Plastic bags and the environment?

[Moocow]

I ran across a statistic that 99% of the plastic bags we use end up in landfills...

Now I'm trying to figure out exactly what's wrong with that. Sure, plastic bags take a very very long time to break down, but how is that specifically harmful?
I've also read that as they break down they release toxins... like what? No one seems to specify. Someone mentioned that they release methane as they break down. So how does the quantity of methane released by plastic bags compare to the methane released by humans, cows, cars, or the rest of the animal kingdom?
I've also heard about animals choking on plastic bags and dying. Animals choke on all kinds of things and die. Are plastic bags a significant cause of any drop in populations? All animals on earth have evolved to overcome some of the most impossible obstacles. What makes us think they can't adapt to having some plastic in the environment?


So what I'm saying is, how terrible are plastic bags and other non biodegradable materials for the environment, realistically? I really want to know, because I have no knowledge of this.
If every day I'm going to be told that I'm an immoral piece of shit for doing or not doing some extremely minor task, I want to see the evidence for it.

 

[Maiken]

Spoiler

YouTube- Canvas Bags by Tim Minchin

I sometimes feel that all questions can be anwered with a Tim Minchin video

 

[Moocow]

Spoiler

YouTube- Canvas Bags by Tim Minchin

I sometimes feel that all questions can be anwered with a Tim Minchin video

Thanks, but that didn't really answer any of my questions.

 

[kantor1003]

I would really like to know as well.. as I almost believe that the only real concern people have against plastic in the environment is one of aesthetics.

 

[Tyria]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate

There was a similar problem in medical tubing with plasticizers being leached out. There's been a switch to have plasticizer free products to protect consumers.

 

[Kuu]

I had a long post for this thread and some damned flash shit made my browser crash >_<

In short:

Even if plastics did not involve lots of toxic chemicals in their production and degradation (which they do, for example Benzene), they'd still be a concern.

You talk about animals adapting against choking on plastic? Adaptation and evolution take considerable amounts of time. Let's all go poison and kill our food supplies and hope they will adapt before it becomes a major problem for us!

Plastic pollution is already a problem. Even if today plastic bags might not be (I don't have any numbers) a "significant cause of any drop in populations" I don't need any research or PhD to do the basic logic and realize that since plastics take thousands of years to degrade, the mass of plastic debris on the oceans will continue to expand if we continue producing it, and therefore even if it were not a problem today, eventually it will become a "significant" if not the major cause of death for many marine species.

We have the capacity of foresight. We should solve problems before they become major disasters, not wait around foolishly when we can see the shit in direct collision course with the fan.

Plastic bags are also a major cause of drainage clogging, leading to floods, and sewage spilling out. Really healthy stuff...


It's absolutely idiotic to use and produce hundreds of disposable plastic bags per year when we could use just a couple of reusable canvas bags.

 

[bananaphallus]

Some more info:

http://fakeplasticfish.com/2010/03/...a-bleak-picture-for-david-letterman-now-what/

http://www.algalita.org/charles_bio.html

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/08/090820-plastic-decomposes-oceans-seas.html

 

[Moocow]

Hmmm that's better.
It's asking a lot to expect a large portion of the population to take initiative and give up using plastic bags. This problem could be easily avoided if all grocery stores simply supplied reusable bags as the only option. Why can't they do that? Too expensive for the companies?

You know, most grocery stores have a sort of 'membership card' to get better deals on products. Why can't they just get rid of that and have membership bags? If you bring a bag, you qualify for discounts.

Maybe this will be the future purpose of the moon... a giant wasteland for all our plastic crap.

 

[Moocow]

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_plastic.html
There's a good video.

Ugh, that's gross. I guess my question is answered.

 

[Jah]

I'm sorry Kuu, I got to "mayor problem" in your post and had to comment.
You clearly know, from reading the rest of your post, the difference between major and mayor.

Sometimes bad grammar really stands out, like a pope's erection, and make everything else seem less important, even though it shouldn't.

 

[Polaris]

*jumps to Kuu's side*


*lets out terrifyingly menacing growl*


No-one picks on Kuu...............

