It was plastic bags being absolutely everywhere in the environment. Streets, parks, trees. Wrapped around anything sticking out of the ground. On your face on a windy day.
Pollution is the problem with plastic. Probably health, too, now that microplastics are being recognized as an issue.
So we are just left with a small group of old timers, who would probably bring back metal (pull) tab cans if they could, complaining about it. Ironically its the same group of people who blocked windmills because they are "unsightly".
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drink_can#Opening_mechanisms
The first part I kind of get, humans get used to stuff they get, and get frustrated when it disappears without them really understanding why, it's kind of understandable.
But why would she be outraged about recycling bins being more readily available? Are the recycling bins like really ugly/disgusting, or why would they upset someone? Sounds like being upset about there being too many libraries or something.
You joke but people who complain about public recycling bins would also likely be the ones to complain about public libraries too. I've encountered many people who think libraries exist to poison the minds of the youth and somehow make homelessness a problem and we should shut them all down to alleviate the homeless issues in our communities and ensure higher community standards in education (mostly, go read the bible at church, that's all you need).
I'm sure skeptics like the article's writers would tweak some numbers to say disposables have an advantage, so who cares? The fact is there are less gunky, sludge-riddled bags in the gutter of my downtown and that absolutely justifies the bans, despite what this article or the NY Post might argue.
The state government response was to ban the ban of plastic bags.
> CA did the wrong thing for like 12 years.
Anything to own the libs.
Since we can't get 100% compliance in rich countries and poor countries can't afford landfills that's a good reason to not use plastic. But it's not a good reason to have plastic recycling programs.
> Provided your municipality doesn't just dump trash in the nearest river which is an issue in some parts of the world.
We can't even reliably trust people to put the plastic bags in a bin and have that bin be cleanly collected and yet you're expecting people to bury them??
No, the solution is to massively reduce how often we use single-use plastic bags. It seems like every time I buy anything from any store its just assumed I want it in a plastic bag. Getting a single bottled drink at a convenience store? The clerk gets a plastic bag ready. Its insane.
The bag doesn't magically get from the store to the waste stream it has to be properly disposed of by the customer to make it there.
> once its collected
Its not the employees of the town or city ensuring that bag ever makes it to the employees of the town or city though, that's my point. Its the user of the plastic bag is where a lot of the breakdown in the chain happens. Its the fact you buy anything and the shop gives you a plastic bag to deal with. Which, a ton of people don't do a good job dealing with them! Similarly, they don't do a good job with drink containers and other packaging either.
Its not like its the city employees putting all the plastic bags in the creeks and the rivers and the fields and the woods. At least, not usually, and not normally in their course of duty.
We can, or more precisely it depends on culture norms. Places where littering is rare do exist.
Energy production is centralized, so the benefits of it becoming cleaner is spread as soon as it arrives, whereas single-use plastic pollution is diffuse, with compounding damage.
Like with single use shaving razor. They don't need to be literally single use. It depends on the user. You can use it as long as it serves you.
The best thing limiting access to plastic bags did was familiarizing people with the idea of taking bags to the market.
> Instead of a simple blowing and sealing process, the cotton must be made into yarn, woven into fabric, prepared, dried, sized, dyed, and finished, which takes around 1,725 megajoules, around 3,050 times as much energy.
That conveniently ignores the drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to make "polyethylene resin".
It also ignores the energy requirements to grow the cotton. This isn't the gotcha you think it is.
Compared to the energy requirements of petroleum based products: Incredible density and pressure acting on sufficient organic matter(thousands of times greater than growing cotton), on millenium time scales, then requiring several incredibly expensive and commoditization refining/distribution practices, and the end product is then ceremoniously burned off as poison or discarded into the aether.
It is 100 percent the "gotcha OP thought it is". However I do see/realize the fallacy you're pointing out in that the lesser of two evils is still evil.
> That conveniently ignores the drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, and transporting again to make "polyethylene resin".
