If We Don;t Send The Stuff To China How Do We Dispose Of Our

[emmie]

plastic waste
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-42456584

[emmie]

no wonder a lot ends up in the oceans of the world, supporting the claim that millions of sea creatures are killed by ingesting plastic.

[Old_Geezer]

Should've been dealing with at least most of it ourselves anyway.
Likely pile up or put in landfill until we've got the facilities up & running.

[emmie]

surely that is just polluting the land..
we must come up with a better solution to our plastic crises.

[fender62]

i wonder why a lot of plastic is not biodegradable, if it costs more to produce ? surely it outweighs the cost of getting rid of non-degradable plastic, i dont understand how the whole thing works, but humans waste to much stuff.

[cassa333]

We will have to start dealing with our waste ourselves pretty quickly.

By palming off our waste to places like China and India we have gotten lazy and now suddenly the truth of our excess is going to be rammed home.

But, because the 'startup' costs from virtually scratch will be astronomical we will be paying a big price for some time to come.

We have suckered ourselves into being ripped off by (I suspect) large and/or foreign companies that we will just be jumping from one dirty ship (China/India) to the next.

[Old_Geezer]

It degrades quite small, then small marine lifeforms eat it.

[jourdain2]

Tend to agree with cassa. I had thought that this, being a modern industry, was under control - silly me. :( Go back to paper bags for a start, they are regrowable and recyclable. This can be done almost instantly. Impose taxes (starting 6 months hence) on plastic packaging. That should stir a few souls. :)

[emmie]

we are so reliant on plastic, at least one enterprising man has come up with a use for it, transforming it into roadways, tarmac, don't ask me how he has done it, but apparently it works brilliantly well.

[Togo]

Perhaps we should now take steps to prevent the Chinese from sending their "cheap plastic" over here in the first place?

[emmie]

what cheap plastics Togo?

[EDDIE51]

My first job way back in 1968 was as a trainee lab assistant at ICI Plastics Division Research Department. We were trying to find ways to make plastic last longer and resist degrading. Now the situation is totally reversed and research is all about finding ways to make plastic degrade faster. As to how to get rid of the 1500 tonnes of waste plastic we were sending to China every week. ? I can only suggest burning it as fuel in a multi fuel power generation system. Most but not all plastic is flammable and can be used as fuel. Current power generation systems can burn wood chips so plastic chips would burn as well. What can't be burnt will have to go as landfill. It is going to be a real problem and not one that is going to be easy to fix.

[emmie]

they send us most things from bras to cars..

[EDDIE51]

A lot of the plastic waste sent to China ended up coming back here as things like plastic window and door frames. We may have to get used to paying more for such items, in addition to paying to get rid of the waste.

[Old_Geezer]

We should go back to natural materials wherever possible. But plastics are too ubiquitous to drop immediately. We need to depend on fewer, easier to recycle varieties. Of course, fewer humans on the globe would reduce demand to tolerable levels. We've gone down an unfortunate path in many ways; we need to get back on the straight & narrow, as they say.