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Europe Plans Ban on Plastic Cutlery, Straws and More (cnn.com)
Europe is proposing a ban on single-use plastic items such as cutlery, straws and cotton buds in a bid to clean up the oceans. From a report: The European Commission wants to ban 10 items that make up 70% of all litter in EU waters and on beaches. The list also includes plastic plates and drink stirrers. The draft rules were unveiled Monday but need the approval of all EU member states and the European Parliament. It could take three or four years for the rules to come into force. The legislation is not just about banning plastic products. It also wants to make plastic producers bear the cost of waste management and cleanup efforts, and it proposes that EU states must collect 90% of single-use plastic bottles by 2025 through new recycling programs.
Please don't let this spread to the U.S. I have some problem that makes the touch of metal silverware on my teeth feel like scratching my fingernails on a chalkboard, and I need to request plastic utensils everywhere I go because of that.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Will this apply to flights as well? I thought that plastic utensils there were generally regarded as a safety feature, not just a cheap convenience.
It's considerably cleaner than plastic and would make all the quacks stop complaining about Bispheno A.
It just sinks to the bottom of the ocean and can turn back into sand through erosion.
I read recently that the vast majority of plastic come from rivers in Asia and Africa. Why do this in Europe?
... lets give fines to the manufacturers and ban their products.
Sigh.
This ban is something that has been happening all over the world in some shape or form. Personally, I have little problem with it. I'm actually happy to see when a restaurant or coffee shop has utensils that are biodegradable. It's a great move.
What I don't like, from the end of this article, is the other part of the EU proposal. Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please? There are so many analogies to make here, it's not worth it.
People ultimately need to be held responsible for proper disposal and/or recycling of materials and consumables they are consuming. The manufacturer in this case isn't building in some weird feature making it difficult to throw the stirring straw in a garbage can. People just need to start being more responsible and not thinking that someone else will clean up after them.
Except for a few rare circumstance, I've always found the abundant use of straws in the US to be a pretty weird thing. When I first came to the US I remember thinking how weird it was seeing a bunch of adults sipping their drinks through straws like little kids?
Why? Too lazy to tip the drink container back to drink from the cup? Not coordinated enough? Still sometimes makes me chuckle seeing Americans drinking out of glasses using straws.
Okay, I get it, no throwaway items. But what about q-tips?
Are we supposed to reuse them? Or will they start making them of bamboo?
People just need to start being more responsible
And how would we achieve that ?
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-plastic-straw-ban-foam-cups-1.4666586
"Biodegradable" means that the chemicals in the product are released into the environment quickly. And paper and wood products are *loaded* with processing chemicals, paper being particularly egregious. Biodegradable plastic is even worse.
Conventional plastics degrade/release the chemicals very very slowly, causing very little actual chemical harm to the environment.
So what this would/will do is make things *look* better more quickly, while flooding the environment with chemicals that would never have been there otherwise.
This is great news. But Europe is already doing a lot to clean up and reduce its plastic use. This is most urgently needed pretty much everywhere else. In particular both in the US and in Asia. The sight of roadsides, fields and beaches littered with tons of plastic waste is ubiquitous in those places - and we all pay the price.
There is no reason for most of current plastic use other than externalizing disposal costs so that everyone bears those.
Hold parents responsible for the behaviour of their children. The biggest cause of most social ills is a failure in parenting, and in the US and western Europe in particular, its as much rich people as the poor.
. . . seeing how this plays against the current British anti-knife campaign. No metal cutlery, no plastic cutlery. . .
Most of the ocean junk is dumped in Asia, repression of Western consumers is a kind of religious sadomasochism
If you really want to do the right thing by Mother Nature, ban disposable diapers.
#DeleteChrome
This will just result in every manufacturer posting a notice on the box saying "please think about the environment, wash and reuse this product."
My hope is that in 50 years from now the world will be pretty much free from mentally retarded idiots like you and, judging from the way the world changes to the better and the global community grows together thanks to the Internet, there are luckily good reasons to think it will. :)
Cheap bulk stainless flatware is $0.50 a part or less. I can see this being just like shopping bags where you either show up with your own flatware or buy flatware when doing things like eating at food trucks. We would have flatware in our desks at the office and scattered in our cars. Another minor greening irritation.
Hold parents responsible for the behaviour of their children
So when I see a kid throw plastic crap in the park, I should call 911 so they can find his parents and write a ticket ?
The amount of waste generated per person in US and other developed nations is shocking and with countries like China and India fast catching up, similar lifestyle is not sustainable globally. Even with all the progress in recycling, lot of it slips out and ends up in our food chain.
The use of plastics especially for disposable items is irresponsible. I wish these were not so cheap and the real cost of disposal and ecological impact was factored in their price. Trying to convince the public for more environmentally responsible behaviour is an exercise in futility and people always take the easy way. Money is the only thing that seems to have real impact these days.
Parts of Europe still does loads of dumping of their garbage in the oceans.
Likewise, 5 nations are responsible for 60% of all garbage in the ocean.
It turns out that five countries are the leading contributors to this crisis. And all are in Asia. In a recent report, Ocean Conservancy claims that China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are spewing out as much as 60 percent of the plastic waste that enters the world’s seas.
America stopped decades ago, so instead, we have had it going to China and other nations. That also needs to stop. ALL OF IT. Far better for America to recycle, bury, or burn it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why not just require that plasticware and straws be dense enough to sink in seawater? This wouldn't prevent people from littering, but if a pile of plastic waste accumulates near to a waterfront park on the Danube, it's a lot easier to identify miscreants than if those plastic knives and forks weren't found until they showed up in an ocean gyre.
