Plastic Packaging Alternatives- Are they causing more harm? - "A panel consisting of 40 academicians from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, has said that a ban on plastics might seem like promoting a cleaner and greener future, but it could lead the environment towards greater damage. Professor David Bucknall, chair in materials chemistry at the University’s Institute of Chemical Sciences, also agrees with the panel by saying that current arguments surrounding a lessening or ban of plastic use were “short-sighted and not based on facts”. On replacing plastics with currently available materials such as metal and glass would double the global energy consumption and treble the emissions of greenhouse gases. The environmental cost would nearly be four times greater. Firms and supermarkets swapping plastics to other packaging material cause a more negative effect on the environment. For example, glass bottles are much heavier and contribute to more pollution through their transportation. On the other hand, plastics are light in weight. Transportation of consumer goods in plastic packaging requires fewer vehicles which involve burning less fuel and, thereby, prominently reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Similarly, paper bags, which are more difficult to reuse, cause greater carbon emissions, when compared to plastic bags. Kate Sang, Professor of gender and employment studies at Heriot-Watt’s School of Social Sciences, has commented that apart from the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution, one must also recognize that single-use plastics have changed the healthcare system in delivering a safe and responsible health service. For example, single-use plastic straws are essential for many disabled and elderly people. Alternatives such as pasta straws are unsuitable because they are not flexible and cannot be used by those with gluten intolerance. Paper straws disintegrate over a short period and silicone straws need to be sterilized, which is simply not practical in public places. Retailers agree that climate change needs to be the primary concern and necessary changes should be adapted to restore our environment. Plastic remains the most effective material in many circumstances, for instance, cucumbers wrapped in plastic last 14 days longer, minimizing food waste... bioplastics can cause immense damage when they end up in the wrong place, says Jo Ruxton, co-founder of campaign group Plastic Oceans. Even plastics labeled as biodegradable can take years to breakdown at sea, during which time they can inflict plenty of damage."
How Useful Is Recycling, Really? - The Atlantic - "One of the few things Americans largely agree on is recycling. This simple act is popular with Democrats, Republicans, free-market diehards, and environmental advocates alike, data consistently show. And among recycling enthusiasts, one group is particularly keen—people already concerned about climate change... Project Drawdown, a nonprofit group that conducts reviews of climate solutions, includes recycling in its recommendations for reining in emissions. But when the group analyzed more than 80 separate means that could help keep the world from passing the oft-cited threshold of 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius of warming, the recycling industry’s projected contributions fell below the median, trailing geothermal power, efficient aviation, forest protection, and dozens of other actions... “People just really want a way out of their consumption that doesn’t make them feel bad”... Critics say focusing on getting hard-to-recycle materials out of the recycling system altogether would do more to curb climate and environmental issues. Dell suggested going back to “core four” recyclables (cardboard, plastic bottles, glass bottles, and aluminum cans), since items such as plastic film and bags are notorious for burdening recycling facilities. But she also cited the Jevons paradox, the economic idea that increasing the efficiency of a resource’s use also increases its consumption. Rather than prioritizing fixing recycling, she said, people should place greater emphasis on scaling back their waste to begin with."
