Plastic...is it too late?

[Talk2Me]

Originally Posted by hubcapsc

But the reality is that a significant percentage of this plastic will on its way to the landfill get diverted and feed into waterways and eventually the ocean.

???

It is the stuff that people don't throw in the trash and that doesn't
get hauled to the land fill that is the problem. That stuff in the ditch
that's going to end up in the creek didn't blow off the garbage truck,
some moron threw it out his window...

-Mike

^^THIS

Unfortunately waste disposal and stupid humans are opposing forces and the idiots are clearly winning. Too late? Oh yeah.

[Steve-arino]

Unless there is an actual $ cost to the people/communities/countries polluting our world there is going to be very slow environmental progress (and a lot more pollution of all types) over time.

That's reality.

[Cypress Knee]

I believe that Mother Earth has tremendous recuperative powers to repair damages to the ecosystem. Remember the oil-eating microbes that emerged from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico to clean up the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Or how the skies suddenly became clear two weeks after the pandemic lockdown began with the sudden lack of aircraft and automobiles spewing emissions into the air?

I don't have as much faith in the human race take pro-active initiatives to save itself from self destruction. However, I am certain that once we are gone some other form of life will emerge to carry on until the day some five billion years from now that our Sun turns into a red giant star and consumes the Earth.

I visited Slab City, CA, yesterday, billed as the last free place on Earth. It is probably best known for Salvation Mountain, a thirty foot tall artificial hill painted with religious slogans on latex paint. It also has a reputation for a lot of other avant-garde art.

Let me tell our experience there, for just an hour or so. People who live totally free in an area without rules or laws will trash their own living space. Most of the pictures you see of Slab City are either the mountain or other piece of art (?). Our impression: the place is a garbage dump.

[fazool]

We live in a closed system.....like a goldfish in a fishbowl.

Nothing comes in and nothing goes out.

We simply transform those materials into other materials temporarily.
Those "plastics" were in the ground before, as petroleum products. We didn't "add" nasty chemicals to the soil. We pulled one material out of the ground, transformed it and put it back.

The Earth will at some point consume all those things back again. Whether it is in mankind's existence or not is an unknown.

I hate littering. But what's the difference between throwing a piece of garbage on the ground or throwing it on the ground at a dump? It's all the same to the Earth. Actually it might be worse for the Earth lumping it all together and it could take longer to decompose and "revert". But we humans like it nice and hidden so we lump all the trash in one convenient out of site location called a dump.

The only true and real way to address such a problem is to package less and consume less. 99% of what we dispose is not goods but the packaging that goods come in.

[imwjl]

Originally Posted by SFCRetired

Sorry, but environmentalists try to solve one problem by creating another problem. Just like the war on oil and gas WILL create other problems, some of which we have no answers for.

I have said for years our biggest problem is the amount of trash we have and the way we are forced to dispose of it. I have recycled for years what I can. But it's not possible to recycle everything, so they better find a way to dispose of it.

Yeah, call me a pessimist too, I believe we are all putting a dagger in ourselves and it cannot be reversed.

What really gets under my skin is how they politicize things while solving absolutely nothing.

To be fair, maybe you are just describing where you live. The differences are measurable where things are managed in a way to do so.

I can't really make sense out of that coming from owning recycling firms, one of the people tasked with the matter for years by a city council, and managing infrastructure in an enterprise where we are extremely focused on all the negative exertnalities of our being in the food business.

It is even harder to believe when we are home owners in two very different areas. We see the differences and results. In our other location any trash collection, recycling, and sewage/septic has reverted to the minimum state and federal requirements. Far too many just burn and litter now. The CAFO operations are managed much differently on a by county difference. Where that got or stayed lax, well drilling has had to go up to 100-200 ft.

Are you also talking about a different country or continent? I want to stay from breaking any rules here but for my country (US) oil production has only increased significantly in recent years with most stuff/talk/policy/change about making sure we have it for where really needed - sustaining ammonia production for ag, pharma, cement making etc.....

I have a really strong be independent and like markets side so would appreciate knowing where a truly hands off approach has worked for what most consider public goods problems.