 

[Kuu]

Jah: Fixed. It's of those annoying mistakes I make frequently, yes, even in the same post... . It doesn't help that in spanish "mayor" = english "major".

And actually, it isn't bad grammar, it's a spelling mistake... (AKA take that!)

Anyways... carry on peoples.

 

[Trebuchet]

Plastics are made of non-renewable resources (petroleum), many contain lots of toxins including xeno-estrogens such as BPA, and are inefficient to recycle.

Plastics are also lightweight, airtight, and keep food fresh longer. I don't think we should stop using plastic wrap for preservation and shipping of food or other perishables, because other packaging wouldn't do as good a job and would cost more to transport. It also makes great boxes for keeping food in the pantry or fridge and I have many such reusable boxes.

I do think that optional use of plastic should be reduced. I have had reusable cloth bags for nearly 6 years now, and based on one time when I went shopping while they were in the laundry, I estimate that I have avoided using about 1000 bags a year. (I do all the shopping for my family.) I have no idea how big a stack 6000 bags is but it sounds pretty good. I bring them into hardware stores and clothing stores and every other kind of store. Doing this took a couple of months to get used to it, because I kept leaving the bags in the car, but now it is just habit to open my trunk and grab bags as I head into any store.

Hmmm that's better.
It's asking a lot to expect a large portion of the population to take initiative and give up using plastic bags. This problem could be easily avoided if all grocery stores simply supplied reusable bags as the only option. Why can't they do that? Too expensive for the companies?

Moocow is right that it is a lot to ask people to decide to reuse bags on their own. It took some planning and initial expense and continuing attention for me to do it, and people have so much on their minds that they understandably want convenience.

If all grocery stores required reusable bags (available for sale at checkout), then of course people would have no choice. But it would have to be all stores. If Store A required reusable bags and Store B didn't, people would feel grumpy at the extra cost or inconvenience at Store A. They would feel manipulated or gouged or something. After 6 years of reusing bags, I've had a lot of conversations with clerk checkers and other customers about it. Everyone admires it verbally, but they don't do it much, and at most stores the clerks are unhappy when I hand them my bags. Canvas bags are slower to fill.

So yes, I think it is too expensive for the companies. They would lose business unless it was by legislation. Some stores encourage it without requiring it. Near me, Trader Joe has a raffle for people who bring in bags (I have never won), and Ralph's gives points for members who bring them, worth a nickel per bag. Those and a few other stores look happy when I bring my bags in, and I do my shopping there because of it. I see other shoppers with their own bags there, too, though not the majority.

You know, most grocery stores have a sort of 'membership card' to get better deals on products. Why can't they just get rid of that and have membership bags? If you bring a bag, you qualify for discounts.

I like it, except for the bags having to be from the store. I have 14 assorted bags from Trader Joe (two insulated), one from a science museum, two from a shopping mall special event, a few that were gifts and don't have logos on them, etc. I would hate to have to buy a separate set for every place I shop. I have no shame about bringing in a Trader Joe bag to shop at Ralph's. Also, it would be a bummer for the clerks to have to check where a bag was purchased. But discounts for bags are being used at various places. I just don't know how well it is working.

At least in the suburban US, we aren't set up for reusing very well. For example, when I finish a dozen eggs, the egg crate is usually in perfect shape. Eggs don't break very often, and egg crates are strong. I'd be happy to bring them to the store and put my new eggs in the same box, but they aren't set up to do that. So I throw it in the recycling bin and get a new box. Same with many other products. And while I do buy a lot of produce at a local farm, I'm not going to go driving all over the southland to pick up groceries at the source, when it is much more efficient that they were sent to my local market. Plastic bags are optional plastic but there are a lot of applications that aren't optional to the typical consumer.

 

[Moocow]

It's a shame that it seems so difficult to get cooperation, asking so little of companies.

Maybe I'm starting to push the idea into the wrong territory but... if a government agency produced universally recognized shopping bags and other things of that sort to cut down on plastic, then gave small tax breaks for stores that change their policy to give customers benefits for using those bags, would it be enough to encourage them?
Stores would get a tax break and eventually save money by no longer needing to produce plastic bags.