"Tommy Robinson" is NOT a journalist by any stretch of the imagination, just an islamaphobe.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Expecting people to stop being irresponsible is about as intelligent as expecting people to stop having sex. I wonder if the GP also thinks abstinence is the solution to teenage hornyness. The solution to the problem must not rely on large numbers of people doing something different, especially if it goes against instincts.
This ban is something that has been happening all over the world in some shape or form. Personally, I have little problem with it. I'm actually happy to see when a restaurant or coffee shop has utensils that are biodegradable. It's a great move.
What I don't like, from the end of this article, is the other part of the EU proposal. Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please? There are so many analogies to make here, it's not worth it.
People ultimately need to be held responsible for proper disposal and/or recycling of materials and consumables they are consuming. The manufacturer in this case isn't building in some weird feature making it difficult to throw the stirring straw in a garbage can. People just need to start being more responsible and not thinking that someone else will clean up after them.
It's pretty basic. Currently manufacturers are not responsible for the costs of disposing of their products. They can make them as toxic and environmentally problematic as they want because they can offload the costs and problems their products cause after the end of their useful lives on the taxpayer and the environment. If you make manufacturers responsible for paying not only for development, marketing, sales and product support but also for disposal you motivate the manufacturers to come up with new and innovative methods to make their products as easily and cheaply recyclable as possible in order to maximise profits. It's just a way to leverage the inventiveness of private industry and the workings of the free market to solve a very serious problem that results form own activities of companies and I think it will work because industry tends to be good at coming up with clever ways of solving sticky problems if profits are at stake. Now, I'm sure that you, as libertarian, find this idea terribly unjust but the rest of us find it equally unjust that private profit making companies can drown us in plastic garbage, make us pay for the mess and not be in any way responsible for solving that problem. Unfortunately for the manufacturers Europe is a cluster of democracies and the people drowning in plastic garbage are in charge, not the industrialists. I'm pretty sure most Europeans will welcome this measure.
restaurants that have reusable utensils? This will hurt fast food, but I can't really think of a problem fast food solves that doesn't have better solutions. The biggest problem it solves is overworked people with 2-3 jobs who don't have time to cook/clean. Best solution there is a solid middle class that doesn't need 3 jobs per person to get by.
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I for one support any measure to reduce plastic waste. Tired of seeing this shit all over the place.
Just take a minute and read what you typed. Just because you can't see the plastic floating on the surface doesn't make it magically non-polluting, taking that argument forwards would make it fine to dump barrels of nuclear waste in the mid-Atlantic provided they were weighted down with concrete.
Already have similar in some UK cities, Bristol for example;
https://www.bristol.gov.uk/bins-recycling/clean-streets-enforcement-campaign
And the tickets don't come cheap.
People ultimately need to be held responsible for proper disposal and/or recycling of materials and consumables they are consuming.
That's more expensive, more work, and less likely to be enforced. It makes sense to place the onus in a centralized place where it's actually enforceable. Companies are made to be held responsible for all kinds of things consumers do for this reason, and it makes sense if your only goal is to actually solve a problem and not wring your hands about how to evenly divide accountability or blame.
"Old man yells at systemd"
In order for the measures to work, you actually need to hold both the manufacturer and the consumer liable. It doesn't matter if the producer has a facility that can recycle their products with 95% yield, if the consumer throws it in the trash instead of the recycle bin it's still going to end up in a landfill.
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Another vote opposing justice.
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And what makes you think the kids (or at least, the grandkids) of today's Muslim immigrants will be any more religious than an average European Catholic, Protestant, or Jew is today? Kids naturally rebel against their parents' beliefs... and the more over-the-top the parents are, the more forcefully their kids push back (and the less likely the kids will be to drift back towards their parents' religious beliefs as adults).
The future of Europe is a mundane, mostly token semi-religion that might as well be called "Chrislam"... the bland subset of Christianity & Islam that mostly overlap, ignores esoteric doctrine, and can be generally summed up as, "there's one God, a man who believed himself to be (and might... or might not... have been) the son of God was crucified by the Romans, and a guy many view as a prophet came later & said, "oops, Jesus was probably just confused... he was a good man who died for a noble cause, but the actual savior hasn't arrived yet. Don't lie, steal, or kill except for self-defense."
200 years from now, Ramadan will be as relevant to the daily lives of Europeans as Lent is now (ie, parental disapproval for openly flouting, but nobody REALLY cares).
Al-Eid will be a totally commercialized gift-giving holiday that'll take on the theme of whatever current holiday it's within a few weeks of. Late November to early January? It'll mark the start or end of the commercial Christmas-AlEid season. Autumn? Halloween-themed decorations, gifts appropriate for kids starting new school year. Summer? It'll come into its own & be treated like "Christmas in July". Spring? Easter-themed.
That's not to say that Catholics, Protestants, Shiites, Sunnis, etc. will disappear... they'll just be viewed as more extreme and uncompromising sects of ChrIslam (the way Americans view fire-breathing Evangelicals).
As long as I don't get a email notices for the next two weeks about some new regulations on the other side of the world that don't effect me.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"Tommy Robinson" is NOT a journalist by any stretch of the imagination, just an islamaphobe.
So, you're saying the trials never happened, and no girls were ever harmed?
If it happens, it needs to be reported.
In economy, you always start with the activity that has the highest marginal product. That way you maximize your output for a given amount of inputs. If you're serious about environment, you start with the worst offenders. Even if Europe paid for the cleaning up Asia or Africa, that would probably be still the most beneficial scenario.
