07-10-18, 06:41 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-10-18, 06:42 PM by tommyardin.)
It is interesting listening to every ones thoughts and opinions on the issue of plastics and other packaging.
Some say Reduce at the till in the supermarket, the problem is that whether you buy that product or not it is packed in plastic, if its not bought it goes into a skip then into landfill plastic and all, if it is purchased the plastic has a better chance of being recycled.
2 wheelie bins a fortnight does seem excessive for two people, but if their council does recycle it all as they say they do then it has to be a good thing.
I honestly think that the problem of plastic and other waste products can only be solved at the factory goods in gates.
A lot of manufactures don't actually give a fuck, it's all about maximum profit for the smallest outlay, profits and shareholders must be appeased, they don't want to hear we have very little profits the financial year but we a very environmentally friendly and have cut down on our carbon footprint by 60%. It also puts the unemployment figures up.
Hedgehogs, red squirrels, water voles, newts, sand lizards, there is a programme on the TV I can hear now as I am typing this drivvle (Country File) all these animals are at risk because of building and other development including modern farming which is destroying hedge rows and field ditches, and it is called progress.
I am afraid we all are a part of the problem, we want cheaper goods, and that usually means automated packaging plants that use more and more plastics.
More and more plastics are being used in the building trade/construction (High thermal value materials) that will also add to the problem in years to come. :eek
Did my bit to save on plastic in the oceans this after noon when I went out for a ride this after noon took a reusable water bottle with me instead of a plastic one, but did use 2 tanks of gas just enjoying the ride so guess I'm not environmentally after all.
There are (so it would seem) also health issues with re using plastic water bottles over and over
I don't do rain or threat there of. dry rider only with no shame.
Some plastic packaging IS needed, for instance cucumbers, the plastic sleeve prolongs the life, we thought we were saving the planet when we saw a cucumber without plastic but had to bin it after a few days--waste water growing it-waste transport pollution- and so on but at least when I bin it that it degrades quick. But there should be a bio degradable sleeve option.
EDIT- IMO cucumbers are a waste of focin time anyway !
I don't do rain or threat there of. dry rider only with no shame.
Cant do away with plastic anyway, cast iron fairing on a Fazer? not forgetting infill panels, side panels and lead crash helmets, cork mobile phones and cardboard iPads.
Plastic is here to stay, so get used to it, we just need to manage it better,and until governments worldwide passes legislation to control it we will have to put up with it.
Even recycle centres in different areas can not agree on what can and can not be recycled.
Quote:For fear of being accused of racism and causing offence.
Absolute nonsense. What evidence do you have for this? And not to mention many businesses, authority’s, idea of waste management is to ship it abroad.
Quote:Some plastic packaging IS needed, for instance cucumbers, the plastic sleeve prolongs the life, we thought we were saving the planet when we saw a cucumber without plastic but had to bin it after a few days
My local supermarket – Morrisons – are telling us they are making a big move to cut packaging. So paper bags have replaced the free wee plastic bags for loose fruit and veg. But yeah the shrink wrap has vanished from the cucumbers. I now get my cucumber home and shrink wrap it in plastic so it won’t go off quick in the fridge. Doh! Yet they are still selling tomatoes in plastic boxes. Oh and why when I need a few floury tatties tae make some soup why do I have to buy 2Kg in a plastic bag. I’ll have some mash to use some of em up, but a good few will get chucked. Why is all fruit and veg not loose?
Quote:It wont change due to public pressure no politician of any party has ever listened to the great unwashed of this country and carried out their wishes.
I can assure you if enough people apply pressure to their elected representatives they will respond. It is a democracy. And democracy is not just about voting once every 5 years. But yeah, leave em to it and most likely they will do foc all. They are there to serve us – make em do their job.
Trouble is self opinionated people who only see things from their point of view tend to put the backs up of most people.
Quote:Oh and why when I need a few floury tatties tae make some soup why do I have to buy 2Kg in a plastic bag. I’ll have some mash to use some of em up, but a good few will get chucked.
We always but a sack of spuds from the local garden centre which comes in a paper sack, £6.50 for 12.5kg and keep it in the shed and it lasts weeks. But you can only get them between October and May. And then its new potatoes - as you say, in plastic bags.
I don't do rain or threat there of. dry rider only with no shame.
There's a weird thing too. Most of the year I eat new tatties, seeing as these days they are available all year roond (maybe that in itself needs to change). My supermarket always has loose new tatties. But I buy em pre-packed cos they are a fraction of the price, and it’s often the same variety from the same region. Why?
It’s only when I do something like make soup I need the old ones, and I end up with shit loads of em.
(08-10-18, 01:12 PM)VNA link Wrote: Quote:For fear of being accused of racism and causing offence.
