Open Response to Congresswoman Clark's recent letter

Submitted by noob_tube03 t3_11f6ax0 in CambridgeMA

I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets the emails from Congresswoman Katherine Clark about the latest work her office is pushing for. I noticed in her recent one, she pushed for getting strong on reducing plastic pollution, but I have not heard anything about the initiatives she is pushing for to help. Worse, her email seems to endorse the idea that we can tackle plastic pollution at an individual level. This is the wrong way to fix the issue of plastic pollution, and I wrote her to ask for her to actually help address global plastic pollution. I would encourage you to do the same. We all know in Cambridge the city holds apartment buildings accountable for [their tenants] failing to recycle properly, there is no reason we can't hold global behemoths to the same policy(s)

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Dear Congresswoman Clark

I love the work that we are pushing for in improving the earth and keeping it safe for future generations. I worry about the tone of your email when it comes to plastic reduction; it appears you indicate the best way to tackle plastics is at an individual level. We know from historical activities, that individuals are less than a drop in the bucket when it comes to climate change policies. Just look at any study done on recycling efforts and how much of the collected recycled materials are not even recyclable to begin with!

If you want to help us tackle the plastic issue, you must hold major global warehouse merchants like Amazon or Walmart accountable. https://gizmodo.com/amazon-s-plastic-waste-soared-in-2021-report-finds-1849903596 Amazon itself generates hundreds of thousands of pounds of plastic waste per year. As a consumer, I cannot buy fewer plastic items or hope to make a recycling impact if companies like Amazon are allowed to crater our oceans with plastic waste. 

Please do what you can to curb corporate pollution. Do not promote policies that require individuals to be the stewards of environmental protection

Your constituent

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jahymvi wrote

Almost no plastic waste in the oceans is actually from the US, right? I believe the Phillipines are the biggest contributor. I don't know if e.g. Amazon's operations are the right target here either.

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noob_tube03 OP t1_jahzw36 wrote

But what is congress supposed to do about the Philippines? There is no reason we should say "those guys are worse so we don't need to do anything". Microplastics are everywhere, and companies like Amazon generates billions of tons of plastic every year, most of it single use. It's certainly going to help the planet much more to hold Amazon accountable than for you to stop using a plastic straw

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SheeEttin t1_jai3qtl wrote

https://theoceancleanup.com/sources/

Mostly developing countries, China, and India.

But that's only for the oceans. The US puts its plastic waste in landfills instead. And yes, large-scale uses like shipping material is far more than what you use as an individual. Any time I get a pallet of something at work, I have to throw out so much plastic foam. At least we're the end consumer and not repacking it with new material to be shipped out again.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaie6pn wrote

Yeah, I only bring up oceans because OP specifically mentions them as the reason plastic production is bad in their letter.

Re. plastic foam, it's interesting: because it's so light, I'm guessing relatively little material is used in manufacturing what feels like so much wasted stuff. It's difficult for me at least to trust my intuitions about what policies are good for the environment: see the recent study showing that disposable K-cups use less energy than making coffee from scratch.

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desicant t1_jaiu9g9 wrote

This thing with the energy component is that plastic may take less energy to produce but the pollution produced (the plastic itself) is worse than the energy component.

But again - we shouldn't be focusing on individual choices here. Plastic pollution (and energy waste) are driven by commercial and industrial practices not individual ones.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaivu8d wrote

> the pollution produced (the plastic itself) is worse than the energy component.

Worse on what axis? If the waste is handled appropriately, I don't see how it inherently causes harm independent of the energy and resources used in its creation .

> we shouldn't be focusing on individual choices here.

I'm not: I'm saying that theres reason not to blindly trust individual intuition as to what societal changes will actually help the environment.

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desicant t1_jaixp14 wrote

It's just worse pollution.

Plastics don't biodegrade but instead fragment - leading to microplastics in the water, soil, and our insides. Plastics can also leach chemicals into the environment that are estrogen mimics or endocrine disruptors. These can cause developmental issues and cancer in humans and other life.

There is no way to ensure plastics are "handled appropriately" in the sense that the only alternative to waste burial is incineration - which costs more energy and requires gas and particulate scrubbers to remove the (now incinerated) pollution.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaiyiuq wrote

Right, I wholeheartedly agree that plastics are bad. But to show that they are worse, you need to compare them to the alternatives. My point is that it's so easy to point to all the harns you enumerate, and say "plastics bad! We should ban disposable plastic coffee cups!" when it's entirely possible that such a policy would cause harm to the environment on net.

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desicant t1_jaiz5mx wrote

The example you used was k cups versus just grinding the beans.

Just grind the beans and minimize the plastic waste.

We don't actually need complete information to avoid obvious problems.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaj0g26 wrote

You are asserting that the harm from a K-cup's worth of plastic waste exceeds the harms of a cup of coffee's worth of energy. That is not at all self-evident.

