When explorers first descended into the Mariana Trench, they were greeted by… a plastic bag.

Considering the amount of plastic in the ocean, this was kinda obvious

@joewilliams007 huh yeah. Not like that's the point or anything 🙄

Reminds me of this bit https://youtu.be/rld0KDcan_w

@hitko that's hillariosly well said by him =]

@ScriptCoded then what is? Maybe i just dont get it nevermind thenn

@joewilliams007 the point is don't litter in the ocean

recycle your fucking plastic

radicals will say “don't use plastic at all”, but I'm not among them and realize people don't like to rebuild their lives just because they were told to

@kiki you dont need to rebuild ur life omg. Just use paper instead of plastic bags and dont buy food that is ten times packed in plastic. Shouldnt be hard enough

@kiki annoying thing is we have all the tech to replace plastic bags with biodegradable alternatives. We just aren’t doing it because it would hurt bottom lines just a smidge

@jeeper mmmmm no. Most biodegradable alternatives are only biodegradable under very specific conditions in industrial composting facilities, otherwise they won't degrade any differently than regular plastic (which is usually the desired outcome, you don't want your packaging to start decomposing until you throw it away). There are some alternatives which are truly biodegradable (usually labelled as "home compostable"), but those aren't nearly as durable as plastic, and only suitable for a limited number of short-term applications because they will start decomposing when exposed to the elements.

@joewilliams007 i hate paper bags. They tear easily, cant hold weight, etc... Paper manufacturing and recycling aint exactly clean either.

Got myself a plastic bag for $2 and been using it for over 3 years pretty much everyday. Durability and long-term usage should be a factor too because this bag covered thousands paper bags i would need otherwise.

Plastic have many practical uses for it's long lasting properties. It's just it's use for food wrapping, straws, forks, plates etc. that should be reduced imho, but as long as people buy them I guess they will still produce them...

@qwwerty yes if u reuse ur plastic bags its the best ofc. But thats not what most ppl were doing

Just don't eat fish. Biggest contribution you can make. We can obsess about plastic straws (while lids of the beverages are still plastic) but the vast majority of plastic in the ocean is fishing gear. That gear also keeps killing fish for as long as it's there.

https://amp.theguardian.com/environ...

@hjk101 I tend to bealive that is not that simple as stopping eating fish. My logic goes like this : good I can just stop eating fish...but then again, other animals will still eat some of that fish and I might consume some of them...

@hitko I guess I should have specified single use plastics. Eg. If you have to pay 10-25 cents for a biodegradable “plastic” bag at the store or your Togo container has a cost due to being biodegradable, that’s a tax on the poor, yes, but it’s possibly the most worth-it of the current taxes on the poor, many of which are policy decisions that could be reversed.

@hitko actually no you just didn’t read my comment. It was just about plastic bags. I’m under no delusion that “plastic” in general can be replaced, but there are places that have already banned plastic bags please read

@jeeper The fuck you're talking about? You specifically said "replace plastic bags with biodegradable alternatives". I pointed out that biodegradable alternatives either aren't as durable as plastic, or they are only biodegradable under very specific conditions. "Replacing plastic bags with biodegradable alternatives" isn't happening because a) if you need a durable bag or container, "biodegradable" alternatives aren't really biodegradable unless they get processed at dedicated facilities, and b) truly biodegradable alternatives are no better than the existing solutions made of paper, which are both cheaper and easier to make. That's it, now put your bullshit in your reusable container and take it somewhere else.

@We3D I could be wrong but I think animal feed is created from fish grown in fish farms. Although they contribute to other problems, don't think plastic is the issue.
Not eating fish is a great contribution. But if you are willing to not eat any meat even better.

@hjk101 yep, u r probably correct about that, I started thinking of real example of my logic and coudn't be able to back it up :). I exclude of cource eating random animals feading naturally w/h sea fish

@kiki in reply to your comment about recycling, research how much of your plastic is actually recycled. Spoilers: it's about 5%

Turns out it's much cheaper to use new plastic than to melt down old stuff.

Only real use case for recycling plastic is to turn it into fibers and use it in things like plastic brooms and rugs. Unfortunately this just delays the process as these also go into the landfill soon and are no longer viable for recycling.

Alternatives to plastic are often pretty decent. In this case why not just a paper bag? It's what we used for many years before plastic bags were a thing. They work fine and tear basically just as often. I think there's tons of situations where using alternatives to plastic isn't radical in the slightest.

