7 ms·

Plastic is an amazing material. You can thermoform it, it's a great insulator, molds and fungi don't feed on it, it's incredibly strong (e.g. UHMWPE rope a.k.

Plastic is an amazing material. You can thermoform it, it's a great insulator, molds and fungi don't feed on it, it's incredibly strong (e.g. UHMWPE rope a.k.a dyneema) and so on. The trouble seems to be we don't really respect the environment enough, so we use it in terrible ways, like single use products. We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due respect to the long term consequences. So we use things like plastic containers, forks, cups, bottles and spoons. What are some alternatives? Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags?

r00fus 8y ago
> Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags? If you put a price (read: tax) on plastic, I'm sure many folks would jump at the opportunity of replacing plastic-heavy stuff with no/minimal plastic options possibly using glass or paper (or metal where things are disposable that shouldn't be). Thing is, plastic has a subsidized price right now due to petroleum supply chain being subsidized - plastic is a byproduct (we even fight wars to keep the price low).
- p3llin0r3 8y ago
  Unfortunately, this probably wouldn't work. Most plastic waste does not come from rich countries with decent waste infrastructure. It comes from shipping and fishing and industrial vessels who dump their garbage into the ocean, and developing countries who dispose of all of their waste by throwing it into a river or the ocean to be washed away. You can't tax them because they are not in your country. You would have to stop the plastic being created at it's source, and prevent it from ever being released into the environment.
  - oldcynic 8y ago
    Should we ignore the escalating amounts of waste, mainly from single use packaging, in the developed world meanwhile?
    - justinator 8y ago
      The developing world has their own problems - how is a developing country going to deal with these problems without first getting the infrastructure needed? Let's focus on our wasteful selves - we're the one's who've been benefited from the consumption of cheap, throwaway products.
  - oppositelock 8y ago
    I don't know why you're being down voted. China, India and Africa are responsible for 90% of the waste in the ocean. All of them are smaller consumers of it than the US. (https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/891361/Plastic-waste-pollution-90-per-cent-rivers-India-China-Africa https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/891361/Plastic-waste-po...) I can't stand these various doomsday scenario stories. Yes, it's certainly wasteful to have single use plastic products. Consumers like them, though, and they're sometimes the only way to comply with various regulations about cleanliness. For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more energy than just making a plastic bottle.
    - dflock 8y ago
      Right, but if your energy comes from renewables, then this calculus changes.
    - chillwaves 8y ago
      > For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more energy than just making a plastic bottle. OK but washing and cleaning is the whole consumer life cycle of glass. How does it compare to both making and "recycling" the plastic bottle?
    - infinite8s 8y ago
      Did you read the original article? Where do you think a lot of the waste from China comes from (hint - we send it there). A lot of the plastic 'recyclable' waste we ship there can't actually be recycled (clam shell containers, contaminated plastic), and ends up as part of the waste stream.
  - r00fus 8y ago
    Taxing the usage of plastic will reduce it's use because it kills the market and reduces. Just like GDPR killing off companies that could only exist where reasonable regulations didn't exist, the same would apply of plastic. If taxing plastic in US/EU creates alternative packaging/disposable options that are cheaper or more effective (doubtful but possible) then the developing world can leapfrom from plastics to non-plastic. Also you're ignoring all the waste that's not ocean-dumped. The billions of tons in landfills.
  - rwallace 8y ago