Blah blah blah...the other guy goes first and here are my pseudo-intellectual reasons.
Teenagers don't get horny until 12:01 AM on their 18th birthday, you paedophile.
Hold parents responsible for the behaviour of their children
So when I see a kid throw plastic crap in the park, I should call 911 so they can find his parents and write a ticket ?
Nope, you should flag it on your Socialization Monitoring Network and the parents should be penalized with six hours of communal labor.
I'd rather have them be washable. Metal forks/knives/spoons, give glasses that are reusable without straws. If it isn't clean enough to put my lips on, I'm not drinking out of it, straw or not.
One of the biggest sources of ridiculous plastic is K-cups. I bought a re-usable stainless steel insert that works quite well, and I can put bulk coffee grounds in it, but the number of those K-cups society must be putting in the landfill every day is staggering.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Just keep bags in your car. Just keep utensils in your car. Right.
So if you have a car, drive it everywhere so you have all the stuff you need for little things like shopping and eating. And if you don't have a car, "environmentalists" are going to make your life more and more difficult until you break down and get one.
Rather counter-productive if these bans have anything to do with trying to save the planet. It's almost as if people are going on a power trip using any flimsy pretext they can find...
Europeans are already dirty eaters.
Because such things exist. Instead of an intrusive ban on a convenient and sometimes useful item.
My perception here is that the EU politicians seem to be all too happy to simply ban things all over the community, because the activists in Brussels don't like them and because they can.
So he deserved to get arrested for the crime of pointing out that Muslims like raping kids a whole lot and that politicians enable it. What a monster.
Fuck off.
Many countries in Europe has deposit system for plastic bottles. When you buy s soft drink few cents are added to a price. You can get this money back when you give this bottle back to a recycling automata. USSR had same system for glass bottles and jars. Wine, beer, milk, kefir - all was sold in certain kind of bottles. Standard beer bottle cost 20 kopecks (junior engineer salary was 140roubles for comparison) so it was strong incentive to give back bottles.
I applaud this incentive - I am horrified about how much unnecessary plastic garbage I create with just buying food. I can pay a little more.
What I don't like, from the end of this article, is the other part of the EU proposal. Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please?
Think of it as a tax of sorts, a hands-off means to steer companies away from the nasty plastic stuff and towards something cleaner. Experience shows that this is much more effective than preaching good manners and civic virtues.
Already have similar in some UK cities, Bristol for example
I've heard of parents being slapped with an asbo due to the behaviour of their children. I can't say I fully disapprove.
... Only outlaws will have plastic knives! :)
Paul B.
It's much easier to police a few dozen manufacturers (given how mega conglomerates work it's not very many) than millions and millions of individuals.
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Conventional plastics degrade/release the chemicals very very slowly, causing very little actual chemical harm to the environment.
Um, No.
Also, your definition of biodegradable
"Biodegradable" means that the chemicals in the product are released into the environment quickly.
seems a little too conveniently crafted for supporting your thesis.
I think this one is a bit more accurate
Making it heavier than water would actually make plastic pollution much less of a problem. Plastic things would sink to the bottom and stay pretty much motionless until they broke up into nothing.
The main problem with plastics now is how much the pieces disperse.
Sure, it's still not 'great', and it wouldn't be very pretty, but it would have less of an impact.
...the U.S. would subscribe to protecting our environment as much as our European neighbors did. Unfortunately, we are stuck with Mr. "Screw Everybody" Trump as President.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
If there are consequences for manufacturers then there are incentives to change. E.g using glass bottles instead of plastic is penalty free. It becomes the better option and there is nothing to leach into your drink...
Currently offering products in glass bottles instead of plastic would build market share. People want to do something to reduce their contribution to plastic waste.
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It used to be an adult could chastise any child, and the parents would at least be understanding, if not supportive. Today's helicopter, hands-off parents, though, will sue you as soon as you so much look cross-eyed at a misbehaving child.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Depends on whether it's biodegradable plastic or bioplastic. The ladder is made from actual plants and isn't that common (PLA) as the biodegradable plastics, but they are at least non toxic, but create other problems, like the amount of land used to actual grow the corn to produce them instead of traditional plastic.
Pathetic blackeyer is pathetic.
You're like an anticonspiracy theorist. Nuts like a conspiracy theorist, but siding *with* the herd owers, due to a natural mollusc-like spinelessness.
It's pretty basic. Currently manufacturers are not responsible for the costs of disposing of their products.
They aren't the ones disposing of their products, so it seems reasonable that they aren't responsible for consumers who dispose of them inappropriately.
They can make them as toxic and environmentally problematic as they want
I think a spate of people dying from using toxic plastic forks would be noticed and something would be done. They notice toxic shellfish outbreaks, and toxic salad greens.
unjust but the rest of us find it equally unjust that private profit making companies can drown us in plastic garbage,
If you are drowning in plastic garbage, talk to your neighbors. They're the ones disposing of things incorrectly.
Always served in a plastic cup, with a plastic lid and a large plastic straw that is wrapped in what else? Plastic. (Unlike normal straws which come most often in a paper wrapper.
This is gonna kill the SanFrancisco Bay Area economy.
E.g using glass bottles instead of plastic is penalty free.
Other than the dangers to the public from broken glass where a plastic bottle would not have caused injury, maybe. The cost of shipping heavy glass instead of plastic is also a penalty.
Currently offering products in glass bottles instead of plastic would build market share. People want to do something to reduce their contribution to plastic waste.
