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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

It's important to understand that the packaging industry, which we pay vast amounts of money to, floods the earth with never ending flow of single use plastic.

That industry WANTS us to keep thinking about and talking about recycling. Don't be sucked in - recycling is the distraction that they want you to think about.

Recycling is NOT the answer. The answer is to stop making the endless flow of single use plastic.

If you want to fix this problem, start laying the blame at the feet of the "garbage brands" - the companies and brands that buy the single use plastic. We need to start with the big, obvious targets like Coca Cola, and we need to associate their precious logo and trademarked red swirl with ruined beaches and reefs and oceans. That's when change will happen - when those big brands come to be tightly associated with garbage.

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"Recycling is NOT the answer. The answer is to stop making the endless flow of single use plastic."

And the manufacturers/retailers need to stop claiming that they are only responding to "market demand" - in numerous decades of buying stuff, no-one has ever asked me what my packaging preferences are. There'll come a time when we can't recycle our way out of our own mess - what will be Big Pollutions smug solution be then?

Well, the market demand is driven more by what sells than by what people say if you ask them. And there's a reason for that: When you ask people how they'll behave, they'll give you an answer that reflects their aspirations as much as it does their actual behavior.

Possible scenario: People will tell you they prefer low-waste packaging when you ask them in a survey. But when they're at a store trying to pick out an item, they still end up perceiving the item in the small paper box as being lower quality than the one in the giant clear plastic clamshell whose contents are clearly visible. So, regardless of what they said they prefer, in reality they might still tend to go for the high-waste packaging.

This is true, this is why the government must be the answer here. They can tax things to help with the cost of properly disposing of single-use plastic or they can outright ban them. This would make the market more realistic because the cost would include disposal of the items.

People, in general, are bad at long term thinking, and they aren't going to pour hours of research into what type of packaging they are going to use. People also think that their singular actions are not going to have that much effect on the bigger picture. While this may be true, everyone cannot think this way.

>They can tax things to help with the cost of properly disposing of single-use plastic or they can outright ban them. This would make the market more realistic because the cost would include disposal of the items.

That cost is, depending on the market, about $80/tonne. Pricing in the cost of disposal would add about 0.04 cents to the cost of a plastic bag and 0.24 cents to the price of a large bottle of soda.

Plastic is not a problem. It has never been a problem and it never will be a problem. Eliminating plastic packaging is at best a complete waste of time and at worst totally counter-productive.

Climate change is a catastrophe; we have already passed the point of no return, and can now only choose how severe that catastrophe will be.

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/studies/pdf/eucostwast...

https://www.environment.gov.au/system/files/resources/2e935b...

Then one must ask why are we not responsibly getting rid of our plastic?

Why is there plastic in every corner of the planet[0]?

Why is there trash covered islands that humans don't live on and should be pristine[1]?

Maybe banning plastics is not the answer and responsible disposal is the correct answer, but there is currently a very large plastics problem that must be addressed.

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-47947235

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2017/05/15/henderson-i...

".. they still end up perceiving the item in the small paper box as being lower quality than the one in the giant clear plastic .."

You are right, but I suppose you mean "we", like in "we the people".

I'm old enough to remember when breakfast cereal came in cardboard outer boxes with the product in a waxed paper bag inside, so the product was still visible. I don't believe that was recyclable (and back then we didn't do that anyway) but nowadays it could probably be burnt as fuel.

The worst packaging I ever saw was a chicken curry and rice meal in 2 compartments, each covered in non-recyclable clear film. In addition, the rice container was non-recyclable while the chicken container was (!) We now hear statements that black plastic containers are not always recyclable, so maybe I should have just thrown the whole lot in the garbage anyway...

With the recent improvements in China's waste management, and the concomitant crackdown on "recycling" imports, my local recycling services here in the midwest have advised people not to recycle such black plastic, regardless of the recycling number on the plastic.

In a way it's a shame, in a way it's an annoyance, but realistically it seems possible only a fraction of that black plastic was ever truly being recycled anyway.

They ask you every time you purchase something. If you don't like the plastic. Put your money where your interests are. Buy the glass bottle, ask for the paper bag. If you can't get it in that form, these things don't need to be purchased. "Market demand" is exactly how they are asking what preferences are.

Is glass a viable alternative? It costs a lot more energy to produce than single-use plastic. It can be reused, but that requires an infrastructure of collection and cleaning. It can (and is) be (being) infinitely recycled, but that costs a lot of energy as well.

