Swiss have a better way to deal with plastic

[Spock]

I used to work with a guy that refused to recycle aluminum.
His take was he was ensuring it would be profitable to eventually go back and mine landfills...

 

[Spock]

Not to trivialize this issue, but the perception that the media presents doesn't match reality (surprise!). emph mine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch

So let's apply some good old fashion 'rithmetic.

a Metric ton is ~ 2200 pounds, trillion is 10^12, so....

176,000,000 pounds of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

1,800,000,000,000 pieces of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Divide, very small number... multiply by 16 to get ounces, and...

The average weight of each plastic piece is 0.001564 ounces. Maybe easier to visualize, it would take 639 of them to make up an ounce.

Again, this is not to trivialize the issue, those small particles can cause problems. It is just to put some this media stuff into perspective.

-ERD50

How many particles would accumulate in a persons kidneys over a modern lifetime.
They used to whine about inhaling carbon nano-particles from soot and tires along the highways. Then we start getting metabolites of anti-depressants and birth control hormones in the water supply.
All populations are self-regulating... eventually.

 

[Bir48die]

So as a non viewer of CNN I thought I would look up the Great Garbage Patch. Third link down was an article from NOAA (I take them as reliable) that debunks the notion of this completely. Just sayin'.

Our current subject of the day (focusing on straws currently for some reason on the U.S.) is a good one to discuss. A huge number of companies have gone to plastic packaging I think for some noble and space saving reasons. However as we know, one mans solution is another mans problem.

Straws aside (I like using them on occasion) I am hoping the current focus on plastics will spur some new technology that can help us get a handle on the problem.

 

[HFWR]

So as a non viewer of CNN I thought I would look up the Great Garbage Patch. Third link down was an article from NOAA (I take them as reliable) that debunks the notion of this completely. Just sayin'.

Our current subject of the day (focusing on straws currently for some reason on the U.S.) is a good one to discuss. A huge number of companies have gone to plastic packaging I think for some noble and space saving reasons. However as we know, one mans solution is another mans problem.

Straws aside (I like using them on occasion) I am hoping the current focus on plastics will spur some new technology that can help us get a handle on the problem.

The article does say that we have no good size estimates, and that much of it is particulate-sized, but it doesn’t argue that garbage patches don’t exist...