Stupid, will do nothing, and may be counter productive. That sums up every western government’s policies. Vast majority of the world’s plastic waste in oceans comes from a few rivers in Asia: yellow and yangtze in China, Ganges in India, etc. Not to mention the billions of useless masks that will shed microplastics for hundreds of years. That’s what happens when Eurocrats bow to Greta.
But heaven forbid we mention that or the coal plants in China and India. I could swear the plastic bag ban in California has only led to one thing - more poop 💩 on the sidewalks. At least the homeless used to crap into plastic bags! 🙄
That's another regulation I never understood. When i grew up, I could be running barefoot through neighbors yards to get home and could step on a yard apple. That was life. The caveat "look where you are going."
Poop is biodegradeable, isnt it? Unless it also comes with microplastics.
It may be good for the soil but I've never appreciated getting it on my shoes when I am out walking. Where I live, dog owners are usually responsible and 'poop and scoop' using the free plastic bags provided by ratepayers (property taxes) and take it home to put in their rubbish bins. I see them picking it up and am very grateful not to be a dog owner. Some go through the motions though and then throw it over my fence in the plastic bag. Not appreciated by me!
Plastics are essentially organic substances, and are (eventually) biodegradable. All those studies of oceanic gyres that supposedly contain vast, floating islands of garbage and plastic waste seem to always find little or none.
Couldn’t help wondering whether the European Mediterranean is on the receiving end of wind blown floating detritus originating in North Africa. Just asking for a friend
Enough with the half-measures! Ban the caps completely! Every bottle must be manufactured, shipped, and sold with no cap whatsoever! Oh, and the bottles have to made from edible shellac, and the drinker must eat it upon completion. Problem solved forever!
Children's candy was far ahead of you sixty-five years ago and more. Anyone else remember those little wax bottles of horrible syrupy stuff? You bit the top off and drank...
I really don't know how I went from loving all that crap to reading the labels on everything and having zero taste for all-American stuff like Coke and Cheetos.
Myriad: Your simple, common-sense solution just makes too much sense for the average selfish person who would whine and cry about their "rights" and having to eat the bottles, baby seals and dolphins be damned!!
I would love to see updated stays showing what percentage of the waste is discarded facemasks. I don’t know about Europe, but in the US they are everywhere now. It’s weird how silent leftists are regarding that source of pollution!
Well you have to understand, we are bare faced plague spreaders. So a mask is the perfect concession for those around us not to have to breathe our disease riddled air.
It's also the biggest pain for bartenders in sports events and concerts (cap cannot be given to the clients so they don't throw the full bottle at someone, I know, stupid) so the bartenders now have to manually tear it apart, which is a pain to do with every beverage served. It's just the perfect example of what the EU has become
Ah, the endless plumage pageantry of Morons on Governmental Parade.
Someone for fun should do a survey of the populaces across the West to find out how many people have ever had to buy brand-new trash bags. I have always, always, always used plastic shopping bags as liners for household garbage bins. Imagine being such idiots as to ban one form of bag to end up ensuring massive purchase of new ones just to throw out.
I've got quite a collection of bottle and jar tops too. You never know when you'll need one to replace an inferior one on that lovely glass jar you've just emptied of the last of anchovy paste or something. Doesn't everyone do that?
... finds that about 30% of plastic allegedly eliminated by banning plastic shopping bags came back in garbage bag purchases. garbage bags are ofc far thicker and more environmentally costly to produce. studies on reusable bags show that they're generally worse than single-use shopping bags (you have to reuse them thousands of times before you break even with the old single-use bags, and they don't last that long), and paper bags are much harder to reuse and arguably worse for the environment.
And you know the unmistakeable sign of entering maturity? Looking at pasta sauce brands on the supermarket shelves and making your choice based at least partly on how nice the jar will be for later reuse. As a mother I was so proud...
My brother works in a large electrical appliance store here in the U.K. Most of his colleagues are young and every lunch time these youngsters go next door to Tesco to buy their lunches. They also buy a 30p (30p! I thought they cost 10p!) carrier bag. Everyday. Everyday a whole lot of thick plastic carry bags builds up in the staff room of my brother’s workplace and everyday he takes them home and eventually delivers a great many to me. I haven’t bought a pedal bin liner in years. Our moronic government, which ever one it was, I forget, thought that having shops charge for carrier bags would mean that people would stop buying them and remember to take their own bags to the shops (I do, because I am very mean and loathe wasting money, but I’m afraid they very much over estimated the thinking power of most shoppers). However very many people, especially youngsters, don’t look at prices and don’t much care - after all, what’s 30p here or there? If you asked most of them they wouldn’t be able to tell you how much their sandwich cost, or the bar of chocolate, or the sickly drink or bag of crisps, let alone the plastic bag. The price is almost irrelevant in the scheme of things. I can’t blame them, saving 30p a day won’t mean they’ll be able to afford a mortgage here in crazy world inc.
