Comment by Aboutplants
2 hours ago
The argument can be made, and I’m basically right there, is that we shouldn’t be recycling any plastics period. The energy, waste water, micro plastic production, toxic chemicals, etc involved in any plastic recycling that it is so much worse than simply throwing all Plastic into landfills and use virgin plastic for when you need to use it. The micro plastic pollution that is produced through plastic recycling is astonishing
And that’s only the plastic that isn’t shipped to third world countries to be piled up in their countryside
We are already burning coal for power generation, whether we like it or not. I have wondered why we don't "recycle" plastic by shoveling it into the same furnace and a) get some energy out of it, and b) solve the landfill problem. That should be carbon neutral, since burning X tons of plastic is X tons of coal we didn't burn.
You mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration?
At family gatherings here it's a typical argument for why there's allegedly no point separating out plastics: the recycling bin allegedly also ends up there. Nobody ever has a source for me though so take that for what it's worth, but it seems to generally be a thing
TIL incineration can involve power generation. I am familiar with the term, but had assumed incineration was basically endothermic and wasteful.
We need to change the law to reduce regulations and introduce a principle of unlimited liability instead.
These things have to be fixed at the incentive layer. Self-regulation is the best form of regulation, by far.
Any discarded plastic found outside of a landfill should be tallied and result in a fine for the company which produced the plastic.
If a person is caught discarding a plastic bottle (littering), they should receive a fine as normal but the company should also be fined a portion of the liability.
The company knows very well that some percentage of the plastic they sell will end up in nature. They know this for a fact... And yet they choose to keep producing plastic packaging when cleaner alternatives exist; I.e. tin cans and glass bottles.
We've been completely brainwashed by the cult of 'limited liability'. It's a horrible idea. The words themselves tell you everything. Right there in front of your face. The liability is limited... It means the liability is externalized. This construct should never have been allowed.
Now with AI and the externalized harms which will result from it, this construct is more important than ever. Lives are at stake.
Once we start assigning partial liability to every harm. Eventually, we'll be able to collectively identify all of them; they will become so rare that they will stand out like a sore thumb.
Imagine; all the people who are currently messing up the political system with useless bureaucracy and toxic ideologies could actually be useful to society. Instead of identifying each other's genders, orientations and emotional triggers, they could be identifying social and environmental harms and holding companies accountable.