Oil states thwart agreement on plastics

Treaties in general aren't the best way to deal with anything. At best they're virtue signaling, at worst they're just misleading.

The countries which benefit the most from ignoring the paper will ignore it in the shadows, then in the light, to the point they just unilaterally denounce it and do their own thing. You can't "stimulate" a country's representatives to care about something unless you give them an equally important incentive, carrot or stick. The stick doesn't work with powerful countries, and the carrot is usually too expensive.

So the methods employed to negotiate and agree on a treaty's text are even less meaningful.

> When will we start to see that it is the communication protocols that are driving this failure, and that good-faith bargaining is a fallacy, when there is profit to be made?

There isn't anything here to suggest countries are bargaining in bad faith, they seem to be pretty up front about what they want and why they want it. And I don't see why there is a presupposition that an anti-plastic treaty is a good idea. Plastic is clearly of enormous value to society, and the linked treaty draft looks a bit wishy-washy.

> Parties shall cooperate in order to prevent disputes and shall seek to settle any dispute between them concerning the interpretation or application of this Convention through negotiation or other peaceful means of their own choice.

The section on settling disputes looks like gainful employment for a veritable office of lawyers with too much free time. I see that this is all backed by the threat of rendering a report if parties can't find common ground. That is so soft that I expect anyone operating in bad faith would just sign on to the treaty then ignore it.

I am actually working on a plastic free toothpaste alternative, we are planning to launch in the next few months. Its not a paste but rather tooth tablets that you crush with your teeth and as they dissolve you brush your teeth as you would normally. Zero plastic, refillable aluminum container, refill packaging made out of paper, and we plan to put free floss and toothbrush for the monthly subscription. Do you want me to add you to our waitlist? Deliquify.com is our website that i hacked together very quickly, but we will rebrand soon.

It's very much a matter of of marketing. I think the explanation for why partially hydrogenated oils have been replaced is because there was a viable alternative (palm oil, mainly) and no one was devious enough or saw profit in countering the honest narrative that they were hurting everyone's health. That's unlike tobacco or oil industry games. They spend as much as needed to protect their profits, consequences be damned. More importantly, I think, plastics are actually wonderful materials and the cost of overproducing is hard to convince people of. It's like the abuse of antibiotics or CO2 pollution. Some people try being alarmist to compensate for how little most people care about these serious problems. But most people go on uninformed or just don't care, even if they are informed.

I tried to find a coffee maker once. There's one automated product in the $1000 price range. I just use my all metal french press.

FYI: They do sell cotton dental floss in paper packaging.

Also, here's an unintuitive thing people may not be aware of. Beverages in glass bottles contain about 10x the dissolved plastics in the liquid. This is believe to be from the paint and coatings used on the cap.

A friend of mine developed a metal toothbrush + a recycling system for its brush heads: https://trynada.com/

Plastic is magic. Non-reactive, sterile, cheap, strong, lightweight, an electrical isolator. Using something like metal instead of it is complete utter madness from a product design standpoint. Something like corn based PLA is probably still the more cost effective option.

Think of the package designers! Honestly, I worked on a team with "Package Designers" back in the early 2000s... they were consumer junkies, looooathed blister packs, but wouldnt hesitate to overuse plastic to promote their fancy visual designs that went into labels.

First world probs. Check who uses Dental Floss in the rest of the world.

This is the correct answer. It's really sad to see that the west is just a propaganda machine. We don't need the oil states to end plastic or whatnot in our countries. But we sure love to point fingers at various nations in search of a scapegoat.

European petrochemical industry is actively expanding its plastic production.

Seeing China criticize Gulf states for torpedoing the agreement is sure something.

EU only cares to the degree that is necessary to virtue signal to its citizens.

