty, teaching them more sustainable fishing practices, and cracking down on littering, all things that require international cooperation.
I am all for minimizing/eliminating single use plastics. But when i get served a milkshake in a plastic mug, with a plastic lid, and a plastic spoon, but a paper straw because of “save the sea”…
i just wish we used our brains more.
What if dispenser machines had a pay by volume model? You bring your own thing, they fill it, and charge you by how much you use. Would probably need something added to measure flow and set prices, but it’s not like a McDonalds built in the 70s is still using exactly the same machines they were back then.
Gas pump style soda fountains would be absolutely hilarious. Truly the peak of american culture.
This but in Oregon you’d get yelled at for doing it yourself. :p
Edit: Huh, turns out they lifted that ban in 2023 so now people can pump their own gas.
Years ago at Universal for Halloween Horror Nights they used bottom fill beer dispensers. They had a connector on the bottom of the cup so you could grab a cup pop it down on the machine and keep going. Say 15 beers in seconds. The beer fills to the exact height needed with the exact desired foam amount on top. No over poors or needing to have any loss. Time was cut down drastically. The cups had to be expensive, but when your charging $10 for $1 with of product you don’t have to worry to much about cup cost I guess. I remember thinking at that moment American Capitalism has peaked haha.
Could just do it by weight. Put vessel under nozzle. Zero scale, and hold till weight determined for sale, hand to customer. Could likely even have software do it.
If you saw how much plastic is used to get that paper straw to you (logistics) you would just drink from the cup
Also paper cups are lined with plastic to stop the drink from running through it, metal cans are lined with plastic to prevent a metallic taste
Oh, i don’t prefer using it anyway, it got served with it already in.
Honestly how much more expensive would glass mugs/cups be? Like A&W Canada will give you a chilled mug for root beer (and other drinks but the root beer is iconic)
If it’s to go then then paper cups are fine. The paper straws are just annoying…
On an unrelated notes, a huge fraction of oceanic microplastics is from car tyres. Driving is a number one source of oceanic microplastic.
Car tyres are also significant contributors to terrestial microplastics and particulate matter!
And bad news: electric cars, being heavier, emit more microplastics.
The worst thing about paper straws is seeing it poked through a plastic lid.
to be fair that was a regulator decision. they seem to have went for the low hanging fruit of something relatively easy to replace without impacting the bottom line.
not gonna save the world by a long shot, but its a better than nothing sort of deal im surprised they even bothered with in the first place.
I think it’s also a product of the guy on the left likely has never used and will never use a fishing net. It’s kind of like the tarrifs on Canada. America wasn’t ever complaining that drugs were being trafficked over the the Canadian border but that is the reason they are giving for the tarrifs. The truth I see is one of the highest imports from Canada to the U.S. is Aluminum. Coke already stated if Aluminum costs go up, they will simply make more of their products in plastic bottles instead to keep their costs down. Those plastic bottles are made from petroleum which funds much of the GOP’s campaigns. He is simply paying back oil executives by ensuring aluminum prices rise. Cokes profits stay the same, Oil companies profits go up. Where does the money come from? Working class Americans
As much as I’d like a valid reason to shit on the Republican government (and there are many), this is not one of them.
Borders arw closing because globalization is declining world-wide. That has to do with reduced growth and progress, and is not due to the whims of a politician. The borders have been closed before the 20th century; what makes you believe that “borders open” is an invariable and ultimate truth? If that were really so, why weren’t global borders so open before the 20th century?
I think it’s also a product of the guy on the left likely has never used and will never use a fishing net.
What? This an absolutely absurd assertion. Fishing cooperatives are incredibly common. Find one near* you and go inside.
Also, who do you think are the ones cleaning up the mess, actually cutting the nets off, and doing the research? It’s not the guy trying to max out his investment portfolio, that’s for sure.
That data has to be scewed by region. Over half the population can’t swim well enough to save themselves from a current. If I asked 10 people in my life when they fished last, 9 of them would say not in the last 10 years. Likely 10 of them would say they have never used a fishing net. A rod and reel is all you ever normally see.
There are people who fish all the time, and there are people who have never seen the ocean or an actual large lake. Many of the people I meet have never been on a boat.
I lived in Panama City Beach for 5.5 years and went fishing once, and never with a rod or nets. We went flounder gigging, so just a spear really.
Maybe stop killing fish and fish will not die as much
If only seals could understand neil-liberal individualism. Neil has to be a dick or he can’t express his nonexistent personality via mindless consumption and/or integrated meaningless gestures to the contrary.
The obvious solution is netting made out of a dissolvable material!
nets serving their purpose long after EOL, except noone is being served.
I wish modern day electronics did as well and they could serve someone.