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1. It's nice of you to be in favor of rising prices you can afford to pay. Wonder how people that are already at the edge of choosing cheaper processed food wil

1. It's nice of you to be in favor of rising prices you can afford to pay. Wonder how people that are already at the edge of choosing cheaper processed food will feel about it. 2. What's wrong about plastic packaging, exactly? The alternative use for oil is to burn it. Having it do something useful and then get buried doesn't sound so horrible.

zeta0134 5y ago
2. Wouldn't the idea here be to reduce the demand for that oil, so that we can slowly work to extract / burn less of it?
- radu_floricica 5y ago
  Why, exactly? I mean, I totally get why we wouldn't want to burn oil. We breath that air and it increases CO2. But why exactly shouldn't we extract it? After all, you can do a lot of useful things with it. Like, for example, food packaging :) Also half the device you're reading this on, most likely.
  - oneplane 5y ago
    Because it is finite and has a cycle much longer than our generations of humans has. We're essentially creating problems instead of planning ahead. That said, the same can be said for a lot of other thing like natural resources we drain faster than we replace them. Perhaps those can be classified similarly. Beyond the limited availability of resources in the forms what we can make use of them, there is processing of those resources which has its own set of problems, as well as normal use of processed resources and waste management of used resources. Example: Aluminium as we know it takes a lot of energy to get to a state where we have a use for it (parts of machines, or foil for example) but once it is in that state and we treat it properly it can be used and re-used and recycled almost infinitely with comparatively minute amounts of energy. Imagine such a process for other resources where we won't have to constantly input new raw materials and energy to get more of the stuff we want. This is really hard for oil after we have changed it to whatever form we wanted to use it for; turning it back into oil or turning used oil into usable oil isn't exactly a viable process.
kayone 5y ago
you do know that no one burns crude oil right? it's not an either burn it or make plastic out of it.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Oil is extracted from the earth primarily to burn it, such as in automobile engines. The fact that it goes through a refining stage is irrelevant.
ahevia 5y ago
2. The alternative could be not using oil at all here. I don’t remember our ancestors needing plastic packaging to eat fruit. Plastic packaging doesn’t always get buried either. Landfills aren’t exactly a solution because of toxins they leech into the surrounding soil. It could end up in bodies of water. It could end up burned in an incinerator which releases the CO2 + volatile organic compounds stored inside it (and volatile organic compounds are quite bad for human health)
- fouric 5y ago
  Clean incinerators have been around for at least a decade[1] - potentially longer, as the Japanese have been separating out their burnable garbage from non-burnable for years. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.htm...
  - ahevia 5y ago
    Hadn’t heard of this. Very cool! Thanks for sharing
    - fouric 5y ago
      You're welcome! And, to be clear, I share many of the concerns that you pointed out in your comment - plastic going into landfills and older, unclean incinerators is a problem, and it can be really hard (if not impossible) to tell its final destination. I just wanted to clarify that (the right) incinerators are a solution for disposal - but it'd be better to not use plastic in the first place (or, at least, not in disposable packaging - long-lived goods like phone cases and Legos are slightly better than one-time-use things like plastic bottles for sodas).
  - stronglikedan 5y ago
    A city near me does this, instead of recycling. Although, they still provide recycling bins, and still ask residents to separate their trash. I presume it's because it makes it easier for them to separate the burnable trash from the "wet" trash.
aoeusnth1 5y ago
2. Leave the oil in the ground.
exporectomy 5y ago
Plastic production has pretty high GHG emissions. I think it's higher than glass for comparable bottles, though I'm not sure about that. But people arguing about landfills are just idiots. Put it in a secure landfill in some geologically stable desert and stop worrying if that's really a problem.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
didntknowya 5y ago
nothing wrong with plastic. It's an amazing material. But using one-time disposable plastic to carry a banana home from the shop, no matter how convenient, leaves a bad environmental footprint and the microplastics used will persist forever.
GuB-42 5y ago
For "2", the answer is "it's complicated". Properly disposed of, minimal plastic packaging can prevent damage and therefore waste, resulting in a smaller environmental footprint than alternatives, including no packaging and reusable materials. The problem is that packaging is not always disposed of properly, and is not always minimal or justified by reasons other than marketing. Also, not all plastics are the same, some are more environmentally friendly than others and you may need more or less of it.

