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2018 Statistic of the Year: 90.5 Percent of Plastic Waste Has Never Been Recycled (bbc.com)
Two of 2018's best statistics from the Royal Statistical Society are about the environment. "The winning international statistic of the year was 90.5% -- the proportion of plastic waste that has never been recycled," reports the BBC. "And in the UK category, the top stat was 27.8% -- the highest percentage of all electricity which was generated by solar power." From the report: A panel of judges picked the two winners, along with several highly commended statistics, from more than 200 nominations. Entries for 2018 were submitted earlier this year. Judges on the panel included Dame Jil Matheson, former national statistician -- the top adviser to the government on official statistics, as well as RSS president Sir David Spiegelhalter, BBC home editor Mark Easton and the Guardian's U.S. data editor Mona Chalabi.
The environment and plastic waste has repeatedly made headlines in 2018, and "single-use" -- referring to plastic waste -- was named the word of the year. Other highly commended statistics include:
$1.3 billion: the amount lost from the value of Snapchat within a day after Kylie Jenner tweeted: "Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?"
85.9%: the proportion of British trains that ran on time -- the lowest for more than a decade
40%: the percentage of Russian men who do not live to the age of 65
64,946: the number of measles cases in Europe from November 2017 to October 2018
82%: the percentage of all British retail shopping that is still in-store rather than online
16.7%: the percentage reduction of the number of Jaffa Cakes in the McVities' Christmas tube
6.4%: the percentage of female executive directors within FTSE 250 companies
The environment and plastic waste has repeatedly made headlines in 2018, and "single-use" -- referring to plastic waste -- was named the word of the year. Other highly commended statistics include:
$1.3 billion: the amount lost from the value of Snapchat within a day after Kylie Jenner tweeted: "Sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore?"
85.9%: the proportion of British trains that ran on time -- the lowest for more than a decade
40%: the percentage of Russian men who do not live to the age of 65
64,946: the number of measles cases in Europe from November 2017 to October 2018
82%: the percentage of all British retail shopping that is still in-store rather than online
16.7%: the percentage reduction of the number of Jaffa Cakes in the McVities' Christmas tube
6.4%: the percentage of female executive directors within FTSE 250 companies
Environmental protection, public transport, women... I'm sure this will be a quiet thread, nothing controversial there.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
the # of us vast majority unchosen wanderers remains overstated, for a variety of reasons, though we still # in the billions & growing (the royals greatest fear) towards reasoned interundependence.. cease fire stand down,, in the moms we trust, our nearest identifiable creators.. we rest our lower case..
The word of the year is 'Blokkeerfries', you insensitive cloth!
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
This is negligible anyway!
A much more important problem that humans will have to face soon is the recycling of creimer's mass.
The center of mass of the universe has never moved more than half a yard away from creimer's external surface, just so you realize the scale...
your love for mindless over-consumption, single-portion servings, useless plastick gimmicks and micro-granules in every toothpaste and shampoo, and of course your stubborn refusal to recycle because "it's what poor people do" accounts for the major contribution of plastic pollution.
The real question is if you will ever admit you fucked up and start taking some responsibility and clean up after yourself. Most likely it's the rest of the world that has to clean up your mess, like you were a small child, because the holy American way of life, over-consumption with no regards to anything or anyone else, is so sacred to you.
Maybe you are not aware of China's environmental record?
The likelihood of Slashdot continuing to hurtling past irrelevance and out of existence.
That would probably do a lot to stop single use plastic consumption.
You may have to carbonate the water.
Maybe we need some sort of biodegradable plastic?
Does this include the PEG that you put into your body as laxatives?? Or use in nasal creams? The world is falling. The world is falling. OH Henny Penny, what are we to do?
74.5% of all movies released in 2018 were remakes
88.4% of Trump's tweets were demonstrably false
14.2% of high schools in America increased spending on women's athletic programs
68.4% of sexual assaults against women went unreported
12.9% of reported sexual assaults against women resulted in convictions
A woman was the victim of gun violence every 12 minutes
The NRA spent an estimated 28.5 million dollars lobbying against common sense gun legislation
NRA Legal Insurance spent an estimated 2.2 million dollars defending gun criminals in court
84.1% of America's prison population is non-white
14.3% of whites charged with violent crimes are convicted, while 91.3% of blacks charged with similar crimes are convicted
23.8% of all crime in America can be attributed to RSH (Racism/Sexism/Homophobia)
A further 52.5% of all crime in America can be attributed to systemic poverty
74.2% of white collar convictions result in no prison time
18.4% of white collar convictions result in no punishment at all
This is the America we live in.
