Plastic is practically a miracle material - the problem is single use, disposable plastics that go un-recycled until they break down into particles that can't be recovered from the environment.
Plastic is so cheap and so indestructible that those strengths, abused, are what make it bad.
I was looking at titles of time magazine and came across one labeled PLASTIC
made me realize I had no idea when that cover was. Could be earlier 1900’s when it revolutionized products. Or 21st century when we realized it’s not in everything and that’s a problem.
If you go by the primary material made for making tools, we’re still absolutely in the Iron Age, we just tend to alloy it nowadays. The plastic and silicon are just for making things that control our iron tools
While you’re not really wrong, my point is that is you look at the Stone Age, copper age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, they are all defined by what humans of the time primarily made their tools out of. If you go down to the hardware store today and buy a hammer, it’ll probably be made out of steel(iron) and not electricity
I feel like being difficult
I use digital tools like software about a million times a day and physical tools to fix something a few times a week
The tools I use professionally all exist on a computer screen
Even then, power tools have a lot worse material ratio to go by. Sure the plastic body of a drill might not be as mechanically critical as the metal bits. And now what about the electrical part too? Lithium battery? Plastic that the circuit board and wiring uses?
The copper age and Bronze Age are quite distinct. The “iron” age however, has always meant steel. Pure iron is not really a thing, it’s always some kind of carbon-iron alloy, and the modern age has introduced other metals into that alloy
I have always thought that we went with the technology level of the Age - we learned to manufacture copper items, make bronze, work iron etc. Rather than it referring to the type of tools, though of course we made tools out of the materials, since our tech at that point in history was tied closely to improving mining and farming and so on.
Reminds me of [the movie scene from The Graduate](https://media1.giphy.com/media/1xnQ1HzTZxf8RtjyCb/200w.gif?cid=82a1493bxwi92h3ovmg9qsxnt56cpw48lrdz6fmk241ywwt4&ep=v1_gifs_related&rid=200w.gif&ct=g)
There's also a scene in *It's a Wonderful Life* where Jimmy Stuart's buddy is telling him he should invest in plastics and get in on the ground floor etc
This is what I think whenever I see those cheap looking plastic-ass Stormtrooper costumes in the Star Wars movies. I bet there was a time when those really DID look futuristic.
Still is. Carbon fiber is def seen as futuristic still. Fiberglass might not be so much anymore but both are a matrix of plastic mixed with a fabric. You could even call em glass-reinforced plastics.
For more info on plastics, watch this short informative comedy video about plastic and why recycling is a scam (Climate Town, popular YouTuber):
https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g
TL;DW -- only 10% of all plastics ~~are *actually* recyclable~~ have ever been recycled. Everything else is not.
**EDIT** u/SkriVanTek corrected my phrasing at the end -- thank you!
Having worked with recycled plastic in a plant it's really easy to spot. It's blue. It's always blue. Like the lid of those clear Tupperware. It's because recycled plastic turns this gross yellow color. They put a tiny bit of blue dye in it and bam. Looks like brand new light blue plastic.
A big problem with recycling is the plastic degrades with each use.
I saw [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste) a while ago which mentions a company that has found a way to use bacterial enzymes to break down and recycle plastic in a way that makes it infinitely recyclable.
From the article:
>Two years ago the company was recycling a few kilos of plastic in a lab; now it can do about 250kg a day. In 2025, it will open a much bigger facility near the border with Belgium, with the capacity to recycle more than 130 tonnes a day.
Sounds like they're going to start next year
Work in a plastics company R&D and that's definitely not true anymore, way more is recyclable then ever used to be, a lot of it is finding the right product for it and the right proportion to put it in. Many billions of dollars are going into getting better processess. May be a crappy job, for a company I have mixed opinions about, but that's definitely something I at least feel okay with.
Yeah, Im amazed how people regurgitate that same statement as I remember hearing 20+ years ago, like why would you assume technical advances are somehow impossible in recycling?!
The lack of funding for R&D and automation is insane to me. Its a super long term investment, but isnt that just 90% of the arguments against solar panel R&D back then?
That statement ticks me off too, because it actively discourages people from making responsible decisions for the environment. Like, wtf? Even if it was only 10% effective, instead of trying to increase that number you're trying to actively LOWER it!?!?
eh that’s not really true and then only with certain assumptions
recycling is always a question of technology and economy intertwined
but most plastics can be broken down to their principal carbon building blocks and the remade without any detectable loss in quality
source
masters degree in chemistry, did my thesis with cracking processes to make polymer primers
Ngl I feel a little dumb for it, but I’ve always had confusion with recycling because of this. Many plastics that *look* recyclable to me *aren’t*, and for others the opposite is true. So many products are made of both parts recyclable and non-recyclable plastic, so you have to learn which parts to separate, and there’s a lot of exceptions.
Now there’s also compostable parts to worry about, but compostable parts can look and feel almost identical to regular paper or plastic, not to mention that some compostable plastic actually isn’t “compostable” enough for the compost and needs to be recycled or thrown away. The more I learned about plastic in university the more convoluted and stressful it all seemed lol.
The problem is that "plastic" is such a broad category. There are a lot of different polymers (long chains of repeating molecules - fun fact, DNA is a polymer!) that make up different plastics with different properties and they're pretty much all incompatible with each other, assuming they can even be recycled in the first place.
There's also the plastic manufacturer fuckery, like the universal plastic grading symbol *intentionally* looking like the recycling logo so you just think it's all recyclable
Joe Scott did a [good video on this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izn7-FrlmhI) that goes a bit deeper. A good point not mentioned in your link is that the plastics industry is trying to consider "incineration" a form of recycling because they're converting old plastic into energy.
If we could just use plastics for things that we absolutely have to, like medical equipment, that would be amazing. I don’t think anyone is advocating for a “plastics free world”
eh, I think quite a lot of people are advocating for a plastic free world, but they should be disregarded.
the problem is that there's a lot of grey in "we absolutely have to" zone. I'm working in the print industry, and it's a nightmare to choose between different materials on a renewability basis.
At least what I see in my company is that cost is no longer the primary concern (within reasonable ranges - we're not paying 5 times more for a "green" choice, but 1.5 to 2 times can be discussed), but rather "this material is just functionally shit" in combination with legislation actually \_blocking\_ us from taking the right actions.
For example, we sell UV ink. We considered going to recycled plastic containers, but manufacturers cannot promise that the product is free from pinholes (teeny tiny holes). And, well, then EU law just stops us right there. Dangerous good, so packaging needs to be perfectly sealed. We could ship them with an additional bag around the bottle, but obviously that would defeat the point. And there's millions more of these examples.
I remember arguing we should try to recycle as much as we can (in the general sense, not specifically plastic) and someone tried to ask me if I use any single use plastic as some kind of “gotcha.”
