The countries which are the most preoccupied with recycling plastics, such as the US, are also the least likely to throw they trash into the ocean.

Plastic bags do no harm buried in the landfill, and we’re not running out of land.

I see plastic bags on the beach. I walk along the creeks nearby, and I see plastic bags and plastic garbage. I go for a hike in the sierras, and I find plastic garbage.

I bike along the roads in town, and I see plastic bags in the gutter. I look down the incline beside the road and there are plastic bags in the trees.

Is the USA as bad as Morocco? No. Is plastic waste a problem? Yes.

Littering/dumping is a much different issue than disposing of your waste through the wrong channel. The problem you are describing isn't because people use the garbage instead of the recycling.

If we only had paper bags and such, littering wouldn't be a problem. Single use plastics of any kind need to be banned universally. Pseudo multiple use plastic such as bags needs to be taxed like alcohol and tobacco, through the roof, until alternatives become economically viable.

How much does a plastic bag cost where you are? Here in Sweden there's a tax on it and a single bag can cost 7 SEK (USD 0.85).

It's still too low.

A plastic bag can be quite sturdy, it can be transparent so you can easily see what's inside, it's light, it folds well, is resistant to humidity, etc.

If you'd give a plastic bag to someone from the 18th century they'd cherish it.

We need to make it so the average person actually cares about buying a bag.

Something like €2 with a return value of €1. Or anything that makes you treat it like you'd treat, say, a good tennis ball. You wouldn't just throw those away willy-nilly.

And we need to ban the low grade ones completely.

>If you'd give a plastic bag to someone from the 18th century they'd cherish it.

Something very similar is happening in north korea.

http://koreabizwire.com/bottled-water-a-symbol-of-wealth-in-...

Yes well here in Spain bags are almost automatically handed out. And the cashier is personally offended if you say you don't need the bag.

We would also have torn handles, pants-staining leaks, groceries spilled across the parking lot, double and triple bagging, and so on. In fact we already have all of these problems thanks to the ham-fisted paper bag laws.

I would be more amenable to the idea if they made a bag that does not get torn (e.g. armor the paper with cotton or bamboo thread), and is leak-resistant (e.g. waxed), but that somehow takes the back seat.

Well, to your paragraph: oh, the humanity! Will someone think of petty conveniences?!?

You do know that we're creating country sized plastic patches in the middle of the Pacific, microplastics are everywhere and we're eating them, they're slowly changing us in ways we don't even understand, etc, etc?

The amount of plastic bags strewn across the environment in Morocco has drastically declined since new laws against them. There is still progress to be made, but the result has made me a supporter of plastic bag bans.

Multiply that by 100 truckloads per bag, and you have what goes into the dump. This blow-away trash is unsightly, but addressing it first is kind of the definition of virtue signaling. We end up at "If I don't see the problem, I can pretend it doesn't exist"?

Where do you live? In the Pacific Northwest I see nothing of the sort, the only nuisance is aluminum beer cans.

Plastic has found its way into water everywhere on Earth [1] and they don't degrade for centuries. Instead of making people recycle, why not tax the externalities upstream and nudge corporations into using biodegradeable materials?

[1] https://qz.com/1299485/antarcticas-waters-now-contain-plasti...

I always struggle with these answers because while the upstream taxing does seem like the “perfect” answer in a model, it has a spotty track record and future. When prices are artificially inflated, and politicians get elected by decreasing drag on your quality of life, a variety of reasonings get used to evade responsible costing as much as possible and to repurpose the proceeds for the initiative of the month. Hence why this nation is 27 trillion dollars in debt. It’s all to sustain an unsustainable way of life. Living off the principle, or indeed future debt, is so imperative to our lifestyle today (and our glide path to retirement and death) that it’s hard to make such burden sharing plans with a straight face. No American generation wants to be the first one to take it on the nose, especially when one of this country’s raisons d'être is to ensure our kids live better than their parents. This country (at least) needs a serious come-to-Jesus moment about consumerism and realistic expectations for sustainability. And yeah, I’m the guy telling you to cut down your drinking while holding a bottle of JD in hand.