People want convenience. That's why plastic bottles are so popular. Manufacturers would not use them if people didn't buy them. People can already buy glass instead of plastic if they choose; clearly they don't choose.
Just one example: people want the convenience of portable potable water. Thus, the thousands of brands and types of water in plastic bottles. Converting all those into glass bottles makes them a lot less convenient. They will break instead of bounce when dropped, they're heavier. They're bulkier. They're less convenient.
Now, you may not care about portable potable water being convenient, so you'll just toss off a flippant "so what?" as a response to all of that, but for the people who care it makes a difference.
As for wanting to do something about plastic waste, they already do. They expect the company that picks up their trash to deal with it. That's why they pay the trash company. The trash company can make 10 cents a bottle locally by pulling bottles from the trash stream -- the fact that they don't do it isn't my fault.
First off, it's BISPHENOL-A and it's an endocrine disrupting pseudohormone causing lowered sperm counts, "spade penis" and other cancers and issues in a plethora. So "quacks" aren't against it, human biology is, you fucking illiterate.
Massive inbreeding and an inferiority complex. As long as they have to compete economically with whites they'll retreat into crime, fundamentalist religion and raping white girls. The low IQ ones will pull the high IQ ones with them into the abyss with them, in times of crisis the fundamentalists always win in Islam.
I think the most likely future scenario is massive white flight to Eastern Europe, Canada, US, Oz, NZ ... followed by economic collapse in western Europe and an ISIS style hunt on the remaining whites not smart enough to escape in time.
Stop drinking Faux Noose agitprop KoolAid like it's water. You might get diabeetus.
https://www.treehugger.com/gre...
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Banned
- plastic cotton buds
- cutlery
- plates
- straws
- drink stirrers
- sticks for balloons
Must reduce
- food containers
- drinks cups
Industry must pay for the processing
- food containers
- packets and wrappers (such as for crisps and sweets)
- drinks containers and cups
- tobacco products with filters (such as cigarette butts=
- wet wipes
- balloons
- lightweight plastic bags
Recycle
- collect 90% of single-use plastic drinks bottles by 2025
Labeling to indicate how to recycle
- sanitary towels
- wet wipes
- balloons
And more stuff about incentives for people and industry, measures to reduce fishing gear waste etc.
This is an article about plastics not about religions.
1) Most of the plastic in the oceans is from China, India and third world countries where rivers are often used for garbage disposal. Our concern for the environment is completely alien to some cultures.*
2) Straws can't be washed so they have to be disposable
3) Straws are small, there mass is negligible, same with plastic grocery bags. As a percentage of your yearly waste I doubt they make 0.5%
4) Be very suspicious of anyone pushing these bans. They are likely virtue signalling and care more about appearing to be doing something than actually doing it.
*To be fair though do to our significantly higher wealth and consumption means our damage to the environment is many times more.
What about plastic credit cards? Amex Platinum will be the only one left.
There is no such thing as an islamaphobe. Phobias refer to the irrational fear of things but there is every reason to fear the damaging impact of third workd islam on civilization
all those people who litter.. start with fines, community service, or something.. as an added bonus places will look nicer without garbage all over the place.
so people just continue to throw their trash where ever they want. Seems like a losing battle to me. With their actions having no effect on the real problem, except maybe changing the nature of the trash everywhere, maybe what they are trying to do. I suppose if degrades faster that could have some effect. The piles might be smaller.
;)
Just my 2 cents
As of 2017, 60% of ocean plastic pollution was generated by China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka, in that order, with China vastly outdoing the others. No EU country is within the top 20, which would indicate a very minuscule amount of plastic waste leaking into the oceans. If European governments want to waste a massive amount of resources to worry about this, the pollution generated is going to be more overall, not less.
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I eat my peas with honey;
I've done it all my life.
It makes the peas taste funny,
But it keeps them on the knife.
They want to ban this stuff because China is no longer accepting European garbage. That's the only reason for this ban, because they don't want it piling up in their landfills.
> Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please?
Ultimately the producer of the product is the producer of the resulting waste.
Having a direct connection between the producer and the overall impact of the resulting waste would naturally cause the producer to manufacture in a way that lead to less waste.
Consider soda companies and the glass bottle to plastic bottle transition long ago.
And consider the impact of waste generation from that transition.
Who was responsible for the increase in waste generation. Of course the company and perhaps you may argue that it is the individual is responsible
But, with no burden on the producer, they have no incentive to create products that result in less waste. The burden to clean up the mess falls on the government and ultimately the taxpayer.
States like CA pay the consumer to recycle the bottle, because otherwise they have to pay to clean it up. It would make sense for a government to place at least some of that burden on the producer.
Otherwise, companies will only head towards the cheapest manufacturing process, and any resulting change in overall waste is simply and externality that is out of their concern.
There is absolutely no reason a spork couldn't be made out of recycled horse shit, pressed, steamed, sterilized, and be better in every way than a crappy plastic version. Somebody is thinking.
Clickety Click
200 years from now Europe will be entirely brown so who cares?
Conquest through illegal immigration.
Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please?
Because the manufacturers are profiting from the supply of the garbage, but society has to pay to have it cleaned up, regardless of where it is thrown after use.
Another example of private profits and socialised costs.
Funny how most beers wines and spirits are sold in glass bottles or cans, the exception tends to be cheap cider.
Back when I was a lad the fizzy drinks bottles were glass with a deposit on them and the kids would bring them back and usually buy a few sweets with the money. Milk got delivered in glass bottles and you put the empty bottles out and they got taken back to the dairy cleaned and reused. It worked well.
