7 ms·

It's interesting how we've come full circle on disposable, single-use plastics, particularly with respect to the plastic ban reversals in the age of COVID. I am

It's interesting how we've come full circle on disposable, single-use plastics, particularly with respect to the plastic ban reversals in the age of COVID. I am curious to see if this will lead in years to come, greater single-use items, or less.

baddox 6y ago
I don’t know that anyone’s minds have really changed regarding disposable products. The situation is what changed, so that we now tend to think disposable products are okay for the moment given the pandemic.
- KeepFlying 6y ago
  Right, but will the worries about sanitation fade quickly enough or will we just accept that disposables are cleaner despite the environmental impact? In the short term I'd say it makes sense to me, but long term I really hope we find other solutions.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    It took years of nudges and eventual laws to seriously reduce a lot of single use plastics. Do you want to be the politician basically requiring the use of reusable plastic bags again? Or getting back into things that were always silly like plastic straw bans? It will be a decade before you reverse the switch to plastic bags.
    - Simulacra 6y ago
      In many places the switch has already occured back to disposable plastic bags i.e., it's getting them to switch back again to reusable is the question. How long will the public etc. accept the continued use of disposable? It could be years..
      - ghaff 6y ago
        Reusable bags aren't even allowed in Massachusetts. I'd be surprised if that changed anytime soon and who knows if the laws requiring you to pay for "multi-use" plastic bags in some locales if you don't bring your own will "ever" end up being reinstated.
microcolonel 6y ago
The other side of it is that single use plastics are reasonably well accounted for in North America, so many parts of the bans are more emotional than pragmatic.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  I get frustrated with the attention that gets paid to trifling amounts of plastic consumption, relative to consumption of other petroleum products. Gasoline weighs ~6 pounds a gallon. How many pounds of plastic does a moderately conscientious person place into waste streams in a month? How many miles do they drive?
  - kijin 6y ago
    Gasoline doesn't get tossed in the ocean and break down into ever smaller particles. It gets burned up in the atmosphere, creating a completely different kind of problem but at least it doesn't leave visible trash for people to rally around.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Neither does plastic that I put in the trash. It goes into a well managed landfill. I can't be certain about what happens to plastic I recycle (but it's sorted and marketed, so I think it ends up in products that use recycled plastics).
      - beerandt 6y ago
        Or it gets shipped to Asia, where it's manually sorted outdoors, at in-situ, un-regulated dumps by what is essentially slave labor. And then the unwanted low value stuff (most of it) is left to end up wherever the weather may take it.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        I don't understand why they would buy it from the recycling center, ship it to Asia and then dump most of it in the environment. When I say it is sorted and marketed, I mean they bale up plastic by type and sell the bales. There's some possibility that the bales, which are 99% the same material, are then shipped to China and sorted for value, but not really.
bArray 6y ago
I'm hopeful for multi-use plastics that can be sanitized. I own a gas mask (over the top) and a washable face mask, both obviously allow for multiple uses with some cleaning and maintenance. Something that can survive being washed with hand soap for example should be more than good enough for most people in terms of sanitation.
- eloisius 6y ago
  What? We have multi-use plastics. Have you never seen plastic Coca-Cola cups? But who wants to work in a dish pit washing hundreds of dishes every day and splashing germy dish water all over themself right now? Furthermore, if you’ve seen how dishwashing works in your average pizza place, you probably wouldn’t want to put your lips on a multi-use plastic cup pandemic or not.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    The way dishwashing works in your average pizza place: someone loads racks, and slides them into the dish machine. Inside the dish machine, recycled soapy water blasts them for maybe 40 seconds, and then they are sanitized with extremely hot fresh water for maybe 20 seconds. Then the operator opens the machine, slides out the tray, and puts them away. (Source: I've washed dishes in 5+ commercial kitchens, though not a pizza parlor. But I've seen these machines and setups in several pizza places.)
    - RhysU 6y ago
      Those dishes hurt to pick up right when they come out of the machine. Dishes in your home are gross in comparison.
      - killjoywashere 6y ago
        Source: I'm a pathologist who runs a clinical lab, including microbiology, and I work with my local public health authority. I was also the electrical officer on a ship and had to help troubleshoot the ship's dish machines. I don't know about the "recycled soapy water" bit. All the systems I've seen use fresh water on each use. The cost of dishwashing is trivia for a restaurant compared to the refrigeration systems, so I would be somewhat surprised if there was a collection tank, plumbing and valving to recirculate water from. That seems like it would occupy a lot of room and cost a pretty penny. Have you actually seen such a set-up? > Dishes in your home are gross in comparison Ah, yes and no. Hot soapy water is definitely effective. But the commercial systems are meant to sanitize, not clean. There are frequently things stuck to the dishes (lettuce comes to mind) that a) don't come off in water cycles, and b) may not get hot enough, long enough to kill everything to the deep surface of the lettuce, gunk, whatever. By comparison, the dishes at home may not get to as high a temperature but you personally have the opportunity to inspect the dish before you re-use it. In a restaurant, the food is prepped to plate or serving dish before it comes to you. In either case, I would anticipate most any swabs of the dishes would fail to grow on culture. In fact, in some commercial kitchens, like hospitals, we do environmental cultures. So this is a fairly known thing, at least as far as the design performance of the sanitization machines go. So, gross, stuck-on lettuce, yes. Sterile, yes. If your local deli isn't using the machine as intended, not much I can say about that.
EGreg 6y ago
Disposable isn’t the main issue. The problem is upstream. Why haven’t they invented good biodegradeable plastics yet? It’s not like there is a plastics lobby telling everyone not to switch to biodegradeable plastics like there is with smart guns because of the NJ law...
- ex3ndr 6y ago
  How can you make something that is biodegradable and at the same time strong? I have tried to use biodegradable bags and they literally biodegraded in a week.
  - petre 6y ago
    I have biodegradable single use cutlery made from corn starch. It's stronger than it's cheap plastic single use counterpart. And ten times more expensive. Wood is also biodegradable. I recycle some of my chopstics.
swiley 6y ago
I’ve always thought the plastic bag bans were a bit silly. Those are definitely one of the more reusable and recyclable of the disposable plastic items.
- dragontamer 6y ago
  Reusable, yes. Recyclable? No. The recycled plastic bag market has collapsed. The price of recycled plastic bags has dropped significantly. For many municipalities (ie: handled by "Waste Management" company), the company has decided that cleaning out plastic bags from conveyor belts is more costly than the price of recycled plastic.
  - swiley 6y ago
    Only because oil is so cheap right now. As more electric vehicles replace fossil fueled ones the refineries will shut down and oil prices will go up.

