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Comment by nafey | Hacker News Reader

> It's a net win, because the environmental impact of wasted cucumbers is far greater than the environmental impact of a gram or two of polyethylene wrapping.

Will need citation for that.

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Producing a cucumber results in CO2 emissions of about 1kg (3.3kg CO2 per kg product, avg weight ~300g). Shrink-wrapping a cucumber increases the average shelf life from 9 days to 15 days in refrigerated conditions and from 2 days to 5 days in ambient conditions.

Producing a kilogram of polyethylene film packaging emits about 2.7kg of CO2. The wrapping on an average-sized cucumber weighs about 2g, producing an additional 5.4g of CO2 emissions and increasing the total carbon footprint of the cucumber by ~0.54%. About 12% of cucumbers delivered to US retailers go unsold due to damage, spoilage or other loss.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146290110...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3550898/

http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Carbon_Methodology_-...

http://www.mdpi.com:8080/2077-0472/5/3/626/pdf

While carbon emissions are an important consideration, they are not only impact of plastic. Plastics often end up in the ocean where they cause havoc with not just marine marine life, but also people.

It is not just about viewing unsightly plastic, but also ingestion of plastic and chemicals associated with plastic such as phthalates and endocrine disruptors. While spoilage is in issue, so are the various health problems associated with plastic. While there are too many unstudied plastic associated chemicals to quantify the impact, a number of them are clearly associated with cancer, obesity and infertility.

This month's issue of National Geographic is devoted to the problem of plastic in the ocean and is worth a look.

As brutal as it might seem, plastic pollution is not a high priority. It makes for some shocking and upsetting photos, but it's not a fundamental threat to the marine ecosystem. The sources of marine plastic pollution are non-obvious and can be mostly mitigated through better management of waste rather than elimination at source.

Ocean acidification due to rising CO2 levels is a cataclysmic threat to the marine ecosystem. A relatively small decrease in pH could lead to the extinction of many key invertebrate species and the complete collapse of some habitats.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification

The health risks posed by plastics are marginal at worst. There are some legitimate concerns about certain persistent organic pollutants, but plastics are not the primary sources of exposure to these compounds and their use is largely under effective control.

In Mumbai, it's a high enough priority to justify doing something about it. There may be bigger threats to the marine ecosystem, but this isn't a situation where relative privation is appropriate - this part is fixable, so why not fix it?

The problem with "better waste management" is it requires involvement on an individual level, and individuals can't be trusted to do it. Elimination at source removes the responsibility for the consumer and reduces the requirement for complex waste processing. That's a win for everybody.

It's unknown if wrapping cucumbers would reduce the % that goes to waste. It's also likely that the 12% of cucumbers that go to waste also include those that are shrink wrapped. Extending shelf life of produce won't matter too much, if customers are looking at the date which the produce was shrink wrapped and buying the 'freshest' wrapped cucumber.

The problem here is that if cucumbers are going to waste, retailers are not managing their inventory well. That means way too many cucumbers are being produced and sold to retailers. This is all in the name of profit, at the expense of the environment.

CO2 emissions are not the only environmental issue. While you may downplay the effect plastics have on the environment compared to CO2, it's still a problem nonetheless.

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