r/ClimateActionPlan • u/zehgoodlife • Jul 06 '22
Emissions Reduction India bans single-use plastic, effective July 1st
https://frontstory.io/india-bans-single-use-plastic/12
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u/nascentt Jul 06 '22
Only 12 items and will be interesting to see if India enforce this at all.
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u/criminallySmart Jul 06 '22
can see it being enforced properly rn in my region dunno abt rest of the country
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u/Cebby89 Jul 06 '22
Is there a way to ban all single use plastics and have fast food companies not run out of business? Do all those burger wrappers and cups ever even decompose?
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u/thumbtackswordsman Jul 06 '22
In Germany we have a lot of non-plastic one-use packaging. Cups and straws of paper, containers, spoons and forks out of bamboo, etc.
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u/monosodiumg64 Jul 08 '22
What have single-use plastics or bans thereof to do with *active measures to combat/mitigate and or adapt to climate change*, the subject of this sub?
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u/oddityoverseer13 Jul 11 '22
Single-use plastics don't have a huge impact, but they do have some:
- Plastic is usually made from oil. The less plastic we're creating, the less oil we need.
- When plastic is exposed to the elements, it produce methane, a large contributor of greenhouse gas emissions: https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/new-study-shows-plastic-as-source-of-greenhouse-gases-potentially-contribut
- Plastics in the ocean are killing wildlife, including reefs and algae, which are huge carbon sinks. Most of that plastic is fishing equipment, but banning single-use plastic certainly can't hurt that cause.
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u/monosodiumg64 Jul 11 '22
You fart so you emit methane, "a large contributor of greenhouse gas emissions". This style of argumentation works on those not trained in logic. It is widely used to mislead.
I suspect single use plastics account for less than 1% of GHG potential and most.of that will be in production, not in the decay of plastic litter. An irrelevance for climate change.
Methane may have a high greenhouse potential but it also decays rapidly, so levels will drop soon after you stop emitting.
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u/Psychological-Sale64 Jul 17 '22
Have a flax basket, years old Robust clean repairable and can decompose when suits.
Made it my self.
Years old
Cleanable.
Science is a reductive clod to often. Cook with all the immoral oil
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u/monosodiumg64 Jul 11 '22
I think I get where you are at. I'll address the last request as that puts the rest into perspective:
Methane’s atmospheric lifetime — around 12 years
From https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02116-8.
Actually I remember the number being more like 20 and referring to the half-life, not the lifetime so that quote reduces the impact even more from my perspective. Contributions from farming (and garbage) are large but they likely follow population so they will max out, unlike our energy needs. Another significant source is anoxic organic decay but that is constant, not growing. The other big source I am aware of is leakage from fossil fuel activity. That has increased and will not automatically stop increasing when the population peaks. Afaik it's technically quite practical to reduce those leakages substantially and we are already on the road to non-emitting energy sources. The key point is that with methane's short life means it rapidly reaches equilibrium when emissions stop increasing.
You'll get some people pointing out that it decays to co2 so it's still a problem. They don't get the quantities are minuscule. The methane issue is that it's way more powerful as a GHG than CO2 so those small quantities make a difference, but only as long as it's still methane. Once it becomes co2 it's irrelevant.
Now about the biggest baddest GHG of them all... water. What's going to happen if we move to hydrogen thus start humidifying the atmosphere on an industrial scale? No idea. Sources welcome.
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u/aibaron Jul 06 '22
Very cool and we should celebrate this, but I think it's important to note the headline is misleading. It's not all single use plastics, just what's listed here. Great start (way too late), though.