baddox 6y ago

I don’t know that anyone’s minds have really changed regarding disposable products. The situation is what changed, so that we now tend to think disposable products are okay for the moment given the pandemic.

KeepFlying 6y ago
Right, but will the worries about sanitation fade quickly enough or will we just accept that disposables are cleaner despite the environmental impact? In the short term I'd say it makes sense to me, but long term I really hope we find other solutions.
- ghaff 6y ago
  It took years of nudges and eventual laws to seriously reduce a lot of single use plastics. Do you want to be the politician basically requiring the use of reusable plastic bags again? Or getting back into things that were always silly like plastic straw bans? It will be a decade before you reverse the switch to plastic bags.
  - Simulacra 6y ago
    In many places the switch has already occured back to disposable plastic bags i.e., it's getting them to switch back again to reusable is the question. How long will the public etc. accept the continued use of disposable? It could be years..
    - ghaff 6y ago
      Reusable bags aren't even allowed in Massachusetts. I'd be surprised if that changed anytime soon and who knows if the laws requiring you to pay for "multi-use" plastic bags in some locales if you don't bring your own will "ever" end up being reinstated.

microcolonel 6y ago

The other side of it is that single use plastics are reasonably well accounted for in North America, so many parts of the bans are more emotional than pragmatic.

maxerickson 6y ago
I get frustrated with the attention that gets paid to trifling amounts of plastic consumption, relative to consumption of other petroleum products. Gasoline weighs ~6 pounds a gallon. How many pounds of plastic does a moderately conscientious person place into waste streams in a month? How many miles do they drive?
- kijin 6y ago
  Gasoline doesn't get tossed in the ocean and break down into ever smaller particles. It gets burned up in the atmosphere, creating a completely different kind of problem but at least it doesn't leave visible trash for people to rally around.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Neither does plastic that I put in the trash. It goes into a well managed landfill. I can't be certain about what happens to plastic I recycle (but it's sorted and marketed, so I think it ends up in products that use recycled plastics).
    - beerandt 6y ago
      Or it gets shipped to Asia, where it's manually sorted outdoors, at in-situ, un-regulated dumps by what is essentially slave labor. And then the unwanted low value stuff (most of it) is left to end up wherever the weather may take it.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        I don't understand why they would buy it from the recycling center, ship it to Asia and then dump most of it in the environment. When I say it is sorted and marketed, I mean they bale up plastic by type and sell the bales. There's some possibility that the bales, which are 99% the same material, are then shipped to China and sorted for value, but not really.

