Thinking that recycling would address the problem of plastic pollution is wishful thinking. Plastic recycles very poorly.
Companies like plastic because it means thicker margins for them, environment be damned; the proper solution is not to buy into the “consumers should be recycling” narrative but to thin out their margins so that using more sustainable and recyclable materials is financially attractive again.
Yes. As someone who is used to putting far too much thought into grocery shopping, it is virtually impossible to advance this change on an individual level. The company making the sustainable toothbrushes is owned by turtle hating petroleum companies or worse. I probably just seem cynical or shitty, but I would be hesitant to potentially induce guilt in individuals who feel they aren't doing enough when there are no better options (within reach, anyway).
Nobody is individually dictating plastic use, and no truly high-level system exists to prescribe it: this is all largely emergent. I think we should try, and I think we need to hold ourselves and each other accountable, but ... what if this is just how it goes?
A major reason why petrochemicals are such an economical solution in so many places in the supply chain is that petrol companies are drastically subsidized by governments. Merely ceasing those subsidies might go a long way to help
It is easy to forget that plastic is made from oil. Most people just do not have that association in their mind.
The oil industry may be looking down the barrel of renewables eating at a good chunk of their profit and subsidy money. I expect them to do all they can to keep plastic attractive in the eyes of the public.
I try to get stuff in glass/aluminium bottles that I clean and reuse myself. It's not easy. Supermarkets is an immediate no-go (when I was young, our village supermarket sold Coke and Milk and other stuff from taps , so you just brought your own); now it's something impossible. But for local farmers, local springs etc it works well. Same for veg, fruit, meat, eggs etc; no plastic needed. Allows us to throw almost all our garbage in the compost heap, give to the chickens etc.
I have met people who like to drink from glass, and people who buy things in plastic bottles because that’s literally the only option if you want to enjoy a drink or even just clean water. These are the two (non mutually exclusive) categories of people that I normally meet. Do you often meet people who specifically like plastic, as opposed to tolerating it?
Nonsense. There are no alternatives consumers can buy. Try it and you'll find it's virtually impossible. A globalized economy has effectively destroyed the idea of voting with your wallet to reduce waste and production of trash.
While I'm sure this is true in general, my impression is that the PET used in drink-bottles recycle well. For drink bottles I don't think we have a good option either? Glass is too heavy, aluminum is more energy intensive (I assume) even when it's recycled. Reusable bottles is unlikely to be realistic.
Why is glass too heavy? For decades, when average income was lower, it was the standard container in which soft drinks came in. Its just that plastic is cheaper, and replaced glass. But surely richer people can afford glass now.
Interestingly, both have different environmental externalities, and not sure how those have changed over the decades and will in the future.
I’ve seen varying (lack of certainty is a sign in itself) estimates for how many times it can be recycled, from up to 2–3 to up to 7 times, where plastic closer to the end of that is only viable for uses like car tires, and read that PET leeches more chemicals into drinks after bring recycled[0]. In my mind, it does not pass the “recycles well” threshold if you compare it to materials like glass.
Steel or aluminum cans might be better? At least they rust away and don't float.
I mean you could have a screw cap on a can too if that is important. Dunno why 33cl/50cl and whatever the oz. sizes are, are metal and plastic respectivly.
Using one time cannisters for water feels fundamentally unsubstainable.
Without plastic modern consumerist society as we now experience it wouldn't be possible, as such, that party-goer from the movie The Graduate was very correct in the assumptions he made towards the end of the 1960s.
Which is to say, are you sure that the current powers that be are ready to withstand the backlash of their political constituencies once that consumerist policy is actively reversed?
The consumerist part of society may not be capable of generating as massive of a backlash as you might think. The key is in the name. :)
People will do the next convenient thing, whatever it is. Re-use containers made of sustainable materials, not buy something on a whim that they do not need, pay more for plastic as an indulgence (obviously it should not be banned, just taxed), etc.
To everyone blaming consumers: I encourage you to take a solution driven mindset here. Consumers won't change. There's far too many people, some of which don't care about the environment.
Tight regulations and additional tax on single use plastics can reduce plastic waste.
I agree with you, I think this is primarily an issue with selfish people littering the environment. I didn't like how the article framed it as a "companies are littering" thing, as if it's factory waste.
Though... I also agree with the GP. It seems to be too hard to educate or enforce littering laws on consumers. It might be easier to mandate things like biodecomposable plastic or... glass? That would be less harmful even if disposed of improperly. (How else are we going to get sweet drinks? Drink dispensers and enforced personal bottles?)
>they used data from brand information on plastic litter and found that 24 percent of the waste with an identifiable brand came from just five companies: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, and Altria.
>Over five years, volunteers in 84 countries analyzed over 1,800,000 pieces of plastic that they collected during clean-up events. Just over half the analyzed items had a visible brand.
1) It wasn't 24%, it was 24% of the half that could be identified.
