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> For instance, investing in better waste management systems in developing countries. How about we stop wasting tax payers’ money to pick up the tab of the ext

> For instance, investing in better waste management systems in developing countries. How about we stop wasting tax payers’ money to pick up the tab of the externalized costs from all these companies selling single-use packaging? At the end of the day these companies will gaslight you saying customers love plastic but the reason they do plastic packaging is because it reduces packaging and shipping costs (at a high cost for the environment, water cycle, and humans). _Ban_single-use_plastic_, except for medical or lab applications. That was the original proposal in the EC before the lobbyists watered it down to this farce of the ban on q tips and straws.

Retric 4y ago
I personally like a lot of single use plastic. What’s the cheap alternative to keep food in an air tight seal from the factory to your home? There is a lot of greenwashing around packing that’s more environmentally harmful to create because they decay when left outside. Except if both products are sent to the landfill then they don’t provide any advantages.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  > What’s the cheap alternative to keep food in an air tight seal from the factory to your home? Why do you need a tight seal? You can safely transport meat, fish, seafood from source to home with basic hygiene measures.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >You can safely transport meat, fish, seafood from source to home with basic hygiene measures. You can, but it doesn't last nearly as long, which means more food waste due to spoilage. At my local supermarket meat that has been packaged in airtight bags have best before dates of 2-3 weeks. Meanwhile meat that's wrapped with non-airtight plastic wrap have best before dates of a week at most. The meats I get from the butcher counter do even worse.
    - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      If you are consuming meat in 3 weeks either buy it and freeze it or buy it in three weeks. These plastic uses are solutions to problems that don't exist.
      - gruez 4y ago
        > If you are consuming meat in 3 weeks either buy it and freeze it or buy it in three weeks. Freezing ruins the texture of the meat. Buying it in 3 weeks is more expensive because it's no longer on sale. Given the choice between slightly more plastic and saving $1+/lb, I'm choosing latter every time. Also, you focusing on the consumer side entirely misses the retail side. According to the USDA 7% of meat/seafood is lost due to spoilage at the retail level alone. This is with plastic packaging. Going back to wrapping everything with pink butcher paper will certainly be worse. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44306/10895_eib44.pdf https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44306/10895_ei...
        DoingIsLearning 4y ago
        I strongly disagree, plastic wrapping is the same as clorinating chicken. You are introducing an extra industrial step to save the additional cost of maintain sanitary conditions throughout the supply chain. > Freezing ruins the texture of the meat. Unless you are grilling some very premium beef cut and eating it without any rub or marination, I strongly doubt the majority of people would even know the 'texture' difference in a blind test.
        Retric 4y ago
        It’s not just about the cost at the supply chain. If hypothetically 3% more food spoils, that’s roughly equivalent to 3% of all environmental impact of all farming and fishing. All the pesticides, land use, runoff fertilizer, fuel, methane production etc adds up to vastly more than the costs from plastics. We think of costs in terms of money but shipping more crap means more fuel and thus more global warming etc.
        4y ago
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  A container with a lid?
  - Retric 4y ago
    Without an airtight seal you get increased spoilage. Something like 3% increased food spoilage might not sound like much but it’s equivalent to increasing the total environmental impact of farming, fishing, and food packaging industries by over 3%, which is massive.
    - spywaregorilla 4y ago
      Ok... but a container with a lid is usually sealed air tight, no? A ziploc bag is airtight. A jar is air tight. A screw on cap is air tight, etc. etc. Am I missing something?
      - Retric 4y ago
        Your ziplock bag is plastic, cheap non plastic containers aren’t generally airtight. A cereal boxes and similar items have a sealed plastic bag inside to prevent the food from going stale by the time you open it. Sure a glass jar with a rubber gasket works as would a tin can etc, but they require a lot of energy and resources to make which means real environmental costs. Aluminum foil is one of the better options cost wise but it requiers a lot of energy and it’s even less biodegradable than plastic.
gruez 4y ago
As other commenters have mentioned, most of the mismanaged plastic comes from developing countries, which aren't exactly paragons of good governance and civil activism. Therefore I'm very skeptical that your policy proposal would actually reduce pollution from mismanaged plastic in any meaningful way. It might be the righteous choice, but if you care about stopping plastic from entering oceans it's a horrible proposal. >_Ban_single-use_plastic_, except for medical or lab applications. >That was the original proposal in the EC before the lobbyists watered it down to this farce of the ban on q tips and straws. And how much of EU plastic waste is mismanaged?
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  No this is not feel good policy like 'recycling'. If the EU and the US ban single-use plastics, the world consumption of plastic would fall an order of magnitude. It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in comparison to where most of the consumer spending is happening in the world. Also it adds friction to the business model of these giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever, etc. A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a market but not another it will likely move the needle to single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest standard. This is a well studied effect in many industries.
  - gruez 4y ago
    > No this is not feel good policy like 'recycling'. If the EU and the US ban single-use plastics, the world consumption of plastic would fall an order of magnitude. >It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in comparison to where most of the consumer spending is happening in the world. Why focus on total plastic waste, rather than mismanaged plastic waste? Surely you must agree that a plastic bottle that's tossed into the Ganges river is orders of magnitude worse for the environment than one that's sitting in a properly engineered and monitored landfill? >Also it adds friction to the business model of theses giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever, etc. >A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a market but not another it will likely move the needle to single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest standard. This is a well studied effect in many industries. I'll need numbers for this. The factors working against your argument are: 1. while economy of scale is a thing, the gains you get decrease as you scale up. If you only have bottle factory and it only produces glass bottles, it would be tremendously expensive for you to start producing plastic bottles, because you have to build a whole new factory from scratch. However, if you have dozens of bottle factories around the world, then having separate plastic/glass bottle factories effectively cost you nothing. Yes, there is small efficiency gains to be had, but I doubt that they're significant enough to drive plastic bottles out of business. 2. as developing countries get richer, their plastic consumption will go up as more people can afford consumer products. The same isn't true for rich countries. After all, you being 10x richer won't cause you to use 10x more shampoo.
jrmg 4y ago
these companies will gaslight you saying customers love plastic but the reason they do plastic packaging is because it reduces packaging and shipping costs But that’s what customers love: undamaged, well packed goods at low prices. I don’t think there’s anyone claiming that people just “love plastic” in the abstract. I don’t disagree with you that regulation is likely the only way to enforce more responsible plastic use. The only other way is to find more responsible alternatives that do the things plastic does at similar or ideally lower cost.

