Posted on 10/29/2018 7:47:34 AM PDT by reaganaut1
The growing backlash against plastic waste has a new target: paper coffee cups.
Paper cups sourced from sustainable forests have for years been hailed as a more environmentally friendly option than plastic foam, with Dunkin’ Brands Group Inc. and McDonald’s Corp. recently pledging to switch to paper.
But paper cups are attracting new scrutiny, because they contain a tightly bonded plastic lining that needs to be separated before the paper can be recycled. The process requires specialist facilities, meaning most cups, even if put in the recycling bin, end up as trash. The issue is gaining attention as consumer awareness rises about how plastic water bottles, bags, straws and other products used just once before being thrown away are ending up in oceans and hurting the environment.
The makers of paper cups defend their products, saying the focus should be on ensuring they are properly recycled. The cups must be collected separately so they can be trucked to facilities that have the ability to separate the lining from the paper.
“There is the capability to recycle a paper cup in its current form; it’s just getting the product to our paper mills that’s the challenge,” said Stefan Pryor, market sector manager for U.K. paper mill James Cropper PLC.
Still, the pushback against paper cups has grown, especially in Europe. Starbucks this summer started charging a five pence (7 cent) levy for paper cups in the U.K., a world first for the chain. British lawmakers this year suggested a levy on disposable coffee cups or even an outright ban in the next five years if recycling targets can’t be met. A new report published Monday is by European trade body, the Paper Cup Recovery & Recycling Group, says just one in 25 paper cups is recycled in the U.K.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
“BYOC! Bring your own cup!”
As long as it is not made out of plastic.
The drive to work would be safer with people not concentrating on their coffee but on the traffic.
I have never gone to a restaurant for coffee.
Since there is absolutely no corroborating evidence of that from any credible scientific studies, there is no doubt in my mind that you have an irrational fear of plastic products. Plastics make up a myriad of different compounds which often have very little chemical relationship to one another. Some plastics are even completely natural. Remember the wrappers that dissolve in your mouth on rice candies? Maybe you should do a little research to help alleviate your fears.
https://www.plasticsmakeitpossible.com/about-plastics/types-of-plastics/what-are-plastics/
“The 10 rivers that carry 93 percent of that trash are the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus and Ganges Delta in Asia, and the Niger and Nile in Africa. The Yangtze alone dumps up to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of plastic waste into the Yellow Sea.”
Most of the Plastics in the Oceans come from Asia.
Less than a minute...
“How about if nobody goes to restaurants & we all drink coffee at home.”
A local roaster has the best coffee beans I’ve ever had the privilege of turning into coffee. Everything else tastes like bitter, muddy water so I just make mine at home now.
““The 10 rivers that carry 93 percent of that trash are the Yangtze, Yellow, Hai, Pearl, Amur, Mekong, Indus and Ganges Delta in Asia, and the Niger and Nile in Africa. The Yangtze alone dumps up to an estimated 1.5 million metric tons of plastic waste into the Yellow Sea.””
An inconvenient fact the marxist-enviros don’t want to know.
Just eeked in, before you.
So the West yet again has to decrease our standards of living by fiat in order to ignore the real problem in the “sh1thole” countries of the world. I say no I will use plastic all I want and throw it in the landfill why because I can. Just like I can eat Black Angus rib-eyes and 16hr post oak smoked brisket 2 days a week. Drink 100 proof 9 year aged Kentucky bourbon, and drive a 350+hp car because I am an American in the first world not some peasant in the turdworld.
We did this at the fire stations that I worked at. At a larger station a guy got really mad because people kept using his mug. So one day he called everyone in the station into the kitchen even the battalion chief and his aide. He took his mug down from the hook it was hanging on; he unzipped his pants, pulled his dick out and rubbed it on the rim of the mug. Then he said that anyone who wanted to use his mug was free to do so.
Better yet, leaded steins. It’ll give them reason to dispose with us in some way all the sooner. We, at least, are biodegradable!
Plastics in the food chain are a HUGE problem, and like Cigarettes it will probably be another few decades before the powers that be begin to admit the reality of the problem.””’
Before all the Enviros get even more excited on this topic:
Look at what & where plastic is used.
Saran wrap & similar.
ALL utensils usually taken on a picnic. Same utensils are in the bag when you order an order to go in a restaurant.
ZIPLOCKS.
Hard plastic containers like Rubbermaid Takeaways...used for left overs.
LARGE Rubbermaid containers-—of all sizes—and I mean all the way up to 300 gallon water tanks used in the livestock industry. Safer than metal tanks, and easier to clean.
The film on all those frozen dinners everyone buys. AND the tray itself.
The tips on all your shoelaces.......
The case your TV, Computer, Monitor and keyboard are made of.
The packaging for almost ALL makeup sold today.....
The packaging for almost all personal care products—shampoo—aspirin-—Pepto Bismal——vitamins-—etc.......
Ice cream containers.......
Plastic bags in the produce department that you put your chosen items into.
Walk thru a large grocery store & LOOK at where plastic is used-—
Then walk thru any other kind of store.....
Walk thru your own house and look........
Plastic isn’t going to go away very soon.....perhaps never.
Our own personal wineskins perhaps?
PLUS-—They are tracing those plastic masses to 2 ASIAN countries. NOT from the USA.
Whatever happened to the kid with the Ted talk whose plan was to swoop all that floating ocean plastic up with big, well, I guess, what, plastic devices?