bArray 6y ago

I'm hopeful for multi-use plastics that can be sanitized. I own a gas mask (over the top) and a washable face mask, both obviously allow for multiple uses with some cleaning and maintenance. Something that can survive being washed with hand soap for example should be more than good enough for most people in terms of sanitation.

eloisius 6y ago
What? We have multi-use plastics. Have you never seen plastic Coca-Cola cups? But who wants to work in a dish pit washing hundreds of dishes every day and splashing germy dish water all over themself right now? Furthermore, if you’ve seen how dishwashing works in your average pizza place, you probably wouldn’t want to put your lips on a multi-use plastic cup pandemic or not.
- jefftk 6y ago
  The way dishwashing works in your average pizza place: someone loads racks, and slides them into the dish machine. Inside the dish machine, recycled soapy water blasts them for maybe 40 seconds, and then they are sanitized with extremely hot fresh water for maybe 20 seconds. Then the operator opens the machine, slides out the tray, and puts them away. (Source: I've washed dishes in 5+ commercial kitchens, though not a pizza parlor. But I've seen these machines and setups in several pizza places.)
  - RhysU 6y ago
    Those dishes hurt to pick up right when they come out of the machine. Dishes in your home are gross in comparison.
    - killjoywashere 6y ago
      Source: I'm a pathologist who runs a clinical lab, including microbiology, and I work with my local public health authority. I was also the electrical officer on a ship and had to help troubleshoot the ship's dish machines. I don't know about the "recycled soapy water" bit. All the systems I've seen use fresh water on each use. The cost of dishwashing is trivia for a restaurant compared to the refrigeration systems, so I would be somewhat surprised if there was a collection tank, plumbing and valving to recirculate water from. That seems like it would occupy a lot of room and cost a pretty penny. Have you actually seen such a set-up? > Dishes in your home are gross in comparison Ah, yes and no. Hot soapy water is definitely effective. But the commercial systems are meant to sanitize, not clean. There are frequently things stuck to the dishes (lettuce comes to mind) that a) don't come off in water cycles, and b) may not get hot enough, long enough to kill everything to the deep surface of the lettuce, gunk, whatever. By comparison, the dishes at home may not get to as high a temperature but you personally have the opportunity to inspect the dish before you re-use it. In a restaurant, the food is prepped to plate or serving dish before it comes to you. In either case, I would anticipate most any swabs of the dishes would fail to grow on culture. In fact, in some commercial kitchens, like hospitals, we do environmental cultures. So this is a fairly known thing, at least as far as the design performance of the sanitization machines go. So, gross, stuck-on lettuce, yes. Sterile, yes. If your local deli isn't using the machine as intended, not much I can say about that.

EGreg 6y ago

Disposable isn’t the main issue. The problem is upstream. Why haven’t they invented good biodegradeable plastics yet? It’s not like there is a plastics lobby telling everyone not to switch to biodegradeable plastics like there is with smart guns because of the NJ law...

ex3ndr 6y ago
How can you make something that is biodegradable and at the same time strong? I have tried to use biodegradable bags and they literally biodegraded in a week.
- petre 6y ago
  I have biodegradable single use cutlery made from corn starch. It's stronger than it's cheap plastic single use counterpart. And ten times more expensive. Wood is also biodegradable. I recycle some of my chopstics.

swiley 6y ago

I’ve always thought the plastic bag bans were a bit silly. Those are definitely one of the more reusable and recyclable of the disposable plastic items.

dragontamer 6y ago
Reusable, yes. Recyclable? No. The recycled plastic bag market has collapsed. The price of recycled plastic bags has dropped significantly. For many municipalities (ie: handled by "Waste Management" company), the company has decided that cleaning out plastic bags from conveyor belts is more costly than the price of recycled plastic.
- swiley 6y ago
  Only because oil is so cheap right now. As more electric vehicles replace fossil fueled ones the refineries will shut down and oil prices will go up.