> No this is not feel good policy like 'recycling'. If the EU and the US ban single-use plastics, the world consumption of plastic would fall an order of magnitude.
>It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in comparison to where most of the consumer spending is happening in the world.
Why focus on total plastic waste, rather than mismanaged plastic waste? Surely you must agree that a plastic bottle that's tossed into the Ganges river is orders of magnitude worse for the environment than one that's sitting in a properly engineered and monitored landfill?
>Also it adds friction to the business model of theses giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever, etc.
>A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a market but not another it will likely move the needle to single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest standard. This is a well studied effect in many industries.
I'll need numbers for this. The factors working against your argument are:
1. while economy of scale is a thing, the gains you get decrease as you scale up. If you only have bottle factory and it only produces glass bottles, it would be tremendously expensive for you to start producing plastic bottles, because you have to build a whole new factory from scratch. However, if you have dozens of bottle factories around the world, then having separate plastic/glass bottle factories effectively cost you nothing. Yes, there is small efficiency gains to be had, but I doubt that they're significant enough to drive plastic bottles out of business.
2. as developing countries get richer, their plastic consumption will go up as more people can afford consumer products. The same isn't true for rich countries. After all, you being 10x richer won't cause you to use 10x more shampoo.
>Because one country you have a say in and the others you don't?
Yeah but what's the point of your activism? Is it to tick off a box and say that you did "something"? Or is it to improve the world by some metric (ie. microplastic pollution)? If it's the latter, then it's pretty obvious that you should devote your effort into the highest impact projects regardless of whether it's righteous or not (ie. even if it means picking up "the tab of the externalized costs from all these companies selling single-use packaging").
>Why should any other country mandate a switch if even wealthy countries don't bother?
They shouldn't because I never made such a proposal. My original comment mentioned "investing in better waste management systems in developing countries".
>It doesn't matter if 'developing' countries mismanage waste, their total plastic waste is still fractional in comparison to where most of the consumer spending is happening in the world.
Why focus on total plastic waste, rather than mismanaged plastic waste? Surely you must agree that a plastic bottle that's tossed into the Ganges river is orders of magnitude worse for the environment than one that's sitting in a properly engineered and monitored landfill?
>Also it adds friction to the business model of theses giants like: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, P&G, Unilever, etc.
>A big part of their savings is in economy of scale. If they now have to keep packaging solutions exclusive for a market but not another it will likely move the needle to single uniform packaging that abides with the strictest standard. This is a well studied effect in many industries.
I'll need numbers for this. The factors working against your argument are:
1. while economy of scale is a thing, the gains you get decrease as you scale up. If you only have bottle factory and it only produces glass bottles, it would be tremendously expensive for you to start producing plastic bottles, because you have to build a whole new factory from scratch. However, if you have dozens of bottle factories around the world, then having separate plastic/glass bottle factories effectively cost you nothing. Yes, there is small efficiency gains to be had, but I doubt that they're significant enough to drive plastic bottles out of business.
2. as developing countries get richer, their plastic consumption will go up as more people can afford consumer products. The same isn't true for rich countries. After all, you being 10x richer won't cause you to use 10x more shampoo.