Plastics in oceans are mounting, but evidence on harm is surprisingly weak - "It’s not surprising this has become a cause célèbre. Unlike many other human pollutants in the environment, plastic debris is very visible. Images of birds or fish entangled in plastic are highly emotive – as is the idea that we could be harming ourselves by eating seafood containing tiny pieces of the stuff... On the question of how much damage microplastics cause to marine life, we certainly know these particles are readily transported throughout our seas and oceans and there is considerable evidence that organisms ingest them. However, the polymers that make up plastics are of minimal toxicity to marine life. The question is whether they may cause harm in other ways. It could be that organisms absorb these particles and they accumulate in internal tissues, though it’s not clear whether or not that might be harmful to them. Microplastics may also accumulate in the gut and potentially interfere with processes like nutrient uptake or the passage of waste – or they may just be expelled without any negative effects. A few studies have shown microplastics being absorbed by marine life in very small amounts, but other studies have found the opposite. We don’t even know whether very small nanoplastics with diameters of less than 1,000 nanometres can be absorbed. The studies that do exist on nanoparticles suggest that such absorption is minimal. In short, the jury is still out on absorption... There is considerable evidence to suggest that plastic particles are readily released from the gut of organisms without negative effects – and note that researchers have tended to test for concentrations in considerably higher amounts than are found in the environment... most studies have shown that toxicants associated with plastics are either at concentrations too low to be toxic – or that the substances stick too strongly to the plastics to be released into organisms and cause problems. In one study, the levels of toxic substances in the tissues of marine birds were actually lower when they had ingested plastics. The investigators suggested the toxic substances already present within the bird tissues were sticking to the plastics and being removed. If so, toxic substances attached to plastics might be less of a concern for toxicity to marine organisms than is feared. Then there are microplastics and the human food chain. We were intrigued by this possibility and conducted an experiment to check. While we cooked in our kitchens, we left open petri dishes with sticky tape to collect dust fallout in the surrounding air. We compared the amounts of plastic fibres in this dust with the quantities we found in mussels collected around the Scottish coast. The results suggest that while a regular UK consumer might ingest 100 plastic particles a year from eating mussels, their average exposure to plastic particles during meals from household dust is well over 10,000 per year."
Related: UN: Don't worry about drinking microplastics in water
The warm glow of recycling can make us more wasteful - "Laudable initiatives designed to limit the environmental damage associated with consumption, such as the recycling of plastic packaging into clothing or unused bread into beer, have become increasingly popular. In three experiments, we show how such initiatives can potentially increase waste rather than preventing it. Specifically, we show that when presented with such options people may come to psychologically frame their waste creation as a contribution to the collective good that makes them feel good about themselves (i.e. eliciting a warm-glow effect). We argue that such potential ‘wasteful contribution’ effects need to be considered in assessing the true sustainability benefits of certain recycling initiatives."
A type of ‘biodegradable’ plastic will soon be phased out in Australia. That’s a big win for the environment - "Many plastics labelled biodegradable are actually traditional fossil-fuel plastics that are simply degradable (as all plastic is) or even “oxo-degradable” — where chemical additives make the fossil-fuel plastic fragment into microplastics. The fragments are usually so small they’re invisible to the naked eye, but still exist in our landfills, water ways and soils... Some biodegradable plastics are made from plant-based materials. But it’s often unknown what type of environment they’ll break down in and how long that would take. Those items may end up existing for decades, if not centuries, in landfill, litter or ocean as many plant-based plastics actually don’t break down any quicker than traditional plastics. This is because not all plant-based plastics are necessarily compostable, as the way some plant-based polymers form can make them incredibly durable... most certified compostable plastics are only for industrial composts, which reach very high temperatures. This means they’re unlikely to break down sufficiently in home composts. Even those certified as “home compostable” are assessed under perfect lab conditions, which aren’t easily achieved in the backyard... Even if you can get your certified compostable plastics to an appropriate facility, composting plastics actually reduces their economic value as they can no longer be used in packaging and products. Instead, they’re only valuable for returning nutrients to soil and, potentially, capturing a fraction of the energy used to produce them. Finally, if you don’t have an appropriate collection system and your compostable plastic ends up in landfill, that might actually be worse than traditional plastic. Compostable plastics could release methane — a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — in landfill, in the same way food waste does."
