I sympathize with your concern about the ecological impact of plastics; I also think you vastly underestimate the beneficial effects of plastics. Plastics are incredibly useful materials. There's no going back.
there were, are and will be alternatives. we won't go back but we evolve. plastics ruin taste and they feel bad. people's senses are just a "bit fucked up" due to the many "other" things in water, air, soil, drinks and food.
The alternatives were for the most part replaced with plastic because of plastic's remarkable qualities. There's very few relatively inert materials that are cheap to manufacturer, durable, light, can withstand (reasonably) high temperatures, can be formed into whatever shape you want, and can be as hard or flexible as you want.
Glass bottles used to be much more common but they're more expensive, very easy to break, and heavier, which also increases cost of transportation. Paper containers for things can't be allowed to get wet which often makes them impractical. Metals are expensive, potentially reactive, heavy, and inflexible.
Yes plastics are very environmentally problematic, but they do solve a lot of problems that aren't really solved by any other kind of material.
The following are assumptions based on vague memories from books, articles, documentaries, anecdotes and thinking based on observations of past and current events and economic methods. You'd have to consult historians and engineers to confirm.
The choice was a purely pseudo-economic one.
a) Alternatives needed less than 12 months longer R&D.
b) Alternatives were less than 5% more expensive.
c) Alternatives were reusable/repairable and would not have been single-use, which would have reduced production mid- and long-term.
d) Alternatives would have sparked more industries and would have created more jobs, more captains and more (metaphorical) ships,
especially in engineering and crafts.
e) Alternatives would have meant better production methods and waste that would be easier and more constructive to handle, which would have meant better health and a more thriving environment and natural produce, which would have meant less opportunity to study negative impacts on humans as well as flora and fauna and less opportunity to make all kinds of swarms dependent on corporate "solutions".
Again, alternatives would have sparked more industries and would have boosted our civilization's/colony's R&D by 50 or more years. And the resulting cumulative competition would have boosted R&D even further. More money overall, less of gap between the wealthiest and the rest.
Pretending that the growing populations required unhealthy factory jobs is thus irrational. People were keen to learn and work and thrive and even dimwits like me had enough brains to catch up within a few months or years.
The conventional argument "do we create jobs now or later" is nonsense, as more emerging industries would have meant at least just as many jobs.
I could probably use an LLM and some books to craft a much better and technical answer but I probably won't use any for at least some longer while.
Single use plastics are convenient, are 99% of the problem, and could be phased out feasibly. Perfect is the enemy is good. Not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, but people arguing with absolutism on plastics is a dead end.
Never going to happen. People already hate paper straws. No one is going to look at the current replacements and say "Yeah life was better after that" besides activists.
Do they really hate them or do they just complain about them like some bad season of some series they will continue to watch anyway?
Life is better without plastic straws and plastic plates and plastic knifes and so on ... and people who don't care usually care but the brain structure to admit that is premature.
In the same vein, no one hates them unless they didn't grow up with them. If you'd have grown up with glass straws, you'd love glass straws, especially if you'd been brought up being taught about the harms of single use plastics.
99% of these things are entirely cultural and habitual.
I doubt that anyone would prefer a glass or any other hard material straw, straws made out of hard materials are just bad. And I say that as someone who was very enthusiastic about getting steel straws until about the forth or fifth time I nearly broke a tooth on them.
Im not biting down on straws, when putting it into your mouth you aren't holding a straw with multiple fingers like a utensil and it can tap into teeth with the entire weight of the glass and drink behind it because it is not really secured well and it moves. A plastic or paper or silicon or even a bamboo straw its not such a problem because teeth are harder and dig into or bend the material. Glass and steel don't do that and are the equivalent of tapping a tooth with a tiny hammer.
Glass and steel straws sound nice on paper, but using them is a whole different ball game.
I live in a first world G20 country with a greater life expectancy than the US.
In 60 years I don't recall ever seeing a single apple wrapped in plastic in a store.
I have seen a plastic bag of apples pre selected weighed and ready to be grabbed .. but most apples are loose and you bag them yourself picking as many of the ones you want individually.