These days the primary soft drink brands are essentially coca cola and pepsi and very profitable, shifting back to glass would probably make a small difference in costs per bottle.
If they shifted back to glass it would make a huge dent in the amount of plastic bottles being made and thrown away.
In Ireland you pay for your waste to be taken away but you can choose to recycle bottles and cans for free. often supermarkets host the bottle and can banks. When you think about it a lot of plastic is for the connivence of super markets. Your local butcher or green grocer would package in grease proof paper and paper bags.
At least this biodegrades.
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I thought that was why the 18th birthday was such a big deal. Then, when I turned 18 (in 1977) nothing different happened. I guess my nerdiness is an incurable ailment.
YOU read what I typed: we're better off if plastic waste falling into the water stays near its source, identifying where it came from, rather than turning up anonymously in the ocean.
Yes banning the things that make up 70% of the problem seems smart. Let us also ban the things that make up 95% of the terrorist attacks!
Reusable dining ware isn't really environment friendly.
In order to properly clean and sterilize stuff these days you have to use a lot of energy ( hotter than boiling water) and chemicals.
And paper straws that don't bend are not going to work for residents in bed.
Wrong target if you wanna reduce plastic waste. Plastic utensils are a minute portion of the problem, and probably a good exception.
If they were being realistic, they'd be targeting plastic wrappers, bottles, containers and *BAGS*, like trash bags, leaf bags, etc. These are your big ticket plastic waste items, not utensils.
It takes a special kind of stupid to single out utensils while leaving the big contributors unmentioned.
So where are the alternatives to plastic items? Especially in the food storage and trash bag departments. Do we really have anything in the pipeline to address these two huge contributors to plastic waste?
What about those 'to go' boxes almost every restaurant in America use, the plastic Styrofoam things?
Basically what I'm trying to point out is, if there is no alternatives to the plastics we're using NOW, they will continue to be used until alternatives are as good or better than what we have now, regardless of the waste impact. Humans don't think like that.
I must admit I'm entirely fucking bewildered by the number of people that seem to need to drink out of a straw.
At least there are now adult sippy cups available, and the branding on them is clever too - 'sports bottle' almost sounds mature.
I think they are plastic, but they are allegedly compostable. We toss the spoons and forks in with the composts.
Not sure all plastics need to be banned from cutlery. But I am not an expert
Now, you may not care about portable potable water being convenient, so you'll just toss off a flippant "so what?" as a response to all of that, but for the people who care it makes a difference.
No, I'll continue to use and re-use the metal bottles that I own.
It's not the 14th century any more, we've progressed past 'wineskin'.
It seems to me that a fundamental aspect is "take out" food. Plastic forks and straws used inside the restruant aren't the problem.
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
In Delaware sure, not sure in other states.
Straws are common because of the common take away cup need the plastic top for its structural integrity. Mc Donnalds did quite a bit of research with Lily-Tulip (Ray Kroc's former boss) to develop what is currently used world wide. While they are thinner now than they used to be, they usually can hold their liquid in when tipped over if the lid is properly put on and not punctured with a straw. One of the early requirements was that glasses that were dropped from table height didn't cause too much of a mess.
You can find it unjust all you want, but you do not have the right to "force" you ideas on others. You might think your idea of the unjust is better, then convince us with reason not compulsion. When you need force behind your ideas to make them work, they by definition are not better.
You people always think force is OK now for my ideas, but what the next guy who wants to go one step further than you and thinks his just ideas are better, are you happy for him to enforce his ideas? Once you give over to the idea force is OK to compel your ideas into practice you give licence to tyrants.
In terms of this let me tell you how you change this without force, you convince people.... everyone to not buy it unless it has proper disposal built in. Ohhh wait that is hard... yes, it needs to be hard to prevent tyranny. Only a good ideas agreed to by everyone get practiced.
I guess you are thinking when has tyranny ever occurred.... answer everywhere in the world. 99% of human history is living under a tyrant, you are lucky enough to live under the constitution which has shielded you from the worst of it and now you complain at how hard it is to get your way with other peoples lives not the remotest bit grateful you don't live in the many "socialist paradises".
Good luck pinko.
IQ is inheritable. So is impulsive, criminal tendencies.
Letting low iq, violent hordes into Europe with hostile culture is NOT a good idea unless you want your culture buried and plundered.
You sure it's not to get rid of knives because of their recent stabbing spate with the mass immigration?
We'll run the experiment and see, well not me ... but you maybe if you're young.
Because the taxpayer needs to clean that up. We can pretend it's not an issue when someone makes and sells something we *know* gets misused, but that's the reality. e.g. if some product blows your hand off if you don't use it properly, the manufacturer cannot just say "well that's the buyer's problem". The same with known litter issues.
The EU is taking bold action and trying to do something about plastic waste, while everyone else is refusing to acknowledge there is a problem. The first implementation will be imperfect, but they will learn and refine. Then later everyone will copy them once the pain points are solved. See subsidized windmills, feed in tariffs, banning of incandescent bulbs, lead free solder, etc, etc. The latest fun is the new privacy law, which I can tell you from personal experience, is a real bitch. But it is only the first iteration and privacy IS a problem.
In sum, the EU is pulling the world into the future kicking and screaming. They use legislation to spur innovation. And it works.
This is too far, plastics may prevent global warming by sequestering fossil fuels. If the oil is locked up as plastic it canâ(TM)t be CO2 in our atmosphere.
Not enough tech news in the world?
Some airlines have metal in Economy. Swiss, for example.
But transporting metal cutlery actually consumes more oil than the oil needed for making and transporting the plastic one.
