One issue I see is that even when the advantages of plastic are practically non-existent people will still demand its use either out convenience or habit. Plastic bags come to mind as an obvious culprit. There are others though, too.
My pet theory is that we're basically stripping the planet of all of the good, usable materials for "stuff" and plastic is a nice stop-gap to keep prices low. We don't do a good job of recognizing how inflation is tied to resource depletion.
Plastic bags are an interesting example. There was a study a little while back that plastic bag bans at stores resulted in an overall increase use of plastic.
The thinking was that people reused the thin store bags at least once (i.e. as a small trash liner for a work desk). Without those as an option, people switched to buying plastic bags, which were thicker and used much more material.
Personally, we always opt for plastic bags at the store, and they always get reused once if not many times. Paper bags just don't seem to hold up as well for some reason.
Here in NJ we have a pretty strict plastic bag ban.
It's all gone pretty smooth except for grocery delivery services. Instead of using one time use thin plastic bags, they now have to use reusable bags. That they never reuse. So places like our company that get office foodstuffs delivered weekly, end up throwing away stacks of thick plastic bags.
Apparently though the legislature is working on a fix for this.
Paper bags available around here don't always have handles. As a result, you either can't carry as many (one hand holds a bag from the bottom) or you crumple or tear the bag at the top accidentally. Also, they tend to not hold as much weight as plastic bags.
What's worse is that they're harder to reuse. Since they aren't resistant to water, there are fewer other uses that they are good for.
My paper bags get reused primarily as a place to keep my cans and bottles (we have a refundable deposit where I live) until I have time to take them to the redemption center or give them to one of the local non-profits that collects them. I've found the paper bags allow any residue to evaporate rather than leaving the cans a sticky and, eventually, moldy mess like plastic bags do.
> So places like our company that get office foodstuffs delivered weekly, end up throwing away stacks of thick plastic bags.
Businesses are far and away the biggest offenders when it comes to waste in general and particularly plastic waste. Getting individuals using reusable bags is fine but really doesn't address the biggest offenders.
I forget the stat but you have to reuse those "reusable" bags like a thousand times before it becomes a net benefit. Even if you do reuse them, you are almost certainly not going to reuse it a thousand times before it wears out or whatever and you dispose of it.
Only in terms of energy. Even then 1000 seems like a suspiciously large amount.
In terms of plastic use the reusable bags are much better. It doesn’t take too many reuses before a reusable bag is a net benefit. Compared to other energy uses the plastic bags are a tiny amount so I don’t worry too much about that.
In Singapore it’s delivered in cardboard boxes which they request you give them when they next deliver. Used to give them back each time if they didn’t get damaged or daughter didn’t use it as a car.
Same here, but it depends on the delivery service and the store. For example, Aldi puts out used cardboard boxes in which they received produce for delivery services like Instacart to reuse. With warehouse based delivery services like from StopandShop they're using the thick reusable plastic totes. Unfortunately they're so small that you end up getting a dozen of them in a single delivery, and you have no hope of using them all, so they end up getting tossed.
In the delivery-company-on-a-recurring-basis case, they could bring fully re-usable packaging (crates or something I guess) and then just recover it when they come back next week.
When I’ve been in Europe I’ve often seen that there are no bags except for fully re-usable tote bags that you have to pay 1-2€ for. It really only takes one instance of forgetting your own bags to teach the lesson.
The problem there is that the law didn't define "reusable" bags well enough, so stores just made slightly thicker plastic bags and called them reusable even though they really aren't. As a result people ended up using the same amount of bags but with far more plastic.
I see the benefit of those heavier “reusable” bags as coming from the fact that they are less likely to blow away and get into the waterways. If you drop one it is more likely to be picked up and put in to the trash instead of ending up in a turtle’s breakfast.
I used to use the single use bags I got while grocery shopping as trash bags. Perhaps not coincidentally, grocery purchases and trash production kept a pretty even pace.
Now I have to buy my trash bags, which are not used twice and used in the same amount as the earlier bags. Also, I used to get much stuff unpacked, the bag was there to not throw a bunch of loose carrots, chicken legs and tomatoes in my carrying bag. Now, nearly everything comes prepackaged, which is single use obviously.
I don't see how my plastic consumption is down. I guestimate it's up.
isn't convenience a practical benefit? Cost as well, particularly for lower income individuals.
Plastic bags actually are practically superior to the alternatives in many ways. They are stronger, smaller and more water resistant than paper. They may use less material per trip than reusable bags which take ~50x more resources but are still prone to eventual breakage.
Basically everything about one time use plastics is amazing, except the potential for environmental harm.
I'd say the alternative is cloth reusable bags rather than paper. It's what I use.
It's stronger and easier to handle than plastic; you just need to remember to bring one with you. My partner keeps one in her bag permanently in case she shops on a whim.
I'm not convinced plastic bag bans save the environment much in terms of co2 production or oil use or whatnot.
However - since the bag ban has been enacted here in Chicago, the amount of plastic bag litter is noticeably less.
