I remember save the trees campaign years ago. I’m convinced it was all started by the plastic industry.
Yup. Logging industry, at least in the US, is remarkably renewable. I remember reading that we have significantly more trees than we did 100 years ago because we’ve improved logging methods. No more clear cutting for pulp or lumber, proper replanting, and age-tracking for proper harvest.
In other words, saying “don’t use paper, save a tree” is akin to saying “don’t eat fries, save a potato.”
We have more trees, yes, but we have fewer forests.
Forests are where the biodiversity is. Not monoculture straight-row tree farms.
And we’ve gotten rid of a lot of old growth forests before we came into renewable forestry. That’s partly why lumber these days isn’t as good (quality, in general) as it was 50 or 100 years ago.
And we’re still tearing down old forests. This time, it’s to grow soy to feed to cows.
hardly any soy goes to cows at all.
https://ourworldindata.org/images/published/Global-soy-production-to-end-use.png
The cultivation of soybeans, primarily for export and the production of biodiesel and animal feed, has been a significant driver of forest loss in the Amazon.[41]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_of_the_Amazon_rainforest
almost all soy that becomes animal feed is a byproduct of pressing soybeans for oil. about 80% of all soybeans are pressed for oil and the byproduct is what is fed to animals. but cattle, as you can see in the chart I provided, hardly get any of the global soy crop
Are you …defending deforestation of the Amazon? For what, cheaper burgers? Cattle ranching is the number one cause of deforestation by a wide margin. Soy is just one of the causes.
Are you …defending deforestation of the Amazon?
no. I’m pointing out a lie about Amazon soy being fed to cows
While this is true, we should also remember that old growth forest, not tree plantations, are the most efficient at sequestering carbon and filtering/storing water.
Just because the timber industry is has been adopting renewable aspects, doesn’t justify expanding it recklessly. Reducing demand and recycling as much paper as possible is still a key part of keeping our usage sustainable. Even if the trees grow back, there is still energy being lost to harvesting and processing. Tree falls are a major source of carbon sequestration in forests, which enrich the soil. If the trees are being harvested, that piece of the local cycle stops. I try to vary the locations that I collect kindling wood in my back woods so as not to deplete any area.
Trees are the most visible and obvious carbon sink. You can watch a tree grow over a few years by literally sucking carbon out of thin air. I live in a bog where the trees all fall down after a few years. Quite a few come down every windy season. You can see how they shape the landscape, dam waterflow, and turn into soil mounds. The dammed water helps to trap more plant matter and sequester more carbon. Removing the trees from this ecosystem by harvesting would interrupt this process. This process maintains the soil fertility. The trees still grow back for now, but our lack of consideration for soil health and for soil as a carbon sink reminds me of our attitude towards conventional industrial agriculture. If we keep treating the soil like this, will the trees keep growing back in 50 years without requiring artificial fertilizers and water filtration to replace the trees we extract?
Original Associated Press article instead of giving traffic to Voice of America
Edit: and a good LA Times article explaining the glaring flaw with the original 2014 law.
Thank you!
Yeah np; VOA is I feel overall pretty tame as national propaganda outlets go, but it’s nonetheless expressly conceived of and funded as a propaganda outlet, so that’s not much of a compliment.
Plus, a news agency article from its own website tends to have a better shelf life than syndicated versions of that article.
VOA seems very factual and accurate in their reporting. Their bias exists in that they’ll never report on something that doesn’t align with US interests.
good. My balls are already maxed out on microplastics
Microplastic is stored in the balls
Mine are stored in the toenails, Mountain Dew is stored in my balls.
Might need to get that looked at
Can we ban plastics in the fishing industry next?
I know little to nothing about fishing on a commercial scale. What are viable alternatives to plastics in that industry?
Hemp it would be a viable alternative due to its rot resistant properties.
Hemp was used as the primary material for this purpose until the oil industry helped feed the anti-cannabis movement.
Interesting. I was thinking more about lines and lures. It didn’t occur to me that such a large amount of ocean trash would be plastic based rope and nets.
Commercial fishing is terrible not only for the environment but leaves a large amount of trash in the ocean. It creates a ton of micro plastics and fucks up entire biomes.
Commercial fishing is probably the biggest contributor to ocean plastic pollution.
Much like commercial industry is the biggest contributor to atmospheric pollution.
You know, I think I’m beginning to see a trend here.
if you ever watch a documentary of the great pacific garbage patch it usually shows the most rampant and dangerous items from aquatic life tends to be discarded fishing nets. They all suck though, just nets suck more and get cut off all the time.
Fishing industry is evil and sucks big times. They just dump their gear (e.g. nets and longlines) in the open water and it’s a bane for turtles, sharks, whales, sea birds, seals etc. It’s not an accident. The gear seems to be deliberately dumped as the expensive stuff is removed. Read this article if you want to know why they do it. In addition those trawler/fish factory vessels are often part of ghost fleets where 75% of them kill every living being within a miles long radius for weeks on end without any controlling instance.
If you’re now under the assumption that it would be better to buy fish from fish farms. It also sucks tremendously. At least when farmed in open pen sea cages out of multiple reasons:
- Pesticides and Antibiotics are released into the sea
- Viruses and parasites escape into the sea
- Salmons escape and alter natural biodiversity
- Excess food and waste lead to oxygen deprivation in the surrounding waters (dead zones)
https://www.worldwildlife.org/industries/farmed-salmon
In addition (and I don’t know why WWF isn’t calling it out): Whales are essentially hunted because of farmed fish. That’s my own conclusion. They don’t openly admit it but because whales need tons of krill they are a direct competition to the omega-3 supplement market and feed for salmon farms. The culprits are Norway (they are real eco terrorists if you look behind their green facade at home), Ruzzia, Japan & Scottland. Not only whales but also penguins and seals depend on krill. And those animals are already suffering from H5N1 (with animal agriculture being the culprit again).
