Why not both?
Yeah, one can just “drink like a real adult”, like the ones said to me that now want the plastic straws back…
Getting rid of plastic straws, but not cups and lids was such a stupid thing. There are substitutes for cups, but they cost more, so they weren’t a good option for greenwashing.
If you’re already minimizing seafood intake because of the lead content, you’re already minimizing your personal impact of fishing net use. What we need to do is legislate the use of hemp nets. Hemp was the primary net maternal before the oil industry put their weight behind making hemp illegal under the guise of “The War On Drugs!” and made plastic/nylon nets the default.
That would be ideal, but each person has limited time and attention. Advocate for both, but put your efforts into figuring out how to change the thing with the larger impact.
to be fair that was a regulator decision. they seem to have went for the low hanging fruit of something relatively easy to replace without impacting the bottom line.
not gonna save the world by a long shot, but its a better than nothing sort of deal im surprised they even bothered with in the first place.
My conspiracy theory is it was chosen to deliberately harm the optics of environmentalists. Something with minimal useful impact and maximum inconvenience would turn people against the whole idea of environmentally friendly alternatives.
thats not something i do not shy away from. those fucks are that manipulative.
I see a lot of people who share your opinion. I used to work rehabbing sea turtles and EVERY turtle we received alive or dead had straws/bags in their gut. It might not seem super important but those products look more like jellyfish and turtles have poor eyesight.
The nets commercial fishing boats make the most plastic waste by a lot but declining a plastic straw and bringing your own bag to shop WILL save a life.
I think it’s also a product of the guy on the left likely has never used and will never use a fishing net. It’s kind of like the tarrifs on Canada. America wasn’t ever complaining that drugs were being trafficked over the the Canadian border but that is the reason they are giving for the tarrifs. The truth I see is one of the highest imports from Canada to the U.S. is Aluminum. Coke already stated if Aluminum costs go up, they will simply make more of their products in plastic bottles instead to keep their costs down. Those plastic bottles are made from petroleum which funds much of the GOP’s campaigns. He is simply paying back oil executives by ensuring aluminum prices rise. Cokes profits stay the same, Oil companies profits go up. Where does the money come from? Working class Americans
As much as I’d like a valid reason to shit on the Republican government (and there are many), this is not one of them.
Borders arw closing because globalization is declining world-wide. That has to do with reduced growth and progress, and is not due to the whims of a politician. The borders have been closed before the 20th century; what makes you believe that “borders open” is an invariable and ultimate truth? If that were really so, why weren’t global borders so open before the 20th century?
I think it’s also a product of the guy on the left likely has never used and will never use a fishing net.
What? This an absolutely absurd assertion. Fishing cooperatives are incredibly common. Find one near* you and go inside.
Also, who do you think are the ones cleaning up the mess, actually cutting the nets off, and doing the research? It’s not the guy trying to max out his investment portfolio, that’s for sure.
That data has to be scewed by region. Over half the population can’t swim well enough to save themselves from a current. If I asked 10 people in my life when they fished last, 9 of them would say not in the last 10 years. Likely 10 of them would say they have never used a fishing net. A rod and reel is all you ever normally see.
There are people who fish all the time, and there are people who have never seen the ocean or an actual large lake. Many of the people I meet have never been on a boat.
I lived in Panama City Beach for 5.5 years and went fishing once, and never with a rod or nets. We went flounder gigging, so just a spear really.
I am all for minimizing/eliminating single use plastics. But when i get served a milkshake in a plastic mug, with a plastic lid, and a plastic spoon, but a paper straw because of “save the sea”…
i just wish we used our brains more.
What if dispenser machines had a pay by volume model? You bring your own thing, they fill it, and charge you by how much you use. Would probably need something added to measure flow and set prices, but it’s not like a McDonalds built in the 70s is still using exactly the same machines they were back then.
Could just do it by weight. Put vessel under nozzle. Zero scale, and hold till weight determined for sale, hand to customer. Could likely even have software do it.
Measuring by volume dispensed like gas pumps would be less likely to be abused. I can just lift the cup slightly as its filled and pay less.
Gas pump style soda fountains would be absolutely hilarious. Truly the peak of american culture.
Years ago at Universal for Halloween Horror Nights they used bottom fill beer dispensers. They had a connector on the bottom of the cup so you could grab a cup pop it down on the machine and keep going. Say 15 beers in seconds. The beer fills to the exact height needed with the exact desired foam amount on top. No over poors or needing to have any loss. Time was cut down drastically. The cups had to be expensive, but when your charging $10 for $1 with of product you don’t have to worry to much about cup cost I guess. I remember thinking at that moment American Capitalism has peaked haha.
