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Scientists built a solar reactor that eats plastic bottles and burps out clean hydrogen . . .at scale.
(www.anthropocenemagazine.org)
this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
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We could ALSO stop producing and using so much damn plastic. Just sayin'.
The problem isnt plastic, the problem is a disposable society.
as long as we have a disposable society, we're gonna generate monstrous piles of of waste. And its gonna be the same for whatever replaces plastic, and then we'll be having these conversations about that material.
No, the problem is definitely that we produce anything at all out of plastic that doesn't strictly require it for whatever reason. Some medical applications are probably good examples. Anything that doesn't strictly need to be plastic just grinds down to microplastics, contributing to their pollution of every last environment we check on earth. Every plastic product produced is one in which a business has forced their externalities onto the rest of society instead of addressing them themselves.
I like plastic pipes. They're not strictly necessary, but I figure they're better than lead and brass pipes.
Brass pipes? Are you thinking of copper?
Copper pipes are about as close as we can get to perfect, and as solderless press-fit connections get better, is just as easy to install as any of the plastic options
Expensive, bend easily, much more heavy. I just see advantages in plastic pipes and no disadvantages.
For water it's probably introducing more microplatics to your water. For waste pipes the are louder and a fire hazard. You can't use them on 3 story plus buildings.
You need specialized tools to bend the copper pipes used in plumbing, and if you don't, you're using the wrong kind of copper or got scammed.
They're a bit more expensive than plastic options, sure, but they also have a 2-3 times longer life expectancy, and in good conditions, copper pipes can last over a century without issue.
They may be heavier than plastic pipes, sure, but I wouldn't classify a copper pipe as "heavy", you know what I mean? Like, a child can carry around a few 10 foot sticks of 1/2 inch type L copper no problem. They're more durable though, so they can actually support their own weight in a lot of situations where plastic pipes need extra support.
A 10 meter long 40 cm diameter copper pipe is quite heavy. If you have to dig the asphalt to fix something it isn't that difficult to bend or perforate. Sure, you'll break a plastic pipe as well in that situation, but that is quite an easier fix.
Regarding how long they last, to be fair I have no idea. I'd imagine a PVC pipe can easily last some 30 years, I don't know whether a copper pipe will last much longer. It could be I guess. What I can say, when I had to deal with copper pipes I was just happier to replace them with plastic pipes; much easier to work with. Want to take a section of the piping off to check what's wrong? Very easy with plastic pipes, will take you a couple minutes without any tool. If you want to do the same with copper pipes most likely you have to cut them and then solder them back or attach them with some kind of fitting.
I do. My house is nearly 70 years old, and still has the original copper piping throughout. I replaced some recently because I had to move things around for a bathroom renovation, but all the old stuff I took out was still in perfectly fine condition. I expect the rest of the copper in the house to last another 70 years.
What kind of plumbing are you doing that lets you use threaded joints on everything? Anything under pressure usually requires glued slip joints, and those certainly can't be taken apart without tools, or without having to use a fitting to get it back together.
Ok you're talking a very different beast. Copper doesnt work at that scale.
I have copper for mains, but the irrigation is HDPE. Because one of these will face more interference and potential damage than the other.
What about glass pipes? They’re fragile but far more eco friendly and cheaper than pvc/plastic. Stainless steel could hold up to, clay is the oldest form of piping that isn’t harmful,
Cast iron could also be used if there’s no air introduced within the water supply though while popular among some we can easily say its a dumb and expensive idea.
Plastic pipes have great advantages over all those materials: they're cheap, light and sturdy.
If properly disposed they don't pollute much since they last many years and basically do not degrade.
I doubt making a city pipeline out of glass pipes would be viable.
Mm that’s totally fair. Just hope that the material can be better recycled/decomposed in some way :P
Glass takes a huge amount of energy to make.
It is? Ah damn :(
That problem is actually just billionaires even existing but blamed on the little guy
The problem is plastic.
Plastic wouldnt be produced by the megaton for disposable packaging, water bottles, etc, if we didnt have a disposable society. The waterways wouldnt be full of plastic trash and contamination if we didnt have a disposable society.
See, this is the problem with humanity. It always wants to hyper focus on the surface issue, and adamantly refuse to acknowledge the deeper, subsurface issues that made them sprout to begin with. Because humanity struggles to care about that which it can not see/easily acknowledge. Plastic is a big, visible problem everyone wants to deal with, but dealing with a disposable society? Thats to hard to think about. Thats too uncomfortable. That might affect me, personally, in an way that annoys me, so we just gotta keep soldiering on and ignore that.
Plastic isn't durable. Eventually it degraded to UV and needs to get thrown away.
