9 ms·

I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic stra

by njovin 3y ago

I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags. Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective and requiring massive amounts of fossil fuel to move the waste around the globe, often with much of it just getting burned or dumped into the environment anyway. Despite that, the aisles of grocery stores are still packed full of single-use plastic bottles, containers, wrappers, etc. Are any countries making a legitimate effort to drastically reduce the use of plastics? It seems like we had a pretty good system years ago in requiring people to leave a deposit for bottles when purchasing beer or pop to incentivize return + reuse.

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
> I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. I'm not- show me the direct harm it is causing on an individual level. We can all agree they are a nuisance but it is hard to show how they are outright harming people. Studies like this are a step towards that proof.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Ideally, governments armed with scientists are capable of making key judgments like this one without “my child’s arm fell off” levels of apparent, individual harm.
  - superhumanuser 3y ago
    Scientists are wrong... a lot. The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice.
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      This is an absolutely horrible heuristic. Let’s put radioactive toys, toys painted with lead, leaded gasoline, DDT, and thalidomide back on the market. None of these were “obvious to the layman.” Individual scientists are wrong a lot. Science as a process continues to be the (imperfect) reigning world champ of truth discovery, no matter what contrarianism du jour memes are spreading over the internet.
      - dwighttk 3y ago
        note how all of those have a horrifying story Tell the horrifying plastic story (if there is one)
        ethanbond 3y ago
        Uhh no. Lead, mercury, radioactivity, thalidomide, and asbestos poisoning are not detectable as “my child put a toy in their mouth and their tongue fell off.” These were uncovered over the course of years by statistical analysis, prompted by suspicions created by (noisy, often non-human) information about the mechanisms. Similarly, we have tons of data supporting a bunch of theories of micro plastic harm in the lab. The waiting revelation isn’t going to be “omg all these people are sick and we didn’t know it,” it’s going to be “all these people have been sick and we didn’t know why.” Which is exactly the form of the sperm quality/fertility theory as well as obesity. We know these compounds cause fertility and metabolism issues in cell cultures and in animal models. We know we are facing civilization-scale problems with obesity and fertility. Drawing the connection between these types of observations is always extremely noisy because there are obviously trillions of variables affecting “does a specific individual become infertile or obese,” or “does a person have an elevated risk of birth defects.” I’m not necessarily on the side of an immediate and total ban, but this “we’ll see the problems if they exist” attitude is profoundly ignorant and arrogant. The historical examples appear obvious to you because you saw the results of extremely deep study prompted from initially low-quality suspicions.
        STRML 3y ago
        Does lead exposure have a "horrifying" story? It has measurable effects over years and decades, but very little acute effect.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - bowsamic 3y ago
      > The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice. I'm not sure if this is sarcasm but if it's not, this is really the peak of anti-intellectualism ideology, i.e., that if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I don't think that kind of opinion is a good fit for this forum to be honest, which has learning and information sharing as an important goal, so I will have to flag your message, which is an extremely rare thing for me to do (actually this may be my first time ever)
      - superhumanuser 3y ago
        > if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I'm not sure if you're willfully ignorant or just saw an opportunity to pass a pejorative and took it. I didn't say we should "ignore it". I said we shouldn't allow scientists to exclusively decide what should or should not be legal.
        bowsamic 3y ago
        No you didn't, you said that if a layman cannot understand it immediately, then we should never use the information in the context of law, i.e. we should just ignore the information, i.e. remain ignorant
        superhumanuser 3y ago
        OK. Have a nice day. Maybe take a little internet timeout and touch grass.
- njovin 3y ago
  From the article: > The mice in the study began to move peculiarly, and to exhibit behaviours reminiscent of dementia in humans I know this is only _in mice_ but the policy we have of "let industry do what they want and if we find out it's harming humans in 30 years we'll do something about it" has not proven to work out so well in the past (lead, DDT, CFCs, cigarettes).
bowsamic 3y ago
It's exactly the same as fossil fuels and climate change, plastic is far too convenient for any government to even consider doing anything extremely significant regarding it
- psychoslave 3y ago
  It’s all about depending the scale you look at. One might expect that where governing is concerned, anticipation of long term down side will be given some weight in the balance.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > It's exactly the same as fossil fuels and climate change, plastic Moreover, the main ingredient in making plastics is derived from fossil fuels (specifically crude oil and natural gas).
- creole_wither 3y ago
  If we replace plastic packaging with metal or glass containers which weigh more then more fossil fuels will be required for transport.
amelius 3y ago
The thing I'm most shocked about is the amount of microplastics used in toothpaste, and cosmetics, and such.
- bcherny 3y ago
  Is there a list of brands that are independently confirmed to not have micro plastics?
