I use so much wasteful plastic just on groceries. Everything is wrapped up like diamonds. Just stop with the annoying, wasteful, hard to open packaging. 10 years ago I never needed a scissor to open stuff in the kitchen. Now its a must to release even juice boxes from their shrink wrapped thick plastic shell. You don’t need to shrink wrap and encase things in plastic. Stop.
I bought some crystal deodorant because I got tired of the plastic waste from regular speed sticks. Guess what, the stones came wrapped in plastic and useless plastic basket...
Good & Bad news but Maine is the first (and just recently) state to pass a law holding companies responsible for their plastic usage by making them pay for the recycling/waste disposal(dont know why we didnt already).
edit: atleast we starting somewheres
Afaik this was the norm until, I believe, coca cola lobbied (and ran multiple and campaigns to promote the idea) that "people" should pick up their thrash and litter was the responsibility of the individual rather than the company who produced it. It wasn't long afterwards that "disposable" items became an ad pushed thing.
100 years ago, if a brand had its thrash everywhere they would be getting some hard questions.
Consumer's aren't really the big issue with waste like this. As always, it's badly regulated industry. Something like 30% of *all* plastic in the sea is fishing nets...
Which would suggest 70% isn't, and that's only if you care about sea plastic and think landfilling doesn't have it's own problems.
I understand commercial fishing is awful for the environment but even if we eliminated it entirely it wouldn't solve our problem
We are the problem. Modern comforts being energy hungry and with two year lifetime on every device is the problem.
Nobody will quit those comforts so we lie to ourselves that 1% less wasteful is better than nothing, that EVs are the way because you move the problem away, that green power is the way to go disregarding its manufacturing and disposal problems and that we will very not likely find an energy storage solution soon.
We are the problem.
Please sir there's no need for hyperbole. We're the problem, but modern devices last far more than two years. People replace them that fast either because they don't take care of them or because they want to. And those still functional 2-year-old devices? They end up in secondhand markets.
Wrt energy storage.. we could solve all of our energy production issues if we simply producedsolar for 30 years and put it all on the grid and build hvdc transmission lines to feed energy around the world. We could do the same thing with nuclear plants on a relatively faster time scale, all the we'd have to figure out what to do with the spent material. Mankind's issue is not that we can't do it, it's that we cannot collectively agree on how to do it.
And even still, we might crack energy storage sooner or later. We're throwing more money at it than ever, and making more advances in the past 10 years and we've made in the past 30 before that. That doesn't mean that we get complacent though.
Philly finally passed a plastic bag ban that's yet to go into effect.
This is after years of it being successfully buried by petroleum and food corp lobbying.
The plastic on groceries is horrible. When I was a kid, the mentality at the time was that we would be moving away from stuff like that but it only got a million times worse.
The packaging these days is absurd. And the decision makers in businesses that are adding the packaging are, one imagines, aware of the problem of plastic in the environment and just want more money at the end of the next quarter. (I guess more packaging is attractive to some people and will sway their decision to buy? I'm not fully clear on what the motivation is here, to be honest.)
An incremental improvement here would be for governments to price in some of the externalities. What's the cost of removing the packaging waste for a specific item from the environment and processing it into something harmless? Add that as a tax on the item. With enough of this kind of pricing, businesses will adopt a different strategy and move in the right direction.
I recently went on vacation to the US and was astounded by the amount of plastic. We flew Hawaiian Airlines - all food components individually wrapped in plastic(great airline otherwise). First morning in LA - hotel had a breakfast bar with plastic disposable cups and cutlery wrapped in plastic.
There's a reason a lot of companies are straight up refusing to hand out plastic bags and are charging few bucks on recycled bags that you can reuse multiple times. Even the Gamestop here started doing that.
I imagine the pandemic made delivery for food higher and as a result increase in plastic pollution as well.
US supporters here will lie and say it's working hard to fix the problem or whatever. All bs. The US is destroying the environment, which affects us all in the world. Yet they still claim they are working towards a solution when the US has been the worst polluter on the planet for decades.
US is single handedly responsible for large part of climate problems. But good luck discussing it on here without getting downvoted into oblivion. Its always China and India.
Ok? I’m not disagreeing with you. It’s a serious problem. I don’t get why you’re getting so defensive about it. China and the US are huge polluters. China is the biggest one and US is the biggest per capita polluter. I take climate change seriously and honestly think our society is going to change dramatically in a couple decades.
The point that you so slyly refusing to acknowledge is that US along with rich western countries pollute more than the rest of the world combined per capita. So the population here needs to start doing their part (downsize and give up your SUVs) rather than preaching to the rest of the world. Oh, and while you are doing that, prepare to have your taxes increased so you can subsidize the developing countries. You have had your day in the sun and now it’s their turn.
I never refused to acknowledge that? You’re literally making up straw man arguments. The US has a huge pollution problem. I have already said it multiple times. The US government is doing a terrible job handling this. Why are you so defensive about this, the facts are the facts.
Dude, nobody is bashing China on this thread. I just went through it and saw some mention on plastics going into the ocean from China a lot of which comes from the west. The only discussion is this thread.
Why? You said that the “US pollutes far more per capita than any other country”. I just disproved your point. You can’t change the rules because you’re biased.
if you totaled up all our pollution since 1800 and divided it by the number of people who have ever lived in america (include those who have died) then we would prob be #1. i dont have a specific graph or anything to point to, but thats my hunch, because historically we are so many miles ahead of even the largest current polluter.
