This week’s furore is microplastics researchers’ ozone moment. If they fail, the powerful plastics lobby will step into the breach, says science journalist and author Debora MacKenzie
We keep making exponentially more plastics. Some ten years ago it was reported something like 90 percent of all plastic ever made had been made in the last ten years. As incredible as that sounds, there were huge new production plants under construction that are now online.
What are they doing with all of this new plastic then? Because everything was replaced with plastic before. There is little metal left in any products, little pure metal. Even tea kettles will be part plastic.
There are thousands of additives they put in it, and it’s not really regulated, a bit in food grade plastic, but not as much as you might think. When you recycle plastic that goes into the air and gets freed, it is way way worse for everything. Recycled plastic is worthless too, done to say they did it and collect subsidies we offered because of the PR campaign the ruling class ran in the 90’s blaming consumers and advocating for recycling as the cure all.
But only like 15% of a product can be recycled plastic, it can’t be recycled more than that one time, and it can’t be used for any food or load bearing or otherwise useful application, on top of the pollution.
The epa I think it is runs these alternative fuel certification programs to ok government funding and one was jet fuel from plastic waste and it was like a thousand times more cancerous than other cancerous things or something ridiculous like that but they gave them an exemption for it anyway and ok’d them for government funding, as reported in propublica some years back. Not sure but I think the project was put on the back burner because of the attention their fake renewable fuel project got.
We are drowning in plastic, it has to be landfilled or else introduces more nasties, and we are making exponentially more all the time. Just one of many toxic byproducts not being properly disposed of, where the attributes of them and it’s waste are not honestly accounted for, as we allow business to corrupt the science, to buy their own science starting backwards from it’s fine and constructing studies to get there, then their media pals, lobbyists, and pet politicians pretend like those are legit. And people trust them. Those of us telling people the truth are looked at like alarmists, trusting the wrong people, by those trusting the worst people. Quite a hopeless seeming situation without real leadership which we still don’t have.
We keep making exponentially more plastics. Some ten years ago it was reported something like 90 percent of all plastic ever made had been made in the last ten years. As incredible as that sounds, there were huge new production plants under construction that are now online.
What are they doing with all of this new plastic then? Because everything was replaced with plastic before. There is little metal left in any products, little pure metal. Even tea kettles will be part plastic.
There are thousands of additives they put in it, and it’s not really regulated, a bit in food grade plastic, but not as much as you might think. When you recycle plastic that goes into the air and gets freed, it is way way worse for everything. Recycled plastic is worthless too, done to say they did it and collect subsidies we offered because of the PR campaign the ruling class ran in the 90’s blaming consumers and advocating for recycling as the cure all.
But only like 15% of a product can be recycled plastic, it can’t be recycled more than that one time, and it can’t be used for any food or load bearing or otherwise useful application, on top of the pollution.
The epa I think it is runs these alternative fuel certification programs to ok government funding and one was jet fuel from plastic waste and it was like a thousand times more cancerous than other cancerous things or something ridiculous like that but they gave them an exemption for it anyway and ok’d them for government funding, as reported in propublica some years back. Not sure but I think the project was put on the back burner because of the attention their fake renewable fuel project got.
We are drowning in plastic, it has to be landfilled or else introduces more nasties, and we are making exponentially more all the time. Just one of many toxic byproducts not being properly disposed of, where the attributes of them and it’s waste are not honestly accounted for, as we allow business to corrupt the science, to buy their own science starting backwards from it’s fine and constructing studies to get there, then their media pals, lobbyists, and pet politicians pretend like those are legit. And people trust them. Those of us telling people the truth are looked at like alarmists, trusting the wrong people, by those trusting the worst people. Quite a hopeless seeming situation without real leadership which we still don’t have.