I don’t recycle and never will - its just another silly scam, a ridiculous joke - the evil ones do like their little jokes, and imagining the nitwits washing plastic yoghurt pots before putting them in the ‘recycling’ bin no doubt makes them laugh their socks off. Their sides are probably still aching from all that laughing at the mask hoax, and the ‘vaccine’ hoax…life is just one merry jape for the blighters. But the masked morons do keep falling for the pranks, don’t they? Heaven help us all.
I believe aluminum-can recycling is pretty worthwhile, and probably cardboard. Plastic, not much. Glass, we periodically have local stories about how they can't find ways to use the glass beyond grinding it up for road base.
Most people believe that glass is melted down to make fresh glass, or plastic is melted down to make fresh plastic. If only.
I already wrote an editorial elsewhere; your opinions pretty much echo mine. The bottom line is that it is possible to recycle nearly anything. The problem is that it is rarely ECONOMICAL to do so. Metals are probably one of the very few post-consumer refuse that qualifies.
Yes, I believe the Danish study about the environmental impact of plastic shopping bags vs cotton shopping bags said that you would have to use the cotton bag 33,000 times to lower the environmental impact of the cotton bag to the level of the plastic bag.
Similar experience here - before the plastic shopping bag rule, I hardly ever had to buy trash ("rubbish" in the UK) bags!
Not to mention all the products (ice cream etc.) formerly in sturdy plastic cartons which could be re-used indefinitely for storing or home-freezing all sorts of things (I have some dating back 3-4 years) now in flimsy cardboard packaging often not even suitable for recycling once empty!
The old Target bags were the best for kitty litter, not too big and thick and sturdy enough. Now I have to use big black 30-gallon plastic trash bags because anything smaller isn’t thick enough. I guess that’s progress? 🤦🏼♀️
I had a brief moment a couple of years ago when I wondered if I really did need to have kept all of those 32-oz yogurt containers.
But I was vindicated. When a supportive housing residence for mentally-handicapped young adults had its housewarming, I potted up about 20 or so of my relentlessly reproducing spider plant offspring in saved containers and crocheted nice covers for them and the residents were so happy to get easy-care greenery for every apt.
My husband refuses to use my lovely collection of tote bags I've amassed over the years and always gets the plastic grocery bags. They live their best lives as dog poop bags.
Tote bags she says. We in our two households will never run out. For the supermarket trips I do line them with some of those already-acquired plastic grocery bags in case of drips and for extra insulation of frozen stuff.
Here in New Zealand they phased out the free plastic bags that were then used for rubbish, dog poop etc. You can only buy paper carrier bags which are useless and the so called tote bags which are equally useless. I refuse to buy bags but I found a few on the street and we have some from ages ago when you could get for free. I frequently see shoppers who have forgotten their bags pay $$$ for the useless paper bags that start ripping before they even have left the shop.......
It sure hasn't taken long, in the scheme of things, to utterly destroy the reputation of New Zealanders as tough sensible people with a great sense of humor, has it?
The bags are shit-coloured when they come out of the machine, unless you colour the plastic first.
That's why the bags are blue and pink and black, instead of sepia-beige: people think shit-coloured bags used to pick up dogshit look icky.
Me, I used clear bags which I could get for free from the supermarket, back when we lived in the city. Just to gross people out. Childish perhaps, but I'd rather the city employed people on welfare as street-sweepers instead.
In a city I can get why you'd want it picked up - it accumulates, stinks, people step in it, and so on.
Degrading takes time and in a city, the components for the process aren't abundant enough; the shit accumulates faster than it breaks down - just look at San Francisco. Turning feces into fertiliser takes 1-3 years, dep on details.
But as I mentioned, why not assign someone on welfare an area to keep clean? They could putter along with a cart with scoops and brooms and stuff. Such people are real valuable to police and SS too, since they see and hear a lot of goings-on. Instead of welfare, give'em a basic income.