But more importantly, if sent through a "trash to energy" plant, in which waste carbon-based trash is burned in incinerators to produce electrical power (much like the coal or natural gas fired generation plants), this waste stream simply releases back to the atmosphere was may have only recently been taken out in the cultivation of trees harvested to produce paper.
If the environmental movement is SERIOUS about clean energy, they would promote a technology called "Plasma arc trash reduction", a process by which ALL forms of trash are reduced to their constituent atomic structure, then the heat generated by this process is used to drive electric power generation. The primary products of this process are "syngas", a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, both of which are excellent fuels that may be used to drive the generation of electric power, and a silica slag which contains practically all other components of whatever went into the trash stream.
The volume of the slag that comes off is about a quarter to a tenth of the volume of the original trash, and it may be mined for various metallic content, as it is a higher grade of ore than is most of the material that is hauled up out of the ground by various mining operations all over the world. It may be hot-formed into building blocks, and depending on how it is cooled (rapid quench or slow radiant cooling), it forms various grades of igneous stone. Or it may be crushed as aggregate for concrete or for road building purposes.
Once up and running, the operating temperature of the plasma torch is about 33,000 ˚ F., about three times the temperature of the sun's surface. The syngas generated is about 2,200˚ F., and is passed over a heat exchanger to generate superheated steam, in the process of cooling it. Once cooled, the stream of hydrogen and carbon monoxide may be separated, yielding up pure hydrogen which may be used to power a fuel cell, or burned directly in the presence of oxygen to yield a very hot flame, which may be used to further produce power through the medium of superheated steam. Carbon monoxide itself is an excellent fuel which when combined with oxygen, forms carbon dioxide, a safe, NON-POLLUTING fraction of our atmosphere, and one that is vital for the photosynthesis of oxygen and carbohydrates in green growing plants. The carbon dioxide may also be captured, cooled and compressed into either liquid CO2, or allowed to become "dry ice", an intensely cold and solid form of CO2, and an important industrial product.
The hydrogen, of course, when combined with oxygen, becomes water vapor.
Empty out our land fills and turn those blighted acres back into "greenfields", divert all the existing and continuing waste stream into electric power, reduce need for and dependence on fossil fuels, assure a continuous supply of building materials that will prove to be the equal of our current supplies, and provide a way of reclaiming metallic elements otherwise lost when merely dumped in a hole in the ground. And not only the land fills, the sewage sludge that is now dumped there could go through this plasma arc, with the decomposed fecal matter adding its bit to the "syngas", and simultaneously extracting all the dreaded metals like cadmium and mercury from circulation in the soil and groundwater.
I don't see a downside. Most elegant solution.
It has been estimated that perhaps fewer than a dozen of these processing units could both clean up all the existing waste dumps, and the current waste stream, for a municipality the size of New York City, and generate enough electricity to keep it lit and industry-capable, without tapping into outside sources.
There is a place to spend the funds for infrastructure that does NOT have to be only for the roads and bridges. This is infrastructure that actually IMPROVES our environment. And generates a number of useful by-products, not the least of which is relatively cheap electric power.
And carbon-neutral to boot. NO fossil fuels are used once the cycle is started.
Can't get greener than that.
Last-—but high on the list:
DISPOSABLE DIAPERS!!!!!
Let’s see today’s snowflakes wash a cloth diaper!!!!!
Liberal think.
Some Nutcase does something Evil and the rest of us must surrender our God Given Constitutional Rights.
Riddle me this. If the guy who Murdered those People at Synagogue decided to use Molotov Cocktails instead of Firearms, would the Liberals be screaming to outlaw Glass Bottles, Rags, Gasoline and Matches?
Liberals are all about control, the environment is a front they are watermelons green on the outside red communists on the inside. They mean to disarm us to control the ones they can of us and kill the rest history is full of this exact story. They must never get our arm as this would be suicide. I will go out with my boots one before I give up my only means of difference against tyranny and go out on my knees. To attempt confiscation is to spark a shooting civil war period full stop.
Haha... Yes, there are no studies showing anything... If you believe that you are a beyond naive.
Why do you think BPA is now being avoided like the plague?? Simple its been proven to interact with hormonal receptors.. and its been replaced with a new molecule that doesn’t have any real reasearch on its safety as well.
If you believe no studies have shown plastics have negative impact on humans (and other animals) once ingested, you are beyond ignorant. Go get yourself updated on what the science actually has shown. Public was told for years Lead in everything was safe.. and that cigarette smoking was not addictive... Stop being a fool.
Plastics are in your food, and far more than you know, and the ways they interact with human systems is largely no understood. Just like industrial chemicals in the 50s and 60s and 70s... no one bothered to see what if any impact on humans and other animals might have, so they were released and manufactured wholesale, only to later discover the impacts of PCB’s, Phosphates, CFC, etc...
If you truly believe that all the man made plastics manufactured have been fully studied and their long term impact, particularly once in the food chain, are understood, you are just fooling yourself.
I am NOT anti plastic, plastics are wonderful materials, and they allow a lot of modern life to be possible, but this idea that they have no negative impacts, particularly once injested is just flat out WRONG, or that the full impact of these molecules have on living systems is fully understood is also WOEFULLY WRONG.
The true impact of them will come to light in the coming decades, and the idea that we are intentionally packaging our food in them will become as insane to future generations as having cocaine in soda pop is to folks today.
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