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Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 12:12:21
by onlooker
And in fact what is being observed and noted is that many sea creatures are digesting this "plastic". That cannot be good for the entire food chain up to us.
Also, I read that in places like the Arctic where the ice is thawing, this is exposing and liberating many of these tiny fragments of plastic to the detriment of life in those areas and possibly many other areas.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 13:39:14
by Newfie
Yes, I think the idea of netting of scooping up much of the plastic is ill conceived. The plastic breaks apart to form tiny modules that are difficult to filter out. Not to say we should not remove all plastic as soon as possible from the system, we should. It’s just noting that the poisonous has already seeped into the system.

If we rose to dim witted we would ban all plastic bottles. Glass bottles are far, far less hazardous.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 13:54:55
by onlooker
Newfie wrote:Yes, I think the idea of netting o scooping up much of the plastic is I’ll concieved. The plastic breaks apart to form tiny modules that are difficult to filter out. Not to say we should not remove all plastic as soon as possible from the system, we should. It’s just noting that the poisonous has already seeped into the system.

If we rose to dim witted we would ban all plastic bottles. Glass bottles are far, far less hazardous.

And do away with all plastic bags. Dohboi posted a link to just that. Cmon, we have other materials that can just as well carry stuff. The inertia in societies is so demoralizing

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 15:44:30
by ozcad
Big topic, unsure where to start.
The problem is that Plastic Bags (PBs) are just SO GOOD at what they do that they are used in most industries as well as last-stage retail delivery to consumers. I even get shipments of electronic components in PBs, and those PBs are shipped inside larger PBs, with PBs containing the address and invoice documents attached to the outside.
PB transparency allows identification of contents. They can have conductive dye embedded (usually pink) to prevent static electricity buildup. Most importantly, PBs are slightly stretchy (plastic), yielding sufficiently when pulled up against a sharp pointed corner of a box to LOAD-SPREAD the forces over a larger area of the PB.
This prevents the tearing of the PB from the box corner point, allowing more freight to be carried in the PB, right up to the point where you can feel the handles stretching.
The first-comes-to-mind substitute material of cellophane does not exhibit sufficient load spreading at the corners to reliably resist immediate tearing, even though it is quite strong if the load is carefully applied and without sharp points.

So does anyone know of any bio-degradable materials in the design pipeline (or already existing) which can perform as well as the current PB materials do? Web-bashing turns up vendors who make claims but give no details, and nobody mentions the load spreading issue which is the key to bag reliability.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 15:48:07
by onlooker
Wow, thanks for that education OZ. I definitely misspoke

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 16:01:11
by KaiserJeep
Here in California, we charge a deposit on plastic containers, and banned plastic bags. I had a packaging engineer on every design team, and if we needed a reusable container for PCBs or computer parts, he designed same. We had barrels in the lab and the campus recycling of plastics was first in bales:
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....then in recycled plastic products:
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It takes a little more FF to recycle the plastics.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 16:11:11
by ozcad
No mis-speak detected. You are correct with your summary 'do away with plastic bags'. I am adding a few reasons why industry & commerce might prove reluctant to change. But change we must.
A lot of applications could & should transition to glass bottles and paper bags to reduce the problem immediately, without waiting for new magic materials (vapourware) to become available.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 16:17:05
by onlooker
ozcad wrote:No mis-speak detected. You are correct with your summary 'do away with plastic bags'. I am adding a few reasons why industry & commerce might prove reluctant to change. But change we must.
A lot of applications could & should transition to glass bottles and paper bags to reduce the problem immediately, without waiting for new magic materials (vapourware) to become available.

Yes the double insensitive of profitability for Industry and appeal to the consumer has it seems been the ideal in the business world. Unfortunately, what has been sacrificed in too many instances is the Environment. All that needs to change

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 19:14:45
by KaiserJeep
Yeah, we could take all those unemployed dark-skinned folks in the inner city areas, and give them healthy outdoor jobs on cotton plantations.
Image
Good idea, baha.
:mrgreen:

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 21:27:14
by Newfie
When in Puerto Rico there were no plastic bags. You needed bring you own bag to the store. Some places you could get them but you had to pay some small fee. Others didn’t even have them. IIRC it was similar in the Dominican Republic.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 21:42:19
by KaiserJeep
Here in California, they banned disposable bags. You bring your own. If you forget, they have cloth bags for sale right there at the checkout for $4 or $5 apiece.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Sun 08 Apr 2018, 22:48:57
by careinke
baha wrote:
ozcad wrote:So does anyone know of any bio-degradable materials in the design pipeline (or already existing) which can perform as well as the current PB materials do?


