No More Plastic

[alaskyn66]

What's Walmart going to sell if they ban plastic. There go a bunch of jobs bye-bye.

[terracore]

"Would "bottled water" come in glass? Cans? Not at all?"

Anheiser Busch always donates disaster-relief water in aluminum cans.

"RWR, what's "AOC"?"

She's like if Bernie Sanders was a female, and also was unable to form a logical sentence.

"Banning plastic straws seemed, at first, to be silly."

The plastic "sippy cup" straw replacement I saw Starbucks using appeared to contain more plastic than the straw it replaced.

"How could anyone miss plastic utensils? They're an abomination."

What is KFC going to make it's sporks out of? The problem with banning things is that some other material has to replace it. China outlawed disposable wooden chopsticks because they were mowing down forests to make them. I never heard the end of that story but I understood that they were replacing them with plastic. Incidentally, KFC replaced it's polystyrene containers with reusable plastic ones (sort of like tupperware) and increased prices to match. Most of them still get thrown away without getting reused, and they contain more plastic than what they replaced.

ETA: I do believe that a plastics ban is coming, sooner or later. I just hope that when they write the law they include verbiage such that biodegradable or compostible and plant-based plastics continue to be legal.

[ElysianWort]

Without OpenD here it seems like we are all in agreement. "No more plastic" I agree too. What a nice concept.

[alaskyn66]

I've seen a lot of pictures of restaurants using straws made of pasta. Not sure how sanitary that is unless they are individually wrapped. Water in a can is okay, as long as it doesn't get a 'taste' to it. Aluminum is the easiest to recycle.

[BillyB]

In the early 1960's Heinekien came up with these beer bottles https://inhabitat.com/heineken-wobo-the-...olds-beer/

In St Thomas VI there is (or was 50 years ago) a street called "Glass Bottle Alley" were the pavement is the bottom of bottles set in concrete and the walls of the buildings are laid up glass bottles of all colors, very clever use of free materials. Much of the market (China) has dried up so recyclables are just making a circuitous and expensive journey to land fills.

Using glass bottles with an obvious recycling purpose other than grinding it up for sand could be a marketing advantage to eco minded people. I wouldn't build a whole house with them, but a translucent panel in a bathroom would be a nice touch.

I suspect most bottled water is a stupid waste of money in the U.S.; unless you live in Flint, Michigan or some other city with old lead pipes. Of course being stupid with your money is a "Human Right" enshrined in the United Nation charter, or at least that's what I was told.

[VancouverIslander]

I read an article recently about 100% biodegradable disposable straws and cutlery made from avocado pits. Surely these and other similar technology could replace plastic.

Me ka ha`aha`a,
Mike

[tada]

Gotta beat Big Brother! I neva needed straws before but I went to the store to buy sausage and tried out the blood pressure meter by the pharmacy section and was shocked by how high my BP was 2 weeks ago. So I put back the sausage. And my plan is to drink less coffee and drink more diluted coffee. So I plan to sip less coffee with straws. So next time I go to McDonald's to grab a handful of straws and reuse them.

[kalakoa]

A focused-solar kiln could melt glass into bricks suitable for decorative construction.

Such an apparatus could also melt recycled plastic into new forms.

Unfortunately, industry is not allowed; we can only import/export from elsewhere.

[alaskyn66]

It would make to much sense to be able to convert plastic bottles into other useful things that we all use. Plastic buckets, tubs,or plastic building materials.

Regarding straws: Google collapsible straws..

[terracore]

I stopped recycling glass (other than the ones with deposit) when I learned that they were just grinding it up and putting it in the landfill. I figured I'd save them the middle step of burning fossil fuels to grind the glass up. I understand that adding the ground up glass in the manner that they are doing is "good" for the landfill, but does anybody know if the "good" outweighs the cost on the planet of drilling, pumping, refining, and shipping the fossil fuels needed to grind it up? When I was a kid they recycled glass bottles by washing and reusing them, I guess replacing them was cheaper?