This but in Oregon you’d get yelled at for doing it yourself. :p
Edit: Huh, turns out they lifted that ban in 2023 so now people can pump their own gas.
If you saw how much plastic is used to get that paper straw to you (logistics) you would just drink from the cup
Also paper cups are lined with plastic to stop the drink from running through it, metal cans are lined with plastic to prevent a metallic taste
Oh, i don’t prefer using it anyway, it got served with it already in.
Honestly how much more expensive would glass mugs/cups be? Like A&W Canada will give you a chilled mug for root beer (and other drinks but the root beer is iconic)
If it’s to go then then paper cups are fine. The paper straws are just annoying…
Just stop eating fish.
No need for nets.
stop eating all animals tbh.
Checked the username, can confirm. Very annoying.
If you call that one comment “very annoying” you need to get more used to reading opinions you don’t agree with. That was the shortest, least preachy thing ever.
Fair.
Are you…ok? Do you really not understand that this was a polite wink at the other person’s username?
Being a programmer isn’t an excuse for having zero concept of normal conversation.
Actually you are desensitized to manic behaviour. they’re the one behaving like a maniac. You got triggered by a single comment so much you had to go and lookup a persons’ history. Are you intentionally looking for a fight just because there are crazy vegans out there? This person was reasonable and did suggest something that is true. We can give up eating meat. You can disagree… but sheesh? stalking their profile?
edit: noticed you are not the original commenter. I meant the person who replied to parent comment, not you.
In the same way I believe they made an incredibly unnecessary reference to being an “annoying vegan” on a comment utterly unannoying, I believe you’ve made a really stereotypical reference to my profession on something totally unrelated. Yes. I am okay. Are you?
They just wanted to point out they noticed the username somehow.
No, that would inconvenience me. I would prefer to virtue signal. /s
did you try that?
There was no trying. I just did it.
it didn’t work
It did a tiny percentage. We’ll need more people to get a bigger percentage.
it’s not clear it did anything at all.
It’s not like somebody is throwing nets in the water because I don’t eat fish.
they don’t care whether you eat fish. they’re throwing the nets regardless.
Yes. Yes I did.
it didn’t work
Why?
looks like this comic is saying it’s not working. do you have some evidence it is?
Bud we were talking about not eating fish. The question was why you think not eating fish would be ineffective at solving this problem.
Or…are you literally just saying that 1 person not eating fish won’t stop fishing? Cause if so, I really should just block you.
I really should just block you.
please, do
Pick up an economics textbook
this is handwaiving, not evidence
nets serving their purpose long after EOL, except noone is being served.
I wish modern day electronics did as well and they could serve someone.
The worst thing about paper straws is seeing it poked through a plastic lid.
Noticed the same thing, how can one be concerned about the plastic straws but not the cups? I almost thought that was the joke.
How is called virtue signaling
Cool thing is that here in Copenhagen a lot of privately owned places now also use cardboard lids. As someone who delivers food for a living, I’m also happy about the change because cardboard lids have far more fiction and don’t pop off as easily when transporting.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16529-0
It’s more like at the first place, with 26% of the mass. Majority doesn’t mean “half of”.
Nevertheless, even if the fishing industry produced no plastic pollution, it would still destroy the ecosystems directly and indirectly (breaking the food chains by fishing tons of krill and small fish to feed the farms)
Majority literally means the subset making up more than half of the set.
Yeah, “plurality” is the generic word for a leading sum, “majority” absolutely does mean >50%.
Plastic Recycling is Largely A Myth.
The world produces an average of 430 million metric tons of plastic each year. The United States alone produces tens of millions of tons of plastic waste annually. Yet on average, only about 5 to 6 percent of plastic in the U.S. is recycled.
Basically, the vast majority of plastic either literally cannot be recycled, at all, or would be astoundingly expensive to properly seperate according to it’s different types and run through the recycling process.
… So, in most cases, it isn’t, and just ends up in a landfill or being directly dumped into nature.
Oil companies have known this for decades, and, as with other issues surrounding pollution … they’ve promoted anything that makes an individual feel guilty when they know that even if all individuals followed the suggested course of action, it would have a negligible impact.
Oil companies have known this for decades,
fun fact: BP created the carbon footprint to turn the guilt onto the end consumers, and away from them.
But please put your plastic in the bin marked plastic.
https://recyclingcenternear.me/7-types-of-plastic-explained/
Which of the 7 different kinds of plastic go in which bins?
Are the labels on the plastic even correct? Do they even exist at all?
Does your local recycling / garbage take away service specify?