I like glass, but seems like the market has spoken on that one. We used to recycle (reuse, really) glass soda bottles back in the 70s and 80s. The bottles get ugly after a while, so people prefer fresh new ones. Today we still struggle to get above 50% recycling on glass, though it has been increasing over time.

Might be better to switch to aluminum. The recycling system appears more advanced.

BPA coatings make aluminum problematic.

https://www.packagingdigest.com/food-packaging/most-food-can... (Most food cans no longer use BPA in their linings)

> At least 90% of today’s food cans have replaced linings that previously contained the controversial chemical bisphenol-A (BPA), according to the Can Manufacturers Institute. This is in reaction to market demands for more options in food safety.

> Food can linings now are typically made from acrylic and polyester. And all new materials are extensively tested and are cleared by regulatory agencies before being sold in the market. Linings are necessary to prevent the can from corroding, provide a barrier to bacteria and maintain food quality.

I was under the impression that many producers simply switched from BPA to BPS, and that this may not be any better for our health: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bpa-free-plastic-...

I admit I've not researched the topic much, and would love to learn that safer materials are used now.

Looking at the big picture:

Available research has left us with a reasonable idea of the bounds on BPA toxicity, and seems to indicate that, in the amounts you get from modern cans, the effect, while non-zero, is probably quite small, possibly to the point of being negligible in the grand scheme of things.

For example, the bacteria and yeast that ferment food also tend to produce all sorts of known carcinogens and toxins. I'd personally expect the fermentation by-products present in my sauerkraut to have a much bigger effect on my health than the BPA that's used to line the can it's packaged in. That seems to be borne out in the science, too, insofar as the health risks associated with eating pickles are readily observable in humans at normal consumption levels, but it seems to take obscenely large megadoses of BPA to make a lab rat sick.

Available research has also left us with a reasonable idea of the health impact of air pollution, including from diesel truck exhaust. And I would guess that the health impact from the extra air pollution produced in shipping heavier glass containers instead of lighter aluminum ones is greater than that of the BPA dose you'd get from cans' linings.

BPA is an Endocrine/hormone disruptor, these are not harmful due to toxicity. They do not follow a simple dose-responce as in, say, carcinogens. Some studies even show a higher effect at lower doses of BPA for instance.

With the industrial & urban styles currently popular (exposed building hardware, ripped jeans) you'd think worn bottles would be chic.

In the US we may have spoken but the situation has also changed, so perhaps it is time to speak again? The market may not have realized the implications and externalities of switching to plastic for say all beverages.

I for one would welcome a switch back to reusable soda and beer bottles that were collected. (see Oregon bottle deposits)

Glass bottles can avoid the 'trash' stream with 'bottle bill' legislation. Most of europe does this, some even for PET and aluminium cans. Collection is essentially the same route as delivery to the cusomers, but in reverse: the customer brings it back to the shop. The bottling plants eventually bring in their output. It's more economically all around than re-flowing the glass bottles. I know that Belgian brewers lean heavily on reused green and brown bottles. In this case, it helps that there are a few near-universal beer bottle types, but perhaps that's more a result of the reuse.

Some music festivals use '10 empty plastic cups = 1 free drink' to reduce the amount of single-use plastic trash laying around. It's simple economics.

> some even for PET and aluminium cans.

Aluminium cans are some of the best items to be recycled, as recycling one takes only 5% of the energy needed for creating one anew. This should be reflected as a higher deposit of course, to get high return rates. I think Finland achieves nowadays over 95% return rate for aluminium cans.

>Is glass a viable alternative?

No. It's worse than plastic, even if the bottles are re-used rather than recycled.

http://www.wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Final%20Report%20Doo...

Giving up altogether on a product you need just because it's packaged in a way you don't agree with is not a workable solution. Choosing between otherwise similar products is viable, though.

> Buy the glass bottle

Maybe go for the aluminum can instead. In the age of single-stream recycling, glass doesn't get recycled all that much more than plastic does. (Some sources suggest it gets recycled even less.) Worse, it tends to render other materials unrecyclable when it shatters and contaminates them with shards.

Also, the can weighs less, which means less pollution incidental to transportation.

Interesting! Also I have always wondered why we don't recycle styrofoam. You can dissolve it in all sorts of solvents, filter it and then evaporate and reclaim the solvent.