Plastic bags more eco-friendly than paper and cotton bags in countries like Singapore: NTU study - "this was true in cities and countries such as Singapore with densely populated metropolitan areas where waste is eventually incinerated... “In a well-structured, closed metropolitan waste management system with incineration treatment, using plastic bags may be the best option that is currently available, provided that there is no significant leakage of waste into the environment." The NTU scientists came to this conclusion after carrying out a life-cycle analysis of five types of bags to evaluate their environmental impact associated with its production, distribution, transportation, waste collection, treatment and end-of-life disposal... “It is essential to evaluate the implications case by case for dealing with plastic waste,” the director of the Residues & Resource Reclamation Centre at the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute said... In places such as Singapore, where waste is incinerated, the timeline of biodegradation of paper, cotton and other biodegradable materials is irrelevant. Such bags are suitable for countries that use landfills and regions with higher leakage of waste into the natural environment"
Virtue signalling is more important than protecting the environment, so this won't change people's minds
Why a plastic bag ban could lead to unintended environmental consequences - "The problem with something like a paper bag alternative, however, is that it's also single use, and its production leaves a carbon footprint that is greater than that of the manufacturing of disposable plastic grocery bags... it "takes more than four times as much energy to manufacture a paper bag as it does to manufacture a plastic bag"... While plastic grocery bags are considered single use, many customers actually reuse them for garbage disposal in their homes, dog poop cleanup and storage receptacles... A 2017 study conducted by Recyc-Québec, a Quebec recycling group, found that the reuse for such bags was more than 77 per cent. The study also found that because the conventional plastic grocery bag is thin and light, its production generates the least environment impact, compared with other disposable bags, including paper bags. Meanwhile, Taylor's study found that the California grocery bag ban led to a 5.4-million-kilogram annual increase in sales of store trash bags, which are thicker than plastic grocery bags. More specifically, the study found that store-bought plastic bags increased the sales of small, medium and large trash bags by 120 per cent, 64 per cent and six per cent, respectively... a cotton tote bag would have to be used 131 times before it was better for the environment than the single use of a plastic grocery bag. And Ryan Sinclair, an associate professor at Loma Linda University School of Public Health in California, found in studies that reusable grocery bags have the potential of carrying bacteria and viruses, including norovirus and coronavirus... Another problem with these reusable bags is that few people wash them... "If you're going to use them, you should definitely wash them," Sinclair said. That means people should probably avoid polypropylene bags and get cotton, burlap or nylon bags, and wash them at a higher temperature and use some kind of disinfectant"
Environmentalists will then just demand paper bags be banned too, then people will keep buying reusable bags (in addition to buying more store trash bags - which since they are thicker are more damaging to the environment) and the environment will be damaged even more
Of course environmentalists ignore the fact that washing reusable bags has an environmental impact too
Opinion: The pandemic should have ended Trudeau’s war on plastics - The Globe and Mail - "Plastics are amazing materials enriching our lives and helping us, including during the pandemic. Those hygienic wipes for countertops and babies’ hands and bodies? The ones that you would have mortgaged the house to buy in March, 2020, but were already out of stock? According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, they’re made of “materials such as polyester, polypropylene, cotton, wood pulp, or rayon fibres formed into sheets.” The containers holding the wipes? Plastic. The face masks and respirators that front-line workers have been wearing throughout the pandemic? They’re made with polypropylene, a type of plastic. The syringe used to vaccinate you? Plastic. Intravenous medicine bags and tubing? Plastic. Bandages? Plastic. Surgical implants? Lots of plastic. Your hospital bed, and nearly every surface you’ll encounter in the hospital? Much plastic. Medical gloves? Sterile dining utensils? Disposable diapers? Your car’s seat belts, and practically the entire interior, including the airbags? Same for your airplane and ambulance. Plastic. For Ottawa to declare a war on plastics is to literally declare war on modern life. Look around you right this moment and ponder how many things you see that have plastic components. Unless you’re in a museum that disallows things produced after 1960, I’m betting it’s a very large proportion of the objects and substances around you. Plastics are a purely human invention – nature gave us wood, metal, stone, bones and skins. And that’s about it. Can you imagine what a Pharaoh of old would have given for a nice bulletproof Lexan windshield on the royal chariot? Or an IV medicine bag for a dying child? Of course, people litter. And we should do more to incentivize people to dispose of waste – all waste – more hygienically and responsibly including in landfills (see the continuing evolution of biodegradable plastics). But in Canada, that’s not what the war on plastics is about. Even according to Oceana, a group dedicated to plastic waste elimination, about “86 per cent of Canada’s plastic waste ends up in landfill, while a meagre nine per cent is recycled. The rest is burned in incinerators, contributing to climate change and air pollution, or ends up in the environment as litter.” So let’s do some math – 86 per cent, plus 9 per cent is 95 per cent. According to data submitted to Parliament, only 1 per cent of the remaining 5 per cent ends up as litter. That’s a 99 per cent rate of hygienic handling of plastic materials. (Incidentally, Oceana’s climate change angle is silly, since anything we use other than plastics also has a carbon footprint, so it’s a matter of trade-offs, not reductions when considering plastic bans.) And what’s the real source of the world’s plastic pollution problem? According to a Scientific American article, 93 per cent of all plastics dumped into the sea every year come from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa."