Does the processing center they are taken to actually bother to seperate them?
The answers to all those questions vary widely by different zipcodes.
Has any of your plastic waste touched food, or touched other plastic that has touched food?
If so, its probably considered contaminated and unrecycleable, and is just put into a landfill, as it would take a lot of time and effort to sanitize it.
I like how under the entry for PVC pipes, they used an image of what looks like terracotta pipes.
I have black and white PVC pipes in my shed, but no clay colored ones, lol.
Orange PVC pipes are used plenty in my neck of the woods. I see them regularly used for fire suppression system piping.
I worked at a public disposal area for a little while and can attest that at least my flyover state/zipcode does separate and sanitize plastic. Cardboard was the only thing that couldn’t have touched oil (including pizza). We only accepted plastics #1 and #2, though, and part of my job included climbing into the dumpster and sorting through. I’d miss it if workers rights weren’t simultaneously such shit* here
*autocorrect trying to sanitize my language too
Lol at “landfill” being different from “dumped into nature” in your brain
A proper landfill is a set aside, contained area, that has systems in place for things like managing pollutants from leaking into the water table, keeping people and animals away from it so as to not infect or injure themselves, monitoring and mitigating the temperature and emmissions of the landfill, etc.
They aren’t all so advanced or well staffed, but a whole lot of landfills are, and they are better for the environment and human and animal populations than just letting trash pile up everywhere, willy nilly.
They obviously are not perfect, but they are certainly better than nothing.
EDIT:
… Where do you think all the mangled fishing nets and what not that environmentalists fish out of the sea… end up?
Do… they just throw them back into the ocean?
Or maybe a contained and secure hazardous waste site?
Your explanation doesn’t make me less amused but is interesting
You clearly have no clue about how waste disposal and managent works then, maybe learn some of the basics before publically embarassing yourself next time.
As the saying goes:
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
You’re being extremely hostile for no real reason. I’m allowed to be amused that two concepts that are similar to me are distinct in your head. You have zero reason to be offended right now, but you’ve decided to take up arms and be an ass.
I’d suggest you wait a day until your panties are no longer in a bunch and reread the actual words and see if you still feel butthurt. Then I’d suggest you spend some time thinking through why something completely innocuous and generally positive made you so upset. It will probably make you a better person and is cheaper than therapy.
Sometimes I wonder if people are too scared of misinformation and quick to “correct” any perceived misunderstandings without stopping to think perhaps those comments were not made in ignorance deliberate, or otherwise.
Its hard to have a discussion.
I don’t agree with your comments bashing people for arguing that landfills don’t necessarily work better than any other piece of land. There is a genuine case to be made that what you describe is idealistic and reality might be more bleak. these perfect landfills might as well be as sophisticated as the perfect “clean coal” plant or even a “carbon credit” plant that billionaires use to launder their wealth.
With the kind of corruption I have seen in government across the world I think you’re naive thinking advanced tech works really well in a system known for corruption and inneficiency.
Just FYI:
Single-use plastic products are used once, or for a short period of time, before being thrown away. Under the EU’s rules on single-use plastics, the EU is tackling the 10 single-use plastic items most commonly found on Europe’s beaches and is promoting sustainable alternatives. The 10 items are
Cotton bud sticks Cutlery, plates, straws and stirrers Balloons and sticks for balloons Food containers Cups for beverages Beverage containers Cigarette butts Plastic bags Packets and wrappers Wet wipes and sanitary itemshttps://commission.europa.eu/news/less-plastic-waste-means-cleaner-beaches-2024-08-14_en
So yeah, nets are bad, but straws, plastic bags, cigarettes and packages are also a problem.
This is a list of end-consumer items put together by a government body beholden to fishing and other industries. And it’s not even about pollution levels, it’s specifically about beach pollution. Plastic lids on cartons of heavy cream are “also a problem” if we focus only on reducing plastic waste in the kitchen, but implying it’s even relevant compared to industrial plastic waste is disingenuous
Why shouldn’t it be relevant? The waste is out there, is being found on our beaches and the industrial plastic waste is not swept up as often? So why would a regulation to prevent the most common plastic-items on our beaches from being there be bad?
Diatribe alert. If you just wanna know, here: 75% to 86% of plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch came from fishing industry, article, study.
It’s not bad, and I didn’t claim it to be bad. It’s not relevant in the same way Dr Thunder and Pibb Xtra aren’t leading to a soft drink crisis in the USA—they’re a small part of a much bigger problem.