Somewhat adjacent, in many rich countries, in the last 10 years there has been a big push to remove plastic drink straws. I think it might have worked. Initially, the designs and performance of wax coated paper straws were pretty terrible, but chemists and material scientists have been working hard to improve the product. I feel like paper-ish drink straws are here to stay.
Yeah, let's stop doing the fairly well established recycling programs that have knock on benefits like reducing pollution, and instead start scaling an entirely unproven and expensive mitigation program.
These are some prominent Effect Altruism guys so I know "cause prioritization" is their whole thing. But I think this is just basic contrarianism, because you cant fundraise off the fact that the cultural shift to recycling in the first world has been pretty successful and positive.
Like lets think about plastic bags from an object use standpoint. Given you have a collection of stuff to carry would you prefer:
A) A reasonably sturdy bag that can be styled to your preference (like with art or whatever) that you have to remember to bring with you when you need.
B) The literal minimum possible material to be considered a bag. Even money whatever you put into it will punch straight through the bottom, or you'll need to use 2-4 nested bags anyway. And it'll be uncomfortable to hold the whole time.
I think from an object use perspective a reusable bag is more pleasant to use.
But embodied energy calculations are convenient because you can get numbers to compare. But it ignores externalities.
Like if you actually considered the embodied energy of the median tote bag vs the median plastic bag from the point that it was extracted from the ground to the point that it returns to dust, I think the story would look really different. I'll bet a sizable percentage of plastic bags don't even make it through their first use. Meanwhile I've got tote bags that I think are fully 15 years old. Plus if you consider the remediation future generations will need to do for plastic bags. meanwhile I can actually bury a cotton tote bag in the dirt to decompose and it doesn't need infrastructure to prevent poisoning the water supply.
Did the authors consider the embodied energy of the landfill itself? Shipping? Trash collection? Ongoing monitoring? The embodied energy of the future carbon capture system?
It's just so convenient to look only at the materials, equate that to kg of co2, and use that for whatever narrative makes you feel good.
My point was not actually about plastic vs reusable. My point was, why is embodied energy always used in contrarian climate arguments. Why not talk about ergonomics, or the "bike waterproof-ness standard"?
I think embodied energy is being used in this article to push the author's specific views, which to fund atmospheric carbon extraction.
Carbon capture is a scam to allow fossil consumption to continue as is. The only path forward is rapid destruction of fossil fuel demand and transitioning to clean energy and electric mobility. At this time, there is no effective technology to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Therefore, capital is best invested where that investment will most rapidly avoid carbon emissions. Broadly speaking, at this time, this is electrifying light and heavy vehicles, and decommissioning coal plants (low carbon generation, batteries, etc will eventually push out fossil gas generation). It's not sexy, but it's straightforward.
Global heating will hit at least 1.8C, UN warns, and there are ‘no good outcomes’ - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/02/global-h... - September 2nd, 2026
Solar Power Is Booming in Emerging Markets - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49537375 - September 2026
Ex-oil engineer warns about potential climate collapse [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49335833 - August 2026
EU Locks In Plan To Triple Energy Storage Capacity By 2030 - https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/EU-Locks-In-Plan-... - August 7th, 2026
Climeworks’ capture fails to cover its own emissions - https://heimildin.is/grein/24581/ - May 15th, 2025
Carbon capture has a long history. Of failure - https://thebulletin.org/2022/09/plagued-by-failures-carbon-c... - September 1st, 2022
> The entire efficacy of the carbon capture process has been called into question by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In its special report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage, the IPCC stated: “CO2 storage is not necessarily permanent. Physical leakage from storage reservoirs is possible via (1) gradual and long-term release or (2) sudden release of CO2 caused by disruption of the reservoir.” Carbon capture has been used as a justification for new oil and gas projects. It has a history of poor performance, only captures a fraction of the total emissions from the lifecycle of oil and gas production and its long-term efficacy is questionable.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2022/10/24/1131131088/recycling-plastic-...
"The real solution is to switch to systems of reuse and refill," Ramsden said. "We are at a decision point on plastic pollution. It is time for corporations to turn off the plastic tap."
