562
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
562 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
59438 readers
3017 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
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
This is such an uninformed take. Plastics are literally everywhere in modern life. Not just the store bags or straws and lids, but objects in the home like appliances, buckles on backpacks, medical devices, items we launch into space. It's not been shown to meaningfully decrease life expectancy and we may find ways to remove it from our bodies. Cold turkey and you essentially have no infrastructure to replace what is made with plastics.
There are places where it's absolutely necessary, there are places where it's inconvenient to get rid of but a good idea, and there are places where it's absolutely stupid to use plastic.
So it's an "uninformed take" when I know that 90% of plastics that make it to recycling plants aren't recycled, and that petroleum plastics are part of the driving factors leading us towards climate chaos?
Climate chaos is not mostly driven by consumer plastics. Burning of fossil fuels to generate power is and has been the largest contributor followed by agriculture. Plastics don't get recycled because.people don't even have a fundamental understanding of how recycling works. That's not the fault of the people, it's their governments. You and I using a reusable bag and water bottle doesn't make a dent in climate change. Until our energy shifts to nuclear we aren't going to be in a better spot. Renewables can supplement but are far away from being a replacement.
Reduction of emissions can't be the only thing we try. We have to do that and engineer ways to contain and scrub high pollution areas.
Even metals don't get recycled like they should because they don't get cleaned and dried.
We have to outengineer the problem at this point because we didn't engineer a cleaner path fifty years ago when we had the opportunity.
Had we leaned more heavily into nuclear the world would be better off.
Pursuing a useable fusion solution should be the focus of the effort for humanity. That alone can provide us the energy needed to shutdown fossil fuels power plants.
But we decided years ago the nuclear is the boogey man because it is too difficult for the average citizen to comprehend.
You don't even offer a viable solution. So yea, uninformed take. I'll stand by it.
Sorry, I didn't know I was tasked with singlehandedly solving our plastic problem. Either way, I did give a suggestion; replace all plastic with reusable objects made of reusable materials, or make them compostable.
The issue is you made a very extreme statement "We need to stop all plastic production" without actually knowing or understanding A) what plastics make up of the items we use in ALL sectors of our daily lives and B) how catastrophic it would be to stop all plastic production. Just like the knee-jerk reaction that caused plastic straws to be banned and replaced by paper straws in certain areas, and then we find out paper straws actually harm the environment more.
Like, your hot take sounds all good and noble like most virtue signaling statements do, but they also all don't consider any of the realities or ramifications, just like yours.
Also, your fixable solution isn't a solution at all. There's many life-saving plastics that cant be made from reusable or compositabke plastics.