zeta0134 5y ago

2. Wouldn't the idea here be to reduce the demand for that oil, so that we can slowly work to extract / burn less of it?

radu_floricica 5y ago
Why, exactly? I mean, I totally get why we wouldn't want to burn oil. We breath that air and it increases CO2. But why exactly shouldn't we extract it? After all, you can do a lot of useful things with it. Like, for example, food packaging :) Also half the device you're reading this on, most likely.
- oneplane 5y ago
  Because it is finite and has a cycle much longer than our generations of humans has. We're essentially creating problems instead of planning ahead. That said, the same can be said for a lot of other thing like natural resources we drain faster than we replace them. Perhaps those can be classified similarly. Beyond the limited availability of resources in the forms what we can make use of them, there is processing of those resources which has its own set of problems, as well as normal use of processed resources and waste management of used resources. Example: Aluminium as we know it takes a lot of energy to get to a state where we have a use for it (parts of machines, or foil for example) but once it is in that state and we treat it properly it can be used and re-used and recycled almost infinitely with comparatively minute amounts of energy. Imagine such a process for other resources where we won't have to constantly input new raw materials and energy to get more of the stuff we want. This is really hard for oil after we have changed it to whatever form we wanted to use it for; turning it back into oil or turning used oil into usable oil isn't exactly a viable process.

kayone 5y ago

you do know that no one burns crude oil right? it's not an either burn it or make plastic out of it.

frosted-flakes 5y ago
Oil is extracted from the earth primarily to burn it, such as in automobile engines. The fact that it goes through a refining stage is irrelevant.

ahevia 5y ago

2. The alternative could be not using oil at all here. I don’t remember our ancestors needing plastic packaging to eat fruit. Plastic packaging doesn’t always get buried either. Landfills aren’t exactly a solution because of toxins they leech into the surrounding soil. It could end up in bodies of water. It could end up burned in an incinerator which releases the CO2 + volatile organic compounds stored inside it (and volatile organic compounds are quite bad for human health)

fouric 5y ago
Clean incinerators have been around for at least a decade[1] - potentially longer, as the Japanese have been separating out their burnable garbage from non-burnable for years. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.htm...
- ahevia 5y ago
  Hadn’t heard of this. Very cool! Thanks for sharing
  - fouric 5y ago
    You're welcome! And, to be clear, I share many of the concerns that you pointed out in your comment - plastic going into landfills and older, unclean incinerators is a problem, and it can be really hard (if not impossible) to tell its final destination. I just wanted to clarify that (the right) incinerators are a solution for disposal - but it'd be better to not use plastic in the first place (or, at least, not in disposable packaging - long-lived goods like phone cases and Legos are slightly better than one-time-use things like plastic bottles for sodas).
- stronglikedan 5y ago
  A city near me does this, instead of recycling. Although, they still provide recycling bins, and still ask residents to separate their trash. I presume it's because it makes it easier for them to separate the burnable trash from the "wet" trash.

aoeusnth1 5y ago

2. Leave the oil in the ground.

exporectomy 5y ago

Plastic production has pretty high GHG emissions. I think it's higher than glass for comparable bottles, though I'm not sure about that. But people arguing about landfills are just idiots. Put it in a secure landfill in some geologically stable desert and stop worrying if that's really a problem.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

didntknowya 5y ago

nothing wrong with plastic. It's an amazing material. But using one-time disposable plastic to carry a banana home from the shop, no matter how convenient, leaves a bad environmental footprint and the microplastics used will persist forever.

GuB-42 5y ago

For "2", the answer is "it's complicated". Properly disposed of, minimal plastic packaging can prevent damage and therefore waste, resulting in a smaller environmental footprint than alternatives, including no packaging and reusable materials. The problem is that packaging is not always disposed of properly, and is not always minimal or justified by reasons other than marketing. Also, not all plastics are the same, some are more environmentally friendly than others and you may need more or less of it.