Is the 30-Year-Long Styrofoam War Nearing Its End? - "Styrofoam actually has its advantages over other packaging products, says Trevor Zink, an assistant professor of management at the Institute of Business Ethics and Sustainability at Loyola Marymount University. If you consider Styrofoam’s overall lifecycle impact assessment, looking at factors like energy demand, global warming, water consumption, and other ills, the foam actually has a lower footprint than other packaging materials, says Zink. It’s so light that it it has “lower production and transportation impacts than other products.” Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of Oregon-based chemical recycling company Agilyx agrees. “Foam is one of the more high utility polymers—very low cost, tremendous value, easy to manufacture—it’s the polymer of choice for things like shipping, food, electronics, etc.,” he says. “And yet it’s being vilified by the public—you have, as typical, a lot of misinformation about it.”... After New York City’s ban on Styrofoam was challenged in court, the Department of Sanitation undertook a comprehensive study on the feasibility of Styrofoam recycling, and determined that food service foam “cannot be recycled in a manner that is economically feasible or environmentally effective for New York City.” After examining other municipalities that have tried to institute recycling for food service foam over the past 30 years, the report found that the majority of Styrofoam collected for recycling ended up in landfill anyway—but at a higher economic cost and carbon footprint compared to being directly landfilled... Zink, who describes himself as a “deep and passionate environmentalist,” argues that perhaps bans are doing more harm than good. When considering a ban, he says, it’s important to consider what will be replacing the banned product. Since single use food service containers are not going to cease to exist, what would replace Styrofoam? It could end up being another type of material that has a greater environmental footprint than Styrofoam, Zink says. “If we’re going to continue to have single use products anyway, it’s better that they be made of the low-impact material than the high-impact material, and we should do a better job of collecting the waste and preventing it from ever entering these fragile ecosystems.” Otherwise you just swap one bad product for another. Compostable options seem promising, but a report by Clean Water Action states that the majority of compostable single use food service products end up in landfill anyway and that whether composted or landfilled, they do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It seems that mealworms or mushrooms show promise for the eco-friendly solutions to degrade plastic, but that technology is still in its infancy... “Recycling has become a religion at this point and when things become a religion you stop looking at them through a critical eye—and I think we should,” says Zink, emphasizing that reducing waste is a much more efficient way to manage it. “A better option is not to use the single-use stuff in the first place.”"
This plasticphobe claimed, after I showed why his suggestion of cellulose was worse for the environment, that with 8 billion people on the planet, someone would surely be able to come up with a better alternative to styrofoam - if not for greasy palms. I noted his faith proposition and suggested that perpetual motion machines were similarly being stymied by greasy palms. He also got annoyed when I posted facts and citations
Other articles talk about why single use stuff isn't necessarily a bad thing - even if you only use an environmental lens (and ignore the benefits of convenience or other things humans other than environmentalists value - since inconvenient actions are good for virute signalling)
Wait a Sec, Are Foam Cups Actually Better for the Environment than Paper? - "paper cups are actually more difficult to recycle than foam (made from polystyrene, not Styrofoam, which is a brand name for foam used for insulation) cups, because of the wax lining inside, and paper cups do produce more waste and require more energy and materials to make... people are slightly more likely to recycle foam containers: 16 percent of foam food service containers are recycled in major American cities, compared to 12 percent of paper containers. Plus, when you use a foam cup, you only use one—people are more likely to double up on paper cups because they’re less insulated, making even more waste in the end."