You’re making some big assumptions: not intentionally dumping into the ocean doesn’t mean that they don’t end up there, and there are other places than the ocean of concern. Where I live in the DC area, plastic bags were about a third of the trash found in rivers, storm drains, etc. and in addition to impact on animals that caused problems for all kinds water processing facilities due to clogs. After a bag tax was passed, that sharply reduced the number of bags which ended up in the local rivers.

That's good to know. Do you have a source handy?

Are we really supposed to be thinking of all currently available land as being flexibly provisioned for landfills.

A 1x1x1 km landfill (they are actually holes in the ground) can contain the entire waste of the US for three years. How many of those can we hide in the western US without anyone ever noticing? Howa bout a 100x100 km patch, that will hold 30,000 years worth of trash. Meanwhile we can focus our energy on the only problem that really matter - the climate problem.

It seems more ethical to bury our trash in our own backyard than bury in a poor country’s backyard or chuck it in the ocean. In the US we definitely have an out-of-site/out-of-mind problem where “recycling” can often really be “another guy’s landfill (e.g. China)”. We value not trashing our own environs with scant recognition that in terms of the global impact of our consumption, it doesn’t matter who’s landfill it goes in. But we’re the same way with strip mining.

Why not? You can still live on top of a landfill. Is it better that we live on top of some ecologically inactive rocks instead?

I don't believe you can live on top of a landfill; it's too toxic. In fact I don't think you can even build housing on the site of a former landfill.

Airports and golf courses, on the other hand.. many uses for surface area besides living. I don’t know (truly) if the issue is really toxicity (in a well designed, reclamated landfill) or the simple fact that city services like sewer, water, gas, electric were never under-grounded there by design. You’d think settlement would be a cause for concern too, but I’d also think they have that solved if airports are made atop them.

Clearly you've never heard of Foster City!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foster_City,_California

That's "landfill" in the sense of raising the ground level, not in the sense of "dumping trash", which is what we're talking about.

We are running out of land. I don't disagree with your point that landfill space isn't "a problem." But if you zoom out and look at inefficient land use more generally (like fields for feed corn), you find that there is for all intents and purposes no nature left in many of the places we occupy.

If we are fine with Cemeteries in extremely valuable land in major city centers, I’m fine with a square mile landfill in Oklahoma.

Cemeteries are also an incredibly inefficient use of space.

I’m not fine with either.

Burn it all, she said!

Ever look at satellite images of coastal cities, such as LA or the greater NYC region? Turn off all map and road labels so it’s just a view of land use and cities just look like a giant concrete mass sprawling hundreds of miles. Now view over Nevada or other major flatland, desolate regions. 2x2 miles of landfill wouldn’t even be visible from the same altitude view. I believe ground water and aquifers are near non-existent in many western areas too so we wouldn’t have to fret about ground water contamination.

A landfill 1x1x1 km can contain the entire waste the US produces in 3 years. A small patch of land 100x100 km has enough space to keep trash for 30,000 years.

https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...

I'm not disputing that landfills aren't really a big deal, I'm disputing the claim that we aren't running out of space.

Mm, you’re running out of coastal land in temperate areas. That’s an entirely different problem. I wonder how the carbon footprint of taking trash to a Nevada desert to be buried compares to shipping it to SE Asia. On the surface (sorry) it seems the former would be more efficient and more ethical. Don’t know the numbers tho.

Developed countries outsource plasti garbage handling to other less developed nations that are happy to take care of it for a fee.

“Take care of it for free” == put it in a hole in their ground because for the developed world, its “outta site, outta mind”. Pretty stunning ethical blind spot we all have, really. At best, it’s a case of wishful thinking, on behalf of developed-world consumers, that once it’s in the bin something responsible is being done with it.

