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| Air travelers to and from the City by the Bay will now experience water in new ways. Starting Tuesday, those wishing to hydrate at San Francisco International Airport will have to drink from a water fountain, bring their own reusable bottle or prepare to buy an airport-approved glass or aluminum water bottle. The airport is adding plastic water bottles to its list of restricted food service items as part of an effort to become the world's first zero-waste airport by 2021. According to the nonprofit Zero Waste Alliance, that means diverting at least 90% of waste from landfills and incinerators by recycling and composting. What the ban includes Purified water, carbonated or sparkling water, mineral water and electrolyte-enhanced water are all officially banned. This means airport vendors, including vending machines, can no longer sell or provide free bottled water in a plastic bottle, a sealed box, can or other container intended primarily for single-service use and having a capacity of 1 liter or less. Vendors will be able to sell or provide reusable recyclable aluminum, glass and certified compostable water products, according to the airport. Travelers also have the option of bringing empty disposable plastic water bottles to fill up at any of the airport's approximately 100 free water fountains and hydration stations. |
So I spilled half of it all over myself for the enviroment
11 more yrs and I am looking for another state
the alternative very possibly has a much higher carbon footprint to produce making the ban not even a net positive (unless people reuse the alternate receptacle 55 times or something like that)
but it makes people feel good.
Meanwhile you can't walk down the street in many SF neighborhoods without risk of stepping in human feces or drug needles because their cost of living is so high they have an out of control homeless problem.
but, hey, they're green.
That's some Golden City...
I have no faith that will be the case.
I have a Vapur collapsible water "bottle" for travel. It's pretty nice to have in your carry-on.
Yes, I watched it and every time they want to pull at people's heart strings they just need to show a sea turtle stuck in a 6-pack ring or with a straw stuck in it's shell.
but these measures are more knee jerk than substantive usually.
Here is a blurb from the World Resources Institute:
It’s encouraging that local governments are focusing on passing laws to fight plastic litter. Unfortunately, while these laws may reduce the most visible form of plastic pollution, it could be at the expense of other environmental impacts. That’s because, somewhat ironically, disposable plastic bags require fewer resources (land, water, CO2 emissions, etc.) to produce than paper, cotton or reusable plastic bags—by a wide margin.
For example, Denmark’s Ministry of Environment and Food found that you would need to reuse a paper bag at least 43 times for its per-use environmental impacts to be equal to or less than that of a typical disposable plastic bag used one time. An organic cotton bag must be reused 20,000 times to produce less of an environmental impact than a single-use plastic bag. That would be like using a cotton bag every day for nearly 55 years. (Note that these figures aggregate the bags’ impact on water use, CO2 emissions, land use and more, but they do not include their impact on plastic pollution.)
Banning plastic straws is also increasingly popular. Starbucks recently announced that it would phase out use of plastic straws by the year 2020. Straws don’t provide as much utility as bags, so for many this is an easy adjustment.
But these bans leave the impression that they solve the plastics pollution problem without much discussion of systematic solutions. As a society, we should think holistically about the products we use and their impacts. We can’t just ban bad products—we must invest in alternatives....
You would think box water or canned/glass bottle water would still be ok.
At the end of the day, it would be a hell of a lot easier to just ban plastic drinks and make everyone use cans; water, soda, whatever.
Next problem to be solved: other drinks. No solution in place yet. That's going to take a while. In the meantime, do what you can do.
no, we can't just instantly become environmentally sound and fix all the problems we've created in the past 100 years with one new policy. This is akin to "we can't solve everything so why try anything..."
It has to begin somewhere, and people need to make positive steps. Bottled water is one of the most atrocious violators in the climate crisis...it's an incredibly stupid and wasteful use of resources and causes immense environmental damage. It should be our first target.
Thank God someone is doing something positive.
60 minutes, L0L ...did mike Wallace’s ghost chase down a water bottle drinker? Did they get the viewpoint of a enviro-woke junkie street-crapper? Lol. Im sure they exposed the unregulated/untreated waste that flows out of Chinese and Indian waterways...No? Lol
Quote:
They talked about the plastic epidemic. Seems like every body of water is contaminated with plastic and it's having an adverse effect on the wildlife. It's really sad to see.
Yes, I watched it and every time they want to pull at people's heart strings they just need to show a sea turtle stuck in a 6-pack ring or with a straw stuck in it's shell.
but these measures are more knee jerk than substantive usually.