To carry on with this dumbass analogy, it would be misleading to argue for a ban on off-brand sodas while continuing to mass produce Sprite, Pepsi, and Diet Coke, and it lets big businesses off the hook for their destruction. Same with letting industries shovel untold plastic waste into the oceans behind our backs while making more visible efforts to ban much smaller amounts back on land.
Also, we’re not just worried about plastic because it ends up on beaches. That is, again, missing the bigger picture. It’s also missing why those items in particular end up on beaches, which is because of local littering. A cup on a beach is actually great for the environment compared to a piece of nylon disintegrating in the ocean. It just looks ugly. Our primary focus can’t be on ugly right now.
If you ban plastic straws from European beaches and say job well done, the planet will never notice. We need to start with the big issues, we don’t have time to pat them on the back and keep subsidizing the destruction of our planet. Agricultural fertilizer is next followed by plastic bags, iirc, or maybe bottles.
Yeah, but it’s a quick win. Ban some single-use plastics and prevent it from getting into the oceans because it doesn’t exist. Yeah, you have to do something about the fishing nets, but there is no reason to not take those quick-wins
Single use plastic items laying on the beach is what bothers people the most, but this doesn’t mean it is the biggest problems. There is much more plastic in the oceans that we do not see.
People want to pretend just the things that are convenient to them are an issue. They say government and companies need to take action, then complain about actions taken. It’s really wild to see.
Not throwing my garbage in the wild makes me have no idea how often straws end up in the ocean, so it seemed like a wild thing to go after.
Any idea if it’s people dumping all this stuff in the wild or if it’s because we throw it out in our bins that it somehow gets to the ocean?
It’s called environmental dumping. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_dumping
First world countries ship waste to third world countries where dumping is not illegal (or at least not enforced).
You get stuff like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVnMBGXVVUI
Stuff falls out of garbage trucks, trash cans get tipped over, stuff gets blown out of the bed of a dumptruck at the landfill, landfills erode and take trash with them. Trashcans aren’t just magic portals that take trash into the nightosphere
a lot of single-use items come from fast food places, which people will eat in their cars and then just throw out the window as they drive along.
it’s a fucking sad practice but it’s really hard to get people to stop doing it, so the next best option is just to make sure as much as possible of the things you get from fast food joints will dissolve in a rain shower.
Not saying they are not but from what you posted it could still be 99.9% nets, what is in the article is just a list of the most common found items in beaches.
Hmm. Perhaps the beaches shouldn’t be the prioritized focus for developing alternatives to plastic.
If it’s on the beach, it can be picked up. Today, tomorrow or eventually.
I think the plastic that can’t be as easily be collected ought to be replaced by alternatives first.
If it’s on the beach it’s been washed up there. The stuff that’s washing up can be collected, sure, but that represents a small percentage of the overall amount that there is.
Excellent point.
If it gets swept up on the shore, it’s in the ocean. So it totally makes sense to prevent it from being there.
Cotton bud stick???
It’s kind of crazy - those plastic Q-tips are only better if you want to totally wreck your ears and every doctor is warning against that. For every legitimate use, those paper variants work perfectly well
how can a paper a tip grease a bearing?
Why would you grease a bearing with a q-tip? Use a proper tool for that!
name a cheaper tool?
The correct tools are those small plastic containers or a cheap grease gun. You can get the grease better into the bearing with them and don’t have the risk of smearing cotton fiber in there. They are of course more expensive than a q-tip, but you can get one for unter 5€. Seriously, if you do this even a couple times a year, buy one.
(This is also a great example why environmental regulation is so tricky: It totally makes sense to prevent one of the worst polluting product to be phased out or replaced with a better solution. But then there are edge cases (how many people have even greased a bearing in their life?) where the new product might be worse, but that still is not an argument for mass pollution on our beaches or against that regulation)
I think Americans call the q tips
Yeah but a q-tips here are paper / cotton
Over here cotton buds used to usually have plastic sticks. They’ve all changed to paper because of this EU thing though.
Not anymore, they switched to plastic.
I just bought some today at Costco and they’re def paper still.
When did they switch?
I can find both paper stick and plastic stick next to each other on the shelf at my local grocery.
It must be the off brands then. I dunno, I don’t buy that junk but I have noticed it in other people’s bathrooms.
Unbranded Q-Tip
straws
I probably use a straw a single time each year, and I don’t see people using straws much either, why is this a huge problem again?
And if you go out and order a drink, you might get 3 or 4 straws. Yes, it’s stupid. Yes, it doesn’t make sense. But it happens and people throw their to-go drinks into the environment after they finished them
And if you go out and order a drink, you might get 3 or 4 straws.
I have never seen that happening. Where do you live? Here in Poland you get maximum 1 straw if any, lol.
