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If you want people to stop making plastic, you need to come up with another material that will work for the various things plastic is used for. Hence this artic

If you want people to stop making plastic, you need to come up with another material that will work for the various things plastic is used for. Hence this article.

andrewstuart 4y ago
Disagree. Firstly, lets clarify. I don't mean "stop making plastic entirely", that would be impractical and silly. What we have not done as a society is make any effort at all to place a limit on how much plastic is created. We likely have no mechanisms at all for knowing who makes plastics, the quantity they make, the purpose they are made for and who buys them. Step one is to somehow get limits in place on the amount the is created. Right now, plastic production is an absolute free for all. You could set up "The Infinity Plastic" company tomorrow and spew out so much plastic that it would completely cover the entire earth and that would break no law at all, no one would know or notice. It stupid that as a society we are so obsessed with dealing with the output without any effort to control the input.
dools 4y ago
Corn starch is already a really good alternative, we use it in our house for bin liners, I wonder why it's not more popular as food packaging. Perhaps it has issues with durability over the time periods for which shelf storage is required.
- WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
  Corn starch sounds good put growing corn is energy intensive. Right now, it takes a great deal of carbon based fuels to grow it. Plus every ear of corn that's grown for a plastic replacement is one less that's grow for food. It's an expensive trade off. Re-use and no-use of plastic is probably the best way to deal with plastic trash.
dhosek 4y ago
It’s worth noting also that it’s not really the consumer plastic waste that’s the big problem. The Atlantic garbage barge in the 1970s made people panicked about a lack of landfill capacity, but the truth of the barge was more a political dispute more than anything else and we have the ability to keep handling solid waste for ages (composting is still important in that it will reduce methane emissions from landfills, but it’s not important in terms of reducing landfill use). The bigger issue is that small pieces of plastic from the manufacturing process end up as environmental waste. I did some volunteer cleanup a dozen years ago near Ballona Creek and the amount of tiny pieces (bean-sized and smaller) of plastic and styrofoam along the creek was just mind-blowing. If you find yourself near any plastic manufacturing facility, you’ll see lots of tiny bits of plastic all over the place. Sawdust and metal shavings get dispersed similarly, but they tend to have less of an environmental impact.

If you want people to stop making plastic, you need to come up with another material that will work for the various things plastic is used for. Hence this article.

andrewstuart 4y ago

Disagree. Firstly, lets clarify. I don't mean "stop making plastic entirely", that would be impractical and silly. What we have not done as a society is make any effort at all to place a limit on how much plastic is created. We likely have no mechanisms at all for knowing who makes plastics, the quantity they make, the purpose they are made for and who buys them. Step one is to somehow get limits in place on the amount the is created. Right now, plastic production is an absolute free for all. You could set up "The Infinity Plastic" company tomorrow and spew out so much plastic that it would completely cover the entire earth and that would break no law at all, no one would know or notice. It stupid that as a society we are so obsessed with dealing with the output without any effort to control the input.

dools 4y ago

Corn starch is already a really good alternative, we use it in our house for bin liners, I wonder why it's not more popular as food packaging. Perhaps it has issues with durability over the time periods for which shelf storage is required.

WheelsAtLarge 4y ago
Corn starch sounds good put growing corn is energy intensive. Right now, it takes a great deal of carbon based fuels to grow it. Plus every ear of corn that's grown for a plastic replacement is one less that's grow for food. It's an expensive trade off. Re-use and no-use of plastic is probably the best way to deal with plastic trash.

dhosek 4y ago

It’s worth noting also that it’s not really the consumer plastic waste that’s the big problem. The Atlantic garbage barge in the 1970s made people panicked about a lack of landfill capacity, but the truth of the barge was more a political dispute more than anything else and we have the ability to keep handling solid waste for ages (composting is still important in that it will reduce methane emissions from landfills, but it’s not important in terms of reducing landfill use). The bigger issue is that small pieces of plastic from the manufacturing process end up as environmental waste. I did some volunteer cleanup a dozen years ago near Ballona Creek and the amount of tiny pieces (bean-sized and smaller) of plastic and styrofoam along the creek was just mind-blowing. If you find yourself near any plastic manufacturing facility, you’ll see lots of tiny bits of plastic all over the place. Sawdust and metal shavings get dispersed similarly, but they tend to have less of an environmental impact.