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Comment by newswriter99 | Hacker News Reader

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".

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> 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.

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.

Food is not a luxury item.

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.

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”?

Diet Coke isn't food.

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 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

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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