    > You would have to stop the plastic being created at it's source, and prevent it from ever being released into the environment. Then let's do that! Sure, you can't police a fishing trawler or some guy in a Third World country throwing plastic bottles into the water, but petroleum production and refining are very big, visible, highly centralized industries. It would be entirely feasible and desirable to put a hefty tax on the production of plastic. And basic economic theory says that's the most efficient way to do it: apply a tax to cover the negative externalities, and let the market figure out how to optimize from there.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Not necessarily. In 2004, Germany introduced a 25 cent deposit on single-use plastic bottles [1] for types of beverages where single-use bottles were much more common than reusable bottles. The intention was like you describe: to encourage consumers and manufacturers to prefer reusable bottles. However, the opposite happened. In the first few months after the law came into power, each retailer would only take back bottles purchased at their own stores, leading to a public outcry. Retailers eventually came together to form a single deposit system for single-use bottles. Bottles purchased from any of the participating retailers could now be returned to any other participating retailer. That's something that's pretty much impossible for reusable bottles: When you return a reusable bottle, the store that takes it back must have a supply chain to ship the bottle back to the corresponding beverage factory. Single-use bottles, on the other hand, are just destroyed and recycled, so the supply chain is much easier. In the end, the deposit system for single-use bottles functioned so well (both for customers and retailers) that manufacturers switched from reusable to single-use bottles. For example, Coca-Cola used to produce only reusable bottles (and single-use aluminum cans). Now they sell a large amount of single-use bottles. A lot of retailers (e.g. the almighty discount chains) sell only single-use bottles because they don't want to bother with collecting reusable bottles. [1] For comparison: Deposits on reusable bottles are either 8 cents (glass, e.g. beer) or 15 cents (plastic, e.g. juices; sometimes glass, e.g. brand sodas).
  - byroot 8y ago
    No the store doesn't need a supply chain. The distributor who deliver new, filled bottles can take the empty ones back. Which is quite efficient. That's how it works in Quebec for instance.
    - Sukram21 8y ago
      The distributor will only take the empty ones that resemble the type he delivers => this is a supply chain. That’s why you can’t just return any type of reusable bottles at a store, but just the ones it is also selling.
      - 8y ago
- mamcx 8y ago
  Here in Colombia the plastic bags in stores cost some (very little) money now. Suddenly, people discover that are not as necessary! Now, people take stuff with their own hands (before EVERYTHING was put in a plastic bag, event single units that are already in plastic bags!) or use bags made of fabrics or just get one with them...
  - acomjean 8y ago
    I'm in cambridge MA, We have the same thing. You need to pay 10 cents for a bag, period (it goes to the city). While slightly annoying at first, you quickly adapt. (I haven't bought a bag yet, its the principal. It also turns the question "do you need a bag" in a hostile one). You totally get used to it.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
A lot of the time you can substitute paper, glass, wood, wicker, wax, natural fiber cloth or string, the things people were using at the turn of the 20th century before any plastic other than rubber had been commercialised. There are also bioplastics that degrade quickly, and those could cover some of the remaining gaps. I don't think even long use products are good uses for plastic, TBH. Long in whose terms? Plastics will hang around for longer than we have had agriculture. Imagine if the Sumerians had made plastic. We'd still have their plastic temple tat, ox yokes, obsolete plough parts etc littering up the Iraq desert.
- majewsky 8y ago
  > Imagine if the Sumerians had made plastic. We'd still have their plastic temple tat, ox yokes, obsolete plough parts etc littering up the Iraq desert. That would actually be great for archaeologists. /s
mjevans 8y ago
Actually, yes. Glass jars/bottles and metal cans are great for recycling (sometimes even reuse if standards are high enough). Paper bags are also a great technology. I could see a standardized beverage container format (including a paper wrapper lightly glued on) and cheap reusable metal 'silverware' that is also magnetic (because we're a nation of idiots and this stuff is going to get in to the waste stream) working out.
- justinator 8y ago
  Glass is a terrible material in a recycling sense, as it's weight makes transport costly and wasteful (fuel). The raw material is essentially sand (silica) which we're not going to run out of, soon. Burying it in a landfill won't make a worst landfill - it's essentially inert. It's literally better to NOT recycle glass than to recycle it. Reuse it.