Well for one styrofoam is neither dense nor valueable so even if said solvent stew approach could work without cleaning and filtering economically (not a given) hauling a bunch of styrofoam wouldn't be all that efficient compared to even glass let alone aluminum.

Expanded polystyrene is, by design, a very lightweight and flimsy material. And the very fact that it's so flimsy, and also typically used in food containers, is why nobody wants to use it: it tends to be horribly contaminated with foreign material, and is difficult to effectively clean. I'm not sure there's much of a market for a post-consumer material that consists of a mix of polystyrene and uneaten cheese.

While glass has recently stopped being recycled, and the transportation costs are concern, it's worth considering that glass is the most naturally recyclable of the 3 materials;

I sometimes wonder if i should crush all of my glass bottle before tossing them in the trash; or to "recycle" them more quickly, drop them somewhere in deep water; though I suppose if it were near a continental shelf, it would be even better.

I wonder if you could market a glass crushing / grinding appliance that you could keep in your garage.

I eat a lot of frozen vegetables. This is less wasteful than fresh, because I can buy them in bulk and store them for several months. With fresh vegetables I'd have to make two or three journeys a week. Additionally, a lot of fresh vegetables rot in the supply chain.

I demand my frozen vegetables are packaged in plastic bags. This is the standard packaging for good reason. There is no other material that combines the flexibility, lightness, and waterproofness of plastic. Plastic bags are not easily recyclable, but very little material is needed to make one. I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff to send a few grams of plastic to landfill (where the carbon stays out of the atmosphere), or burn it for energy recovery, to avoid spending far more fossil fuel on transport and wasted production.

Banning plastic packaging without thinking about the consequences will do more harm than good.

Banning plastic would mean you'd need to buy more fresh vegetables, which would reduce the amount that's wasted now. It would also encourage you to plan your trips more efficiently (eg shop somewhere closer to home).

>Banning plastic would mean you'd need to buy more fresh vegetables, which would reduce the amount that's wasted now.

It would not. If I (and frozen vegetable buyers in general) switch to buying fresh vegetables, the market will increase production of fresh vegetables to compensate.

>shop somewhere closer to home

I already shop as close to home as possible.

I feel like banning the sale of fresh vegetables would do a whole lot more to reduce waste.

Every grocery store talks about "shrink" in their Form 10K. They buy extra fruits, vegetables, and meat so that the consumer has a full shelf or display to select from. XX% of that goes unsold, gets processed into prepared food (chopped fruits/vegetables, etc.), and then what's unsold from that gets tossed or donated.

Farmer's Markets have shrink too -- and the lack of climate control means that spoilage happens on the order of days, rather than weeks.

I can buy frozen vegetables and fish at the supermarket, which are packaged only in paper boxes (no plastic inside). For example : https://www.vomar.nl/g-woon-Tuinerwten-Extra-Fijn-450-g

Not sure about the EU market, in the US most paper or cardboard packaging for use with frozen or refrigerated foods is hard to recycle[1].

1: https://earth911.com/food/frozen-food-box-recycling/

≥ I demand my frozen vegetables are packaged in plastic bags.

Paper boxes are perfectly suitable for frozen veg. They stack perfectly. Less flexible, I'll give you that. But a compostable box versus plastic seems like a win to me.

I suspect the reason manufacturers and grocers like plastic is that in a paper box, poor handling is dead obvious, because if the produce partially thaws in transit the box gets damp and is a telltale for poor temperature control.

>Paper boxes are perfectly suitable for frozen veg.

Only if you coat the inside with plastic, thereby making the paper non-recyclable.

There are biodegradable coatings that allow the paper to still be compostable.

If this caught on wouldn't the article be in 5 years "Just 10% of U.S. paper products are composted?" Is the problem really the material or is is the fact that it's single use.

Paper boxes are also single-use and meant to be recycled, aren't they? This subthread is about how recycling is not enough and how we need to switch to reusable packaging.

Instead of paper boxes, it would be nice if it became the norm to go into stores with our own containers to put our food in instead of using store-provided, single-use packaging. It's ok if they're plastic as long as they're intended and made to be used and reused for years.

The paper boxes are bio degradable. A major difference.

IIRC a problem with this is bacteria; bacteria can hang around in reusable bags.

Yes, reusability means that we need to clean more stuff. We won't be able to just throw out dirty stuff anymore.