Edit: Or you mean alcoholic drink? It’s possible, but I don’t really drink this kind of stuff at pubs, only beer.
No, someone else is doing something worse than me so I’m absolved. I can do what I want.
Yeah, I simultaneously want to comment that the left panels are a wild fantasy, as I’ve never seen an actual human say that we should focus on plastic straws. As far as I can tell, that’s propaganda put into the world by companies trying to discredit genuine efforts.
But at the same time, it’s not even like you have to focus on straws. You can simply not use them, because it is just a stupid concept to produce something that’s immediately trash, and then also go and do other things in life. Believe it or not, most activities in life don’t involve straws.
Straws become the focus because people like them and find them useful and make them a part of their culture and then proposed bans threaten to take them away. People do focus on them, I’ve seen plenty of online arguments about straw bans and the ethics of straws, which happens because they are a part of the lives of the people arguing about them, unlike fishing nets which they never use or see.
There is a side of environmentalism that comes off as being smugly superior about your lifestyle and disparaging and seeking to shame and control in small ways (usually poorer) people who don’t live that way, with the pretext that it’s about saving the planet. To me that sort of thing seems like it’s mainly just a dumpster fire of political capital, purely counterproductive.
There’s a smug side to anti-environmentalists where they like to pretend they can’t do anything because they’re a little bit poor. And that it they couldn’t possibly do anything.
Have they not seen the turtle video?!
That was not a single-use plastic straw. It was a reusable straw like the one people started buying to avoid single-use ones.
On an unrelated notes, a huge fraction of oceanic microplastics is from car tyres. Driving is a number one source of oceanic microplastic.
Car tyres are also significant contributors to terrestial microplastics and particulate matter!
Since this is a science community, can I ask what studies directly link these microplastics to the specific adverse affects?
I see a lot of “BPA microplastics are hormone disruptors” and “microplastics found in placentas!” Etc … ok, but are they the same microplastics in these studies?
It sounds like when everyone puts scarequotes around “chemicals”…
Come on, let’s not doubt that eating car tires is unhealthy.
I breath a lot of car tires when i walk to work…
I never made any claims concerning effects.
And bad news: electric cars, being heavier, emit more microplastics.
tbf they are only heavier because they are making them SUVs instead of coupes or sedans and trying to convince people that a 150 mile range isnt long enough for them as if they wont just plug it back in when they get home or as if they actually commute 75 miles each way. God forbid they have to wait for it to charge. Electric vehicles have the potential to be the same weight or lighter but car companies all suck.
Yeah, if they built cars people don’t want with batteries smaller than people want to buy, the wheels could just be as bad as normal cars.
If everyone had switched to driving corollas and civics in the year 1990, we would have less micro plastics and a way cooler environment but… people hate each other and don’t give a fuck.
But aside from donating to NGOs dedicated to cleaning up ocean litter, the average person has very little way to reduce the number of plastic nets in the water. It requires lifting fishermen out of poverty, teaching them more sustainable fishing practices, and cracking down on littering, all things that require international cooperation.
It requires lifting fishermen out of poverty
Bruh. These aren’t 1 dude in a boat with a long line. These are billion dollar corporations running fleets. And yes, we need international cooperation to bring them to heel. Like with farmers, however, make no mistake that the people doing this kind of pollution are at all ignorant or unaware of what they are doing.
Even the adrenaline junkies on Deadliest Catch are running multiple million dollar businesses
the average person has very little way to reduce the number of plastic nets in the water
Besides the obvious and 100% viable option of just not eating fish.
The average person cannot make the connection between the food they eat and the animal it was. People act so appalled by the torturous conditions in animal farms, and then stop at McDonald’s on their lunch break to pick up some chicken nuggets, totally unaware of the irony
Now I feel better about my weird dietary preferences.
I’m doing my part!
I also do not enjoy the taste of fish. High five haha
Yeah eating fish is not sustainable, especially considering how global fish population is dropping rapidly. Sadly, my dad loves fish…
have you tried that?
It seems to be working well after about 6 years.
seems like this comic indicates it’s not doing enough
Seems the problem is beyond finding a ‘cure-all’. Multiple strategies will be necessary.
I’d prefer an effective strategy
…which somehow doesn’t include producing less garbage?
Or organise a boycott on eating fish.
You could go the rest of your life without eating another fish and you would be fine.
But what if we pass the responsibility down to the consumer instead of dealing with industrial waste that’s often more of a matter of cost than practicality?
Then I won’t get reelected.
You can call yourself God emperor and have Facebook shovel your bullshit into everyone’s face, that seems to work.
Maybe stop killing fish and fish will not die as much