 

[Trebuchet]

It's a shame that it seems so difficult to get cooperation, asking so little of companies.

Maybe I'm starting to push the idea into the wrong territory but... if a government agency produced universally recognized shopping bags and other things of that sort to cut down on plastic, then gave small tax breaks for stores that change their policy to give customers benefits for using those bags, would it be enough to encourage them?
Stores would get a tax break and eventually save money by no longer needing to produce plastic bags.

I like it. Write your Representative or state legislator. Maybe it will happen. I think most stores, around here anyway, already produces bags, so it wouldn't have to be a gov't agency. People would just have to buy a bunch of bags once. They range from free to about $10 depending on the bag, but most are $1 to $3 that I have seen.

 

[Melkor]

Is this *really* the most interesting and pressing issue we should be discussing?

We're going downhill alright.

 

[Jah]

Jah: Fixed. It's of those annoying mistakes I make frequently, yes, even in the same post... . It doesn't help that in spanish "mayor" = english "major".

And actually, it isn't bad grammar, it's a spelling mistake... (AKA take that!)

Anyways... carry on peoples.

Again, I'm sorry I had to point it out, as I realized quickly by reading the rest of your post that it was just typing.
As I said, sometimes I just have to point such things out, and may end up completely blind to the other qualities and correct usages throughout the rest of the post, especially when tired.

You're still a good.
I did bad.

 

[Moocow]

Is this *really* the most interesting and pressing issue we should be discussing?

We're going downhill alright.

jee, you're right, maybe we ought to only dedicate all the threads on this forum to how to solve INTP depression! Forget the slow, gradual poisoning of every ecosystem on earth.

 

[Trebuchet]

Is this *really* the most interesting and pressing issue we should be discussing?

We're going downhill alright.

It is important enough for cities and countries worldwide to have debated and introduced legislation about it - Taiwan outlawed plastic bags, I understand. It is important enough to me that I have seriously inconvenienced myself for years to avoid making the problem worse, or leaving a worse world for my daughter. It is a primary threat to extremely endangered sea turtles. It is a waste of millions of barrels of oil. It is one of the easiest ways to reduce waste and thus important to encourage.

Is it the most interesting and pressing issue? Since it is in the Science and Technology section, I do think it is way up there. It wouldn't make any sense in the Human Relationship threads.

But even if it isn't the most interesting and pressing topic, what is? Can't there be more than one interesting and pressing topic? Is frivolity so bad?

 

[420MuNkEy]

SCIENCE!
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2008/05/science-fair-pr/

 

[Maiken]

Thanks, but that didn't really answer any of my questions.

Ha ha, sorry I should know better than to try to be funny when I'm really tired.

 

[diver]

Plastic bag bans are not a good idea (See http://www.biodeg.org/position-papers/Plastic-bag-bans/?domain=biodeg.org ) and they all need to be the subject of a detailed Environmental Impact Report.
Plastic as a marine issue: As an experienced international diving instructor and marine biologist, I think the best change we can make is to require all short-life plastic to be oxo-biodegradable, as the UAE has recently done. It would then degrade and disappear (not just fragment) long before it ever reached an ocean garbage patch.
I wonder how many of your anti-plastic readers regularly spend time underwater and truly understand the socio-economic factors which have lead to this situation in the first place? Banning plastic will not work –visit a developing nation or one of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) with highly populous cities and rapid economic growth and try to tell them why they should ban a material which is so useful, especially for the poorest people?
As a pro-environmentalist I feel it is important not to jump onto the ‘environmental wagon’ and immediately advocate the benefits of banning plastic – surely as a scientist it is much more important to identify the behavioural traits and consider the contribution which could be made by new technology.

 

[WeAreTheStrange]

YouTube- George Carlin on The Environment (HQ)


the late George Carlin everyone.

 

[A22]

YouTube - A Majestosa Sacola de Plástico - The Majestic Plastic Bag (Legendado Pt BR)

Single-use plastic bags are a big problem because, besides creating a huge amount of garbage that takes a long time to decompose, it's taken to rivers by the rain/wind and may clog sewers. It's also - as shown by the video - taken to the pacific ocean by the wind and fishes eat that plastic. A study (Life Cycle Assesment of Supermarket Carrier Bags) shows that ecobags (canvas?) are worst for the enviroment than plastic bags. So what should be used/done? I guess the best alternatives are biodegradable/oxybiodegradable bags or cardboard boxes. Since in most undeveloped countries there are no (or few) recycling.

