7 ms·

The packaging industry is going to fight tooth and nail so it can continue to spew out single use plastics for every single sales transaction that occurs. Ther

The packaging industry is going to fight tooth and nail so it can continue to spew out single use plastics for every single sales transaction that occurs. There's big money involved. Imagine the costs to the packaging industry if it was no longer allowed to create infinite garbage. I do find it strange that there seems to be zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles.

SamReidHughes 8y ago
It would create infinite other forms of garbage that people throw in the trash anyway.
- outside1234 8y ago
  Plastic lasts essential forever - aluminum and steel do not
  - cc81 8y ago
    In countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled. Other containers such as paper might sometimes even be worse as it will cost more energy to produce them than plastic.
    - NullPrefix 8y ago
      >paper might sometimes even be worse as it will cost more energy to produce them than plastic That's the point. Plastic is cheap to produce but costly to look after. Paper is costly to produce but cheap to look after.
      - cc81 8y ago
        And my point is that it is not necessarily true in countries with good waste management. I will take Sweden as an example with plastic bags. I cannot find the quotation now but a researcher was asked about plastic bags and the environmental impact on them and the point was that it was not as clear as people think. In Sweden almost all plastic bags ends up being burned like this: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy-production/sweden-is-great-at-turning-trash-to-energy.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/e... That is very cheap. And the result would be that the total environmental impact for the complete life cycle might be greater if you choose a paper bag as more energy was required in creating it.
    - gambiting 8y ago
      >>In countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled Those countries are so rare that it's almost not worth mentioning. Vast majority of places around the world, including most of the developed world do not have "good waste management" by this definition. Even in countries as rich as UK, Germany and France most waste goes to a landfill, not an incinerator. Sure Sweden shows a good example how it can be done, but it's like dismissing the problem of car-related pollution because there exists one hydrogen car that you can actually buy. Yes, it doesn't have those problems but in the large scheme of things it's completely irrelevant.
      - barney54 8y ago
        I’m not seeing the problem with plastic going into landfills. That means it doesn’t result in plastic pollution in waters and the ocean and is sequestering the carbon back in the earth.
      - martinald 8y ago
        Not true in the UK anymore. Nearly every local authority has or has under construction a 'waste to energy' plant (incinerator). Most of South London's waste has been burnt since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELCHP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELCHP, for example.
      - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
        > Even in countries as rich as UK, Germany and France most waste goes to a landfill, not an incinerator. Dumping untreated waste into landfills has been illegal in Germany since 2005, so that's not a thing anymore.
      - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        Landfill has been falling steadily in the UK for a long time. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/607416/Digest_of_Waste_and_Resource_Statistics__2017_rev.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
      - xorfish 8y ago
- newnewpdro 8y ago
  Not all forms of garbage are equally harmful to the environment. We should enforce prioritizing producing garbage that provides nutrition to the things it passes through. Plastics do the opposite, to the extent of killing the animals mistaking it for food.
- crooked-v 8y ago
  Single-used cardboard wrappings for non-perishables don't have nearly as much impact on the environment as plastic, even if just thrown away.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    It really depends on whether you value apples or oranges more highly. My understanding is that paper fares better on the litter front, since even the stuff that escapes landfills still degrades quickly, while plastic tends to fare better on the carbon footprint front, because it's lighter (which reduces fuel burned to ship things) and less energy-intensive to manufacture.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