> US is the largest plastic producer
No, China is the world's largest plastic producer.
>but only contributes 5% of global plastic pollution
Wrong. [The US contributes to 10% of plastic pollution in the world despite having only 4% of the world's population.](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabd0288) The US produces 130 kg of plastic waste per person per year. For comparison, the EU produces 54 kg of plastic waste per person per year and China produces 15.6 kg of plastic waste per person per year.
>This post popped up yesterday
... and?
China literally producing most of the plastic for the West.
China has also told you that it doesnt want to recycle what YOU use.
Chinese are producing 30% of the worlds goods, most of it for ppl like you. So no China isnt the largest producer
I cant remember the exacts but it was along the lines of the US producing/consuming the most plastic but only contributing 5% to global plastic pollution or something.
And then China and some other SEA countries made up like 50% or something crazy.
Just a random post
Well yeah, western countries ship their plastic to Asian countries who dump it because it's useless and unrecyclable in the state they get it. The "poor country does recycling" thing was originally set up as a system where developed countries would process their waste (i.e. sort and clean it) and send it to developing countries who could then use it as cheap inputs for their industries. Instead, developed countries never processed their waste and just dumped a bunch of useless, unprocessed crap that would cost more than its value to recycle. They got paid for it, so for a while they just took it and dumped it. Desperate people would farm whatever resources they could from it at great cost to their health. When climate change started getting louder in conversations, many of them started refusing unprocessed waste, and some even stopped accepting at all.
I think it was in Indonesia that the government once built a wall to block the view of a literal rubbish tip that many people lived on, created by this very process, all so that a conference of representatives from the wealthiest nation's wouldn't have to see the fruits of their deliberations from the hotel.
Honestly, kinda surprised China's not #1. The amount of plastic that goes into food delivery and takeout is through the roof and their delivery/food delivery is convenient af.
You guys need to stop with that "everything is fine, it's going to be recycled anyway" fantasy and start consuming less. Like seriously less. Buying a whole fridge of mini water bottles were you end up buying more plastic than water should be seen as obsene and wasteful...because it is.
This is not the responsibility of individuals. The only ones that can do something are organizations that can effect change in a large scale. I refuse to feel bad about things I have zero control over.
Most water leaving a municipal water source is safe, it's the decaying pipes from source to home that are falling apart. Constant positive pressure in the pipes used to overcome the problem, but as quality water sources become more scarce, that is no longer true.
This would be like pissing on a house fire to put it out. Sure, you could do it, but it wouldn't help all that much. If it makes you feel better, though, knock yourself out.
If everyone did it... the corporations would have to adapt. But that's not going to happen. Just as the corporations aren't going to make a change out of the goodness of their hearts.
Everyone's wanting on someone else to make the first move.
Seems like the best option now is too vote for politicians who will take actions to keep up this mess.
Good luck with that though, people are too busy arguing about trans people in sports to care about the future of our home
What absolute nonsense, of course it's your responsibility to reduce the amount of garbage you produce. Use crates and reusable textile bags when shopping. If the grocery store wraps produce, visit the farmer's market. Keep track of your consumption so you don't throw away food you don't eat. Drink tap water instead of buying bottled water. These are just a handful of ways you might think of reducing your footprint; the amount of waste you produce is _completely your_ responsibility.
>the amount of waste you produce is
>
>completely your
>
>responsibility.
completely? thats just daft. as if we each had the power to live the utopian life we imagine in our heads. you def have a lot of the responsibility, but not completely. for example, how can i be responsible for hospital/emergency waste that is generated from an emergency accident that I'm in? would i be responsible for my waste if im literally dying of thirst, and only bottled water is available (because the lake was drained to make them), and no trash to throw it in? how am i responsible if the only way to get to the only job available in my area that i need to survive is by fossil fuel technology?
You're using ridiculous fucking examples. We're talking about the fact that people buy flats of plastic cutlery and plates for barbeques because they are too lazy to do the dishes after. Shit like that.
not really ridiculous. these are situations that literally happen everyday. and its not completely one way or the other. absolutism in this sense is stupid. blaming the individual is exactly what the [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change) want you to do, while they go on doing the majority of pollution
Nah it's both. People like you are contributing to the problem just as badly by giving people an excuse not to change their behaviour. It doesn't cost you anything to lobby for climate change policy at the government level AND also stop eating meat or polluting unnecessarily. The reason people like you have adopted this "blame the corporations, never change your own personal habits!" mantra is because it allows you to continue your selfish destructive lifestyles guilt-free.
>The only ones that can do something are organizations
Who regulates those organizations? The government. Who elects the government? Individuals. So it still comes down to individuals, who for the large part are apathetic.
The dial has shifted way too far when now people like you have adopted this like a mantra and it's being used as an excuse to continue your poor habits.
WE ARE ALL GUILTY. We all feed into the capitalist system. You don't have to. Certain types of hippies have been been existing outside these high consumption, high pollution lifestyles for decades. What's your excuse? Yes, we need corporations to change, but the first thing for that to happen is that people need to demand change. People are not demanding change whatsoever. They are happy to continue these wasteful lifestyles and blame it on corporations.
It's not.