The solution is to use paper and glass, not plastic, where possible
and wax paper turns into smothering, suffocating mush, and glass becomes dangerous, sharp shards.
and thats what you'll be dealing with until you deal with the root of the problem, which is a disposable society. Because that will not only stop the excess waste and production of disposable bullshit, not just containers and bottles, but TVs, electronics, etc etc. Much of that latter stuff being shipped off to third world where the desperate dissolve it in carcinogens and burn it to extract precious metals from the shit westerners throw away in excess.
One of the first steps to getting away from a disposable society is by advocating for more non-disposable container options, like glass. You don't jump straight to tackling the incredibly difficult disposable electronics problem and ignore the easy problem of reusable and recyclable containers.
I am assuming I'm the only one around here old enough to remember when it was dangerous to go barefoot because of the preponderance of broken glass everywhere due to disposable society treating glass bottles and other glass products like they treat plastic today.
Glass doesnt magically make society non disposable. As I have said, repeatedly. Getting rid of plastic wont cure a disposable society, it will only just make whatever replaces plastic the new waste dejure to end up everywhere and threaten everything in its own new ways, until you fundamentally change society by having strict fines, personal repercussions, and public shaming. . as well as education and wide spread access of disposal receptacles, and a waste recycling system that doesnt just dump 90% of its collected recyclables into a landfill.
Everyone wants to keep hyper focusing on plastic, plastic isnt the issue. Plastic is just the fever. The fever isnt what is making you sick. its the appendix about to detonate in your lower abdomen, but everyone wants to ignore the appendix and hyper focus on the fever, because the fever is easy to see.
I know, I didn't claim that. You seem to be arguing against using glass at all though, which is stupid.
I understand that it's only a small part of the solution. But it is a part of the solution, and should be advocated for, even if we don't have all the pieces of the rest of a perfect solution in place yet.
I made no such argument, overtly or covertly. You even remotely thinking that is a failure on your part, not on mine.
I have made one single, consistent argument this entire time.. And that is to address the underlying cause at the root of the issue, instead of trying to put a bandaid on it. If you could snap your fingers right now and replace all plastic usage with glass without addressing the root cause, in 20 years time we'd be having the same argument as we are now, except you'd be demanding something to replace glass on the insistence of just using a better material will magically solve the problem.
The problem won't be solved, until the disposable society issue is addressed and solved.. and that has to be addressed globally. because it doesnt matter how clean and proper China, Canada and and Cameroon are, for hypothetical example, if other countries continue to fill their rivers with trash and poisons which end up flowing out into the oceans and becoming a global problem.
What are your constant references to how glass turns into sharp, scary shards that make it unsafe to walk barefoot then?
Your "argument" is hollow. Honestly, you haven't really presented much of an argument at all. You've said absolutely nothing about how to address the disposable society problem, in favor of berating people for wanting to do things in the "wrong" order and dismissing our suggestions and ideas as band aids instead of engaging meaningfully. It's self masturbatory and uninformed at best, and adds nothing useful to the conversation.
If you wanna talk about how to move away from a disposable society, we're all ears. If you wanna continue being combative for no reason, I'm out.
Only one being combative is you, because you cant tolerate being challenged. If you cant have an adult conversation, then don't engage in one. And if you're gonna participate in a discussion, read the goddamn replies, and don't whinge about shit not being said/addressed, that has already been said/addressed.
Ayyy, thank you! I genuinely missed that snippet in the sea of you telling people they're wrong.
It seems to me like you're putting all your eggs into the "recycle" basket though, and ignoring the "reuse" and "reduce" baskets (which are just as important, and are much easier to address). Recycling is hard to do cost effectively, at scale, and can sometimes still be damaging to the environment anyways. Rinsing out your glass jelly jar or metal cookie tin and using them to store leftovers is really really easy. Why not acknowledge and focus on the easy stuff first, and maybe give ourselves more time to develop and refine the hard things like recycling? Who knows, maybe we get to a point where reducing consumption and reusing what we have is enough by itself, and we don't even need to bother with recycling! Wouldn't that be neat?
Do you think capitalism is a big driver in our disposable society? To me it seems like the main one. Capitalist economies have to keep money flowing to remain healthy, and the easiest way to do that is to constantly make new products for people to buy - new phones every couple years, new laptops, new computer parts, new power tools with new battery platforms that obsolete the old ones, new styles of clothing that obsolete the old styles, new cars that are better than the old ones, etc etc etc. If so, do you have any ideas on how to address that?
Wax paper is compostable and glass is reusable and recyclable indefinitely (unlike plastic)
Neither glass nor paper contains carcinogens.
We have to do both. Passing laws mandating beer bottles to use standard sizes and have deposits is usually the first step. Then you can do that with soda and every other item sold in plastic.
I love how you are arguing against dealing with a disposable society, by using examples and arguments on how to deal with a disposable society.
Literal cant see the forest for the trees moment.
I'm not arguing against ending a disposable society. I'm saying we need to do both. And I'm explaining how we do both.
We could recycle bottle plastic instead of burning it to make hydrogen. Take two steps back an this is stupid.