Study: Glass Bottles Harm the Environment More Than Plastic Bottles - "glass is actually more detrimental than plastic because it is mined from rare materials and requires more fossil fuels to produce and ship. "It might come as a surprise, but glass bottles actually ranked last in our analysis," study coauthors Alice Brock and Ian Williams wrote in The Conversation. "You might instinctively reach for a glass bottle to avoid buying a plastic alternative, but glass takes more resources and energy to produce.""
Follow the science. Unless it clashes with liberal beliefs
A comparison of the environmental impacts of different categories of insulation materials - "More than sixty environmental product declarations of insulation materials (glass wool, mineral wool, expanded polystyrene, extruded polystyrene, polyurethane, foam glass and cellulose) have been examined and the published information for global warming potential (GWP) and for embodied energy (EE) has been analysed and is presented. A peer-review literature survey of the data for GWP and EE associated with the different insulation products is also included. The data for GWP (kg carbon dioxide equivalents) and EE (megajoules) is reported in terms of product mass or as a functional unit (FU) (1 m2 of insulation with R = 1 m2 K/W). Data for some classes of insulation material (such as glass wool) exhibit a relatively narrow range of values when reported in terms of weight of product or as a functional unit. Other classes of insulation material exhibit much wider distributions of values (e.g., expanded polystyrene). When reported per weight of product, the hydrocarbon-based insulation materials exhibit higher GWP and EE values compared to inorganic or cellulosic equivalents. However, when compared on an FU basis this distinction is no longer apparent and some of the cellulosic based materials (obtained by refining of wood chips) show some of the highest EE values. The relationship between the EE and GWP per kg of insulation product has also been determined as being 15.8 MJ per kg CO2 equivalents."
This won't stop the plasticphobes
Life cycle assessment of single use thermoform boxes made from polystyrene (PS), polylactic acid, (PLA), and PLA/starch: cradle to consumer gate - "PLA and PLA/starch boxes give a slightly higher environmental impact than the PS box by 1.59 and 1.09 times, respectively, when LUC was not accounted in the absolute scores and clean energy TIGCC was used throughout the life cycle."
This is the idealised best case scenario. When you take land use change and energy source into account, polystyrene (plastic) is even more environmentally friendly
Potential trade-offs between eliminating plastics and mitigating climate change: An LCA perspective on Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottles in Cornwall - "The model allows users to define key system parameters such as masses of materials, transport options and end-of-life processes and produces results for 11 environmental impact categories including the Global Warming Potential (GWP). The results from the application of this model on the case study of Cornwall have shown that the substitution of PET with glass as the material for bottling under the current waste infrastructure and management practices could lead to significant increases in GWP and hinder efforts to tackle climate change. A sensitivity analysis of the glass/PET mass ratio suggests that in order to achieve equal GWP the glass bottles need to become approximately 38% of the weight they are now"
Those who proclaim we must listen to the scientists still fall prey to plastic hysteria
Europe’s Plastic Recycling is Getting Dumped in the Ocean - "despite efforts to export plastic waste for recycling, new research finds that almost one-third of it leaving Europe isn't getting recycled at all... recycling is a farce – a scheme conjured up by big business to place the responsibility of (profitable) disposables into the hands of the consumer. We are tasked with cleaning up their mess, ostensibly by recycling. Meanwhile, recycling is disorganized, confusing, and broken. Of all the plastic waste we have created, only nine percent has been recycled. Since wealthier nations don’t have the capacity to recycle all of their prodigious waste, much of it was traditionally shipped to China for processing. But in 2018, China closed its doors to foreign waste, leaving the world in a bit of a plastic pickle, scrambling to figure out what to do with it all. One solution has been to ship it to countries in Southeast Asia... "A large share of this plastic is transported thousands of kilometres to countries with poor waste management practices, largely located in Southeast Asia. Once in these countries, a large share of the waste is rejected from recycling streams into overstretched local waste management systems that have been found to contribute significantly to ocean littering."