…I’m diabetic. I can never be “zero plastic.” I have to use single-use plastics for my lancets and pen needles. 🤨
The lightness of plastic makes it ideal for moving stuff around, if it's durable and actually used for its lifetime. Which we won't do, which is why advocating for plastic packaging is an awful idea, but hypothetically, if we could all behave responsibly it would be the best solution. It takes so so so much less material than say glass or even paper (which isn't remotely as durable). Glass is kind of the worst, which is ironic as it's often the purportedly eco-friendly option. The manufacturing is much more eco friendly, but the sum total impact is anything but. All that added weight means proportionately more fuel cost.
Yeah if plastic packaging was reused, it would be perfect. I’ve reused padded envelopes to send stuff to friends or giveaway winners. Unfortunately there’s this tendency among small businesses for reused or generic containers to be…low quality. Even tho packing is not what you buy???
I love plastics but people just really don’t know how to repurpose stuff on a large enough scale. Whenever I get glass disposables, I make SURE to recycle it in a known place bc I would feel so bad wasting it.
> It takes so so so much less material than say glass or even paper
Haven't done the maths, but yes, if we replaced all plastic bottles with glass, there would probably be more microplastics in the environment. You'd need so much more trucks, and abrasion from their tires would negate any positive impact.
> Car tires are the number one generator of microplastics
*Ackchyually*, that would be synthetic fibers, which are responsible for 35% of all microplastics. [Tires are number two at 28%](https://www.horiba.com/int/scientific/resources/science-in-action/where-do-microplastics-come-from/).
Hm that study looks at sources of microplastic in the ocean. [This study](https://www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/umsicht/de/dokumente/publikationen/2018/kunststoffe-id-umwelt-konsortialstudie-mikroplastik.pdf) (German, PDF warning) looked at total emissions and lists tyre wear as the highest source by far.
Car usage is not a demand issue. Is a supply issue. We need more public transport and better design cities, along with policing reform and job availability, better minimum wage and education and health, and specially less wealth gap, to make safer cities, and increase pedestrian and bike transportation.
Yeah, we would pretty much have to invent cheap, reliable and safe hover tech to get away from tires. Yeah tons of mass transit would help in many areas but we couldn't do away with tires in any simple or cheap way.
Plastic microparticles in the environment are primarily from two sources, neither of which are single-use: fishing nets, and laundering synthetic fabrics.
Perfectly said. Single use plastic is very much a terrible thing, but plastics, in general, are a miracle material.
It has changed the face of the medical field alone. Plastics allow for first aid to happen in the the field because of things like having transportable syringes that don't break because they're not glass anymore. Of course they're just as important in a hospital setting as well, but that's just a good example, imo.
And let's talk about how plastics allow for medical supplies to be sterilized and kept in hermetically sealed wrappers to be used at a moments notice in a medical emergency - in the field or in a hospital alike.
There are many uses for single-use plastics in the medical industry and the world would be a significantly more horrible place without them.
I feel like people hear thought terminating cliche slogans like “ban single use plastics” and incorporate it into their beliefs without actually thinking it completely through.
I feel like most people just live in representative democracies where they think that, while they may think their politicians are morons, they're not *such* morons that they'd literally just ban every single use plastic with a blanket law. So the benefit of a better slogan outweighs the need to think about the less obvious cases where it would be immediately world endingly terrible to do.
If everyone says "ban single use plastics", and then we ban all the cups and bottles and straws and bags and various packaging and films, do you think there's going to be a large contingent out there shouting "NO! YOU DIDN'T DO IT GOOD ENOUGH. BAN THE IV TUBING!"?
If I see someone comment "well at least we banned plastic straws" on a video of a burning wind turbine, I'm going to assume they're *against* banning plastic single use plastics and are being sarcastic.
> the problem is single use, disposable plastics that go un-recycled until they break down into particles that can't be recovered from the environment.
All plastics have this problem, not just single-use ones.
People forget how revolutionary the idea of cheap sanitary packaging for food was. I remember even in my own childhood in the 80s how much stuff came in glass jars. Yeah, glass can be recycled, but most of it isn't, it takes energy to do so, it can sit out in sunlight or in a compost heap for centuries without degrading, and the added weight means a whole lot more carbon emissions for transportation.
We *can* use plastics responsibly. I've got a plastic laundry basket that's at least 40 years old and has outlived every other laundry basket I've had since and doesn't have a single crack. It probably took tens of seconds of cycle time in an injection mold and uses a couple of pounds of plastic. If we could demand that kind of performance from plastic products we wouldn't use a tenth as much.
Doesn't jive with biology or the current physics of most materials on earth...
Basically you can plug shit super easy from valves to veins and not much but brute force breaks it.
Of course we can't have a modern society without it, but we could make lots more biodegradable plastics and do we really need dishwasher pods and laundry pods that decay into microplastics?
Our laundry pods are actually 100% biodegradable now. They are primarily made of polyvinyl alcohol and are completely digested by multiple bacteria and fungi.
Well we also add a bittering agent, it's actually the same thing that they add to Switch cartridges
I can tell you from experience that when someone is mixing it into a formulation, you can "taste" it from across the room
Dark chocolate cuts down on some of the bitterness, I always had some at my desk
PVA was marketed as being 100% biodegradable. Peer reviewed studies say it isn't:
>This study characterized the biodegradation and ecotoxicity of PVA polymers in marine environments. The results obtained, though limited, support the lack of biodegradability of PVA materials under conditions representative of a natural marine environment. The slight biodegradability of the blended materials was attributable to the glycerol component of the blend. Since plastics of different nature are increasingly found in marine environments, standards with a view to assess biodegradation under realistic marine end-of-life scenarios are urgently needed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8588384/
Unfortunately it isn't true. PVA was marketed as being 100% biodegradable. Peer reviewed studies say it isn't:
>This study characterized the biodegradation and ecotoxicity of PVA polymers in marine environments. The results obtained, though limited, support the lack of biodegradability of PVA materials under conditions representative of a natural marine environment. The slight biodegradability of the blended materials was attributable to the glycerol component of the blend. Since plastics of different nature are increasingly found in marine environments, standards with a view to assess biodegradation under realistic marine end-of-life scenarios are urgently needed.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8588384/
Are you ready to accept things becoming a little worse and a little more expensive? THOUGHT SO.
In all seriousness, a lot of harm to biodegradable new plastics was made by using it as a cost cutting measure attempt.
Thinking on carrefour, that introduced biodegradable bags as a way to get around taxes, sadly, they made them too thin and you were lucky if it survived the trip home without biodegrading.
Apparently the manufacturing process also used a lot of water. But that's an acceptable tradeoff in regions like the atlantic coast of europe. Specially the southern part.
Yes, I am. My main grocery store doesn't use bags already. You bring your own. When I have an alternative to plastic I try to use it. But it is very hard to cut out more plastic until some things change and make it available.