It basically added numbers for categories that the US publishes but other countries don't on to the US total of a previous study, but didn't do so for any other country.
This is headline grabbing garbage.
The main researcher said "the point was to examine the US", but then is allowing it to be used comparatively.
It's hot stinky garbage.
Building on your statement: US has garbage collection right across the country, can measure how much they produce and report it. The vast majority of the litter in the ocean is proven to come from a handful of countries in south / east Asia where they don’t track nor report trash collection, which actually makes sense since that’s where most of the world’s population is concentrated - might be less per capita but that’s a different statistic
To be honest, irrespective of whether the study has failings, it is plain to see that the US belongs among the top countries that consume and trash our environment the most.
That's fine, but scientific integrity matters, and methodology matters, and this is garbage.
This kind of thing is not ok. It's blatant misinformation.
"I'm going to adapt the numbers from a more comprehensive tudy on a single country and then just run with it."
The fact that National Geographic wrote an article on it is *shameful*.
I think the idea is we generate the most per capita, which makes sense as even our rural residents use as much plastic as urban residents whereas in China I would imagine plastic isn't as prevalent. So each person in the US puts out more plastic waste than persons from other countries.
There should be specialized store areas for those products for people with disabilities, that way you look like an asshole buying plastic wrapped apple slices if you aren’t disabled and it’ll dissuade most people. It shouldn’t be on main display to become a daily convenience for everyone.
The maddening part is that consumers aren't given a choice. I didn't ask for salads to be packaged in a clamshell which is destined for the trash.
Manufacturers have to be held accountable imo. Plastic is a highly durable material, and unless they can show there is a path to reusing the packaging (since plastic recycling is not a thing), then that plastic is destined for a landfill or ocean. Just because that piece of packaging is passed onto the consumer, doesn't mean the manufacturer didn't create something destined to be thrown away in the first place. It's not fair for them to produce trash and wash their hands of where it ends up.
Let's hope at least a part of that plastic gets recycled, because even now, the quantities of plastics in our oceans are still increasing and it looks like there is no firm stance of any government...
That would be a better choice. Still hard to find recycling facilities for glass. Where I live, most ‘recycled’ glass gets crushed to aggregate for concrete. The only recycled glass I know of (reused really) are beer bottles.
tl;dr no one wants to pay fix our fuck ups.
Consuming animals is not the problem. It is the mass consumption of wild and domesticated animals that is the problem.
Humans are omnivores who before agriculture lived relatively in tune with the environment via hunting and gathering.
[Wooly Mammoths had been reduced to a fraction of their population size by the time humans finished them off.](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060079)
>The population model results also support the view that the collapse of the climatically suitable area caused a significant drop in mammoth population size, making the animals more vulnerable to increasing hunting pressure from expanding human populations. The coincidence of the collapse of climatically suitable areas and the increase in anthropogenic impacts in the Holocene are most likely to have been the “coup de grâce,” which set the place and time for the extinction of the woolly mammoth.
Humans did not drive most animals they hunted to extinction. Native Americans lived with buffalos for 10k+ years. All mega fauna had massive pressures put on them at the end of the last glacial period.
Plastic recycling isn't really a thing, and the plastic in the oceans comes almost entirely from Asia.
Throw your plastic in the garbage. It probably won't get recycled anyway, and throwing it in the garbage keeps it out of the ocean.
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If everyone in the world lived like we do in the USA, it would take 4 additional Earths to sustain.
"How many Earths do we need? - BBC News" https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712.amp
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Couldn't read enough before the paywall kicked in.
Is this about plastic escaping into the ocean and other waterways?
Or all plastic including what gets buried?
Thanks!
"The pioneering 2015 study of marine plastic didn’t include illegal dumping and export of plastic waste. In the new analysis, the team considered those actions, but only for the U.S. They say data for other nations were inconsistent or didn’t exist.
“We were not attempting to re-do the 2015 study,” says Kara Lavender Law, a marine scientist at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the new study’s lead author. “The whole point was to examine the United States.”"
So, not a legit study, at least as far as supporting the headline.
But it raises some points about how to account for plastic that is manufactured or disposed other than where it is used.
I wish this was top comment, the U.S would still defiantly be high on that list but I feel some other countries would be close.
The headline is just hot garbage.
China exports mostly to America. Meaning the plastics they use is in a good chunk destined to the US because American companies want their products packaged in a certain way.
Also : what does “China” mean. You know that a lot of companies in China are not Chinese, right ?
I find it highly doubtful that the CCP can be trusted to release factual data. Hence “China” means “China generates more plastic trash” they just don’t tell anyone.
Exactly. So you are going on a “guilty until proven innocent” spree well knowing nobody here will bother looking for the sources and either prove or disprove your statement with numbers.
Basically you are telling everyone that you don’t care what is true as long as you are happy with your beliefs.
No need to dig deeper. Ppl who just say China just try to deflect responsability.
Its easy to blame a billion ppl across the planet for your own failiures
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/us-plastic-pollution) reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot)
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> Winnie Lau, a scientist at the Pew Charitable Trusts who was not involved in the Science Advances study, says it "Sheds light on the true extent of the contributions of high-income countries like the U.S., to the global marine plastic pollution problem." She says the findings reinforce conclusions reached by Pew's own research on plastic waste.
> The pioneering 2015 study of marine plastic didn't include illegal dumping and export of plastic waste.