It’s very important to pick up dog doings. Dog mess is filthy, stinking and not good for the soil. And of course, extremely horrible to step in or have it trod into your house. I used to save all kinds of plastic bags to use to pick up my dog’s waste (not carrier bags as they are too big and have better uses). I still bought the black bags, though, especially for use outside my own garden, as they fitted better in coats pockets. My dog is dead now, and the thought of getting another dog…no, no, no. No more picking up shit.
At my house, wait totally used to use plastic shopping bags liners in our waste baskets. Now that we don't get them anymore, we buy a box of trash can liners at Costco. Crazy!
The extra tax on plastic grocery bags here (5 years ago or so now) led to a couple of things:
Instead of a net profit of 5 000 000 000:- (divide by ten for dollars) in taxes, it incurred over 60 000 000:- in losses to the Crown, due to drop-off in sales.
As the tax was only for [grocery bags] specifically, people started buying other kinds of bags, such as the much sturdier kind used for garbage at construction sites and such, to put in their garbage cans. So the tax increased sales of plastic bags.
And of course, people like us who do our shopping monthly or quarterly just bring boxes and load up the truck anyway, costing both the manufacturers and the Crown money in lost sales and taxes.
Which led to the Green party wanting a ban on taking your car to the store. . .
It's like a punishment for those of us who loved Monty Python etc. Forced now to live in a world where it's not absurd commentary but daily reality. Imposed by the congenitally bereft of any sense of humor.
I can understand all those Egyptian pharaohs' tombs so well. Why can't I bring my mother's glass Sanka and Ovaltine jars with me to the afterlife? You never know what you might need, stranded in eternity...
Yes, what I find interesting is that when I was reading this article, I reflected that usually I don't buy drinks in plastic bottles but I could see how this cap business could be annoying as well as being stupid. I buy my milk (and wine!) in glass bottles and drink them from mainly secondhand china and glassware . Not because I want to save the world but because it tastes better and I love the historical continuity.
The smaller glasses I inherited from my mother were all from, if I recall, that Kraft Pimento Cheese Spread that was so popular in the '50s.
When I moved up here to New England from NY, I was charmed to see that all the casual restaurants served (non-alcoholic) drinks in mason jars, with straws.
Yes, decades ago I hit upon the same solution for (U.S.) shopping bags. Rather than the taller kitchen trash bins, I bought the smallest "office" sized that the "grocery" bag fits perfectly. If one is a slovenly bachelor as I am, this has the added benefit of the kitchen trash is emptied daily or so instead of becoming a compost heap.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions: here in Holland they introduced a deposit on beverage cans, just like we already had on bottles. This however had the unintentioned consequence that people started tearing garbage bags apart to look for cans, in order to collect the deposit. General mess on the streets ensued. Now instead of admitting the new rule is a failure, they have decided to invest more money in doubling down on the deposit rules. It's just horrifying to watch the incompetence.
I was quite surprised, coming from the USA, when I encountered a bottle where the lid stayed attached on a recent trip. It didn't take long to be annoyed, realize drinking from the bottle could be awkward, and that it was another dimwitted attempt at environmentalism. Thanks for confirming it all.
Last time I was in Italy, some of the wonderful restaurants had a plastic bin on the table for food scraps. Composting don’t you know. Because everyone wants a bin of rotting garbage on the table when enjoying a meal. Buon appetito!
Occasionally in the states, you get the same thing on the rings that do not detach properly when turned.You end up either with a cap that stays tethered or the cap and plastic ring are removed from the cap together and can't easily be replaced.
Eugyppius, these tethered caps are hellish. I dislike drinking from a bottle anyway and on a recent internal European flight was handed a bottle of water incorporating one of these caps. It is even more disgusting to drink from the bottle because the wretched cap gets in the way of your mouth. I thought this new fangled cap was the result of one manufacturer’s eccentricity, then I listened to your recent podcast and it all became clear. This same airline provides bamboo “cutlery” which is even more vile. Just try eating yoghurt with a bamboo spoon - ugh. What’s environmentally wrong with washing and reusing stainless steel cutlery?
even plastic cutlery is superior to the weird wood, bamboo sometimes even card or paper stuff that they've introduced everywhere. plastics really aren't the huge problem they're made out to be, they're generally inert and cheap to produce – often less energy-intensive than their more apparently environmental replacements. the anxiety seems to be that plastic is somehow not naturally occurring and so it must be bad, but the more 'natural' replacements mostly worse, more expensive and so on. it's just totally irrational.