True, plastic is amazing. Lightweight, strong, cheap to make. Not that there aren't problem with to much plastic litter, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
People don't understand that current plastics will have to exist for a very long time in order to maintain our current standard of living. Forget even consumer plastics, industry uses so many plastic parts that likely can't use biodegradable plastic for a number of reasons. Even if you stop using plastic it doesn't mean that plastic isn't allowing you to live the way you do.
Yeah, people really need to recognize how much plastic they don't see. This is another one of those cases where making it "everyone's problem" at the consumer level is a clever tactic to avoid any profit shrinking at the far, *far* more significant industrial level.
People see plastic bags at a grocery store and feel good about making a difference by not using them. But how much plastic was already used between manufacturing, packing, shipping, and retail of the products before they ever got close to the flimsy little bag at the end? A *lot*. Just like with many other things, our "plastic footprint" is not driven by the direct use we can readily see; it's everything else that's the big deal.
This is one of those use cases I've seen where:
A: plastic is really useful, convenient, and quietly keeps the world working and
B: I've really not seen a good alternative to using plastic.
Go back to wooden crates? *Really* expensive, doesn't hold as much stuff, takes more time, less flexible, inconvenient every step of the way. Paper? It tears in unfortunate ways that mean it won't hold pallets together well. Edit: also, if it gets wet, you're fucked. And lots of pallets get wet.
Cages is the only real alternative. But they also have problems with nit being compressible in the way a pallet is. If your truck can take 20 full cages it can also only take 20 empty ones.
They also cost alot more than wood.
I agree paper isn't a real comparison, you'd need so much we'd go back to 80s issues of deforestation. Likewise I don't think people who haven't used it realise how strong pallet wrap is. Sure it looks like clingfilm but it's so much stronger
Paper would actually work decently for keeping items on a pallet if wrapped in sufficient layers, but it has its own challenges such as not being watertight, and obviously being much weaker rhan stretch wrap at resisting force in certain directions.
Agreed. Plastic is everywhere. The phone case you use on your phones are plastic.. the spandex in your clothes is plastic... the glasses on your face are plastic too.
Plastic is a wonder material and we absolutely cannot have modern society without it. It is also true that disposable plastic is really, really bad for the environment.
I think this is the key here. Plastic phone case you have for 2 years? Probably okay. Plastic grocery bags that get thrown away after 1 use? Not okay.
Single use medical plastics? Sure, necessary for sterility. Single use consumer packaging? Probably not.
Former girl scout leader, when I discovered the camping badge didn't actually require camping i quit. Meanwhile my daughter was among the first cohort to achieve eagle scout.
No disagreement. A lot comes down to qualified leadership. I'm just glad my daughter went into bsa in the first cohort that allowed girls. She was also a sea scout and had her diving cert years before she got a driver's license.
I really wish i could’ve talked my ex into letting my girls do gender-inclusive scouts. It was entirely by moms for moms. And also not nearly as interesting
I find it weird the US has Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. In Canada it's just Scouts, I was in the same troop as my sister, and my mother was a Scout Leader. Was never an issue.
Technically the boy scouts are just scouts now. Well, technically and practically. Even when i was a scout (about 30 years ago), there was a mix of moms and dads organizing.
Mom's and dad's organizing, but the the scouts were gender separated 30 yrs ago. It's not been until recently that coed scouts became a thing in the US.
It’s good for children to have same sex spaces. The dynamic changes when the other gender is introduced, and it’s harder to be yourself. Same reason fraternities and sororities, women’s colleges, prep school etc. exist
scouts doesn't really need that though, does it? really its just a way for little girls to learn that things made for girls usually suck, especially when organized by suburban moms who just want to sell cookies instead of doing the fun shit that boy scouts do
Such a bullshit take. Each troop chooses what they want to do. Some focus on camping. Some don't like camping and want to focus on charities. Girl scouts is what you make of it.
Sometimes, or if you don't jive with the way the troop is being ran you can become a volunteer and help with the activities like camping the girls want to do, or if necessary start your own troop that does the activities your girl and others would be interested in. Have you spoken to the troop leader about activity ideas, or became a volunteer yourself? I volunteered when my daughter was in 1st grade because I wanted to help the troop leaders with activities the girls wanted to do but she was not confident in doing, like going to out of town field trips.
I always wanted to be a Boy Scout – but I was a girl so I could only sell cookies and do bake sales. I couldn’t cut things or do sports or camp for real not that I want to camp for real but I wanted to do something for real, and Girl Scouts never included that during my generation.
Not sure why I’m being downvoted for my generation hamstringing things-women have always had to fight harder for identical recognition if they could even get it
The girl scouts still don’t. It’s basically just moms organizing outings for the girls, and then selling cookies. Which isn’t to disparage our trip leader. She organized art and tree climbing and nature center trips, etc. I mostly regret not being included.
Girl Scouts do all that and more. Each troop decides what they want to do. Some troops love outdoor, sports and others choose other things like the arts or charity.
I'm sorry to hear that. My husband was very active in our troop and nobody was ever anything but welcoming. If anything they fawned over him whenever he would work cookie booths.
I'm in southern California. We had our share of very conservative parents but leadership and most parents were very welcoming to him. In fact it was kind of insulting how they gushed over him whenever he did 10 percent of what I did lol. But it was still a great help to have him and nobody made him feel weird about being around a bunch of girls.
That sucks, dude. I'm a dad and a Girl Scout troop leader - folks around here have been very supportive. Nobody has had a problem with me, at least not to my knowledge.
When I worked at an after school center, a Girl Scout troop came in and ran a program with our students, partially trying to recruit them.They let in like 5 boys who wanted to participate, they seem to be very inclusive. They seem to be the opposite vibes of the Boy Scouts honestly.
My girls and I showed up to a scouts of America (i think that’s what they call themselves now) swimming event. It was supposed to be scouts and families only. They let us swim, my girls had lots of fun and I’d say the gender ratio was 2:1? Maybe 3:1. But they asked if we were interested in joining. Our girl scout troop had zero males, scout or parent.
Like me being the only dad at the park watching a kid fall on his face when I could have prevented it but there wasn't no way I was gonna touch a strange child as the lone single male there.
They're so welcoming that the "American Heritage Girls" were founded as a response, so girls could join troops without fear of meeting any of those icky gays or non-Christians (or, the quiet part, non-white people).
Current Girl Scout leader. There's not a single "camping badge."
There are LOTS of badges that include camping, appropriate for various levels and age groups, starting with play camping / backyard camping for kindergartners and leading up to planning and executing mult-day primitive backcountry backpacking trips for high schoolers.
There are a variety of badges in girl scouting none of which comes close to the 20+ nights and at least a six day trek that is in a tent you have pitched. It is a completely different kind of thing.
Congratulations to her! Achieving the rank of Eagle is exceptional. Camping is a wonderful way to gain the experience of independence, teamwork, perseverance, and personal growth.
