set with ballpoint pen in a practical gift bag is enclosed with this letter.” Above it reads: “I appreciate the extraordinary commitment from the many volunteers of the DLRG. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, President of Germany and patron of the DLRG (German Lifeguard Association)”.
The main point is that the German parliament banned plastic straws and bags by law. This is a classical example of the expediency of German politics. These “pseudo solutions” (electric scooters, plastic straws) do not contribute anything to the real solution of the problem and even hinder this by pretending to be solutions that they’re not.
It seems to be important to act in a media-effective way without the marine animals having anything to gain from it. Officially, however, one is working for the “welfare of animals”, of course.
Burning (Plastic) Materials
Burning plastic is like a red flag to environmentalists, something like blasphemy. Hence, everything has to be recycled – an energy-intensive process because you have to invest energy in order to recycle plastic. When it comes to expensive carbon-reinforced plastics, however, it may make sense to reuse these kinds of fibers. Otherwise, plastic is itself energy because it’s solely made up of hydrocarbons and, hence, solely of petroleum.
Combustion is an issue that we will examine later in terms of “energy” and the “energy supply”. When being “burned”, as we call it in colloquial German, plastics produce carbon dioxide (CO2) and water (H2O) and burn atmospheric oxygen. By-products, such as hydrochloric acid, or other products, such as nitrogen oxides, can be created. Hydrochloric acid can only be created when the plastic contains chlorine, for example in the case of PVC or polyvinyl chloride. Nowadays, a whole host of waste gas filters is placed on top of each chimney of the waste incineration plant. This has been the case for the past thirty years. Of course, pollutants can be detected in exhaust gases. No argument there. Everything can be detected with today’s measuring methods. If you were to examine the exhaust gases that any normal person exhales, you would probably have to shut these all down. It’s harmful to the environment, which is a real problem in cemeteries because corpses are hazardous waste, especially after a cancer therapy or with amalgam fillings.
Plastic has about half the calorific value of coal and petroleum per kilogram weight. About half of the energy can be produced during combustion. The carbon dioxide it emits is probably better since plastic has a higher proportion of hydrogen and thus not produce that much carbon dioxide during combustion. Instead, more water is released per energy produced. In chemistry lessons, the keyword here is the “stoichiometric ratio”. By the way, water vapor is a greenhouse gas as well. This is often glossed over because it doesn’t fit neatly into any pro-green argument.
Naturally, waste incineration plants emit pollutants. Naturally, not everything has to be burned. But recycling everything and shipping it abroad doesn’t seem to make much sense either.
Everything overdone is no good.
Consequences
Waste that can’t be recycled is transported abroad using a lot of energy to be recycled there. That’s how people in Germany live according to the principle: “O Holy St. Florian, please spare my house, set fire to another one.” What’s so abstruse about the entire situation is that Germany has almost perfect control over its waste separation: Used paper and plastic packaging are sorted. Residual waste, such as kitchen waste, vacuum cleaner contents and similar waste combusts poorly. As a result, the last plastic waste is shipped to third world countries in order to be sorted there. Petroleum or other substances must be used in German waste incineration plants to increase waste combustibility. Single-variety plastics not used for packaging, such as old plastic buckets, end up as residual waste.
“Side Effects”
I once witnessed where I used to live how five containers of plastic waste were transported by truck to the Czech Republic. Why was this done?
Plastic packaging material is a relatively good fuel. Yet burning these is prohibited. The enterprising politician gets paid to dispose of the plastic by driving it to the Czech Republic using diesel fuel, thus increasing overall traffic congestion, and then burning it there in order to produce energy. Yet the politician in the Czech Republic gets to enjoy another salary.
Something like this is still relatively simple, contributing at least to a three-digit million Euro deficit for Germany every year, all the while making Germany look ridiculous to its neighbors, who aren’t that stupid either. Yet Germans are convinced that only they know the golden path. Now to something more complex.
Our Luxury Problem: Food and Toxin
Nothing can illustrate the tendency towards “self-optimization” better than the perennial subject of nutrition and toxins. This gets really complex now since both are closely intertwined.
The philosopher, physician and theologian Manfred Lütz points out in the introduction of his book “Lebenslust” (Lust for Life) that this is both a religious and a political topic, and satirical reality as well.
How susceptible nutrition is to Voodoo reporting can be demonstrated with the subject “margarine”. A study was published over fifty years ago that warned of the dangers of cholesterol. The company Procter&Gamble, was advertising margarine since butter and the cholesterol contained therein were regarded as bad for the heart. This “insight” was based on a single study. This resulted in “mountains of butter” in Germany, which had preoccupied the media for months on end. So much butter was not eaten that it was given away to East Germany. East Germany then sold it back to West Germany to obtain foreign currency.
The problem was that the study had been rigged: Twenty-two countries were examined, but the results from only seven countries, which produced “correct” results, were published (it was even called “The Seven Countries Study”). The author, Ancel Keys, had admitted in a 1997 interview that there had never been a connection between dietary cholesterol and cholesterol associated with heart disease.
One single fake study had caused billions of Deutschmarks in damage and only because people wanted to “believe” things and cared about their health. Strangely enough, no one has come up with the idea that the situation could be the same today, just concerning other matters. This behavior can, I think, be called “naive”.
Coincidentally, forty years ago I had personally attended a lecture by a nutritionist who was already complaining about the margarine hype and who preferred butter. He demonstrated how unnatural the production process of margarine can be. It was thus known. Facts were already being ignored back on those days. Furthermore, the expert warned against the traces of catalysts present as heavy metals in cheap margarine as a residue from the manufacturing process.
But “health pills” or pills that make you feel better have always existed, even 200 years ago. These couldn’t have been vitamin pills because vitamins weren’t known yet, but were heavy metals. Yes, in low doses, but heavy metals nevertheless. These are toxic.
Why were these pills sold as “health pills”? People at the time had suffered from “uninvited guests” like tapeworms, and they didn’t like heavy metals. The parasites departed. Humans can partially excrete heavy metals through their sweat. What’s more, they have an antibiotic effect, but are toxic at too high a dosage. Two-hundred years ago, many great minds like Beethoven died from heavy metal poisoning: Wine was sweetened with lead sugar, and arsenic sulphur was used.
Understanding the above logic with the “health pills”, which is incomprehensible from today’s point of view, is necessary in order to understand the relativity of “a healthy diet”, which therefore doesn’t exist.
Rice Wafers
In 2015, rice wafers came under fire as they were shown to contain arsenic. Apparently, the process of expanding the rice makes the heavy metal bioavailable. The rice came from China. Rice wafers: Those are those round things that come in a stack of about fifteen