Should Disposable Waste be Banned?

[Guest]

As am sure most of you have heard of by now, in China having recently applied a strict ban on imports of disposable waste.

 

This can be seen as a global crisis in the making to some. Some governments are seeing it as a wake up call, or even prime opportunity to change the way we do garbage.

 

One of the main issues just like fossil fuels, is that waste disposal done by private firms, is highly lucrative. Recycling, often is not. 

 

From the cost of the machinery, to the employees in sorting facilities, many forms of recyclables are often done at a loss--cue in the shipping them by the boat load, to China (or simply sending truck loads of it to the landfill, defeating the purpose of you recycling in the first place). A country that welcomed our garbage with open arms. This fed their insatiable appetite for raw materials.

 

The unintended consequence on their end, is that our waste often was poorly sorted (I.E Pizza boxes, and milk cartons that aren't rinsed contaminating a batch as its soaked to give an example). As a result, a significant portion of it was doomed to enter their landfill. Out of our sight, out of mind right?

 

Some countries are scrambling to find replacements. Notably, other poorer countries that we can dump our waste on. Some are firming up their borders to such waste as well, seeing the catastrophic ecological problem it causes.

 

Begs the question. Why is it taking such extreme foreign government push back, for anyone to want to do a thing about this?

 

Canada alone, will look towards fully banning plastic waste. Is plastic waste enough? Cities like San Francisco and other global cities and towns have either pilot projects, or full blown ones in attempts to become waste free cities with target dates. Is this realistic?

 

Should companies be forced to reduce their waste output in creating their products, significantly? Better yet, eliminating it?

 

Should this be incentivized? Penalties applied, instead considering we are all responsible for the reduction of waste?

 

Should disposable waste be banned?

[Skycaptain]

A quick start would be to simply reduce the number of different plastics in use. Clear PET, the stuff pop bottles are made of, and easily recycled, so use more of that, and less of the coloured plastics which can't be recycled. 

[Chihiro]

Before plastics, humans survived and did just fine. It will take a lot of adjustment, but eventually I think humans can adapt to ban on non recyclable waste. A ban will encourage people to find alternate solutions or use existing solutions which some countries have adopted. I think, giving companies incentives to reduce waste, will also be a good solution.

 

 

[andreas1033]

The only answer, is for humans to not exist.

 

Nature would return to some normality eventually.

 

There is no other answer for this, but that, as humans are just going to consume more and more. The bigger the populations, the more people getting out of the dirt and living some sort of life, will lead to even more garbage.

 

Its the reason why america keeps so many countries in the dirt, so they do not really industrialise.

 

Look at china, and india, both with over a billion people. That cat is out of the bag now, and they will not stop industrialising.

 

There is no answer for this, other then to get rid of the human race. Earth would not miss them, and nature would heal, and drive back eventually.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, andreas1033 said:

There is no answer for this

How would you explain some municipalities around the world that have been able to achieve a waste free or virtually waste free existence?

 

5 hours ago, andreas1033 said:

The only answer, is for humans to not exist.

 

Isn't that like saying that the only way to eliminate fossil fuel related damage to our atmosphere, is to eliminate car companies from existence?

 

Ignoring the fact that they choose to continue using a highly polluting product for the most part? 

 

Knowing how highly profitable fuel is?

 

Being aware that electric vehicle technology is quite old but didn't take flight until there were incentives put in place to do so. 

 

There were ecological pressures forcing us to do so. 

 

Shouldn't these same pressures apply to the garbage we create?

 

These are choices. 

 

Shouldn't the ban eliminate those choices? Legislative measures ensuring some become law?

 

Instead of riding the planet of humans, should there be an attempt to force them to change their ways?

[uhtred]

I think we can do a lot without an absolute ban.    Changing recycling rules will help. One of the biggest problems with recycling is that people try to recycle too much - contaminating the recycling stream.  Having the same recycling rules over the whole country, with *clearly* marked packages would help a lot.   Otherwise even if people look for the little recycling symbol, they may not remember if #6 plastic can be recycled some particular area.

 

Make it *simple* and people will do it. 

[Anthracite_Impreza]

Make it easier to fucking recycle in the first place, not have 50 different rules in 30 different postcodes. I can't see how you can ever completely ban disposable waste, but they're already doing stupid things anyway so they'll probably try.

[CelesteAdAstra]

The only reason why we have disposable waste is that it allows company owners to accumulate money easily while turning a blind eye on the world. As @Chihiro said, we managed just fine before plastic was invented, and there's no reason why this should be different now. The big decision makers should just finally get their sh*t together and realize that new laws are no good if their target date lies 20 years in the future when it's already far too late to change anything.

