Microplastics in the sea

[barnakiel]

This is exactly where the problem is.


Bans and regulations are worth nothing. The EU is full of bans and regulations already.



Throwing garbage in the street is prohibited in Spain. Come look at the water in our marina during a weekend - it IS full of plastic bags and you see no one collecting these - neither boaters, nor marina crew! Unless you spot me. Or one very old Spanish guy who lives here close by. But that's just two old people picking up garbage thrown by maybe 200 hundred weekend visitors. NOT enough. 200:2. NOT ENOUGH.



Pragmatics.


We do not need more laws, bans and regulations. We have plenty of these already in the EU. We need more police, more control, higher penalties. People stop throwing garbage as soon as you penalize them enough. Look at Sweden, look at Singapore.



Sure. I would like to say "we need aware and conscious societies, educated, and empathic". But I am pragmatic, I can't see many nice people around doing anything for the environment. What I see is thousands of families with 3 cars each, consuming wildly. Polluting in complete bliss.



We need Singapore style laws - you spit in the street they cut off your tongue. Have you noticed how clean streets in Singapore are?


I can hear you and, emotionally, I am with you.


Too bad. I wish I would have had different experience of societies. Likely possible living in different places. Maybe Nordic places, not sure. But I am here in the Med / Africa and it is what it is.



Cheers,
b.

[Hardhead]

Ignorant people will always throw trash on the ground. Countries will always lack sufficient trash disposal, and recycling facilities. Including the US. Including every less fortunate country.

Biodegradable, or inert, single-use packaging is a common sense solution - that inherently helps to prevent these issues.

What is needed - is a profit motive - for a capitalistic, free market, economy to promote biodegradable, or inert packaging. That profit motive is supplied by a ban on non-biodegradable and/or non-inert single use packaging. It is the capitalistic, free market, solution - to the problem of non-biodegradable single-use plastic waste.

It allows the economy to evolve with maximum freedom, and maximum efficiency. Solutions are not specified, or specifically required - just that any alternative packaging meet the requirements of the ban. Dozens of alternatives are available to the free market - milk carton technology, recycled aluminum, single layer packaging (not endless double clam-shell secondary plastic packaging) - and unlimited other options, that modern technology has not yet invented - due to the current lack of a profit motive.

It's real capitalism 101.

We have the technology to now extract oil (3) miles down into the earth, after having already extracted all easily obtainable supplies less than 3 miles deep. We have the technology capacity to replace single-use, non-biodegradable, plastic packaging.

The solution does not need to be perfection --- it just needs to be better than what we know we have now. Right now -- we have extremely serious issues arising from microplastic contamination. The solutions will have down-sides, as does everything in life.

The solution will always evolve. It will always evolve quicker - if there is a profit motive to do so.

[S/V Adeline]

It was stated that consumers desire biodegradable packaging, this is probably true for most of us.

The absolute truth is we desire affordable biodegradable packaging.

When a family is living paycheck to paycheck, most only a few weeks from being homeless, small price changes make a huge difference.

Many a week after bills, food, and fueling the car for next week, the account balance has been <$5.

$$ extra for organic? Can't afford that. $$ extra for biodegradable? Can't afford that.

Sad facts are many people are forced to purchase whatever is cheapest to survive.

[Hardhead]

I believe that is a common misstatement of the issue. (Respectfully)

With a free market economy, maximum profit - REQUIRES minimum cost. We have a lot of smart people in the world, and many of them industrialists. You will not be paying more for packaging. The packaging market will evolve to minimum cost.

[S/V Adeline]

Originally Posted by Hardhead

I believe that is a common misstatement of the issue. (Respectfully)

With a free market economy, maximum profit - REQUIRES minimum cost. We have a lot of smart people in the world, and many of them industrialists. You will not be paying more for packaging. The packaging market will evolve to minimum cost.

I personally believe the 'minimum cost' is what brought us to where we are. When I owned my stores in the 80's and 90's, single use plastic bags were 1/10 the cost of biodegradable.
Today, you can buy approximately 100 single use bags for the cost of one reusable (still not biodegradable)

I don't see any changes in our future.