[imwjl]

Originally Posted by Cypress Knee

I believe that Mother Earth has tremendous recuperative powers to repair damages to the ecosystem. Remember the oil-eating microbes that emerged from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico to clean up the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Or how the skies suddenly became clear two weeks after the pandemic lockdown began with the sudden lack of aircraft and automobiles spewing emissions into the air?

I don't have as much faith in the human race take pro-active initiatives to save itself from self destruction. However, I am certain that once we are gone some other form of life will emerge to carry on until the day some five billion years from now that our Sun turns into a red giant star and consumes the Earth.

I visited Slab City, CA, yesterday, billed as the last free place on Earth. It is probably best known for Salvation Mountain, a thirty foot tall artificial hill painted with religious slogans on latex paint. It also has a reputation for a lot of other avant-garde art.

Let me tell our experience there, for just an hour or so. People who live totally free in an area without rules or laws will trash their own living space. Most of the pictures you see of Slab City are either the mountain or other piece of art (?). Our impression: the place is a garbage dump.

That looks like what areas near our other home are become if they're not near prime property. The group areas and compounds are sort of opposite of hippie like and some associated have been in serious trouble.

By our main home most of the municipalities have chosen to still recycle, and most of the CAFOs now use two manure digesters (below). It took decades of planning but now we have watersheds running clear, and some of the new subdivisions and exurb sorts of places have less trash.

The farms that have gotten on board are much cleaned up too. They've found it is all really good business.

[Dirk Hofman]

Originally Posted by SFCRetired

Sorry, but environmentalists try to solve one problem by creating another problem. Just like the war on oil and gas WILL create other problems, some of which we have no answers for.

...

What really gets under my skin is how they politicize things while solving absolutely nothing.

Hmmmm....maybe worth considering that lobbing inaccurate and inflammatory rhetoric like "the war on oil and gas", might be politicizing things.

Just a little.

[mike o]

Mother Earth will take of things itself. She’s been through 5 cataclysmic events in 4 billion years where each time life on was nearly completely eliminated. It will happen again. Look at how much damage humans have done to earth in the past 150 years. We know better but choose to do what is easy and cheap. Just how it is.

[Bob Womack]

Originally Posted by mike o

Mother Earth will take of things itself. She’s been through 5 cataclysmic events in 4 billion years where each time life on was nearly completely eliminated. It will happen again. Look at how much damage humans have done to earth in the past 150 years. We know better but choose to do what is easy and cheap. Just how it is.

My father was an environmental scientist whose work was used throughout the world by the U.S. government. We discussed the environment quite often and I actually worked for an environmental science company while I was in college. He brought up an interesting fact: The cataclysmic eruption of the Mt. Penatubo volcano in the Phillipines in 1991 spewed more pollution of all kinds into the atmosphere than had been produced by man from the start of industrial revolution until the present. Yet the earth neutralized this pollution and had cleared the atmosphere to normal levels within two years.

Amazing. Not well-reported, either.

Bob

[fitness1]

We have added 60% to the world population since '91 though.

I believe that will have an effect as well.

As David Wilcox said "if we aren't careful, we'll get right where we are headed"

[Talk2Me]

Originally Posted by Cypress Knee

I believe that Mother Earth has tremendous recuperative powers to repair damages to the ecosystem. Remember the oil-eating microbes that emerged from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico to clean up the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster? Or how the skies suddenly became clear two weeks after the pandemic lockdown began with the sudden lack of aircraft and automobiles spewing emissions into the air?

I don't have as much faith in the human race take pro-active initiatives to save itself from self destruction. However, I am certain that once we are gone some other form of life will emerge to carry on until the day some five billion years from now that our Sun turns into a red giant star and consumes the Earth.

I visited Slab City, CA, yesterday, billed as the last free place on Earth. It is probably best known for Salvation Mountain, a thirty foot tall artificial hill painted with religious slogans on latex paint. It also has a reputation for a lot of other avant-garde art.

Let me tell our experience there, for just an hour or so. People who live totally free in an area without rules or laws will trash their own living space. Most of the pictures you see of Slab City are either the mountain or other piece of art (?). Our impression: the place is a garbage dump.

