The Anti-Plastic Brigade

[HUGH]

There is a popular hippie-type culture arising in the UK to disparage all things plastic, especially packaging. Sadly, those signing up to this think that there is only one type of "plastic" and therefore it's all bad for the environment so should be eliminated.

I have a couple of cousins who boast that they're eliminating plastic from their lives as one kind of packaging per week. Naturally what they haven't considered is how much plastic, and of how many types, are already in their lives and what happens when they are due for disposal. I'm at pains to point out that often their false teeth (prosthetics) are plastic, often acrylic and would they like wooden or porcelain teeth instead? It doesn't always go down well!

I wish some people would come back and live in the real world and consider things more fully but isn't that always the case?

[KG4CGC]

Plant based plastics are needed once again.

[kb2vxa]

What KIND of plastic? Well, you can ask yourself what kind of plastic ends up in the Pacific Gyre, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is weathered into microplastics and is killing marine life. The same thing is happening in the Atlantic, there's no escaping it when beaches in Japan, the US, UK, etc. look like a dump, tip to you Brits, and then there is the stench of dead things rotting.

Then there is the supply side, petroleum, and that's where things get sticky. Was that a pun? We're well past Peak Oil, supplies are running out. The House of Saud is headed for a crash, they're already pumping 50% water, when they go back to being just another tribe of poor Arabs wandering in the desert they won't be thirsty. last evening when I was having supper with a friend from a planet the name of which the human vocal apparatus is unable to pronounce that subject came up. Suddenly he turned a sickly shade of purple, normally he's a pale green, he could barely squeak out "You BURN it?" That's the double whammy we face eating up petroleum at a fantastic rate, and all his people can do is watch as we destroy Earth and ourselves with it, there IS a Prime Directive you think is science fiction.

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Here's something that's been bugging me for a while now. Why do you call those of us who are concerned about our planet and our future "hippie types"? Are you stuck in the 60s smoking pot, dropping acid, and wearing tie-dye clothes, or will you step up into the New Millennium and call us by a name descriptive... conservationists?

[N8YX]

The plastic genie ain't going back in the bottle.

Best thing we can do is to ensure the stuff stays out of our waterways and oceans.

[N2SR]

There is a popular hippie-type culture arising in the UK to disparage all things plastic, especially packaging. Sadly, those signing up to this think that there is only one type of "plastic" and therefore it's all bad for the environment so should be eliminated.

I have a couple of cousins who boast that they're eliminating plastic from their lives as one kind of packaging per week. Naturally what they haven't considered is how much plastic, and of how many types, are already in their lives and what happens when they are due for disposal. I'm at pains to point out that often their false teeth (prosthetics) are plastic, often acrylic and would they like wooden or porcelain teeth instead? It doesn't always go down well!

I wish some people would come back and live in the real world and consider things more fully but isn't that always the case?

Tell your cousins to give up their cell phones, cars, TVs, computers, every plastic bowl that they use to store food in, etc

As someone else said, it's not plastic that is the problem, it's non-decomposible plastics that are the problem.

People love to "feel good" about their computer scrap, e-waste being taken away and having the metals in them recovered. What they don't know is that companies pay pennies on the dollar for that bulk scrap, send it to some third world country in Africa, where that plastic is set on fire and burned to remove it. Then kids work in those "junk yards" breathing those fumes (which are also released into the air), salvaging the metal from all that e-waste.

The e-waste that is sent by large corporations and municipalities get tax credits or greenhouse credits (ask Al Gore), yet how bad are the carbon emissions from those third world African countries? Pretty bad, I'd imagine. Probably worse than just burying the e-waste and plastic in landfills.

But hey, if those anti-plastic people want to feel good, go for it. Just remember that the earth has survived much more than us puny humans have done to it. Two complete ice ages (the earth was a snowball), and who knows how many cyclic temp rises. Sure, humans may have driven the temp rise at a faster rate, but how accurate were those thermometers 100 years ago? When the local weatherman says, "it was an average of 1.3 degrees higher for the month of February, what digital thermometer measured that 0.3 degrees back in 1919?

[KG4CGC]

After all the humans are gone, there won't be anyone left to give a single flat fuck.

[KG4CGC]

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[HUGH]

Yes gentlemen, it is the disposal of used plastic and the unnecessary use which are the problems.

Rightly you mention paying poor countries to dispose of the stuff for us, a disgrace which started years ago with commercial trash from big corporations. Those countries don't have the plant to recycle it so it is burnt or dumped.

Some plastics are supposedly infinitely recycleable, polyester is one, but others such as ABS have uses limited to whatever they are blended for. I did a couple of powerpoint presentations on different types of plastics and their uses plus their disposal, this was largely to enlighten the audience and invite suggestions for alternatives. There is no alternative for chilled, shrink-wrapped (hermetically sealed) meats for example. This method saves freezing, therefore saves power and the cellular damage to the contents.