Most people here use it as trash bags (only a few people use the black heavy duty trash bags). If the plastic bags were biodegradable that would be of great help, wouldn't it?

 

[Dr. Freeman]

There is no way this is true!

I burn at least half of my plastic bags.

Spoiler

 

[420MuNkEy]

If the plastic bags were biodegradable

They are.

 

[Cogwulf]

First of all, if all plastic bags ended up in landfill, there would be no problems like animals being choked or drains clogging. These are problems due to improper disposal, they are not unavoidable consequences of using plastic bags.

Plastic bags now are being made incredibly thin, the energy and materials cost per bag is minuscule. Re-usable bags represent probably at least a hundred disposable plastic bags, but many people aren't good at looking after re-usable bags and don't keep them for long enough.
Disposable plastic bags are reusable. not indefinitely, but at least a couple of times. And furthermore they're useful for using in bins, otherwise it means buying separete bins liners.

And plastic bags don't leach phthalates. These chemicals are used in PVC bags, not disposable bags, and have been found in trace amounts plastic bottles. They are not found in plastic bags. I don't think disposable plastic bags contain any additives at all, but I can't find any proof. Plastic bags may produce some toxic chemicals as they break down, but the process is slow, and depending where the landfill is situated, very little should reach water tables.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

As an environmental engineer, my professional opinion is that plastic bags are harmless. It is the paper bags you must watch out for. If you think there is a problem you can pay me to fix it. XD

I rofled.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

ay produce some toxic chemicals as they break down, but the process is slow, and depending where the landfill is situated, very little should reach water tables.

Landfills normally have an impermeable underlay made out of geotextiles.

 

[Cogwulf]

Landfills normally have an impermeable underlay made out of geotextiles.

I didn't know that, very interesting. Though what is the stability of the underlay over a few hundred years?

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

I didn't know that, very interesting. Though what is the stability of the underlay over a few hundred years?

Depends on the material. High tech landfills have leachate collection and treatment systems. Other landfills burn the methane produced to generate electricity. Generally plastic degrades. Paper? Not so well. I found a 50 year old news paper which was still legible.

 

[Aramea]

Thanks for all the information, Proxy. I save and reuse my plastic bags where possible. It is common sense to use them as opposed to throwing them out and buying others. They are handy for dumping little wastebaskets in the house and collecting soda bottles and candy wrappers that my husband can't be bothered with putting in the trash directly. They tend to pile up though even with reuse so I drag them to the store for recycling. What they actually do with them I don't know or care.

Most cheap carpet in the US is made out of recycled plastic (not bags, probably bottles). It's decent stuff and can handle your average family abuse pretty well. You can use bleach on it.

Recycling has come a long way in the last few decades and it makes sense to do it. Some places will even provide garden compost from organic waste. Much crap still makes it to the landfill, but as Proxy notes, it is often burned for energy.

 

[EditorOne]

1. Put a newspaper in sunlight and it will crumble within days.
2. Believe it or not, the plastic bag industry has a lobbyist and a lawyer on call. Ran into them when my zealous and crusading editorial writer wrote up an editorial applauding canvas bags and suggesting everyone follow the lead of, I think, California, and somehow make plastic bags less attractive with a surcharge or tariff or something, or passed a law outlawing them, can't remember. Anyway, within a couple of days I got a nasty email threatening the newspaper with a lawsuit, and spent some time on the phone with an officious prick with an English accent. What they thought was they were dealing with a little 20,000 newspaper they could stomp down and intimidate. They found out two things: 1. I don't intimidate and 2. They were up against Dow Jones, which, despite many sadly obvious shortcomings, has always had the overwhelmingly good sense to tell anyone who shows up shouting "Lawsuit! Libel!" to stuff it up their butts and light it. But, in answer the question farther up, there's an entire industry counting on us doing the wrong thing for aesthetics and the environment.
3. We also tested water at one point for a newspaper series. What we found was that water sold in individual disposable plastic bottles had a lower pH than municipal tap water, private, untreated well water, or water in glass bottles. Leave the plastic water bottle in the sunlight and the pH goes down more. Draw your own conclusion about how "inert" plastic containers really are. We're talking dropping a full number on the pH scale here, not teensy bits. (Our municipal system sells "deep well" water to big bottlers like Deer Park. It goes out of here in huge trucks, tasting fine. It comes back in plastic bottles and tastes like battery acid.)
Plastic is good for lots of stuff. Personally I think it's too valuable to waste on things like fuel and trash bags.