Until they realize that handling plastic garbage becomes a noticeable health problem and health insurances are no longer willing to pay for this externality.

I don't think that happens anymore?

Assuming that we can keep burying it forever is not a healthy attitude.

People used to assume that dumping sewage in the streets was just fine, but it led to cholera outbreaks [1]. There was no push to change that until it became a major problem and something had to be done. Sure, we can assume burying plastic will be a solution forever. But is it not better to avoid risking the event where it suddenly is a problem, and try and mitigate it now?

(Personally, I think so, but it is one of things that will be forever debatable.)

[1] http://www.hubhistory.com/episodes/boston-in-the-time-of-cho...

> Assuming that we can keep burying it forever is not a healthy attitude.

Yes it is. Just because some decision made in the past is wrong doesn't mean a different decision made in the present is also wrong. There is no harm to landfill, and we know it quite well by now.

It isn’t about being right or wrong. It is about sustainability and foresight. Yes, landfill works now. But the population is growing and eventually the land may need to be reclaimed. It is about recognizing that excess waste now may become a problem for future generations. It is about realizing that things could, you know, maybe be done better.

Dumping our trash in the ground is lazy and I just don't understand how anyone wants to defend it.

Well, I’ll have a go - first, most people have no idea where their trash goes and don’t worry about the problem that something has to be done with it. It just magically disappears because we (especially urban and suburban dwellers) are that abstracted from dealing with it.

The options are to make a pile of it, bury a pile of it (ocean or land), burn a pile of it, or eject a pile of it into space, while recycling what we can to reduce load on the aforementioned options (often far, far less than people imagine, btw).

So it’s not an issue of people desiring to put their dirty diapers in the ground for its own sake, but it being the better of several shittier options.

Fundamentally we all make too much trash. Each of us. But while that problem is being worked we still need to put it somewhere where it minimizes sanitation and environmental risk.

Far from being lazy, modern landfills are pretty meticulously engineered for surface reclamation in the developed world. You are probably acting more responsible by putting developed-world trash in a developed-world landfill than by shipping it across the ocean in container barges to the developing world, where often as not it just ends up in an unmanaged, seeping pile (assuming it makes it to and stays on land).

There’s a lot of wishful thinking about what to do with garbage (if “we” only..., “people” just need to...), but the best thing any of us as individuals can do is obsessively reuse finished materials without becoming hoarders, donate, and consume less (opt out of gratuitous packaging, don’t buy tchotchkes for decorations or gifts, buy things that will last for decades or generations, not seasons or years).

How’s that?

How would recycling help that? Throwing your trash in a trash can and taking it to a landfill would protect the ocean and food chain just as much as recycling it would.

Yeah, the great irony here is that recycling is what sends the trash to Asia were it's then tossed in the ocean.

Or at least, it used to. I think most plastic "recycling" is now going into local landfills.

> recycling is what sends the trash to Asia were it's then tossed in the ocean.

That isn't true (and was never true). Trash in Asia that ends up in the ocean is local trash.

Even back when Asia bought recycling from us there wasn't much trash in it, and even the trash that was there didn't end up in the ocean.

The stuff in the ocean is what litters the streets, and then goes in rivers during rain storms.

I tried explaining this a very eager green friend of mine and he would have none of it, he preferred blaming the USA on every bad thing going on in the world. Even Asian garbage being dumped in the ocean.

Depends on your local council. Recycling is a very local issue, and so it's something communities can and should tackle head on.

But you are right, the amount of councils sending recycling to landfill is very sad.

Why is it sad? Why does plastic need to be recycled?

Here are some reasons:

https://abcnews.go.com/International/plastic-garbage-flip-fl...

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180426-why-plastics-are...

https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/microplastics-f...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ocean-plastic-liberals-fact...

And it's only going to get worse unless we do something about it. Recycling is far worse than just taxing negative externalities and making the companies upstream use biodegradeable materials.