... "Given that such a large share of waste destined for recycling is exported, with poor downstream traceability, this study suggests that 'true' recycling rates may deviate significantly from rates reported by municipalities and countries where the waste originates.”... recycling rates are often calculated based on quantities sent for recycling, irrespective of the final fate of that separated waste, notes the study. Which is to say, those nice recycling numbers that some European countries boast? They are incorrect. And in fact, are a macrocosm of the wishful recycling we do at home – send it off and it will all be taken care of; out of sight, out of mind"
Religious rituals aren't meant to be questioned
If you want to stop plastic going into the oceans, send it to the landfill instead of recycling it
Will people still support recycling if they know how expensive (yet useless) it is? "Free" virtue signalling is cheap. But finding out how much in taxes it costs is another story
Is Canada’s recycling industry broken? - "At the Loraas recycling plant in Saskatoon, 650 bales of worthless plastic pile up outside. Among the towers of packaging: a crumpled parmesan cheese container, a spray bottle of tile cleaner and a tub of garlic mayo. A lot of this plastic, tightly compressed into cubes, has been sitting here for months, waiting for a buyer. But no one has come knocking. “This material here is very hard to move,” said Dale Schmidt, manager of Loraas Recycle. “Currently, it moves at a negative value and it only moves once in a while. We’re having a real hard time getting this stuff to market.” What once could be sold for profit now costs money to haul away, and the notion that Canadians are saving the planet by putting things in a blue bin is proving to be a delusion... with few exceptions, more recycling is being sent to landfill, fewer items are being accepted in the blue bin and the financial toll of running these programs has become a burden for some municipalities. While recycling has never been a money-making venture, cities and recycling companies rely on the revenue from the products they collect at the curb — things like plastic, paper, aluminum and cardboard — to offset the cost of sorting and processing.Everything had a value — for a time... For years, Canada shipped roughly half of its recycling exports to China with the belief it was all being transformed on the other side of the Pacific.“It’s since come to light that, in fact, what they were doing was mining out the valuable materials, and they were, in large part, burning the low-valuable materials”... Other Asian countries have tried to fill the void. From 2016 to 2018, a 98 per cent drop in Canadian plastic exports to China was countered by a more than 1,000 per cent increase in exports to Malaysia. But Malaysia couldn’t handle the flood of materials and, in October 2018, banned plastic imports as well. India did the same. Vietnam imposed restrictions. So did Taiwan.The drug that was China was gone. The message from the rest of Asia was clear: we don’t want your trash... In Cowansville, Que., a recycling facility went bankrupt. The Quebec government responded with a $13-million bailout for the industry and a pledge of another $100 million in the 2019 budget... Instead of landfilling products at the end of processing, some cities have simply told residents they will accept fewer items to start with — a move contrary to the ethos of recycling... Items no longer accepted for curbside recycling include glass bottles, single-use cups such as coffee and yogurt cups, plastic clamshell packaging – the type used for berries and pastries, chip cans and non-deposit Tetra Pak containers, which are commonly used for soup and broth packaging."