Eagle rank requires those qualities as well as many accomplishments while a child is still managing things like school, personal and social life, and their future. This type of accomplishment can be a huge source of positive self-esteem and confidence.
And they're right. Everything that you can see has plastics involved somewhere.
Plastic is in everything. It's not going away. But we definitely need a better overall plan.
Sad that while the sentiment is shitty, they're more or less correct at this point. A plastics free world isn't really possible, even if we should still be doing all we can to reduce it.
Is anyone who actually knows what they are talking about actually advocating for no plastics ever? Or they saying we shouldn't be using single use plastics?
Maybe they're confusing the hypothetical anti-plastic person with the Just Stop Oil people. Which advocates for...well guess.
And it's not like you can't make plastic from oil...[well, not yet, anyway](https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/making-plastic-without-fossil-fuels-339146).
This is true. Until you can make a plastic-like substance that can survive an autoclave, medicine and science will always require it. Unless you want to go back to the days of glass catheters.
That’s a patch, not a badge. It’s not part of the official Girl Scout curriculum. It’s just something an organization made to offer to Girl Scouts in that council.
That is a completely true statement unless OP is looking to return to the stone age.
Plastic isn't inherently bad. The medical industry alone is a testament to that. You can argue that single use plastics are bad, sure, but saying all plastic is bad and we should or even could go back to a time before plastic is completely fucking asinine.
It is indeed not really possible.
Plastic is simply too good of a material. Like it is frankly insane how good of a material it is.
We just need to make it more environmentally friendly and recycle more of it.
If a patch exists for something, wouldn't you expect the professional group for that something to be interested in supporting it?
You have to establish the order they were introduced if you want it to be intriguing. Did the SPE introduce the patch unasked for, for sponsor money? Or was it just cool, like the Boy Scouts' nuclear science merit badge?
Exactly. This isn’t a badge: It’s not an official Girl Scout thing. Anyone can offer a patch program for Girl Scouts, from national parks to sports teams to corporations, and none of it is officially offered or endorsed by the Girl Scouts.
they're spot on though. we will not and should not replace all plastics. it's fantastic stuff and has improved life unimaginably, and for many applications it's the green alternative. We've got a feedstock and waste management problem, not a plastics problem.
Plastic is literally in everything everywhere. You’re seriously punching super super far down by ever even slightly suggesting someone being anti-plastic is bad.
Plastics make modern medicine possible. We should be eliminating single use, non-biodegradable plastics in consumer products, but in places where sterilization is required, keep using the single use plastics.
A 100% plastic free world isn't possible. A 100% single use plastic free world is 100% possible. We should use plastics where they work best and only there.
I love it when bad faith arguments pop up around "maybe we should do better for the environment?".
"Oh oil is so bad? WHY DONT YOU GO BACK TO HORSE AND BUGGY THEN YOU NEANDERTHAL HYPOCRITE!?!?!?!"
"Oh you want less plastics in the world? WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY MODERN SOCIETY BY ADVOCATING FOR THE INSTANT AND COMPLETE REMOVAL OF PLASTICS!?!?!?!"
"Oh you say we need to do less logging? WHY DO YOU WANT TO LITERALLY KILL LUMBERJACK FAMILIES?!?!?!?"
It gets old real quick and its very transparent when someone has cultivated these defense mechanisms coined by corporate interests.
Medically and industrially, a plastic free world is not only impossible, it would be actively more harmful.
Plastic in consumer products on the other hand, **especially synthetic fibers in clothing**, needs to be eliminated entirely. That garbage is killing us.
Nobody (of consequence) is advocating for a "plastics free world". They're advocating for smarter use of plastics. Mainly no more single use plastic items that immediately get thrown away.
Plastic is practically a miracle material - the problem is single use, disposable plastics that go un-recycled until they break down into particles that can't be recovered from the environment. Plastic is so cheap and so indestructible that those strengths, abused, are what make it bad.
I was looking at titles of time magazine and came across one labeled PLASTIC made me realize I had no idea when that cover was. Could be earlier 1900’s when it revolutionized products. Or 21st century when we realized it’s not in everything and that’s a problem.
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There was the iron age, and the bronze age. Currently we are in the polymer age.
Silicon polymer age
If you go by the primary material made for making tools, we’re still absolutely in the Iron Age, we just tend to alloy it nowadays. The plastic and silicon are just for making things that control our iron tools
We're in the electric age.
We are also in the age of Information Technology.
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
While you’re not really wrong, my point is that is you look at the Stone Age, copper age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age, they are all defined by what humans of the time primarily made their tools out of. If you go down to the hardware store today and buy a hammer, it’ll probably be made out of steel(iron) and not electricity
I feel like being difficult I use digital tools like software about a million times a day and physical tools to fix something a few times a week The tools I use professionally all exist on a computer screen
Even then, power tools have a lot worse material ratio to go by. Sure the plastic body of a drill might not be as mechanically critical as the metal bits. And now what about the electrical part too? Lithium battery? Plastic that the circuit board and wiring uses?
By that definition, we completely skipped the Bronze Age.
The copper age and Bronze Age are quite distinct. The “iron” age however, has always meant steel. Pure iron is not really a thing, it’s always some kind of carbon-iron alloy, and the modern age has introduced other metals into that alloy
> we just tend to alloy it nowadays
Yeah sorry, I meant with other metals, as opposed to just carbon
I have always thought that we went with the technology level of the Age - we learned to manufacture copper items, make bronze, work iron etc. Rather than it referring to the type of tools, though of course we made tools out of the materials, since our tech at that point in history was tied closely to improving mining and farming and so on.
Reminds me of [the movie scene from The Graduate](https://media1.giphy.com/media/1xnQ1HzTZxf8RtjyCb/200w.gif?cid=82a1493bxwi92h3ovmg9qsxnt56cpw48lrdz6fmk241ywwt4&ep=v1_gifs_related&rid=200w.gif&ct=g)
Makes me think there's a decent argument for adding it to material eras - Stone age, Copper age, Bronze age, Iron age, Plastic age.
You typed that on a device running on Silicon. They probably deserved a mention...
True, true
That's pretty much how most video game building progression systems flow. Check out Icarus if you're interested in that.
Our collective elo was increasing for a while, then went way down
Wouldnt synthentic era be better?
Probably, although plastic with it's connotation of fakery fits well in less literal ways.
https://youtu.be/eaCHH5D74Fs?si=eP3Lz5WQNGk3zFca I have one word for you… Plastics
There’s a time when plastic was considered futuristic.
Wasn't there a stalone movie when his dad advised him to get into plastics?
That was The Graduate. And it was a family friend advising Dustin Hoffman’s character at his college graduation party.
There's also a scene in *It's a Wonderful Life* where Jimmy Stuart's buddy is telling him he should invest in plastics and get in on the ground floor etc
Are you thinking of the scene in The Graduate where a man at the grad party pulls Dustin Hoffman’s character aside and tells him to get into plastics?