"Just Bury Your Trash" is arguing "Turn the plastic tap on more please, and don't even bother TRYING to recycle it".
I think there's a thing about food shopping here. Americans just don't go shopping as frequently, so you're better off with paper bags in the back of your car.
I am a Brit. I have a Lidl cotton bag that I've probably used sixty times already. It augments and will ultimately replace two reusable foldable/pocketable bags from Marks & Spencer that I have used for all of my shopping for at least thirteen years, perhaps more like sixteen. (Genuinely can't remember when I bought them but as early as 2010 seems possible)
I shop on foot, about once every four or five days. I wil have used the two M&S bags on more than a thousand journeys. One of them is finally wearing thin. The other goes in my pocket more or less whenever I leave the house. They were themselves made from recycled material (rPET I guess, not cotton).
I use two the majority of the time so I am confident I've avoided using at least 1800 plastic bags.
(Weird timing, but I did end up needing one last night, annoyingly, because I had to shop in an emergency, but it is the first time in five years or so and it already has a reuse purpose)
Reusable shopping bags are easy. A British shopper might even get to 173 uses in a single year.
In Switzerland grocery stores have been promoting reusable (recycled plastic) bags for years, and people use them for everything: I saw someone in Interlaken carrying firewood with one.
So:
- To people promoting reuse: maybe go beyond the environmental impact and appeal to quality of life. Having bag or two in your boot all the time is a good idea.
- To people promoting single use: others have pointed out that you need to address the other environmental problems beyond energy, but also acknowledge that you're asking people to find a replacement for their everyday tote bags as well.
Similar for the cup - I've dropped and broke several ceramic cups in my life - and I don't drink coffee/tea. Those cups will never get another use since the shards are scrap.
Yeah, comfortably. Shopping bags don't actually get much "wear" in each active use period. The main issue will be the handles but good stitching will solve that.
And it'll go in the washing machine with your clothes (though you might want to tie the handles together).
I have a Lidl bag that is already into the sixties of usage (it has been my food shopping bag for more than a year).
I have other two reusable bags made from recycled polyester (so recycled plastic bottles and plastic bags) that have seen probably 1800 uses each, maybe more, in their lifetime.
This material is probably a better choice for reusable shopping bags anyway; it can be made from plastic that can't be reused for food grade, it's incredibly tough, it folds down small etc.
however i have never re-used a paper bag because they are awfully loud and cannot be compressed. it is the worst kind of bag.
Unfortunately, when they deliver, they use brand-new bags, and they don't accept them back for reuse, so a lot of them get thrown away after a single use.
Of course, this requires you to have less trash , which is very easy if you simply take a few seconds to go outside and throw your food out after lunch/dinner. Everything else is just dry scraps usually. There’s always the fridge :)
All in all, there is no concept of “garbage”, “garbage bin” , or any kind of “garbage accumulation” in my apartments.
Oh, you can also just freaking flush small things down the toilet. Seriously, it’s like a little mini garbage. Only advise this for people with great water pressure (lucky you!).
If I had a backyard, I’d be burning and burying garbage too, man.
Last but not least, never ever buy expensive garbage bags. It’s literally going in the garbage, man.
I respect the approach and find it fascinating even though I think it’s crazy aha. I don’t think this would be very compatible at all with a lot of people’s cooking habits or hobbies, etc. Or if your apartment complex has an inconvenient garbage disposal location.
And there’s a lot of garbage I wouldn’t feel comfortable putting in the freezer.
How do you handle bathroom trash? I’m thinking feminine hygiene products specifically. Surely you don’t recommend flushing those right?
People with this attitude are why the drains in my apartment keep backing up and my landlord sends emails threatening to evict whoever's flushing things they shouldn't.
For me a freezer is for food, I don't mix that with garbage by intention. (small particles of it will remain)
https://www.energimyndigheten.se/en/news/2025/from-waste-to-...