So much for all the bright people online who obsess about glass containers as an alternative to plastic
The losing economics of recycling: Canada’s green industry is deep in the red - "At the Bluewater Recycling Association plant outside of London, Ont., an aluminum pop can is the most precious item they receive.It’s worth more than paper. More than plastic. More than cardboard.Selling these products is how recyclers make a profit — and aluminum is the moneymaker. Though it only makes up two per cent of everything that’s trucked into the Bluewater plant, the metal is worth 25 per cent of the company’s revenue.And yet, even aluminum isn’t immune to an industry whose profits are plunging... Only two plants still accept Veilleux’s aluminum. Aluminum pie plates and cat food tins are no longer accepted. Just pop cans and beer cans... “Garbage and recycling is the number 1 rising cost that municipalities are facing right now. Higher than police or ambulance or medical or anything else”... The sharp drop in profits has put municipalities at a crossroads: raise taxes or cut programs. In Kawartha Lakes, Ont., where there’s no appetite for a tax increase, the city has backed away from teaching kids the virtues of recycling... In the U.S., the financial burden of recycling has proven too great for some communities like Franklin, N.H., and Broadway, Va., which have cancelled their recycling programs. But in Ontario, that’s not an option: communities over 5,000 people are mandated by the province to recycle. Exacerbating the financial problem are rapidly rising labour costs. Buyers who are still accepting recycling will only take the highest quality. Gone are the days when a greasy pizza box in a bale of cardboard or a piece of plastic slipped into a package of glass was passable. Now, plants are being forced to sort and sometimes re-sort products to meet stringent requirements, driving up manpower costs."
Canada’s recycling industry is on life-support. Here’s how to fix it - "Anyone in B.C. who makes a product, sells a product or imports a product that’s collected in a blue bin has to pay to recycle its packaging. The province is the only jurisdiction in North America that is both funding and managing its entire recycling system — instead of leaving that responsibility to municipalities and their taxpayers. The model is called “extended producer responsibility,” or EPR, and it’s regulated under a provincial law that came into force in B.C. in 2014... At 69 per cent, B.C.’s recycling rate is the highest recorded in the country."
Of course, the cost of stuff in BC is another story
Cold Storage Memes For Meritocratic Teens - Posts - "If you would ban all plastic straws because of one turtle, would you then ban all metal straws because of one human? #Turtlelivesmatter Vs #Humanlivesmatter"
MPs reiterate call for plastic bag surcharge; MEWR says focus is on reducing excessive use of all disposables - "“Our approach has been to reduce the excessive use of all types of disposables, not just single-use plastics, and to promote the use of reusables. “We do not target plastics alone ... substituting plastics with other types of single-use packaging materials is not necessarily better for the environment.”All types of disposables have an environmental impact, said Dr Khor... There are “good reasons” why single-use plastic bags have to be given or used by the public, added Dr Khor. “For years we have worked hard to inculcate this habit of bagging your rubbish before you dispose it to maintain good public hygiene,” said Dr Khor. “We don’t want to undo such efforts, irresponsible disposal is going to lead to public hygiene issues like pest infestation for instance.” Given that Singapore incinerates all its waste, it does not face the “challenges” other countries who are more reliant on direct landfilling do, she added."
Addendum: Too bad they didn't remember this and forced a plastic bag charge in 2023
Opinion: Sorry, banning plastic bags won’t save our planet - "In just four decades, plastic packaging has become ubiquitous because it keeps everything from cereals to juice fresher and reduces transportation losses, while one-use plastics in the medical sector have made syringes, pill bottles and diagnostic equipment more safe.Going without disposable plastic entirely would leave us worse off, so we need to tackle the problems without losing all of the benefits.The simplest action for consumers is to ensure that plastic is collected and used, so a grocery bag, for example, has a second life as a trash bag, and is then used for energy... More than 20 countries have taken the showy action of banning plastic bags, including even an al-Qaeda-backed terrorist group which said plastic bags pose “a serious threat to the well-being of humans and animals alike.”But even if every country banned plastic bags it would not make much of a difference, since plastic bags make up less than 0.8 per cent of the mass of plastic currently afloat on the world’s oceans.Rather than trying to save the oceans with such bans in rich countries, we need to focus on tackling the inferior waste management and poor environmental policies in developing regions. Research from 2015 shows that less than 5 per cent of land-based plastic waste going into the ocean comes from OECD countries, with half coming from just four countries: China, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam... Moreover, banning plastic bags can have unexpected, inconvenient results. A new study shows California’s ban eliminates 40 million pounds of plastic annually. However, many banned bags would have been reused for trash, so consumption of trash bags went up by 12 million pounds, reducing the benefit. It also increased consumption of paper bags by twice the saved amount of plastic – 83 million pounds. This will lead to much larger emissions of CO₂.When Kenya banned plastic bags, people predictably shifted to thicker bags made of synthetic fabric – which now may be banned. But Kenya had to relent and exempt plastics used to wrap fresh foods such as meat and other products... a simple plastic bag, reused as a trash bag, has the smallest environmental impact of any of the choices... We should also recognize that more than 70 per cent of all plastics floating on oceans today – about 190,000 tonnes – come from fisheries, with buoys and lines making up the majority. That tells us clearly that concerted action is needed to clean up the fishing industry."