I once had some frozen foods delivered to me in a paper/cardboard box. There was ice around the frozen food, and it had melted partially, and the water had made the bottom of the cardboard box soft and mushy. When I lifted the cardboard box, its bottom tore, and my frozen foods started poking out. A plastic-like bag would not have tore due to wetness/water, would have been be a lot thinner, lighter, and not required any dead trees to make. If it were biodegradable, there no major environmental concerns either.

I get my frozen vegetables in cardboard boxes and they keep fine. They definitely don't need to be in plastic. Plus they stack: extra bonus for a clean-looking freezer.

The bags being made by the process in the cited article are specifically designed to be quickly recycleable ... eliminating the 'worthwhile tradeoff' in the event of sensible, defendable policy.

Anecdata: I rarely counter Coca Cola bottles on the few times during August when I clean a small section of beach here in Portugal. What does occur in large quantities are the plastic stems of cotton buds (which I think are banned in the USA) and liquid yogurt bottles. So Nestlé would be a better target - at least in Europe.

Also eat less fish - the seas will be healthier and there will be a lot fewer nets, ropes, hooks and floats washing up and fewer birds tangled up in them too.

I think most cotton buds(which we call cotton swabs) in the US use rolled paper for the stem, but I'm not aware of any ban on plastic ones.

I just looked at two brands that i have around and one has paper stems (Equate) while the other uses plastic tubing (Assured).

There’s huge “ghost nets” lost from fishing vessels floating around the worlds ocean and constantly catching fish.

I've spent time beach cleaning in the Mediterranean and fishing nets are absolutely the worst. Those blue thing plastic threads that disintegrate and get everywhere: the beaches are bleached with it.

I'm not one for sharing Facebook videos but if you want to see impact: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1727552737379394

Counterargument: Aluminum is crazy recyclable. I don't see people talking about single use aluminum (maybe I'm just not in those conversations). Plastic is great for a whole bunch of applications, and making it easily recyclable / recoverable seems like a big win.

How would you prefer Coca Cola get their product to you? I suppose don't drink Coke or anything else you need to ship in a bottle at volume to prevent pollution when people throw things in the ocean.

In general, I think we will find more success in pragmatic alternatives that make sense in the market (which could obviously include applying the cost of externalities like pollution on companies that use single-use plastics) so a recycling option that allows for more efficient re-use to reduce the overall volume created seems like it would only help the cause?

Aluminum makes sense to recycle for many reasons:

- Extracting aluminum from ore is very expensive

- That makes recycled aluminum cheaper than fresh aluminum

- Aluminum is a metal, you can melt it down to burn off or separate any impurities

None is those is true of plastic.

The article said that this new research makes plastic recycling like aluminum recycling in that it can separate impurities. I don't see any reason why recycled plastic wouldn't be at least price competitive with virgin plastic if this technology works at scale.

Aluminum cans are typically BPA lined, FYI.

Yeah - not a perfect solution by any means, but better than the whole container I guess?

Simple solution: make producers take back the waste as a condition for selling.

External cost now internalised.

In fact, new companies that are environmentally friendly (refills, product last years, etc) would be on a competitive level with former extremely cheap single use disposable companies.

Downside? Increased consumer costs and decreased shareholder value.

Once a government adopts this or plans to adopt this, expect to see massive and intense lobbying by packaging/consumable industry. In Australia, Coca Cola spent a lot to fight container deposit schemes which I think is a bandaid solution. The above solution could work with anything, not just plastics.

Coca Cola and Pepsi don't strike me as obvious targets -- most folks can switch to buying aluminum cans (or, in some markets, glass bottles) that contain literally the same drink and definitely are a net profit to recycle.

In my opinion, the place where we need to lay blame for single-use plastic are people who eat take-out food, and people who go to a restaurant and ask for a take-home box to avoid wasting food. Wasted food that goes to compost or landfill is benign. But go to any small or medium sized business that serves food, and you will see stacks and stacks of single use plastic containers. Go to stores that market to small business owners (Costco, Smart & Final) and you'll see dozens of pallets of single-use plastic trays, plates, cups, all for the buying. The sheer scale of single-use food packaging is mind-boggling. The movement against plastic straws at fast-casual and upscale restaurants is fine, but those restaurants usually have reusable glass or metal cups, and we need a real solution for restaurants that serve "regular people".

