Re:Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of pla...
by jdietrich on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @01:53PM
(#19731080)
>Wasted food that goes to compost or landfill is benign.
No, no, a thousand times no.
Farming is massively carbon-intensive. That handful of leftovers might have resulted in hundreds of grams of CO2 emissions during its production, processing and distribution. Plastic just sits there in landfill, or maybe chokes a sea turtle if someone tosses it in a watercourse. Atmospheric CO2 is causing the greatest crisis in the history of humanity; ocean acidification will likely make the sea turtle extinct within a century.
Using a few grams of plastic to avoid hundreds of grams of CO2 is a huge win.
No, no, a thousand times no.
Farming is massively carbon-intensive. That handful of leftovers might have resulted in hundreds of grams of CO2 emissions during its production, processing and distribution. Plastic just sits there in landfill, or maybe chokes a sea turtle if someone tosses it in a watercourse. Atmospheric CO2 is causing the greatest crisis in the history of humanity; ocean acidification will likely make the sea turtle extinct within a century.
Using a few grams of plastic to avoid hundreds of grams of CO2 is a huge win.