  - FooBarWidget 8y ago
    I don't understand why it's better to not recycle glass. Yes transporting used glass is costly, but isn't collecting and transporting sand even more costly? And while we won't run out of sand, good sand is limited. Or can you use any sort of sand to produce glass instead of a specific type of sand? Doesn't refining sand into glass take additional energy compared to melting existing glass?
    - justinator 8y ago
      For one truck load, how much sand can you carry per volume, vs. old glass bottles? For the latter, aren't you mostly transporting air? You don't want to BREAK the glass bottles, since they still need to be sorted, and cleaned.
      - hutzlibu 8y ago
        Do you know what you are talking about? I am far from an expert, but here in germany glas gets recycled in 3 bins, brown, green, white - and get usually smashed by people throwing those bottles in. So not much air. And cleaned they still can get (and should)
justinator 8y ago
I mean, we use it despite it's glaring problems because the material is essential free, being a byproduct of oil refining.
protonfish 8y ago
Glass isn't biodegradable either, but for some reason that's OK. Paper uses more energy (fossil fuels) and pollutants in production than plastics. Taking a rational look at environmental impact of different materials contradicts the knee-jerk anti-plastic attitude that is popular. Unless I am missing something, I can't see a rational reason that using plastics for packaging, then properly disposing in a land fill is not the sky-is-falling bogeyman it is portrayed to be.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- justin66 8y ago
  > Glass isn't biodegradable either, but for some reason that's OK. Regular glass in the environment is eventually pulverized into dust, it doesn't react with much of anything, and if the little bits that persist longest in the environment are ingested by an animal, it's handled biologically like any other nontoxic stone or grit. Pretty much the worst you can say about its environmental effect is that the broken bits can be pretty sharp when they're new and it's rather heavy, making disposal and recycling expensive in some respects. Plastic is quite different.
gsich 8y ago
>What are some alternatives? Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags? Yes. Beaverages from glass bottles taste better. This is probably just ones own taste.
gwbas1c 8y ago
I always ask for paper bags. Environmentalism aside, they make great free trash bags.
dghughes 8y ago
> We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due respect to the long term consequences. Those properties are also used in place of other materials. Gears in devices that were once metal are now plastic which works OK for w while but it's not even close to the durability of metal. The result is the device with plastic gears fails and a new one is made to replace it, maybe two or three times in a decade. Meanwhile a device with metal gears may last decades. How many vacuum cleaners, washers, dryers, microwave ovens from the 1970s and 1980s are still in use versus the same devices from the 1990s/2000s? Modular devices that can be updated to suit whims of fashion. And technology which use durable metal parts would make more sense and cut down on plastic waste plus the sheer volume of old failed devices.
- joecot 8y ago
  > How many vacuum cleaners, washers, dryers, microwave ovens from the 1970s and 1980s are still in use versus the same devices from the 1990s/2000s? I don't doubt that metal is more durable than plastic, but there's some survivor's bias in that statement. We usually think of 70s and 80s appliances being more durable because we see people still using them. The truth is that we've always had a mix of cheaply made vs durable products, and the cheaply made stuff broke years ago and was replaced. We're comparing our cheapest made products of now to the most durably made products of decades ago.
  - JohnSully 8y ago
    Older stuff generally had poorer tolerances and in some cases barely worked. However when it did it was easy to fix and was generally designed with a large margin. Nowadays we make things with a lot more precision and the mechanics will go a lot longer without needing repair. However if anything goes wrong the whole thing needs replacement as it's not designed for repair.
- sgnelson 8y ago