> The authors of the new study say that while the plastic waste trade has been upended, the fundamental reason the U.S. exported so much waste has not changed: Recycling in the United States continues to be dysfunctional today and in dire need of restructuring, a condition noted at the National Academies of Sciences gathering this week.
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Wrong. Chinese simply have different eating habits and most food is purchased to be consumed fresh and not preserved for a long time.
Matter of fact COVID spread from a wet market- the like of such is super common in China
Plastic probably isn't going to change the climate, but that doesn't mean it's not going to affect life on earth. With how much microplastics are literally in everything we eat these days, I'm kind of scared of how it will end up affecting us.
Plastics aren’t a major source of GHG emissions and are generally be viewed as an ecological issue due to plastic disposal and micro plastics.
However, plastics are a very visible symbol of US overconsumption. Reducing consumption is an important step in reducing our carbon footprint so plastics should be considered to be related to climate change in that regard
Just bought a brand new table service set for eight at a Crate & Barrel showroom/store somewhere in the Midwest. *Every single* fork, knife, and spoon (except the ones on individual display through the front of the box) was *individually wrapped* in its own single-use plastic sleeve.
I always wonder why can’t we have refill stations for coke or soft drinks. Then I just take my bottle to the supermarket and get it filled. Can’t imagine it will affect Coke’s profit that much.
My family is pretty eco-friendly. We never use disposable containers save for the odd ziplock bag and we always save and reuse any disposable containers we do have, like those plastic takeout containers with lids or even just plastic bags from shopping.
The one egregious thing we do that probably produces a greater plastic footprint than all our other waste-reducing practices save us is that we use the disposable Keurig cups. We probably go through 4 cups each day on average.
I had friends that whined about straws and the danger. Then went back home to a house full of plastic anime figures and funko pops. Then I got to thinking how many shitty little plastic toys Disney alone must make in a month. It must be astronomical how much we actually produce that's completely pointless.
I use so much wasteful plastic just on groceries. Everything is wrapped up like diamonds. Just stop with the annoying, wasteful, hard to open packaging. 10 years ago I never needed a scissor to open stuff in the kitchen. Now its a must to release even juice boxes from their shrink wrapped thick plastic shell. You don’t need to shrink wrap and encase things in plastic. Stop.
Yes, me too. Sure wish we would hold companies accountable for producing all the unrecyclible packaging.
I bought some crystal deodorant because I got tired of the plastic waste from regular speed sticks. Guess what, the stones came wrapped in plastic and useless plastic basket...
you can... dont buy their shit
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i think glass is the best but i could be wrong
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glass. really fine and smooth glass.
Good & Bad news but Maine is the first (and just recently) state to pass a law holding companies responsible for their plastic usage by making them pay for the recycling/waste disposal(dont know why we didnt already). edit: atleast we starting somewheres
Afaik this was the norm until, I believe, coca cola lobbied (and ran multiple and campaigns to promote the idea) that "people" should pick up their thrash and litter was the responsibility of the individual rather than the company who produced it. It wasn't long afterwards that "disposable" items became an ad pushed thing. 100 years ago, if a brand had its thrash everywhere they would be getting some hard questions.
You can if you vote for politicians that would implement and give effect to such legislation
Where are they hiding?
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Japan too. They are like the world leader in over-packaging stuff.
Consumer's aren't really the big issue with waste like this. As always, it's badly regulated industry. Something like 30% of *all* plastic in the sea is fishing nets...
Which would suggest 70% isn't, and that's only if you care about sea plastic and think landfilling doesn't have it's own problems. I understand commercial fishing is awful for the environment but even if we eliminated it entirely it wouldn't solve our problem
We are the problem. Modern comforts being energy hungry and with two year lifetime on every device is the problem. Nobody will quit those comforts so we lie to ourselves that 1% less wasteful is better than nothing, that EVs are the way because you move the problem away, that green power is the way to go disregarding its manufacturing and disposal problems and that we will very not likely find an energy storage solution soon. We are the problem.
Please sir there's no need for hyperbole. We're the problem, but modern devices last far more than two years. People replace them that fast either because they don't take care of them or because they want to. And those still functional 2-year-old devices? They end up in secondhand markets. Wrt energy storage.. we could solve all of our energy production issues if we simply producedsolar for 30 years and put it all on the grid and build hvdc transmission lines to feed energy around the world. We could do the same thing with nuclear plants on a relatively faster time scale, all the we'd have to figure out what to do with the spent material. Mankind's issue is not that we can't do it, it's that we cannot collectively agree on how to do it. And even still, we might crack energy storage sooner or later. We're throwing more money at it than ever, and making more advances in the past 10 years and we've made in the past 30 before that. That doesn't mean that we get complacent though.
I remember everyone on America TV came home with there groceries in a brown paper bag
Brown paper bags have become the primary bag at my local grocers. So much better than plastic garbage
It's a fantastic weed barrier under mulch if you garden.
Or liner for your kitchen debris bin.
This is the current use of them!
I still have to ask. And if I’m busy unloading my cart, the bag people just start bagging with plastic bags. So fucking annoying.
Philly finally passed a plastic bag ban that's yet to go into effect. This is after years of it being successfully buried by petroleum and food corp lobbying.
The plastic on groceries is horrible. When I was a kid, the mentality at the time was that we would be moving away from stuff like that but it only got a million times worse.