[Zagadka]

Convenience is used to excuse a lot of waste these days.

 

The recycling in this city isn't very encouraging. Non-sorted, everything just goes into one giant bin. There is no way that is all actually recycled.

[N8ty L3asT]

https://dai.ly/x6n1nw3 

 

not entirely if this will work 😅

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Zagadka said:

There is no way that is all actually recycled.

Much of it is contaminated and goes to the landfill. A significant portion of it, is sold to countries looking for such resources (I.E China, trying to boost production of say, polyester garments and looking for cheaper sources for the raw materials), opening up an underworld where illegal waste sorting corporations would sprout up. This of course, are in countries with lax laws, more fueled by a quick profit, than long term ecological sustainability. Why would I buy expensive plastic pellets from processed recyclable waste from China for say, 1, 000$ a ton, when I could get the same from Bangladesh, for 250.00$.

 

Essentially, massive landfills sitting with many thousands of tons of waste that cannot be processed. This, coupled with such countries own waste disposal problems.

 

If people truly saw what happened with their recycled goods, especially if you're a business paying to have it picked up, many would be outraged.

[RoseGoesToYale]

It's much more difficult to ban waste than it is to ban the production of something, so the first thing I'd like to is a ban of synthetic plastic production. Biodegradable plastics would be fine. No plastic rolling off shelves, no more into the landfills, except already existing plastic.

 

Problem is, plastic is cheap, and capitalism thrives on the purchase of mass amounts of cheap goods. Westerners particularly would have to change their lifestyles completely. Cars would become exorbitantly expensive, or ugly af, either way car ownership would never be the same again. Children would have to learn to live with fewer toys, because no more plastic Barbie and GI Joe. People would have to keep their electronics for longer because they'd be too expensive not only to replace, but to dispose of their wholly-metal carcasses. Bye-bye half of IKEA. Tampons would also never be the same, much to the horror of many uterus bearers. And there's another side to this, too... polyester, which I personally would love to see die and never come back. Clothes will become more expensive due to having to make them from natural fibers. People would have to learn to repair clothes, too. Really, there would need to be a large scale return to artisanship and handicrafts.

 

Industrialized society is disposable, and we see our lives and ourselves as disposable. We are slaves to time and money, we buy things that suit these ends, and our lives are so short we never ever stopped to think what harm our waste would do. To ban waste or plastic would descend us into mass existential crisis. I pretty much already see the destruction of the planet as inevitable, because even if every other country committed to ban waste, my country (and China probably too) would. Not. Give. A. Single. F*ck. Why? Because disposability is our culture, and always was. (For proof of that, mine's the country founded by angry men who dumped a bunch of perfectly good tea into the ocean, polluting the water with it and probably killing fish, tossing perfectly usable wood crates into the water to rot, all because they didn't want to pay their taxes)

[InDefenseOfPOMO]

20 hours ago, Perspektiv said:

Should disposable waste be banned?

 

No.

 

People should take personal moral responsibility for their lives for a change.

 

We have been playing this free market vs. government-regulated market game for too long. Nothing really changes. Markets and governments have mostly done nothing but create problems. You won't solve a problem with more of where it came from.

 

It is irresponsible to leave things to "the invisible hand" of the market and the state.

 

"Be the change that you wish to see in the world." -- Mahatma Gandhi

[Zagadka]

There is a difference between "banned" and "discouraged"... when thing are made socially unacceptable, they tend to rapidly fall out of fashion (such as public smoking* or littering). I really don't see the harm in "discouraging" waste via law, though. At worst, we end up with slightly soggy straws.

 

* I've been a smoker for non-health reasons

[SorryNotSorry]

The problem is with the way most of us here in the US think of the ideas of trash and waste.

 

Many of us who are not by nature frugal people are guilty of this. My roommate is one of these. He buys food, then he'll either eat half and throw the rest into the trash, or even decide he doesn't want it after all and throw away the unopened package. How he disposes of his waste makes no sense to me: everything goes into the trash, nothing to the compost pile or the recyclables. He thinks nothing of throwing out half-empty PETE water bottles as well as aluminum soda cans—hell, I save those and sell them! And this guy is well-educated!!!

 

My mother was another similarly wasteful person. She grew up during the 1950s, when a lot of people had enough money to be wasteful and not feel one damn bit guilty about it. The scrap-iron drives of WW2 had been conveniently forgotten by then. If you got tired of looking at your car, you just had the junk man haul it away and you could run right out and buy a new one. If your TV set broke, into the trash it went, and you just went out and blew some cash on a new one.

