EU Takes Aim at Plastic Pellets to Prevent Their Nightmare Cleanup

Lactic acid is in milk/yogurt/etc.

Thinking of PLA, for me at least, it's fine if it takes years instead of weeks, as long as it's fundamentally vulnerable to common bio-chemical attack and the monomers aren't toxic. That's not the stuff that's causing issues, I think.

Just like every plastic marketed as biodegradable. I feel like most of the "biodegradable"/"eco-friendly" products rushed to the markets in the wake of stricter regulations are worse for the environment since they either require significantly more resources (especially water) to produce, extremely complicated special setups to dispose of, or even both.

There are significant efficiency gains to be had with increasing organizational and operational sizes, the problem is many people assume those gains will benefit everyone, at least partially, rather than the more common reality of all that efficiency being redirected towards the personal gains of a few. And billions of dollars are spent year after year to convince the common people that they will get screwed more if they don't allow it to happen because all the efficiency gains, that they have never actually experienced, will disappear.

A big part of the problem with the UK is exactly that; since 2015, the UK has been lurching from crisis to crisis, and more or less ignoring actually keeping the country running (keeping the country running is boring, Brexit is not boring, and so on).

They’ll say they are making hard, necessary decisions, but the truth is that ramming up taxes is the default mode easy decision for labour.

Honestly I think all of them need to be fixed. You might think they are contradicting, but I think that is only a way to make people be angry at each other, and not starting to demand really fixing things.

You are implying division among the public when in fact the division is sown by the billionaire/corporate media agendas, not real people:

- too many immigrants - too many small boat arrivals

All parties and a majority of the public agree on these points (polling shows). The details of how to tackle small boats and relative importance differ, but I don't think anyone wants to see large numbers of people crossing Europe.

- the existence of billionaires

Most of "the left" don't care about billionaires existing, they worry they exert an outside influence on our politics and skew market fairness. There's common ground with many on the populist right here. The only people who don't want us to think about these issues are corporate shills.

- too much tax - too little tax

This is a largely manufactured concern and reflects corporate interests or interests of the rich. The difference between Corbyn' 'wild' taxation plans and Johnson's was much smaller (as a portion of GDP) than that between the UK and France, German, any other northern euro country. Our debate around tax is hugely parochial, and concern largely used as a stick to beat the left with.

- UK membership in NATO - UK being too weak in NATO

I'm not sure how many people are worried about UK being in NATO. Would love to see polling data showing this as anything other than a very fringe concern. In fact Ukraine and Russian threat has made defence spending much _less_ controversial than since the cold war.

- too much smut online that kids can see - too many attempts to control the web

Polling shows the first is a majority concern, the latter not so much (this is a HN bubble). This is not a wedge issue.

The thing you missed is culture war bullshit (who is a 'real woman' etc)... but again, most people are either nonplussed or in the thrall of Russian chatbots and the MAGA trolls infecting uk online discourse. It's not something people really care about.

That's a totally absurd statement in response to "the current government put a new law on the books to give themselves the power to prosecute."

> How many executives has the UK government sought to prosecute under this law?

As stated in my original reply: it came into force in February 2025. It's currently November 2025. It takes time to commit "multiple" offences, particularly given they need to be investigated and convicted. And no, dumping sewage twice doesn't automatically count under any legal regime.

In addition, DEFRA identified that Ofwat (the water regulator) is not fit for purpose in July 2025 and set out a proposal to abolish and replace it.

So yes, it does contradict your statement because the government is literally acting. What would you propose happen instead? That the government hold show trials and just start locking up water company staff and execs?

I guess the sarcasm just flew over my head there. Thanks for the civility though.