Here is a blurb from the World Resources Institute:
Quote:
....Where Plastic Bans Fall Short
It’s encouraging that local governments are focusing on passing laws to fight plastic litter. Unfortunately, while these laws may reduce the most visible form of plastic pollution, it could be at the expense of other environmental impacts. That’s because, somewhat ironically, disposable plastic bags require fewer resources (land, water, CO2 emissions, etc.) to produce than paper, cotton or reusable plastic bags—by a wide margin.
For example, Denmark’s Ministry of Environment and Food found that you would need to reuse a paper bag at least 43 times for its per-use environmental impacts to be equal to or less than that of a typical disposable plastic bag used one time. An organic cotton bag must be reused 20,000 times to produce less of an environmental impact than a single-use plastic bag. That would be like using a cotton bag every day for nearly 55 years. (Note that these figures aggregate the bags’ impact on water use, CO2 emissions, land use and more, but they do not include their impact on plastic pollution.)
Banning plastic straws is also increasingly popular. Starbucks recently announced that it would phase out use of plastic straws by the year 2020. Straws don’t provide as much utility as bags, so for many this is an easy adjustment.
But these bans leave the impression that they solve the plastics pollution problem without much discussion of systematic solutions. As a society, we should think holistically about the products we use and their impacts. We can’t just ban bad products—we must invest in alternatives....
Doesn't forcing a ban increase investment to find an alternate solution? I'm sure there are people who will now invest in finding a more ecological solution to this because now there is more demand..
Why don't they do this for all beverages? Simple - it's logistically easier. They can provide you all the free water you want. They can't do the same for soft drinks.
They're solving a small part of a much larger problem. Single use plastics are a huge problem. It's not a PC issue, it's not an 'agenda' where people weaponize cute animals to fool you. In this past year alone, Asia (for the most part, China) has stopped taking plastics for recycling (mainly because they were just burning or burying them) and now they're starting to pile up. There's a fucking continent of plastic floating around the Pacific. This is global warming all over again - how obvious does a problem have to get before people can look at it and say 'hey, maybe we should try to do something about this before it's too late?'
Why don't they do this for all beverages? Simple - it's logistically easier. They can provide you all the free water you want. They can't do the same for soft drinks.
They're solving a small part of a much larger problem. Single use plastics are a huge problem. It's not a PC issue, it's not an 'agenda' where people weaponize cute animals to fool you. In this past year alone, Asia (for the most part, China) has stopped taking plastics for recycling (mainly because they were just burning or burying them) and now they're starting to pile up. There's a fucking continent of plastic floating around the Pacific. This is global warming all over again - how obvious does a problem have to get before people can look at it and say 'hey, maybe we should try to do something about this before it's too late?'
Aside from that if the snowflakes here want to make a symbolic gesture to save the whales or whatever, why not ban plastic bottles in the City of San Francisco rather than the airport ? That would be a lot more practical. In the City people could carry their own containers. Thats not a realistic option at the airport. The TSA and passengers have enough to worry about without bringing an extra container just to be PC.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/702501726/where-will-your-plastic-trash-go-now-that-china-doesnt-want-it - ( New Window )
Why don't they do this for all beverages? Simple - it's logistically easier. They can provide you all the free water you want. They can't do the same for soft drinks.
They're solving a small part of a much larger problem. Single use plastics are a huge problem. It's not a PC issue, it's not an 'agenda' where people weaponize cute animals to fool you. In this past year alone, Asia (for the most part, China) has stopped taking plastics for recycling (mainly because they were just burning or burying them) and now they're starting to pile up. There's a fucking continent of plastic floating around the Pacific. This is global warming all over again - how obvious does a problem have to get before people can look at it and say 'hey, maybe we should try to do something about this before it's too late?'
this is not addressing the root cause, it's addressing a symptom.
like you say China stopped taking our plastic waste in January, and because they had been taking our plastic waste it allowed technology and corporate America to ignore plastic waste. it was someone else's problem.
now corporate America and technology will figure this out.
almost all the plastic water bottles consumers can access are recyclable. the problem is the infrastructure is not prevalent and it's more costly than alternatives (like shipping the waste to China).
I agree we should do something, there are many obvious changes that can be done that you don't even need to rely on politics to believe in, but half-assed measures designed to meet a "pat yourself on the back" standard (first zero waste airport) are in a lot of ways potentially more detrimental than good.
