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Plastics are necessary. Just as cars and airplanes are necessary to civilization. Cellphones and computers are also necessary. I just got a life saving operatio
by _yoqn 5y ago
Plastics are necessary. Just as cars and airplanes are necessary to civilization. Cellphones and computers are also necessary. I just got a life saving operation two months ago. None of these things would be possible without plastics.
Civilizations grow on top of their earlier innovations and we can't just go back to the way things were without a collapse. How do you think the cell phone in your pocket could possibly be made without plastic? Or how about the Starship?
- colechristensen 5y agoTo be fair there really isn’t that much plastic in space hardware, it tends to outgas and deposit itself on everything nearby in a vacuum. Some very specialized polymers sure, but not many, and not much.
- _yoqn 5y agoThat's a fair point on the components themselves. But what about the plastics involved in the production of the components? It's turtles all the way down.
- colechristensen 5y agoEh, when it comes to metalworking or the production of advanced alloys, again plastics really aren't a big part of the process. I bet machinists eat fast food and use plastic straws sometimes :) but maybe that's not the point. Space rockets just aren't prime examples of how plastics enable modern tech, of course it would be hard to find something that had zero plastic in the production chain, but food, medicine, and biology are really where the plastic shines and consumer goods are where there are lots of times where plastic is environmentally competitive to the alternatives unless your argument involves transitioning to a luddite society.