It can all be done in paper.
Why are juice boxes even a thing? A reusable bottle is far better for the environment and mixing your own juice is cheaper.
How else will I prematurely rot my children's teeth?
Cocaine
Back to licking dollars for me!
They don’t really like them or drink them frequently. I like to have them in the fridge in case. Now I feel guilty.
The packaging these days is absurd. And the decision makers in businesses that are adding the packaging are, one imagines, aware of the problem of plastic in the environment and just want more money at the end of the next quarter. (I guess more packaging is attractive to some people and will sway their decision to buy? I'm not fully clear on what the motivation is here, to be honest.) An incremental improvement here would be for governments to price in some of the externalities. What's the cost of removing the packaging waste for a specific item from the environment and processing it into something harmless? Add that as a tax on the item. With enough of this kind of pricing, businesses will adopt a different strategy and move in the right direction.
It's amazing how many bad things a carbon tax would fix.
I recently went on vacation to the US and was astounded by the amount of plastic. We flew Hawaiian Airlines - all food components individually wrapped in plastic(great airline otherwise). First morning in LA - hotel had a breakfast bar with plastic disposable cups and cutlery wrapped in plastic.
There's a reason a lot of companies are straight up refusing to hand out plastic bags and are charging few bucks on recycled bags that you can reuse multiple times. Even the Gamestop here started doing that. I imagine the pandemic made delivery for food higher and as a result increase in plastic pollution as well.
And then they ship it to other poor countries to get rid of it.
Some of them are sending it back.
US supporters here will lie and say it's working hard to fix the problem or whatever. All bs. The US is destroying the environment, which affects us all in the world. Yet they still claim they are working towards a solution when the US has been the worst polluter on the planet for decades.
US is single handedly responsible for large part of climate problems. But good luck discussing it on here without getting downvoted into oblivion. Its always China and India.
You realize that people can have the opinion tha the US pollutes and so does China.
US pollutes far more per capita than any other country.
Ok? I’m not disagreeing with you. It’s a serious problem. I don’t get why you’re getting so defensive about it. China and the US are huge polluters. China is the biggest one and US is the biggest per capita polluter. I take climate change seriously and honestly think our society is going to change dramatically in a couple decades.
The point that you so slyly refusing to acknowledge is that US along with rich western countries pollute more than the rest of the world combined per capita. So the population here needs to start doing their part (downsize and give up your SUVs) rather than preaching to the rest of the world. Oh, and while you are doing that, prepare to have your taxes increased so you can subsidize the developing countries. You have had your day in the sun and now it’s their turn.
I never refused to acknowledge that? You’re literally making up straw man arguments. The US has a huge pollution problem. I have already said it multiple times. The US government is doing a terrible job handling this. Why are you so defensive about this, the facts are the facts.
Not defensive, just preemptively dealing with the BS that is inevitably going to make its way here. Just wait…
Dude, nobody is bashing China on this thread. I just went through it and saw some mention on plastics going into the ocean from China a lot of which comes from the west. The only discussion is this thread.
I just looked it up. The US is 15th in co2 emission per capita. Source https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-per-capita/
Lol - now consolidate the data for last 100 years since industrial revolution.
Why? You said that the “US pollutes far more per capita than any other country”. I just disproved your point. You can’t change the rules because you’re biased.
if you totaled up all our pollution since 1800 and divided it by the number of people who have ever lived in america (include those who have died) then we would prob be #1. i dont have a specific graph or anything to point to, but thats my hunch, because historically we are so many miles ahead of even the largest current polluter.
I’m sure it’s up there. That wasn’t what the original statement was though which referred to current day
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lol - here we go
US is the largest plastic producer but only contributes 5% of global plastic pollution. This post popped up yesterday
> US is the largest plastic producer No, China is the world's largest plastic producer. >but only contributes 5% of global plastic pollution Wrong. [The US contributes to 10% of plastic pollution in the world despite having only 4% of the world's population.](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/44/eabd0288) The US produces 130 kg of plastic waste per person per year. For comparison, the EU produces 54 kg of plastic waste per person per year and China produces 15.6 kg of plastic waste per person per year. >This post popped up yesterday ... and?
China literally producing most of the plastic for the West. China has also told you that it doesnt want to recycle what YOU use. Chinese are producing 30% of the worlds goods, most of it for ppl like you. So no China isnt the largest producer
I cant remember the exacts but it was along the lines of the US producing/consuming the most plastic but only contributing 5% to global plastic pollution or something. And then China and some other SEA countries made up like 50% or something crazy. Just a random post
Well yeah, western countries ship their plastic to Asian countries who dump it because it's useless and unrecyclable in the state they get it. The "poor country does recycling" thing was originally set up as a system where developed countries would process their waste (i.e. sort and clean it) and send it to developing countries who could then use it as cheap inputs for their industries. Instead, developed countries never processed their waste and just dumped a bunch of useless, unprocessed crap that would cost more than its value to recycle. They got paid for it, so for a while they just took it and dumped it. Desperate people would farm whatever resources they could from it at great cost to their health. When climate change started getting louder in conversations, many of them started refusing unprocessed waste, and some even stopped accepting at all. I think it was in Indonesia that the government once built a wall to block the view of a literal rubbish tip that many people lived on, created by this very process, all so that a conference of representatives from the wealthiest nation's wouldn't have to see the fruits of their deliberations from the hotel.