That is absolutely true. Plastic is in reality an environmentalist dream material. It is superior to almost anything else. But, for some reason, my friends and family seem to be very annoyed when I told them so.
I remember reading that the plastic we virtuously recycled years ago was shipped to Asia where probably they just dumped it in the river. Another comment here points out that China banned those imports in 2017. I think plastic recycling is pretty much pointless.
I do n=1 recycling—I don't buy things in plastic, I use my own shopping bags, etc.
It turns put that China banned imports of plastic waste back in 2017, so they beat me to it. That also means that all the plastic waste they are dumping in the ocean is locally sourced and sustainably produced.
A long, long time ago my materials technology lecturer gave the solution:
1. Gather the material so it does not enter lakes / rivers / the sea. This is very difficult - but not impossible.
2. Burn it in an industrial process, so that some of the retained the energy can be released for power or heating. The reason - so many polymers, often combined with such small quantities per item of waste make recycling horrifically expansive and deeply flawed. The second users want material of defined polymer in uniform size and colour pellets - near enough 100 per cent perfect. Anything less than that is scrap.....
Nothing has changed in the past 43 years to present a different path - except our reliance on polymers has increased.
The comment is exactly correct. I teach materials courses, and this includes some recycling information. It is difficult and expensive to collect and separate polymers to process into usable recycled pellets. There are also many additives, which cannot feasibly be separated, and contaminated plastics cannot be sufficiently purified because the processes must be at low temperatures (unlike steel or aluminum). Incinerating them to produce power and heat is the obvious thing to do if you do not want to put plastics into landfills.
The idiot Twitter legions of idiots who beset you were really something. And I believe these were actual zombied people, not NGO or government bot accounts.
it's just crazy. the EU could mandate that all bottled water must contain a minimum of 5% upcycled urine and these deranged lunatics would be lining up to explain why that's just great and how much they love drinking urine.
I've been noticing these caps on bottles/cartons in the UK over the last few months - didn't know about the EU rule, but guessed it must have been something of the sort.
Other issues aside, they're really annoying as (in the case of screw caps rather than clip-on ones) they make it very hard to put the cap back on tightly and securely! Of course, you can easily solve the problem by cutting the cap off its "tether"
They are not easy to open either as the tether is short. My OH is over 80 and his hands are not so strong as they were, so he often has to ask me to open the bottle.
Stupid, will do nothing, and may be counter productive. That sums up every western government’s policies. Vast majority of the world’s plastic waste in oceans comes from a few rivers in Asia: yellow and yangtze in China, Ganges in India, etc. Not to mention the billions of useless masks that will shed microplastics for hundreds of years. That’s what happens when Eurocrats bow to Greta.
But heaven forbid we mention that or the coal plants in China and India. I could swear the plastic bag ban in California has only led to one thing - more poop 💩 on the sidewalks. At least the homeless used to crap into plastic bags! 🙄
Dog poop is good for the soil, isn't it?
That's another regulation I never understood. When i grew up, I could be running barefoot through neighbors yards to get home and could step on a yard apple. That was life. The caveat "look where you are going."
Poop is biodegradeable, isnt it? Unless it also comes with microplastics.
It may be good for the soil but I've never appreciated getting it on my shoes when I am out walking. Where I live, dog owners are usually responsible and 'poop and scoop' using the free plastic bags provided by ratepayers (property taxes) and take it home to put in their rubbish bins. I see them picking it up and am very grateful not to be a dog owner. Some go through the motions though and then throw it over my fence in the plastic bag. Not appreciated by me!
Not to mention that it's a vector for all sorts of infectious disease.
Had to chuckle at "some go through the motions."
Plastics are essentially organic substances, and are (eventually) biodegradable. All those studies of oceanic gyres that supposedly contain vast, floating islands of garbage and plastic waste seem to always find little or none.
Couldn’t help wondering whether the European Mediterranean is on the receiving end of wind blown floating detritus originating in North Africa. Just asking for a friend
That sums up every Western government.
https://voza0db.substack.com/p/morons-just-dont-get-it-13a
Enough with the half-measures! Ban the caps completely! Every bottle must be manufactured, shipped, and sold with no cap whatsoever! Oh, and the bottles have to made from edible shellac, and the drinker must eat it upon completion. Problem solved forever!
Edible shellac... well, that could get quite explosive, especially if it's quite old.
Brings a whole new meaning to spontaneous conversation.
I wonder if GreenPeace would take this hook, line and sinker?