How about Cotton? Cotton bags are tough and tear resistant. It's organic and bio-degradable. And it comes from the Old South :) where it grows like a weed.


I vote for Hemp. Much more environmentally friendly. :)

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 Apr 2018, 06:39:47
by vtsnowedin
KaiserJeep wrote:Yeah, we could take all those unemployed dark-skinned folks in the inner city areas, and give them healthy outdoor jobs on cotton plantations.
Image
Good idea, baha.
:mrgreen:

What would you need the laborers for? John Deere has made it so in the cotton belt" Black lives don't matter" .
A single machine now does the work of three hundred laborers.
http://certipik.com/2015/08/a-brief-his ... ter-parts/

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 Apr 2018, 07:39:39
by KaiserJeep
It was a joke. That's why I added the smilie face. Not so funny, I guess.
:roll:

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Mon 09 Apr 2018, 08:17:35
by vtsnowedin
KaiserJeep wrote:It was a joke. That's why I added the smilie face. Not so funny, I guess.
:roll:

Oh I got the joke and my line in " " is one as well. Biting humor that is sad but true.

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Tue 10 Apr 2018, 00:11:26
by jedrider
Newfie wrote:We found that in Puerto Rico they don’t use plastic shopping bags. You need to bring your own bag.

Most of the places we have been to are cleaner, less wayside trash, less trash on the streets than in the USA.

I was standing on a dock in PR, a big Tarpoon Cake by, like 8’. They hang around restaurants for food scraps. Anyway, as I’m watching him he slurps up a clear plastic bag that was floating on the water. I didn’t see it until just as he vacuumed it up. The next day there was a big tarpoon dead in the marina.


Or this:

Plastic Waste Kills Six-Ton Whale (with just 64 pounds of plastic waste)
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/04/09/plastic-waste-kills-six-ton-whale/

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Fri 11 May 2018, 14:06:58
by Newfie
But he also points to difficulties in calculating IUU’s scale: the FAO’s estimates of fish stocks, for instance, are based on official government data, which are open to under- and over-reporting.

His research shows global catches from 1950 to 2010 were 50 percent higher than countries had said.

http://gcaptain.com/data-bait-using-tec ... ng-cheats/

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Tue 19 Jun 2018, 10:08:43
by onlooker
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/dead ... ch-n879581

Dead whale found in Thailand with 17 pounds of plastic in its stomach

Re: Plastic and the Oceans

Unread postPosted: Tue 26 Jun 2018, 15:09:44
by Newfie
http://gcaptain.com/solving-the-oceans- ... a-opinion/

Solving the Ocean Plastic Crisis Starts With Asia -Opinion
June 26, 2018 by Bloomberg

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Photo: MOHAMED ABDULRAHEEM / Shutterstock
By Adam Minter (Bloomberg Opinion) — Since Jan. 1, when China stopped accepting the rich world’s recyclable plastic waste, it’s gotten a ton of criticism for worsening the already deep crisis of ocean plastic pollution. But China isn’t the only culprit here. This is a crisis made — and growing worse — throughout developing Asia.

Just eight countries in the region are responsible for about 63 percent of total plastic waste flowing into the oceans. Little of that junk has been exported by rich economies. Instead, it’s almost solely generated by Asia’s newly minted consumer classes, the vast majority of whom lack access to garbage collection, modern landfills and incineration. Any progress in reducing ocean plastic will have to start with them.

A boom in garbage is almost always the result of two related phenomena: urbanization and income growth. Rural dwellers moving to the city shift from buying unpackaged goods to buying stuff (especially food) wrapped in plastic. As their incomes rise, their purchases increase. That growth in consumption is almost never matched by expanded garbage collection and disposal. In typical low-income countries, less than half of all garbage is collected formally, and what little is picked up tends to end up in unregulated open dumps. In 2015, scientists estimated that as much as 88 percent of the waste generated in Vietnam is either littered or tossed into uncontained dumps. In China, the rate is about 77 percent. By comparison, the U.S. rate is 2 percent.