It’s a bit frustrating how difficult (near impossible) it can be to not buy plastic products. I try to avoid it as much as possible but more often than not, the only option (other than not being a consumer) is to purchase a product contained in plastic.
I’ll use the simple example of dental floss. When I was younger, you could purchase dental floss in a small circular metal container. Today, almost every option of dental floss available for purchase is in an often oversized / non-recyclable plastic container with non-recyclable plastic packaging.
This actually prompted me to once again go on the hunt for that little metal container of dental floss from my youth, and I actually found an option! A US company called Poh sells dental floss in metal container. Just thought I’d share, for anyone else that is dumbfounded when they have to buy more plastic wrapped plastic products to practice good dental hygiene.
joules77 · 6m ago
First world probs. Check who uses Dental Floss in the rest of the world.
moffkalast · 5m ago
Plastic is magic. Non-reactive, sterile, cheap, strong, lightweight, an electrical isolator. Using something like metal instead of it is complete utter madness from a product design standpoint. Something like corn based PLA is probably still the more cost effective option.
willguest · 52m ago
> A norm around consensus-based decision-making discouraged compromise from all countries
So, a maladaptive systemic influence was noted, but they continued to focus on lower-level discussions around plastics. When will we start to see that it is the communication protocols that are driving this failure, and that good-faith bargaining is a fallacy, when there is profit to be made? I would like to know how this is being addressed, and which other proposals have been made that represent alternative routes to progress - specifically ones that do not require vested interest to forego their short-term benefits in favour of others' long-term needs.
> But only one speaker was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting
If the observers' voices are so important, why schedule them for the very end? Yet another structural failing that demonstrates that the scale of thinking and organisation being employed is insufficient for the stated task.
yyyk · 1h ago
They weren't really trying. Once you give oil-producing states a veto the result is obvious. If they were serious, EU and others would negotiate a separate treaty and then maybe get others to join.
tonydav · 1h ago
If the EU really wanted an agreement, there would have been an agreement.
Put tarrifs on all trade with non compliant nations and their partners.
It's not just the oil states, it's almost all of them.
jasonsb · 45m ago
This is the correct answer. It's really sad to see that the west is just a propaganda machine. We don't need the oil states to end plastic or whatnot in our countries. But we sure love to point fingers at various nations in search of a scapegoat.
Ygg2 · 1h ago
Seeing China criticize Gulf states for torpedoing the agreement is sure something.
thrown-0825 · 39m ago
EU only cares to the degree that is necessary to virtue signal to its citizens.
They are still buying natural gas from Russia at record levels lmao.
HPsquared · 1h ago
Plastics aren't a problem if people actually put them in the bin, and they are buried / recycled / burned. The problem is littering and poor waste management.
You can solve plastic pollution in two ways. Either crackdown on inappropriate waste disposal, or eliminate the use of plastics. One is actually possible, the other isn't.
Edit: although to be fair there are a range of "harm reduction" type measures. But if you focus on those, you might solve 10% of the problem and just drain energy from actually solving waste management.
ch0wn · 23m ago
> Plastics aren't a problem if people actually put them in the bin, and they are buried / recycled / burned.
Only 9% of all plastics ever produced has been recycled. 100% is impossible due to the various composite materials that exist.
Landfills don't work in many places in the world due to lack of space and are expensive, hard to manage and come with methane emissions. Burning is obviously the same as burning fossil fuels and cannot happen if we want to keep our planet habitable. It also happens almost always in poor communities that suffer health consequences because of it.
Even if the disposal was somehow magically solved, we still have the problem with production. Plastics are a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and are expected to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030. Cracker plants for plastics production are also usually placed near communities of colour or in developing countries and create toxic conditions for life around them.
Plastics are a problem. Regardless of the disposal.
chrz · 9m ago
It is a problem even with 100% recycling if we are talking about food.
Sharlin · 45m ago
I doubt either of those is really possible. The worst offenders are countries with little resources for enforcement (at least unless it threatens tourism income). It’s still needed, but at the same time we have to work towards a big reduction in our addiction to expendable, single-use plastic products. Disposal of plastic by burning cannot be a long-term solution, either, as long as almost all of it is made of fossil hydrocarbons.
andrepd · 30m ago
Developed countries generate an order of magnitude more waste per capita. It seems unfair to blame poorer countries.