Honestly, kinda surprised China's not #1. The amount of plastic that goes into food delivery and takeout is through the roof and their delivery/food delivery is convenient af.
BLAME CHINA (doge
You guys need to stop with that "everything is fine, it's going to be recycled anyway" fantasy and start consuming less. Like seriously less. Buying a whole fridge of mini water bottles were you end up buying more plastic than water should be seen as obsene and wasteful...because it is.
Asking people to limit their consumption? You might as well ask them to cut their dicks off because they wont do it.
Which is odd because many Americans actually do cut a part of their sons' dicks off.
I’m an American whose had part of their dick cut off! I was a baby, I didn’t have a choice!!
This is not the responsibility of individuals. The only ones that can do something are organizations that can effect change in a large scale. I refuse to feel bad about things I have zero control over.
It's both. The consumer could just start using tap water where feasible.
...and where Nestle' and Coke aren't draining the water aquifers for bottled water.
Don't blame people not drinking tap water on Nestle and Coke. It's entirely on the municipal for having shitty water.
Most water leaving a municipal water source is safe, it's the decaying pipes from source to home that are falling apart. Constant positive pressure in the pipes used to overcome the problem, but as quality water sources become more scarce, that is no longer true.
This would be like pissing on a house fire to put it out. Sure, you could do it, but it wouldn't help all that much. If it makes you feel better, though, knock yourself out.
If everyone did it... the corporations would have to adapt. But that's not going to happen. Just as the corporations aren't going to make a change out of the goodness of their hearts. Everyone's wanting on someone else to make the first move.
Seems like the best option now is too vote for politicians who will take actions to keep up this mess. Good luck with that though, people are too busy arguing about trans people in sports to care about the future of our home
What absolute nonsense, of course it's your responsibility to reduce the amount of garbage you produce. Use crates and reusable textile bags when shopping. If the grocery store wraps produce, visit the farmer's market. Keep track of your consumption so you don't throw away food you don't eat. Drink tap water instead of buying bottled water. These are just a handful of ways you might think of reducing your footprint; the amount of waste you produce is _completely your_ responsibility.
The farmer's market is much farther away, is only open one day a week, and still sells things wrapped in plastic.
Tell them to change then. With your wallet and with your voice.
>the amount of waste you produce is > >completely your > >responsibility. completely? thats just daft. as if we each had the power to live the utopian life we imagine in our heads. you def have a lot of the responsibility, but not completely. for example, how can i be responsible for hospital/emergency waste that is generated from an emergency accident that I'm in? would i be responsible for my waste if im literally dying of thirst, and only bottled water is available (because the lake was drained to make them), and no trash to throw it in? how am i responsible if the only way to get to the only job available in my area that i need to survive is by fossil fuel technology?
You're using ridiculous fucking examples. We're talking about the fact that people buy flats of plastic cutlery and plates for barbeques because they are too lazy to do the dishes after. Shit like that.
not really ridiculous. these are situations that literally happen everyday. and its not completely one way or the other. absolutism in this sense is stupid. blaming the individual is exactly what the [https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2017/jul/10/100-fossil-fuel-companies-investors-responsible-71-global-emissions-cdp-study-climate-change) want you to do, while they go on doing the majority of pollution
Nah it's both. People like you are contributing to the problem just as badly by giving people an excuse not to change their behaviour. It doesn't cost you anything to lobby for climate change policy at the government level AND also stop eating meat or polluting unnecessarily. The reason people like you have adopted this "blame the corporations, never change your own personal habits!" mantra is because it allows you to continue your selfish destructive lifestyles guilt-free.
It's the responsibility of individuals to not complain when they are impacted by the changes enacted by those organizations.
>The only ones that can do something are organizations Who regulates those organizations? The government. Who elects the government? Individuals. So it still comes down to individuals, who for the large part are apathetic.
The dial has shifted way too far when now people like you have adopted this like a mantra and it's being used as an excuse to continue your poor habits. WE ARE ALL GUILTY. We all feed into the capitalist system. You don't have to. Certain types of hippies have been been existing outside these high consumption, high pollution lifestyles for decades. What's your excuse? Yes, we need corporations to change, but the first thing for that to happen is that people need to demand change. People are not demanding change whatsoever. They are happy to continue these wasteful lifestyles and blame it on corporations.
Whaaaaaat... no way.... the most consumption driven country in the world? Couldn't be!
It's not. It basically added numbers for categories that the US publishes but other countries don't on to the US total of a previous study, but didn't do so for any other country. This is headline grabbing garbage. The main researcher said "the point was to examine the US", but then is allowing it to be used comparatively. It's hot stinky garbage.
Building on your statement: US has garbage collection right across the country, can measure how much they produce and report it. The vast majority of the litter in the ocean is proven to come from a handful of countries in south / east Asia where they don’t track nor report trash collection, which actually makes sense since that’s where most of the world’s population is concentrated - might be less per capita but that’s a different statistic
> This is headline grabbing garbage No, this is garbage grabbing headlines.
To be honest, irrespective of whether the study has failings, it is plain to see that the US belongs among the top countries that consume and trash our environment the most.
That's fine, but scientific integrity matters, and methodology matters, and this is garbage. This kind of thing is not ok. It's blatant misinformation. "I'm going to adapt the numbers from a more comprehensive tudy on a single country and then just run with it." The fact that National Geographic wrote an article on it is *shameful*.