  I'm no packaging expert, however we did innovate ourselves in to this mess, it seems reasonable we may be able to innovate ourselves out of it.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Is that anything more than a sentiment? It's easy to come up with counter-examples. For example, it's easy for me to "innovate" myself into a 15-foot hole in the ground, and likely impossible to innovate myself out of it without outside help.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
      What is the point of this comment? I’m not suggesting any one individual attempt to innovate themselves out of a world polluted with plastic without outside help, but I guess digging yourself a 15-foot grave could be construed as one method. It’s always easier to say why a thing can’t be done than come up with methods of doing a thing and implementing that thing. I have friends who intentionally restrict the amount of plastic-packaged items they buy, they would struggling to throw out a 200mm cube of tightly bound plastics every month or two; so we know significant reductions in plastic waste are possible on an individual scale. In the scope of, for example, landing a probe on an asteroid and returning a sample, the engineering challenges facing us in the form of reducing plastic packaging use seem to me, the non-expert, fairly trivial. I could list some possibilities I, and others, have consider, though they seem to be extensively thrashed out in the comments here and the internet at large. Was going to the moon, or being able to buy an all electric production vehicle, or the modern microchip, not a mere sentiment at some point? It seems like the primary lack in this context is the desire for collective action, which appears to be changing. Perhaps I wildely misunderstood your comment?
      - SamReidHughes 8y ago
        Recycling has nothing to do with plastic pollution. Plastics that don't get recycled instead get buried in a hole in the ground.
tyoma 8y ago
As a counterpoint, single use packaging is a godsend to people with food allergies.
- ddebernardy 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, what's wrong with single use paper packaging or some other non-plastic alternative to the same effect?
  - abainbridge 8y ago
    Broadly speaking, I expect the answer is that plastic better prolongs shelf life and leads to less food waste. And plastic is cheaper.
    - abainbridge 8y ago
      For example, in the UK a punnet of strawberries in the supermarket has a little rectangle of bubble wrap glued into the bottom of it. It is there to reduce the amount of physical damage to the fruit. It looks like it couldn't do anything. But the food companies would love not to have the extra cost of the rectangle of bubble wrap and the gluing process. They do it because it works.
      - GordonS 8y ago
        I always thought it's more like a nappy than bubble wrap; it's always stained with the colour of the fruit, so assumed it was there to absorb moisture from bruised fruit.
        abainbridge 8y ago
        Oh yeah, sometimes there's a nappy thing, but I'd say bubble wrap is more normal for strawberries. I think the nappy thing is impregnated with something that absorbs ethylene. See http://www.itsfresh.com/Absorbing_Ethylene.html http://www.itsfresh.com/Absorbing_Ethylene.html The bubble wrap can be seen in a photo in this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/in_search_of_the_naked_strawbe.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/in_se...
dredmorbius 8y ago
That's been a very long-term strategy. See Annie Leonard's "Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change": In one of the most iconic ads of the twentieth century, a Native American (actually, it was an Italian dressed up as a Native American) canoes through a river strewn with trash. He disembarks and walks along the shore as the passenger in a car driving past throws a bag of litter out the window. As the camera zooms in to a single tear rolling down his cheek, the narrator announces, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” This 1971 ad, just a year after the first national Earth Day celebration, had a huge impact on a generation awakening to environmental concerns. Children and young adults watched it over and over, shared the faux-Indian’s grief, and vowed to make changes in their individual lives to stop pollution. That response was exactly what the ad’s creators hoped for: individual action. For the ad was produced not by a campaign to protect the environment but by a campaign to protect the garbage-makers themselves. http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainabilitypossible/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SOW2013-23-Leonard-.pdf http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainabilitypossible/wp-conten...