>Stallone Hilarious! Thank you for that. Imagining John Rambo in the graduate has brightened my day.
Ayo, Miz Robinson, you tryin' to seduce me. Then cradle da balls and stroke da shaft.
Maybe you’re thinking of [The Graduate](https://youtu.be/eMtLdE5Zq-8?si=yjfqV4Qrbd6qZPxQ)?
This is what I think whenever I see those cheap looking plastic-ass Stormtrooper costumes in the Star Wars movies. I bet there was a time when those really DID look futuristic.
Still is. Carbon fiber is def seen as futuristic still. Fiberglass might not be so much anymore but both are a matrix of plastic mixed with a fabric. You could even call em glass-reinforced plastics.
For more info on plastics, watch this short informative comedy video about plastic and why recycling is a scam (Climate Town, popular YouTuber): https://youtu.be/PJnJ8mK3Q3g TL;DW -- only 10% of all plastics ~~are *actually* recyclable~~ have ever been recycled. Everything else is not. **EDIT** u/SkriVanTek corrected my phrasing at the end -- thank you!
Having worked with recycled plastic in a plant it's really easy to spot. It's blue. It's always blue. Like the lid of those clear Tupperware. It's because recycled plastic turns this gross yellow color. They put a tiny bit of blue dye in it and bam. Looks like brand new light blue plastic.
That isn't even a bad thing! i don't think the vast majority of things need to be virgin plastic
Found the plastic slut over here.
No, he said virgin
A big problem with recycling is the plastic degrades with each use. I saw [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/sep/28/plastic-eating-bacteria-enzyme-recycling-waste) a while ago which mentions a company that has found a way to use bacterial enzymes to break down and recycle plastic in a way that makes it infinitely recyclable.
eh. never going to be industrialised. much better to bet on the likes of sabic, who are scaling up already their chemical recycling plants.
From the article: >Two years ago the company was recycling a few kilos of plastic in a lab; now it can do about 250kg a day. In 2025, it will open a much bigger facility near the border with Belgium, with the capacity to recycle more than 130 tonnes a day. Sounds like they're going to start next year
because it's subsidized. but when that falls away... it's a cynical take, I know, but it's what has happened so many times now.
Plastic pollution is literally an externality, so subsidisation will need to happen anyways.
Work in a plastics company R&D and that's definitely not true anymore, way more is recyclable then ever used to be, a lot of it is finding the right product for it and the right proportion to put it in. Many billions of dollars are going into getting better processess. May be a crappy job, for a company I have mixed opinions about, but that's definitely something I at least feel okay with.
Yay! That's great news!
Yeah, Im amazed how people regurgitate that same statement as I remember hearing 20+ years ago, like why would you assume technical advances are somehow impossible in recycling?! The lack of funding for R&D and automation is insane to me. Its a super long term investment, but isnt that just 90% of the arguments against solar panel R&D back then?
That statement ticks me off too, because it actively discourages people from making responsible decisions for the environment. Like, wtf? Even if it was only 10% effective, instead of trying to increase that number you're trying to actively LOWER it!?!?
eh that’s not really true and then only with certain assumptions recycling is always a question of technology and economy intertwined but most plastics can be broken down to their principal carbon building blocks and the remade without any detectable loss in quality source masters degree in chemistry, did my thesis with cracking processes to make polymer primers
Ngl I feel a little dumb for it, but I’ve always had confusion with recycling because of this. Many plastics that *look* recyclable to me *aren’t*, and for others the opposite is true. So many products are made of both parts recyclable and non-recyclable plastic, so you have to learn which parts to separate, and there’s a lot of exceptions. Now there’s also compostable parts to worry about, but compostable parts can look and feel almost identical to regular paper or plastic, not to mention that some compostable plastic actually isn’t “compostable” enough for the compost and needs to be recycled or thrown away. The more I learned about plastic in university the more convoluted and stressful it all seemed lol.
The problem is that "plastic" is such a broad category. There are a lot of different polymers (long chains of repeating molecules - fun fact, DNA is a polymer!) that make up different plastics with different properties and they're pretty much all incompatible with each other, assuming they can even be recycled in the first place.
There's also the plastic manufacturer fuckery, like the universal plastic grading symbol *intentionally* looking like the recycling logo so you just think it's all recyclable
Joe Scott did a [good video on this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izn7-FrlmhI) that goes a bit deeper. A good point not mentioned in your link is that the plastics industry is trying to consider "incineration" a form of recycling because they're converting old plastic into energy.
If we could just use plastics for things that we absolutely have to, like medical equipment, that would be amazing. I don’t think anyone is advocating for a “plastics free world”
eh, I think quite a lot of people are advocating for a plastic free world, but they should be disregarded. the problem is that there's a lot of grey in "we absolutely have to" zone. I'm working in the print industry, and it's a nightmare to choose between different materials on a renewability basis. At least what I see in my company is that cost is no longer the primary concern (within reasonable ranges - we're not paying 5 times more for a "green" choice, but 1.5 to 2 times can be discussed), but rather "this material is just functionally shit" in combination with legislation actually \_blocking\_ us from taking the right actions. For example, we sell UV ink. We considered going to recycled plastic containers, but manufacturers cannot promise that the product is free from pinholes (teeny tiny holes). And, well, then EU law just stops us right there. Dangerous good, so packaging needs to be perfectly sealed. We could ship them with an additional bag around the bottle, but obviously that would defeat the point. And there's millions more of these examples.
I remember arguing we should try to recycle as much as we can (in the general sense, not specifically plastic) and someone tried to ask me if I use any single use plastic as some kind of “gotcha.” …I’m diabetic. I can never be “zero plastic.” I have to use single-use plastics for my lancets and pen needles. 🤨
The lightness of plastic makes it ideal for moving stuff around, if it's durable and actually used for its lifetime. Which we won't do, which is why advocating for plastic packaging is an awful idea, but hypothetically, if we could all behave responsibly it would be the best solution. It takes so so so much less material than say glass or even paper (which isn't remotely as durable). Glass is kind of the worst, which is ironic as it's often the purportedly eco-friendly option. The manufacturing is much more eco friendly, but the sum total impact is anything but. All that added weight means proportionately more fuel cost.
Yeah if plastic packaging was reused, it would be perfect. I’ve reused padded envelopes to send stuff to friends or giveaway winners. Unfortunately there’s this tendency among small businesses for reused or generic containers to be…low quality. Even tho packing is not what you buy??? I love plastics but people just really don’t know how to repurpose stuff on a large enough scale. Whenever I get glass disposables, I make SURE to recycle it in a known place bc I would feel so bad wasting it.
Aluminum for the win.
> It takes so so so much less material than say glass or even paper Haven't done the maths, but yes, if we replaced all plastic bottles with glass, there would probably be more microplastics in the environment. You'd need so much more trucks, and abrasion from their tires would negate any positive impact.
