>By his logic, we should plastic wrap every vegetable and fruit. That is nonsensical.Not at all. Cucumbers have a relatively short shelf-life due to a high water content and a permeable skin, so wrapping them makes economic and environmental sense. Apples and citrus fruits don't need plastic packaging, but their shelf life is considerably enhanced by the application of a protective wax coating. Some products like loose salad leaves need modified atmosphere packaging to achieve a satisfactory shelf life, while delicate soft fruits require a protective packaging system that could involve a variety of wood- or plastic-based products. I'm indifferent to points of principle, I care about choosing the most sustainable tool for any given task.
The critical environmental issue in our fruit and vegetable supply is the needlessly high use of air freight to maintain supplies of out-of-season produce. A single package of asparagus or green beans might produce emissions of >10kg CO2e, simply because of their transport mode. If you want to reduce the sustainability of your produce consumption, that one issue overwhelms pretty much everything else.
>It's far easier to not create the waste in the first place. And there are ways to reduce CO2 that don't involve creating exponentially more plastic waste.
You're trading one kind of waste for another. Plastic packaging is wasteful in one sense because it is disposable, but it reduces a potentially far greater waste by protecting products during transportation and storage. Plastic isn't always the most sustainable packaging material, but it often is. That decision needs to be made based on hard facts, not the presumption that plastic is evil.
>Charge producers for the waste their products create. That will incentivize less waste. Charge them for the CO2 they emit. That will incentivize a reduction in CO2.
I'm fully in favour of both, as long as those charges represent the actual economic impacts of mitigating those issues.