• southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    7 days ago

    The problem is compounded by the fact that plastics do a lot of jobs better than other materials, , and even when it isn’t better, it’s cheaper.

    In order to do away with plastics, something else has to take their place.

    That isn’t a task that’s easy to get rolling, and it’s one that risks making the same mistakes. If new materials receive as little testing as the more common plastics did when they came on the market, even stuff that tests out as short term viable won’t have long term data available until and after they’re on the market.

    Going back to previous materials can work when they’re known to be safer on an environmental level, but nothing is without impact at all. Switch to glass, you not only increase shipping weights which drives up the output of whatever fuel source is driving that, but you run into needing fresh materials at some points in the process of making new glass.

    If you just reuse, you now have added fuel costs getting the glas to where it can be changed and processed. You have whatever impact that cleaning process causes (if any).

    And that’s just scraping the surface of what it would take to switch back to glass for food and drinks.

    I’m not saying it wouldn’t be worth it, I’m just saying that blindly switching any given plastic use to something else isn’t guaranteed to be better just because it isn’t plastic. It could end up being a roughly equal proposition, or one where it’s just bad in different ways.

    Woods, metals, stone and minerals, paper, none of them are without environmental cost. There’s no magic wand here, no magic bullet to kill environmental harm just by shooting plastic.

    The reduce,reuse,recycle mantra decreases impact. And it’s really only applicable if there’s infrastructure to support it.

    It’s a giant fucking mess, and plastics are a symptom of it all. But without materials usage, we lose the good parts of industry and manufacturing. So even if we all decided it was worth an immediate change, how long would that consensus last when heart monitors and refrigerators go away? You get rid of fridges, and you open a giant hole in food storage and management that was never solved by root cellars, ice boxes, and preservation methods. They could get close, but nothing preserves food like freezing. Even a bad refrigerator beats an ice box, and there are still people alive that have used both to back that up.

    It’s all a giant snowball ramping up speed. And until we solve it, even terraforming other planets would only kick the can down the road.

    But, good luck working on it seriously, over decades and centuries when greed and outright malice get in the way

    • BruceLee@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      Agree. That’s the reason why I try to not obsess over my plastic consumption. I avoid single use plastic my best but there is sometimes when the choice of plastic and of single use is just better. It takes me a few year for me to finish a small of cling wrap but how unpractical it would be never use any! Same with reusable plastic, not the best for environnemental and health perspective but unbeatable for weight, plus not breakable and cheap.

      The point for industry is the same as for people: we should try to find the right material for the right conditions while avoid overconsumption and wastefullness and keep single use for case with no other solution.
      But do just that while be a lot of work already.

    • solo@slrpnk.net
      0·
      6 days ago

      The problem is

      The problem is capitalism with its embedded goal of growing profit. It took capitalists some time and a lot of propaganda to convince people to shift to single-use plastics instead of reusable containers (i.e. glass bottles for milk). It is not profitable for this economic wasteful system of production to change back, and it doesn’t need to, because this system is backed by governments all over the world. So, the solution can only come from a systemic change.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        6 days ago

        Abso-freakin-lutely

        The drive for not just profit, but ever increasing stock values is dead at the center of most environmental issues, and a damn big slice of general issues. The environmental ones it isn’t the core of, it ain’t far from center, and it amplified any other factors far more than it would have with a people focused system.

  • spinnetrouble@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    7 days ago

    https://wapo.st/4k65INs

    Above is a free link to a Washington Post op-ed from a year ago about why plastic recycling is bullshit. Here’s a human-generated summary:

    1. “Recycling” old plastic requires the addition of much more new, unused plastic. At least two-thirds of the most efficiently “recycled” plastic is the new, unused plastic holding the mixture together.
    2. Plastic is made from petroleum processed with really toxic shit that has never undergone human safety studies. (These are the PFAS that everybody’s squawking about, along with heavy metals.) Plastic threatens human health, and now that we’re starting to look for micro- and nanoplastics in tissue samples and out in the environment, it’s being found everywhere from brains and reproductive organs to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.
    3. Plastic recycling plants are environmental catastrophes due to the amounts of plastic particles they release into their surrounding areas, putting an even greater health burden on the people living nearby.
    4. Plastic is for landfills. It goes against everything many of us were taught growing up, but plastic truly is for landfills. The stated goal was “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but industry has really pushed the idea that recycling plastic is enough. It isn’t.

    I say this as someone who loves plastic: sherpa fleece, that super soft cotton-poly blend t-shirt material, colorful toys and tchotchkes, and everything else you can make out of a material that light, strong, and durable. I hate that it’s dangerous and damaging because it’s just so fucking convenient!

    • BruceLee@sopuli.xyzOPEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      Here’s a human-generated summary
      Thank you for doing that for us :-)

      There is a balance to find I believe. I find people follow the principle of “refuse, reduce, reuse” truly and adopt plastic only when it is a significantly better choice than an other material, we would be in a much better situation.

      But then there would still be the issue of the giagantus amont of plastic waste we would still have to deal with from the past and honestly, I’m not use there is a way to tackle them.

  • lurch (he/him)@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    7 days ago

    There are exceptions. I have several items made from industrially recycled plastic. (A few plastic bags, a pullover and a restaurant two blocks from me has transparent lids for their paper takeaway containers that say they are from recycled plastic. The bags have a really bad odour tho 🤢 but if it helps the planet a bit, I’m okay with that.)