 

[Aramea]

EditorOne, I confess to failing at reusable canvas bags. I have tons of them, bought at POS whilst purchasing things. They aren't too expensive and they hold more than the plastic. They dont split and break 2 of the six beers in the six pack I just bought. I just forget to bring them back in the next time. I finally quit buying them to just pile up in the garage. I am going to give it another try per the post above me that did say it took a few months.

As for newspaper, a good way to dispose of it is in the garden. Many on my rose forum use it as mulch and it goes away in a season.

 

[EditorOne]

Do you have a car? I just leave mine in the car so they're ready whenever I stop at the market.

Most newspapers today are printed on paper manufactured by a process that leaves a faint residue of sulfuric acid. It's not enoughtto notice or hurt anything, but sunlight excites it a bit and it chews up the paper fibers some more, which is what it did during the manufacturing process. It turns yellow, then crumbles. It happens so fast someone away on a week's vacation who forgets to cancel delivery will see a marked difference in the color of the papers thrown in the driveway over that week.
(Most first-world newspapers are also printed with vegetable oil ink or soy ink, so using them in gardens is not harmful to the tomatoes or whatever. )

 

[Aramea]

Yep, gonna need to do that thing I'm not so good at - planning. I CAN be a creature of habit though, so it is worth another try. The plastic bag thing is a pet peeve of mine since it is basically a waste most of the time. If you buy a tube of lip balm the dumbshit behind the counter will put it in a huge sack so you can take it back out when you get to the car or home. I started politely handing the bag back to the cashier. LOL, half the time they say "are you sure".

Don't get me started on the GA law that says alcohol must be in a bag to leave the store, wtf. I have been known to take it out of the bag just outside the door to be a prick but the satisfaction has worn off that one.

 

[Aramea]

grr duplicate

 

[Cogwulf]

They tend to pile up though even with reuse so I drag them to the store for recycling. What they actually do with them I don't know or care.

Most cheap carpet in the US is made out of recycled plastic (not bags, probably bottles). It's decent stuff and can handle your average family abuse pretty well. You can use bleach on it.

Yes, plastic bottles are recycled into fibres for carpets and things.
Plastic bags can't be recycled into high value products because they're so thin that they degrade readily and pick up contamination. They're often recycled into large items such as car bumpers or bins.

3. We also tested water at one point for a newspaper series. What we found was that water sold in individual disposable plastic bottles had a lower pH than municipal tap water, private, untreated well water, or water in glass bottles. Leave the plastic water bottle in the sunlight and the pH goes down more. Draw your own conclusion about how "inert" plastic containers really are. We're talking dropping a full number on the pH scale here, not teensy bits. (Our municipal system sells "deep well" water to big bottlers like Deer Park. It goes out of here in huge trucks, tasting fine. It comes back in plastic bottles and tastes like battery acid.)

It isn't conclusive evidence that the plastic bottles are to blame, the well water may have a high or unusual mineral content being affected by sunlight. The water in glass bottles is fine because glass blocks UV light.

Plastic is good for lots of stuff. Personally I think it's too valuable to waste on things like fuel and trash bags.

I agree.
I've always thought burning oil is a terrible waste when it could be used to make plastic instead.

Most newspapers today are printed on paper manufactured by a process that leaves a faint residue of sulfuric acid.

I've always read that it is due to the tree resins left in the paper being acidified by sunlight.

 

[EditorOne]

OH an INTP in Georgia. I'm so sorry. You must feel positively stifled sometimes.

