Plastic seals food, sterile medical implements, medicine, beverages, etc… it’s seems like plastic is used as a way to seal things safely. Post pandemic rising, I see even more. My work used to be have plastic utensils in the cafeteria, for example, an already wasteful thing. Now, post-2020, every fork, knife, and spoon is individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper. I feel like the more my desire to escape plastic intensifies, the more plastic I see all around me everywhere.
How can we get away from plastic as a safety layer?
We don’t have to get rid of plastics.
Get rid of cars (which emit the most micro-plastics), fishing nets (which cause the most plastic pollution in the ocean), plastics in clothing and packaging where it isn’t needed.
Then use bio-degradable plastics for whatever’s left. And single use plastics only for the tiny reminder of use cases where it’s needed, like medicine.
The best way to get people out of cars is to give them good alternatives, so I think you need to start by improving infrastructure and public transport.
Getting rid of Internal combustion engined cars more reasonable. EVs aren’t perfect, but they are much better than ICE cars as far as pollution goes.
In the context of micro plastics, it’s the same. It comes from the rubber tires wearing out.
Right, but we’re talking about microplastics here. Those mainly come from tires and braking systems, so the switch won’t help this specific problem.
Wait till energy costs 10x in the next decade. Car use will go to nothing real quick.
Ready to go to the grocery store kids? All aboard the grocery store express!
We don’t need to ban every single bit of plastic. It’s fine to keep it where it’s absolutely necessary. Some of the examples you provided definitely aren’t necessary though, like individually wrapped cutlery (wtf) or beverages (can use glass).
So many things are unnecessarily wrapped in plastic. We use bubble wrap in situations where paper would be a perfectly fine buffer for shipping. We use plastic bags when paper and reusable bags work perfectly well.
I get so frustrated about it not even because I’m scared of the environmental impact of all this plastic floating around, although that does suck, but because plastic is currently absolutely crucial for modern medicine. One day maybe we’ll find alternatives but until then I think a rational society would be preserving the limited life-saving miracle material for uses that aren’t as basic as “use it to take home groceries, then throw it away.”
the same issue is happening with helium. its crucial for a lot of forensic processes and scientific research but we are rapidly running out of helium. but haha balloon go up!
This has never been true. The ‘great helium shortage’ was just complaining about not being able to get cheap helium.
We are more than capable at capturing it from fracking and other sources. We just didn’t want to since it costs money lol.
Why the news ran with it for years is beyond me when it was one google search away from being debunked lol.
https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/how-helium-gas-obtained/32109/
Canada is in the process of “banning single-use plastics”. Although you still see them everywhere, there are many places that have switched some stuff like plastic grocery bags, plastic straws and plastic utensils to cloth grocery bags, paper straws and wooden utensils.
The point OP is making still holds true in Canada though. I can’t go buy a plastic bag at my grocery store, but the store can use a ridiculous amount of wrap to sell produce, and there are tons of food products where you buy a bag full of smaller bags(and some full of even smaller bags. Pre-made salad is a big one) that I can buy easily and usually for fairly cheap.
Well for one: most of the things listed already have a solution:
Food? Glassware and Metal containers. Or Even reusable single type plastic containers, like a tupperware.
Sterile medical supplies already are packed in a paper bag. The ones that are in plastic actually aren’t.
Medicine can also be packed into glass and metal containers.
Beverages can be put in cans or Reusable Glass bottles or you simply drink tap water. (I know in some countries that’s not safe but it should be)
And honestly your cafeteria is the most ridiculous example. Get a dishwasher and use real cutlery. Or bring your own cutlery from home. (Is it actually a cafeteria or just a glorified break room?)
Sterile medical supplies already are packed in a paper bag. The ones that are in plastic actually aren’t.
Uh… What? Sterile medical instruments are absolutely packed in plastic, paper is too permeable and will lead to contamination. Even if it looks like paper it’s still lined with plastic. Have you ever worked in a medical setting before?
My only note here is that canned beverages have a layer of non-recyclable plastic on the inside to prevent chemical interactions between the contents and the metal. Glass bottles are fine though as (aside from plastic labels) they’re fully recyclable.
I loathe plastic waste, but here’s a conundrum I read about.
Elementary school kids learned about environmentalism, wanted to do better. They got the school to dump plastic utensils and plates in favor of steel. No brainer, right?
Turns out the energy cost for making the steel meant they would have to wash those items 1,000+ times to make up for the plastic energy production. Still, no brainer, right?
Then they added in the energy costs for washing those items 1,000+ times. Not remotely worth doing. (Factor in loss, it’s even worse.)
We got ourselves in a hella mess. Getting off plastic is going to mean cheap, clean and abundant energy. I mean shitloads of power. I’m all in for nuclear, at least as a stopgap.
The primary concern with single-use plastics is not energy consumption but plastic waste. That, of course raises the question of how to weigh one kind of environmental harm against another, and I do not have a good answer.
My instinct here is that not generating so much trash is the energy use in this case, but I can’t prove that.
It’s a balancing act for sure. You have to understand what’s good for the climate isnt necessarily good for the environment. However I believe we have to understand that cleaning up the plastic in the world is imho harder than recapturing co2 since you can’t just build a big machine wherever you want and it does it’s job. Plastic you have to hunt down manually, and good luck doing that for micro plastics
But I don’t think your example works as well as eg plastic Vs glas bottles. Your energy dilemma can be solved simply by having photovoltaic panels and/or hooking the dishwasher up to a renewably generated hot water supply.
Also even in your calculations which I assume are not optimised 2000+ wash cycles is only like 6 years of use. And I still think that’s a no brainer.
Glorified break room with a shop area, convenience store food/snacks. Sometimes catering comes in from places but otherwise, yep, big break room. I never use their awful cutlery. I’ve been known to purchase pizza rolls because yum. And hey, those come.in a totally cardboard container lol
Man, I spent a short while in the states and what I miss most is Pizza rolls and the quesarito from Taco Bell. Ridiculously large milkshakes from sonics drive thru are probably also up there
Bad news, quesarito is no more. The closest we have now is the grilled cheese burrito which is basically a burrito with cheese grilled onto the outside.
Start with the easy wins and replace the others as options come available. We don’t have to fix everything at once.
