It’d be half-and-half. That’s being easy going with Quebec though, right? /s

Don’t forget the wall of hidden conventional missiles Iran has pointed at the gulf states, probably starting with the desalination plants.

Ah yes, the joys of being politically convenient but also globally irrelevant.

The close cultural affinity gives us better insight. Europeans seem to see Americans through Hollywood. We see them shopping at Walmart.

Yep, that’ll do it. If you have a pile of scrapped iron things, you have to think it wouldn’t be hard to miss something that has a lead battery or weight in it somewhere. Although, I have to wonder why they didn’t test that batch before it was sold, if it’s for cooking in.

I seem to remember a story about a radiation source for probing gas wells getting into scrap and causing problems. They just look something like a metal cylinder, so would blend in easily with all the other oil and gas errata getting scrapped.

Think all you want, basically.

The sad thing is that it’s too abstract. A police state often leads to foreign invasions, but until that happens people in the foreign nations mostly can’t be arsed.

Thanks! I’m not sure I have the same presence IRL, haha.

Nope, metals are elements as opposed to molecule compounds and literally can be melted and cast forever. They say most of the gold ever mined is still in use today, so your modern ring might have bits of a ring melted down in ancient Egypt in it. Glass is like this too. Paper is more like plastic, albeit somewhat biodegradable when it eventually has to be thrown out.

In practice, there’s still a limit for many metals because they will get contaminated. Copper building up in scrap steel is a problem IIRC. It’s not a big issue with aluminum, though, unless you’re doing something like building an airplane where you need super high purity. Cans are almost all recycled into more cans.

There are ways to purify a metal melt, but they can be expensive and usually produce waste slag. I’ve never heard of glass being purified; it’s probably too cheap to not just make more of, since it’s derived from really common minerals.

Not very well. Those long molecules break down into shorter segments every time they’re recycled, which makes for an inferior and eventually useless product. Some plastics are also thermoset and can’t ever be melted again, and some are just hard to recycle for other reasons and get picked out and landfilled. The whole idea of plastics recycling is basically greenwashing on a massive scale; the industry put a lot of money into promoting it to avoid scrutiny.

That being said, they’re also permanent in the good way. Plastics don’t biodegrade or erode. If you bury a plastic pipe in the ground, it may well still be there and intact in a million years. Anything natural will rot long before that, common metals will corrode, and concrete usually has metal rebar inside that pulls it apart as it corrodes. Plastic is also lightweight, which ceramics (stone-like materials) and metals are not, while still being strong under tension like metals.

Sunlight does slowly break down many plastics, but only into ever-smaller particles, which is where the microplastics in OP come from.

So is it possible the blood-brain barrier is designed to trap nanoparticles? They do exist in nature.

Like what? If you’re building an airplane or a sewer main all substitutes are inferior. The problem is that we’re using the ultra-permanent wonder material for, like, candy wrappers.

I’ve definitely seen AI get into loops personally. From what you’re saying it sounds like they’ve added restrictions on reusing words to try and solve that.

Plastic also has the benefit that it’s really easy to make in whatever shape with injection molding, and is totally permanent, which if you don’t care about disposal is great.

Meanwhile, making stuff out of a sheet of paper is a manufacturing challenge that has resulted in creative solutions like corrugation, and the container might seep through or soften or something.

There’s a thing called extended producer responsibility which basically is the idea of making disposal not free anymore for the manufacturer.

Canada has a similar list, FYI.

It only takes 1% idiots to give enough anecdotal ammunition for the other side. It’s not the hard numbers that were ever in their favour anyway.