My understanding is that biological decomposition of waste creates methane which is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
The methane that landfills produce is routinely captured and burned for power, they may otherwise flare it off before it can contribute to the greenhouse effect. This is also mentioned in the article.
[1] https://science.nasa.gov/earth/explore/earth-indicators/meth...
> A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO2, but methane has a relatively short lifespan of 7 to 12 years in the atmosphere. CO2 can persist for hundreds of years or more.
If you burn the methane, you have one molecule of CO₂ for x years.
Burning seems strictly better.
(If you use the heat of the burning to offset other emissions, it gets even better)
Please correct me if I am wrong, but from what I understand, not all sand is created equal. Desert sand, like in the Sahara Desert, is eroded by wind. The smooth, round, and tiny grains are practically useless for both construction concrete and high-grade glassmaking. We want something called silica sand. Moreover, while industrial sand may be abundant worldwide, the same localized shortages that we face with petroleum or cobalt (from the article) also apply to sand.
Good example is South Korea. They were devastated after continual war in the 1950s. So they implemented mandatory recycling. Food waste goings into bin A, metals into bin B, plastics into bin C, ... This allows for reducing the cost of recycling by presorting items. It helped them rebuild and become stronger. To this day they still properly separate their garbage to ease recycling.
Recycling food waste and scraps means creating a nutrient rich fertilize resource. Tossing them into a land fill removes nutrients from the food chain. USA food has less nutrients than years past because of the push for synthetic nitrogen fertilizers.
I use maybe one PET water bottle each month when i go for outdoor activities. PET bottle i would buy anyway even if i had reusable one, because i've got stuck somewhere without running water or because i craved bottled icetea or orange juice. After carefully rinsing it. I keep using it for month or so and then dispose it. I only use it for clean tap water. No sugar or anything that might promote unnecessary microbial growth. Non-abrasive rinsing. Store with lid off when not in use.
These are usualy made locally in soda bottling companies, so the shipping is cheaper and more ecological than shipping reusable bottles from one central reusable bottle factory (likely abroad). This makes me feel zero guilt when i finaly decide it's used enough to be disposed.
Quite often these are reasonably sturdy to be used for months if you keep them in backpack and don't throw them around too much. And the reusable bottles get damaged over time as well if you don't treat them right.
Reusable bottle people say something about how refilling that water bottle with water makes it leak BPA or whatever chemicals. That's just insane. I've seen huge grocery market chains storing pallets of those in direct sunlight for months, yet somehow magically that's not leaking enough to violate any regulatory limits. But me puting pure tap water into the bottle automaticaly makes it extremely nasty hormonal disruptor according to some people.
On the other hand, i would like to see some sensible regulation on amount of packaging materials vs amount of product these are holding. Shrinkflation and cost cutting caused some products to be ridiculously small compared to amount of packaging they need. (especialy when you realize the relationship between volume of product and surface area covered by packaging is geometricaly increasing the packaging to product ratio when shrinking down). Sometimes it kinda makes sense (pills/medications), sometimes it's kinda stupid (100ml water bottles - and yes, i am aware of airplanes and conference rooms).
Also: > In total, Britain’s Environment Agency calculated that a conventional cotton bag needed to be reused 173 times to beat plastic.
They make it seem like this is a bad thing but surely the average cotton bag gets used more than 173 times. I've probably used some of my oldest reusable bags like ~1k times.
I'm curious what happens to these landfill sites in 100, 1000 and 10k years. Do they inevitably break down and leak into the water table? Do they eventually stop off-gassing and become inert? Do they become fossilized layers of sediment on a long enough horizon? If we maintain our current waste levels, how much land is required by the year 3000?
For those unaware, amoung rich countries, the US has incredibly low rates of garbage incineration: ~12%. (Shockingly, Canada is even lower: ~5%!) When I was growing up in the US, we were always (incorrectly) taught that garbage incineration is terrible for the environment and creates a lot of air pollution. When I got older and was fortunate enough to visit other countries, I learned that many rich countries do with their garbage: (1) recycle what they can, (2) bury a tiny fraction that cannot be burned, and (3) burn the rest. Modern flue gas treatment techniques can remove the vast majority of air pollution (except CO2) from garbage incineraters exhaust stacks. Again: The tech isn't cheap, but it is necessary if you want to have clean air.
