Plastic pollution

[mistermack]

In the UK they are planning to make people pay a deposit on plastic bottles which is good.

I have another idea.

Make it compulsory that any plastic item must be designed to float. So if it does end up in the sea, it can be skimmed off the surface, or picked up off beaches.

It would be easy for plastic wrapping to be all bubble wrap. And for bottles to have an air-filled chamber.
And other plastics to have air micro bubbles in the plastic itself.

So that it will no longer be sunken, out of sight, out of mind.

That's my idea. Any more?

[pErvinalia]

Doesn't most plastic float? There's a plastic graveyard out in the middle of the Pacific that's bigger than France and Germany combined. No one is scooping that one up.

[mistermack]

If plastic floats at all, it's like an iceberg. Nearly all of it is below the surface, which would make it hard to skim off and nearly invisible.

If it was really bouyant, it would be hard to ignore and easy to skim. It's just an idea, I doubt if it would be practical, or at least, it would cost money.

If every country agreed to charge deposits, they could easily afford special clean up ships. It might even be possible to power them by burning the plastic.

[laklak]

Ban plastic!

Or make it legal to throat punch anybody you see drinking Fiji water.

[Tero]

If you must have plastic, and kandfill the stupid household trash, it’s there forever. Better to burn it. Burns well. PVC gives off HCl as hazardous gas.

[JimC]

Doesn't most plastic float? There's a plastic graveyard out in the middle of the Pacific that's bigger than France and Germany combined. No one is scooping that one up.

I read an article on that recently. There are a fair number of plastic products that do sink, and others with a virtually neutral buoyancy that float all through the water column. As for the surface stuff in that Pacific eddy, surely it's not beyond our technology to have teams of powerful trawlers towing especially designed floating skimmers, with a large mother ship to compact the waste (or even, perhaps, with a properly designed incinerator to burn it without excessive pollution, possibly powering the ship as it does so...)

[Tero]

Landfill. Not kandfill.

[pErvinalia]

Doesn't most plastic float? There's a plastic graveyard out in the middle of the Pacific that's bigger than France and Germany combined. No one is scooping that one up.

I read an article on that recently. There are a fair number of plastic products that do sink, and others with a virtually neutral buoyancy that float all through the water column. As for the surface stuff in that Pacific eddy, surely it's not beyond our technology to have teams of powerful trawlers towing especially designed floating skimmers, with a large mother ship to compact the waste (or even, perhaps, with a properly designed incinerator to burn it without excessive pollution, possibly powering the ship as it does so...)

We could definitely do it, but no one really gives a shit. Out of sight, out of mind.

[laklak]

Convince the Chinese that sea plastic will give 'em a hard on, they'll buy it by the ton.

[rainbow]

In many villages in India, the local dump is also the creek. When the monsoon comes, the trash from the previous year is all washed away into the sea.

[Rum]

I think I posted about this a week or two ago - small victory - small good news story.

A field where I walk my dogs now and again was covered in plastic bottles after football training a couple of Sundays ago - there are about three footy pitches there. I stopped counting at 80 discarded plastic bottles. In the past I have seen mowers just come along and shred the plastic as they mow the grass. There is a river nearby and it all ends up there - and it is only 10 miles to the sea. I belong to a group here called 'Sustainable Carlisle' - an eco group. So I wrote to the head teacher of the school which owns the fields expressing my concern - referring to the group in passing.

Turned out three schools share the field and others around it. The head teacher replied very positively saying he was arranging a meeting of relevant school staff from each school to sort out the problem and in the interim they would have more litter collections.

All this a couple of weeks before Mr Gove's deposit scheme was announced - which will doubtless increase the incentive to stop just chucking the stuff away.

Anyway sometimes it does pay off being a retired busy body with nothing better to do than write complaining letters!

[JimC]

[laklak]

Sternly worded complaining letters!

[mistermack]

You would think that there's a fortune lurking in the industry, for anyone who can invent a substitute that is genuinely bio degradable.
If not, my next idea is for all plastic to have a special magnetic signal impregnated in it, so that it can be sorted by machines. It could be read so that the different types can be separated and reused where possible.

Whatever can't be reused could be stored and eventually melted down to huge blocks to be stored till a use is found for it.
It could be used in building. After all, if it takes hundreds of years to degrade, that's just what you want for some jobs.

[JimC]

You would think that there's a fortune lurking in the industry, for anyone who can invent a substitute that is genuinely bio degradable.
If not, my next idea is for all plastic to have a special magnetic signal impregnated in it, so that it can be sorted by machines. It could be read so that the different types can be separated and reused where possible.

Whatever can't be reused could be stored and eventually melted down to huge blocks to be stored till a use is found for it.
It could be used in building. After all, if it takes hundreds of years to degrade, that's just what you want for some jobs.

There is already a certain amount of recycling to make products that last. A combination of the right plastics blended together and melted (sometimes including finely chopped used tyres) can be used to make anything from park benches to the soft surfaces in children's playgrounds. At least the carbon is locked away...