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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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We started mass production of plastic 90 years ago, and we're choking on it. We need to stop all plastic production.
The sheer amount of plastic that goes in the trash any time I take a trip to the grocery story is maddening. And I'm someone who is conscious about it and try to buy products with less plastic waste! Like, what is the point of all this? Is waxed paper not good enough?
I did read some argument that for certain foods, if they removed the plastic wrapping, the expiration would happen so much faster that food waste would increase by a lot. I honestly have no idea if waxed paper would work as well though.
I do agree that hopefully alternative solutions can be found in any case...
I doubt waxed paper would be a blanket solution for everything. Hot dogs come to mind as an example of something that may require plastic (meats in general, but that a whole other issue). But even something like cheese should do fine in sealed waxed paper.
But more obviously, bread and other baked goods, candy, chips, pretty much anything where perishability isn't a major concern can use waxed paper or cardboard for packaging. Sodas, water, milk, and juice could come in glass, aluminum, or even cardboard cartons instead of plastic bottles. Produce that comes in plastic could use paper, waxed paper, or those little cardboard cartons.
There are plenty of alternatives but our corporate masters would have to sacrifice a small percentage of their quarterly profits so instead we will piss where we sleep until we die.
Do people not recycle plastics in your country?
These plastics are single-use. The vast majority of plastic I come across in my groceries is destined for the garbage, not the recycle.
If you think 'recycling' plastic does a damn thing, you need to do some reading. It's a sham for corporations to trick you into thinking your plastic waste gets reused. It doesn't.
The problem is that many medical devices for the disabled and chronically ill are made of plastic. It's why the disability community protested the plastic straw ban, since many of them require to use them to consume anything.
I genuinely emphasize with the people that rely on plastic materials to get through life, it's tough in that situation. I think the solution for straws (since that's a more simple solution) would be either something reusable like metal staws or something compostable like agave straws. Medical applications should replace with compostable plastics like hemp. My point is that stopping cold turkey with petroleum based plastics would be better than trying to slowly phase it out. The plastics cartel will do anything to slow down the phase out
Implantable devices can't be compostable. Catheters and other things that will go inside your body cannot be compostable. That's not the easy solution you think it is.
I know, and I don't have any solid solutions. I'm a single person that never studied materials science. I'd love to have all the solutions, but I don't. The plastic waste that comes to mind for me in a medical setting is the packaging for sterile products, which could definitely be made of industrially compostable materials. Implantable devices is far more complex, but biologically inert metals exist.
The packaging could not be either. Sterility has to be assured for the shelf life of the device. Those are typically years. These materials aren't just cheap or convenient. They've been vetted over decades of research and testing.
Now this isn't meant to rain on your parade. Just showing how even the best intentions can fall short. Tossing out solutions in areas you aren't familiar with can just muddy discussions.
That can be a hard lesson to learn, but it's a great one. If there were awards on here, I'd give you one... In place accept this 🌟
This is such an uninformed take. Plastics are literally everywhere in modern life. Not just the store bags or straws and lids, but objects in the home like appliances, buckles on backpacks, medical devices, items we launch into space. It's not been shown to meaningfully decrease life expectancy and we may find ways to remove it from our bodies. Cold turkey and you essentially have no infrastructure to replace what is made with plastics.
There are places where it's absolutely necessary, there are places where it's inconvenient to get rid of but a good idea, and there are places where it's absolutely stupid to use plastic.
So it's an "uninformed take" when I know that 90% of plastics that make it to recycling plants aren't recycled, and that petroleum plastics are part of the driving factors leading us towards climate chaos?
Climate chaos is not mostly driven by consumer plastics. Burning of fossil fuels to generate power is and has been the largest contributor followed by agriculture. Plastics don't get recycled because.people don't even have a fundamental understanding of how recycling works. That's not the fault of the people, it's their governments. You and I using a reusable bag and water bottle doesn't make a dent in climate change. Until our energy shifts to nuclear we aren't going to be in a better spot. Renewables can supplement but are far away from being a replacement.
Reduction of emissions can't be the only thing we try. We have to do that and engineer ways to contain and scrub high pollution areas.
Even metals don't get recycled like they should because they don't get cleaned and dried.
We have to outengineer the problem at this point because we didn't engineer a cleaner path fifty years ago when we had the opportunity.
