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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

Thank goodness somewhere is taking the obvious action of banning the packaging, which is really just pre-garbage.

However, banning packaging only works if it is backed by a system for precisely standardised, refundable and washable containers that food and other products can be shipped in.

You can't just say "no packaging". We need a MUCH better form of packaging than disposable/recyclable because recycling only works a little bit to solve the problem of packaging turning into garbage. That better form is re-usable standardised containers.

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The washable aspect is key - they will have to take steps to work on that too. As a foreigner, when I'm in India, I know that I have to pay attention to (for example) which chai sellers the locals know to wash their cups properly, and to make sure that I see bottles of water are properly sealed before I drink from them. Water in particular will be a problem for foreigners if people start selling or serving it in jugs.

>Water in particular will be a problem for foreigners

Water is an immense problem for Indians. Diarrhoea is a major cause of childhood malnutrition, stunting and death. India still desperately needs clean water and adequate sanitation. The most important pledge in Narendra Modi's election campaign was more toilets.

https://www.prb.org/india-sanitation-malnutrition/

You can use the disposable clay chai cups. But I still think that made me sick.

Better to use paper packaging. For food it can be waxed like in the olden days.

Doesn’t paper bags literally mean demand for more papers and consequently more jungle would be destroyed?

It is my understanding that paper isn't made from jungle tree species. An increased demand for paper would lead to an increase in tree farms in temperate climates, not tropical.

Not really, new paper is mostly produced from recycled paper. What destroys the jungle is deforestation to create farmlands.

I didn't down vote you. Just want to point out that deforestation to create farmlands also includes tree plantations. Tree farms, as it were.

I live in Tasmania, which is notorious for chopping down old-growth forest, wood chip it mostly for paper products, and replace it with plantation timber.

It happened also in my homeland: Cantabria. I just think that the need for paper is mostly replaced by recycled paper, at least in theory.

I was about to write that certified timber has a great sustainability record. You can recycle all of it and when it regrows it does so by pulling carbon from the atmosphere. But when I read the WP article [1] on sustainability of paper I saw that the actual problem seems not to be in the wood used, but in other pollutants released into nature when producing paper.

[1]: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_paper

No.

Paper bags don't add up to much. The Indians use vast numbers of small bags. I weighed a paper bag I got some fruit in just now, 7g. Divide by x to compensate for realistic recycling. A tree weighs several million grams. Not all of it becomes paper, but still, one tree is a lot of 7g bags.

Adding to that: Once the paper is burned or rots, the route back to a new tree is fairly short. Not like plastic, which forms new oil in fifty million years.

On top of that, these days paper isn't manufactured by cutting down forests we have more eco friendly ways of manufacturing paper, in and out of India

Waxed, wrapped in plastic for advertising and packaged in a plastic net. Progress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babybel

The wax is a petroleum product also..equally non-biodegradable.

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