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It's practically impossible to avoid plastic without great effort. I think even if we collectively don't do much towards that goal, each of us should think abou

It's practically impossible to avoid plastic without great effort. I think even if we collectively don't do much towards that goal, each of us should think about it while we go about our daily lives. For instance, there are times where the choice is wholly ours. Eggs, for instance, often come in plastic or cardboard, so aside from taking a few extra seconds to consider the kind of eggs we want, that's easy. If we want yogurt, though, we basically have little choice beyond considering the packaging that wastes the least plastic. But there's still so much we can do. When we know that a store puts plastic utensils in an order without asking, and/or gives us our purchase in a plastic bag, it's simple to ask them for neither. It's also simple to carry a reusable bag or two, or a travel mug, et cetera. Spending just a little energy can easily reduce default plastic use quite a lot. This story is a good reminder that perfect should never be the enemy of good, so at very least we should try where we can.

_heimdall 2y ago
Eggs are such an interesting example to me. I'll speak mostly to the US here, but a good chunk of the population could absolutely raise their own chickens for eggs I'd they really were interested in an easy way to reduce impact. A flock of 6-8 hens don't require too much space, and ideally you can use them as bug control and fertilizer replacement in their lawn. I live in an area with quite a few commercial chicken houses. Its an absolutely disgusting industry today, from how the animals are treated to the nasty conditions workers have to deal with. Getting rid of plastic and styrofoam packaging would be a nice win, getting rid of at least a portion of the market for industrial bird operations would be the real win in my book.
d_sem 2y ago
Car dominated societies inevitably will expose their inhabitants to micro plastics through synthetic tire rubber dust. There is basically no possible way to avoid them without regulation.
- ricketyricky 2y ago
  [flagged]
dyauspitr 2y ago
Plastic is too perfect to stop using. Honestly we need to find some miracle plastic that is completely biodegradable after say 10 years. The byproducts of the biodegradation process should be completely harmless as well. I know people are going to say that we already have biodegradable plastic but the key point here is degrade more or less around 10 years, not earlier.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  Just implement better recycling programs, and develop better technology for recycling (so "contamination" isn't a problem, etc.). This might not work so well for societies where it's socially acceptable to just throw your trash on the ground and have trash littering the landscape though.
  - lozenge 2y ago
    If no new plastic was available, maybe we could recycle better, but at a very high energy cost. Even Japan, famous for its recycling where end users clean and sort their plastic in great detail, burns a lot of their plastic for energy.
  - FredPret 2y ago
    Recycling is hard because different plastic molecules don’t always play nice together - and the same goes for metal. So you need to sort everything carefully. This is hard, slow, and way too imperfect. I wonder if a better approach could one day be to burn it and then use some future catalyst or reaction to convert the smoke into something useful, or to chop the raw plastic up and feed it to a vat ful of special bacteria.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Yeah, that's why I said we should develop better recycling technology, because what we have today isn't that good. The bacteria idea is a good one I think. We already have microorganisms that can eat plastic, so it seems like it should be possible to genetically-engineer better plastic-eating bacteria for this purpose.
jillesvangurp 2y ago
Cardboard and glass packaging used to be a lot more common. The key to reducing to use of plastic is fiddling with the economics. It's cheap for companies to use plastic as long as they don't have to worry about cleanup or recycling. As soon as you start charging them for the privilege of mass polluting our world with their cost savings, they can adapt pretty rapidly. In the Netherlands, there are some discussions about going back to using cardboard packaging for dairy products. That was basically all there was when I grew up. Before cardboard, glass was very common for this stuff. But In recent years, a lot of plastic bottles were used for milk. But with the requirement to give people money for returning those to be recycled, that just got a lot less attractive. Plastic is only convenient if you don't have to recycle it. Same with plastic bags. At some point those stopped being free (in most of Europe at least). And then people started pushing for paper bags. Problem solved. There are a lot less plastic bags now. I actually carry a nice foldable plastic bag made out of recycled plastic in my backpack these days. Fits behind the laptop compartment. So, I rarely need to buy paper bags.
- ttyprintk 2y ago
  In USA, I hope we can talk about: The amount of plastic in junk mail. Maybe instead of stamps, we sell envelopes without a window. The concentration of plastics in receipts. Maybe we replace those printers with photographable screens, and have a separate lane for people desiring print. Receipts expose you to far more plastic than more-emotionally-attentive items like shampoo.
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > But with the requirement to give people money for returning those to be recycled Statiegeld! I really liked this scheme there for beer bottles. When I lived there most milk came in tetra pak though. I thought it was recyclable?
- SECProto 2y ago
  Note that cardboard for liquid packaging often has a plastic lining, aluminum cans have plastic/epoxy lining, glass containers have plastic seals in the lids, etc.
zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago
Yogurt is fun and easy to make at home. And pickles. And beer. And bread. The only drawback is it takes time.
diffeomorphism 2y ago
Does that actually matter or is it yet another PR campaign where we shift the blame from companies to consumers?
xiconfjs 2y ago
For yogurt, milk and so on there is glass - no need for plastics.
Iulioh 2y ago
>If we want yogurt, though, we basically have little choice beyond considering the packaging that wastes the least plastic. Ceramic and glass containers are quite available in my area, i just think that's really big waste. It they were reusable it would be one thing but we are talking about 4g of plastic vs 100g of glass...