-> Metal in less environmentally friendly on planes.
aaaaaaa
In India they are paid to not dump in the street
Fox news is bad enough, but the lies of omission from the MSM is even worse. What he described is real enough and happening and can be confirmed by anybody with 2 ears to hear and 2 eyes to see and basic google skills.
They aren't the ones disposing of their products, so it seems reasonable that they aren't responsible for consumers who dispose of them inappropriately.
If you are drowning in plastic garbage, talk to your neighbors. They're the ones disposing of things incorrectly.
Not really, no. The manufacturers are selling this stuff to humans. We know how humans behave. Wishing that humans behaved in some sort of ideal way isn't going to fix anything. Wishing that people simply human better than they do is the ultimate failing of both libertarianism and communism.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
In Europe, drinks do not have any ice by default. The glass full of ice is an American thing, in Europe they bring you a little ice if you ask for it, but generally they don't bring it to the table or in your cup.
Virtue doesn't scale. To make everyone do a good thing, restrict the bad alternatives.
Of course you MAY be talking out your arse by regurgitating a bunch of scaremongering designed to stop you reusing bottles, and therefore spending more and more on them and contributing to the basic problem.
But hey, with all those MAYs, who can be sure.
That's "leading by example" for our non-pathologically cynical readers.
One does not exclude the other. It is also a lot more effective. Thegoal is to reduce waste and the most convinient wau is to make the companies responsible.
And controling 100 manufacturors is a lot easier than checking 350MM peoplle.
In Europe companies are not as holy and fragile that they need protection from the things they do. People are.
What would otherwise happen? Nothing. Jere and there an individual might get a fine, but companies will push straws just to make money. The cleanup still needs to be done and suddenly everybody has to share the cost, except the companies who will now want straws in your cookies, because profit.
When they have to pay, thecompany will either realize that they need to calculate the waste disposal into their price. Now prices increase just because of that. Companies like lower prices, so they find ways to reduce waste.
So ot is better to have the party that makes the polution pay for the cleanup. And that still does not mean you can not punish others who litter as well.
Starting at the end is treating the symptoms. Starting at the cause is like treating the problem. And if the companies don't like it, they can stop making those products.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Mostly this is due to massive over-regulation.
In the old days it was OK for them to collect, wash, and reuse glass bottles for example.
Then, almost certainly due to lobbying by the glass makers, it was decided that simple industrial washing it hot serializing solutions was just not enough.
Somehow a bacterial could survive (ignoring the decades of evidence that they did not) and harm some poor soul! so regulations were put in place to
require full 'reprocessing' of glass (in effect crushing, purifying, melting, recasting) to make it 'food safe' again, and THAT killed reuse.
Because, ladies and gentlemen, that is how regulatory capture works, and companies pay WELL for such things to be put in place.
Bamboo advocates are panda killers
Why should the manufacturers be responsible
Traditionally, companies have been allowed to make a profit by producing things that in one way or another have effects that society then has to spend time and money putting right - and by society, I mean tax payers. Pollution is one such thing, obesity is another - companies produce unnecessary packaging or other use-once items because it helps them make a bigger profit, and they make sure consumers have few alternatives; I don't think I have seen any drinks carton where you could choose between a plastic straw, a paper one, or none, just as one example. Same with obesity: producers of fatty/sugary snacks collude with supermarkets to sell these things in as large quantities as possible, which is why you always have trouble finding eg. a single chocolate bar, and if you do, it turns out that if you buy a 5-pack, it is only slightly more expensive - and of course, once you have 5, you up downing the lot rather quickly. All of these practices cost society dearly, which is why companies should have to pay for it, and regulation should be put into place to ban this kind of business practices, IMO.
I'm actually happy to see when a restaurant or coffee shop has utensils that are biodegradable. It's a great move.
It's really not. I much prefer to see utensils that are locally recyclable, that is, made of metal or something else that can be washed and used again. With that all we need is environmentally friendly/biodegradable detergents, which is much easier to make.
You are both right. Indeed, manufacturers in general offload costs to the environment and the tax payer. However, the GP is also correct in that a minority of the public is not really cooperating, and screwing the rest.
People ultimately need to be held responsible for proper disposal and/or recycling of materials and consumables they are consuming
By which you mean 'punished', I assume. I think that is wrong - people should be MADE responsible, which is a different thing: we should all learn to choose to act responsibly, which implies learning what is responsible and understanding enough about the consequences of our actions, to be motivfated. Most people, from the poorest to the richest, would actually prefer to take care of the environment and live healthily, and many inaccurately think they do so, because they haven't quite got the facts right. So, it is all about education - and avoiding the deliberate misinformation produced by corporations with a vested interest.
As for recycling: it is very far from being a solution to this problem. We over-produce things that add no real value to our lives, especially plastics, and the right solution is to stop producing them, simply.
I burn all my plastic in a nice big pile bellowing lovely black smoke.
Saves it ending up in the oceans. I throw away nothing. Job done.
(Actually, I dont, and hate over packaging, and reuse everything I can, but just sayin..)
(and BTW, ANYONE who uses nespresso et.al for coffee should NOT be allowed to complain about plastics pollution..)
So, you are saying that anyone who supplies something to someone else should be responsible for their use of it 'because'?
Can I borrow your car?
Do you have a reference for your claim about the glass bottle turning back into sand?
Here's one for you that states it takes a glass bottle 1 million years to degrade. Significantly longer than plastics.
https://4ocean.com/blogs/blog/how-long-does-it-take-trash-to-biodegrade
But glass doesn't float in water and won't get caught in some fish or whale/dolphin.