Children's candy was far ahead of you sixty-five years ago and more. Anyone else remember those little wax bottles of horrible syrupy stuff? You bit the top off and drank...
You didn't spit out the wax top?
I can remember it was quite common to chew the wax like gum after drinking the contents.
Gack. I never did like those.
I really don't know how I went from loving all that crap to reading the labels on everything and having zero taste for all-American stuff like Coke and Cheetos.
I don't eat them anymore, but I have fond memories of those hot purple Cheetos.
You are clearly the hero we need but don't deserve.
feed them vinyl chloride!!!
"edible shellac" Thanks for that! Reminded me of the "non-nutritive cereal varnish" from the Chevy Chase classic, Christmas Vacation.
Myriad: Your simple, common-sense solution just makes too much sense for the average selfish person who would whine and cry about their "rights" and having to eat the bottles, baby seals and dolphins be damned!!
I would love to see updated stays showing what percentage of the waste is discarded facemasks. I don’t know about Europe, but in the US they are everywhere now. It’s weird how silent leftists are regarding that source of pollution!
Came here just to say: Notice they didn’t just ban the f’ing masks to save the Earth.
Well you have to understand, we are bare faced plague spreaders. So a mask is the perfect concession for those around us not to have to breathe our disease riddled air.
👿
Snot pouches saved the planet including the moon .
* stats, not stays
I've also seen quite a few "floss on plastic" devices laying around. Why are they even out in public?
We saw this over the summer when we were in Italy. We just broke the tether and detached the cap.
million dollar idea. A keychain that contains a "tether cutter."
I already have one on my keychain. It’s called a P-38 can opener.
My trusty old P-37 does the job just fine. I see no reason to upgrade to the P-38.
Same
It's also the biggest pain for bartenders in sports events and concerts (cap cannot be given to the clients so they don't throw the full bottle at someone, I know, stupid) so the bartenders now have to manually tear it apart, which is a pain to do with every beverage served. It's just the perfect example of what the EU has become
I'm sure nobody thought of that.
My simple and meaningless act of resistance that makes me feel good:
1. Cut off the cap.
2. Carefully place the cap into the recycling bin.
3. Carefully place the bottle into the regular trash bin.
There you go again, eugyppius: trying to argue against feelings with FACTS. Tsk, tsk.
Donald Tusk may well have had something to do with this. It's mad enough.
Ah, the endless plumage pageantry of Morons on Governmental Parade.
Someone for fun should do a survey of the populaces across the West to find out how many people have ever had to buy brand-new trash bags. I have always, always, always used plastic shopping bags as liners for household garbage bins. Imagine being such idiots as to ban one form of bag to end up ensuring massive purchase of new ones just to throw out.
I've got quite a collection of bottle and jar tops too. You never know when you'll need one to replace an inferior one on that lovely glass jar you've just emptied of the last of anchovy paste or something. Doesn't everyone do that?
you are not alone, SCA. this study ...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0095069618305291
... finds that about 30% of plastic allegedly eliminated by banning plastic shopping bags came back in garbage bag purchases. garbage bags are ofc far thicker and more environmentally costly to produce. studies on reusable bags show that they're generally worse than single-use shopping bags (you have to reuse them thousands of times before you break even with the old single-use bags, and they don't last that long), and paper bags are much harder to reuse and arguably worse for the environment.
The wisdom of housewives.
And you know the unmistakeable sign of entering maturity? Looking at pasta sauce brands on the supermarket shelves and making your choice based at least partly on how nice the jar will be for later reuse. As a mother I was so proud...
My brother works in a large electrical appliance store here in the U.K. Most of his colleagues are young and every lunch time these youngsters go next door to Tesco to buy their lunches. They also buy a 30p (30p! I thought they cost 10p!) carrier bag. Everyday. Everyday a whole lot of thick plastic carry bags builds up in the staff room of my brother’s workplace and everyday he takes them home and eventually delivers a great many to me. I haven’t bought a pedal bin liner in years. Our moronic government, which ever one it was, I forget, thought that having shops charge for carrier bags would mean that people would stop buying them and remember to take their own bags to the shops (I do, because I am very mean and loathe wasting money, but I’m afraid they very much over estimated the thinking power of most shoppers). However very many people, especially youngsters, don’t look at prices and don’t much care - after all, what’s 30p here or there? If you asked most of them they wouldn’t be able to tell you how much their sandwich cost, or the bar of chocolate, or the sickly drink or bag of crisps, let alone the plastic bag. The price is almost irrelevant in the scheme of things. I can’t blame them, saving 30p a day won’t mean they’ll be able to afford a mortgage here in crazy world inc.