Semaphor 3y ago
Germany and several other EU countries have deposits on plastic bottles. I’m not sure how much that helps with the microplastics issue, though.
- soco 3y ago
  They have for the PET bottles, yes, but there are still thousands of other packaging types which just get dumped in garbage with unknown destinations. I cannot really imagine a deposit on those (do you want stinky meat packages returned to the shop?) but still we need to find a solution.
  - Semaphor 3y ago
    Most of it ends up in landfills which are relatively safe IIRC from other microplastic articles?
    - soco 3y ago
      Leachate analysis says otherwise: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004313541930377X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00431...
      - Semaphor 3y ago
        Well, there goes that :/ Thanks.
  - psychoslave 3y ago
    Bottle in glass, aluminum or paper. Beers, various soda and juice already use that
    - zo1 3y ago
      Don't cans have a plastic lining on the inside so that the liquid doesn't touch the metal? Same goes for paper from what another commenter said about paper straws. Heck I wouldn't trust paper food packaging because I'm not sure they would use a wax liner instead of some fancy PFAS forever chemical.
Justsignedup 3y ago
The problem is plastic particles getting into food. And that comes from things like heating up in plastic, storing things in plastic. Non single use plastics are a major problem. That's the thing. Plastic is modern lead. It's easily moldable, but causes subtle health problems.
- drewcon 3y ago
  Citation needed. These comments read like Reddit/TikTok. Lots of frantic fearful hand waving, not a lot of evidence presented.
  - remarkEon 3y ago
    I don't understand this perspective, the need to wait for mountains of published evidence that something is "bad", or "bad enough" to do something about it. Plastic is toxic, we all know this. It's everywhere, it's in the food and in the water. In reality it's the "Citation needed" reflex that's the reddit-tier reaction to stuff like this, because it pretends that humans can't or shouldn't make decisions unless we all sit around in a peer-review committee to review the "data". Perhaps in some contexts that perspective makes sense, but again, in this one, we all know plastic is bad (for us and the environment).
    - atrus 3y ago
      > Plastic is toxic, we all know this. There are thousands of plastics, and a blanket statement like this is simply false. We should be working to figure out which plastics are toxic, and why. You're essentially looking at lead and coming to the conclusion that "Metal is toxic, we all know this."
      - mint2 3y ago
        That’s not a great comparison. If it was comparable to lead in terms of identifying toxicity, we wouldn’t be having this debate. So actually plastic is worse than lead in that it’s more insidious, some want to slowly kill things but it’s nearly impossible to tell which. If only it were like lead and upfront about it. So no, they are not saying “metal is toxic”. That is extending the analogy to another topic: identification
rcarr 3y ago
I agree there’s far too much single use plastic. For example, it baffles me why non perishable products are still sold in transparent plastic bags. If they go to the store they generally get taken out of the plastic bag and put on display. If they’re sold online I have to waste time opening and discarding of a random plastic bag. Why? What purpose does it serve? If you’re that desperate to wrap it in something why not branded paper or even one of the decomposable clear bags that look like plastic but aren’t. Why is the cable in the box also in a small plastic bag? It’s ridiculous.
- thworp 3y ago
  Mostly to prevent dust and other dirt accumulating before evrything goes into the final packaging.
  - trgn 3y ago
    I believe you. Or, plastic is essentially worthless, so it just gets applied willy-nilly. As if, plastic, _because_ it is cheap and easy to produce, therefore it must be everywhere. Go shopping, here's your free plastic bag, well, hell no, double bagged, because plastic is flimsy and crap quality (you didn't even ask, but force of habit, shrug). Package a thing, wrap it in plastic on the outside and the inside! And maybe, if you put in in a box, put more plastic inside that box. so the thingie is snugly ensconced in russian dolls of plastic. Plastic straws, free, a bunch of them, of course in a little plastic sleeve. This proliferation of plastic is not rational, certainly not wholesome. It is purely the downstream effect of plastic being cheap to produce, it is primarily a technological phenomenon.
    - thworp 3y ago
      If you were just talking about plastic packaging you have a point. By weight that is a small percentage of plastics though, which is incidentally why it is so cheap. For other applications plastics are an outright miracle material though. Imagine if all drinks came in glass bottles; all cases and other structural parts were made of metal or wood; all elastic members were made of rubber or treated wood. The added need for shipping alone would probably outweigh the CO2 impact from current plastics production. As it is you get plastics almost for free while refining oil. Not to mention the insane demand there would be for metals, wood and rubber.
nrjames 3y ago
Good PBS Frontline show, Plastic Wars, about the recycling industry: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/
reisse 3y ago
> It seems like we had a pretty good system years ago in requiring people to leave a deposit for bottles when purchasing beer or pop to incentivize return + reuse. On the other hand, this system incentivised using plastic bottles instead of glass, because of less hassle with returning. > Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective... There is one effective way to recycle plastic into energy called "waste incineration".
- resonious 3y ago
  Japan incinerates trash for energy, and yet they typically require residents to separate plastics from "burnables". Maybe it'd be better (and easier) for everyone if we just started putting everything into the burnable pile.
