> Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.
Go to any waterway in the US and you will find it. Plastic bottles, bottle caps, chip bags, cpu lids, straws, milk jugs, food containers, chewing tobacco cans, lighters, ping pong balls, syringes, milk crates, fishing line, bobbers, clothes hangers, insulation, O-rings, tires, fishing nets, pens, pen caps, grocery bags, six pack rings, chew toys, fake flowers, buckets, handles, 55 gallon drums, soccer balls, the broken plastic housing of almost any consumer product you can imagine.
I have with my bare hands picked up over 500 bags of this shit off coastlines and waterways and highways on three different continents. Based on my experience, every single mile of ocean coastline and nearly every waterway is littered with plastic waste to a greater or lesser degree.
The problem is so bad that unless you are in a national park a hundred miles from civilization, you cannot walk more than 100 feet along a waterway without seeing some kind of garbage, unless someone has specifically detrashed there, thoroughly, in the past week. The water is full of our junk.
> Don’t get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of plastic waste in the ocean.
The tone of this comment really raised my hackles. I'm not going to unload on you, but I am so tempted to right now. But holy shit, if you'd dragged 5 tons of shit out of the creek you'd not complain from behind your keyboard that they want to take your stupid straws away.
I’ll be honest, I spend a lot of time outdoors in New England. Plastic waste is not nearly as endemic as you describe in North America. The only area that gets comparable to what you describe are waterways in major population centers such as the Charles river and Boston harbor.
Banning single use plastic is still a great way to cut down on
It's a sliding scale, which is why I mentioned the national parks. More people = more trash. Take a little plastic bag with you next time and pick up every piece of trash you see. Suddenly it will pop out of the woodwork. Waterways collect and concentrate it.
> Plastic waste is not nearly as endemic as you describe in North America
Plastic waste isn’t really endemic to North America. Surely there are some locations with plastic waste problems, but I do a lot of hiking and local travel and I can’t remember the last time
I saw huge swaths of plastic waste. People around here are generally good at picking up behind themselves and even picking up waste that others mistakenly leave behind.
That said, I’ve been to some developing countries and been absolutely shocked at the quantities of plastic waste I encountered in certain locations. Unfortunately these are the same places least likely to switch to use degradable plastic bags if they’re more expensive.
The alternatives are worse. They use much more energy, and you can't go outside without seeing how bad global warming is now, and how devastating it soon will be.
We need to forget plastics recycling entirely, and spend all that effort on redirecting trash to landfills.
If plastic that's "properly" disposed of still ends up in the environment, how do you dispose of all the trash you collect to ensure that it doesn't end up back in the environment?
Go to any waterway in the US and you will find it. Plastic bottles, bottle caps, chip bags, cpu lids, straws, milk jugs, food containers, chewing tobacco cans, lighters, ping pong balls, syringes, milk crates, fishing line, bobbers, clothes hangers, insulation, O-rings, tires, fishing nets, pens, pen caps, grocery bags, six pack rings, chew toys, fake flowers, buckets, handles, 55 gallon drums, soccer balls, the broken plastic housing of almost any consumer product you can imagine.
I have with my bare hands picked up over 500 bags of this shit off coastlines and waterways and highways on three different continents. Based on my experience, every single mile of ocean coastline and nearly every waterway is littered with plastic waste to a greater or lesser degree.
The problem is so bad that unless you are in a national park a hundred miles from civilization, you cannot walk more than 100 feet along a waterway without seeing some kind of garbage, unless someone has specifically detrashed there, thoroughly, in the past week. The water is full of our junk.
> Don’t get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of plastic waste in the ocean.
The tone of this comment really raised my hackles. I'm not going to unload on you, but I am so tempted to right now. But holy shit, if you'd dragged 5 tons of shit out of the creek you'd not complain from behind your keyboard that they want to take your stupid straws away.
I say ban all single-use plastic.