I don’t recycle and never will - its just another silly scam, a ridiculous joke - the evil ones do like their little jokes, and imagining the nitwits washing plastic yoghurt pots before putting them in the ‘recycling’ bin no doubt makes them laugh their socks off. Their sides are probably still aching from all that laughing at the mask hoax, and the ‘vaccine’ hoax…life is just one merry jape for the blighters. But the masked morons do keep falling for the pranks, don’t they? Heaven help us all.
I believe aluminum-can recycling is pretty worthwhile, and probably cardboard. Plastic, not much. Glass, we periodically have local stories about how they can't find ways to use the glass beyond grinding it up for road base.
Most people believe that glass is melted down to make fresh glass, or plastic is melted down to make fresh plastic. If only.
All the waste from our town goes to a plant that burns it to make energy. More of these plants should be built.
I already wrote an editorial elsewhere; your opinions pretty much echo mine. The bottom line is that it is possible to recycle nearly anything. The problem is that it is rarely ECONOMICAL to do so. Metals are probably one of the very few post-consumer refuse that qualifies.
Ugh… 😑🤦🏽♀️
Yes, I believe the Danish study about the environmental impact of plastic shopping bags vs cotton shopping bags said that you would have to use the cotton bag 33,000 times to lower the environmental impact of the cotton bag to the level of the plastic bag.
What about how they told us to wash our cloth bags during covid!! Or was that just our moronic government?
Paper shopping bags go straight in the bin - useless things. Plastic ones can be used and reused.
We use paper bags as wastebaskets or wastebasket liners. Also useful for ripening fruit.
They don’t last that long. No durablity.
Similar experience here - before the plastic shopping bag rule, I hardly ever had to buy trash ("rubbish" in the UK) bags!
Not to mention all the products (ice cream etc.) formerly in sturdy plastic cartons which could be re-used indefinitely for storing or home-freezing all sorts of things (I have some dating back 3-4 years) now in flimsy cardboard packaging often not even suitable for recycling once empty!
The old Target bags were the best for kitty litter, not too big and thick and sturdy enough. Now I have to use big black 30-gallon plastic trash bags because anything smaller isn’t thick enough. I guess that’s progress? 🤦🏼♀️
Same!
I had a brief moment a couple of years ago when I wondered if I really did need to have kept all of those 32-oz yogurt containers.
But I was vindicated. When a supportive housing residence for mentally-handicapped young adults had its housewarming, I potted up about 20 or so of my relentlessly reproducing spider plant offspring in saved containers and crocheted nice covers for them and the residents were so happy to get easy-care greenery for every apt.
In the same vein, who buys dog poop bags?
Yes. What a baffling market.
My husband refuses to use my lovely collection of tote bags I've amassed over the years and always gets the plastic grocery bags. They live their best lives as dog poop bags.
Tote bags she says. We in our two households will never run out. For the supermarket trips I do line them with some of those already-acquired plastic grocery bags in case of drips and for extra insulation of frozen stuff.
Here in New Zealand they phased out the free plastic bags that were then used for rubbish, dog poop etc. You can only buy paper carrier bags which are useless and the so called tote bags which are equally useless. I refuse to buy bags but I found a few on the street and we have some from ages ago when you could get for free. I frequently see shoppers who have forgotten their bags pay $$$ for the useless paper bags that start ripping before they even have left the shop.......
It sure hasn't taken long, in the scheme of things, to utterly destroy the reputation of New Zealanders as tough sensible people with a great sense of humor, has it?
Want to be further baffled?
The bags are shit-coloured when they come out of the machine, unless you colour the plastic first.
That's why the bags are blue and pink and black, instead of sepia-beige: people think shit-coloured bags used to pick up dogshit look icky.
Me, I used clear bags which I could get for free from the supermarket, back when we lived in the city. Just to gross people out. Childish perhaps, but I'd rather the city employed people on welfare as street-sweepers instead.
I'm still questioning why people pick up dog poop at all. Isnt it bioegradable and actually good for the soil?
Jimmy: You have clearly never scraped dog poop out of the 1.6 million crevices of a child's sneaker sole 😜
As a woman whose work uniform (to the despair of every boss I ever had) included black velcro sneakers, I can testify it's not just the little soles.
lmao!!!!
so true
In a city I can get why you'd want it picked up - it accumulates, stinks, people step in it, and so on.