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    Recyclable packaging tends to make for pretty good fuel.
    - tuukkah 3y ago
      During last winter's energy crisis, Finnish cities were heated with plastics collected in Italy.
  - tuukkah 3y ago
    Another reason for the sorting at least here is that the companies using plastic packaging are the ones responsible for and paying the disposal system. I think the theory is that this will cause them to reduce plastics use and develop improved re-use.
jokoon 3y ago
The problem of replacing plastic in food is the cost. If you use glass or steel or aluminum, you need new logistics to reuse them. Also, glass is heavier, and requires a lot of energy to be made, so it would require a production chain that ships back empty containers. The best silver bullet solution would be to have local canteen, a bit like in the army or at school, where you just get a subscription with a calendar (not on demand, you plan the meals you'll get), so it reduces waste and costs. We should just stop eating at home, with individual fridges, ovens, kitchens etc, this is highly inefficient. Yes, this is collectivization, but it's the best solution for an economy of scale. Individualism was never a good solution, individualism is often very wasteful. Call me a communist or a socialist, I don't really care.
- bombolo 3y ago
  I call you someone who doesn't like to eat good food :D
  - HPsquared 3y ago
    A good canteen can combine more ingredients in a more sophisticated way than I have time for at home. I'm not making Beef Bourguignon at home, but it's easy for them to make up a big batch. Economies of scale!
    - bombolo 3y ago
      That's how you end up fat.
- bowsamic 3y ago
  This is how they do it in Germany. Most working Germans I know of eat at the work canteen and have a small bread meal at home in the evening Weird that you're getting downvoted for this. HN is on a weird one recently
  - jokoon 3y ago
    Because the united states valued individualism for a very long time, before and during the cold war, and even now. It's a cultural aspect. Blame people like Reagan and Milton Friedman for this. It's a highly political problem. Inequality is already somewhat caused by individualism, but climate change is also caused by climate change. For example, if China wants to reduce its co2 emissions, you only have to convince Chinese leaders, and it's done just by snapping fingers. In the US, you have to make it profitable, which is doable, but it's more complicated and lobbyists will also be a big barrier to change. I loathe the chinese leadership, but being a democratic modern industrialized nation doesn't mean you will see decisions that make sense.
troyjfarrell 3y ago
Kyrgyzstan passed a law banning many single-use plastics from January 1st, 2027. I hope the ban sticks. It will be challenging to make the economics work. https://24.kg/english/272281__Production_and_sale_of_plastic_prohibited_in_Kyrgyzstan_from_January_1_2027/ https://24.kg/english/272281__Production_and_sale_of_plastic... https://24.kg/english/272323__Kyrgyzstan_to_fine_for_sale_and_production_of_plastic_bags_/ https://24.kg/english/272323__Kyrgyzstan_to_fine_for_sale_an...
tohnjitor 3y ago
Apparently most paper straws just have a thin plastic coating of PFOAs
- Izkata 3y ago
  We should replace both with cookie straws.
  - tohnjitor 3y ago
    I like the way you think.
DrThunder 3y ago
You have to have a good alternative first. Paper items sprayed with harmful chemicals is not a good replacement. https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-forever-chemicals-plastic-straws/ https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-for...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago
  No you don't. A ban forces industries to create alternatives. Otherwise they won't bother. You just schedule a phased elimination over time so those alternatives can get developed. That's precisely how the Montreal Protocol banned CFCs and protected the ozone layer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
  - DrThunder 3y ago
    If it was that easy to get an alternative introduced it would have been suggested already and all of these radical "green" governments would have hopped on the train immediately. This idea that we're just killing people with microplastics because we like it is insane. CFC's coming out of your hairspray is WAY different than removing the plastic keeping your food fresh. Stop with the black and white thinking. There is NO alternative that is free of some negative consequence. You're already seeing this with EV's. Every single "green" replacement introduces new problems that are often worse than what they've replaced.
    - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
      [flagged]
avgcorrection 3y ago
> I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags. I think it's because those two things can be used to scold consumers and thus inculcate the belief that the final link in the production-consumption chain bears all the blame. I mean I have seen signs encouraging people to use reusable bags at the checkout line. But is it a problem that literally everything in the store (except mushrooms I guess) is wrapped in plastic? Apparently it is not.
- njovin 3y ago
  Even most of the mushrooms are wrapped in plastic at the stores I visit :(
BirAdam 3y ago
Personally, while being exceedingly libertarian leaning, I would advocate a gradual ban of plastics generally. All plastics are ephemeral and they're not easily recyclable. Humans used glass, wax, paper, wood, and other products before plastics were widely available and our materials sciences have improved dramatically over time. To me, the main problem here is that plastics are just so cheap due to having been in production for so long. With a strong tax incentive, it should be possible to promote other materials. The biggest hurdle in my mind would be an unbelievable increase in the cost of wood...
Transpire7487 3y ago
It appears to be that paper straws have more PFAS than plastic. Seems no matter what we do we are boned. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/28/paper-straws-worse-than-plastic-pfas-study/70702090007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/28/paper-...