> Instead of paying more to recycle, we could spend that money far more effectively on other environmental mitigation measures like carbon capture.
Pure unadulterated bollocks, I'm sorry to say. I shall flag this source whenever emerges in my feed.
> Sufficiently well-worn cotton tote bags can beat plastic for environmental cost, but only for the most consistent among us.
We simply don't need to rely on the "most consistent among us", because these things -- and so, so many others -- can be legislated, enforced, stopped, controlled etc. Businesses make and sell plastic bags because no one stops them and they're convenient (as well as a serious environmental problem). Should governments do the job they are supposed to do (or simply step aside and let the society organise in that particular respect), plastic bags would cease to be a problem.
I am somewhat disappointed, I guess.
How much plastic is escaping into the environment from the recycling process vs. landfill? What are the CO2 output of landfill vs. recycling? I imagine burning would be the worst option for these.
Not surprised that the market forces tended towards the most energy efficient waste disposal systems; glad we don't have mountains of trash or poor landfills.
It’s worth reading about and considering what happens to your waste.
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/kenya-aid-waste...
The total plastic waste in subsaharan africa is expected to increase by 100 Million tons by 2060.
Tierney:
"The Reign of..." https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/04/opinion/sunday/the-reign-...
Kinnaman:
"Is it Time to..." https://www.vox.com/2016/2/13/10972986/recycling
Kinnaman, Thomas C. "Determining the Socially Optimal Recycling Rate." Resources, Conservation and Recycling, vol. 85, 2014, pp. 5–10, doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2013.11.002.
This seems like the weakest of presented arguments. Just 10 trips and it's more environmentally friendly? Yeah, seems like reusable milk bottles wins over plastic. That's what, ~10 weeks for payback?
That still ends up being translated to 1/2 to 1/3 (up to 1/5th) the energy of plastic.
Glass is also one of the few good cases for recycling.
It's by a "magazine of new and underrated ideas to improve the world". Aka, contrarian armchair experts who did some googling and are now throwing spitballs made to be shallowly convincing enough to make money off it with no skin in the game. Catnip for HN, but 100% unreliable.
China cracked the pollution issues of burning trash, and built a lot of high-temperature incinerator to burn trash and generate electricity.
The overcapacity leads to a shortage(!) of new trash to burn, and it has started to dig out landfills accumulated from the past decades.
The video from Asianometry is very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuIEBSb2xiE
[1] https://www.latimes.com/environment/newsletter/2026-08-06/bo...
It plausible that in cold climates burning trash has significant advantages.
There are cases of shipping trash around, but it has more to do with it being cheaper to send a container of garbage somewhere than dispose of it locally.
Cost is the constraint, not available space.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/vCeyDb9tbm29zr549
It's much more the case that we ship plastic to be recycled to other countries than trash. The problem is that then the unrecyclable plastic mixed in often ends up in rivers.
Fixed that for you.
My municipality is staring down getting screwed bad in the 2030s so I've gone down the rabbit hole.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_gasification
InEnTec says its plasma technology effectively destroys PFAS - https://www.wastetodaymagazine.com/news/inentec-says-its-pla... - August 23rd, 2024
Production of high quality syngas from argon plasma gasification of plastic - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41623879 (September 2024) (0 comments)
Plasma gasification versus incineration of plastic waste: Energy, economic and environmental analysis - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fuproc.2022.107470
> Air emissions can be cleaner than landfills and similar to that of incinerators.
> Large initial investment costs relative to that of alternatives, including [...] incineration.
> Operational costs are high relative to that of incineration.
So what? That's like a year of grocery shopping maybe. I easily use a tote bag for way longer than that and I'm not trying that hard to live an environment friendly life.
That episode has always stuck with me, and I've always wondered how valid their argument is.