The Environmental Thread

[TitoFan]

Millennials need to quit their fucking whining.

Seriously... we're not going to abolish plastic tomorrow or any time in the foreseeable future. We've become too dependent on it. What we need to do is parallel efforts to: a) reduce the amount of plastics used in manufacturing, and b) continue to find ways to effectively recycle plastic into things we need.

The (a) part involves things like reducing the thickness of water bottles (already at an annoying "thinness"), rethink how we do our packaging, and just plain use our engineering know-how to lessen the amounts of plastic being manufactured for everyday things. The (b) part is even more exciting, and we've all read about road-building technologies in places like India and Indonesia, where asphalt is substituted with some kind of aggregate using recycled plastic to make roads. These roads are reportedly better and cheaper. As usual, the holdup is always the bureaucratic part of the whole affair.

[Gandalf]

Millennials need to quit their fucking whining.

Seriously... we're not going to abolish plastic tomorrow or any time in the foreseeable future. We've become too dependent on it. What we need to do is parallel efforts to: a) reduce the amount of plastics used in manufacturing, and b) continue to find ways to effectively recycle plastic into things we need.

The (a) part involves things like reducing the thickness of water bottles (already at an annoying "thinness"), rethink how we do our packaging, and just plain use our engineering know-how to lessen the amounts of plastic being manufactured for everyday things. The (b) part is even more exciting, and we've all read about road-building technologies in places like India and Indonesia, where asphalt is substituted with some kind of aggregate using recycled plastic to make roads. These roads are reportedly better and cheaper. As usual, the holdup is always the bureaucratic part of the whole affair.

Exactly nothing will change, but we will see silly things like banning straws come into effect and meanwhile the global population will double. Much of this plastic and sewage ends up in rivers and oceans and our own water supplies. It is very harmful. I don't eat seafood, so I don't really care about it from that angle, but I don't think it is fair to destroy ocean life because of our awful methods of production and waste evacuation.

Also, I was hearing that birds are dying because they fly into the reflections of trees on these shiny new steel skyscrapers. You didn't have this problem when we had beautiful Cathedrals and actual trees in urban areas.

Post Modernism is a stain in so many ways.

[Spicoli]

It's ironic that the local recycling programs use huge bins made of plastic to put your plastics in for weekly collection . They still offer paper or plastic at the local grocery but often don't have paper bags or try to charge you a fee to purchase one of those clothe bags. In general we as consumers really do throw away so much garbage in the name of packaging and branding-labels. Someone needs to invent basic 'melters' or compactors purchased for the home, cube your own pure plastics and turn in for exchange with financial incentive. It's like can and aluminum recycling when we were kids. It was so massive and we'd always take an hour or two to go 'hunting cans' and run to the store to collect a few bucks. Schools actually organized events and drop offs. We even had plastic drop offs and would cut up the binders that held 6 packs together. Kids are to busy on their tablets and phones now to go develop an early understanding of turning everyday trash into profits. Little shats don't even catch lizards or put baseball cards in their spokes anymore .