"how many apples are thrown away" is not just a question of personal responsibility and brains but how the public was "raised" over generations of mass production and cheap methods.
"even" in Germany ( I don't know why I keep saying this ), and in upper class super markets, fresh produce rots much quicker than anything we produce in our gardens. mid-priced frozen stuff triggers unhealthy/gassy reactions in stomach and guts that are not triggered by higher-priced frozen stuff but again, the crowd doesn't care because it was raised that way or does not know.
cheap liquor produce triggers worse reactions in body and brain, short-, mid- and long-term because the production methods are not as clean because producers are OK with the negative outcomes because they were raised to believe that their customers are "fucking stupid".
I understand much of your rambling, but the wax that's sprayed on apples isn't an issue. To the contrary, it increases the shelf life of them, reducing waste. And it's not dangerous either, so pouncing on that particular detail isn't furthering your cause..
I bought a special eco friendly floss that came in a glass bottle. I accidentally dropped it on my tile bathroom floor late one night while flossing and it shattered.
Glass is heavier and more breakable than plastic. I'm not sure I want to give my baby glass cups. He tends to drop and throw things.
I doubt your baby is going to be holding glass objects 5 feet above a tile floor and also being significantly heavier they are pretty hard for babies to throw. So I don't think breakage is nearly the problem you are imagining.
On many occasions my baby has whacked the bottle out of my hand onto the floor. He can be quite strong. He also often grabs the bottle and yanks it quickly out of his mouth. When he's eating solid food in his high chair, he needs water with it. Sometimes we use a bottle, sometimes a sippy cup. The sippy cup generally ends up on the ground. Sometimes this is above a tile floor (a kitchen). Having the high chair above carpeting is not a great idea when it comes to cleaning up food that gets thrown around.
Although, if the goal is to switch entirely off of plastic, I don't think modern glass baby bottles will do that, because the ones I've seen still use plastic caps.
BTW, we just bought some glass bottles (with plastic caps) today. We'll see how they go.
Although, if the goal is to switch entirely off of plastic, I don't think modern glass baby bottles will do that, because the ones I've seen still use plastic caps.
BTW, we just bought some glass bottles (with plastic caps) today. We'll see how they go.
There are lots of wasteful uses for sure. Too much crap out there being produced essentially for the land fill. This can all go away.
But there are many areas where plastics are quite literally life savers and it will be hard to replace them. For example, look at a modern ER and imagine it without plastics. Won't happen.
Is glass manufacturing of a coke bottle better for the environment than plastic manufacturing in terms of say emissions in manufacturing or supply chain?
Glass is much more energy-intensive to create and process than plastic, and its strength-to-weight ratio means that you'll be spending more energy (carbon emissions, whatever) on transportation too. It's also not flexible nor resistant to impact.
I forgot about leaving bottles for the milk man. Certainly a more expensive way of doing business than a one off bottle you don’t have to collect and clean though.
Do you realize just how much plastic we use? Almost everything we use had plastic in it (in some form or another)
Not saying we can't go back, but it isn't as simple as "don't use plastic"
> My understanding is that while glass is reusable/recyclable, nobody is really willing to do it.
Plenty of people have been buying glass over plastic exactly when possible for this reason. Those people show that it's a concious decision and are not to be waved away.
I am not talking about the individual consumers, but rather that even glass that ends up in a recycling stream usually doesn't get recycled unless customers do all the pre-sorting work.
They certainly used to. Why do you say we don’t recycle glass? It’s basically the same process as making new glass, you just add broken up glass in with the silica sand.
You don't HAVE to, but you aren't going to be making clear glass again if you mix it with other colored glasses. Im not an glass expert though and it could be more of a cost consideration in not having to chemically separate out colored elements from glass when you can much more easily just get clean sand again for significantly cheaper.
Irony is, syringes can be reused well after sterilizing with heat.
But I agree that extremism usually just drives people the opposite way. Especially in the medical field plastic will stay, but in lots of other areas it can be reduced.