_heimdall 2y ago

Eggs are such an interesting example to me. I'll speak mostly to the US here, but a good chunk of the population could absolutely raise their own chickens for eggs I'd they really were interested in an easy way to reduce impact. A flock of 6-8 hens don't require too much space, and ideally you can use them as bug control and fertilizer replacement in their lawn. I live in an area with quite a few commercial chicken houses. Its an absolutely disgusting industry today, from how the animals are treated to the nasty conditions workers have to deal with. Getting rid of plastic and styrofoam packaging would be a nice win, getting rid of at least a portion of the market for industrial bird operations would be the real win in my book.

d_sem 2y ago

Car dominated societies inevitably will expose their inhabitants to micro plastics through synthetic tire rubber dust. There is basically no possible way to avoid them without regulation.

ricketyricky 2y ago
[flagged]

dyauspitr 2y ago

Plastic is too perfect to stop using. Honestly we need to find some miracle plastic that is completely biodegradable after say 10 years. The byproducts of the biodegradation process should be completely harmless as well. I know people are going to say that we already have biodegradable plastic but the key point here is degrade more or less around 10 years, not earlier.

shiroiushi 2y ago
Just implement better recycling programs, and develop better technology for recycling (so "contamination" isn't a problem, etc.). This might not work so well for societies where it's socially acceptable to just throw your trash on the ground and have trash littering the landscape though.
- lozenge 2y ago
  If no new plastic was available, maybe we could recycle better, but at a very high energy cost. Even Japan, famous for its recycling where end users clean and sort their plastic in great detail, burns a lot of their plastic for energy.
- FredPret 2y ago
  Recycling is hard because different plastic molecules don’t always play nice together - and the same goes for metal. So you need to sort everything carefully. This is hard, slow, and way too imperfect. I wonder if a better approach could one day be to burn it and then use some future catalyst or reaction to convert the smoke into something useful, or to chop the raw plastic up and feed it to a vat ful of special bacteria.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Yeah, that's why I said we should develop better recycling technology, because what we have today isn't that good. The bacteria idea is a good one I think. We already have microorganisms that can eat plastic, so it seems like it should be possible to genetically-engineer better plastic-eating bacteria for this purpose.

jillesvangurp 2y ago

Cardboard and glass packaging used to be a lot more common. The key to reducing to use of plastic is fiddling with the economics. It's cheap for companies to use plastic as long as they don't have to worry about cleanup or recycling. As soon as you start charging them for the privilege of mass polluting our world with their cost savings, they can adapt pretty rapidly. In the Netherlands, there are some discussions about going back to using cardboard packaging for dairy products. That was basically all there was when I grew up. Before cardboard, glass was very common for this stuff. But In recent years, a lot of plastic bottles were used for milk. But with the requirement to give people money for returning those to be recycled, that just got a lot less attractive. Plastic is only convenient if you don't have to recycle it. Same with plastic bags. At some point those stopped being free (in most of Europe at least). And then people started pushing for paper bags. Problem solved. There are a lot less plastic bags now. I actually carry a nice foldable plastic bag made out of recycled plastic in my backpack these days. Fits behind the laptop compartment. So, I rarely need to buy paper bags.

ttyprintk 2y ago
In USA, I hope we can talk about: The amount of plastic in junk mail. Maybe instead of stamps, we sell envelopes without a window. The concentration of plastics in receipts. Maybe we replace those printers with photographable screens, and have a separate lane for people desiring print. Receipts expose you to far more plastic than more-emotionally-attentive items like shampoo.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> But with the requirement to give people money for returning those to be recycled Statiegeld! I really liked this scheme there for beer bottles. When I lived there most milk came in tetra pak though. I thought it was recyclable?
SECProto 2y ago
Note that cardboard for liquid packaging often has a plastic lining, aluminum cans have plastic/epoxy lining, glass containers have plastic seals in the lids, etc.

zoklet-enjoyer 2y ago

Yogurt is fun and easy to make at home. And pickles. And beer. And bread. The only drawback is it takes time.

diffeomorphism 2y ago

Does that actually matter or is it yet another PR campaign where we shift the blame from companies to consumers?

xiconfjs 2y ago

For yogurt, milk and so on there is glass - no need for plastics.

Iulioh 2y ago

>If we want yogurt, though, we basically have little choice beyond considering the packaging that wastes the least plastic. Ceramic and glass containers are quite available in my area, i just think that's really big waste. It they were reusable it would be one thing but we are talking about 4g of plastic vs 100g of glass...