The actual, physical food waste may be more benign than plastic, but the supply chain that produced it in the first place is not. All the cattle feed and greenhouse gases required to deliver a burger to someone's plate are a problem, but I would argue that it's a bigger problem to use all those same resources to deliver that burger to a landfill. Food taken home as leftovers can easily take the place of another resource-demanding meal.

You aren't wrong about all the waste produced by that process, but I think the better answer is to make portions smaller, not to throw away food as if food waste isn't also a huge problem.

>Wasted food that goes to compost or landfill is benign.

No, no, a thousand times no.

Farming is massively carbon-intensive. That handful of leftovers might have resulted in hundreds of grams of CO2 emissions during its production, processing and distribution. Plastic just sits there in landfill, or maybe chokes a sea turtle if someone tosses it in a watercourse. Atmospheric CO2 is causing the greatest crisis in the history of humanity; ocean acidification will likely make the sea turtle extinct within a century.

Using a few grams of plastic to avoid hundreds of grams of CO2 is a huge win.

"The answer is to stop making the endless flow of single use plastic"

What's the question? Because I can tell you right now that plunging us back into a world of expensive commodities won't be accepted by most consumers. Not in the developed world, and not in developing nations.

There are many things that could easily switch to being packaged in paper/cardboard, and reusable glass containers with a deposit fee for quite a few others.

It may surprise you that reusable glass bottles are the norm rather than the exception in some developing countries. I lived in Rwanda for a while and every soda and beer bottle is reused glass. (and it is indeed great and no burden at all)

This seemed the norm in East African in general.

>Recycling is NOT the answer. The answer is to stop making the endless flow of single use plastic.

Yes. And I have a silly question to ask. For plastic bags, why cant we make them only last one year and it will start to decompose itself. Making it an issue for Supply Chain management rather than recycling. I specifically use bags here because I am not too sure if the same could be possible for plastic bottles, you don't want your bottles to have 1% chance of self decompose before you drink it.

The problem is, people are lazy, we want convenience. That is why sometimes I still use plastic bags.

I really wish people would stop coming up with ideas on how to throw things into the environment and "make it good".

Reuse, not decompose, because it's still shit you're dumping into the environment.

Do you really want unlimited paper bags in the ocean, dissolved so they are not visible and therefore not creating outrage but still fucking the environment?

Totally Agree, it's a pretty sad state when we're looking for magic tech solutions that can be heavily mitigated by simple behavior changes like bringing water, bringing bags and coffee mugs.

When i visited Germany you bought a bag if you didn't have one and it seemed everyone had them. In the US grocery chains knock a nickel off your total for all the bags you don't use. I don't think saving 20-40 cents is a huge motivator for people. If all grocery chains charged $1 per bag used, behavior may change.

Ideally we should try to motivate people into proper behavior and make it part of the cultural expectation.

It's important to remember the order of operations are listed in order of importance. 1. Reduce 2. Reuse 3. Recycle

Sometimes i forget mine too, we're human but i reuse those when i can and stick them in my car, backpack etc.

>When i visited Germany you bought a bag if you didn't have one and it seemed everyone had them.

Re-usable carrier bags are worse for the environment under any realistic scenario.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

TIL the cloth bag I've been using for the past decade or so is "unrealistic". Still, interesting data.

Bio-degradability can not be under-rated. The big problem with plastic is that it degrades extremely slowly, practically speaking it is not bio-degradable.

You clearly care about the environment, so do understand that plain paper is as biodegradable as tree leaves. Little bugs of all sizes happily eat it like leaves. It will never accumulate in the oceans.

There are problems with how it can be produced, but it can be one of the most ecologically advantageous and sustainable materials possible.

Why would any paper bag need to be dumped in the ocean? Are U.S. plastic bags and single use takeout containers ending up in the ocean in significant quantities? If so, what municipality is dumping them in and why aren't we stopping them?

We have plenty of space (absent NIMBY zoning issues) and the capability to build ever safer landfills.

The average American dumps 16.5 tonnes of CO2 into the environment every year. Sixteen and a half tonnes. That's the same mass as seven Ford F150s. Three adult elephants. 265 adult humans.

I don't care about paper bags in the ocean. I don't care about plastic bags in the ocean. Neither has the capacity to seriously affect the functioning of marine ecosystems on any reasonable timescale. If we don't seriously reduce our carbon emissions now, most marine ecosystems will collapse due to acidification and deoxygenation.