  Sure, and I agree that many products aren't built like they once were (with or without survivorship bias, as well as the ability to fix older products is way easier than newer products) but, the cost of metal gears versus plastic gears, for instance, was much much higher. (now with Metal Injection molding, the prices would be closer, but the MiM are still more expensive.) For better or worse, people are almost always going to choose cheaper products.
Grazester 8y ago
Yes with the glass bottles please. In the Caribbean Soda use to come in glass bottle with a $0.50 deposit. You would never find a bottle on the side of the street, kids lamented losing their deposit if they broke a bottle(also ran the risk of getting yourself cut if you did) so they made sure to hold on to those bottles with both hands. Now soda comes in a plastic bottle with no deposit on it and isn't recycled on the island. The side of roads and nearby bushes are filled with these plastic bottles. Drains are clogged with them. Its an absolute nuisance. I dont know why the government even allowed the switch over to plastic....Ok I lied, I know. the glass bottles were costly to the breweries and they are the government biggest campaign supporters.
- lopmotr 8y ago
  Isn't that a problem that could be solved with law enforcement and cleaners like what developed countries do? That still seems to be cheaper than glass bottles.
  - Grazester 8y ago
    Yes there are law's against littering and that doesn't mean much. I live in New York City(in a "developed" country). Yet some streets can become pretty littered. The glass bottle made the people police themselves instead of having the governments use public resources to do it.
  - dflock 8y ago
    Cheaper is not the measure of everything. Glass bottles, returned and re-used are much better for the environment than plastic bottles.
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      Also for your health - lots of plastic bottles are not so stable and less so, in heat. So you end up drinking small amounts of plastic and additives.
    - rkda 8y ago
imhoguy 8y ago
Upcycling! Pack stuff into reusable durable plastic bags. Reuse small bottles - fill them with tap water or water from large refillable dispensers.
smallnamespace 8y ago
> molds and fungi don't feed on it At the macro level this is a bug, not a feature. The fact that it doesn't biodegrade easily is what makes it accumulate in the environment, with more and more toxic effects as we go up the food chain.
garmaine 8y ago
> molds and fungi don't feed on it Yet. This is rapidly changing.
2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
What about aluminium bottles? There are a bunch of Japanese drinks that come in aluminium bottles. Eg Miracle Body https://www.mix.com.my/en/goods.php?id=3456 https://www.mix.com.my/en/goods.php?id=3456 They’re light, and you can make the entire thing out of the same material.
cdolan 8y ago
Glass bottles are only valuable if they are not broken. However a lot of bottles break as part of any recycling or reuse process.
FrozenVoid 8y ago
Better biodegradable plastics and alternatives: https://natsci.source.colostate.edu/biorenewable-biodegradable-plastic-alternative-synthesized-by-csu-chemists/ https://natsci.source.colostate.edu/biorenewable-biodegradab... https://physicsworld.com/a/100-biodegradable-packaging-company-expands-its-customer-base/ https://physicsworld.com/a/100-biodegradable-packaging-compa... There is a switch to paper(cellulose)-based products https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/the-fight-for-paper-straws-is-getting-fierce-in-new-york-bars https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/the-fight... https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/06/15/mcdonalds-test-plastic-straw-alternatives-u-s-later-year/703297002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/06/15/mcdonalds-te... Glass bottles are coming back https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/glass-milk-bottles-plastic-pollution-recycling-environment-replace-a8172816.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/glass-milk-bottles... Aluminum and glass replacing plastic in premium smartphones Plastic stickers replaced by laser engraving http://www.dw.com/en/finally-an-alternative-to-plastic-for-labeling-organics/a-44084391 http://www.dw.com/en/finally-an-alternative-to-plastic-for-l... Bubble wrap replaced by new package geometry https://www.adweek.com/creativity/could-this-alternative-to-bubble-wrap-reduce-ecommerces-dependence-on-plastic/ https://www.adweek.com/creativity/could-this-alternative-to-... Beeswax food wrap http://www.trurodaily.com/business/beezy-wrap-a-sustainable-natural-alternative-to-plastic-217680/ http://www.trurodaily.com/business/beezy-wrap-a-sustainable-...

