I used to work in a warehouse that made a HUGE deal about the employees using the proper recycling bin so the company can get a nice check from somewhere or other for “going green”
This warehouse recieved thousands of pallets every day.
Each pallet is wrapped with hundreds of square feet of plastic wrap.
Each box is individually wrapped with maybe 10ftsq-50 depending on size.
Each box contains goods in plastic bags. Many of them with plastic clamshell packaging.
The products get unwrapped, and placed in larger boxes on shelves.
When the items get distributed to stores, the items were put in plastic bags, boxed up and wrapped in plastic wrap, boxes placed on pallets that were automatically wrapped by machines in hundreds of square feet of plastic.
None of the plastic from the warehouse floor is separated from the general waste.
Remember, it’s your responsibility to reduce waste.
I loathe the trend to blame the end consumer for their waste and eliminate very publicly visible things like straws when the vast majority is caused by industry every step of the way. The amount of plastic I see in retail garbage bins is sickening, and the average customer has no clue because it’s all long before anything ends up on the shelf.
Then people stop using plastic cutlery and think they’re helping the planet meanwhile it’s just a facade to keep the real wasters off their radar.
Also, I would LOVE to buy stuff not wrapped in plastic, but it doesn’t exist. There are no glass bottles of milk anymore, no soy-butcher
glass costs and weighs significantly more than plastic
It’d be great if more and more companies packaged their foods through EcoEnclose or similar.
It’d be even better if this was made default by legislation that eliminates the need for good will.
I work in healthcare and sometimes I think about the amount of waste I generate in a day and it’s wild
Plastic recycling in the home is basically a scam, but at the scale of a hospital where you’re generating large amounts of the same (known) plastic that’s going in its own bin, it’s much easier to recycle. I just bought a bunch of recycled PET that mostly came from medical waste.
I mean, I’ve worked at a number of hospitals in the US and never seen a recycling receptacle for our waste. Our waste either goes in a biohazard bag to be incinerated, sharps containers to be disposed of (altho not sure in what way), or a regular trash can to presumably in a landfill.
Not sure if other countries are different, but I can’t imagine they sort through our biohazard waste bags for plastic materials.
Its a matter of scale. If labs went through pipette tips the same way that fast food joints went through plastic straws, they’d be banned too.
And we don’t throw pipette tips in the ocean, we throw them in the biohazard box. While not better for the environment, at least we don’t choke baby turtles.
The lab is a much more controlled environment. I trust a lab tech to dispose of the tips as per protocol, which could reduce the number of tips that end up as litter.
No they wouldn’t. Banning straws is politically expedient, not effective policy. Straws are a tiny drop in the bucket of plastic waste. But they’re visible, largely optional, and have alternatives. It’s easy to make them look bad so a politician can look big by banning them. Your average person can feel like they’re making a difference by buying a reusable straw. The industrial scale plastic waste that happens out of sight is allowed to continue because nobody cares about actually doing anything. Everyone wants to feel like they’re doing something.
To avoid plastic waste, they use now paper straws …wrapped individualy in plastic. Genius
People in America who use pipet tips: probably 10k People who use plastic straws: 300 mil
Straws don’t pollute the oceans if you throw them in the trash. Well, unless that trash gets processed badly. Where I live trash gets burned. So I make sure to throw some straws in the river so the sea turtles can do coke off each others backs 😎
Good luck choking sea turtles by throwing straws in the river. The only turtles you’ll choke that way are the river turtles
Where do you think the river goes?
Who cares? out of sight, out of mind.
The river turtles collect the plastic straws and bring them downstream to the sea turtles. Basic nature stuff.
Plastic nowadays is inevitable, but at least the use of biodegradable plastic made from modified natural pulps is growing. Plastic is just a generic term for artificial materials and not all of them are harmful, and a lot of these also can be easy recycled. PET are often converted to filaments for 3D printers or yarns for clothing. Bad only if they are thrown into nature or into the sea
Ah, but you must see that recycling costs money! It’s cheaper to pretend you’re recycling and just throw it in the oceans and rivers and landscapes!
I hate it here. We even throw out online returns nearly 100% of the time for all it’s worth, it’s fucking crazy.
deleted by creator
Like seriously, we save SO much money on tips.
Researchers shouldn’t have to live off of tips.
I recently saw paper straws for sale in a carboard box with a cutout so you could physically touch the straws. Naturally, I was revolted.
Simple. Don’t throw them in the ocean. Why are you throwing them in the ocean?
deleted by creator
I feel like you might be doing something wrong.
Multi-channel pipette goes brrrrrr
Having to dispense a different volume to every sample goes faaaaack.
That’s why you use pipetting robots. Just sit back and watch the show.
Also used a heap of tips (unless it’s the kind that washes, those are weird)
I know. They’re definitely not environment friendly. Still much better than manual pipetting.
It takes the resources it takes. Can’t just go “we’re stopping doing science because it uses plastic, sorry everyone”.
Yeah. True. I’m a programmer of those things and I make an effort to be as efficient as possible with tips, ie mixing with the same tip and compensating accuracy for it. It’s more difficult but worth the effort imo.
Also reuse for things like reagents makes a big difference.