Retric 4y ago

I personally like a lot of single use plastic. What’s the cheap alternative to keep food in an air tight seal from the factory to your home? There is a lot of greenwashing around packing that’s more environmentally harmful to create because they decay when left outside. Except if both products are sent to the landfill then they don’t provide any advantages.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
> What’s the cheap alternative to keep food in an air tight seal from the factory to your home? Why do you need a tight seal? You can safely transport meat, fish, seafood from source to home with basic hygiene measures.
- gruez 4y ago
  >You can safely transport meat, fish, seafood from source to home with basic hygiene measures. You can, but it doesn't last nearly as long, which means more food waste due to spoilage. At my local supermarket meat that has been packaged in airtight bags have best before dates of 2-3 weeks. Meanwhile meat that's wrapped with non-airtight plastic wrap have best before dates of a week at most. The meats I get from the butcher counter do even worse.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    If you are consuming meat in 3 weeks either buy it and freeze it or buy it in three weeks. These plastic uses are solutions to problems that don't exist.
    - gruez 4y ago
      > If you are consuming meat in 3 weeks either buy it and freeze it or buy it in three weeks. Freezing ruins the texture of the meat. Buying it in 3 weeks is more expensive because it's no longer on sale. Given the choice between slightly more plastic and saving $1+/lb, I'm choosing latter every time. Also, you focusing on the consumer side entirely misses the retail side. According to the USDA 7% of meat/seafood is lost due to spoilage at the retail level alone. This is with plastic packaging. Going back to wrapping everything with pink butcher paper will certainly be worse. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44306/10895_eib44.pdf https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/44306/10895_ei...
      - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
        I strongly disagree, plastic wrapping is the same as clorinating chicken. You are introducing an extra industrial step to save the additional cost of maintain sanitary conditions throughout the supply chain. > Freezing ruins the texture of the meat. Unless you are grilling some very premium beef cut and eating it without any rub or marination, I strongly doubt the majority of people would even know the 'texture' difference in a blind test.
        Retric 4y ago
        It’s not just about the cost at the supply chain. If hypothetically 3% more food spoils, that’s roughly equivalent to 3% of all environmental impact of all farming and fishing. All the pesticides, land use, runoff fertilizer, fuel, methane production etc adds up to vastly more than the costs from plastics. We think of costs in terms of money but shipping more crap means more fuel and thus more global warming etc.
        4y ago
spywaregorilla 4y ago
A container with a lid?
- Retric 4y ago
  Without an airtight seal you get increased spoilage. Something like 3% increased food spoilage might not sound like much but it’s equivalent to increasing the total environmental impact of farming, fishing, and food packaging industries by over 3%, which is massive.
  - spywaregorilla 4y ago
    Ok... but a container with a lid is usually sealed air tight, no? A ziploc bag is airtight. A jar is air tight. A screw on cap is air tight, etc. etc. Am I missing something?
    - Retric 4y ago
      Your ziplock bag is plastic, cheap non plastic containers aren’t generally airtight. A cereal boxes and similar items have a sealed plastic bag inside to prevent the food from going stale by the time you open it. Sure a glass jar with a rubber gasket works as would a tin can etc, but they require a lot of energy and resources to make which means real environmental costs. Aluminum foil is one of the better options cost wise but it requiers a lot of energy and it’s even less biodegradable than plastic.