 

[Don't mind me]

2. Believe it or not, the plastic bag industry has a lobbyist and a lawyer on call. Ran into them when my zealous and crusading editorial writer wrote up an editorial applauding canvas bags and suggesting everyone follow the lead of, I think, California, and somehow make plastic bags less attractive with a surcharge or tariff or something, or passed a law outlawing them, can't remember. Anyway, within a couple of days I got a nasty email threatening the newspaper with a lawsuit, and spent some time on the phone with an officious prick with an English accent. What they thought was they were dealing with a little 20,000 newspaper they could stomp down and intimidate. They found out two things: 1. I don't intimidate and 2. They were up against Dow Jones, which, despite many sadly obvious shortcomings, has always had the overwhelmingly good sense to tell anyone who shows up shouting "Lawsuit! Libel!" to stuff it up their butts and light it. But, in answer the question farther up, there's an entire industry counting on us doing the wrong thing for aesthetics and the environment.

Hmm. Are trash handling services financed with taxes? If they weren't, individual people would have to pay for their own garbage disposal, correct? If plastic doesn't degrade, is bad for the surroundings etc. and is generally much worse than paper, then landfill owners and such would want to charge more for these, making the disposal process much costlier for plastic bags than paper, which would mean that lots fewer plastic bags were sold. However, with public funding, plastic users can externalize their costs onto the taxpayers, meaning that the total costs to an individual for having a plastic bag is a lot lower than the "social cost" of it, meaning that plastic can still be a competitive option.

The plastic bag industry lobbyists (in collusion with people from other industries whose waste products are nasty) are behind municipal garbage disposal services?

 

[Aramea]

OH an INTP in Georgia. I'm so sorry. You must feel positively stifled sometimes.

Georgia is a beautiful and temperate state (well in the north) but it does have it's backwards elements. Atlanta is very much a melting pot but the rest of the state is not and it shows in the legislation coming out of the capitol. We still have no sales of alcohol on Sundays, so stocking up on Saturday is a family tradition.

 

[A22]

They are.

But they take a long long time to decompose. I'm talking about the ones that decompose in a few weeks. We call those "biodegradable" here.

First of all, if all plastic bags ended up in landfill, there would be no problems like animals being choked or drains clogging. These are problems due to improper disposal, they are not unavoidable consequences of using plastic bags.

Alright suppose all plastic bags end up in the landfill. They take a long time to decompose, right? That's space being occupied in the landfil. And trash is a big problem for most nations - at the same time most undeveloped countries don't recycle. The biodegradable plastic bags I was talking about take only a few weeks to decompose.

 

[Cogwulf]

But they take a long long time to decompose. I'm talking about the ones that decompose in a few weeks. We call those "biodegradable" here.



Alright suppose all plastic bags end up in the landfill. They take a long time to decompose, right? That's space being occupied in the landfil. And trash is a big problem for most nations - at the same time most undeveloped countries don't recycle. The biodegradable plastic bags I was talking about take only a few weeks to decompose.

The space isn't really an issue as plastic bags will only be a tiny fraction of the material in a landfill.
The packaging of the food that went into the bags is probably more of an issue.

And it depends on the conditions and the material, but bio-degradable plastics take more like months to decompose. And they can still have a detrimental effect to the environment in the meantime.

 

[SkyWalker]

toxins my ass, you could make plastics without toxins. why concentrate on no-plastic, just concentrate on no-toxins (e.g. better plastics, this is possible).

plastics are made from oil. oil is natural, oil is just compressed dead plants.

both oil spills and plastic spills are bad for animals, duh. but no harm done if we just stash all those plastic bags deep in the ground from where it originally came from. it can sit there for millions of years, just like oil. (let it become oil again). just dont spill it in large quantity above ground, just like oil

I am PRO-plastic

 

[Cogwulf]

toxins my ass, you could make plastics without toxins. why concentrate on no-plastic, just concentrate on no-toxins (e.g. better plastics, this is possible).