They have to be pretty damned heavy to not move with currents etc. Not convenient. Besides it's a pretty damned stupid idea when you can make the problem in a more permanent way. You're aiming to solving any problems, you're just chasing symptoms.
There are many countries in the EU which already force manufacturers to take environmental responsibility for their products such as recycling aluminum cans and paper. The manufacturers in both cases usually own a company together which they pay for which encourages and makes it easier for the citizens to recycle.
Yes, more shifting of personal responsibility. Typical SJW thinking. SJW is dumb enough to buy it, SJW can figure out how to dispose of it.
If you look at it that way, every bottle (and every beverage can) is a "sippy cup".
"sports bottles" are just the ones which you can open and close with your teeth and one hand, instead of using both hands.
Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please?
Because otherwise you don't close the circle. Make manufactures accountable for the waste and you may see a startling trend, like things built to last, or actual recycling done rather than recycling collected and then given to some other manufacturer because we couldn't be bothered.
Necessity is the mother of invention, ... or innovation. People by n large are very difficult to stop being jackarses, but watch how quickly things turn around when you affect the profits of those feeding the jackarseery.
They aren't the ones disposing of their products, so it seems reasonable that they aren't responsible for consumers who dispose of them inappropriately.
And by logical extension don't provide consumers with even the means creating a wonderful race to the bottom.
As of 2017, 60% of ocean plastic pollution was generated by China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka, in that order, with China vastly outdoing the others. No EU country is within the top 20, which would indicate a very minuscule amount of plastic waste leaking into the oceans. If European governments want to waste a massive amount of resources to worry about this, the pollution generated is going to be more overall, not less.
Cool story bro. But it's not Chinese plastic that ends up in European landfills, dumped out at European beaches, in European rivers. It's not all about the ocean believe it or not, and a population of 750million people is able to do quite a bit of their damage without blaming someone else.
What you call virtue signalling others call leading by example and doing right by their local environment. It'll be such a tragedy that the EU will have an affect on the 40% of waste not coming from the countries you list. Tragedy! /sarcasm
If European governments want to waste a massive amount of resources to worry about this, the pollution generated is going to be more overall, not less.
I take it you are Dutch? Because you must be smoking a lot of weed to come up with that conclusion.
Why should the manufacturers be responsible for preventing people from being jackasses and throwing their garbage wherever they please?
Because you can't make people more responsible, (especially not those buying alcohol.)
Mercury thermometers wouldn't be a problem if all disposed of them properly. But you can't get 100% on that score, so private mercury was outlawed. For that matter, private nukes wouldn't be a problem if all handled them responsible and according to law. But some will use them for suicides in crowded places - so no private nukes.
Likewise for plastic items. People are not responsible, at least a few percent throw litter wherever they want. So no plastic cutlery then. Not much of a loss - these litter items aren't much good when new either.
Also, replacement is easy. Most plastic can be replaced by some form of wooden or cardboard stuff. which may cost more than plastic, but still cheap. And nobody really need straws.
So, you are saying that anyone who supplies something to someone else should be responsible for their use of it 'because'?
So you're saying we should adopt your model where no one is responsible for anything especially if they're turning a profit?
Did you say that? Who cares, if you're going to take extreme misreadings of my posts, why shouldn't I do the same?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Looks like they already recycled your 'be'.
Increasingly, not a lot of plastic garbage in the sea actually comes from the US and first world countries, not by design in any case. This is increasingly true due to waste incineration used more and more which destroys the plastic., A lot of plastic floating around the pacific probably is coming from the dirtier and more careless countries such as Mexico, China and other Asian countries. I live near the US coast and rarely do I ever see plastic garbage in the water.
Who can read this block of text and see sense in any of it?
* We're not the biggest problem, so let's not do anything (I see this fallacy every time any government tries to do anything).
* There is no way, cultural or mechanical, to produce environmentally friendly cutlery
And Davey the douchebag is now finnally fucking dead, this makes perfect sense.
If Rockefeller was still in oil this would not be allowed.
What about cigarette butts? I see tones of those all over the place? Besides, if they ban plastic cups and straws, I wonder if this will drive the people dependent on fast food extinct? Another ecosystem bites the dust.
At most modern universities, and in many countries, we already have biodegradeable compostable utensils.
They're easy to use.
If you actually need a knife or fork, silverware works fine too: you just wash it.
They're only replacing the easily broken plastic garbage utensils with stronger ones that biodegrade. Many of us wash those and reuse them too, but you can literally toss them into the compost bin and they will be broken down over time, as opposed to plastic, which is forever.
And ever.
"But they're expensive!" say the luddites. So was plastic until it became mainstream. The invisible hand of the marketplace adapts to all inputs. Produce them at scale and they're not expensive.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Funny how most beers wines and spirits are sold in glass bottles or cans, the exception tends to be cheap cider.
I don' t know why that is funny.
I do know that the vast majority of consumers are not carrying heavy bottles of beer or wine around to stay hydrated. The market is different.
Back when I was a lad
Last week is not this week.
If they shifted back to glass it would make a huge dent in the amount of plastic bottles being made and thrown away.
If they shifted back to glass only there would also be a serious dent in sales. That's why they haven't done so. You claim it is all positives to do that, but the facts show otherwise. If it was such a win for the companies, they'd have switched back a long time ago. They'd be marketing as the environmentally friendly company. But there's some reason this doesn't happen, and the customers are the most likely culprit.
In Ireland you pay for your waste to be taken away but you can choose to recycle bottles and cans for free.