by njovin 3y ago

2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago

> I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. I'm not- show me the direct harm it is causing on an individual level. We can all agree they are a nuisance but it is hard to show how they are outright harming people. Studies like this are a step towards that proof.

ethanbond 3y ago
Ideally, governments armed with scientists are capable of making key judgments like this one without “my child’s arm fell off” levels of apparent, individual harm.
- superhumanuser 3y ago
  Scientists are wrong... a lot. The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice.
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    This is an absolutely horrible heuristic. Let’s put radioactive toys, toys painted with lead, leaded gasoline, DDT, and thalidomide back on the market. None of these were “obvious to the layman.” Individual scientists are wrong a lot. Science as a process continues to be the (imperfect) reigning world champ of truth discovery, no matter what contrarianism du jour memes are spreading over the internet.
    - dwighttk 3y ago
      note how all of those have a horrifying story Tell the horrifying plastic story (if there is one)
      - ethanbond 3y ago
        Uhh no. Lead, mercury, radioactivity, thalidomide, and asbestos poisoning are not detectable as “my child put a toy in their mouth and their tongue fell off.” These were uncovered over the course of years by statistical analysis, prompted by suspicions created by (noisy, often non-human) information about the mechanisms. Similarly, we have tons of data supporting a bunch of theories of micro plastic harm in the lab. The waiting revelation isn’t going to be “omg all these people are sick and we didn’t know it,” it’s going to be “all these people have been sick and we didn’t know why.” Which is exactly the form of the sperm quality/fertility theory as well as obesity. We know these compounds cause fertility and metabolism issues in cell cultures and in animal models. We know we are facing civilization-scale problems with obesity and fertility. Drawing the connection between these types of observations is always extremely noisy because there are obviously trillions of variables affecting “does a specific individual become infertile or obese,” or “does a person have an elevated risk of birth defects.” I’m not necessarily on the side of an immediate and total ban, but this “we’ll see the problems if they exist” attitude is profoundly ignorant and arrogant. The historical examples appear obvious to you because you saw the results of extremely deep study prompted from initially low-quality suspicions.
      - STRML 3y ago
        Does lead exposure have a "horrifying" story? It has measurable effects over years and decades, but very little acute effect.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - bowsamic 3y ago
    > The harm should be obvious to the layman IMHO in order to be legislated away. Otherwise, it should be left up to personal choice. I'm not sure if this is sarcasm but if it's not, this is really the peak of anti-intellectualism ideology, i.e., that if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I don't think that kind of opinion is a good fit for this forum to be honest, which has learning and information sharing as an important goal, so I will have to flag your message, which is an extremely rare thing for me to do (actually this may be my first time ever)
    - superhumanuser 3y ago
      > if a thing is not immediately obvious without studying then we should remain ignorant of it. I'm not sure if you're willfully ignorant or just saw an opportunity to pass a pejorative and took it. I didn't say we should "ignore it". I said we shouldn't allow scientists to exclusively decide what should or should not be legal.
      - bowsamic 3y ago
        No you didn't, you said that if a layman cannot understand it immediately, then we should never use the information in the context of law, i.e. we should just ignore the information, i.e. remain ignorant
        superhumanuser 3y ago
        OK. Have a nice day. Maybe take a little internet timeout and touch grass.
njovin 3y ago
From the article: > The mice in the study began to move peculiarly, and to exhibit behaviours reminiscent of dementia in humans I know this is only _in mice_ but the policy we have of "let industry do what they want and if we find out it's harming humans in 30 years we'll do something about it" has not proven to work out so well in the past (lead, DDT, CFCs, cigarettes).