Isn’t it much better for concerned citizens to decide to stop purchasing single use plastics, out of concern for the environment? It’s also fine for any private business to decide not to offer single use plastics. Starbucks phasing out plastic straws for example, replacing with wooden stirrers is perfect.
Why should NYC tell me how much salt or sugar I can eat? That’s up to me to decide.
...because cutting down trees is better
...because cutting down trees is better
Yes that’s right. With careful forestry management, making use of a renewable resource like wood is far better ecologically than producing new plastics.
Isn’t it much better for concerned citizens to decide to stop purchasing single use plastics, out of concern for the environment? It’s also fine for any private business to decide not to offer single use plastics. Starbucks phasing out plastic straws for example, replacing with wooden stirrers is perfect.
Why should NYC tell me how much salt or sugar I can eat? That’s up to me to decide.
Plastic is a health menace. Efforts to limit plastic waste by moral suasion have failed. I'm ok with taking it to level of legal restrictions and bans. So far that doesn't threaten my way of life, or anyone's way of life as far as I can tell, in any important way. If it does, maybe I'll reconsider.
Might I have to use wax paper instead of Saran Wrap? Ok. Glass leftover containers with silicone lids instead of Ziploc bags? Ok. I like Saran Wrap and Ziploc bags, and I'll miss them, but that's not important. I am fine with paper straws. I grew up with them, and Coke tasted just as good before my first plastic straw. I just got a metal straw as swag; even better.
And the energy and resources to make things supposedly safer for the usually don’t. I’d the waste and cost
Of long lasting blight bulbs
And lastly how many people use cloth diapers?
San Franbis the epitome of stupid useless gestures. But they feel good about themselves by passing stupid laws that make them feel good. The residents deserve to get shit on. They vote in these
Guys
And this whole bottled water thing is absurd and needs to end anyway. Most of these brands are nothing but purified tap water and stupidly expensive. Yeah, you can get 40 half liter bottles for $4.50 or $225 per 1000 liters (1 ton). In United Arab Emirates I would buy 1000 liters(1 ton) of water(bulk) for $2.50 - yes about 1% of what people are paying for bottled water. That water was all desalinated - made from seawater and purified. Saudi Arabia was $16 per ton, Oman was $4.50 per ton. Again 1 ton equals 1000 liters or 2000 bottles.(Examples just to show the absurdity of what bottled water costs).
Next thing you know they are going to ban incandescent bulbs! Un-AMERICAN -
We should be able to consume whatever, whenever we want!
No lifestyle changes, period. Write a letter of apology to your grand kids - to be opened in 25 years. We were too fat and happy to make changes.
Next thing you know they are going to ban incandescent bulbs! Un-AMERICAN -
We should be able to consume whatever, whenever we want!
No lifestyle changes, period. Write a letter of apology to your grand kids - to be opened in 25 years. We were too fat and happy to make changes. [/quote]
Tired of that talking point, in reality. Technology changes so fast that what you see today will have changed 3 times in 25 years. Again, until the Asian continent changes itself nothing will get better - even if I do believe plastic throw away bottles are frivolous and any reduction is helpful.
We are destroying the planet. People do not live in harmony with nature, they destroy nature to live apart from it and in comfort. Nature WILL cause a correction if people do not do it first. The only question is how many species will be extinct; what will be left when that correction happens.
My thinking is that food supply/famine will be the impetus, and people and MAYBE governments will cause violence to get it. But the government will always ensure they are well-fed before anyone else.
I imagine we have 50-80 years of fooling ourselves we can continue down this path whistlin' dixie.
People are so worried about climate change, and while that may be a concern, the real concern, IMV, is too many people increasingly competing for dwindling resources (and wildlife left out of the equation altogether). We are digging our own graves.
FWIW, goes back to my point on Asia needing to clean up its' mess. About half of the world population are in 2 countries that just happen to be some of the most polluted without any sign of controlling their population growth(or pollution) - China did for a couple decades anyway.
I'm all for ending pollution, but until the two biggest polluters start to help, what we do is a drop in the bucket.
Basically people throw anything into the recycle bins and it becomes a fairly high burden for the recycling companies to separate out the good from the bad and complete the recycling process.
The company that offers recycling in our neighborhood discontinued it last month, so the burden is now on people to recycle on their own by taking things to the dump.
I would think that this change, even in a town of 30,000 people would have as much of an effect as eliminating water bottles in the SFO airport.
I still think a lot of measures are taken more to say people are thinking "green" rather than having specific goals or outcomes or compliance in mind.