r00fus 8y ago

> Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags? If you put a price (read: tax) on plastic, I'm sure many folks would jump at the opportunity of replacing plastic-heavy stuff with no/minimal plastic options possibly using glass or paper (or metal where things are disposable that shouldn't be). Thing is, plastic has a subsidized price right now due to petroleum supply chain being subsidized - plastic is a byproduct (we even fight wars to keep the price low).

p3llin0r3 8y ago
Unfortunately, this probably wouldn't work. Most plastic waste does not come from rich countries with decent waste infrastructure. It comes from shipping and fishing and industrial vessels who dump their garbage into the ocean, and developing countries who dispose of all of their waste by throwing it into a river or the ocean to be washed away. You can't tax them because they are not in your country. You would have to stop the plastic being created at it's source, and prevent it from ever being released into the environment.
- oldcynic 8y ago
  Should we ignore the escalating amounts of waste, mainly from single use packaging, in the developed world meanwhile?
  - justinator 8y ago
    The developing world has their own problems - how is a developing country going to deal with these problems without first getting the infrastructure needed? Let's focus on our wasteful selves - we're the one's who've been benefited from the consumption of cheap, throwaway products.
- oppositelock 8y ago
  I don't know why you're being down voted. China, India and Africa are responsible for 90% of the waste in the ocean. All of them are smaller consumers of it than the US. (https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/891361/Plastic-waste-pollution-90-per-cent-rivers-India-China-Africa https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/891361/Plastic-waste-po...) I can't stand these various doomsday scenario stories. Yes, it's certainly wasteful to have single use plastic products. Consumers like them, though, and they're sometimes the only way to comply with various regulations about cleanliness. For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more energy than just making a plastic bottle.
  - dflock 8y ago
    Right, but if your energy comes from renewables, then this calculus changes.
  - chillwaves 8y ago
    > For example, washing and steam cleaning glass to sterilize it uses more energy than just making a plastic bottle. OK but washing and cleaning is the whole consumer life cycle of glass. How does it compare to both making and "recycling" the plastic bottle?
  - infinite8s 8y ago
    Did you read the original article? Where do you think a lot of the waste from China comes from (hint - we send it there). A lot of the plastic 'recyclable' waste we ship there can't actually be recycled (clam shell containers, contaminated plastic), and ends up as part of the waste stream.
- r00fus 8y ago
  Taxing the usage of plastic will reduce it's use because it kills the market and reduces. Just like GDPR killing off companies that could only exist where reasonable regulations didn't exist, the same would apply of plastic. If taxing plastic in US/EU creates alternative packaging/disposable options that are cheaper or more effective (doubtful but possible) then the developing world can leapfrom from plastics to non-plastic. Also you're ignoring all the waste that's not ocean-dumped. The billions of tons in landfills.
- rwallace 8y ago
  > You would have to stop the plastic being created at it's source, and prevent it from ever being released into the environment. Then let's do that! Sure, you can't police a fishing trawler or some guy in a Third World country throwing plastic bottles into the water, but petroleum production and refining are very big, visible, highly centralized industries. It would be entirely feasible and desirable to put a hefty tax on the production of plastic. And basic economic theory says that's the most efficient way to do it: apply a tax to cover the negative externalities, and let the market figure out how to optimize from there.
majewsky 8y ago
Not necessarily. In 2004, Germany introduced a 25 cent deposit on single-use plastic bottles [1] for types of beverages where single-use bottles were much more common than reusable bottles. The intention was like you describe: to encourage consumers and manufacturers to prefer reusable bottles. However, the opposite happened. In the first few months after the law came into power, each retailer would only take back bottles purchased at their own stores, leading to a public outcry. Retailers eventually came together to form a single deposit system for single-use bottles. Bottles purchased from any of the participating retailers could now be returned to any other participating retailer. That's something that's pretty much impossible for reusable bottles: When you return a reusable bottle, the store that takes it back must have a supply chain to ship the bottle back to the corresponding beverage factory. Single-use bottles, on the other hand, are just destroyed and recycled, so the supply chain is much easier. In the end, the deposit system for single-use bottles functioned so well (both for customers and retailers) that manufacturers switched from reusable to single-use bottles. For example, Coca-Cola used to produce only reusable bottles (and single-use aluminum cans). Now they sell a large amount of single-use bottles. A lot of retailers (e.g. the almighty discount chains) sell only single-use bottles because they don't want to bother with collecting reusable bottles. [1] For comparison: Deposits on reusable bottles are either 8 cents (glass, e.g. beer) or 15 cents (plastic, e.g. juices; sometimes glass, e.g. brand sodas).
- byroot 8y ago
  No the store doesn't need a supply chain. The distributor who deliver new, filled bottles can take the empty ones back. Which is quite efficient. That's how it works in Quebec for instance.
  - Sukram21 8y ago
    The distributor will only take the empty ones that resemble the type he delivers => this is a supply chain. That’s why you can’t just return any type of reusable bottles at a store, but just the ones it is also selling.
    - 8y ago
mamcx 8y ago
Here in Colombia the plastic bags in stores cost some (very little) money now. Suddenly, people discover that are not as necessary! Now, people take stuff with their own hands (before EVERYTHING was put in a plastic bag, event single units that are already in plastic bags!) or use bags made of fabrics or just get one with them...
- acomjean 8y ago
  I'm in cambridge MA, We have the same thing. You need to pay 10 cents for a bag, period (it goes to the city). While slightly annoying at first, you quickly adapt. (I haven't bought a bag yet, its the principal. It also turns the question "do you need a bag" in a hostile one). You totally get used to it.