- thinkingkong 8y ago
  It's a little more nuanced than that. The ad was produced by soft drink companies, because the tabs were strewn all over the place. The goal of the companies banding together and creating this campaign was to put the onus on the individual to clean up garbage, and defer responsibility themselves.
  - dredmorbius 8y ago
    That's Leonard's message, precisely.
blablablabla991 8y ago
I don't get the logic behind this? How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? And if it isn't superfluous, getting rid of it might be a net negative?
- andrewstuart 8y ago
  >>> How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? By strongly opposing any initiative to implement returnable, multi use packaging, coming up with a bunch of plausible reasons why it doesn't work - maybe it's unhygienic, maybe things can't be washed etc etc
  - blablablabla991 8y ago
    But if multi use packaging would work just as well other single use packaging, wouldn't the packaging industry make the same profits?
    - Dylan16807 8y ago
      Many types of wasteful packaging work better for them, when they don't have to pay a lot of the costs. That doesn't mean they're the better overall choice.
      - blablablabla991 8y ago
        Why would THEY have to pay the costs, and not their customers? Presumably, if the costs for packaging would go up, packaging industry would also rice the prices to make up for it?
        Dylan16807 8y ago
        Charging the customers at point of purchase is perfectly fine and equivalent. Customers are already indirectly paying, the point is to move that cost to a point where it's super obvious and affects purchasing decisions. Customers as a group were already paying the cost of the garbage, but there was no pressure on the manufacturers to reduce it. Once you make the change then the total cost is the same, but now reducing packaging can improve a manufacturer's profit margin[1], even if it costs them a tiny bit more to make! This pushes things toward reduced waste, with the total number of [shelf price + garbage harm] dropping by some number of pennies. [1] Even if you charge the customer directly, presumably the manufacturer still wants to hit a specific shelf price.
anonymous5133 8y ago
I think there will eventually be a public outcry since now based on the research, it appears that plastic has made a full loop into the human food chain. Plastic fibers are being found in human sewage...which basically means we have plastic in our diets. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-plastics-microplastics-human-feces/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-...
- akvadrako 8y ago
  Most people could use more fiber in their diet.
grecy 8y ago
> zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles Plastic water bottles - of any size - have been illegal in NSW, a state of Australia for many years. It has been fantastic. Governments need to grow a spine and stop taking so much corporate money as bribes, and actually get to work making our world better.
- m3at 8y ago
  Is it for water only? If yes, did consumption of other drinks still sold in plastic bottles increase? Genuinely interested, if no hard numbers exist anecdotes are fine
- dannyw 8y ago
  I'm drinking from a plastic water bottle right now in NSW, so I'm no sure what you're referring to.
- zebracanevra 8y ago
  Some small towns like Bundanoon [1] have banned water bottles, but in no way have water bottles been banned across NSW. There has been a push from leading supermarkets Coles and Woolworths to ban single use plastic bags, with great success. But that's a private matter, not from the government. Other states have banned them, but not NSW. [2] [1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/bundanoon-in-world-first-ban-on-bottled-water/news-story/03d20a2496881eafa9510b3fdf019b36 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/bundanoon-in-wo... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/supermarket-ban-sees-80pc-drop-in-plastic-bags-nationwide/10576554 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/supermarket-ban-sees-...