Degrading takes time and in a city, the components for the process aren't abundant enough; the shit accumulates faster than it breaks down - just look at San Francisco. Turning feces into fertiliser takes 1-3 years, dep on details.
But as I mentioned, why not assign someone on welfare an area to keep clean? They could putter along with a cart with scoops and brooms and stuff. Such people are real valuable to police and SS too, since they see and hear a lot of goings-on. Instead of welfare, give'em a basic income.
It’s very important to pick up dog doings. Dog mess is filthy, stinking and not good for the soil. And of course, extremely horrible to step in or have it trod into your house. I used to save all kinds of plastic bags to use to pick up my dog’s waste (not carrier bags as they are too big and have better uses). I still bought the black bags, though, especially for use outside my own garden, as they fitted better in coats pockets. My dog is dead now, and the thought of getting another dog…no, no, no. No more picking up shit.
At my house, wait totally used to use plastic shopping bags liners in our waste baskets. Now that we don't get them anymore, we buy a box of trash can liners at Costco. Crazy!
I live in a place where the plastic shopping bags are still readily available, fortunately.
The extra tax on plastic grocery bags here (5 years ago or so now) led to a couple of things:
Instead of a net profit of 5 000 000 000:- (divide by ten for dollars) in taxes, it incurred over 60 000 000:- in losses to the Crown, due to drop-off in sales.
As the tax was only for [grocery bags] specifically, people started buying other kinds of bags, such as the much sturdier kind used for garbage at construction sites and such, to put in their garbage cans. So the tax increased sales of plastic bags.
And of course, people like us who do our shopping monthly or quarterly just bring boxes and load up the truck anyway, costing both the manufacturers and the Crown money in lost sales and taxes.
Which led to the Green party wanting a ban on taking your car to the store. . .
It's like a punishment for those of us who loved Monty Python etc. Forced now to live in a world where it's not absurd commentary but daily reality. Imposed by the congenitally bereft of any sense of humor.
Yes, we do. I've had some bottles for years.
I can understand all those Egyptian pharaohs' tombs so well. Why can't I bring my mother's glass Sanka and Ovaltine jars with me to the afterlife? You never know what you might need, stranded in eternity...
I've had a lovely cut glass bottle that I use to make salad dressing that I can put straight on the table it's that beautiful.
There were full generations that never had to buy drinking glasses as separate purchases...
Yes, what I find interesting is that when I was reading this article, I reflected that usually I don't buy drinks in plastic bottles but I could see how this cap business could be annoying as well as being stupid. I buy my milk (and wine!) in glass bottles and drink them from mainly secondhand china and glassware . Not because I want to save the world but because it tastes better and I love the historical continuity.
The smaller glasses I inherited from my mother were all from, if I recall, that Kraft Pimento Cheese Spread that was so popular in the '50s.
When I moved up here to New England from NY, I was charmed to see that all the casual restaurants served (non-alcoholic) drinks in mason jars, with straws.
Yes, decades ago I hit upon the same solution for (U.S.) shopping bags. Rather than the taller kitchen trash bins, I bought the smallest "office" sized that the "grocery" bag fits perfectly. If one is a slovenly bachelor as I am, this has the added benefit of the kitchen trash is emptied daily or so instead of becoming a compost heap.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions: here in Holland they introduced a deposit on beverage cans, just like we already had on bottles. This however had the unintentioned consequence that people started tearing garbage bags apart to look for cans, in order to collect the deposit. General mess on the streets ensued. Now instead of admitting the new rule is a failure, they have decided to invest more money in doubling down on the deposit rules. It's just horrifying to watch the incompetence.
You could suggest they try what we did here, 20-something years ago when we had the same problem:
Add a can/bottle receptacle to the public trash-can's exterior.
I was quite surprised, coming from the USA, when I encountered a bottle where the lid stayed attached on a recent trip. It didn't take long to be annoyed, realize drinking from the bottle could be awkward, and that it was another dimwitted attempt at environmentalism. Thanks for confirming it all.
Last time I was in Italy, some of the wonderful restaurants had a plastic bin on the table for food scraps. Composting don’t you know. Because everyone wants a bin of rotting garbage on the table when enjoying a meal. Buon appetito!
Wait, you mean there was old food from some other guest in the bin when you were seated?
That's a health hazard, and here it would be illegal and cause for shuttering the restuarant on the spot.
Glad I didn’t see that.