gruez 4y ago

As other commenters have mentioned, most of the mismanaged plastic comes from developing countries, which aren't exactly paragons of good governance and civil activism. Therefore I'm very skeptical that your policy proposal would actually reduce pollution from mismanaged plastic in any meaningful way. It might be the righteous choice, but if you care about stopping plastic from entering oceans it's a horrible proposal. >_Ban_single-use_plastic_, except for medical or lab applications. >That was the original proposal in the EC before the lobbyists watered it down to this farce of the ban on q tips and straws. And how much of EU plastic waste is mismanaged?

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
No this is not feel good policy like 'recycling'. If the EU and the US ban single-use plastics, the world consumption of plastic would fall an order of magnitude. It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in comparison to where most of the consumer spending is happening in the world. Also it adds friction to the business model of these giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever, etc. A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a market but not another it will likely move the needle to single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest standard. This is a well studied effect in many industries.
- gruez 4y ago
  > No this is not feel good policy like 'recycling'. If the EU and the US ban single-use plastics, the world consumption of plastic would fall an order of magnitude. >It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in comparison to where most of the consumer spending is happening in the world. Why focus on total plastic waste, rather than mismanaged plastic waste? Surely you must agree that a plastic bottle that's tossed into the Ganges river is orders of magnitude worse for the environment than one that's sitting in a properly engineered and monitored landfill? >Also it adds friction to the business model of theses giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever, etc. >A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a market but not another it will likely move the needle to single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest standard. This is a well studied effect in many industries. I'll need numbers for this. The factors working against your argument are: 1. while economy of scale is a thing, the gains you get decrease as you scale up. If you only have bottle factory and it only produces glass bottles, it would be tremendously expensive for you to start producing plastic bottles, because you have to build a whole new factory from scratch. However, if you have dozens of bottle factories around the world, then having separate plastic/glass bottle factories effectively cost you nothing. Yes, there is small efficiency gains to be had, but I doubt that they're significant enough to drive plastic bottles out of business. 2. as developing countries get richer, their plastic consumption will go up as more people can afford consumer products. The same isn't true for rich countries. After all, you being 10x richer won't cause you to use 10x more shampoo.

jrmg 4y ago

these companies will gaslight you saying customers love plastic but the reason they do plastic packaging is because it reduces packaging and shipping costs But that’s what customers love: undamaged, well packed goods at low prices. I don’t think there’s anyone claiming that people just “love plastic” in the abstract. I don’t disagree with you that regulation is likely the only way to enforce more responsible plastic use. The only other way is to find more responsible alternatives that do the things plastic does at similar or ideally lower cost.