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desicant t1_jaj3is3 wrote

???

Yes. I am asserting that making more plastic (which doesn't break down, makes microplastics, and leaches endocrine disruptors into environmen) is bad compared to not making more plastic.

I don't think we have to wait until a final tally of the global chain of production, distribution, and consumption is performed to n-th levels of accuracy to take reasonable steps towards harm reduction.

And, just to be clear, it isn't k cups that matter - but the actions of corporations and their intransigence against removing plastic from their business model.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jaj6jr6 wrote

You just aren't listening. Of course those things are bad. You haven't shown any evidence that they are worse: any comparison of the harms of additional plastic to the harms of additional energy use.

Unless you are asserting that there is no harm from energy use which could possibly be as bad as the harm from plastic, which is prima facie ludicrous.

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desicant t1_jakbodt wrote

Right, so I am listening I just think I wasn't being clear in my response.

I'm rejecting your premise because it is flawed, specifically it commits the McNamara fallacy. This fallacy occurs when you have a complex or ill-defined situation (like "harm") and you've measured one part of it (CO2) and are ignoring the unmeasured parts (plastic pollution)

To be precise to your argument - the research you mention doesn't measure "harm" it only measures energy/CO2 per cup of coffee consumed. Plastic pollution and the impact it has on health and wellness can't be measured using energy/CO2.

Note that when the k cup research was written up by the Washington Post they actually had to post a correction and a quote from the Ocean Conservancy pointing this out. Essentially warning people to not over interpret from the limited data, specifically because the original research failed to take into account plastic pollution and what offsets that may have on health outside of CO2 production.

Now - I challenge you to consider that we don't actually need to measure "harm" in this case because we don't need to find the optimal solution to find a solution that mitigates harm. Indeed, demanding that level of evidence is similar to tobacco companies claiming that no one's ever 'proved' that smoking causes cancer.

Instead consider that with increasing energy production coming from renewable resources and carbon sequestration technologies focusing on atmospheric CO2 capture it seems like these concerns can be addressed using near term scalable technologies.

Conversely, plastics and microplastics, get mixed into the soil, water, and biological tissues in ways that make it hard, if not impossible, to separate out. There is no near term technology that can sort microplastics from soil. It presents a permanent problem. And, unlike the shift in energy production towards renewables, plastics are only being produced in ever greater abundances.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jakbykg wrote

Ok, I understand what you're saying here. I appreciate the really in-depth response! I'm not sure I agree 100%, but I'm at least convinced that you have really good reasons for your position.

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desicant t1_jakcpza wrote

Thanks for taking the time to have this conversation with me.

This has helped me think more clearly about my assumptions as well.

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jamdqu5 wrote

It seems like this logic would also rule out e.g. current electric vehicles, which cause permanent environmental damage in the name of reducing emissions.

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desicant t1_jan32td wrote

Like, hypothetically, you have to get a car - it's not a choice - you only get to choose what kind and you can't wait for things to change or improve?

And, to be clear, if you want to 'reduce emissions' that is going to be something separate from 'rare earth mining and slave labor' - so it will be hard to compare directly.

But you could apply a heuristic that considers the long term consequences of one versus the other. The gas powered vehicle relies on gas industry infrastructure after all, and so buying a gas powered car reinvests in that infrastructure. And EVs, in contrast, do not - the purchase of an EV invests in the development of a non-carbon based energy system. So both have long term consequences, it's kind of a wash.

But ultimately how do you know if reduced emissions would offset the impact of rare earth mining? It's terribly difficult to see how that could even be measured, let alone evaluated. And because of the absence of any obvious choice it would probably just come down to making a personal, subjective, choice.

Like this "logic" is just trying to reason with limited information - and sometimes, as individuals, we must make choices before we have all the information we would like. Like we should definitely do more research, get more information, get better batteries, organize labor, de-colonize the countries being exploited by extraction industries - but those are long term projects that, if you have to buy a car to get to work tomorrow, aren't really going to help.

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bostonguy2004 t1_jameyqx wrote

Do you have a link to that study? That doesn't make any sense.

Also, what about the hot water running through the plastic k-cup and contaminating the coffee with endocrine disruptions and nasty flavors?

This study showing lots of endocrine disruptors, including BPA, in plastic capsule coffee is pretty clear:

"Benzophenone was the most frequently detected estrogenic chemical in capsule coffee (mean concentration ± SD: 20.37 ± 47.07 ng/mL, n = 6), followed by bisphenol A (BPA, 0.31 ± 0.71, n = 4), dibutyl phthalate (1.41 ± 3.58, n = 3), 4-nonylphenol (0.67 ± 1.82, n = 3) and bisphenol F (BPF, 0.49 ± 1.54, n = 2). BPA and BPF were each detected in 3 French press coffee samples (0.29 ± 0.58 and 0.85 ± 1.75 ng/mL, respectively).