Our local municipal authority is a leader in recycling but some plastic, food wrapping mostly, still ends up in their incinerator which also runs power from a large alternator into the national grid.

[kb2vxa]

No one will be here to put the pieces back together. Who cares? Who WANTS to put the dirty pieces back together, the dirty pieces of this ball of shit? Relax as you wonder how you got here, there is even water at the bottom of the ocean, letting the days go by, letting the water hold you up. Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was......... There is no need to hope, for those who believe eternal life in The Happy Hunting Ground is a certainty, the promise of Gitchi Manitou, the Great Spirit, creator god of the Anishinabe. There will be a new Heavens and a new Earth, plenty buffalo, pretty squaw never get old, and many papooses... papeese?
"We don't want your civilization, we don't want your religion. We are happy to live as our fathers and their fathers before them." Tȟašúŋke Witkó

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Crazy Horse Memorial work in progress, Black Hills, South Dakota. I leave you with this to think about...
"After all the humans are gone, there won't be anyone left to give a single flat fuck."
On the contrary! Planaria is a genus of planarians in the family Planariidae. When an individual is cut into pieces, each piece has the ability to regenerate into a fully formed individual. Just THINK of a colony blasted to bits, billions of bits that each grow into a new flat worm. THEN consider this, currently the genus Planaria is defined as freshwater triclads with oviducts that unite to form a common oviduct without embracing the bursa copulatrix and with an adenodactyl present in the male atrium. The testes occur along the whole body. Oh boy, when they get together there will be a WHOLE LOT of flat fucks! WOW!

[KG4CGC]

Warren, at least you're in a good mood ... even if you are full of shit.

[kb2vxa]

This grumpy old bastid is never in a good mood, sometimes I fake it.

Right Hugh, "Proud Americans" think we're world leaders when it comes to green, but the sad truth is the only things green are God's creation and our currency. It's actually the UK and the Continent far ahead while lagging behind, the tricky word is progress. Green is progress backward, like trading blown plastic grocery shopping bags for old fashioned recycled paper. Blown plastic at home is good for only two things, lining garbage pails where it goes to the dump/tip, is buried so 10,000 years from now archaeologists will discover the names of the shops where we bought groceries. The other thing they're good for is sneaking up behing Trump supporters, bagging them and hold on tight lest they get away. Paper bags at home are good for a number of things, one is covering kids' school books with them so they can draw on them to their heart's content. Another thing is sending them to a "recycling center" where they make covering for things that arrive in the post in a plain brown wrapper... wink wink nudge nudge.

"Rightly you mention paying poor countries to dispose of the stuff for us... ... Those countries don't have the plant to recycle it so it is burnt or dumped."
IIRC I mentioned a while back Asian inland waterways choked with garbage. Unfortunately many dumps are located near and along those waterways, poor neighborhoods likewise where they use those waterways to get around, and a handy place to dump their garbage. Having an interest in caring for our planet, it's the only one we've got, I have seen the pictures, literally a crying shame. All rivers lead to the sea, except the once mighty Colorado that is, so you really don't need to ask where that vast and growing ocean going trash pile comes from.

"There is no alternative for chilled, shrink-wrapped (hermetically sealed) meats for example."
I'll follow that up with anyone who freezes meat should get their own meat frozen, the police will find the body some time later if someone trips over the cord.
"Our local municipal authority is a leader in recycling but some plastic, food wrapping mostly, still ends up in their incinerator which also runs power from a large alternator into the national grid."
While the Global Warming Blame It On CO2 Brigade will scream and cry, burning garbage in a modern gas fired incinerator with a co-generator is a win-win situation. It's easy to separate metals from the ashes for recycling, chemicals can be extracted from the ashes, and what's left can harden into a cement like substance used for any number of things.

The European Continent is far ahead of the rest of the world, and high speed electric railways isn't the only thing. Japan had the first one (1 October 1964) because a tiny country with a severe overpopulation problem had to come up with a way for people yo get around quickly, efficiently, and safely. I being a railfan just HAD to say that. (;->) In the early 90s Parmalat room temperature box milk showed up on supermarket shelves here and one day POOF, it mysteriously vanished. Because UHT went over like a lead balloon, as did food sterilized with high intensity nuclear radiation, progress toward preservation without refrigeration is stymied. https://www.100daysofrealfood.com/uht-why-some-milk-is-not-refrigerated/ If you think Third World countries are backward, take a closer look at America!

So you think I'm full of shit do you? Pa Pa Pahrump! (Nevada)

[KG4CGC]

Yes. Yes I do.