bowsamic 3y ago

It's exactly the same as fossil fuels and climate change, plastic is far too convenient for any government to even consider doing anything extremely significant regarding it

psychoslave 3y ago
It’s all about depending the scale you look at. One might expect that where governing is concerned, anticipation of long term down side will be given some weight in the balance.
andsoitis 3y ago
> It's exactly the same as fossil fuels and climate change, plastic Moreover, the main ingredient in making plastics is derived from fossil fuels (specifically crude oil and natural gas).
creole_wither 3y ago
If we replace plastic packaging with metal or glass containers which weigh more then more fossil fuels will be required for transport.

amelius 3y ago

The thing I'm most shocked about is the amount of microplastics used in toothpaste, and cosmetics, and such.

bcherny 3y ago
Is there a list of brands that are independently confirmed to not have micro plastics?

Semaphor 3y ago

Germany and several other EU countries have deposits on plastic bottles. I’m not sure how much that helps with the microplastics issue, though.

soco 3y ago
They have for the PET bottles, yes, but there are still thousands of other packaging types which just get dumped in garbage with unknown destinations. I cannot really imagine a deposit on those (do you want stinky meat packages returned to the shop?) but still we need to find a solution.
- Semaphor 3y ago
  Most of it ends up in landfills which are relatively safe IIRC from other microplastic articles?
  - soco 3y ago
    Leachate analysis says otherwise: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S004313541930377X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00431...
    - Semaphor 3y ago
      Well, there goes that :/ Thanks.
- psychoslave 3y ago
  Bottle in glass, aluminum or paper. Beers, various soda and juice already use that
  - zo1 3y ago
    Don't cans have a plastic lining on the inside so that the liquid doesn't touch the metal? Same goes for paper from what another commenter said about paper straws. Heck I wouldn't trust paper food packaging because I'm not sure they would use a wax liner instead of some fancy PFAS forever chemical.

Justsignedup 3y ago

The problem is plastic particles getting into food. And that comes from things like heating up in plastic, storing things in plastic. Non single use plastics are a major problem. That's the thing. Plastic is modern lead. It's easily moldable, but causes subtle health problems.

