Slack Randoms: Tour de France Knives, Omni-Wheels, 272km/h on a Bike & More

 The solution isn't "recycling". It's multi use containers.

 Indeed Reduce, Re-use, Recycle puts "recycle" last for a reason.

 @hamncheez Fact is there isn't a solution. I read a statistic that 8 million pieces of plastic go into the world's oceans every day. It's been known for years that we're eating and drinking it, we're also now breathing it.
If we stopped new production of all plastic tomorrow (which will obviously never happen), there's still all the plastic that currently exists. It doesn't go away, it just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.
We're f*cked.

 In Canada (and the rest of the developed world) we have the luxury of regular trash collection, right from our doorsteps. Many parts of the developing world, especially urban slums do not. The problem of plastics in our oceans and rivers is largely caused by the lack of proper municipal waste collection in developing mega-cities.

 One technical term used is "exporting pollution" and it doesn't just have to be sending your trash away for less environmentally friendly processing, it also includes when domestic regulations restrict a component, process or waste; therefore causing the consumer to purchase it for another country.

As a manufacturer whom chromed steel tubes in California, regulations made the product so expensive and reduced its performance so much that it was 2x as expensive and lasted 20% of the same lifespan. Therefore it was more fiscally responsible to buy the chrome plated finished component form Thailand/Taiwan or china rather than produce it responsibly here.

Furthermore products that are more environmentally friendly are actually less environmentally friendly if they last half as long, for example paint, if it lasts half as long to reduce emissions 40% you will actually create 20% more emissions in the products lifespan when you repaint it.

These are inconvenient truths surrounding the climate change debate, most countries only control their emissions domestically, while outsourcing the products to less controlled countries that poisin the environment more.

This is my TED talk, please downvote me to oblivion.

 @Rattles: Its true. And even in our country, how many times is there a windstorm on recycling day and every blue bin in the neighborhood is blown over and emptied into the most windward ditch at the end of the street.

 @way2manyhobbies2keep: I like the term "fiscally responsible" - AKA stupidly cheaper.

 @iian: The fact that the emissions compliant coating did not hold up even half as long negates the value of the product.

 If he’s crazy why is he wearing a helmet?

 @Kootbiker: UCI rules.

 @iamamodel: Union Cart-iste Internationale

 Surely a good french cheese should have a thick pouring consistency. The knife is for cutting la baguette to serve it in and chunks of saucisson. Damn that's making me hungry.

 @ROOTminus1: In France you don’t cut a baguette, you tear it apart with your hands. And you wouldn‘t do that to the cheese.

 No es un cuchillo, es una navaja

 It would be easiest to just not throw it in the river.

 Tell that to the corporations that use needless amounts of plastic to keep their profit margins as high as possible, instead of using paper, glass or metals, all of which are far more easily recyclable than plastics. Capitalism will kill us all, if the microplastics don't do it first.

 More often than not your probably find using plastic has a lower carbon foot print (This isn't generally because companies care about this, it simply costs them less. The more energy it takes to make and get us the product the more money it will cost them/us and as most energy comes from carbon... I'm not saying make everything from plastic but it defiantly has its place (which is not in a river...) consumers over consumption of all things is the real issue. buy less.

 That would be 2 easy and then how would they make money off selling you water selling you water?
Funny thing is when we were kids in the summer we would leave the house first thing in the morning to go explore the woods and a lot of times didn’t come home tell dinner if we really got thirsty we would drink out of the creek or eat snow no off us got sick and if we were dehydrated we never new it. Different times I guess.

 @Bungalow-bikes: well said

 @Bungalow-bikes: While consumers are not blameless they are very much not the root cause of the problem. Consumers are adaptable, they take what they are given. If everyone's drinks and packaging suddenly went to glass and paper, do you honestly think people would consume less? Even at a slight increase in price? I think not. Many towns in my region banned plastic bags, sure they complained about paper bags for about a month, then they got over it, brought reuse-able bags or shut up and got on with life. This is very much a corporation/capitalism problem, and it is very much the only way it can be fixed, along with regulation. Needless to say I love that people are trying to find solutions to problems such as plastics in the ocean. But the real solutions are and always have been with corporations not individuals.

 @MegalodonMatt: yet they still walk out with cases of bottled water. But they are helping

 @mfoga: They must have missed the isle with glass and cartons of water. Like I said they buy what is available.

 Wouldn’t it be great if complicated problems had simple solutions. The world is not black and white.

Plastic in the abstract is a wonder-material.

Surgical equipment.

I’m sure you can think of some other useful applications of plastics.

 @MegalodonMatt: or get a filter for your house and refill bottles as needed. It crazy how reliant people are to plastic bottled water.

 @MegalodonMatt: Lol! What? Are microplastics the new smoking or something?

 @ashlemon: it’s much worse than you can imagine. There are island nations that don’t have infrastructure for dealing with their garbage so the garbage is dumped on the beach for the tide to carry away.