It would reduce the demand for landfill space?

We’re not running out of land tho.

That's not correct, plenty of countries don't have space for landfill and instead burn off trash in incinerators.

Let’s talk about the US then. Do you agree we’re not running out of land? If so, what is the point of recycling?

For plastic and glass, to make you feel better. Even if you're concerned about land use, they end up throwing away a lot of what goes into the recycling anyway. With glass especially, it is actually worse for the enviroment to reuse the glass because of the energy and water use associated with cleaning it. (There's also an argument to be made that we should continue to recycle plastic so the public is in the habit of sorting their trash if we ever come up with a way to do it efficiently)

For aluminum, recycling is incredibly important. It reduces the need for environmentally-destructive aluminum mining and energy intensive smelting.

For paper, recycling high quality paper like clean office paper and some cardboard reduces the demand for virgin wood pulp. Lower quality paper gets thrown away.

Also, shout-out to composting - food and yard scraps breaking down in a well aerated environment produces fewer greenhouse gasses than landfills.

It is amazing how much stuff you can compost. In my armchair quarterback opinion compost everything you can and recycle only metal.

If people are pissed about how much stuff they are throwing into the trash... go look at the incredible amount of packaging material that gets thrown out....

How many people have backyards to compost stuff and the time to do it? 25%?

Backyard composting piles aren't really the solution in my opinion (they're great if you can do them, but few people ever will). We need municipal compost pickup.

My city actually has this - we were all given bright green compost bins and instructions for composting. The amazing thing about municipal composting is that they can handle way more types of food scraps (e.g. bones and fruit pits) than backyard composting bins. They come pick it up every week just like the trash and recycling.

Unfortunately, it seems like I'm one of two or three people on my street who compost my food scraps every week. I think composting should really be easier for people to figure out than recycling - it's so simple to know what you should and should not compost (as it says on the front of every green bin, "If it grows, it goes").

Presumably you hope the US has a long and prosperous future beyond our generation, so it's a problem that will need to be solved at some point. The US consumes 70 million plastic water bottles a day, just disposable water bottles. Consider all other plastic waste, and consider that just because there is uninhabited land doesn't mean you can economically put rubbish in it.

I must admit I am surprised that anyone needs to justify the merits of recycling, so I'm curious what your outlook is. What makes you question the need for recycling?

There is enough landfill space effectively forever. It's really not a problem.

> What makes you question the need for recycling?

The environment makes me question it. Everything I've seen shows recycling anything except metal is bad for the environment. We only do it because it makes people "feel good".

The right thing to do with:

Metal: recycle it

Glass: bury it

Paper: bury it

Plastic: burn it

Everything else: bury it

If you look at the free market for recyclable materials, you will find that clean paper and especially clean cardboard are valuable feedstocks for paper/board processing, and should definitely be recycled.

You can compost food waste paper like paper towels, cardboard takeout boxes, etc... compost makes a lot of sense.

Why not turn organic waste into charcoal/carbon and bury that? It would be considered CO2 sequestration.

Why is glass recycling bad for the environment?

Because transporting it (it's heavy) and recycling it consumes more resources than making it fresh.

Additionally glass is harmless in the environment, and it's not something we can ever run out of.

So why do it?

Additionally, if you actually do want to recycle things, glass shards contaminate everything, making it much more difficult and expensive (i.e. consumes more resources) to do it.

What you're describing is mostly a failure of US commingled recycling system. Meanwhile most of EU countries successfully recycle about 90% of collected glass, collected in glass-only containers.

Making new glass can be an issue, as it typically uses sand, which is not very renewable and sand mining in many countries causes massive issues with flooding, droughts, sinking, black markets, even sand mafia!

No we should not landfill everything after a single use, or we will soon run out of reasonably accessible raw materials in suitable forms.

That's sand for concrete and beaches you are talking about. Sand for glass is not in short supply.

And no, we will never run out of it - the planet is made of it.