drewcon 3y ago
Citation needed. These comments read like Reddit/TikTok. Lots of frantic fearful hand waving, not a lot of evidence presented.
- remarkEon 3y ago
  I don't understand this perspective, the need to wait for mountains of published evidence that something is "bad", or "bad enough" to do something about it. Plastic is toxic, we all know this. It's everywhere, it's in the food and in the water. In reality it's the "Citation needed" reflex that's the reddit-tier reaction to stuff like this, because it pretends that humans can't or shouldn't make decisions unless we all sit around in a peer-review committee to review the "data". Perhaps in some contexts that perspective makes sense, but again, in this one, we all know plastic is bad (for us and the environment).
  - atrus 3y ago
    > Plastic is toxic, we all know this. There are thousands of plastics, and a blanket statement like this is simply false. We should be working to figure out which plastics are toxic, and why. You're essentially looking at lead and coming to the conclusion that "Metal is toxic, we all know this."
    - mint2 3y ago
      That’s not a great comparison. If it was comparable to lead in terms of identifying toxicity, we wouldn’t be having this debate. So actually plastic is worse than lead in that it’s more insidious, some want to slowly kill things but it’s nearly impossible to tell which. If only it were like lead and upfront about it. So no, they are not saying “metal is toxic”. That is extending the analogy to another topic: identification

rcarr 3y ago

I agree there’s far too much single use plastic. For example, it baffles me why non perishable products are still sold in transparent plastic bags. If they go to the store they generally get taken out of the plastic bag and put on display. If they’re sold online I have to waste time opening and discarding of a random plastic bag. Why? What purpose does it serve? If you’re that desperate to wrap it in something why not branded paper or even one of the decomposable clear bags that look like plastic but aren’t. Why is the cable in the box also in a small plastic bag? It’s ridiculous.

thworp 3y ago
Mostly to prevent dust and other dirt accumulating before evrything goes into the final packaging.
- trgn 3y ago
  I believe you. Or, plastic is essentially worthless, so it just gets applied willy-nilly. As if, plastic, _because_ it is cheap and easy to produce, therefore it must be everywhere. Go shopping, here's your free plastic bag, well, hell no, double bagged, because plastic is flimsy and crap quality (you didn't even ask, but force of habit, shrug). Package a thing, wrap it in plastic on the outside and the inside! And maybe, if you put in in a box, put more plastic inside that box. so the thingie is snugly ensconced in russian dolls of plastic. Plastic straws, free, a bunch of them, of course in a little plastic sleeve. This proliferation of plastic is not rational, certainly not wholesome. It is purely the downstream effect of plastic being cheap to produce, it is primarily a technological phenomenon.
  - thworp 3y ago
    If you were just talking about plastic packaging you have a point. By weight that is a small percentage of plastics though, which is incidentally why it is so cheap. For other applications plastics are an outright miracle material though. Imagine if all drinks came in glass bottles; all cases and other structural parts were made of metal or wood; all elastic members were made of rubber or treated wood. The added need for shipping alone would probably outweigh the CO2 impact from current plastics production. As it is you get plastics almost for free while refining oil. Not to mention the insane demand there would be for metals, wood and rubber.

nrjames 3y ago

Good PBS Frontline show, Plastic Wars, about the recycling industry: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/

reisse 3y ago

> It seems like we had a pretty good system years ago in requiring people to leave a deposit for bottles when purchasing beer or pop to incentivize return + reuse. On the other hand, this system incentivised using plastic bottles instead of glass, because of less hassle with returning. > Everything I've read about plastic recycling points to it being ineffective... There is one effective way to recycle plastic into energy called "waste incineration".

resonious 3y ago
Japan incinerates trash for energy, and yet they typically require residents to separate plastics from "burnables". Maybe it'd be better (and easier) for everyone if we just started putting everything into the burnable pile.
- HPsquared 3y ago
  Recyclable packaging tends to make for pretty good fuel.
  - tuukkah 3y ago
    During last winter's energy crisis, Finnish cities were heated with plastics collected in Italy.
- tuukkah 3y ago
  Another reason for the sorting at least here is that the companies using plastic packaging are the ones responsible for and paying the disposal system. I think the theory is that this will cause them to reduce plastics use and develop improved re-use.

jokoon 3y ago

The problem of replacing plastic in food is the cost. If you use glass or steel or aluminum, you need new logistics to reuse them. Also, glass is heavier, and requires a lot of energy to be made, so it would require a production chain that ships back empty containers. The best silver bullet solution would be to have local canteen, a bit like in the army or at school, where you just get a subscription with a calendar (not on demand, you plan the meals you'll get), so it reduces waste and costs. We should just stop eating at home, with individual fridges, ovens, kitchens etc, this is highly inefficient. Yes, this is collectivization, but it's the best solution for an economy of scale. Individualism was never a good solution, individualism is often very wasteful. Call me a communist or a socialist, I don't really care.

