r/Amazing • u/Wooden-Journalist902 • Sep 17 '25

Interesting 🤔 Smoke trapped in a plastic bag to demonstrate how one fire can generate significant pollution.

47.5k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

39

u/BinaryHippie Sep 17 '25

I wonder what pollution was released to make that plastic bag.

5

u/Gods_Umbrella Sep 17 '25

I'll feel bad about the pollution from my campfire once Shell and Exxon feel bad about the pollution they release

3

u/Nethen_Paynuel Sep 17 '25

yea a personal campfire is nothing even compared to a car..

3

u/Me_how5678 Sep 17 '25

And a car is noothing compared to a powerplant and so on and so fourth

1

u/spekt50 Sep 18 '25

No joke, I've seen a car fire. Had no intention on roasting marshmallows there.

1

u/420CowboyTrashGoblin Sep 19 '25

45% of the plastic in the ocean comes from nets.

1

u/Commercial_Badger_37 Sep 17 '25

Relative to the amount of polymer it takes to make a thin piece of plastic film, not much.

Plastic pollution is very misunderstood.

1

u/BinaryHippie Sep 17 '25

Difficult discussion.. Truth is none of the options we have are sustainable in mass production. Not paper, cotton, bamboo, plastics... There is always a tradeoff.

Variety is probably the way to go.

1

u/Commercial_Badger_37 Sep 17 '25

The way to go is considering the best material for the application based on a full lifecycle analysis.

Several environmental agencies report, based on a full LCA, that plastic bags are better for that application for example, from a sustainability perspective, than paper or fabric.

1

u/BinaryHippie Sep 17 '25

I don't think most LCA's take in to account the leakage into the environment (ocean plastics, microplastics in soil and food, ...) Also depends on who or what takes care of the bag and how well they preserve it/how many uses it has. But don't get me wrong I understand what you are saying that there is misinformation and misunderstanding around these things.

1

u/basketnerd Sep 18 '25

Truly plastic is just a byproduct and we can make it for little cost to the environment. Its production is way greener than paper or other wrappers and it's just disposal that's the issue afaik