Occasionally in the states, you get the same thing on the rings that do not detach properly when turned.You end up either with a cap that stays tethered or the cap and plastic ring are removed from the cap together and can't easily be replaced.
Ditto
Eugyppius, these tethered caps are hellish. I dislike drinking from a bottle anyway and on a recent internal European flight was handed a bottle of water incorporating one of these caps. It is even more disgusting to drink from the bottle because the wretched cap gets in the way of your mouth. I thought this new fangled cap was the result of one manufacturer’s eccentricity, then I listened to your recent podcast and it all became clear. This same airline provides bamboo “cutlery” which is even more vile. Just try eating yoghurt with a bamboo spoon - ugh. What’s environmentally wrong with washing and reusing stainless steel cutlery?
even plastic cutlery is superior to the weird wood, bamboo sometimes even card or paper stuff that they've introduced everywhere. plastics really aren't the huge problem they're made out to be, they're generally inert and cheap to produce – often less energy-intensive than their more apparently environmental replacements. the anxiety seems to be that plastic is somehow not naturally occurring and so it must be bad, but the more 'natural' replacements mostly worse, more expensive and so on. it's just totally irrational.
That is absolutely true. Plastic is in reality an environmentalist dream material. It is superior to almost anything else. But, for some reason, my friends and family seem to be very annoyed when I told them so.
We are truly living in very strange times.
Well, now you've made me have to find a spot in my schedule to watch "Plastic Planet" to find out how bad off we really are. https://www.bitchute.com/video/0vGeNoG7rBHA
Can you not just twist the cap at the tether until it pops off? Then throw the newly liberated cap at the fool that came up with the idea.
Can possibly be used as weapons. Therefore they are a terrorist risk.
🙄
If they are really concerned about plastic pollution in the ocean, perhaps they should ban exports of plastic to Asia.
Do you think that Europe and America actually export much plastic to Asia? I would guess that it is quite the reverse.
I remember reading that the plastic we virtuously recycled years ago was shipped to Asia where probably they just dumped it in the river. Another comment here points out that China banned those imports in 2017. I think plastic recycling is pretty much pointless.
I do n=1 recycling—I don't buy things in plastic, I use my own shopping bags, etc.
It turns put that China banned imports of plastic waste back in 2017, so they beat me to it. That also means that all the plastic waste they are dumping in the ocean is locally sourced and sustainably produced.
A long, long time ago my materials technology lecturer gave the solution:
1. Gather the material so it does not enter lakes / rivers / the sea. This is very difficult - but not impossible.
2. Burn it in an industrial process, so that some of the retained the energy can be released for power or heating. The reason - so many polymers, often combined with such small quantities per item of waste make recycling horrifically expansive and deeply flawed. The second users want material of defined polymer in uniform size and colour pellets - near enough 100 per cent perfect. Anything less than that is scrap.....
Nothing has changed in the past 43 years to present a different path - except our reliance on polymers has increased.
The comment is exactly correct. I teach materials courses, and this includes some recycling information. It is difficult and expensive to collect and separate polymers to process into usable recycled pellets. There are also many additives, which cannot feasibly be separated, and contaminated plastics cannot be sufficiently purified because the processes must be at low temperatures (unlike steel or aluminum). Incinerating them to produce power and heat is the obvious thing to do if you do not want to put plastics into landfills.
Good to see this. Thank you.
And in the meantime, the LA Times admits that California's plastic bag ban has resulted in more plastic bags being sent to landfills. Their solution? More regulations banning plastic bags. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-05/editorial-california-needs-to-ban-all-the-other-plastic-grocery-bags
The idiot Twitter legions of idiots who beset you were really something. And I believe these were actual zombied people, not NGO or government bot accounts.
it's just crazy. the EU could mandate that all bottled water must contain a minimum of 5% upcycled urine and these deranged lunatics would be lining up to explain why that's just great and how much they love drinking urine.
I think of these people as "The Defenders." No matter the topic, they appear like superman to defend the stupid.
lolol.
urine to wash down ze bugs!...yummy
I've been noticing these caps on bottles/cartons in the UK over the last few months - didn't know about the EU rule, but guessed it must have been something of the sort.
Other issues aside, they're really annoying as (in the case of screw caps rather than clip-on ones) they make it very hard to put the cap back on tightly and securely! Of course, you can easily solve the problem by cutting the cap off its "tether"
They are not easy to open either as the tether is short. My OH is over 80 and his hands are not so strong as they were, so he often has to ask me to open the bottle.