What is your point? If we are not running out of land should we start dumping plastic all over the place?

Modern landfill techniques are actually quite scientific and regulated. It's not as bad as the far left portrays. We do need to encourage more reusable things though. Plastic and aluminum can be almost 100% recycled. Plastic is much much lower. It will take more than one solution to fix the problem. I think composting is a pipe dream though unless someone figures out how to quickly do it on a very large scale. It's fine for home gardeners but the rest of us simply aren't going to do it.

Composting is only a pipe-dream for plastic because so few councils have a plastics composting process in place. No one was ever expected to compost PLA at home, and it's definitely just a feel-good exercise right now. Most PLA cups end up in landfill because they can't go to the normal recylcing plants.

What about biodegradable plastics? If regular plastics were made illegal or heavily taxed, wouldn't industry quickly come up with biodegradable alternatives?

Current biodegradable plastics are an industry smokescreen. The biodegradable portion is generally plant starch used as a binder. The “plastic” is just that, a very stable long lived micro/nano plastic. The big chunks break down, and the plastics continue to move through the environment and bioaccumulate.

The work towards truly biodegrade plastic is generally from the other end; identifying or making organisms that can break down the polymers themselves. Those don’t seem to be commercially viable, and in themselves won’t address environmental plastic pollution.

Which plastics are you refering to? In a PLA plastic for example (which is derived from lactic acid, derived from startch) there is no distinction between "binder" and "plastic", and there is no starch left in the resulting production.

Granted the biodegradability of many formulations is still far too long and requires unrealistic circumstances to happen in the wild (hot composting for example).

What about hemp or mushrooms?

We overuse plastic when paper would suffice. But then some worry about cutting down trees for paper. Hemp is a pretty good crop for the natural fibers needed in paper production (and many other things besides) and could replace trees as raw material source for paper.

It’s not easy to find good biodegradable alternatives for many types of plastics. See the example of Legos trying to replace their plastic with a more environmentally friendly version. https://www.wsj.com/articles/lego-struggles-to-find-a-plant-...

Seems weird to want biodegradable lego, when they’re highly reusable. I’ve never heard of a LEGO brick get so worn out that it had to be thrown away. Making them rot would just decrease their productive multi-generational lifespan.

... which would increase the ability of the market to absorb new LEGO(R) Bricks! Genius.

Everything has the potential to end up in the environment, so we have to consider the full cycle of the product. I think you might underestimate how much LEGO ends up in the bin.

Biodegrading plastic releases CO2, landfill-buried plastic does not.

Apart from that, what problem are you trying to solve with this innovation?

The problem with plastic is not the CO2, but the fact that we are producing more and more of it and it does not decompose so we now have it in forests, rivers, ocean, fish, drinking water, our bodies... this can't continue, it's not a sustainable path.

If the biodegradable plastic isn't made of oil but something we grow, then it would still be CO2 neutral.

So is petroleum-derived plastic buried in the landfill.

In fact bio-derived plastic buried in the landfill is carbon-negative and should be encourged!

> I believe it is motivated by trash accumulation in oceans and the food chain (microplastics). There are a ton of areas of the world where plastic just piles up.

But then how are we not at the same solution? Burn the plastic garbage (in place of coal or natural gas) to generate electricity.

Even better if they were plant-based plastics to begin with, because then it's renewable energy.

Off-topic, but sometimes I feel like we could harvest the plastic from the ocean, make plastic bricks, and build millions of houses.

Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that this is a viable solution to anything, or that it’s a good use of resources based on our current methodologies. I’m more just trying to say that there’s so much raw material out there and that it’s better if it comes out of the ocean. Like, if suddenly we found a non-polluting method to perfectly separate out all the components, then a health-safe chemical mixture with those components that was solid and fireproof (and UV proof), there’s probably enough out there to do something significant with.

Bricks made of plastic weather into dust made of microplastic.

