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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
Maybe you are not aware of China's environmental record?
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..
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Dasani already makes their bottles out of recycled plant waste. I was reusing the same 4 bottles for a month at a time, refilling with filtered water, until another report came out indicating I was at higher risk of ingesting toxins by doing that.
No good deed goes unpunished.
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.
Biodegradable plastic exists. It's just way more expensive to produce than regular plastic.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I'm not an american, but you have the constitution, so if you want to do gun legislation you need to change the constitution.
That would be a good step, but unrealistic. Any constitutional amendment requires 3/4 of states to ratify it. There are a lot more low population, rural gun-friendly states than there are larger population states that are less friendly to guns.
Even if a large majority of the population wanted the constitution changed (and I'm honestly not sure what % want it changed), it wouldn't happen. There are too many sparsely populated states that don't want "gub'munt tushin' ma guns". You're not going to see a gun control amendment to the constitution in your lifetime.
More realistic would be a reinterpretation of the current constitution:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed
I think gun-control proponents are more likely to get their way by examining the phrase "A well regulated Militia". Which honestly, how that is interpreted will always depend on who is in the Supreme Court at any given time.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
It is non-zero... that's really all that matters for this number. You don't need a percentage to know that we have outright failed to kill the damn disease. We had a shot at it, but generations of hard work are being undone.
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.
I'd much prefer we went back to paper and cardboard... at least if someone fails to recycle them then it at least decomposes pretty quickly if left to the elements. Naturally, this would depend on sustainable forestry techniques to be "Better"... which might actually serve as a carbon sink if we add to the woodlands we already have to grow paper.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
...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
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.
Dasani already makes their bottles out of recycled plant waste. I was reusing the same 4 bottles for a month at a time, refilling with filtered water, until another report came out indicating I was at higher risk of ingesting toxins by doing that.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Make certain you get your minimum daily requirement of Bisphenol-A.
Glass is probably the least troublesome water storage material.
This might make you cringe, but locally we have some springs, typically near the tops of mountains, that have some of the most wonderful water you've tasted. Unfiltered, fresh out of the ground. People come from miles around to fill jugs of drinking water.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Funny how that plastic can sit on shelves and hot trucks for months without releasing toxins, but if you refill it and drink the water that day the concentration is high enough to be deadly.
Also, funny how the hawkers of a product that is nearly free but is packaged for several dollars a gallon don't want you using the free product.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
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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93% of workplace deaths were men.
This is the America we live in.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
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.
Alternately, 3/4 of all producers could be turned into Soylent green with zero negative impact to society.
Yeah, except for all the saturated fats and cholesterol and alcohol and antidepressants/opioids in their system that you'll be consuming. They should call it Soylent yellowish brown.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”