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7451997/

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jamk641 wrote

https://theconversation.com/heres-how-your-cup-of-coffee-contributes-to-climate-change-196648

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bostonguy2004 t1_jamqb5g wrote

Never heard of that website?

And it's not peer-reviewed scientific research, just a news article, so not super reliable, right?

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Opposite_Match5303 t1_jamqs90 wrote

The authors link to the peer-reviewed full study in the article, this is just the readable version https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jiec.12487

This was picked up by major news outlets (WaPo most notably) when it came out.

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bostonguy2004 t1_jamrafx wrote

Thanks for sharing.

It shows that French Press was actually less wasteful than capsule coffee, so not so clear cut as you claimed.

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bostonguy2004 t1_jamec4d wrote

Not exactly, and it's a much larger problem than just plastic in waterways.

Most plastic waste, such as that from from plastic bottles and bags, is not recycled and is either incinerated like at the huge incinerator up in Saugus, or at 10+ other incinerators across Massachusetts, or put in landfills.

When you burn plastic, its releases all kinds of toxic chemicals into ghe air and water, which have severe health impacts (Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187802961630158X ).

"The hazardous brominated compounds act as carcinogens and mutagens. Dioxins settle on the crops and in our waterways where they eventually enter into our food and hence the body system. These Dioxins are the lethal persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and its worst component, 2,3,7,8 tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), commonly known as agent orange is a toxic compound which causes cancer and neurological damage, disrupts reproductive, thyroid and respiratory systems."

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pelican_chorus t1_jai5lfw wrote

While I 100% support all waste-reduction incentives, what's interesting is that our instincts may actually often be backwards when it comes to plastics.

Take single-use plastic bags. If you have an organic cotton bag, it would need to be re-used hundreds of times to have the same carbon impact as a single-use plastic bag, and thousands of times to have the same water impact as that plastic bag. (Source 1, Source 2)

If, like me, you have 5-10 reusable bags, you need to use them tens of thousands of times to offset the emissions and water impacts they had, compared with if you had used single-use plastic bags the whole time.

And paper bags, from that source, would have to be reused 40 times, which is unlikely ever to happen.

(Note, my take-away from that study is not to not use my reusable bags, but to make sure I use them as many times as possibly possible. But also, if I forget my bag, I should use single-use plastic rather than paper (bad) or buying yet another bag (much worse).)

Our instincts usually come from a "visible trash" perspective, we assume that what we see littering is the worse thing. But actually from a climate change and water freshness perspective, this is not always correct. (And, interestingly, studies have shown that all plastic bags make up less than 1% of litter.)

I'm not sure the point I'm trying to make: initiatives to stop trash and waste are definitely good. But that our good intentions aren't always correct when it comes to plastics, so we should try to look at the available research, and let that guide our decisions, more than our gut instincts.

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noob_tube03 OP t1_jai6l7a wrote

For sure. This is very much the "electric car" problem. Electric cars are terrible for the environment, but electric cars are still a good thing because we need to push for renewable energies. It's more about framing and making sure you know what issue you are addressing. In this case, it's about reducing plastic waste, especially microplastics in our water and plastic in the ocean. While paper bags don't necessarily help the forests, they do reduce microplastics

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SesquipedalianPossum t1_jak9811 wrote

Since you seem to be anti-climate chaos, I wanted to say, think it's important for everyone to understand that EV passenger cars are not a good choice. EV passenger cars are meant to save the car industry, not us or the planet.

The materials required to create batteries to power EVs--cadmium and lithium--are in quite limited quantities on the planet, we really, really need to reserve those small amounts to use for batteries that will store energy for the power grid and large-capacity vehicles, like buses and trucks. If we waste it all on private passenger electric cars, we'll have none left for the grid or public transit.

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bostonguy2004 t1_jamddnw wrote

So what about the lack of Climate Change-causing emissions from EV cars? Can you explain how not emitting CO2 is bad for the planet?

And, this criticism of EVs seems like a lot of speculation and lacks sources. Could you provide some valid and reliable source links (e.g., peer-reviewed scientific research) about your points?

What if massive deposits of cadmium and lithium ore are discovered in the future?

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Broad_External7605 t1_jakjej1 wrote

The first step is to reduce the amount of unnecessary plastic packaging. Then i think we need to have regional recycling plants where new products of packaging can be made. I don't think "The Market" can make this profitable, so it should be part of the public works. More products could be in glass or Aluminum cans. There is much that could be done. There is no single silver bullet solution to the problem.

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Captainbostonfish420 t1_jajdk81 wrote

Amazon is nothing compared to the plastic pollution generated by India and China. Unless you plan on invading those countries to collapse their economies, any suggestions you write into your congressmen is absolutely laughable.

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