They are still buying natural gas from Russia at record levels lmao.

ffs: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_science

things like polynesian ocean navigation methods, and various land management practices to creat fire breaks, and promote different species benificial to there needs, inuit technolgy's that are very specialised for survival in the far north, and include the totaly indipendent development of the screw thread fastener, other far north technologys exist accross the polar regions. There is a very very ling list of things that were explored and refined, and developed into the basic framework that we call science now.....ceramics are ancient, but were developed many times in far flung places through ,what apears to be an inate drive to understand and explore our world, test our ideas and impliment those in some way benificial to our survival and comfort. They has science, that existed in a pure meritocracy,certain studys into lithic ,pigment, and fibre technologys have outlasted the species that started them, but have been continious and in some sense are ongoing today more than 1 million years later....no break. As there is now mountains of video of other species useing tools and solving problems, the question for "modern science" is to find out how much specific information is pre loaded into our DNA, along with the drive to find more information. Which then begs the question is "science" instinctual rather than a process?

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You are not wrong. We tend to zoom in on on the wrong problems. Most of continental Europe produces a lot of waste. Almost none of that ends up in the oceans. The problem exists mostly in coastal areas with a lack of legislation and rules or just a generally a sloppy attitude to cleaning up. And shipping in international waters. Once you are in international waters, there are very little rules and essentially no enforcement. Most of the problems in our oceans come from very specific countries and shipping just dumping their waste directly in the oceans. The problem is not the oil industry but some countries not managing their waste effectively.

Of course the best thing is just not having one time use plastics to begin with. But we tend to over-emphasize the problem and focus on the wrong parts. People using e.g. straws in their drinks is maybe unnecessary but in tons of plastic it's a very minor part of the actual problem. Especially if most of it goes into the trash and ends up in a landfill or incinerator. E.g. People using plastic or paper straws in Berlin makes no measurable impact. It's all very symbolic. The Spree, the main river that runs through Berlin and the only way trash could physically make it to oceans, has been pretty clean since the DDR stopped dumping toxic waste into it a few decades ago. I don't think rule changes in recent years for one time use plastics made any measurable difference.

It's more of a problem on beaches and near coastal areas where some people can't be bothered to clean up after themselves. You see the same on public roads or train tracks where people just toss their crap out of the window. This is the root of the problem: too many people just do the wrong thing without even thinking about it.

IMHO littering fines and more effective enforcement would be very appropriate and should be fairly uncontroversial. If people are being jerks, just treat them as such. Shame them into doing the right thing. Inconvenience them. Etc. Littering is a choice. And it should have consequences. And when people know there might be consequences, they usually adapt. Other things that work are deposits on bottles and cans. Making people separate their trash.

And then go after the big polluters and force them via tariffs, trade restrictions, etc. to do better.

You are ignoring the other problems with plastics. Microplastics in the environment, greenhouse gas emissions, and health problems from plasticizer chemicals.

I doubt either of those is really possible. The worst offenders are countries with little resources for enforcement (at least unless it threatens tourism income). It’s still needed, but at the same time we have to work towards a big reduction in our addiction to expendable, single-use plastic products. Disposal of plastic by burning cannot be a long-term solution, either, as long as almost all of it is made of fossil hydrocarbons.

> Plastics aren't a problem if people actually put them in the bin, and they are buried / recycled / burned.

Only 9% of all plastics ever produced has been recycled. 100% is impossible due to the various composite materials that exist.

Landfills don't work in many places in the world due to lack of space and are expensive, hard to manage and come with methane emissions. Burning is obviously the same as burning fossil fuels and cannot happen if we want to keep our planet habitable. It also happens almost always in poor communities that suffer health consequences because of it.

Even if the disposal was somehow magically solved, we still have the problem with production. Plastics are a lifeline to the fossil fuel industry and are expected to account for more than a third of the growth in world oil demand to 2030. Cracker plants for plastics production are also usually placed near communities of colour or in developing countries and create toxic conditions for life around them.

Plastics are a problem. Regardless of the disposal.

It is a problem even with 100% recycling if we are talking about food.

You can say the same about everything that’s going to end up killing us all