The problem is that even if a plastic is completely toxin free, it can still degrade into toxic chemicals.
And anyway, even though there are some relatively safe plastics about, they aren't good for everything, a huge amount of effort and money is being put into better plastics, but without many great successes so far. We've almost eliminated lead heat stabilisers from PVC, but the alternatives still aren't as good as the lead they've replaced.

plastics are made from oil. oil is natural, oil is just compressed dead plants.

both oil spills and plastic spills are bad for animals, duh. but no harm done if we just stash all those plastic bags deep in the ground from where it originally came from. it can sit there for millions of years, just like oil. (let it become oil again). just dont spill it in large quantity above ground, just like oil

The problem is getting it deep enough underground.
oil is so deep underground that the pressures are huge, this makes it easy to get stuff out, but very hard to get things back in. There is definitely no easy way to get solid plastic down that deep.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

I am somewhat perplexed about why people are so concerned about possible environmental problems. Landfill leachate can be easily treated to a non-toxic, non-carcinogenic level by simply using an artificial wetland with phragmites in abundance and a conservative residence time of 20 days.

 

[Cogwulf]

I am somewhat perplexed about why people are so concerned about possible environmental problems. Landfill leachate can be easily treated to a non-toxic, non-carcinogenic level by simply using an artificial wetland with phragmites in abundance and a conservative residence time of 20 days.

There's always the possibility of poor management over the decades, or in poorer countries where they just don't bother trying.


With things like this, it's fine if everything is done right, but something going wrong is always a possibility.


Although I'm personally not very concerned that toxins leeching into food or the environment have more than a negligible effect.

 

[SkyWalker]

The problem is getting it deep enough underground.

It doesnt have to go as deep as oil... Just deep enough so no common animal will dig it up. after millions of years it will go deeper by itself, ground is known to miraculously fall on top of ground (meteorite debris?)
things tend to go deeper by themselves, entire roman empires already sit under layers of ground

I think most here are a bunch of Si-whiners. My Ne does not see problems, only possibilities

 

[Cogwulf]

It doesnt have to go as deep as oil... Just deep enough so no common animal will dig it up. after millions of years it will go deeper by itself, ground is known to miraculously fall on top of ground (meteorite debris?)
things tend to go deeper by themselves, entire roman empires already sit under layers of ground

I think most here are a bunch of Si-whiners. My Ne does not see problems, only possibilities

It isn't a case of getting deep enough that it can't be dug up, it's a case of being too deep for contamination of the water table.

Ground is built up through collection of sediments blown or washed from hills and mountains, and from the growth and decay of plant matter.

 

[SkyWalker]

just playing devil's advocate against stupid anti-plastic Si-sentiment here... my Ne can't help it.

Actually anti-plastic folks are not that bad. anti-CO2 folks are worse, thats like Si2, Si that went wrong to the power of 2. (My Ne is supposed to shoot them down)

It isn't a case of getting deep enough that it can't be dug up, it's a case of being too deep for contamination of the water table.

You are right about this part. But then again, only if plastic is toxic. If there were no toxins in plastic (better plastics) then this problem is solved. As long as water can't flush the plastic away from its place, then the water may still touch the plastic. Even so called toxic plastic is pretty non-toxic and that has been tested thoroughly in real life: We let our kids swim in plastic swimming pools, we eat&drink from plastic cups and bottles. And now animals&plants all of a sudden cant handle that? whats the big deal. are plants and animals more sensitive than humans? i dont think so.

even in tjernobyl and hiroshima plants & animals flourish, i guess thats quite a bit more toxic than some lame oil-solids (plastics)

you know how toxic plain old cow dung is?? you can lab test that stuff, god knows how many toxins

btw your avatar is wearing a toxic-plastic gas mask (OK maybe some rubber too) to filter some toxins out of the air you should buy a metal one, non-toxic metal that is, gold will do, although its kind of scarce though. ah..just kill somebody who has gold. better to kill somebody than to use that really toxic plastic. poor plants & animals... good thing you killed that bastard for his gold...bastard human.. sweet animals&plants (just some pun to show how ridiculous this is)

Ground is built up through collection of sediments blown or washed from hills and mountains, and from the growth and decay of plant matter.

Haha, yep. It's stilll more fun to discuss miraculous meteorite debris though... Just kidding around a bit here.




PRO-PLASTIC, PRO-CO2