Plastic is a useful material that is frequently the least energy-intensive (and by extension carbon-intensive) option, but that's largely besides the point. It simply doesn't matter. If you think it does matter, you have grossly under-estimated the effects of climate change. Our house is on fire and we're too busy arguing about the mess on the lawn to put it out.

There are no factual points that can be countered here, but it needs to be pointed out that recycling is very much a big part of "the answer". This is very much an area of research and there are lots of data to support this.

While we certainly should try to minimize unnecessary packaging, whatever we use should absolutely be recycled as raw material whenever possible. Recycling plastics is difficult because it is such a wide term, but if comparable countries recycle five times as much then surely improvement is possible. Hate on plastic bottles all you want but when 90% is recycled, at comparably low cost, it's not clear what the alternatives are.

The obvious alternative to single use (recyclable) packaging is re-filling containers. That's what everyone did half a century ago. But the food supply chain is rather wasteful as it is and sealed packaging was revolution when it came. Producing food for humans has huge energy costs by the use of fertilizers and diesel. It might seem counter intuitive but burning plastic containers is always better than burning wasted food.

Here's an example tweet associating the Coca Cola trademarked red swirl with single use plastic and ruined beaches: https://twitter.com/bootrino/status/1120700701246545920

No you're right, we should go back to not having cheap, affordable packaging the world over. That way people in developed nations can go back to paying through the nose for shipping products, thus making products cost more, thus lowering the affordability of those products for the middle and working class.

And as for the developing nations who have been increasing their middle class with affordable packaging and plastic products? Eh, screw 'em, right?

/sarcasm

I'm only using this to illustrate how you went right into the "industry bad, four legs good" mantra of the pro-green movement without regard to an alternative that would keep or raise the quality of living for people the world over.

Fact of the matter is if it weren't for plastics, the everyday products that we all consume would either cost way more, or be so expensive that quite a few of us would never get to use them.

Stew on that before you jump to "ban all plastics".

I didn't say "ban all plastics".

And I simply don't believe that it's not possible to create a highly standardised, reusable washable container system.

These sorts of objections are what the packaging industry will scream till it's lungs fall out because the packaging industries profits and maybe existence depends on spewing out infinite garbage.

That industry needs to say things like "well you're hurting the third world if you stop us spewing infinite garbage".

I don't believe it.

> No you're right, we should go back to not having cheap, affordable packaging the world over

We really should. Plastic packaging is only cheap because the environmental cost is externalised. And reused glass / cardboard is not even that much more expensive. Long-term to medium-term plastic packaging is going to be a lot more costly.

I agree, how is it anti-capitalist to make things cost what they cost? The disposal of things should be built into the purchase price. Currently, the tax payers shoulder the majority of this burden

> Fact of the matter is if it weren't for plastics, the everyday products that we all consume would either cost way more, or be so expensive that quite a few of us would never get to use them.

That's fine. When the choice is not having some luxury items vs total biosphere collapse, I'll side with the former. I guess you'd rather keep sipping your Diet Coke while the world burns.

Food is not a luxury item.

Diet Coke isn't food.

Food doesn’t always need to be wrapped in plastics. For example I’ve seen bananas wrapped in clear plastic bags. Why is that when bananas come with their own “wrappers”?

Some foods absolutely are. Foie gras, black truffles, Dom Perignon, endangered tiger meat, etc.

That's missing the point. The point is that the introduction of plastic packaging has made food far safer and more accessible for billions of people.

I've been drinking almost exclusively tap water the better part of my life. I suppose my luxury is drinkable tap water. So let's aim for that for everyone instead.

As soon as you made it a personal, moral issue, you lost the argument entirely. If the goal is to get everyone to adopt good habits for the environment, you're going to have to address price and convenience.

"I wish they would have addressed the price and convenience issues and not made it such a question of morality", I say, as I eat a handful of dirt and survey the barren lifeless landscape around me.

Invent some better packaging, for goodness sake!

Cardboard, paper, bamboo, corn starch... the list of sustainable, biodegradable materials goes on and on. It's only cheap laziness that makes you believe the choice is either we have single-use plastic for everything or we give up affordable products.

People are working on this problem already, and you'd better believe a lot more would happen if government took appropriate steps to tax and/or ban rubbish plastics.

Good choices for dry product, but a lot of plastic is used for food and drink. Luckily we do have options there. Aluminum.

If you associate Coca Cola consumption with the raised quality of living, then I don't know what to say.

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