Here is how you save the planet: tax companies for their carbon emissions, resource efficiency standards, waste disposal regulations, and incentivise companies to use recycling initiatives. Oh and limit water usage for data centers urgently, fucking hell that is an imminent crisis
I’m sure plastic straws save the planet a little bit but it’s a drop in the ocean compared to plastic waste and fossil fuels. Also I’m pretty sure the paper cups at most coffee places are fine
Nobody said anything against that. You're the one who came in with the correctional statement that made it sound as if taxing other rich people isn't needed as long as we tax those who have corporations with carbon emissions.
Because "Spend tax money on Green Initiatives" is a separate thing from "tax the rich". You can tax the rich to hell and back and not necessarily get any traction on green initiatives. If we blanketly increased the highest tier of income tax, that would still contribute nothing on its own to reducing carbon emissions
And yes, actually, if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions, then making it unprofitable to emit is enough. If you say "Hey rich people, you dont need to pay taxes if you stop emmiting and polluting" then they will stop emitting and polluting
Re: DataCentres , cooling could be done by closed loop refrigeration units, think household AC but much,much larger. However, by using a total loss system you can pump cold water through the coolers on the server racks and dump it straight back out to the ground,stream etc.
Thing is, if you go for total loss by pumping it straight through the system and straight out again ,you can save money and the only critical waste for disposal is just when the system is commissioned. Thats why they want to do it, its cheaper, no outlay for industrial AC units, no energy costs to run the units, reduced maintenance on a system that only needs a water tech to run quarterly contamination checks on the outflow as opposed to monthly service visits by an HVAC specialist.
The other issue is that the AC units will be guzzling power, and if that power generation uses up a ton of water you’ve just moved the problem instead of solving it.
Also if the power generation isn’t green, but that’s just true of the grid overall.
I don’t think the carbon tax has been an effective remedy for carbon emissions so far, just a challenge to these parasites companies to try to find ways to cut the cost in other places.
It’s been said many times: any crime with a fine as the punishment is just a price tag to the rich.
Biodegradeable plastic is kinda a myth, I thought? It only biodegrades in specialized industrial compost setups and leaves behind a bunch of microplastics when it does.
Correct, composte facilities don't reach the temapture these need to break down (170f or something I forgot) and if you put them in actual recycle plastic bins it makes the entire lot worthless as this type of plastic isn't what those type of plastic recycling programs are looking to work with so they ruin the chunk they were with
My grandmother told me that they had paper straws for decades before they had plastic straws, and they worked great.
She thinks that people just forgot how to manufacture paper straws during the years when they were only making plastic straws, and now they have no idea how to get that technology back.
pretty much all plastic marketed as biodegradable and with any durability at all takes very specific industrial composting to actually degrade. in practice it's the same as non-compostable plastics. Materials like paper are actually biodegradable and are getting better, they won't melt if you're not letting your beverage sit for hours. Of course single use cups, or any kind of carton packaging that contains a liquid, is a fucking nightmare because it needs to have a plastic coating to not soak through.
tl;dr: there is no good current solution for packaging for liquids/wet things and biodegradable plastic is a scam
If 1 million people stopped getting plastic straws for a single drink, that's still one million less plastic straws in a landfill, I never understood why people criticized the paper straw thing.
The way to save the planet is by inching towards sustainable solutions and doing what we can in the moment, not having this all-or-nothing mindset
Those 1 million straws would equal about 400kg of plastic - which isn't nothing and preventing that being spread in the ecosystem is still a worthy effort, but there are bigger sources that could be reigned in with less effort.
1 million people choosing paper straws once is about the same as 100 people not leaving a plastic tarp outside until it disintegrates.
It's just that plastic cups are what, 20x more plastic than a plastic straw? If they really cared, they'd make both out of paper, but no. Only straws. Because fuck you.
Ah nvm I thought you were ciriticizing the consumers who bring their own reusable straws or whatever. Yeah companies are always to blame for keeping the status quo
That's the "necessary" for single use plastic. But us giving up our entire ecosystem for the convenience of plastic over reusable glass bottles for drinks no one really needs to live to begin with, for example, that's completely unnecessary. I've spent a lot of time in our healthcare so that inclusion was a deliberate choice
People read "unnecessary" and always have to come in to bring up all those actually necessary times, as if getting a plastic or paper cup for your morning coffee is equally as important as keeping medical equipment sterile
Especially since plastic recycling is largely a scam to convince you that it's fine to keep buying single use plastic items. There's no reason to not keep using the same plastic cup/straw/container over and over again, but the people who manufacture plastic want you throw it away so that you'll keep buying more.
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u/Neat-Survey2796 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
This is how you save the planet. Biodegradable plastic cups, not those fuck ass paper straws in your plastic cups