SamReidHughes 8y ago

It would create infinite other forms of garbage that people throw in the trash anyway.

outside1234 8y ago
Plastic lasts essential forever - aluminum and steel do not
- cc81 8y ago
  In countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled. Other containers such as paper might sometimes even be worse as it will cost more energy to produce them than plastic.
  - NullPrefix 8y ago
    >paper might sometimes even be worse as it will cost more energy to produce them than plastic That's the point. Plastic is cheap to produce but costly to look after. Paper is costly to produce but cheap to look after.
    - cc81 8y ago
      And my point is that it is not necessarily true in countries with good waste management. I will take Sweden as an example with plastic bags. I cannot find the quotation now but a researcher was asked about plastic bags and the environmental impact on them and the point was that it was not as clear as people think. In Sweden almost all plastic bags ends up being burned like this: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy-production/sweden-is-great-at-turning-trash-to-energy.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/e... That is very cheap. And the result would be that the total environmental impact for the complete life cycle might be greater if you choose a paper bag as more energy was required in creating it.
  - gambiting 8y ago
    >>In countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled Those countries are so rare that it's almost not worth mentioning. Vast majority of places around the world, including most of the developed world do not have "good waste management" by this definition. Even in countries as rich as UK, Germany and France most waste goes to a landfill, not an incinerator. Sure Sweden shows a good example how it can be done, but it's like dismissing the problem of car-related pollution because there exists one hydrogen car that you can actually buy. Yes, it doesn't have those problems but in the large scheme of things it's completely irrelevant.
    - barney54 8y ago
      I’m not seeing the problem with plastic going into landfills. That means it doesn’t result in plastic pollution in waters and the ocean and is sequestering the carbon back in the earth.
    - martinald 8y ago
      Not true in the UK anymore. Nearly every local authority has or has under construction a 'waste to energy' plant (incinerator). Most of South London's waste has been burnt since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELCHP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELCHP, for example.
    - zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago
      > Even in countries as rich as UK, Germany and France most waste goes to a landfill, not an incinerator. Dumping untreated waste into landfills has been illegal in Germany since 2005, so that's not a thing anymore.
    - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      Landfill has been falling steadily in the UK for a long time. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/607416/Digest_of_Waste_and_Resource_Statistics__2017_rev.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
    - xorfish 8y ago
newnewpdro 8y ago
Not all forms of garbage are equally harmful to the environment. We should enforce prioritizing producing garbage that provides nutrition to the things it passes through. Plastics do the opposite, to the extent of killing the animals mistaking it for food.
crooked-v 8y ago
Single-used cardboard wrappings for non-perishables don't have nearly as much impact on the environment as plastic, even if just thrown away.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  It really depends on whether you value apples or oranges more highly. My understanding is that paper fares better on the litter front, since even the stuff that escapes landfills still degrades quickly, while plastic tends to fare better on the carbon footprint front, because it's lighter (which reduces fuel burned to ship things) and less energy-intensive to manufacture.
TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
I'm no packaging expert, however we did innovate ourselves in to this mess, it seems reasonable we may be able to innovate ourselves out of it.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Is that anything more than a sentiment? It's easy to come up with counter-examples. For example, it's easy for me to "innovate" myself into a 15-foot hole in the ground, and likely impossible to innovate myself out of it without outside help.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 8y ago
    What is the point of this comment? I’m not suggesting any one individual attempt to innovate themselves out of a world polluted with plastic without outside help, but I guess digging yourself a 15-foot grave could be construed as one method. It’s always easier to say why a thing can’t be done than come up with methods of doing a thing and implementing that thing. I have friends who intentionally restrict the amount of plastic-packaged items they buy, they would struggling to throw out a 200mm cube of tightly bound plastics every month or two; so we know significant reductions in plastic waste are possible on an individual scale. In the scope of, for example, landing a probe on an asteroid and returning a sample, the engineering challenges facing us in the form of reducing plastic packaging use seem to me, the non-expert, fairly trivial. I could list some possibilities I, and others, have consider, though they seem to be extensively thrashed out in the comments here and the internet at large. Was going to the moon, or being able to buy an all electric production vehicle, or the modern microchip, not a mere sentiment at some point? It seems like the primary lack in this context is the desire for collective action, which appears to be changing. Perhaps I wildely misunderstood your comment?
    - SamReidHughes 8y ago
      Recycling has nothing to do with plastic pollution. Plastics that don't get recycled instead get buried in a hole in the ground.

tyoma 8y ago

As a counterpoint, single use packaging is a godsend to people with food allergies.

ddebernardy 8y ago
Out of curiosity, what's wrong with single use paper packaging or some other non-plastic alternative to the same effect?
- abainbridge 8y ago
  Broadly speaking, I expect the answer is that plastic better prolongs shelf life and leads to less food waste. And plastic is cheaper.
  - abainbridge 8y ago
    For example, in the UK a punnet of strawberries in the supermarket has a little rectangle of bubble wrap glued into the bottom of it. It is there to reduce the amount of physical damage to the fruit. It looks like it couldn't do anything. But the food companies would love not to have the extra cost of the rectangle of bubble wrap and the gluing process. They do it because it works.
    - GordonS 8y ago
      I always thought it's more like a nappy than bubble wrap; it's always stained with the colour of the fruit, so assumed it was there to absorb moisture from bruised fruit.
      - abainbridge 8y ago
        Oh yeah, sometimes there's a nappy thing, but I'd say bubble wrap is more normal for strawberries. I think the nappy thing is impregnated with something that absorbs ethylene. See http://www.itsfresh.com/Absorbing_Ethylene.html http://www.itsfresh.com/Absorbing_Ethylene.html The bubble wrap can be seen in a photo in this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/in_search_of_the_naked_strawbe.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/in_se...