Absolute nonsense. What evidence do you have for this? And not to mention many businesses, authority’s, idea of waste management is to ship it abroad.
Quote:Some plastic packaging IS needed, for instance cucumbers, the plastic sleeve prolongs the life, we thought we were saving the planet when we saw a cucumber without plastic but had to bin it after a few days
My local supermarket – Morrisons – are telling us they are making a big move to cut packaging. So paper bags have replaced the free wee plastic bags for loose fruit and veg. But yeah the shrink wrap has vanished from the cucumbers. I now get my cucumber home and shrink wrap it in plastic so it won’t go off quick in the fridge. Doh! Yet they are still selling tomatoes in plastic boxes. Oh and why when I need a few floury tatties tae make some soup why do I have to buy 2Kg in a plastic bag. I’ll have some mash to use some of em up, but a good few will get chucked. Why is all fruit and veg not loose?
Quote:It wont change due to public pressure no politician of any party has ever listened to the great unwashed of this country and carried out their wishes.
I can assure you if enough people apply pressure to their elected representatives they will respond. It is a democracy. And democracy is not just about voting once every 5 years. But yeah, leave em to it and most likely they will do foc all. They are there to serve us – make em do their job. Every time you do this VNA I think of this 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvcnx6-0GhA
and lets try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees eh. Just enough to melt the ice caps, then we can get at the underground resources.
Where I live, the waste collection is becoming a joke.
We get one large (only becasue I complained about the small) recycling bin that is collected once a fortnight. On black bag bin that is emtied weekly and a garden waste bin that if they detect you have been putting kitchen waste (like potatoe peelings) they refuse to empty.
We fill our recycling bin in under two weeks meaning that we actually end up putting stuff in teh black bag bin that we could recycle. I dont want bags and boxes lying around the place so in the bin it goes.
The garden waste bin is now emptied 50 weeks of the year but only every other week meaning I still ahve a sizable pile of garden waste in teh garden I cant get rid of. I cant get rid of it because our local council have deemed vans and trailers to be the spawn of the earth and wont allow them in teh local tip without paying for the priveledge. On top of this, they now close at 4:30pm dueing the week having not opened until 9am (and never on a Thursday) so I cannot get there before/after work and at the weekend, the queue goes way back down the road blocking off the local retail park. You can sit in teh queue, gradually creeping forwards, for 45 minutes for the privieldge of self sorting your rubbish into specific piles.
I dont mind recycling, reusing etc but the problem is not in this country really. The problem you have all seen on the tv is places like india, mexico, etc where the poeple just dont give a foc and their governments dont either. To them, they think very little of dropping another plastic back in teh street or tipping the contents of their engine oil in the local stream becasue thats the way its done there.
We can go as green as we want in this continent, but when the USA, China and the third world are not helping, even if we stopped using plastic and fosil fuel tonight, the problem would still be there and will remain there until the other parts of the world start to do something.
Another ex-Fazer rider that is a foccer again
Agree with much of what you say BBROWN1664.
But at the same time we have a policy of dumping our waste on third world and developing countries. Though some of these countries are now rightly refusing to take our waste.
And of course the biggest part of our recycling bin problem is we have so much darn pointless packaging to stick in there in the first place.
Totally agree it's a global problem. As for the USA, well Trump is in complete denial of all enviromental issues. Plus he's renaging on international agreement after agreement. Trump is a problem for us all.
I would argue, by the way, that China is actually one country that is now, and to some degree has already in the past, taken global warming more seriously than most other countries, and it's now moving to more robustly tackle waste. China may be a big polluter as a country, by on a single person basis they are one of the least polluting countries in the world.
But regardless of what other countries do, we need to clean up our act. Cos if nothing else, leading the way on emmisions, plastic use, recycling and waste means we'll have the technology and expertise to sell to other countries when sooner or later they will be screaming out for solutions to a mounting problem. It's a win win, if we can get it right (big if)
My thoughts on this, correct me if I'm missing something.
Ironic/"funny" part: beavers build dams, humans make plastic. Planet loves plastic, we're a part of the planet.  We've been here for a relatively very short time and not that anyone would miss us if we pollute ourselves to death.
Bit more serious: more humans, more polution. Limiting a number of new borns worldwide would get us within a manageable number of people, with more than enough resources and less pollution.
Seriously: We've had a company VW Golf 2 diesel. It ran for over 20 years! As a company car. Used very little fuel. I wonder if that's less eco than modern cars that have filters, but use the same amount of fuel per 100 kms, if not more, due to engine being suffocated with all the exhaust filters. How much pollution does making a new car do? Golf 2 can last for 20-30 years, while modern cars are "phased out" after 5 years, with strong government incentives for new, "eco" cars... Plus Golf 2 runs on filtered, used food frying oil.
