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That's a false dichotomy though. Individual single use plastic bottles and cholera are not the only two options. Paper packaging, metal packaging, glass packag
by yareal 2y ago
That's a false dichotomy though. Individual single use plastic bottles and cholera are not the only two options.
Paper packaging, metal packaging, glass packaging, bulk packaging, improved infrastructure, filters, etc. I'm sure there are other reasonable options beyond single use plastic bottles.
- martinbaun 2y agoWell, if you're living in "Extreme Poverty", then you'll be earning around $2 a day. If you're earning $2 a day, then paying $.2 more for bottled water in paper is probably going to be detrimental for you. Around 1 billion people live in extreme poverty. So yes, there's alternatives for you and me, but not for a billion people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_poverty
- yareal 2y agoI'm aware. A glass bottle has a unit cost increase of approximately a penny per bottle (per CleanMetrics). But the bottle itself can be reused and recycled. Also, this assumes it's not in our best interest to subsidize this penny per bottle cost for our own health. Plastic trash ends up in our hydrocycle no matter where it is used. Also, reusable plastic aren't the problem either. A large, centrally fillable 5 gallon container is not likely to be used once and discarded. Are you really asserting that individual 12-40oz single use bottles of water are the best system we can imagine and what a million people use for daily water?
- xyzzyz 2y agoIn what way paper, metal, or glass bottles are better than plastic?
- CatWChainsaw 2y agoAluminum can be almost 100% recycled IIRC and aluminum cans don't weigh a lot. You're getting the same product in better packaging.
- SoftTalker 2y agoI would have expected the cost of aluminum cans to be an order of magnitude more than plastic bottles, but from some quick searching it appears it's not even double.
- CatWChainsaw 2y agoIs that in their production or their recycling? Even if it is recycling, I'm pretty sure virgin plastic can be remade 6-7 times only.
- giantg2 2y agoAluminum cans are plastic lined
- yareal 2y agoPaper biodegrades and can potentially be composted. If our ocean started filling with paper, existing biological systems would be able to address it. Metal and glass are reusable many, many more times than plastic and are sterilizable with heat. Both metal and glass are recyclable or inert in the environment. If a bottle ends up in the ocean it eventually becomes sand again. None of the above require oil to be produced. I'm not saying plastic has no upsides, I'm saying other options exist that specifically address the downsides of plastic. With materials we are always making trade offs.
- QuercusMax 2y agoThey can all be recycled in a much more meaningful way than plastic. Paper can biodegrade. Empty metal and glass bottles are easy to use as raw materials.
- RetroTechie 2y agoGlass bottles can be re-used as is (like ~20..50 roundtrips or so in consumer <-> supermarket context), before recycling even comes into the picture.
- petre 2y agoYes but they're heavy and generate CO2 from transportation. During communism we used to recycle all food and drink glass containers, but one would only get a few glass shapes and a few jar shapes. They only took back the containers clean and without labels. Most of the work was washing off the paper labels and bone glue. Kids were earning ice cream money doing the cleaning and recycling.
- kgabis 2y agoYou can, and often do, reuse plastic bottles. Water dispensers are very popular in some places and they use recyclable 19l plastic bottles. Glass is just too heavy and fragile for transporting water and if I understand correctly metal still needs plastic lining so that it doesn't react with fluids.