The world is choking on plastic!!! Does that need repeating or have you got it????

Captain Goodvibes was talking about this more than 30 years ago. WAKE UP!!!!!

We know. Some time long into the future geologists will see a stratum of plastic deposited in sedimentary rocks and associate it with the current mass extinction event, just like the iridium layer is associated with the dinosaur extinction event

just a small twitch, all is needed. Switch from polycarbonate to cellulose-based easy biodegradable stuff.
For most people plastic is the same but that will disintegrate in a few years or decades for sure.

But that is only one small part referring t packaging. The most serious stuff like building material and construction will be based on longer-lasting composites, so definitely we could have future soil and ocean composed of artificial carbon/silicon structures man-made.

In 200 Years from now your garden mulch will be composed of grinder plastic bottles for sure.

Yes. When the plastic wave washes into your weekender in a few decades you'll remember climate change, that fangled 2019 WOKE topic we're all supposed to forget....

You'll grumble to yourself "it's natural variability"!

We are trying to do our bit.. we have made a surfboard cloth out of recycled water bottles a world first and made in Australia
www.sanded.com.au/collections/surfboard-fibreglass/products/pet-surfboard-cloth-3oz-made-from-recycled-plastic-bottles
www.swellnet.com/news/swellnet-dispatch/2019/10/29/fantastic-plastic
asbmag.com/sanded-australia-launch-world-first-pet-surfboard-eco-cloth/

^^^^Good to see. However plastic pullution needs to stopped at the scource.

In the 50s and 60s there was no plastic food packageing. You went to your local corner store or BCC (Brisbane Cash and Carry), bought your food which may or may not have been wrapped in paper and carried it home in a string bag or your two wheeled shopping trolley. Milk came in glass bottles with a foil cap. There was no such thing as bottled water.

Somehow most of us survived without getting food poisoning.

Google "plastic in the food chain" and see what you come up with. This is just one short video.

We need to stop the oil companies producing plastic for anything except for what is absolutely essential.

Finally something we can all agree on.

Nah nah, it's all about carbon

A 16yo told me, and they know everything

The plastic that really pisses me off is the new thicker vacuum packaging that Woolies is putting around its meat. The old trays with a cling wrap film and a little flat sponge to soak up the blood weren't great, but the new packing looks like they haven't bothered to let the carcass bleed before they cut it and sell it. It's got so much blood in it that it tastes like liver. I suppose that it is a little higher in iron as a result, but if I want to eat offal, I'll buy it. And when I checked the weight of meat in a couple of packages, you guessed it, it came up short.
So I guess I have to start making a side trip to the butchers after the supermarket

What puzzles me about this topic, is why the subject has to be a binary proposition of almost unrelated topics.

Surely we can address both issues without resorting to the hyperbole and an absence of facts.

My theory is burning Fossil fuel is a waste of good plastic just like our cheap packaging .
Were getting to the stage with vortex separating & our understanding of chemistry is far beyond shopping bags & how we wasted the good stuff on that
plastic ,is now an acceptable engineering concept we can make it lighter stronger & faster than metal & we are moving into the 3D printing at home is cheap I honestly think the mining of the oceans could be the next gold field if you incorporate carbon extraction from the atmosphere into cheap carbon nanotubes & vortex separation does that & use recycled plastic & this stuff could be massively cheap into affordable home & housing for everything useful cheap 3D printing at home
Stronger lighter cheaper we have the technology it's just a matter political will .
Plastic pollution is catastrophic only if we ignore it but if we treat it like the resource it is we clean the planet .

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Mr Milk said..
The plastic that really pisses me off is the new thicker vacuum packaging that Woolies is putting around its meat. The old trays with a cling wrap film and a little flat sponge to soak up the blood weren't great, but the new packing looks like they haven't bothered to let the carcass bleed before they cut it and sell it. It's got so much blood in it that it tastes like liver. I suppose that it is a little higher in iron as a result, but if I want to eat offal, I'll buy it. And when I checked the weight of meat in a couple of packages, you guessed it, it came up short.
So I guess I have to start making a side trip to the butchers after the supermarket

One of the ultimate sea breeze first world problem posts!!

heaven forbid you need to make an extra shopping stop for a food item 3/4 of the world probably can't even afford You'll be ok boomer

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actiomax said..

