5 ms·

Food wraps, straws, cup liners, plates, bowls, utensils, anywhere single use plastics are just there to hold something for like 30 min before being discarded.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jnurmine 2y ago
Still, why plastic nowadays? Wood and other biodegradeable materials are available. Plenty of products already on the market, not just for cutlery but things like product packaging, too. Companies exist all over the planet, like BioPak from Australia, WoodAble from Chile, Sulapac from Finland, Hunufa Compostable from Vietnam, etc.
- adrianN 2y ago
  Plastic is cheap and convenient. It also might have a lower carbon footprint than alternatives.
- solardev 2y ago
  Cheap and easily manufactured using existing processes and factories (pellets molded into various films and containers). Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the deluxe eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer only, but one who frequents such stores). They're almost like a lifestyle / branding thing to go along with organic / vegetarian / sustainable / local themed restaurants, but most don't do that and just want to keep costs down. Most just use regular cheap plastic and some still use Styrofoam. I think a bioplastic that actually biodegrades in average municipal landfills at a minimal cost markup vs current plastics, that say 40% of restaurants adopt voluntarily (or by regulation), will be more impactful than the boutique reusables we currently see but only at like one restaurant per thousand. I don't ever see places like Walmart or Costco switching to wooden bowls, for example. But bioplastics that look and feel the same and only cost a few percentage more? Maybe. Especially if encouraged by local regulations, similar to plastic bag bans.
  - DFHippie 2y ago
    > Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the deluxe eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer only, but one who frequents such stores). They're almost like a lifestyle / branding thing to go along with organic / vegetarian / sustainable / local themed restaurants, but most don't do that and just want to keep costs down. Restaurants can be perfectly sincere (and branding isn't incompatible with sincerity), but they have tight margins. It's their customers who really have the choice, and there are very few customers willing to pay extra for the eco stuff. It reminds me of this evergreen Onion article: https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-commuters-favor-public-trans-1819565837 https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-commuters-...
    - solardev 2y ago
      I'm not saying restaurants are insincere about it, just that it's a cost of doing business many won't (or can't) absorb. It's usually the more expensive hippie-tastic places with already-high prices (and hopefully higher margins) that can afford them. Culturally, I don't think customers would accept a choice on the matter either, like I've never seen a place offer "you can have the plastic box for free, or buy the sustainable wooden one for $2". In lieu of that, I used to bring my own reusable tupperware to the restaurants for takeout, but got a looooooot of strange looks and comments about that. What I'd really love to see is more of a "borrow a tupperware, bring back a tupperware" model where they just loan you containers. I'd only ever seen that on college campuses, not in the real world. Anyway, none of that is really the point. There's nothing wrong with fancy sustainable/reusable dishware, but something that's incrementally better and not much more costly than regular plastic is much more likely to see widespread adoption. I think the gradual phase-out of styrofoam to plastics is one such example, and cheap bioplastics of the less-biodegradable kind are more common now (though not everywhere), paperboard boxes with some wax paper/foil lining are popping up, some places are doing away with bottled plastic water in favor of water in milk-like cartons... gradual incrementalism seems to work better than revolutionary approaches in that industry.
      - DFHippie 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

jnurmine 2y ago

Still, why plastic nowadays? Wood and other biodegradeable materials are available. Plenty of products already on the market, not just for cutlery but things like product packaging, too. Companies exist all over the planet, like BioPak from Australia, WoodAble from Chile, Sulapac from Finland, Hunufa Compostable from Vietnam, etc.

adrianN 2y ago
Plastic is cheap and convenient. It also might have a lower carbon footprint than alternatives.
solardev 2y ago
Cheap and easily manufactured using existing processes and factories (pellets molded into various films and containers). Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the deluxe eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer only, but one who frequents such stores). They're almost like a lifestyle / branding thing to go along with organic / vegetarian / sustainable / local themed restaurants, but most don't do that and just want to keep costs down. Most just use regular cheap plastic and some still use Styrofoam. I think a bioplastic that actually biodegrades in average municipal landfills at a minimal cost markup vs current plastics, that say 40% of restaurants adopt voluntarily (or by regulation), will be more impactful than the boutique reusables we currently see but only at like one restaurant per thousand. I don't ever see places like Walmart or Costco switching to wooden bowls, for example. But bioplastics that look and feel the same and only cost a few percentage more? Maybe. Especially if encouraged by local regulations, similar to plastic bag bans.
- DFHippie 2y ago
  > Very few restaurants want to pay a premium for the deluxe eco groovy stuff, in my experience (as a customer only, but one who frequents such stores). They're almost like a lifestyle / branding thing to go along with organic / vegetarian / sustainable / local themed restaurants, but most don't do that and just want to keep costs down. Restaurants can be perfectly sincere (and branding isn't incompatible with sincerity), but they have tight margins. It's their customers who really have the choice, and there are very few customers willing to pay extra for the eco stuff. It reminds me of this evergreen Onion article: https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-commuters-favor-public-trans-1819565837 https://www.theonion.com/report-98-percent-of-u-s-commuters-...
  - solardev 2y ago
    I'm not saying restaurants are insincere about it, just that it's a cost of doing business many won't (or can't) absorb. It's usually the more expensive hippie-tastic places with already-high prices (and hopefully higher margins) that can afford them. Culturally, I don't think customers would accept a choice on the matter either, like I've never seen a place offer "you can have the plastic box for free, or buy the sustainable wooden one for $2". In lieu of that, I used to bring my own reusable tupperware to the restaurants for takeout, but got a looooooot of strange looks and comments about that. What I'd really love to see is more of a "borrow a tupperware, bring back a tupperware" model where they just loan you containers. I'd only ever seen that on college campuses, not in the real world. Anyway, none of that is really the point. There's nothing wrong with fancy sustainable/reusable dishware, but something that's incrementally better and not much more costly than regular plastic is much more likely to see widespread adoption. I think the gradual phase-out of styrofoam to plastics is one such example, and cheap bioplastics of the less-biodegradable kind are more common now (though not everywhere), paperboard boxes with some wax paper/foil lining are popping up, some places are doing away with bottled plastic water in favor of water in milk-like cartons... gradual incrementalism seems to work better than revolutionary approaches in that industry.
    - DFHippie 2y ago