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Plastic is made mostly out of natural gas (NG) and some from the waste products of petroleum processing.
Only 4% of that fossil material is used to make plastic each year....Of that 4%, a little over 1/3rd goes into making "disposables"-- mostly bottles...Plastic straws, the most recent target of the patially educated envronmentalists, accounts for less than o.ooo2% of fossil material production...
This means that 2/3rds of plastic is used to make things with long service lives, and in doing so, they replace parts made of metal or wood, etc, which usually have more intensive energy costs in production. Plastic makes up 1/8th weight of a car. These plastic car parts replace much heavier materials that would increase the fuel demands of driving, not to mention the much lower energy required in manufacturing the plastic parts.
Manufacturiing things from plastic instead of traditonal metals or wood, etc, makes them cheaper, more affordable--> more buying and flow of money--> more jobs-->better flow of money--> higher standard of living--> and around the cycle again and again.
Plastics have been used increasingly in the textile industry, and go into clothing and carpeting, replacng wool & cotton, saving many acres of farmland, thus reducing loss of habitiat.
The biggest drawback to plastics is their relatively long duration before complete breakdown. But considering that it took millions of years to produce the fossil material that went into their production, what's a few decades of continued life in the dump?
This article gives a nice summary of the situation in more detail https://theconversation.com/the-worl...numbers-100291 ....The last paragraph points out an interesting fact--People are buying 60% more clothes now (article from 2016) than they did 15 yrs earlier, and keeping them for shorter periods. That's a lot of extra plastic usage.
It seems to me that in the long run, using plastic is better for the environmnet than not using it-- easier on land (habitat) usage, easier on energy usage and a significant stimulus to the economy & standard of living...Just don't throw yours in the ocean.
Plastics in the food supply is troublesome and should be significantly reduced. Leaching of chemicals and synthetic hormones affect the human body. As you noted, plastic in the ocean is also a big problem. It is a global problem and in many places is literally chocking to death various species of aquatic life. Studies of both humans and various animal species have detected growing percentages of microplastics, as well as chemicals from plastics, in their bodies.
I recently was standing on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale after Hurricane Ian. The amount of plastic it churned up that filled the beaches, jetties, etc., was incredible. Some of these items looked like they were from the 70s and 80s and were probably brought in with the strong currents from far away.
We all need to have some respect, at least for each other if not for the environment, and not cavalierly toss garbage out the window, but the plastic in the oceans isn't nearly as bad as we're being led to believe, and while micro-plastic has been found in just about every species in which it was looked for, that apparently hasn;t caused any measurable problems.
Plastic in oceans collects at the edges where it's washed ashore, and in certain eddy spots- kinda like the dust bunnies in your house all collect in certain corners, depending on your trafffic patterns....
I've read dozens of the papers on micro-plastics appearing in everything from mollusks to plankton to musk rats and eagles and humans and none of them have been able to demonstrate that it has caused any pathology (Anybody that has read one showing pathology, please post it here to educate us)....That same chemistry that makes plastic so hard to decay away in the dump also makes it inert to our body chemistry. It's there, but doesn't affect anything.
We should be directling our attrntion not to Draconian laws to force unwarranted behavior on us, but towards better appreciation of the envronment and encouragement of better stewardship activities.
It always saddens me to see the amount of plastic that shows up on our roadways. Dirty Pampers, bottles, car parts, shopping bags, etc. Just awful! We owe our world and each other more than that.
^^^ We can complain that the glass is half empty, or rejoice that it is half full. ...considering how many billions of plastic bottles and shoppiing bags we use every day, it's a miracle that there isn't more trash recklessly disposed.
If it were a perfect world, we'd only need one Law--The Golden Rule...But it's not a perfect world, and we need only one rascal among every hundred people to take advantage of everyone else to screw things up. Consider the classic Prisoners' Dilemma problem in game theory-- It can be analyzed as a Markov Process, and, IIRC, the most people benefit the most time is when every body acts selfishly 60% of the time.
Who should best be teaching morality & good citizenship to our kids...their parents or Big Brother?
We all need to have some respect, at least for each other if not for the environment, and not cavalierly toss garbage out the window, but the plastic in the oceans isn't nearly as bad as we're being led to believe, and while micro-plastic has been found in just about every species in which it was looked for, that apparently hasn't caused any measurable problems.
