Tag: plastics

Posted on by Tim Worstall

If Only The Guardian Understood Numbers – Fat Chance

As we know the arts graduates that produce The Guardian don’t understand numbers in the slightest. That’s why we get the tosh from them that we do. An example today being the damage done to human welfare by plastics in the seas. This doesn’t even make sense in the numbers they themselves quote:

Plastic pollution in the world’s oceans costs society billions of dollars every year in damaged and lost resources, research has found. Fisheries, aquaculture, recreational activities and global wellbeing are all negatively affected by plastic pollution, with an estimated 1-5% decline in the benefit humans derive from oceans.

… See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Environmentalism – Wasting Our Most Limited, Precious, Resource, Our Time

The core belief of environmentalism is that we face a world of scarce resources so we’d better go about conserving them. In this the idea is no different from economics, we face a universe of scarce resources how best can we use them? The acknowledgement of scarcity being written into the very basics of economics, something that’s not scarce isn’t even an economic good.

The point that environmentalism fails upon and economics doesn’t is the consideration of our most precious, scarce, resource, our own time.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Is Liberty Vittert Actually This Stupid – Making Money By Recycling Plastics

Liberty Vittert is rather the public face of a certain sort of science these days. Statistical science, and she was on the judging panel of the Royal Statistical Society for what was to be called the International Statistic of the Year. Obviously enough this would be something about the environment, for what international meeting of the Great and the Good isn’t these days? The number they came up with is that 90.5% of all plastics have not been recycled.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

International Statistic Of The Year – 90.5% Of All Plastics Aren’t Recycled

From The Conversation:

This year, I served on the judging panel for The Royal Statistical Society’s International Statistic of the Year.

On Dec. 18, we announced the winner: 90.5 percent, the amount of plastic that has never been recycled. Okay – but why is that such a big deal?

Much like Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year” competition, the international statistic is meant to capture the zeitgeist of this year. The judging panel accepted nominations from the statistical community and the public at large for a statistic they feel shines a light on today’s most pressing issues.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

A New £1 Billion Tax Says We Shouldn’t Recycle Plastics

Sure we should recycle some things and equally certainly we shouldn’t recycle others. The trick is in knowing what falls into which class. Even, to have a method of deciding that difficult point. To an economist this is easy, recycle where recycling adds value, don’t where it doesn’t. That simplicity meaning that this recent decision by the government proves we should not be recycling plastic. It’s the very fact that they want to raise £1 billion in tax in order to fund the recycling which shows we shouldn’t be doing the plastics recycling.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

EU Tries Rampant Stupidity Over Single Use Plastics – Banning Them

The European Union Parliament has decided, in a fit of virtue signalling, to entirely fail Chesterton’s Fence. For they’ve decided to ban single use plastics. Without actually thinking why it is that we use plastics in the first place we cannot work out whether we should still be using them now, can we?

The European Parliament on Wednesday backed a wide-ranging proposal to ban the use of single-use plastics across the European Union.

The ban includes a full prohibition of plastic plates and utensils, cotton swabs, straws and drink stirrers and calls for reduced use of plastic cups and other similar food packaging products, according to the BBC.

… See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

The UN’s Erik Solheim Is Wrong – We Do Have Infinite Landfill Space For Plastic Wastes

One of the current passing fashions that mystifies is this demonisation of plastics. It’s simply very difficult to understand how people arrive at the conclusion that we’ve all got to stop using the stuff. Sure, we don’t want it all clogging up the oceans but that’s a waste management problem, not something to drive the abolition of the use in the first place. There are two arguments put forward to insist upon reducing plastics use, despite and over and above that waste management problem, both of which are wrong.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Cute Statistic – So Remote The Closest Humans Are On The Space Station

The Guardian tells us of Point Nemo, a place so remote that often enough the closest human beings are those on the International Space Station. I for one rather doubt that statistic, as Point Nemo is in the Great Pacific Gyre. And judging by the number of reports we get from Greenpeace and the like about the plastics floating about there I’m certain that there must be boatloads of hippies permanently in place. If, you know, we want to include hippies among a wider definition of humans.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

What Is This Drivel About Australia Profiting From Recycling?

There’s something about recycling that stops brains from working. Recycling costs money – the sort we’re all urged to do at least does. So, how can we profit from doing something which costs us money? And yes, the land of people standing on their heads suffers from this just as much as the rest of the world. Consider this in The Age:

We can profit from the recycling crisis

This simply cannot be true. China has decided to stop taking Australian rubbish.…

See More
Posted on by Tim Worstall

Why The Heck Does Josh Frydenberg Want To Do More Plastics Recycling?

Those with a modicum of economic training will be hard put to understand this story out of Australia. Recycling plastics has just got more expensive. So, therefore, the Federal environment minister, Josh Frydenburg, is insisting that everyone must recycle plastics more.

What? Even, whut?

No, no, demand curves slope downwards, when things become more expensive we do less of them, not more. It’s only in religion that we are urged to do even more of the more difficult things.…

See More