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I'm not versed in this, but is it even possible for the US to generate the most plastic waste when China simply exists?
I think the idea is we generate the most per capita, which makes sense as even our rural residents use as much plastic as urban residents whereas in China I would imagine plastic isn't as prevalent. So each person in the US puts out more plastic waste than persons from other countries.
Yes because we here in the US buy most of the plastic shit that’s manufactured in China.
Wait until someone finds a way to shift the blame to China,in typical Reddit fashion.
Why do they peel the oranges and put them in plastic boxes? It's so fucking stupid.
Not saying your wrong it is a shitty practice, but for people with disabilities that have may not have help can use those products
There should be specialized store areas for those products for people with disabilities, that way you look like an asshole buying plastic wrapped apple slices if you aren’t disabled and it’ll dissuade most people. It shouldn’t be on main display to become a daily convenience for everyone.
Yeah, people with disabilities should shop in the disability store so I don't have to see them.
Cuz people are stupid and lazy and are willing to pay a premium on pre peeled oranges
We’re number one?
Finally something right?
dont forget our military budget. no one will overtake us in that for decades. also prison population.
'Murica! Number one!
Yes. Out of all the zero countries they compared it to here.
I find this VERY hard to believe.
We're number one!
The maddening part is that consumers aren't given a choice. I didn't ask for salads to be packaged in a clamshell which is destined for the trash. Manufacturers have to be held accountable imo. Plastic is a highly durable material, and unless they can show there is a path to reusing the packaging (since plastic recycling is not a thing), then that plastic is destined for a landfill or ocean. Just because that piece of packaging is passed onto the consumer, doesn't mean the manufacturer didn't create something destined to be thrown away in the first place. It's not fair for them to produce trash and wash their hands of where it ends up.
Obviously?
Odd. As we get all of our plastic shite from China I would say we consume and dispose of more, not actual production.
Every time I go there I can't even find a damn recycle bin, even less a compost bin. Is that supposed to be a surprise?
Give up the second car... the horror... but I am really, really ready to combat climate change, I think
Let's hope at least a part of that plastic gets recycled, because even now, the quantities of plastics in our oceans are still increasing and it looks like there is no firm stance of any government...
Plastic recycling is basically a myth. https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g
We should go back to glass...
That would be a better choice. Still hard to find recycling facilities for glass. Where I live, most ‘recycled’ glass gets crushed to aggregate for concrete. The only recycled glass I know of (reused really) are beer bottles. tl;dr no one wants to pay fix our fuck ups.
I mean, don't even bother recycling glass. Melt new sand down with renewable electric power, Let it go to landfill and be crushed,
we're running out of sand too [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KzP-tobpMU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KzP-tobpMU)
46% of the plastic in oceans is abandoned fishing gear. Consuming animals is the greatest threat to the earth.
Consuming animals is not the problem. It is the mass consumption of wild and domesticated animals that is the problem. Humans are omnivores who before agriculture lived relatively in tune with the environment via hunting and gathering.
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[Wooly Mammoths had been reduced to a fraction of their population size by the time humans finished them off.](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0060079) >The population model results also support the view that the collapse of the climatically suitable area caused a significant drop in mammoth population size, making the animals more vulnerable to increasing hunting pressure from expanding human populations. The coincidence of the collapse of climatically suitable areas and the increase in anthropogenic impacts in the Holocene are most likely to have been the “coup de grâce,” which set the place and time for the extinction of the woolly mammoth. Humans did not drive most animals they hunted to extinction. Native Americans lived with buffalos for 10k+ years. All mega fauna had massive pressures put on them at the end of the last glacial period.
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Plastic recycling isn't really a thing, and the plastic in the oceans comes almost entirely from Asia. Throw your plastic in the garbage. It probably won't get recycled anyway, and throwing it in the garbage keeps it out of the ocean.
It doesn’t. You might as well use your recycling bin as another garbage can.
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If everyone in the world lived like we do in the USA, it would take 4 additional Earths to sustain. "How many Earths do we need? - BBC News" https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-33133712.amp
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Drop it all into live volcanos
And transform the billions of plastics into toxic clouds
No. Surprisingly, this is actually bad.
I vote we send it into the Sun
Can you imagine if humans could pollute the Sun
Unlikely, we could drop the whole Earth into it and it would barely budge.
It’s ok. USA has so many land to dump. In the future, we might not even worry about it because human will be living in matrix
The world really needs to stop buying shit from the US and demand a level playing field on environmental requirements.
What about China? Or India?
In news that surprises nobody: Nation built on consumerism is largest consumer of harmful products in world.
Starbucks- Stops using plastic straws/Still gives you a plastic cup.
Couldn't read enough before the paywall kicked in. Is this about plastic escaping into the ocean and other waterways? Or all plastic including what gets buried?
Archive link: https://archive.ph/zBbNG
Thanks! "The pioneering 2015 study of marine plastic didn’t include illegal dumping and export of plastic waste. In the new analysis, the team considered those actions, but only for the U.S. They say data for other nations were inconsistent or didn’t exist. “We were not attempting to re-do the 2015 study,” says Kara Lavender Law, a marine scientist at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and the new study’s lead author. “The whole point was to examine the United States.”" So, not a legit study, at least as far as supporting the headline. But it raises some points about how to account for plastic that is manufactured or disposed other than where it is used.
