OT China stopping plastic waste imports.

[Max Demian]

What do the greenies expect us to do? Go back to cotton and linen shirts and sheets? Or homespun woollen smocks?

[Tim Streater]

I already only use cotton shirts and sheets.

[harry]

They have near slave labour. It's sorted manually.

[harry]

There's no alternative.

[alan_m]

Ban the use of washing machines?

[Chris Hogg]

AIUI it's not always the fault of the food manufacturer, but there is/was legislation that required a minimum of two layers of packaging on some foods. With the toughness of modern plastic films, I would think that unnecessary these days, if indeed it's still a legal requirement.

But most domestic foul water, including discharge from washing machines, is returned to the sewage works for cleaning up, often to potable standards. Is it that those sewage works that discharge into rivers don't filter out the micro-plastics that you're referring to? And severely reducing the use of plastic bags, drinking straws, cotton buds or whatever isn't going to change the composition of the discharge from washing machines.

[Jethro_uk]

All of which require *vast* natural resources that we don't have.

It's an unpopular view (in some circles). But the bottom line is there are too many humans for the available resources. Stories like the OP could be considered gentle nudges from Nature to sort ourselves out.

It's up to us ... we either find a way, or Nature will - no skin off their nose. I'm sure there are plenty of really nasty pandemics that can be cooked up to kill off half the humans alive.

[Bertie Doe]

About 5 years ago, there was a beeb documentary about a Chinese entrepreneur who spotted Chinese container ships arriving in the UK and leaving - empty. No surprises there.

Can't remember her name but she formed a company and "bought" our plastic waste and sent it home. They turned it into nylon thread and sold it to clothes manufacturers. Needless to say, she became a multi millionaire.

[Bertie Doe]

Sorry, it was Polyester NOT Nylon :-

[Jethro_uk]

Well I'm surprised. Empty cargo transport is the antichrist. No sane company would allow it if there was any way to avoid it.

When I worked in logistics, there was a reason the tramping module was a premium plugin. It was what almost everyone wanted.

(Mind you, who knows anything about why Liverpool was the richest city in the world, and more importantly, *why* ?)

[Bertie Doe]

Collapse of Hanjin didn't help. If they lose MSC / Maersk, it'll be curtains for Felixstowe :-

[Chris Green]

That report is from October 2016, well over a year ago.

[Bertie Doe]

True but 6 months ago "10,000 empty containers ..... with no immediate prospect of shifting them"

Other ports have problems (on a smaller scale), with ships "cutting and running" i.e. they are so far behind schedule, they leave the empties behind.

[newshound]

Agreed.

Everywhere seems to be different, but here in Gloucestershire we have four streams: landfill, food waste, paper/cardboard, and tins+glass+ "bulk" plastic.

Food waste is new, this goes to a digester, I think. I read somewhere that only paper/cardboard is an actual net earner, tins/glass/plastic is just less expensive than landfill.

There is a big incinerator being built (with much public opposition).

Presumably tins easily go into iron and aluminium recycling. Glass is I think crushed and put into building or road aggregate. No idea what they currently do with plastic (send to China?) but could be incinerated and potentially generate some electricity. PE and PP can go into low grade structural stuff, I think PET can be turned into fleeces.

[tim...]

This is normal

it's why second hand containers bought for other purposes are so cheap

tim