The key word is "apparently", meaning evidence of potential harm has yet to be found, if it ever will.
I, for one, avoid plastic when possible, because I cannot fathom microplastics being healthy for me with long-term exposure.
... I cannot fathom microplastics being healthy for me .../QUOTE]
Being "healthy for you" implies it helps your health....Being "unhealthy" implies your health suffers from it.
Microplastics internalized by vertebrates are probably easily nueutralized by macrophages, being engulfed and destroyed or at least isolated from causing any harm to other cells. Evolution is amazing. https://biologyreader.com/macrophages.html
I don't know enough about protective mechanisms in invertebrates or plants to comment, but they aren't apparently harmed by microplastic exposure. As I said, plastic is chemically not very reactive, so they probably don't need any special protective mechanisms.
What about all the sand desert creatures get exposed to and inhale, ingest or phagocytize?
... I cannot fathom microplastics being healthy for me .../QUOTE]
Being "healthy for you" implies it helps your health....Being "unhealthy" implies your health suffers from it.
Microplastics internalized by vertebrates are probably easily nueutralized by macrophages, being engulfed and destroyed or at least isolated from causing any harm to other cells. Evolution is amazing. https://biologyreader.com/macrophages.html
I don't know enough about protective mechanisms in invertebrates or plants to comment, but they aren't apparently harmed by microplastic exposure. As I said, plastic is chemically not very reactive, so they probably don't need any special protective mechanisms.
What about all the sand desert creatures get exposed to and inhale, ingest or phagocytize?
Certain plastics, such as BPA, have been proven to be endocrine disruptors. It has been well documented that plastics also contain synthetic estrogens that disrupt the hormones in the human body. BPA plastics have been banned but there are many others that have not that continue to leach chemicals that can cause potential harm to humans and other organisms.
One thing that I think most people can agree with is that there is an excess of packaging used and with on-line home delivery the amount of packaging continues to grow. This excess packaging ends up in landfills, incinerators, and waterways. We need to find ways to significantly reduce the use of plastics and other packaging materials wherever possible. This problem is further complicated by the fact that many communities have reduced municipal recycling of plastics and other recyclables due to increased costs and the difficulty of maintaining compliance by the users (people not properly sorting recyclables resulting in contaminated materials and/or jammed equipment).
The packaging thing is a mixed bag-- some more material used, but even more material & fuel saved in reduced shipping problems...I don't know the final sum once the data is plugged in, but given the sensivity of the prifit motive, I bet we're better off with extra packaging...Personally, I'd like to see more paper fillers than styrofoam or PCE/air bubbles. That would help support our forestry & conservation efforts.
BPAs have been shown to be hormone disruptors in vitro but with no measuarable clinical consequences. If you would familiarize yourself with the EPA/FDA regs on chemicals, you'd see how ridiculous they are--> absurdly high doses tested in unusally susceptible animal models....Eg--
..When they first came up with their standards back in the '60s, they required new substances to be injected into the peritoneal cavities of mice. (Mice, BTW. have intensely sensitive peritoneal cavities.) If the injection caused cancerous changes in enough mice, the substance was required to called carcinogenic and prohibited from sale....A wise guy in our lab, knowing this, imbedded 10 dimes from the US mint in 10 mice. They all developed ca, so he submitted a letter to the FDA, insisting dimes be removed from circulation....They did not respond to him.
IIRC, the dose of daily, orally ingested glyphosate that causes ca in rats would be equivalent to a human eating several hundred pounds of it every day, yet it's classified as "possibley carcinogenic."
My response to those who talk about how bad all these now things are for us is to agree with them--'They certainly cause all sorts of health problems...Now the question becomes "how much of a problem do they cause?" ....The answer is usually so little that the trend can't be separated from the natural background noise in the data...We are, after all, living longer lives. These problems can't amount to anything worth worrying about....(Not to imply we should relax our vigilance.)
Re- landfills, incinerators etc-- I've posted the actual facts around here in years past. That's another non-problem exploited by those with an agenda (follow the money) Maybe I'll start another thread exposing the actual data and we can discuss it rationally...."It's easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled"-- Mark Twain
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