@AlgoRythm Exactly. It's really hard to separate different types of plastic for recycling, and it has to be done carefully because any contaminant will ruin the entire batch. Things like plastic bottles are easy, because they have a distinct look and feel and they're all made of the same material. The same goes for standardised plastic waste, e.g. McDonald's food containers, or industrial scraps where you know exactly what something's made of, but beyond that plastic becomes really hard to recycle, even if we "do everything right".

Some types of plastic are simply not possible to recycle at all (e.g. melamine, the stuff plastic kitchenware is often made of), a lot of plastic waste can't be sufficiently cleaned for recycling, many recycling processes don't scale (i.e. we can recycle X into Y, but we have too much X and there's only a limited marked for Y), and we haven't even touched the problem of composite materials.

@hitko I've even heard theories that the idea of plastic being recyclable at all is an oil company propaganda campaign to make people feel better about using plastic for everything.

Buuuut I won't get into that. Point is, plastic for all intents and purposes is basically the least recyclable material on the planet.

@AlgoRythm I mean it kinda is in theory, but in practice there's just way too many things that have to be just right. That bag of chips is recyclable - provided that you have several tons of such bags with no other contamination mixed in. And that you have the right machines. And that you get a continuous supply of those bags for recycling, so you can keep the process operating at a steady rate. Yeah right, not going to happen.

The problem is that people don't care about those details, they care about the superficial claims that those bags are recyclable.

But there is also the factor that many foods are just not offered in other materials and we don't have a choice when we want to eat them... it's kind of 50/50 problem of producers vs buyers

@hitko another huge issue is the fact that new plastic is cheap as hell. That's why we don't use glass or paper in the first place, and is definitely why nobody buys processed and recycled plastic in the second place.

If the original reason you're using plastic is because it's a cheap and quick material, you'll be damn sure not to pay for the entire process of recycling it.

Maybe if waste management authorities sold plastic at a loss in order to keep it out of their landfills it would be a good option. Unfortunately there's no reason to do this because:

-It's cheaper to just put them in landfills and we have no real shortage of landfill space
-Its really hard to justify the initial investment for the recycling machinery AND the ongoing loss due to production of plastics

Not to mention the fact that if recycled, the same product just ends up back in the hands of the waste authority again and becomes another loss.

The only solutions I see are either just using alternatives, or sci-fi stuff like having bacteria break it down for us (I heard something about plastic eating bacteria recently. Maybe those little bugs could make a usable product)

@We3D plastic containers only became popular in the 60s. Food was sold to people before then just fine

And honestly we don't need to drop plastic all together. There's no need. Single use containers won't actually kill our planet. The issue is the horrible waste that comes from the over-usage of them. Why grab a bag at the supermarket just to walk them:

-from the supermarket to your car
-from your car to your house

*That's all they do*

Why are so many things individually wrapped in plastic bags and then ALSO wrapped in a cardboard box? Things like that just don't need to be, and dropping them entirely would have no effect on people. We don't need to replace straws with flaccid paper tubes to save the world.

@AlgoRythm I've heard of the plasting eating bacteria too, but also heard that it's a still long process ( compared to what we can throw at them ). We have to boost them in order to use them and then control them to not eat everything that we still need. I've seen a field w/h trees full of plastic bags decorated by the wind and personally use canvas bag for years now. 2 of them in my backpack is all I need when shopping

@AlgoRythm Well, plastic is in many ways better than other materials - it doesn't break like glass, it doesn't weaken like paper, it doesn't react with various substances like metals, it's light and easy to shape, it can be tuned to have the desired elasticity and stiffness, and it's cheap. I really don't think plastic is problematic on its own, and I don't think the use of plastic should necessarily be avoided. For example, most plastic crates used for transportation end up chipped and melted into fresh creates, because it's a simple and efficient process, and moving a container of chipped plastic is way easier than moving lots of empty crates. The same goes for plastic soda bottles. What bothers me are the everyday consumables, like why the fuck can't I get a fresh sandwich or a candy bar wrapped in regular (or at least vax) paper? Why does it have to come in a plastic packaging which has absolutely 0 chance of getting recycled?

Why do stores only have plastic bags for groceries? Sure, you need to put a bunch of carrots in a bag and weigh them, but that bag is only ever meant to last until you bring them home and put them in the fridge! Also stuff like potato chips. They're not even *that* good, and they come in those bulky inflated bags to keep them from crushing. If there's one thing we can get rid of to help reduce pollution, it's snacks like chips, cotton candy, and [popped] popcorn. I mean all that plastic for what, 80 grams of actual product, and the bag is impossible to recycle? Hell no. We should also ban the use of plastic packaging where the sole purpose of plastic is to make the product more visible to increase the sales.