What the greedy bastards don’t get is, when they kill off the whales, they kill off the krill too. As so often humans disturb eco systems developed over millions of years. In this case it’s the poop loop.
The intention of my wall of text is to move the people who have a modicum of interest left to save the oceans to consider to ditch any fish caught in the oceans or bred on salmon farms (btw they are feeding them chicken bones too). Humans need Omega 3 DHA & EPA fatty acids. You can easily get those via algae capsules. That’s where fish get theirs from essentially.
Only we the consumers have the power to break the vicious circle but we’re to uneducated and complacent. As long as there’s a market they’ll ruthlessly plunder the ecosystems till nothing is left. Some say we’re already nearing that moment with parts of the oceans.
What asshole downvoted a legit question of someone asking for more info on something they admit they don’t know much about…?
People do this all the time, and it’s super annoying. I’d love for someone to explain why they downvote an honest question.
I do it accidentally sometimes. Especially right now since im pretty sure my instances last update moved everything a bit to the right for some reason.
The downvotes you and I got are “funny”
One viable alternative is to use nothing and let the fish live their lives.
And then Jesus gave them fish to eat, taught men to lead other men to water and teach them to fish and feed them forever, on fish.
Yes, this is what’s commonly known as a “joke” where Jesus is a stand-in for muix and the audience is the downvoters, and it is an exaggeration made for comedic effect. I’m not basing my actual morality on the God of the Bible – the same entity as Jesus if you’re unitarian or essentially the same entity with some mental gymnastics thrown in if you’re trinitarian – who had a temper tantrum and flooded the entire Earth to wipe all but one human family and two of every species of animal from the face of the planet.
Fishing is catastrophic for the environment, and it results in the needless deaths of literal trillions of fish every year.
Well then it must be too late for salvation, as so many men have already learnt to fish.
In Austria, we banned plastic bags ~ 5 years ago. We only have paper bags that are ~ 70c each. Before that we had 30c plastic bags.
Oh, and that is the price per bag. People here just get some high quality bags, baskets… and use them over and over.
As long as it also requires them to carry paper bags that’s perfect
In France they didn’t always have bags available, and if they did they were usually for sale and were reusable. Everyone just brought their own bags.
Canada works pretty well without them. If you forget your bags though you have to buy more.
I keep several reusable bags and I’ve almost never had to use the paper ones. The few times I have, the bags fell apart halfway home lol.
The best places keep a pile of all of their cardboard boxes by the registers, so you can grab one or two or ten depending on how much you’re buying. I only get paper bags if they’re out of boxes or I need more trash bags.
If they don’t just tell them you need help to your car.
As long as you don’t expect them to be free
Didn’t we already do this like five years ago? I haven’t seen a plastic shopping bag in a long time.
edit: single use plastic bags, this appears to be targeting the reusable ones too.
Grocery Outlet in IB and CV both offer plastic bags to me even as I am putting my backpack, or one of their reusable bags on the counter.
Not sure about north of San Diego, though.
I realized after commenting that the new law includes the reusable ones with the thicker plastic too, not just the single-use ones I was thinking about. I’m up in Riverside these days and I always take my groceries home in a cardboard box or two, for the record, so this probably won’t change anything for me.
My gf got me into bringing my own grocery bags and after a few times forgetting to bring them in, I got used to it. Now it’s automatic and can’t see doing it any other way.
I used to forget my bags all the time until I got some actual nice bags made for groceries. They’re way bigger, sturdy enough to hold anything, and can stand freely as I load groceries in them. I don’t forget them now.
Crafty people: If you don’t already, you should learn about plarn, aka yarn made from cut up disposable plastic shopping bags.
My wife makes it and turns it into forever bags.
Great to see this. I have not seen someone bring their own bags except me in months.
Good and the Europeans have been doing this for this decades.
Why not just mandate the green bio ones?
Great! Now do other 49.
Colorado has had this law for a couple years now
They’re on their own. Pretty sure Texas likes the poison.
Yes in 2018, the TX Supreme Court struck down plastic bag bans in Laredo even though the small city was saving something like $250,000/year in waterway cleanup. The other cities, including Austin, that had a plastic bag ban lifted their ban after the court ruling.
It was great under the bag ban, the cities were so much cleaner. Grocery stores all had some thicker Reusable plastic bags that could be bought and would hold up for a long time as long as you didn’t overfill them. They also sold cloth bags, not to mention the people carrying Ikea bags around the stores.
Those thicker bags suck, it’s just even more plastic. That’s what California just banned and I’m so happy.
Yeah the ticker bags that would last a year or so before the handles fell off were more plastic, but it was at least a step. I saw more people using cloth and other sturdy Reusable bags after a few months.
Hawaii hasn’t had plastic bags for almost a decade at this point. Styrofoam takeout containers have also been banned since around COVID.
Some stores let you buy a paper bag for a few cents, otherwise it’s reusable bags you bring. Takeout containers have all transitioned to cardboard or PLA containers.
Austin tried years ago and Texas said no.
Nice to see California catching up to Colorado.
Ah, Lemmy with the backhanded compliments - at best
Nah, more of a challenge. California normally leads the way with things that are good. Competition towards good things is good.
for us there is a law that if there is one item they wont give us plastic bags