JulianMorrison 8y ago

A lot of the time you can substitute paper, glass, wood, wicker, wax, natural fiber cloth or string, the things people were using at the turn of the 20th century before any plastic other than rubber had been commercialised. There are also bioplastics that degrade quickly, and those could cover some of the remaining gaps. I don't think even long use products are good uses for plastic, TBH. Long in whose terms? Plastics will hang around for longer than we have had agriculture. Imagine if the Sumerians had made plastic. We'd still have their plastic temple tat, ox yokes, obsolete plough parts etc littering up the Iraq desert.

majewsky 8y ago
> Imagine if the Sumerians had made plastic. We'd still have their plastic temple tat, ox yokes, obsolete plough parts etc littering up the Iraq desert. That would actually be great for archaeologists. /s

mjevans 8y ago

Actually, yes. Glass jars/bottles and metal cans are great for recycling (sometimes even reuse if standards are high enough). Paper bags are also a great technology. I could see a standardized beverage container format (including a paper wrapper lightly glued on) and cheap reusable metal 'silverware' that is also magnetic (because we're a nation of idiots and this stuff is going to get in to the waste stream) working out.

justinator 8y ago
Glass is a terrible material in a recycling sense, as it's weight makes transport costly and wasteful (fuel). The raw material is essentially sand (silica) which we're not going to run out of, soon. Burying it in a landfill won't make a worst landfill - it's essentially inert. It's literally better to NOT recycle glass than to recycle it. Reuse it.
- FooBarWidget 8y ago
  I don't understand why it's better to not recycle glass. Yes transporting used glass is costly, but isn't collecting and transporting sand even more costly? And while we won't run out of sand, good sand is limited. Or can you use any sort of sand to produce glass instead of a specific type of sand? Doesn't refining sand into glass take additional energy compared to melting existing glass?
  - justinator 8y ago
    For one truck load, how much sand can you carry per volume, vs. old glass bottles? For the latter, aren't you mostly transporting air? You don't want to BREAK the glass bottles, since they still need to be sorted, and cleaned.
    - hutzlibu 8y ago
      Do you know what you are talking about? I am far from an expert, but here in germany glas gets recycled in 3 bins, brown, green, white - and get usually smashed by people throwing those bottles in. So not much air. And cleaned they still can get (and should)

justinator 8y ago

I mean, we use it despite it's glaring problems because the material is essential free, being a byproduct of oil refining.

protonfish 8y ago

Glass isn't biodegradable either, but for some reason that's OK. Paper uses more energy (fossil fuels) and pollutants in production than plastics. Taking a rational look at environmental impact of different materials contradicts the knee-jerk anti-plastic attitude that is popular. Unless I am missing something, I can't see a rational reason that using plastics for packaging, then properly disposing in a land fill is not the sky-is-falling bogeyman it is portrayed to be.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
justin66 8y ago
> Glass isn't biodegradable either, but for some reason that's OK. Regular glass in the environment is eventually pulverized into dust, it doesn't react with much of anything, and if the little bits that persist longest in the environment are ingested by an animal, it's handled biologically like any other nontoxic stone or grit. Pretty much the worst you can say about its environmental effect is that the broken bits can be pretty sharp when they're new and it's rather heavy, making disposal and recycling expensive in some respects. Plastic is quite different.

gsich 8y ago

>What are some alternatives? Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags? Yes. Beaverages from glass bottles taste better. This is probably just ones own taste.

gwbas1c 8y ago

I always ask for paper bags. Environmentalism aside, they make great free trash bags.

dghughes 8y ago

> We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due respect to the long term consequences. Those properties are also used in place of other materials. Gears in devices that were once metal are now plastic which works OK for w while but it's not even close to the durability of metal. The result is the device with plastic gears fails and a new one is made to replace it, maybe two or three times in a decade. Meanwhile a device with metal gears may last decades. How many vacuum cleaners, washers, dryers, microwave ovens from the 1970s and 1980s are still in use versus the same devices from the 1990s/2000s? Modular devices that can be updated to suit whims of fashion. And technology which use durable metal parts would make more sense and cut down on plastic waste plus the sheer volume of old failed devices.

joecot 8y ago
> How many vacuum cleaners, washers, dryers, microwave ovens from the 1970s and 1980s are still in use versus the same devices from the 1990s/2000s? I don't doubt that metal is more durable than plastic, but there's some survivor's bias in that statement. We usually think of 70s and 80s appliances being more durable because we see people still using them. The truth is that we've always had a mix of cheaply made vs durable products, and the cheaply made stuff broke years ago and was replaced. We're comparing our cheapest made products of now to the most durably made products of decades ago.
- JohnSully 8y ago
  Older stuff generally had poorer tolerances and in some cases barely worked. However when it did it was easy to fix and was generally designed with a large margin. Nowadays we make things with a lot more precision and the mechanics will go a lot longer without needing repair. However if anything goes wrong the whole thing needs replacement as it's not designed for repair.
sgnelson 8y ago
Sure, and I agree that many products aren't built like they once were (with or without survivorship bias, as well as the ability to fix older products is way easier than newer products) but, the cost of metal gears versus plastic gears, for instance, was much much higher. (now with Metal Injection molding, the prices would be closer, but the MiM are still more expensive.) For better or worse, people are almost always going to choose cheaper products.