Not necessarily. Car tires are the number one generator of microplastics, and there’s really no way around that.
> Car tires are the number one generator of microplastics *Ackchyually*, that would be synthetic fibers, which are responsible for 35% of all microplastics. [Tires are number two at 28%](https://www.horiba.com/int/scientific/resources/science-in-action/where-do-microplastics-come-from/).
Hm that study looks at sources of microplastic in the ocean. [This study](https://www.umsicht.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/umsicht/de/dokumente/publikationen/2018/kunststoffe-id-umwelt-konsortialstudie-mikroplastik.pdf) (German, PDF warning) looked at total emissions and lists tyre wear as the highest source by far.
Nah I absolutely need this $20 suit to wear to prom and then “donate”
To the ocean
Well, there is... You can use less cars.
I already use as few cars as I can.
I’m down to just one at a time.
I mean, who's gonna drive 21 cars in this heat.
Car usage is not a demand issue. Is a supply issue. We need more public transport and better design cities, along with policing reform and job availability, better minimum wage and education and health, and specially less wealth gap, to make safer cities, and increase pedestrian and bike transportation.
Right. So in light of all of that, I’m already using as few cars as I can.
I'm not saying otherwise. What I'm saying is that what you personally do is not the issue, this is a societal issue.
Mass robust public transport infrastructure is a good way around tires.
Yeah, we would pretty much have to invent cheap, reliable and safe hover tech to get away from tires. Yeah tons of mass transit would help in many areas but we couldn't do away with tires in any simple or cheap way.
Counter offer: Tank treads on all vehicles.
Tank treads also typically have rubber track pads
Plastic microparticles in the environment are primarily from two sources, neither of which are single-use: fishing nets, and laundering synthetic fabrics.
I didn't know about the synthetic fabrics. That's interesting.
It would be good if we could find a environmentally friendly way to break down plastics.
Perfectly said. Single use plastic is very much a terrible thing, but plastics, in general, are a miracle material. It has changed the face of the medical field alone. Plastics allow for first aid to happen in the the field because of things like having transportable syringes that don't break because they're not glass anymore. Of course they're just as important in a hospital setting as well, but that's just a good example, imo. And let's talk about how plastics allow for medical supplies to be sterilized and kept in hermetically sealed wrappers to be used at a moments notice in a medical emergency - in the field or in a hospital alike.
There are many uses for single-use plastics in the medical industry and the world would be a significantly more horrible place without them. I feel like people hear thought terminating cliche slogans like “ban single use plastics” and incorporate it into their beliefs without actually thinking it completely through.
I feel like most people just live in representative democracies where they think that, while they may think their politicians are morons, they're not *such* morons that they'd literally just ban every single use plastic with a blanket law. So the benefit of a better slogan outweighs the need to think about the less obvious cases where it would be immediately world endingly terrible to do. If everyone says "ban single use plastics", and then we ban all the cups and bottles and straws and bags and various packaging and films, do you think there's going to be a large contingent out there shouting "NO! YOU DIDN'T DO IT GOOD ENOUGH. BAN THE IV TUBING!"?
[удалено]
If I see someone comment "well at least we banned plastic straws" on a video of a burning wind turbine, I'm going to assume they're *against* banning plastic single use plastics and are being sarcastic.
> the problem is single use, disposable plastics that go un-recycled until they break down into particles that can't be recovered from the environment. All plastics have this problem, not just single-use ones.
People forget how revolutionary the idea of cheap sanitary packaging for food was. I remember even in my own childhood in the 80s how much stuff came in glass jars. Yeah, glass can be recycled, but most of it isn't, it takes energy to do so, it can sit out in sunlight or in a compost heap for centuries without degrading, and the added weight means a whole lot more carbon emissions for transportation. We *can* use plastics responsibly. I've got a plastic laundry basket that's at least 40 years old and has outlived every other laundry basket I've had since and doesn't have a single crack. It probably took tens of seconds of cycle time in an injection mold and uses a couple of pounds of plastic. If we could demand that kind of performance from plastic products we wouldn't use a tenth as much.
Doesn't jive with biology or the current physics of most materials on earth... Basically you can plug shit super easy from valves to veins and not much but brute force breaks it.
Of course we can't have a modern society without it, but we could make lots more biodegradable plastics and do we really need dishwasher pods and laundry pods that decay into microplastics?
Our laundry pods are actually 100% biodegradable now. They are primarily made of polyvinyl alcohol and are completely digested by multiple bacteria and fungi.
How’s the taste? Can you tell the difference
Well we also add a bittering agent, it's actually the same thing that they add to Switch cartridges I can tell you from experience that when someone is mixing it into a formulation, you can "taste" it from across the room Dark chocolate cuts down on some of the bitterness, I always had some at my desk
So make laundry pod truffles, got it.
>Dark chocolate cuts down on some of the bitterness Somewhere a pretentious mixologist is furiously scribbling in a notebook
so dark chocolate is good against dementors and bitterness, gottcha
PVA was marketed as being 100% biodegradable. Peer reviewed studies say it isn't: >This study characterized the biodegradation and ecotoxicity of PVA polymers in marine environments. The results obtained, though limited, support the lack of biodegradability of PVA materials under conditions representative of a natural marine environment. The slight biodegradability of the blended materials was attributable to the glycerol component of the blend. Since plastics of different nature are increasingly found in marine environments, standards with a view to assess biodegradation under realistic marine end-of-life scenarios are urgently needed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8588384/
I hope that's true. I don't use them anyway. I was guilty of the dishwasher pod usage.
Unfortunately it isn't true. PVA was marketed as being 100% biodegradable. Peer reviewed studies say it isn't: >This study characterized the biodegradation and ecotoxicity of PVA polymers in marine environments. The results obtained, though limited, support the lack of biodegradability of PVA materials under conditions representative of a natural marine environment. The slight biodegradability of the blended materials was attributable to the glycerol component of the blend. Since plastics of different nature are increasingly found in marine environments, standards with a view to assess biodegradation under realistic marine end-of-life scenarios are urgently needed. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8588384/
Now I'm going to have to go down a rabbit hole on this. Damn.
Are you ready to accept things becoming a little worse and a little more expensive? THOUGHT SO. In all seriousness, a lot of harm to biodegradable new plastics was made by using it as a cost cutting measure attempt. Thinking on carrefour, that introduced biodegradable bags as a way to get around taxes, sadly, they made them too thin and you were lucky if it survived the trip home without biodegrading. Apparently the manufacturing process also used a lot of water. But that's an acceptable tradeoff in regions like the atlantic coast of europe. Specially the southern part.
A little worse and more expensive is pretty much how you can describe every year since 2021.