The US American's average ecological footprint is more than double the average Chinese's [source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., where you can study the methodologies to your heart's content].
That doesn't mean everything is easy-peasy elsewhere. We're all to make our due effort, if we want to stop our so-far pretty successful attempt at de-terraforming Earth.
So stop pointing fingers and get to work (or finish up that super-duper-supersized Big Whopper in the hopes you die early).
I like to think I'm a fairly environmental conscience person but I can't bring myself to care about most plastic waste. As long as it's properly disposed of in a landfill I just don't care. We have enough space for landfill to last at least a couple hundred years and at that point we'll probably be disintegrating our trash..
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Good point. Counterfeiting is so bad there that infants have died from malnutrition because they even counterfeit baby formula. Thats a special kind of fucked up right there. A few years ago they found one of their pork producers was dumping dead pigs in their rivers. Hundreds.
We are. And we're deathly afraid of the time when the average Chinese has the same environmental footprint the average American has.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The measles one is the one that really gets my goat. That number should be 0. F*** you Andrew Wakefield and Stella McCartney and all the Karens of the world.
Its a feel good attempt at making people think they are actually doing good by recycling. Much of my neighborhood has given up on recycling for a lot of stuff. Around me most just put out garbage and not recycling containers. Our disposal company has over the years become more picky about what they accept as recyclable material. Its getting harder to find companies making products that will buy the raw material and many are getting finicky about the quality. Last I read only around 30% of what is received is ever recycled properly. Maybe its time to reconsider all the plastic we use rather then trying to recycle something nobody wants.
Worry about things you can do, not about those you can't change.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
I can't say about Canada, US or other countries, states or provinces but I know in Québec we got 2 big major problems. The first one is everything that is about our recycling system is just too old. From infrastructure to systems. Its old and not even up to date. So they need to update everything to have better recycling systems. Multiple times in the last year we had to do major dumping in the St-Laurent River. tons of waste in nature. This kind of behavior and decision is simply unacceptable
companies that do product packaging are not doing packaging that are recyclable in my city. Yet goverment love to give a message to either blame me or point fingers at their own citizens and tell them its their fault. Sometimes, some cities taxes citizens for this kind of situation. Sorry but I don't feel bad in this. Companies should be fines for not making packages that are not recyclable in my opinion.
I love it when people throw around names like everyone know them.
What we're aware of is that their carbon and pollution footprint PER CAPITA is far, far below that of America and the west in general. You're basically accusing them of wrong-doing because they have a bigger population, and it's not going to work.
...the point is to leverage western guilt into recycling their water bottles or some shit.
But isn't the BULK of ocean plastic waste pollution (90%+) coming from 10 rivers? (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-plastic-tide-10-rivers-contribute-most-of-the-plastic-in-the-oceans/)
2 are in Africa, 8 are Asian. The Yangtze alone dumps more than all the other rivers/sources combined.
Let's be objective then: wealthy suburban Starbucks customers could literally throw every scrap of plastic they use into the ocean directly, and they wouldn't even tickle the needle vs the megatonnage pouring from these 10 rivers. Carry all the stupid stainless-steel straws you like, you're at least giving people an idea of a cheap dumb gift they can give you at Christmas...but you're not doing *anything* for the environment.
So these sorts of public flagellation programs - if they're produced in English, basically - amount to nothing more than virtue-signaling guilt-assuagement.
-Styopa
It's not a good point. It's just misleading. But given the intellectual honesty of Americans, I suppose making a point that misleads the discussion is to be considered good.
There's an interesting quirk in human psychology that makes negative facts and news seem more salient than positive ones. For media that thrives on reader attention (and that's both new and old media), this naturally leads to more emphasis on the negative.
I think this is a bias worth noting and pushing back on. The world is pretty far from perfect, but there's also huge helpings of good news all around us.
Most of these (Daesh not withstanding, but threw them in just because they were really vile) follow the same pattern: slow but steady progress. It's hardly clickbait -- in fact these are not even specific events you can point to, they are trends seen on the scale of decades. And on the scale of decades, the world is consistently becoming a less-bad place.
Wow, my goodness. Imma stop stereotyping shots of vodka as something manly Russians do.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Sometimes one really doesn't understand. People talk about reducing plastic usage, but then they do just the opposite. Recent example: There's a particular brand of cat litter that I usually buy. Cat litter is basically fancy dirt, nothing special, and this brand packed it in a paper bag, which was fine. I went to buy another bag last week, and: they've changed to a heavy-duty plastic bag. WTF?
I now buy a different brand of fancy dirt...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
we've been shipping our plastic waste to China? At least until recently. Given how poverty stricken those nations are I somehow doubt they're generating that much waste plastic themselves.
