499
Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2024
499 points (99.0% liked)
News
23287 readers
3637 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Think the unthinkable- what if we not only still sold most of our beverages in recyclable glass bottles, what if we also offered money to recycle them?
Don't forget aluminum!
Aluminum is theoretically recyclable an unlimited number of times, so the cans are much less of an issue.
My point is aluminum and glass are much better than plastic.
I think one or the draw backs with aluminium cans though is they still have that plastic lining inside?
Coke cans and most pop for example still have plastic inside. Canada even recently made a paper wine bottle, but believe it or not, plastic bag inside a paper bottle.
When i was young we had glass bottles for everything.
Thank god for PET bottles.
PET is just as easily recyclable as glass and it doesnt break when the bottle falls or explode during temperature swings. Next to that its weighs not even 10% of a glass bottle thus saving a lot of transportation costs. Creating a PET bottle costs a fraction of a glass bottle. Nobody ever died because of a cut vein by a PET bottle. Glass on the other hand...
PET is way better for the environment then glass ever will be.
I lived in the 70s/80s as a kid and there are very good reasons why we stopped with glass. Glass bottles for pop sucked ass, big times.
And the recycle money scheme also works on PET bottles. I know that also for a fact. Why? I live in the EU. We're doing that for like... Forever.
In the end its not the companies who just jug it onto the roadside or dont recycle shit. It's us. We're the assholes. We find it too hard to put something in the right bin. We find it too hard having 4 bins at home for recycling. We find it too hard to just keep our waste with us in the car. Its nasty. Just open the window and throw it out.
Putting everything in glass will solve nothing. Then, instead of forever plastic we're left with forever glass. People are lazy assholes. Accept it and start work on that, not the symptoms.
And maybe... Maybe Carlin was right about plastic. (if you dont know what im talking about, which I cannot believe, search "carlin earth plastic" on YouTube. And choose the longest one for the entire sketch)
I get your point about PET bottles needing less energy to make and transport, but that is only looking at the energy use and co2 pollution.
You absolutely right there, but the article focuses on microplastics, another huge issue.
Is the microplastics issue worse than the co2 issue?
I am tempted to say "depends", we don't fully know the health impact of being exposed to microplastics constantly. We don't know the long term effects of a planet being covered in microplastics, but it doesn't look brilliant.
So you can't say thay PET is outright better for the environment than glass.
PET is better in some ways, glass it better in others, which will win, no idea...
The real issue is: single servings are wasteful. If you make more food at home you'll save money, eat healthier, and use less plastic and energy.
I think you have to hike through largely untouched forests to a very remote lake to find sharp glass shards scattered across the little beach to realize that glass maybe isn't the most environmentally-sound magic-solution that some people would like to think. It can be just as (and much worse) strong at causing ecological catastrophies that are incredibly expensive to clean up.
The symptoms are: littered streets, nature.
The causes: fuckfaced fuckwads for people. In all areas of society.
This will hopefully be the dumbest thing I read today. But I assume this is a troll or a PR person.
This is not true.
Great substantiation. Thanks for that clear insight.
My insight is that it's my area of expertise, it is clearly not yours.
Hahaha, great one.