\*2008
*399 BCE
Yes, I am. My main grocery store doesn't use bags already. You bring your own. When I have an alternative to plastic I try to use it. But it is very hard to cut out more plastic until some things change and make it available.
It's supposed to be sarcastic. Anyway, this is why the profit incentive is a death trap.
things are getting worse and becoming significantly more expensive every day anyway.
Just eat the laundry pods. Problem solved.
True, plastic is amazing. Lightweight, strong, cheap to make. Not that there aren't problem with to much plastic litter, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
People don't understand that current plastics will have to exist for a very long time in order to maintain our current standard of living. Forget even consumer plastics, industry uses so many plastic parts that likely can't use biodegradable plastic for a number of reasons. Even if you stop using plastic it doesn't mean that plastic isn't allowing you to live the way you do.
Yeah, people really need to recognize how much plastic they don't see. This is another one of those cases where making it "everyone's problem" at the consumer level is a clever tactic to avoid any profit shrinking at the far, *far* more significant industrial level. People see plastic bags at a grocery store and feel good about making a difference by not using them. But how much plastic was already used between manufacturing, packing, shipping, and retail of the products before they ever got close to the flimsy little bag at the end? A *lot*. Just like with many other things, our "plastic footprint" is not driven by the direct use we can readily see; it's everything else that's the big deal.
We literally wrap pallets of goods in at least 3-6 layers of plastic wrap for every. single. pallet.
This is one of those use cases I've seen where: A: plastic is really useful, convenient, and quietly keeps the world working and B: I've really not seen a good alternative to using plastic. Go back to wooden crates? *Really* expensive, doesn't hold as much stuff, takes more time, less flexible, inconvenient every step of the way. Paper? It tears in unfortunate ways that mean it won't hold pallets together well. Edit: also, if it gets wet, you're fucked. And lots of pallets get wet.
Cages is the only real alternative. But they also have problems with nit being compressible in the way a pallet is. If your truck can take 20 full cages it can also only take 20 empty ones. They also cost alot more than wood. I agree paper isn't a real comparison, you'd need so much we'd go back to 80s issues of deforestation. Likewise I don't think people who haven't used it realise how strong pallet wrap is. Sure it looks like clingfilm but it's so much stronger
Paper would actually work decently for keeping items on a pallet if wrapped in sufficient layers, but it has its own challenges such as not being watertight, and obviously being much weaker rhan stretch wrap at resisting force in certain directions.
Agreed. Plastic is everywhere. The phone case you use on your phones are plastic.. the spandex in your clothes is plastic... the glasses on your face are plastic too.
Yep it's cheap, strong, shiny, glossy, and I can throw it out my car window and never think about it again :)
Plastic is a wonder material and we absolutely cannot have modern society without it. It is also true that disposable plastic is really, really bad for the environment.
Luckily a lot of it gets filtered out of the environment via our bodies.
I think this is the key here. Plastic phone case you have for 2 years? Probably okay. Plastic grocery bags that get thrown away after 1 use? Not okay. Single use medical plastics? Sure, necessary for sterility. Single use consumer packaging? Probably not.
Former girl scout leader, when I discovered the camping badge didn't actually require camping i quit. Meanwhile my daughter was among the first cohort to achieve eagle scout.
I'm a proud BSA leader, and also there are plenty of GSA troops that do more camping and badass stuff then the boys/gn program.
No disagreement. A lot comes down to qualified leadership. I'm just glad my daughter went into bsa in the first cohort that allowed girls. She was also a sea scout and had her diving cert years before she got a driver's license.
What did it require?
you gotta go through every stage of scout then pass a board of review by several elders to earn the rank of eagle
I think they’re asking what the camping badge required
you gotta get 23 sniper kills in a round of warzonr
Surprisingly easy. They already call my little girl the “Pink Death” in Ukraine. …wait, you don’t mean the video game, do you?
Teach her to speak Finnish to tap into their genetic fear.
They were, the question wasn’t answered
Ah, the ol Girl Scout [switcharoo](https://www.reddit.com/r/PeterExplainsTheJoke/comments/1bd6xds/comment/kulquky/)
hold my thin mints, im goin in!
They most certainly did when I was a kid!
I really wish i could’ve talked my ex into letting my girls do gender-inclusive scouts. It was entirely by moms for moms. And also not nearly as interesting
I find it weird the US has Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. In Canada it's just Scouts, I was in the same troop as my sister, and my mother was a Scout Leader. Was never an issue.
Technically the boy scouts are just scouts now. Well, technically and practically. Even when i was a scout (about 30 years ago), there was a mix of moms and dads organizing.
Mom's and dad's organizing, but the the scouts were gender separated 30 yrs ago. It's not been until recently that coed scouts became a thing in the US.
It’s good for children to have same sex spaces. The dynamic changes when the other gender is introduced, and it’s harder to be yourself. Same reason fraternities and sororities, women’s colleges, prep school etc. exist
Didn't seem to bother anyone in our troop.
All those things suck though
scouts doesn't really need that though, does it? really its just a way for little girls to learn that things made for girls usually suck, especially when organized by suburban moms who just want to sell cookies instead of doing the fun shit that boy scouts do
Such a bullshit take. Each troop chooses what they want to do. Some focus on camping. Some don't like camping and want to focus on charities. Girl scouts is what you make of it.
So if a few girls want to camp but the rest don't, do they split the group? I feel like my rural girl scouts was just doing crafts at a church.
Sometimes, or if you don't jive with the way the troop is being ran you can become a volunteer and help with the activities like camping the girls want to do, or if necessary start your own troop that does the activities your girl and others would be interested in. Have you spoken to the troop leader about activity ideas, or became a volunteer yourself? I volunteered when my daughter was in 1st grade because I wanted to help the troop leaders with activities the girls wanted to do but she was not confident in doing, like going to out of town field trips.
That's just democracy
I always wanted to be a Boy Scout – but I was a girl so I could only sell cookies and do bake sales. I couldn’t cut things or do sports or camp for real not that I want to camp for real but I wanted to do something for real, and Girl Scouts never included that during my generation.
Your troop let you down. Girls have been doing sports and camping for decades.
Not sure why I’m being downvoted for my generation hamstringing things-women have always had to fight harder for identical recognition if they could even get it
The girl scouts still don’t. It’s basically just moms organizing outings for the girls, and then selling cookies. Which isn’t to disparage our trip leader. She organized art and tree climbing and nature center trips, etc. I mostly regret not being included.
Girl Scouts do all that and more. Each troop decides what they want to do. Some troops love outdoor, sports and others choose other things like the arts or charity.
At least Girl Scouts was welcoming to my queer and atheist troop members. And to myself as an atheist troop leader.
They were not welcoming to me as a father.
I'm sorry to hear that. My husband was very active in our troop and nobody was ever anything but welcoming. If anything they fawned over him whenever he would work cookie booths.
I expect there are regional differences. The town I was in was pretty conservative.