A poor example if you're trying to equate pollution with the Slab City folks. They live so far off the grid that they have their own "laws" and (other than drug usage) there's very little crime. Remember also, they are not receiving service from any outside agencies. Thus no trash collection whatsoever which does mean that things get scattered about sometimes. I feel the need to mention they also actually have a "city dump" area where MOST people leave their garbage and there's an entire artists community there too that, from what I saw when I visited both, had NONE of the trash issues in your pictures.

[RJVB]

Originally Posted by imwjl

News in recent weeks and months has had more about the discovery of microplastics in our bodies and links to heart disease and strokes.

Not just microparticles, also nanoparticles which well be even harder/costlier to get rid of...

https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2309822

(no, I don't have a way around the paywall but maybe on of the authors has a reprint available online.)

[imwjl]

Originally Posted by Bob Womack

My father was an environmental scientist whose work was used throughout the world by the U.S. government. We discussed the environment quite often and I actually worked for an environmental science company while I was in college. He brought up an interesting fact: The cataclysmic eruption of the Mt. Penatubo volcano in the Phillipines in 1991 spewed more pollution of all kinds into the atmosphere than had been produced by man from the start of industrial revolution until the present. Yet the earth neutralized this pollution and had cleared the atmosphere to normal levels within two years.

Amazing. Not well-reported, either.

Bob

Bob, yes that was really interesting to me when that occurred but I've also caught the story used by pundits as a red herring so not sure of the intent here. It did take a little longer, and it left more localized damage. I was fascinated by all that.

That is not the specific plastics problem where that is showing up in unrelated discoveries. Moving from sky to below.... Tangents from the problems from CAFOs in wells in our state are yielding info that is not good. Long after start of the rust belt and other business changes have found more than the PFAS problems. The plastics are getting in aquifers. In addition to the "forever" or PFAS, microplastics from films, mulch and sewage plant effluence.

The institution with shooting rage were I'm a retired board member had $200,000+ higher costs to drill two new wells because that went into a 2nd layer of rock where the aquifer is still clean water plus enough.

What a shocker that we had to take such steps for clean water without fecal matter, oil and plastics where for generations you poke a 30-40 ft sand point in the ground or at worst spend an extra $5-6000 for a case well. One of the two new wells was high cap, but the huge cost was depth more than larger casing for one of the two wells.

The recent news about the plastics contributing to mortality with plaque got me more frustrated with the shape I see so much of my boomer cohort in.

Edit: I wanted to point out neat stuff I've learned from my friend who works in our sewage district. They are and hope to do more removal of plastics but we're also in a prosperous area influenced by one of the country's great universities. There's no will for anything like that were our other home is. It is the opposite as I said in an earlier post. Even where there is will it still needs a prosperous area to fund it.

[stokes1971]

"I still wouldn't go swimming in the East River along NYC...but it's better than it used to be."
I grew up in the 60's in a Bklyn waterfront area on the East River. We swam in it every summer all summer long. Didnt kill me or anybody I know except for Willie when he took a dare and dove off a warehouse on a pier. Cracked his cruller on some floating debris. It was probably the dirtiest its ever been back then. There was no sewer treatment plants in those days, you flushed your toilet right into the river. I credit those days to building the immune system I have today, George Carlin wasnt joking when he said that.

[Steve-arino]

Originally Posted by stokes1971

"I still wouldn't go swimming in the East River along NYC...but it's better than it used to be."
I grew up in the 60's in a Bklyn waterfront area on the East River. We swam in it every summer all summer long. Didnt kill me or anybody I know except for Willie when he took a dare and dove off a warehouse on a pier. Cracked his cruller on some floating debris. It was probably the dirtiest its ever been back then. There was no sewer treatment plants in those days, you flushed your toilet right into the river. I credit those days to building the immune system I have today, George Carlin wasnt joking when he said that.

Thank you - I needed a good laugh today. I went for a calcium heart scan the other day, my heart seems to be ok but they found a "ground glass nodule" on one of my lungs. I'm waiting for my primary dr. to call me back to discuss next steps. I'm a nervous wreck.