Same goes for most other products - capitalism, with consumerism, leads to pollution. People are encouraged to buy more often, new stuff, discouraged from repairing the old. New stuff is designed so it doesn't last long AND so it's expensive to repair. Plus, you have a "free market" with 1000 different variants of the same thing - instead of choosing a most durable, easyest and cleanest to produce models, of high quality, making them in large series.
Most things done in a hurry need to be done again - patiently.
:agree
The so called old and "dirty" cars tend to be cleaner than new ones when you look at the cradle to grave emmisions for the reasons you have given. the effort/emmisions involved in building them has increased and the effort/cost/emisions to scrap the car has increased. Add in the shorter lifespan of some of these cars now and whilst they may emit less particles per km or whatever, they are not as green as the carrot munchers would like you to believe.
Another ex-Fazer rider that is a foccer again
Quote:The so called old and "dirty" cars tend to be cleaner than new ones when you look at the cradle to grave emmisions for the reasons you have given.
Except the older diesel ones, they visibly spew out diesel particles and soot. Arguably they need to taken off the road. But then, the current answer - congestion charges or bans for older diesels - is pretty much directly targeting those who can least afford. It’s not clever and it’s not right.
But yeah I ran my last car for over 10 years. 2.0ltr petrol Bora. Got a Euro 6 diesel now. I’d say it’s well built and should last even longer than my Bora, but the problem may be if you have a car that suffers ‘technical’ problems, as it gets harder to diagnose and fix some issues. So far it's run for almost 3 years faultlessly (fingers crossed)
I do think we will see increasing numbers of electric cars on the roads over the next few years. Still a bit limited in choice, pricey for what you get and the killer for me is range just now. But for a lot of folks they are going to start ticking boxes. Exepct them to become a common sight.
Quote:Bit more serious: more humans, more polution. Limiting a number of new borns worldwide would get us within a manageable number of people, with more than enough resources and less pollution.
Population, the big white elephant in the room. It is though the number one issue.
Electric cars can help an overpopulated city have a bit less pollution, but the planet as a whole - not so much, if not worse IMO.
My country now gives incentive for "renewable" power sources. So people with money put dams on small, beautiful mountain rivers, and make small power plants. This destroys the mountain rivers/streams, kills all the fast water inhabiting fish (trout I think is the English name). Even affects the surrounding forrests.
Similar thing happens with wind-turbines - haven't seen it for myself, but was told they tend to decimate flocks of birds, who don't see the fins. They even make them with some whistles, to allow birds to notice them, but then you have noise pollution.
Solar panels - they take a lot of room, and have a limited life span - not sure how eco-friendly their production is.
Coal - no need to even explain that.
Nuclear power plants - these seem like the most eco friendly, in terms of pollution per MW produced. As long as there are no disasters and the waste is stored safely and properly.
All those sources are either time, or/and resource limited. Electricity is produced, then converted to charge batteries. Then converted again to run an electric car engine from the batteries. With losses at each transformation (smaller, or larger). OK, when the electric car is run in a busy street it doesn't pollute then and there. It did use pollution to charge the batteries, but that came from hundreds of miles away. It will affect the ecosystem and the climate, probably, but the busy city street will be a bit cleaner, more "eco".
Batteries need to be replaced from time to time, even the rechargeable ones don't last forever. This also creates some waste, and takes effort to re-use what can be re-used, so there's a bit less waste. But there is waste.
Banning private cars, with good quality public transport and bicycle infrastructure are a sensible, long term option. For several reasons. Same, unfortunately, goes for motorcycles as well. Though we needn't fear, common sense is dead and buried. I would expect my son to get to see cars/motorcycles run by humans outlawed, for "safety concerns" though.
Most things done in a hurry need to be done again - patiently.
(09-10-18, 11:49 AM)VNA link Wrote: Quote:The so called old and "dirty" cars tend to be cleaner than new ones when you look at the cradle to grave emmisions for the reasons you have given.
Except the older diesel ones, they visibly spew out diesel particles and soot.
You will probably find the cradle to grave emmisions for these is still lower than your new Euro 6 diesel
Another ex-Fazer rider that is a foccer again
The big problem with any electrical vehicle is you have to charge the batteries using electricity. If everybody in the future is running an electric vehicle how much power has to be generated to just to charge all those batteries?
To be green it all has to be done using renewable power supplies, so massive wind farms and solar panel farms etc have to be built, where are they going to build them? Sticking a few solar panels and a little wind turbine on your garage is not going to do it!
Has there been any studies done into how much power a country like the UK would have to generate if every vehicle was replaced by an electric one?
The grid just about manages to cope when the adverts come on during Coronation Street and everybody sticks the kettle on
FFS Pass me another bullet Betty :eek :2guns :car
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