If microplastic turns out to be as serious a problem as has been suggested, with bioaccumulation and various sorts of damage, then the only solution is that all plastic without exception has to be thoroughly destroyed chemically or by burning as soon as it it isn't in use. And not put into use in ways that emit microplastic (as fibers, dust, or otherwise).

How about asphalt with plastics mixed into the underwater, but not the top layer?

Deferring the problem. Roads get dug up and relaid, roads get abandoned, maybe a few years down the line, we won't be using roads. Mentally insert "Back to the Future 2" clip here. And so a few decades later, we return to the problem.

I forget where I read this but asphalt is perhaps the most recycled plastic out there. Asphalt can be ripped up and then remelted right back into place or moved somewhere else.

Right! They even have road-paving machines that rip up the asphalt; add a bit more tar to replace the tar that seeped away; heat up the mixture and tumble it; lay it back down; and steamroll over it; all in one pass, all in a closed system with no dust escaping. (Ref: https://youtu.be/XKFaC5RYbEM)

Plus, since asphalt’s petroleum-tar binder is liquified during the working process, it would actually act as a solvent perfect for dissolving (certain) microplastics into. The microplastics wouldn’t merely be in mechanical mixture with the asphalt; they wouldn’t exist as distinct entities any more! They’d revert to being a petroleum fraction, in complex with the heavier petroleum fractions of the tar.

Most of the plastic can not be practically recovered from the ocean. It's more of a publicity stunt and cleaning hotspots.

We need to catch the plastics before they go into the environment, disintegrate, release their plasticizers and other toxins.

As has been said, best way to deal with all the plastic garbage that contains who-knows-what would probably be fuel, feedstock in refineries or similar.

There is a Kenyan Entrepreneur that is trying making bricks from excess and non-recyclable plastic: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kenya-environment-recycli...

There have been attempts at harvesting plastic from the ocean. I remember one fairly recently that built a system using crowd funding but I don't think it was as successful as hoped. If they keep trying I have little doubt they'll make it work and possibly even turn a profit.

https://www.sciencealert.com/that-ocean-garbage-collector-is...

This company did a slight pivot to building autonomous collectors anchored in rivers which have the most plastic dumped into them leading to the ocean.

> [...] build millions of houses

... slowly leaching endocrine disruptors in the environment for generations to come.

This would also cut reproduction rates, which is not pleasant but is necessary to stop climate change.

There are more species than humans who need to reproduce.

That is a good point, maybe something like one-child policy better serve this need. Or possibly we must consider which is worse for animals, damage from climate change or damage from endocrine disruptor.

The answer is neither. Human energy use that causes climate harms can be replaced with renewables. Fuel can be replaced with batteries. In the longer term, the sun is absolutely pouring out energy, which largely goes to waste, and a Dyson swarm capturing a small fraction of that would satisfy the energy needs of a much larger population.

> Human energy use that causes climate harms can be replaced with renewables

No, it can't.

These are not solving land impact of human. We must have fewer human or live in smal space like in Tokyo and others city like it. Most human no have desire to do this. Batery take resources like lithium more than we have. Maybe Dyson swarm eating star energy output cause climate change of its own, fewer energy reaching earth surface. There is always impacts that human create. We only can for truly mitigate climate change with reducing human numbers. One action we take for to reduce impact create impact again in one other place. We swalow spider to catch fly and continue on each and again. One child policy is the forebest way for to accomplish.

> We only can for truly mitigate climate change with reducing human numbers.

Then you should welcome pandemic, genocide and war.

they are having some positive efect in long enough view. also they are having sufering first. best is not to have as much persons born.

> one-child policy better serve this need

Over my cold dead body [and I won't go without a fight.].

This more extreme usonian gun and freedom idea. If government say you have only one child you hav xr15 rifle not help. you people no can be trust with guns, ability to have as many children as wanted, others. you try use them to continue kill planet. you no have freedom to keep breeding kill other country with climate change. US having more children is externality it not pay. the US days of telling world around and doing what desire is over.