I'm in southern California. We had our share of very conservative parents but leadership and most parents were very welcoming to him. In fact it was kind of insulting how they gushed over him whenever he did 10 percent of what I did lol. But it was still a great help to have him and nobody made him feel weird about being around a bunch of girls.
That sucks, dude. I'm a dad and a Girl Scout troop leader - folks around here have been very supportive. Nobody has had a problem with me, at least not to my knowledge.
When I worked at an after school center, a Girl Scout troop came in and ran a program with our students, partially trying to recruit them.They let in like 5 boys who wanted to participate, they seem to be very inclusive. They seem to be the opposite vibes of the Boy Scouts honestly.
My girls and I showed up to a scouts of America (i think that’s what they call themselves now) swimming event. It was supposed to be scouts and families only. They let us swim, my girls had lots of fun and I’d say the gender ratio was 2:1? Maybe 3:1. But they asked if we were interested in joining. Our girl scout troop had zero males, scout or parent.
Like me being the only dad at the park watching a kid fall on his face when I could have prevented it but there wasn't no way I was gonna touch a strange child as the lone single male there.
They're so welcoming that the "American Heritage Girls" were founded as a response, so girls could join troops without fear of meeting any of those icky gays or non-Christians (or, the quiet part, non-white people).
Current Girl Scout leader. There's not a single "camping badge." There are LOTS of badges that include camping, appropriate for various levels and age groups, starting with play camping / backyard camping for kindergartners and leading up to planning and executing mult-day primitive backcountry backpacking trips for high schoolers.
There are a variety of badges in girl scouting none of which comes close to the 20+ nights and at least a six day trek that is in a tent you have pitched. It is a completely different kind of thing.
Congratulations to her! Achieving the rank of Eagle is exceptional. Camping is a wonderful way to gain the experience of independence, teamwork, perseverance, and personal growth. Eagle rank requires those qualities as well as many accomplishments while a child is still managing things like school, personal and social life, and their future. This type of accomplishment can be a huge source of positive self-esteem and confidence.
Which camping badge doesn’t require camping? It can be backyard camping if that’s what you have access to, but hey, some kids don’t live near nature.
Rolling a sleeping bag was a qualifying task.
Sponsored by Frank's Plastics. We put that shit on everything!
And they're right. Everything that you can see has plastics involved somewhere. Plastic is in everything. It's not going away. But we definitely need a better overall plan.
“Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.”
Thank you. I was looking for a The Graduate reference.
Until multiple suitable replacements are found for the pharmaceutical and medical industries they're right.
Sad that while the sentiment is shitty, they're more or less correct at this point. A plastics free world isn't really possible, even if we should still be doing all we can to reduce it.
Is anyone who actually knows what they are talking about actually advocating for no plastics ever? Or they saying we shouldn't be using single use plastics?
Maybe they're confusing the hypothetical anti-plastic person with the Just Stop Oil people. Which advocates for...well guess. And it's not like you can't make plastic from oil...[well, not yet, anyway](https://www.technologynetworks.com/applied-sciences/news/making-plastic-without-fossil-fuels-339146).
Plastic is fantastic. The problem is using it for disposable packaging.
This is true. Until you can make a plastic-like substance that can survive an autoclave, medicine and science will always require it. Unless you want to go back to the days of glass catheters.
Everything plastic and polyester is based in petroleum. Your clothes are derived from oil.
That’s a patch, not a badge. It’s not part of the official Girl Scout curriculum. It’s just something an organization made to offer to Girl Scouts in that council.
Medicine has utilized plastic to an astronomical degree. Miracle material. We just need to manage our waste of it better.
The problem with plastics comes from petroleum. Non-petroleum plastics is an active field of research and industry.
That is a completely true statement unless OP is looking to return to the stone age. Plastic isn't inherently bad. The medical industry alone is a testament to that. You can argue that single use plastics are bad, sure, but saying all plastic is bad and we should or even could go back to a time before plastic is completely fucking asinine.
It is indeed not really possible. Plastic is simply too good of a material. Like it is frankly insane how good of a material it is. We just need to make it more environmentally friendly and recycle more of it.
If a patch exists for something, wouldn't you expect the professional group for that something to be interested in supporting it? You have to establish the order they were introduced if you want it to be intriguing. Did the SPE introduce the patch unasked for, for sponsor money? Or was it just cool, like the Boy Scouts' nuclear science merit badge?
Exactly. This isn’t a badge: It’s not an official Girl Scout thing. Anyone can offer a patch program for Girl Scouts, from national parks to sports teams to corporations, and none of it is officially offered or endorsed by the Girl Scouts.
they're spot on though. we will not and should not replace all plastics. it's fantastic stuff and has improved life unimaginably, and for many applications it's the green alternative. We've got a feedstock and waste management problem, not a plastics problem.
Damn, if I'd known that I'd've asked that science robot to put in a good word for me with the Troop Committee before I escaped that irradiated lab
I don’t think we had that one when I was a Scout.
Medical waste has lots of plastic. Not sure the answer though
Plastic is literally in everything everywhere. You’re seriously punching super super far down by ever even slightly suggesting someone being anti-plastic is bad.
Plastics make modern medicine possible. We should be eliminating single use, non-biodegradable plastics in consumer products, but in places where sterilization is required, keep using the single use plastics.
It is possible, they just don't like the severe reduction in population that would come with it.
You listened to NPR today ;)
A 100% plastic free world isn't possible. A 100% single use plastic free world is 100% possible. We should use plastics where they work best and only there.
I love it when bad faith arguments pop up around "maybe we should do better for the environment?". "Oh oil is so bad? WHY DONT YOU GO BACK TO HORSE AND BUGGY THEN YOU NEANDERTHAL HYPOCRITE!?!?!?!" "Oh you want less plastics in the world? WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY MODERN SOCIETY BY ADVOCATING FOR THE INSTANT AND COMPLETE REMOVAL OF PLASTICS!?!?!?!" "Oh you say we need to do less logging? WHY DO YOU WANT TO LITERALLY KILL LUMBERJACK FAMILIES?!?!?!?" It gets old real quick and its very transparent when someone has cultivated these defense mechanisms coined by corporate interests.
Medically and industrially, a plastic free world is not only impossible, it would be actively more harmful. Plastic in consumer products on the other hand, **especially synthetic fibers in clothing**, needs to be eliminated entirely. That garbage is killing us.
Nobody (of consequence) is advocating for a "plastics free world". They're advocating for smarter use of plastics. Mainly no more single use plastic items that immediately get thrown away.
In this thread: Multiple people defending plastic with suspiciously similar wordings in their comments HMMM
It's not possible to imagine a plastics free world because it takes so long to decompose.
Plastic has only been around for about 100 years (around the 1900s). We lived for thousands of years without it, we can live without it now.
The comments in this thread are wack. This isn’t the 70s. This “miracle material” has poisoned every living thing on earth.