Had we leaned more heavily into nuclear the world would be better off.
Pursuing a useable fusion solution should be the focus of the effort for humanity. That alone can provide us the energy needed to shutdown fossil fuels power plants.
But we decided years ago the nuclear is the boogey man because it is too difficult for the average citizen to comprehend.
You don't even offer a viable solution. So yea, uninformed take. I'll stand by it.
Sorry, I didn't know I was tasked with singlehandedly solving our plastic problem. Either way, I did give a suggestion; replace all plastic with reusable objects made of reusable materials, or make them compostable.
The issue is you made a very extreme statement "We need to stop all plastic production" without actually knowing or understanding A) what plastics make up of the items we use in ALL sectors of our daily lives and B) how catastrophic it would be to stop all plastic production. Just like the knee-jerk reaction that caused plastic straws to be banned and replaced by paper straws in certain areas, and then we find out paper straws actually harm the environment more.
Like, your hot take sounds all good and noble like most virtue signaling statements do, but they also all don't consider any of the realities or ramifications, just like yours.
Also, your fixable solution isn't a solution at all. There's many life-saving plastics that cant be made from reusable or compositabke plastics.
I think plastics are genuinely awesome, but we are over-reliant on them. I'd also rather not drive, but there will always be someone who has a use for cars.
I could remove single-use plastics from my life if my groceries were packaged sustainably. But for example, scientists use single-use plastics and that's a good thing.
Please take a moment to think of everything in your life that is made of plastic, and then think of what could replace it.
Glass and Aluminum are the ultimate recyclables and yet we are still are based around them It's all about the profits for Corporations and the consumers that buy this trash.
Buy bar soap instead of body wash, etc.
Love my locally made goat milk soap
Need to get me some of that.
I just bought 6 different flowery-scented goat milk soaps and they are heavenly
I'm a guy and I love flowery scented body soap. If you smell good nobody cares what the actual scent is lol
No they aren't. They typically don't even get recycled unless they're both clean and dry which most people don't do.
Let's change that then. They are the best reusables we have and we don't even have a federal system in place for recycling it all. Just trash and consume more cheap plastics.
That's mostly true in America, where recycling usually is (like everything else) a for profit initiative.
You can replace most anything with wood or sheet metal. Not only that, but without subsidies to the fossil fuel industries, it would actually be cheaper to make many products we make out of plastic of wood or metal instead.
I wouldn't go so far as to say we need to ban plastics entirely. Expensive, long-lasting items like certain electronics (televisions, game consoles) are probably fine made of sturdy plastics (think the old stuff SNES's were made out of, not the brittle shit they make Xboxes out of today). And I'd have to guess there are certain electronic components that are best made of plastic and not likely to introduce any microplastics into people's systems.
What we need to cut down on are disposable plastics and plastics in food service. Styrofoam trays, plastic wrap, tupperware, plastic bottles, plastic grocery bags, plastic packaging, plastic dishes, plastic handles on silverware. All of these could be replaced with glass, metal, wood, or fabric and become more renewable/reusable/recyclable and less dangerous to people's health.
we need to at least make a plastic that is sustainable, biodegradable, and with a shorter lifespan depending on the applications. for example, a water bottle could be made to last 6 months or so depending on the size, while a keyboard could be made to last decades before starting to break down. this would be quite hard to achieve, but if we want to keep all the commodities given to us by plastic, while also keeping our health, we have to invest some money into research.
IIRC They've found a microbe recently that will eat plastic within a couple years. Could be wrong though.
Either way I agree. Wish we would just go back to glass.
so can we just drink that?
Isn't that the lore for the cat adventure game Stray? Some little bug thing was able to eat plastic, they deployed it but it got out of control and mutated to consume all kinds, now chunks of the city are cut off to prevent the spread.
Hope that doesn't happen smile.
Edit: Afterthought, why does this alleged microbe consume plastic? What nutritional value does oil / hydrocarbons provide?
Not many nutrients, but a lot of energy. Think of the calorie content of cooking oil or butter. That’s why cars can run on cooking oil.
Iirc they bred some worms that are able to, but not prefer to, consume and digest plastics. So the issue is that they essentially had to deprive the worms of other food sources before they chose to eat the available plastic.
There may be some more promising research going into microbes or bacteria that i am not aware of though, so this answer isn’t necessarily comprehensive