from Hacker News

Humans have made 8.3bn tons of plastic since 1950

by prakashk on 6/24/19, 11:17 AM with 44 comments

• by spodek on 6/24/19, 11:45 AM

  Missing from most environmental conversation is how much you can improve your life avoiding polluting things. What you replace packaged food, flying, and such with is fresh fruits and vegetables and local community. You learn that while one flight will bring you closer to a distant loved one, flying in general is what led to your "community" living where you can't see each other.

  When I point out that you, the reader, can make a difference, this community usually responds that you can't, that only government action will make a difference or something like that. That's where government action comes from. Besides, if it improves your life, you personally benefit from reducing your consumption anyway.

  The article's most important point I saw was that recycling hasn't shown to reduce production of virgin material. Without reducing production, reusing and recycling only shuffle plastic around. Burning it creates dioxin and other pollution. My podcast episode 183 describes how reusing and recycling are only tactical. Reduction is strategic http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-monologues-volume....

  However snarky and cynical people here can be -- I'm sure they consider themselves practical and realist -- if avoiding buying plastic will improve your life and reduce demand, why not do it anyway. Besides it will lead others to change and can lead to politicians realizing voters want regulation. Legislators and heads of companies are people too and will change when people around them do, which is you and me.

• by rpiguy on 6/24/19, 12:45 PM

  Human beings are astounding! Assuming the Earth is about 5.972 sextillion (1,000 trillion) metric tons, we've converted .000000000000134 of the Earth into plastic. No other species could have accomplished this. A testament to our ingenuity.

• by ginko on 6/24/19, 11:38 AM

  If my calculations are correct and assuming an average plastic density of 1.15g/cm³[1] that's 7.2 billion cubic meters of plastic. If you pressed all of that into a solid cube it'd be 1.9km along each side. More than twice as tall as Burj Khalifa.

  [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/595434/plastic-materials...

• by ianai on 6/24/19, 11:36 AM

  This underscores the sadness in burning oil. Plastics allow us to do and make so many useful things. We should be stockpiling oil for this sort of use and only burning it when no other option exists.

• by mrfusion on 6/24/19, 2:10 PM

  Why is this necessarily bad?

• by foobar_ on 6/24/19, 5:12 PM

  The problem with capitalism is waste management and producing good and services in excess.