A severe heatwave is ongoing in Europe. Temperature records broken in France, Switzerland, Germany and Spain.
On 11 July 2023, the Land Surface Temperature (LST) in some areas of Extremadura (Spain) exceeded 60°C, as highlighted in this data visualisation derived from measurements from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) instrument. The ongoing heatwave in Spain this week is resulting in a total of 13 autonomous communities, being at extreme risk (red alert), significant risk (orange alert), and risk (yellow alert) due to maximum temperatures that, in some cases, will exceed 40°C and reach a maximum of 43°C.
For reference, “in areas where vegetation is dense, the land surface temperature never rises above 35°C. The hottest land surface temperatures on Earth are in plant-free desert landscapes.”
Get ready for new eco bans, we will have to stop using plastic milk containers and factories will produce more junk to put the milk in to. Like with the plastic straws and bags, good idea on papper, poor execution irl.
Maybe you’re being funny, maybe not, but plastic bag pollution and straws etc are not the driving force behind temperature swings like this. Atmospheric gasses such as CO2, CH4, etc are the issue that causes climate change, and thus the instability accompanying things like greater peak temps, more disasters, etc.
The bags and straws discussion is about environmental care. Eg not letting sea turtles eat plastic bags because they think they are jelly fish.
What iam saying that the average person will get the short stick, and the big polluters like factories will not see any new anti pollution regulations. Like do we need 100s of key chain factories, we lived without useless plastic trinkets before, ban those things because thry have no use.
Distractions to make the govt look like they care and to shift blame onto the average person.
Yeah indeed, the paper bags are more polluting to produce than its plastic equivalent. The many problem with plastics is that it does more damage when it ends up in nature, but it is recyclable though.
We should stop blaming the people/consumers and start blaming the large corporations that dump PFAS in our drink water supply, like they did here in The Netherlands and Belgium. That does lore harm than the plastic straws ever did
Out of curiosity, how are paper bags more polluting than plastic ones?
Also, from what I have been reading, the problem with plastic is that it’s actually marketed as widely recyclable, but nobody actually recycles plastic as it is too expensive (water bottles, plastic packaging, etc…). Its actually cheaper to produce more plastic than to recycle.
in germany most plastic bottles are reused several times through a deposit system and after reaching a limit they are almost completely recycled. Always wonder why other countries can’t seem to be able to use a similar system
Is this audited in any way by authorities? How do you know what has been recycled and what is “virgin” plastic?
That’s definitely the way forward in my opinion. Do people get any incentive to use the deposit system or it’s already ingrained in the culture?
yeah searching for it, there seem to be certification institutes and audits. The system is quite nicely explained in this video: https://youtu.be/YQ2GOtpYiqk
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/YQ2GOtpYiqk
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It takes more energy to produce paper bags and they last less… a paper bag that gets even slightly wet is useless while a plastic bag can be dried out and reused. I read that plastic bags that are reused 2x are less problematic than paper bags.
But that’s a big assumption to work from no? The fact that a plastic bag is going to be used more than once. I mean definitely a paper bag is less practical, but it won’t end up in a landfill trying to decompose for god knows how many years…
There are loads of single use plastics in our daily lives that are pretty much heading to a landfill as they won’t be recycled.