Opinion: Canadians want less plastic. But will they pay the price? - "while 93.1 per cent of Canadians want the plastic issue to disappear, only 23.2 per cent of them would accept paying a fee to a food company for reusable food packaging. Furthermore, most Canadians would not accept their food bill going up while still seeing more plastic packaging in food stores. These statistics are far from convincing... As a cheap material, plastics have kept food affordable and safe, and have reduced the amount of food waste we all generate... Our way of life and food safety expectations can only force the food industry to use more plastics, if current practices are not altered. For one thing, single servings of ready-to-eat, portable portions are more popular than ever. These servings require more packaging, and thus, more plastics. Secondly, new food safety rules that are now being implemented for better traceability are putting more pressure on the food industry to use more packaging. Most of our food safety regulations are not really aligned with the industry’s environmental obligations. But based on the Dalhousie report, consumers apparently see the environment as a more important factor than food safety... Allowing customers to bring in their own “clean” containers raises significant food safety concerns. Even if containers are indeed clean, the naked eye cannot see pathogens such as salmonella, E. coli, or even worse, allergens."
How many humans will need to die in the crusade against plastic?
Canada’s planned single-use plastics ban: What we know so far and what you can do to recycle better - "Blue-bin recycling is a Canadian invention of the 1980s, but only a fraction of the plastic you’ve put in those bins over the years has ever come back to consumers as recycled goods. Only 9 per cent of plastics are recycled in Canada, and about 10 per cent in the United States. Most plastic up in landfills, some is incinerated and some ends up in unmanaged dumps."
Commentary: Why some plastic packaging is necessary - "Plastic packaging is used in the food supply chain because it supports the safe distribution of food over long distances and minimises food waste by keeping food fresh for longer.A 2016 review of studies on food waste found that 88 million tonnes of food is wasted every year in the EU – that’s 173kg per person and equals about 20 per cent of food produced.Minimising this wastage is crucial for environmental protection, as well as food security... the use of just 1.5g of plastic film for wrapping a cucumber can extend its shelf life from three days to 14 days and selling grapes in plastic bags or trays has reduced in-store wastage of grapes by 20 per cent.A lot of food is air freighted, so prolonging its shelf life has important benefits for the environment. It minimises waste and conserves all valuable resources involved from farm to shelf.Recent estimates from Zero Waste Scotland suggest that the carbon footprint of food waste generated can be higher than that of plastic. Specifically, 456,000 tonnes of food waste produced in Scottish households were found to contribute to around 1.9 million tonnes of CO2, three times higher than that of the 224,000 tonnes of plastic waste generated. Plastic packaging maintains food quality and safety. Food that is naturally wrapped in its own skin and can be safely transported and consumed without the need for single-use plastic packaging often draws attention. But research shows that these products appear to be sustainable only where short food supply chains exist. When food is transported from further away, as a lot is, plastic can play an important role in protecting it from becoming waste.Furthermore, plastic packaging is more flexible and lighter than alternatives such as glass and card. This reduces transportation costs and the carbon emissions that come with them."