> If government say you have only one child you hav xr15 rifle not help

What are they gonna do, line me up and execute me and my family ? Kill my children ? Fortunately, Rights are still a thing, including the 2nd.

This is not in need. Fining confiscateing properties limiting from some good jobs all good consicuences. You have politician come to senses but slowly, you have democrat party finaly beat sense into your head on guns, sicund amendment be finaly rimoved. US no simply dictate to rest of world any more. If US continue cause climate change PRC enforce by army. US no more have army hegemony, have less man than PRC and bad technology than PRC. Your government enforce or we enforce, this is choice you for to make.

We will meet on the battlefield in the looming civil war, then.

It is not necessary. Malthus was wrong. You'll notice this position was popular among boomer environmentalists, which is why it was parodied just recently by 70s comic villain Thanos.

The birth rate everywhere outside Africa has already collapsed, anyway. It's probably too low.

Malthus wasn't wrong in a sense that /if/ there's geometric population growth, there /will/ come a point where a die-off of said population is inevitable.

Funny thing is that Malthus already recognized the effects that artificial birth control can have on the reproductive rate and was worried about that - I don't the the citation at hand though.

I agree that the birth rate outside Sub-Saharan Africa is probably too low and I think that this will become an issue, probably first in China, then the EU and finally in the USA.

Well, Malthus was right in terms of history, he just made one of the worst future predictions ever - he wrote his theory about human population crises right when it stopped being true.

I think we are seeing people having fewer children because they're depressed about the world/future expectations, of course, but that's not quite the same thing.

Your edit is where the problem is. Sure there is a lot of plastic in the ocean, but the ocean is big as well. As a whole the size of the ocean cancels out your attempts to do any recovery. You end up using more energy to power the filters (which are typically on ships) than you would by taking the oil powering the filters and directly turning it into plastic.

Plastic in the ocean isn't an easy problem to solve with anything other than wait for it to degrade. Which isn't as bad as it sounds because plastic doesn't do well in the sun, and we can easily make plastics that do worse and thus degrade faster.

You're assuming smaller plastic is better.

You should probably stop assuming that.

I assume no such thing. Degrade is more than just smaller, though that does come first

Better to harvest the plastic from the ocean, and power the collection system with the plastic in a plasma gasifier. The slag can be disposed of in the ocean, as its chemically inert.

You also need to make it fireproof or use an outer layer of fireproof material.

Yeah, if you aren't careful plastic building materials have some grim failure modes, the cladding that burned Grenfell Tower was made of aluminum and polyethylene, which more or less acted like a candle.

I’ve edited my comment to clarify the subtext, but yes you’d definitely need to make it fireproof. Fiery liquid plastic is exceptionally unpleasant.

You certainly could, but you could also build houses out of stone and cement, like they used to do in the old days. Makes for very durable construction.

Or... we could not use so much plastic, and make actual bricks to build ‘millions of houses’.

Since you sound so excited, are you going to live in the first plastic house with your family?

I think suggestions like this are super demeaning. I often see them coming from privileged knowledge workers, who are eager to share ‘free ideas‘/psuedo-solutions as a sort of ‘charity’ for poor people (and people in the global south). They are also often strategies which somehow don’t seem to fit for their own life - and instead are for ‘others’ who are less well off.

In other words: tech solutionism.

As knowledge workers, let’s try to cut through our false consciousness and come up with some awesome systemic changes that kick butt.

Demeaning or proposing ‘charity’ was not my intent at all.

I’ve edited my comment to clarify the subtext, but to answer your question: if we could find a health-safe fire and UV-resistant plastic formula that made solid building materials out of the pollution in the ocean, I would definitely live in the first plastic house with my family. It could survive hundreds of years and have a lot of benefits.

You're reading a lot into that short parent comment. Maybe you should be a bit more generous in your interpretation of other people's words.