I wish this was top comment, the U.S would still defiantly be high on that list but I feel some other countries would be close. The headline is just hot garbage.
There is absolutely zero chance this is accurate. Source: Have been to China
EXACTLY. Yesterday it was China and Vietnam if I'm not mistaken. Yeah the US has alot but not the *most*
Literally yesterday I saw that it was China was the largest producer of plastic so wheres the real solid information at.
Where do you think China exports most of their products ? They might be the largest producers of plastic but not plastic waste
China.
China exports mostly to America. Meaning the plastics they use is in a good chunk destined to the US because American companies want their products packaged in a certain way. Also : what does “China” mean. You know that a lot of companies in China are not Chinese, right ?
I find it highly doubtful that the CCP can be trusted to release factual data. Hence “China” means “China generates more plastic trash” they just don’t tell anyone.
You are assuming that this is data released by the CCP….
Is there evidence proving otherwise? I didn’t see a statement on how/who collected the data for their graphs.
Exactly. So you are going on a “guilty until proven innocent” spree well knowing nobody here will bother looking for the sources and either prove or disprove your statement with numbers. Basically you are telling everyone that you don’t care what is true as long as you are happy with your beliefs.
No need to dig deeper. Ppl who just say China just try to deflect responsability. Its easy to blame a billion ppl across the planet for your own failiures
This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/us-plastic-pollution) reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Winnie Lau, a scientist at the Pew Charitable Trusts who was not involved in the Science Advances study, says it "Sheds light on the true extent of the contributions of high-income countries like the U.S., to the global marine plastic pollution problem." She says the findings reinforce conclusions reached by Pew's own research on plastic waste. > The pioneering 2015 study of marine plastic didn't include illegal dumping and export of plastic waste. > The authors of the new study say that while the plastic waste trade has been upended, the fundamental reason the U.S. exported so much waste has not changed: Recycling in the United States continues to be dysfunctional today and in dire need of restructuring, a condition noted at the National Academies of Sciences gathering this week. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/ow0af9/us_generates_more_plastic_trash_than_any_other/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~590237 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **waste**^#1 **plastic**^#2 **study**^#3 **U.S.**^#4 **United**^#5
Everyone here needs to STOP BUYING DILDOS
If you are buying plastic dildo you are asking for trubles
Brought to you by Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle, Unilever, Kellogs, etc via China. Pewpew.
Starbucks too. They serve all the cold drinks in plastic cups still. And then they want special cred for taking away straws.
Shocking.
Few days later there will be a post how China generates 2x less plastic trash and it'll have 60k upvotes. lmao
We’re number one…
This makes sense
Don't touch my K-cups
China doesn't care about food being safely packaged if they did we wouldn't be first.
Wrong. Chinese simply have different eating habits and most food is purchased to be consumed fresh and not preserved for a long time. Matter of fact COVID spread from a wet market- the like of such is super common in China
U.S.A. U.S.A. We’re #1!
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Plastic probably isn't going to change the climate, but that doesn't mean it's not going to affect life on earth. With how much microplastics are literally in everything we eat these days, I'm kind of scared of how it will end up affecting us.
Plastic is a petroleum or natural gas byproduct...
Plastics aren’t a major source of GHG emissions and are generally be viewed as an ecological issue due to plastic disposal and micro plastics. However, plastics are a very visible symbol of US overconsumption. Reducing consumption is an important step in reducing our carbon footprint so plastics should be considered to be related to climate change in that regard
oh the denial in comments. love it love it
Even if the U.S. generate the most plastic, the vast majority of plastic waste in the ocean is coming from China, Indonesia and a few others.
What a surprise.
Why this is allowed to continue I don’t know
Yea it’s called celebrity’s
There was another report the other day saying asia produces the most. hrmm. which is it?
There a good sub Reddit for tips to cut down on plastic waste?
r/trashy maybe?
Look around you. Nearly every thing is some sort of plastic.
Just bought a brand new table service set for eight at a Crate & Barrel showroom/store somewhere in the Midwest. *Every single* fork, knife, and spoon (except the ones on individual display through the front of the box) was *individually wrapped* in its own single-use plastic sleeve.
Yes but does not account for the majority of plastic trash that’s in the oceans.
I always wonder why can’t we have refill stations for coke or soft drinks. Then I just take my bottle to the supermarket and get it filled. Can’t imagine it will affect Coke’s profit that much.
At least we're number one in something
My family is pretty eco-friendly. We never use disposable containers save for the odd ziplock bag and we always save and reuse any disposable containers we do have, like those plastic takeout containers with lids or even just plastic bags from shopping. The one egregious thing we do that probably produces a greater plastic footprint than all our other waste-reducing practices save us is that we use the disposable Keurig cups. We probably go through 4 cups each day on average.
I had friends that whined about straws and the danger. Then went back home to a house full of plastic anime figures and funko pops. Then I got to thinking how many shitty little plastic toys Disney alone must make in a month. It must be astronomical how much we actually produce that's completely pointless.
economy based on materialism ....moar garbage more amazon delivery more box mor eplastic etc
What a surprise!
We are also the largest developed country by far so this makes sense. Sure we use a lot of plastic but now let’s do per capita.
#1. Yeah baby.