 

Then came Love Canal, Times Beach, and other superfund sites. One thing we should've learned since then is that waste can never really be out of sight and out of mind unless we change our attitudes to one of "how do we deconstruct this stuff and do something useful with it, or at least do something with it that doesn't wreck the environment?"

 

I separate ALL my own waste. I'd recycle my plastic bags too, except the city in which I live insists those are trash—I'd get a ticket for putting them in the recycling bin. All the other stuff... rotten food? Compost it. Scrap aluminum and copper? Sell them and make a little money. Beer and soda bottles aren't economical for me to save and sell, so I give the ones I do find to people in the neighborhood who do find it economical to save and sell them. Papers, cardboard, broken plastic objects, scrap iron, rusty nails, packing peanuts, styrofoam... I throw all that stuff into the recycle bin. Unfortunately I don't have a chemical cracking plant in my back yard for turning plastic waste into useful goodies like fuel gas and plastic resin.

[InDefenseOfPOMO]

I do not have scientific evidence to support me, but I believe that a lot of Americans are pathologically narcissistic. They see everything else as only having instrumental value and existing to meet their wants and needs. If they did not want pickles on their sandwich and you put pickles on it, they are not leaving until you make a completely new sandwich for them, and they do not care--do not even bother to notice--that you are going to have to throw the original sandwich in the trash. It was really their fault? They really did not say "no pickles"? It does not matter--they are not leaving until you make them a new sandwich.

 

I do not see how a government ban on waste changes anything. The sandwich might get recycled rather than buried in a landfill, but people will continue to create preventable waste.

 

But, we will probably be told, the costs of holding people responsible ("You break it, you pay") are greater than letting them create waste.

 

If you have a narcissistic culture that sees everything in terms of the self-interest of the individual, the only options are to change that culture or work within it to try to convince people that zero waste is in their best interests.

 

Banning waste does not change the culture or hold people accountable for their actions. Therefore, they will find some loophole in the law or some other way to narcissistically destroy the Earth.

 

It would be more effective for individuals to start treating the Earth like it has intrinsic value and that humans are stewards of it.

 

Humility in individials would make a big difference, no matter what the government does or does not do.

[Guest]

I think it would take a catastrophic extinction level event in order to wake some people up. 

 

With that said, many countries are soon to follow China's lead in refusing recyclable waste. 

 

Many of these countries already have overburdened waste management resources. Many of this waste is often poorly sorted from the countries of origin, thus contaminated and useless for a portion of it if not entirely. 

 

I think unfortunately, many social changes are born out of necessity.

 

Many cities start building or expanding for the future when their infrastructure is overburdened.

 

You know, vs planning the projected growth into their design which is cost efficient long term. 

 

It will take a global shockwave of push back telling the US and similar countries with similar issues like Australia and Canada to name a few more to take their waste back. Better yet. Fix your own waste problems, vs dumping them elsewhere. 

[Guest]

8 hours ago, InDefenseOfPOMO said:

I do not have scientific evidence to support me, but I believe that a lot of Americans are pathologically narcissistic.

Any highly patriotic country will have an issue with self-awareness. 

 

It's not just the US. 

 

I have been to countries where the anthem is played before movies in theaters. 

 

Where your entire world centers around yourself. 

 

No surprise where self-awareness isn't prevalent, thus complicating things when change is needed. 

 

Hard to change, when most can't look in the mirror. 

 

Forced change due to global crises is the only real opportunity available.

[Karst]

@Woodworker1968, I'm always a little bit shocked by people who do things like buying more clothes than they can actually wear or drinking bottled water when they have access to reusable canteens.  It's like they've never had to de-clutter a house or sort the recycling.

[Karst]

I think that it won't be possible to eliminate plastic waste overnight, but with a combination of well-planned laws and individual conscience, we can drastically reduce it over time.  One thing that would help solve this issue is discouraging companies from making poorly-constructed merchandise that needs to be replaced frequently.  Planned obsolescence should be illegal.

[daveb]

They could make a start by cutting down on over-packaged items (some companies have done a bit of that).

[Guest]

1 hour ago, daveb said:

They could make a start by cutting down on over-packaged items (some companies have done a bit of that).

This always irritated me to no avail. It was like a company's sadistic means of making you put up a fight to get your product out. 

 

I think tighter regulations against such culprits would be huge. 

 

There should be no reason half my packing has to go to landfills as is non recyclable plastics bags or elastics. 

 

Even plastic bags. They at the very least should have to be biodegradable. 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Ardoise said:

One thing that would help solve this issue is discouraging companies from making poorly-constructed merchandise that needs to be replaced frequently. 

Especially if we are taking batteries or battery powered goods that wind up in a landfill. Any goods, really.