2) It's only of the litter collected during clean-up events, so will be skewed towards waste from products used outside. This will ignore things like industrial plastic waste, fishing nets (which is a big issue in ocean plastics), etc.
That said it still seems like an important study.
There's also the question of what is actually problematic waste, that causes issues for humans or animals. Plastic in landfill isn't "good", but as long as it doesn't contaminate groundwater AFAIK it's harmless.
The fact that Altria (ex Philip Morris), a tobacco brand, made it to this list is telling IMO. There is no way that the cigarette packaging produces that much identifiable plastic trash.
My guess would be that in some countries, the stores provide disposable plastic bags with any purchase and that these bags include ads for tobacco brands. This study would associate the brand with the generation of trash while the trash should rather be associated with the store.
I'll personally classify this study as unreliable.
>It wasn't 24%, it was 24% of the half that could be identified.
with a large enough data set the chance that the half that cannot be identified is also 24% looks pretty good, unless there is something specifically about these brands that makes the identifying of them easier than other brands - which is also a pretty good chance I would say.
If there is a good likelihood of identifying these brands specifically then I guess it is actually pretty close to 12% (assuming there are still some small amount which cannot be identified)
Reducing sugar consumption has long term health benefit, reduce medical cost, and might reduce consumption of plastic bottle. Anyone explored regulating/taxing sugar before?
In the US, President Wilson proposed a soft-drink tax in 1914, but the already-powerful Coca-Cola Company lobbied to defeat the initiative. In this country, the beverage industry is incredibly influential and has bought off a lot of legislators.
Waste isn't inherently bad, littering is. It's not Coca Cola's fault that people throw away plastic bottles into the rainforest, oceans or other fragile ecosystems.
No, but it definitely should be in Coca Cola's charter to explore and invest in biodegradable alternatives. And the only way to hold such immense companies to their environmental responsibilities is either regulation or consumer perception.
No, but it definitely should be in Coca Cola's charter to explore and invest in biodegradable alternatives. And the only way to hold such immense companies to their environmental responsibilities is either regulation or consumer perception.
I don't actually care at all about plastic waste anymore. Landfill it and we're good: it started off as oil in the ground, it can end up as oil in the ground.
Plastic not going into stable landfill is the real issue : so actually consumer plastic is kind of bad like that, whereas industrial plastic basically fine (i.e. infrastructure plastics like pipes).
While I understand the point, that and the classic "X company produce Y% of carbon emission worldwide!" feel very dishonest. They don't produce the waste for the heck of it. It is directly linked to our consumption. We want less plastic waste ? Then vote for more regulation, and sadly, this doesn't seem like the priority for a lot of people right now (which is understandable since rich country just send their plastic waste to poor country, they don't see the consequences of their action).
You don't need 'more' regulation, but probably different regulation.
So eg instead of having lots of piecemeal regulation that bans straws and plastic bags and Kinder Surprise eggs etc, you can have a single relatively simple tax on plastic garbage. The total amount of regulation would go down, but effectiveness would go up.
(You can give companies who collect and deal with their plastic trash a discount on the tax, if you want to.)
Similar for carbon dioxide emissions tax, instead of silly gameable things like CAFE car standards.
I agree with your abstraction of the problem, but I think you stopped half-way.
Regulators, producers and consumers are all following the same interconnected incentive structures, many of which have been designed with efficient production and an exponential increase of consumption in mind, not environmental concern.
It makes sense for these companies to operate, following their obligation to shareholders. They are, by definition, successful and so the idea that they should be diminished in any way by taxation/regulation creates a dissonance that can easily be loopholed or simply undone by the next gov't. Tax is a political lever, but the incentives are emergent economic atttributes. This means that, as soon as there is enough economic influence within politics, the lever doesn't do much anyway.
Visible plastic pollution is horrible, and is only part of the problem. This then breaks down and was shown to enter and accumulate in not only animal bodies, including human bodies (soft tissue, lungs, even placenta[0]), but individual cells[1]. This includes BPA, a xenoestrogen used in most or all plastic bottles, which in EU is among the candidates for SVHC (substances of very high concern)[2].
While I agree with the ending statement largely, we have to blame the producers here. If I want water, I'm stuck with what's sold to me.
Most on this site are fortunate enough to be able to drink disposables and have it whisked away magically. It's when that doesn't or can't occur that you start to realize how much we all waste.
Single use plastics should have been outlawed years ago. Or at least taxed to high heaven.
I was going to say the same. There is a chance that they sailed to the location.
However a 6 hour flight from the closest major city would have given off 1500 kg of CO2 (per passenger). And presumably another 1500kg to get back again.
The real problem is everyone using plastic bags to haul their purchases (which might be wrapped in five layers of plastic but who cares). That’s what the telly tells me.
Companies like plastic because it means thicker margins for them, environment be damned; the proper solution is not to buy into the “consumers should be recycling” narrative but to thin out their margins so that using more sustainable and recyclable materials is financially attractive again.
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