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Comment by jiri | Hacker News Reader

This. And I think that we really should focus more on recyclable materials: like steel and aluminium instead of trying to use (unescessary) plastic everywhere.

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They are made of 100% recycled material, have a lifetime breakage guarantee, and end-of-product-life recycling.

Still, after breaking, the bottom part of the PLASTIC screw will remain buried in the soil of some national park.

In this scenario, how is a polycarbonate screw any more environmentally damaging than one made of e.g. some aluminum alloy? Neither one is decomposing any time soon.

Plastics eventually break up into micro-plastics that enter the food chain or leach other chemicals and they stick around without chemically changing much. Metals don’t do that, they’ll either oxidize and eventually become nutrients for something, or stay as a hunk of metal.

If this kind of decompositional pollution is a significant concern, why aren’t we worried about the millions of miles of PVC pipe we lay in the ground? Wouldn’t that be the same mechanism?

Lots of people are worried about that...

But PVC pipe has so many advantages over copper/cast iron/lead pipe that they are overlooked.

Probably out of general ignorance and active campaigns from the manufacturers. Just like no one was concerned about, then were confused about, and then finally started to have very late well-founded concern about cigarettes, and then oil. Plastics are just at the beginning of that curve.

The phrasing of the "100% recycled material" statements on their website a little suspect.

But that’s not enough. The company might guarantee all those things and that’s great, but when it’s left in a field somewhere because the user forgot about it or if the tube blows away then it still turns into plastic pollution.

it seems plastics recycling is a highly controversial topic on it's own:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24441979

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