I don't live in Ireland. I pay for my trash to be dealt with. If I wanted to spend my time in a completely unproductive way, I could "recycle" my bottles and be paid for it, but not enough to make it worth my time. I'll let the trash company I PAY TO DEAL WITH TRASH deal with them.
When you think about it a lot of plastic is for the connivence of super markets.
I've thought about it and I do not see the same thing. By the way, the instruction to "think about it" is patently insulting. You think you're the only one who has ever thought about this?
And by logical extension don't provide consumers with even the means creating a wonderful race to the bottom.
Everything you can buy can be misused. Prohibit the sales of everything, because selling someone something just provides them a means of "creating a wonderful race to the bottom."
Is there any real data, not provided by activists, that indicates the degree of the problem, its increase over time, and what the sources are of the materials?
I suspect that the vast vast majority of plastic in the oceans comes from either lost fishing equipment or actual dumping from ships. In addition, for many many decades, some coastal cities, such as, er, New York, put their garbage on barges and dumped it at sea. How much ocean plastic pollution comes from garbage disposal practices that no longer occur, or that should be stopped?
I think it is extremely unlikely that items like plastic straws handed out at Burger Glop, which mainly end up in landfills, somehow make it to the ocean.
Meanwhile, real issues, like gross overfishing go on unchecked, while "environmental" activists worry about trivialities like soda straws.
The US and EU combined contribute less than 3% of oceanic plastic waste. "Leading by example" is not sufficient if more resources are consumed and greater pollution is generated in the process, which will certainly be the case due to greater production, consumption, and transition costs; neither is "leading by example" by rich countries an an action seriously calculated to influence poor countries. A rise in wealth is both correlated with and causes an increase in environmentally concerned actions and policies; once people are no longer worried about food, shelter, etc., they will be more interested in their surrounding environs, and will hae the disposable income to attend to it. That the EU's proposed ban has no other virtue than virtue-signalling itself is made clear.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
No there is a point here, ideally plastic doesn't make it to ocean, but when(not if) it does then sinking is better than swimming. Floating plastic stays in food-chain forever, stuff that sinks gets eventually covered in sediment and becomes a head scratcher for future geologists. Deep water also shields from UV degradation and reduces the micro-plastic problem and then there is the benefit that it doesn't float half way around the planet.
Not an ideal solution perhaps, but it would improve the situation.
if someone hurts themselves with sharp cutlery, there will be lawsuits.
Isn't this backwards? I thought dull knives were supposed to be more dangerous than sharp ones because you have to apply more force which can cause the blade to slip?
I'm entirely fucking bewildered by the number of people that seem to need to drink out of a straw.
Never been out running or hiking, have we?
industry tends to be good at coming up with clever ways of solving sticky problems if profits are at stake
In most of the world, they already solved it. By buying the laws to not make it mandatory for industries to be responsible for recycling their product.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Others have given some reasons, here is one more :
Make-up industry is worth billions of dollars per year. Most of their product is not as smudge free as they want it to be.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Everything you can buy can be misused. Prohibit the sales of everything, because selling someone something just provides them a means of "creating a wonderful race to the bottom."
Misuse wasn't the point of my comment. Lack of ability to use correctly was. It's amazing how much recycling improves when you provide people with recycling facilities. It's even more amazing at how much better it gets when you put enforcement costs on the supplier. Have you been to venice? They once had a huge garbage problem due to disposable packaging, but there was only a few takeaway shops in the city centre. Venice is quite clean now many thanks to the government forcing McDondals Subway and Burger King to sponsor garbage bins and collection services for the mess their product ultimately makes. I mean it's just as easy to kick them out, they are really only preying on conviencence anyway.
It's even more amazing at how much recycling improves when you pass the newly enforced cost down to the consumer and reward them for good practices as is the case with many glass and plastic bottles in Europe.
Sounds unfair, maybe. Go live in a polluted river in China if you want fair and government regulation free life.
https://www.scientificamerican...
Island countries like the Philippines and Indonesia also tend to have issues with a lot of waste getting into the ocean quickly. In a landlocked country the odds of your properly disposed of plastic waste reaching the ocean are pretty slim.
The real answer for plastic disposal is "Waste to Energy". Plastic burns very well, you just need to burn it hot enough that it doesn't emit dioxins. What we need is a technological solution that can be mass produced and distributed across the developing world so people can collect and incinerate their plastic safely.
Oh great, I guess the EU should do nothing to reduce plastic pollution then! /s
What exactly is your point? In what way is this step bad for the EU or our ecosystems?
No, what you're observing is garbage being dumped into streams and rivers from poor and remote villages in countries that don't have waste management.
It has NOTHING to do with plastic forks and straws used in advanced countries. Banning this is pure virtue-signalling, and will do nothing to reduce plastic in oceans
Boom! Very astute. One of the strangest things about the gyres of plastics is that the assumption is that it all comes from the USA. When in fact, we have a lot of recycling going on.
Because it is getting very difficult to open new landfills, most of us recycle as much as possible.
Where the more developed countries need to focus on is eliminating microspheres of plastic in skin care products. Those don't do anything but make the product feel "silky smooth".
Enter the "Friendly Floaties". In 1992, a container of some 28,000 rubber ducks washed overboard on a ship coming from Hong Kong, while traversing the Pacific Ocean. We've been tracking them ever since. Not surprisingly, they've shown up in the pacific, but have been tracked above the arctic circle and to the East Coast of USA, and even in Europe. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The entire continent is full of imbeciles. To hell with them and their stupidity. Next time they need help, we stay home. Fuck you morons. Fuck you to hell.