{"id":2637,"date":"2019-08-23T07:55:15","date_gmt":"2019-08-23T11:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/?p=2637"},"modified":"2019-08-23T07:56:09","modified_gmt":"2019-08-23T11:56:09","slug":"san-franciscos-war-on-plastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/2019\/08\/23\/san-franciscos-war-on-plastic\/","title":{"rendered":"San Francisco’s War on Plastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via independent.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Politicians in California like to show how much they care about making the world a better place by banning things. Making the world a better place isn\u2019t something they seem to care much about, however, because if they did, they would be doing very different things.
\nAs Exhibit A, please consider San Francisco\u2019s new ban on sales of bottled water at the city\u2019s international airport, which just took effect on August 20, 2019. The Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u2018s Andy Kessler considers a scenario<\/a> that may become all too common thanks to the city\u2019s new law aimed at inconveniencing air travelers passing through SFO:<\/p>\n

After running late for your flight after a 30-minute security line only to have TSA confiscate your Fiji water bottle, you\u2019ll now have to stop at a crowded water fountain to fill your own metal flask. Or buy an overpriced glass or aluminum bottle at the concession stand, paying another 10 cents for a bag. And your teeth will chatter if you drink through a paper straw. Of course you could risk dehydration instead: Men lose up to a half-gallon of water during a 10-hour flight. Oddly, you can still buy sugary drinks in plastic bottles at SFO; only healthy, calorie-free water is banned in plastic. You can\u2019t make this stuff up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s not that city officials don\u2019t like the idea of people buying overpriced bottled drinks at the city-owned airport. Rather, it\u2019s the idea of people buying water in plastic bottles that upsets them\u2014especially because of what they seem to think happens with all those bottles after air travelers drink the water in them.
\nThe San Francisco Chronicle<\/i>\u2018s Dustin Gardiner quotes<\/a> state senator Scott Wiener\u2019s justification for state politicians\u2019 efforts to ban all things plastic in California:<\/p>\n

\u201cPlastics are frankly strangling the health of our oceans,\u201d Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, said as the Senate debated SB54 last month. \u201cThis is a huge problem, and it\u2019s time to move past baby steps to address it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A huge problem, indeed. According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, over 8 million metric tons<\/a> of plastic waste flows into the oceans every year. If California\u2019s politicians think they are going to have a meaningful impact in solving that problem with the actions they take, they must also think Californians are major contributors to that problem.
\nAre they really?
\nA study<\/a> by Germany\u2019s Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research suggests that over 90 percent of all the plastic waste in the ocean flows into it from just 10 rivers. Alex Gray of the World Economic Forum<\/i> reports<\/a>:<\/p>\n

By analyzing the waste found in the rivers and surrounding landscape, researchers were able to estimate that just 10 river systems carry 90% of the plastic that ends up in the ocean.
\nEight of them are in Asia: the Yangtze; Indus; Yellow; Hai He; Ganges; Pearl; Amur; Mekong; and two in Africa \u2013 the Nile and the Niger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to National Geographic<\/a><\/i>, \u201crelatively little plastic waste enters the ocean from North America and Europe because of their more robust waste-management systems.\u201d
\nCalifornians may not be as environmentally destructive as state politicians believe.
\nBut perhaps that\u2019s not true in San Francisco, if politicians from that city think their latest ban on sales of water in plastic bottles at the city\u2019s airport will have a noticeable impact on the global problem of plastic waste being dumped in the oceans.
\nLet\u2019s play pretend and say that instead of disposing four million plastic water bottles with a robust waste-management system, San Francisco\u2019s politicians allow city employees at the airport to dump the bottles into San Francisco Bay each year to flow out into the Pacific Ocean and add to the global plastic waste problem.
\nBefore the ban took effect, San Francisco\u2019s airport was selling 4 million water bottles each year<\/a>. Assuming all were half-liter containers, each weighing 9.3 grams<\/a>, that amount of plastic bottle waste would total 37.2 metric tons. If the public employees of the airport were dumping that many empty plastic water bottles into San Francisco Bay, it would account for 0.000465 percent of all the plastic waste flowing into the world\u2019s oceans each year.
\nAn effective solution to that hypothetical problem wouldn\u2019t be to ban the sale of water in plastic bottles at the airport. It would be to establish and operate an effective waste management system for the city while also banning the city\u2019s employees from dumping empty water bottles into the bay. If they already had done all that, why not focus on making their system work better?
\nDo you suppose that common sense solution occurred to the politicians? Or do you suppose they cared more about showing how much they care about the environment without really caring enough to do anything to noticeably improve it, regardless of whatever harm and inconvenience they might impose upon the dignity of air travelers passing through the city\u2019s airport?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via independent.org. Politicians in California like to show how much they care about making the world a better place by banning things. Making the world a better place isn\u2019t something they seem to care much about, however, because if they did, they would be doing very different things. As Exhibit A, please consider San Francisco\u2019s … Continue reading San Francisco’s War on Plastic<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9wXzO-Gx","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2638,"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions\/2638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockpicks4you.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}