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this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2023
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We started mass production of plastic 90 years ago, and we're choking on it. We need to stop all plastic production.
I did read some argument that for certain foods, if they removed the plastic wrapping, the expiration would happen so much faster that food waste would increase by a lot. I honestly have no idea if waxed paper would work as well though.
I do agree that hopefully alternative solutions can be found in any case...
Do people not recycle plastics in your country?
These plastics are single-use. The vast majority of plastic I come across in my groceries is destined for the garbage, not the recycle.
Please take a moment to think of everything in your life that is made of plastic, and then think of what could replace it.
The problem is that many medical devices for the disabled and chronically ill are made of plastic. It's why the disability community protested the plastic straw ban, since many of them require to use them to consume anything.
I genuinely emphasize with the people that rely on plastic materials to get through life, it's tough in that situation. I think the solution for straws (since that's a more simple solution) would be either something reusable like metal staws or something compostable like agave straws. Medical applications should replace with compostable plastics like hemp. My point is that stopping cold turkey with petroleum based plastics would be better than trying to slowly phase it out. The plastics cartel will do anything to slow down the phase out
Implantable devices can't be compostable. Catheters and other things that will go inside your body cannot be compostable. That's not the easy solution you think it is.
I know, and I don't have any solid solutions. I'm a single person that never studied materials science. I'd love to have all the solutions, but I don't. The plastic waste that comes to mind for me in a medical setting is the packaging for sterile products, which could definitely be made of industrially compostable materials. Implantable devices is far more complex, but biologically inert metals exist.
The packaging could not be either. Sterility has to be assured for the shelf life of the device. Those are typically years. These materials aren't just cheap or convenient. They've been vetted over decades of research and testing.
Now this isn't meant to rain on your parade. Just showing how even the best intentions can fall short. Tossing out solutions in areas you aren't familiar with can just muddy discussions.
That can be a hard lesson to learn, but it's a great one. If there were awards on here, I'd give you one... In place accept this ๐
This is such an uninformed take. Plastics are literally everywhere in modern life. Not just the store bags or straws and lids, but objects in the home like appliances, buckles on backpacks, medical devices, items we launch into space. It's not been shown to meaningfully decrease life expectancy and we may find ways to remove it from our bodies. Cold turkey and you essentially have no infrastructure to replace what is made with plastics.
There are places where it's absolutely necessary, there are places where it's inconvenient to get rid of but a good idea, and there are places where it's absolutely stupid to use plastic.
So it's an "uninformed take" when I know that 90% of plastics that make it to recycling plants aren't recycled, and that petroleum plastics are part of the driving factors leading us towards climate chaos?
Climate chaos is not mostly driven by consumer plastics. Burning of fossil fuels to generate power is and has been the largest contributor followed by agriculture. Plastics don't get recycled because.people don't even have a fundamental understanding of how recycling works. That's not the fault of the people, it's their governments. You and I using a reusable bag and water bottle doesn't make a dent in climate change. Until our energy shifts to nuclear we aren't going to be in a better spot. Renewables can supplement but are far away from being a replacement.
Reduction of emissions can't be the only thing we try. We have to do that and engineer ways to contain and scrub high pollution areas.
Even metals don't get recycled like they should because they don't get cleaned and dried.
We have to outengineer the problem at this point because we didn't engineer a cleaner path fifty years ago when we had the opportunity.
Had we leaned more heavily into nuclear the world would be better off.
Pursuing a useable fusion solution should be the focus of the effort for humanity. That alone can provide us the energy needed to shutdown fossil fuels power plants.
But we decided years ago the nuclear is the boogey man because it is too difficult for the average citizen to comprehend.
You don't even offer a viable solution. So yea, uninformed take. I'll stand by it.
Sorry, I didn't know I was tasked with singlehandedly solving our plastic problem. Either way, I did give a suggestion; replace all plastic with reusable objects made of reusable materials, or make them compostable.
I think plastics are genuinely awesome, but we are over-reliant on them. I'd also rather not drive, but there will always be someone who has a use for cars.
I could remove single-use plastics from my life if my groceries were packaged sustainably. But for example, scientists use single-use plastics and that's a good thing.
we need to at least make a plastic that is sustainable, biodegradable, and with a shorter lifespan depending on the applications. for example, a water bottle could be made to last 6 months or so depending on the size, while a keyboard could be made to last decades before starting to break down. this would be quite hard to achieve, but if we want to keep all the commodities given to us by plastic, while also keeping our health, we have to invest some money into research.
IIRC They've found a microbe recently that will eat plastic within a couple years. Could be wrong though.
Either way I agree. Wish we would just go back to glass.
Isn't that the lore for the cat adventure game Stray? Some little bug thing was able to eat plastic, they deployed it but it got out of control and mutated to consume all kinds, now chunks of the city are cut off to prevent the spread.
Hope that doesn't happen smile.
Edit: Afterthought, why does this alleged microbe consume plastic? What nutritional value does oil / hydrocarbons provide?
so can we just drink that?