[Hardhead]

I'd respectfully submit - what brought us to where we are now - is a 30 year lag-time in seeing the real effects of the "new" throw-away plastic packaging mania. Markets evolve into things, and they later evolve away from them. Horse & buggy, lead paint, etc.

I'd respectfully submit - if something is a durable good - it should not need to be biodegradable or inert. Packaging intended to be thrown away, after (1) single use - should be biodegradable, or inert - as a matter of common sense. Like most regular commercial packaging, just 30 years ago.

I'd submit there is a simple, free-market, capitalisitic solution - to the growing issue of microplastics - if common sense is employed. The inherent good power of capitalism is being grossly distorted, as we see it today, IMO.

Total disregard for the human environment is not a usual tenant of capitalism. It's just the way it's practiced now.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by S/V Adeline

I don't see any changes in our future.

If you live long enough, you will either see the changes we choose to make, or the changes forced upon us for not choosing to change.

[S/V Adeline]

True enough, but I have lived long enough to see scientific evidence changed and manipulated for political and monetary gain. I see the lies spread via media bias to futher those agendas.

None of which has a place in this thread outside of microplastics.

But as hardhead stated, 30-40 years ago we went to plastic, because environmentalists wanted to preserve natural biodegradable resources.

Force it or choose it, change for changes sake is often shortsighted.
Hormones and genetic modification to increase plant and animal growth to mature both at a faster rate. And now human children mature (physically) at much younger rates than was typical. Shortsighted

Our generation will probably never learn the lasting effects of our parents mistakes.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by S/V Adeline

But as hardhead stated, 30-40 years ago we went to plastic, because environmentalists wanted to preserve natural biodegradable resources.

What? I was around then; there was no such thinking. The decision to use plastic for single-use disposable stuff was commercial and shortsighted.

[S/V Adeline]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

What? I was around then; there was no such thinking. The decision to use plastic for single-use disposable stuff was commercial and shortsighted.

You don't remember 'paper or plastic?' Take the plastic or more trees have to be cut down to create more paper?

You really don't remember that?

Everyone complained the plastics were not as durable as paper but it's a sacrifice we just have to make to save the trees...

Where did you grow up?

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by S/V Adeline

You don't remember 'paper or plastic?' Take the plastic or more trees have to be cut down to create more paper?

You really don't remember that?

Everyone complained the plastics were not as durable as paper but it's a sacrifice we just have to make to save the trees...

Where did you grow up?

Canada, and no I don't remember plastic being pushed as the 'greener' alternative over paper. But I could be wrong, and of course industry always tries to make a virtue out of a necessity (or a cheaper bag).


As per this article, the choice between paper or plastic bags isn't so clear-cut, but the best answer is neither; use reusable bags.


And of course, plastic bags are just a short chapter, and not the whole story of plastics in the sea.

[S/V Adeline]

Lake-effect,
In the US one of the most common things heard was using plastic to save trees. I believe that was before phrases like 'going green' were popular. This was before reusable bags were marketed and as a store owner I could purchase 10 of the most expensive plastic bags for the cost of 1 paper bag.
I stuck with paper.

Regardless of the paper plastic debate my only reason to chime in was about the monetary cost of biodegradable.

[boatman61]

Paper can be managed with fast growing pine and other species plantations, absorbing carbon in the process.
Single use plastics pollute as produced and continues long long after their single use.
As for regulations, ask the residents of Flint about that, or the towns in the Mid West where the tap water is so bad locals dare not even use it to clean their teeth.
Big Brother and the Corporations dont give a $h1t about the lip service regulations some of you so proudly wave, theyre printed on white paper.. and lets face it, if its not Greenbacked its worthless..

[landsend]

Reduce the population. Its the simplest, most effective method of solving all of our problems. Also the most politically impossible. Oh well.

[john61ct]

Originally Posted by S/V Adeline

But as hardhead stated, 30-40 years ago we went to plastic, because environmentalists wanted to preserve natural biodegradable resources.

Absolute hogwash!

Plastic and the chemical / oil industries were always the bête noire of greenies, long before Silent Spring and the first Earth Day.