My theory is burning Fossil fuel is a waste of good plastic just like our cheap packaging .
Were getting to the stage with vortex separating & our understanding of chemistry is far beyond shopping bags & how we wasted the good stuff on that
plastic ,is now an acceptable engineering concept we can make it lighter stronger & faster than metal & we are moving into the 3D printing at home is cheap I honestly think the mining of the oceans could be the next gold field if you incorporate carbon extraction from the atmosphere into cheap carbon nanotubes & vortex separation does that & use recycled plastic & this stuff could be massively cheap into affordable home & housing for everything useful cheap 3D printing at home
Stronger lighter cheaper we have the technology it's just a matter political will .
Plastic pollution is catastrophic only if we ignore it but if we treat it like the resource it is we clean the planet .

I agree on the main, It's not the product, it's the application.

But not familiar with the vortex separating- will look that up, cheers

Massively cool This should be a noble prize for an Ozzie .
who would have thought spinning stuff at the right speed & angel could separate molecules & that's cheap technology

Plastic, climate change, politicians.... it's all bad

Fuqwits running the show, and things just spiralling.

Thanks capitalism!

I just asked Google about vortex plastic waste sorting and got lots of references to the Pacific gyre, but nothing about a recycling technique.
So, actiomax, can you tell me where to look to see what you are talking about?

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Mr Milk said..
The plastic that really pisses me off is the new thicker vacuum packaging that Woolies is putting around its meat.

what about the tape they put around meat at Coles. That thing is bullet proof! I don't think you can buy it without a security clearance. Must be military grade stuff! Mylar with kevlar, made by NASA no doubt. I challenge you to break it - you can't, the glue is also super stuff.

but WTF would you put it on meat pack is beyond me

I saw interesting paleo scientist presentation.
We humans already created quite significant layer at Earth crust, that in the event of instant extinction will be very interesting to study by future intelligent creature that inhabit Earth.We must agree that studying humans leftover will be much more fascinating that putting dinosaurus bones together.Look how interesting also resuicess we left. Some other creature contributed to oil or coal deposits - but that is monotony.
Out landfills will be absolute gold mine , consisting range of interesting material for future civilisation to use.

Shirt load of science podcast from doctor Karl about molecular separation using a vortex I think it's called uncooking an egg

I looked up vortex separation and presume from reading that it ties to carbon sequestration, and then using the carbon for nano tubes, which can be made with plastic polymers now to enhance properties of both

pretty interesting / futuristic- maybe not applicable to "clean up" phase or mind set we're currently in

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171122113000.htm

heres something on the nanotube - plastic application if interested

Thanks mazdon.
that was interesting.
But I think this could be used to spur on both carbon extraction & the plastic clean up.
In my mind this is the sort of thing that is tangible & can be presented to people as a positive approach use it as a building materials for quick prefabricated housing to be used in third world countries or disaster relief accommodation .
I couldn't see anyone having objections & honestly everything is doom & gloom & I think people would jump at the chance to think that 3 problems can be solved at once

This is a conspiracy by corrupt scientists and the one world government to tax us on plastics. Wake up.

[insert 4 hour video]

Actually problem with any sort of plastic could be resolved with water.
Very hot water indeed.When you treat any plastic with water vapour/ steam at 600 Celcius- will disintegrate completely.
Long chains will brake, depolymerization completed and you could use outcome product as new , to create plastic again. So to deal with plastic here in Australia we have enough heat, waste plastic could be found , but with water could be some problems.But seriously speaking I imagine that we could use one day our concentrated solar to heat the water, then break this plastic. Using existing technology we should be able to resolve the problem.Even nuclear waste that usually last for thousands of years could be dealt with particle accelerators to break into hemless within days only - but the energy needed scale is a bit different.

I don't think anybody here is getting the message!!

Recycling, seperations and water at 600 c is all fine and dandy for cleaning up the existing mess, but if it still gets pumped into the environment at the top end, the problem will never be solved.

It needs to be stopped at the source, i.e. the oil companies that keep churning it out.

Being as how they fairly much rule the world it is a tough problem to beat.

A documentary called A Plastic Ocean is a scary watch!

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TonyAbbott said..
Nah nah, it's all about carbon

A 16yo told me, and they know everything

Like the ones who have anger management??

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TonyAbbott said..
Nah nah, it's all about carbon

A 16yo told me, and they know everything

To be fair there are a lot of intelligent 16 year olds.

I reckon my 10 year old could replace a lot of people at my work, easily.

and yet...

"I'm not young enough to know everything." - Oscar Wilde