Worth banning something? Maybe, maybe not. But I'd take an educated guess that more plastic is reaching landfills vs. waterways due to it - even if the total amount of plastic is more overall.
Not op, but given the supply side constraints (especially international with 0 Covid) recycling could have been a major solution.
It could still be a major solution. Novelis, an aluminum recycler in Georgia, claims $73m of aluminum are sent to landfills every year. If the southeast boosted aluminum recycling efforts it would drastically increase domestic "raw" materials. (Things like pontoon boats were aluminum limited).
Then do the same for cardboard (hello toilet paper shortage) where recycling paper products reduces energy and water inputs by 50%. Countries like Spain have cardboard thieves while in the US, it goes to the dump.
Inflation is a complex problem that probably has multiple contributing factors, but one of those factors is the cost of energy, and one of the drivers of energy cost is the depletion of easily accessible fossil fuels.
I wouldn't say current problems because those are largely due to absurdly poor fiscal policy under the Trump administration [1], but just in general. I have no "evidence", just a pet theory/observation.
The theory (and it may be a shit one, and I have no good claims here besides it's fun to discuss) goes like this, back in the day you could get real hardwood pretty cheap. You could build brick homes. Etc. Now you can't (i.e. it's very expensive) and that is reflected in ongoing inflation of the money supply and partially why we decoupled from gold. New technologies and materials can create substitute products, of course, but for many natural resources I think we're basically stripping or have stripped the planet for the time being. Think lobster and salmon, hardwood furniture, pollution, etc.
It's interesting if you read that article you posted the trend was pretty normal until COVID which speaks volumes. They blame it on the tax cut but the data just doesn't align with that theory. Specifically the chart at https://assets-c3.propublica.org/images/articles/_threeTwo80...
In reality the president doesn't control the budget. They influence it through an agenda but it's ultimately up to congress. Congress passed a lot of stimulus in response to the pandemic and much of it was bi-partisan.
Well, yes and no. We can see that during his administration the deficit was already increasing quite a bit in relative terms even before the pandemic.
> When Trump took office in January 2017, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was projecting that federal budget deficits would be 2% to 3% of our gross domestic product during Trump’s term. Instead, the deficit reached nearly 4% of gross domestic product in 2018 and 4.6% in 2019.
> There were multiple culprits. Trump’s tax cuts, especially the sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35%, took a big bite out of federal revenue. The CBO estimated in 2018 that the tax cut would increase deficits by about $1.9 trillion over 11 years.
COVID-19 certainly didn't help, and you are correct that stimulus was largely bipartisan, but in common discussion "blame" for spending is usually assigned to the president and their administration. This can be observed by current members of Congress (Republicans) who have been quick to suggest that Biden has created a huge deficit, inflation, etc. while it's not only untrue but was largely due to actions from the previous administration or Congress before he was president. (In other words for every representative complaining about inflation they should be posting that they were the ones who actually voted for it).
If we were being truthful we wouldn't do this, but if we're going to continue to suggest that the deficit is (whatever insane things people are making up right now to blame Biden on) then it would make no sense to not instead blame any financial problems on the previous administration and keep assigning blame to the President.
W.r.t COVID-19 you can just say the Trump administration did a terrible job and mishandled allocations of money and that's why the deficit increased so much. I personally don't wholly subscribe to that but if Republicans are going to blame inflation on Biden it makes sense to turn around and blame it all on Trump/Republicans instead.
It's obvious Biden and congress are not primarily responsible for inflation, that's a combination of macro economic factors as well as the Federal Reserve's drastic actions.
But not only did the COVID stimulus continue once the dems took control, they continued to pass multi-trillion dollar bills (Infrastructure & Inflation Reduction Act) along with a half trillion dollar student loan forgiveness. It's this aggressive spending, while inflation was already rising, that is giving them that reputation.
I'm not taking sides here nor do I want anything to do with Trump. Just laying it out how I see it.
Spending can be an investment too, so I think broadly characterizing them as spending bills is misleading which makes the characterization of "Democrat inflation" also misleading. An easy example is the national highway system which was a spending bill, yet we reaped massive (although problematic in my opinion) economic gain from doing so.
I'm conflicted on student loan forgiveness, but I don't see it as any worse than numerous corporate subsidies and bailouts, and is likely a better use of money than what we normally spend. If this forgiveness bill proceeds forward as it is likely to do, I think coupling it with a measured withdrawal of the federal government from guaranteeing student loans and also allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy would be ideal.
Except in this case "investment" is more like buying a stock at it's peak maxing out your margin with a variable interest rate in a rising interest rate environment.
>even when the advantages of plastic are practically non-existent people will still demand its use either out convenience or habit.
Or, if manufactures / retailers / etc adopted other options would consumers simply adapt? The problem here is supply side not demand side - consumers have few choices.
My pet theory is that we're basically stripping the planet of all of the good, usable materials for "stuff" and plastic is a nice stop-gap to keep prices low. We don't do a good job of recognizing how inflation is tied to resource depletion.