Dylan16807 · 21m ago
We make more waste but we don't put it in rivers.
evrimoztamur · 17m ago
We instead ship it to poorer countries for them to put it in their rivers.
bawolff · 1h ago
> ... senior policy officer for the U.S. nonprofit Society of Native Nations, which has advocated that the treaty include specific language on Indigenous peoples’ rights and the use of Indigenous science.
things like polynesian ocean navigation methods,
and various land management practices to creat fire breaks, and promote different species benificial to there needs, inuit technolgy's that are very specialised for survival in the far north, and include the totaly indipendent development of the screw thread fastener, other far north technologys exist accross the polar regions.
There is a very very ling list of things that were explored and refined, and developed into the basic framework that we call science now.....ceramics are ancient, but were developed many times in far flung places through ,what apears to be an inate drive to understand and explore our world, test our ideas and impliment those in some way benificial to our survival and comfort. They has science, that existed in a pure meritocracy,certain studys into lithic ,pigment, and fibre technologys have outlasted the species that started them, but have been continious and in some sense are ongoing today more than 1 million years later....no break.
As there is now mountains of video of other species useing tools and solving problems, the question for "modern science" is to find out how much specific information is pre loaded into our DNA, along with the drive to find more information.
Which then begs the question is "science" instinctual rather than a process?
forgetfreeman · 1h ago
No surprise there. Making oil producers part of the discussion isn't exactly what a serious effort to curtail plastic production looks like.
xyzal · 58m ago
This is the logic of yeast. Optimize locally until you drown in your own shit.
userbinator · 48m ago
Plastics were not a problem until the radical environmentalists found their new target. I remember when they were strongly against paper products and "use plastic, save trees" was a popular slogan.
we have got to stop the production of plastic
Look back to the early 19th century if you want to know what it's like to live in a "world without plastic".
AlecSchueler · 45m ago
We learned about microplastics and updated our worldviews? We saw the oceans become saturated with plastic waste and thought again?
People believed different things in the past because they had a different understanding of the world. Not sure why you would find that surprising or so contentious as to frame it as a purely radical action.
ch0wn · 19m ago
What exactly makes an environmentalist "radical" in your mind? Is it reading studies about planetary boundaries and the effects on micro plastics pollution?
I’ll use the simple example of dental floss. When I was younger, you could purchase dental floss in a small circular metal container. Today, almost every option of dental floss available for purchase is in an often oversized / non-recyclable plastic container with non-recyclable plastic packaging.
This actually prompted me to once again go on the hunt for that little metal container of dental floss from my youth, and I actually found an option! A US company called Poh sells dental floss in metal container. Just thought I’d share, for anyone else that is dumbfounded when they have to buy more plastic wrapped plastic products to practice good dental hygiene.
So, a maladaptive systemic influence was noted, but they continued to focus on lower-level discussions around plastics. When will we start to see that it is the communication protocols that are driving this failure, and that good-faith bargaining is a fallacy, when there is profit to be made? I would like to know how this is being addressed, and which other proposals have been made that represent alternative routes to progress - specifically ones that do not require vested interest to forego their short-term benefits in favour of others' long-term needs.
> But only one speaker was able to give a statement before the United States and Kuwait asked the chair to cut them off and conclude the meeting
If the observers' voices are so important, why schedule them for the very end? Yet another structural failing that demonstrates that the scale of thinking and organisation being employed is insufficient for the stated task.
Put tarrifs on all trade with non compliant nations and their partners.
It's not just the oil states, it's almost all of them.
They are still buying natural gas from Russia at record levels lmao.
You can solve plastic pollution in two ways. Either crackdown on inappropriate waste disposal, or eliminate the use of plastics. One is actually possible, the other isn't.
Edit: although to be fair there are a range of "harm reduction" type measures. But if you focus on those, you might solve 10% of the problem and just drain energy from actually solving waste management.
Only 9% of all plastics ever produced has been recycled. 100% is impossible due to the various composite materials that exist.
Landfills don't work in many places in the world due to lack of space and are expensive, hard to manage and come with methane emissions. Burning is obviously the same as burning fossil fuels and cannot happen if we want to keep our planet habitable. It also happens almost always in poor communities that suffer health consequences because of it.
Even if the disposal was somehow magically solved, we still have the problem with production. Plastics are a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and are expected to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030. Cracker plants for plastics production are also usually placed near communities of colour or in developing countries and create toxic conditions for life around them.
Plastics are a problem. Regardless of the disposal.
What is indigenous science?
we have got to stop the production of plastic
Look back to the early 19th century if you want to know what it's like to live in a "world without plastic".
People believed different things in the past because they had a different understanding of the world. Not sure why you would find that surprising or so contentious as to frame it as a purely radical action.