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Plastic originates from oil, and has the chemical form (C2H4)n for polyethelene, C2H3-x for PVC and polysyrene. When we bury it in a landfill, each C there is carbon which has been sequestered back underground, not combusted with atmospheric oxygen to produce CO2. In that respect, its resistance to biodegradation is a good thing, since it prevents bacteria in the landfill from converting it into CH4 (methane) and CO2. In a landfill locked in the form of plastic, that carbon is well and truly sequestered.
Unfortunately, TFA does not make a distinction between what percentage of plastic ends up in landfills, and what percentage in the natural environment. I'm also curious if the incineration process is high enough in temperature to yield atomic carbon (soot), or if it converts the carbon into CO2. I'm guessing the latter since that yields more energy, helping defray the cost of incineration.
I recycle a lot - it's a mandatory law in these parts. I'm sure that I personally send in more than 10% of my plastics for food containers etc.
BUT --- does this 90% include Childrens Toys? Cell phones, the dashboard & engine cover of my car? Meaning... Long term items that I'm still using?
Since this has been the year of anti-plastics I've been mentally monitoring my plastic usage. Food comes wrapped in it, toys, parts of my toilet, carpet fibres, ethernet cables, my laptop, keyboard, monitor etc.
It's hard to wrap my head around such a low recycle rate. Unless it includes items that are still alive and being used.
That's a pretty heavy drinking problem, eh? Or is it from the stress of working so hard to force the Americans to vote for Trump?
Since we're baiting people:
I would like to know what percentage of Slashdotters still vote GOP/DNC...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
2 problems:
1) I'm showing my age, but when I was a kid, we paid a nickel deposit on soft drink bottles, and returned the bottles at the grocery store for cash.
We now have to pay a deposit on several kinds of glass and plastic containers. But where can we return the containers, to get our deposit back? Grocery stores won't take them. (At least not in the SF Bay area city in which I live.) And the "recycling centers" that buy back your glass and plastic containers are closing down. Right now, there's only one recycling center left, that pays for your deposit containers near where I live.
I always recycle, whether or not I get my deposit back. But some people might put their glass and plastic containers in the trash, if they can't get their deposit back.
2) Our local trash and recycling company tells us that they won't recycle plastic "film" (thin, soft sheets of plastic), including those soft plastic bags that hold frozen vegetables. The trash/recycling company says plastic film messes up their recycling machines. They ask us to put plastic film into our trash bin, not recycling bin.
So I checked around, and I found a company that does take plastic film. It has collection boxes in several stores near me. So I put used plastic film into a plastic bag, and occasionally I go to one of those stores, and stuff that plastic bag into the store's plastic film collection box. I don't get paid for it, but that's ok.
Note to self: I'll tell my trash/recycling company about those plastic film collection boxes, and ask them to mention the film collection boxes in their website, instead of telling us to put plastic film into the trash.
99% of plastic waste in the Pacific comes from 7 rivers in Asia.
Go bother someone else.
"Indeed." - Teal'c
Just because your neighbor won't haul his garbage off to the dump doesn't mean you should let the trash in your yard pile up as well. Take some goddamned self responsibility for once. Clean your shit up. America will take care of America and China can take care of China.
I see your posts every day. What this is really about is you just love to shit on China and here's a time you can point the finger away from your own dirty ass. Yours is still covered in shit. Take a bath.
Asia, Africa Cause 90% of Plastic Pollution in World's Oceans
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/26/asia-africa-cause-90-plastic-pollution-worlds-oceans-13233
Asia, Africa Cause 90% of Plastic Pollution in World's Oceans
https://www.acsh.org/news/2018/07/26/asia-africa-cause-90-plastic-pollution-worlds-oceans-13233
Lots more issues with China. For example, China is driving animals into extinction by paying poachers for things like elephant tusks, and rhino horns.
I could go on. Environmental issues are not high priorities with China.
You're just flim flamming around to try and distract everyone from the bad shit because you don't like what they mean, nor the solutions it would take to fix them.
Incredibly cunty, given that Chinese medicine is a load of fucking shit.
At least with homeopathy one rhino horn would be enough to last forever.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Poverty means two things:
a. Not having consistent access to basics required for a decent human life (Food, shelter, education, healthcare & transportation).
b. Being able to be forced to do things you don't want to do because you don't have access to those things (join the military, sell drugs, prostitution, work a job you hate that's also dangerous, etc, etc).
Poverty is when you don't have enough resources to live a good life and that others with access to those resources can force you to do as they say. That's poverty.
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