Grazester 8y ago

Yes with the glass bottles please. In the Caribbean Soda use to come in glass bottle with a $0.50 deposit. You would never find a bottle on the side of the street, kids lamented losing their deposit if they broke a bottle(also ran the risk of getting yourself cut if you did) so they made sure to hold on to those bottles with both hands. Now soda comes in a plastic bottle with no deposit on it and isn't recycled on the island. The side of roads and nearby bushes are filled with these plastic bottles. Drains are clogged with them. Its an absolute nuisance. I dont know why the government even allowed the switch over to plastic....Ok I lied, I know. the glass bottles were costly to the breweries and they are the government biggest campaign supporters.

lopmotr 8y ago
Isn't that a problem that could be solved with law enforcement and cleaners like what developed countries do? That still seems to be cheaper than glass bottles.
- Grazester 8y ago
  Yes there are law's against littering and that doesn't mean much. I live in New York City(in a "developed" country). Yet some streets can become pretty littered. The glass bottle made the people police themselves instead of having the governments use public resources to do it.
- dflock 8y ago
  Cheaper is not the measure of everything. Glass bottles, returned and re-used are much better for the environment than plastic bottles.
  - hutzlibu 8y ago
    Also for your health - lots of plastic bottles are not so stable and less so, in heat. So you end up drinking small amounts of plastic and additives.
  - rkda 8y ago

imhoguy 8y ago

Upcycling! Pack stuff into reusable durable plastic bags. Reuse small bottles - fill them with tap water or water from large refillable dispensers.

smallnamespace 8y ago

> molds and fungi don't feed on it At the macro level this is a bug, not a feature. The fact that it doesn't biodegrade easily is what makes it accumulate in the environment, with more and more toxic effects as we go up the food chain.

garmaine 8y ago

> molds and fungi don't feed on it Yet. This is rapidly changing.

2muchcoffeeman 8y ago

What about aluminium bottles? There are a bunch of Japanese drinks that come in aluminium bottles. Eg Miracle Body https://www.mix.com.my/en/goods.php?id=3456 https://www.mix.com.my/en/goods.php?id=3456 They’re light, and you can make the entire thing out of the same material.

cdolan 8y ago

Glass bottles are only valuable if they are not broken. However a lot of bottles break as part of any recycling or reuse process.

FrozenVoid 8y ago

Better biodegradable plastics and alternatives: https://natsci.source.colostate.edu/biorenewable-biodegradable-plastic-alternative-synthesized-by-csu-chemists/ https://natsci.source.colostate.edu/biorenewable-biodegradab... https://physicsworld.com/a/100-biodegradable-packaging-company-expands-its-customer-base/ https://physicsworld.com/a/100-biodegradable-packaging-compa... There is a switch to paper(cellulose)-based products https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/the-fight-for-paper-straws-is-getting-fierce-in-new-york-bars https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-05/the-fight... https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/06/15/mcdonalds-test-plastic-straw-alternatives-u-s-later-year/703297002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/06/15/mcdonalds-te... Glass bottles are coming back https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/glass-milk-bottles-plastic-pollution-recycling-environment-replace-a8172816.html https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/glass-milk-bottles... Aluminum and glass replacing plastic in premium smartphones Plastic stickers replaced by laser engraving http://www.dw.com/en/finally-an-alternative-to-plastic-for-labeling-organics/a-44084391 http://www.dw.com/en/finally-an-alternative-to-plastic-for-l... Bubble wrap replaced by new package geometry https://www.adweek.com/creativity/could-this-alternative-to-bubble-wrap-reduce-ecommerces-dependence-on-plastic/ https://www.adweek.com/creativity/could-this-alternative-to-... Beeswax food wrap http://www.trurodaily.com/business/beezy-wrap-a-sustainable-natural-alternative-to-plastic-217680/ http://www.trurodaily.com/business/beezy-wrap-a-sustainable-...