dredmorbius 8y ago

That's been a very long-term strategy. See Annie Leonard's "Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change": In one of the most iconic ads of the twentieth century, a Native American (actually, it was an Italian dressed up as a Native American) canoes through a river strewn with trash. He disembarks and walks along the shore as the passenger in a car driving past throws a bag of litter out the window. As the camera zooms in to a single tear rolling down his cheek, the narrator announces, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” This 1971 ad, just a year after the first national Earth Day celebration, had a huge impact on a generation awakening to environmental concerns. Children and young adults watched it over and over, shared the faux-Indian’s grief, and vowed to make changes in their individual lives to stop pollution. That response was exactly what the ad’s creators hoped for: individual action. For the ad was produced not by a campaign to protect the environment but by a campaign to protect the garbage-makers themselves. http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainabilitypossible/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SOW2013-23-Leonard-.pdf http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainabilitypossible/wp-conten...

thinkingkong 8y ago
It's a little more nuanced than that. The ad was produced by soft drink companies, because the tabs were strewn all over the place. The goal of the companies banding together and creating this campaign was to put the onus on the individual to clean up garbage, and defer responsibility themselves.
- dredmorbius 8y ago
  That's Leonard's message, precisely.

blablablabla991 8y ago

I don't get the logic behind this? How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? And if it isn't superfluous, getting rid of it might be a net negative?

andrewstuart 8y ago
>>> How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? By strongly opposing any initiative to implement returnable, multi use packaging, coming up with a bunch of plausible reasons why it doesn't work - maybe it's unhygienic, maybe things can't be washed etc etc
- blablablabla991 8y ago
  But if multi use packaging would work just as well other single use packaging, wouldn't the packaging industry make the same profits?
  - Dylan16807 8y ago
    Many types of wasteful packaging work better for them, when they don't have to pay a lot of the costs. That doesn't mean they're the better overall choice.
    - blablablabla991 8y ago
      Why would THEY have to pay the costs, and not their customers? Presumably, if the costs for packaging would go up, packaging industry would also rice the prices to make up for it?
      - Dylan16807 8y ago
        Charging the customers at point of purchase is perfectly fine and equivalent. Customers are already indirectly paying, the point is to move that cost to a point where it's super obvious and affects purchasing decisions. Customers as a group were already paying the cost of the garbage, but there was no pressure on the manufacturers to reduce it. Once you make the change then the total cost is the same, but now reducing packaging can improve a manufacturer's profit margin[1], even if it costs them a tiny bit more to make! This pushes things toward reduced waste, with the total number of [shelf price + garbage harm] dropping by some number of pennies. [1] Even if you charge the customer directly, presumably the manufacturer still wants to hit a specific shelf price.

anonymous5133 8y ago

I think there will eventually be a public outcry since now based on the research, it appears that plastic has made a full loop into the human food chain. Plastic fibers are being found in human sewage...which basically means we have plastic in our diets. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-plastics-microplastics-human-feces/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-...

akvadrako 8y ago
Most people could use more fiber in their diet.

grecy 8y ago

> zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles Plastic water bottles - of any size - have been illegal in NSW, a state of Australia for many years. It has been fantastic. Governments need to grow a spine and stop taking so much corporate money as bribes, and actually get to work making our world better.

m3at 8y ago
Is it for water only? If yes, did consumption of other drinks still sold in plastic bottles increase? Genuinely interested, if no hard numbers exist anecdotes are fine
dannyw 8y ago
I'm drinking from a plastic water bottle right now in NSW, so I'm no sure what you're referring to.
zebracanevra 8y ago
Some small towns like Bundanoon [1] have banned water bottles, but in no way have water bottles been banned across NSW. There has been a push from leading supermarkets Coles and Woolworths to ban single use plastic bags, with great success. But that's a private matter, not from the government. Other states have banned them, but not NSW. [2] [1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/bundanoon-in-world-first-ban-on-bottled-water/news-story/03d20a2496881eafa9510b3fdf019b36 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/bundanoon-in-wo... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/supermarket-ban-sees-80pc-drop-in-plastic-bags-nationwide/10576554 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/supermarket-ban-sees-...