bombolo 3y ago
I call you someone who doesn't like to eat good food :D
- HPsquared 3y ago
  A good canteen can combine more ingredients in a more sophisticated way than I have time for at home. I'm not making Beef Bourguignon at home, but it's easy for them to make up a big batch. Economies of scale!
  - bombolo 3y ago
    That's how you end up fat.
bowsamic 3y ago
This is how they do it in Germany. Most working Germans I know of eat at the work canteen and have a small bread meal at home in the evening Weird that you're getting downvoted for this. HN is on a weird one recently
- jokoon 3y ago
  Because the united states valued individualism for a very long time, before and during the cold war, and even now. It's a cultural aspect. Blame people like Reagan and Milton Friedman for this. It's a highly political problem. Inequality is already somewhat caused by individualism, but climate change is also caused by climate change. For example, if China wants to reduce its co2 emissions, you only have to convince Chinese leaders, and it's done just by snapping fingers. In the US, you have to make it profitable, which is doable, but it's more complicated and lobbyists will also be a big barrier to change. I loathe the chinese leadership, but being a democratic modern industrialized nation doesn't mean you will see decisions that make sense.

troyjfarrell 3y ago

Kyrgyzstan passed a law banning many single-use plastics from January 1st, 2027. I hope the ban sticks. It will be challenging to make the economics work. https://24.kg/english/272281__Production_and_sale_of_plastic_prohibited_in_Kyrgyzstan_from_January_1_2027/ https://24.kg/english/272281__Production_and_sale_of_plastic... https://24.kg/english/272323__Kyrgyzstan_to_fine_for_sale_and_production_of_plastic_bags_/ https://24.kg/english/272323__Kyrgyzstan_to_fine_for_sale_an...

tohnjitor 3y ago

Apparently most paper straws just have a thin plastic coating of PFOAs

Izkata 3y ago
We should replace both with cookie straws.
- tohnjitor 3y ago
  I like the way you think.

DrThunder 3y ago

You have to have a good alternative first. Paper items sprayed with harmful chemicals is not a good replacement. https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-forever-chemicals-plastic-straws/ https://fortune.com/well/2023/08/24/paper-straws-harmful-for...

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BaseballPhysics 3y ago
No you don't. A ban forces industries to create alternatives. Otherwise they won't bother. You just schedule a phased elimination over time so those alternatives can get developed. That's precisely how the Montreal Protocol banned CFCs and protected the ozone layer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
- DrThunder 3y ago
  If it was that easy to get an alternative introduced it would have been suggested already and all of these radical "green" governments would have hopped on the train immediately. This idea that we're just killing people with microplastics because we like it is insane. CFC's coming out of your hairspray is WAY different than removing the plastic keeping your food fresh. Stop with the black and white thinking. There is NO alternative that is free of some negative consequence. You're already seeing this with EV's. Every single "green" replacement introduces new problems that are often worse than what they've replaced.
  - BaseballPhysics 3y ago
    [flagged]

avgcorrection 3y ago

> I'm still shocked that there hasn't been more of a regulatory push to eliminate single-use plastics. In the US the closest we've gotten is banning plastic straws and charging for plastic carry bags. I think it's because those two things can be used to scold consumers and thus inculcate the belief that the final link in the production-consumption chain bears all the blame. I mean I have seen signs encouraging people to use reusable bags at the checkout line. But is it a problem that literally everything in the store (except mushrooms I guess) is wrapped in plastic? Apparently it is not.

njovin 3y ago
Even most of the mushrooms are wrapped in plastic at the stores I visit :(

BirAdam 3y ago

Personally, while being exceedingly libertarian leaning, I would advocate a gradual ban of plastics generally. All plastics are ephemeral and they're not easily recyclable. Humans used glass, wax, paper, wood, and other products before plastics were widely available and our materials sciences have improved dramatically over time. To me, the main problem here is that plastics are just so cheap due to having been in production for so long. With a strong tax incentive, it should be possible to promote other materials. The biggest hurdle in my mind would be an unbelievable increase in the cost of wood...

Transpire7487 3y ago

It appears to be that paper straws have more PFAS than plastic. Seems no matter what we do we are boned. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/28/paper-straws-worse-than-plastic-pfas-study/70702090007/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/08/28/paper-...