Tag: plastic

Posted on by Tim Worstall

So We Didn’t Need To Ban Plastic Bags Then

Greenpeace finally tells us the truth about those single use plastic bags:

Lost and abandoned fishing gear which is deadly to marine life makes up the majority of large plastic pollution in the oceans, according to a report by Greenpeace.

More than 640,000 tonnes of nets, lines, pots and traps used in commercial fishing are dumped and discarded in the sea every year, the same weight as 55,000 double-decker buses.

This is entirely true, as we’ve reported more than once:

As Science Shows, It’s Fishing Gear, Not Plastic Bags, Causing Problems In The Oceans

And:

The second is the more fatuous answer.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Why Is Packaged Food Cheaper?

We have something called WRAP – Waste and Resources Action Programme – in the UK. They’re the people tasked with reducing waste across the economy. Sadly, they’re either idiots or woefully misinformed. For they fail the most basic economic test of the problem they’re supposedly there to deal with.

The perceptive – OK, all those not drooling morons – will grasp it immediately:

Supermarkets must ditch plastic packaging on fruit and vegetables and remove sell-by dates in order to reduce waste, a new government-backed report has said.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

You’ve Got It, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Is Both A Monomaniac And An Idiot

The latest bulletin from the frontline of the war for Gaia. Why is it that people in drunken crowds are served alcohol in plastic rather than glass?

What could possibly be the reason here? Any thoughts? The possibility that we consider 50 unstitched – because uncreated – Glasgae Smiles of more value than Flipper should be considered perhaps?

At which point we’ve Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall:

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has labeled the Edinburgh Fringe festival a ‘plastic nightmare’ after seeing venues give out plastic cups instead of reusable glasses over health and safety fears.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Lies, Lies, Yet More Lies About Plastics In The Ocean

We’re told that we must all stop using single use plastics because they all end up in the ocean choking the whales. This is not true but it’s said enough anyway. For the plastics that end up in the ocean don’t come from us. They come from Asia and Africa. So, we might think that this is an advance with The Guardian telling us that truth:

Following the Ganges upstream from where it empties in the Bay of Bengal to its source in the Himalayas, the National Geographic-backed expedition aims to better understand how plastic pollution travels from source to sea and provide solutions for reducing the amount that ends up in the world’s oceans.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

The Horrors Of Plastic On Henderson Island

The Guardian wishes to tell us of how awful this all is that a remote Pacific island has plastic on the beaches. Part of the Pitcairn group and uninhabited:

Henderson Island, uninhabited and a day’s sea crossing from the nearest sign of civilisation, should be an untouched paradise. Instead its beaches, which were awarded Unesco world heritage status in 1988, are a monument to humanity’s destructive, disposable culture. Along a 2.5km stretch of sandy beach, an estimated 18 tonnes of plastic has accumulated over decades at a rate of several thousand pieces of plastic every day.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Don’t Recycle Plastics – Burn Them

An excellent letter in The Observer. One that actually has the facts to hand, proposes the right policy. The only problem with it is that it’s a letter in The Observer, not a green or white paper from our governors. Who will, of course, pay absolutely no attention to this and will continue to do exactly the wrong thing:

We have been going the wrong way with plastics for the last 30 or more years (“Waste no more?

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

As Science Shows, It’s Fishing Gear, Not Plastic Bags, Causing Problems In The Oceans

That we should all stop using plastic bags has become a commonplace assertion of our times. That we should do so in order to stop the sharks and rays and whales from drowning is given as the reason. The problem with this is that it’s not the plastic bags causing the problems in the oceans:

Sharks are getting tangled up in plastic rubbish and dying in horrific pain, scientists reveal

OK, but which plastic rubbish?…

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Welcome To The New Food Fascism

That some people think we should use – or no – plastic in the supermarkets, well, fair enough. Freedom and liberty do mean differences of opinion are allowed.

Except, of course, that there are fascists in every line of work. Yea, even, whether we should use more or less plastic in the supermarkets:

The first key step towards this vision is widening the packaging-free philosophy to all stores of all the major supermarkets, and, crucially, not giving consumers who might resist change the option to stick with the polluting packaged goods that feel so familiar.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Yes, You’re Right, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Is An Idiot

We could be a little kinder here and declare instead that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is just a confirmation of Feynman’s Contention. That off their specialist subjects experts are just as dumb as the rest of us. But why the hell be kind? Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is an idiot.

Take this from his latest crusade:

But what they all wanted most was simply to come home with less plastic when they did their regular supermarket shop. But the stores are not making that easy.

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Posted on by Tim Worstall

Thank God We’re Leaving – EU Bans Single Use Plastics

Well, thank God we’re leaving at some point in some as yet to be determined manner for the European Union has just done another silly thing – banned single use plastics. There’s the point itself, which is that single use plastics are, often enough but not always, the least resource hungry ways of doing something. That is, we save resources by using them instead of paper, or cotton, or whatever. The second and more important thing is the underlying point.…

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