Delaware Celebrates National Pollution week
Sep 21st, 2009 by David Anderson
I am all for this week’s theme. We finally get to have fun and Pollute without some nanny stater trying to make us feel guilty. Go bury a Styrofoam cup for me. Governor Markell and I are back on the same page.
Oh, sorry I should have read further. I guess they don’t want us to pollute this week either.
Seriously, my way of recognizing this week will be to use Styrofoam plates and cups all week. I really did buy some. What is my point? It is to show the complicated nature of environmental policy. It takes over 1000 uses for a ceramic plate to balance out the Styrofoam one when it comes to energy consumption for production. It takes around 400 for a glass to equal a Styrofoam cup. Most environmental policy is similarly complex. An electric car has to pull energy from somewhere and if that is not nuclear or wind it is likely causing more pollution than just jumping in an efficient standard car. The people who go crazy on the save the Planet bandwagon are operating out of emotion not fact. That is fine when they are running their lives, but not when they try to dictate economic and energy policy for the rest of us.
It takes over 1000 uses for a ceramic plate to balance out the Styrofoam one when it comes to energy consumption for production.
OK David, given that the last set of “everyday” plates in my house lasted for eleven years, with at least one use of each plate daily in a service of eight, that is–conservatively speaking–32,120 uses, which–according to your stat–would only have balanced out 32 styrofoam plates. Except that I would have had to use over 32,000 styrfoam plates in their place, which would then have to be disposed of and (we could only hope) degrade somehow or be recycled.
I would like to see the source of your 1 to 32 ratio sometime.
For most people that would take about 3 years to make up. Not to mention all of the phosphorous going into the water supply. I don’t see how you get 1 to 32. It would be more like one to 3. In my house, plates only last about a year before a kid breaks it. We have only one original plate from our marriage which we saved for keep sake. We are in the hole about 3 to 1 in Styrofoam’s favor. Most of us don’t get home to eat lunch. The only meal with plates is dinner. Breakfast consists of fruit, yogurt, and pop tarts or a breakfast bar.
The great part is that it can be recycled and if you do toss it, it is a small proportion of the landfill space (less than 1%).
All stats are from the Styrofoam trade organization.
Then if you really want to blow your stats, I often reuse Styrofoam. If it has just crumbs on it, why throw it away? Just rinse with warm soapy water and reuse. Same with cups if you just had water in it save it and reuse it. Fewer trips to the store. When you are through bury one in the back yard just to annoy the earth worshipers.
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No Free Lunch.
that’s the point, it’s not that styrofoam is good or styrofoam is bad, it’s that there is always a trade off and the green left never talks about that cost.
The green left will talk about how much oil we will save is x% of our cars were electric but give no consideration to the number of new power plants that would be needed or the cost of beefing up the grid.
Greenpeace: “Who uses plates?”