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- Hacker News
- by bensyverson
- the article and most comments here are focused in the wrong direction.
To me the real and only question is, can burying trash in landfills be made environmentally safe, and is it sustainable enough that we can do it for the next 100 years after which solar powered robots can mine those goldmines for new uses?
my time on earth is limited, and I'd prefer not to spend it handling trash; this waste of human life and potential is an irretrievable cost. I'd prefer not to even have had it dominating and skewing politics since the 1970s. Leisure time before you die is precious, that's something we can all agree on.
by fsckboy - That's fine if said trash actually ends up in the landfill. When it ends up ont the grass next to the parking lot is when you start to get the idea that we're all living in each others filth.
Also I disagree that energy should be the item to minimize. It makes sense if you are burning stuff for it, but we've known how to get free energy from the sky for quite a while.
- Proper recycling improves national security and the well-being of their citizens.
Good example is South Korea. They were devastated after continual war in the 1950s. So they implemented mandatory recycling. Food waste goings into bin A, metals into bin B, plastics into bin C, ... This allows for reducing the cost of recycling by presorting items. It helped them rebuild and become stronger. To this day they still properly separate their garbage to ease recycling.
Recycling food waste and scraps means creating a nutrient rich fertilize resource. Tossing them into a land fill removes nutrients from the food chain. USA food has less nutrients than years past because of the push for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
by yndoendo - The language gives off some climate denialist vibes, but the substance is nonetheless true - recycling become both a magical word which is forbidden to be challenged on merit, and it also become a crude hammer to just bash peons to distract from real problems and real solutions. I also appreciate that finally someone says that DAC should happen as a more effective climate change tool.
Lately I'm getting a feel that it's becoming impossible to be a progressive person and criticize some parts of global greenwashing initiatives. One either need to blindly follow the gospel of 12 recycle bins and other inane ideas, or be shut down as a "climate change denier" because one dared to disagree on something.
by Yizahi - A question I've often wondered: is the "cost" of bad recycling higher or lower than the cost of not recycling?
We've moved a few times over the years and it's often surprising what is and isn't recyclable in different jurisdictions. This means I often find myself putting something into the recycle that isn't recyclable in my current jurisdiction.
Is this worse than just not recycling, let's say on a per unit basis? I.e. is one unit of recyclable material in the landfill more or less bad than one unit of trash in the recycling pipeline?
Not sure there's an answer, but it's a question I've pondered often.
- This author does what other pro-industry mouthpieces do: 1. Reference a real scientific study with a genuine but conditional result, 2. Remove the qualifications associated with the study, so they can 3. Make a much stronger rhetorical conclusion.
Or they simply willfully misreport the results.It's exhausting exercise to have to continuously fact-check these shills. Here's just one example from the article:
"Approximately a hundred rivers, mostly in South and South-East Asia, account for half of ocean plastic."
That is not supported by the cited study. Earlier models estimated highly concentrated emissions; the cited paper concluded that emissions were distributed among far more rivers than previously thought.The cited paper actually helped overturn the older “a handful of rivers cause nearly everything” story. Yet the article uses it to tell essentially that same concentrated-source story.
Also, not "Half of ocean plastic." The paper actually says: “More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global _riverine plastic emissions_ into the ocean." They did not measure half of all plastic in the ocean. The paper modeled annual floating macroplastic (not microplastics) emissions from rivers to ocean. That is different from: "all plastic already present in the ocean or "all plastic entering the ocean from every source".
by natex - As someone who works in sustainability, and life cycle analysis, it's quite frustrating to see someone who is clearly not technically trained lay out an argument for single-use based on LCA data. Establishing a functional unit is critical for this type of analysis, otherwise yeah, it looks like every single-use item is "more sustainable" than a reusable. That isn't actually how you measure a sustainability scenario in this context. Also, the simplification of these vastly complex problems being presented as if we have been over reacting or too dumb to solve them -- be, as the kids say, so for real. It is exhausting to have non-technical sustainability folks write these articles as if they've provided some insight on how simple this all can be, as if we eggheads got too caught up in our science textbooks. Now we have to spend time undoing the perception that "it's just so simple, landfills and single use aren't that bad" instead of moving forward into better systems and effective action. Either spend 5 minutes talking with someone who actually works in sustainability or don't write these nonsense articles.by sustainalady