 @mfoga: I totally agree, that's what I do. It just sucks that some people are forced to choose plastic bottled water when they would just as happily choose boxed or glass bottles water if that's what was available to them. I'm not saying plastic is the devil, it has plenty of great uses, it's just used far to often for small profit gains when other actually recyclable materials could used.

 @SacAssassin: you're welcome to read about them and decide for yourself. There's been studies publish recently which sound fairly grim. Probably fake news though.

 @SacAssassin: You might not be aware of how bad a particular problem is. That's okay, but it doesn't mean it's not a serious problem.

 @ashlemon: you'd be surprised how many nations still plow their landfills straight into the rivers and oceans...

 @MegalodonMatt: if you should be thinking about single-use glass bottles: they are much (!) worse than PET bottles, due to material weight (ca 180g for 0.3l size vs. ca 10-15g of a PET bottle or alu can) and the energy needed for initial production and re-melting.

Reusable glass bottles are better, but only in regional low-distance collect-and-refill solutions. (that need to be set-up in the first place)

1. Avoid bottled water.
2. Don't throw into nature FFS.
3. Recycle it.

 @MegalodonMatt: It's not Capitalism , it's a lack of morals, intelligence and education

 @MegalodonMatt: I'm a hypocrite on the subject. Until countries like China, India, etc start jumping on board and taking it serious its pointless to worry. At the same time I fully support getting rid of useless clamshell packaging thats far to big for the product

Enjoy your paper straws

 @MegalodonMatt: The problem is the 'obvious solutions' are often the wrong solutions, when you take the time to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. like replacing Light weight easy to recycle plastic bottles with heavy weight glass bottles (that require more energy to recycle, due to there much high melting point) or worse replacing with a heavy weight non recyclable plastic "reusable bottle" that will unfortunately inevitable thrown away due to fashion breakage or hygiene. there a lots of articles that have detailed the unfortunate environmental impact of "bags for life" (carbon foot print, consumption of water, actual life span etc...) & paper bags have a huge requirement for water in production/recycling of them. Capitalisms search for profit naturally forces company's to try to use less energy and less material because that reduce costs wins them business. consumers need to consume less - switching to "Greener" materials is often just green washing to make consumers feel better about buying something they probably shouldn't be buying, in my opinion.

 @Bungalow-bikes: it's been my understanding that almost no plastic actually gets recycled in the US. For years it was sold to China (being shipped back across the world) but over the past few years it's value dropped so much as a recycleable commodity that they no longer buy it and instead it piles up in warehouses all around the country, I guess, waiting for the value to increase? There's really no end game when it comes to plastics, we were sold a lie by the oil companies, go figure. Then when you factor in the ever increasing argument of micro-plastics finding their way into our food, water and our bodies, causing cancers and infertility...I guess I'd take a product with a slightly higher carbon foot print (glass, paper, metals, etc) that doesn't end up trying to kill me (and other animals) Like you said, it's a complicated situation, one which I don't fully understand. But what I do understand is that capitalism is happy to kill people as long as doing so fits within the budget, it's just business, and humans are just a number on a computer.

 @lovetheride990: unfortunately greed (within a capitalistic society) trumps morals, intelligence and education. Especially that whole morals part.

 @SacAssassin: great plan! Let's just don't bother, why should we, they don't.
Humanity is doomed, and rightly so.

 Need gold pads in them brakes

 The only thing worse then how slow and tedious that video is was how 50% of the camera view was obstructed at all times.

 if you need to have it explained to you, you will never understand

 To ride motos like that you need a clutch for control, your left finger works much better than electronic traction control.

 Pol Tarres would agree with you,that´s why he did it in a 700cc Yamaha Tenere trail/touring 180 kg bike. Some of the downhills are crazy,many of us would look them twice to do it in a DH/enduro bike,but doing it in a 180 kg bike is something else.
Many of the moto riders would think the same about what we do in the bike.

 @RadBartTaylor: An electric motor doesn't even require a clutch; output torque can be proportional to throttle position, e.g. EVs that can be driven using only the throttle pedal.

 @boozed: to function, no it doesn't, to be worth a damn in extreme offroad you need a clutch for control....gas or electric

 They aren’t electric because Harley killed the Alta Redshift and nobody has come up with anything like it yet.

 @RadBartTaylor:
Can anyone explain to me why this was down-voted? Seriously, I am baffled.

 @bbeak: no clue, wondered the same thing. Who's down voting this? Speak up...

 Like a E MTB? Wouldnt be mutch fun, you could pick it up over rocks and it doesn't have the power to get up hills

 @RadBartTaylor: it would have to be slightly less gnarly.

 How else are you going to cut open your bag of epo

 @littleskull99: not necessarily just for cyclists. The TdF brand is very popular in the junkie community as a whole.

 He was wearing motorcycle leathers and helmet for safety as well as aerodynamics. I doubt a go pro will add too much wind resistance.