You'd think with COVID-19, there'd be a rush to move to contactless payments.
Overkill.. Maybe? But it costs me nothing so I'll take the peice of mind.
It's not about your individual glove. It's the 300million-ish people using 10 disposable gloves a day.
>And the way you solve pollution and microplastics from items in the trash can is by making sure that trash from cans is handled appropriately. Not by having consumers reduce their trash by a few percent.
How can you handle the level of trash we have responsibly? what's the plan? You seem to know, so please share it with the world so we can save the planet.
Given that I only fill my car once every 14 days, and only use 1 single glove for the hand touching the handle, I'm not overly concerned about the generated waste. Even if every American did this during the pandemic it would be dwarfed by the number of gloves used by hospitals even before covid.
I certainly agree that plastic waste is a major issue, and I'll certainly re-evaluate my current method when we aren't mid pandemic, but I'm confident there's simpler ways to reduce plastic waste in more meaningful amounts. I'm pretty sure that I've removed more unnecessary packaging plastic from purchased goods in the past month then gloves I've personally used total this year (I dabble with stuff you want to wear gloves with).
FWIW, At least in MA, it's rare to see a gas pump older than 10 years -- I think due to both Federal and MA State UST laws that require fairly recent (e.g. 2019) minimum standards such as double walled, properly cathodized, leak detecting tanks along with subsidies for tank replacement that have resulted in pretty much every gas station around here being totally renovated in the past 5 years or so.
https://www.mass.gov/guides/massdep-underground-storage-tank...
This is in Texas, for reference.
Go more places.
I know of a national restaurant chain and a regional coffee chain that are swipe only.
Also, Lowe's was swipe only the last time I was in there, but that was a several months ago.
As for the experience of using each, it seems to depend a lot on the machines. I did not like using chip and pin in Europe because it seemed to take longer and required more interactions. With the magstrip I pull the card out, swipe it, put it away. I'm never waiting for anything. Sometimes I'd have to swipe it twice, but that didn't happen too often to me. But it seems like different people have very different experiences with these things.
edit: this mostly applies to credit cards, which are much more common in the US than in Europe. But the lack of significant benefit for credit cards to use this technology could have resulted in momentum that slowed the adoptation of it for debit cards.
Legacy hardware.
Europe was late to the credit card game, so when it finally got on board it had newer gear. The Americans already had their stuff in place and it worked.
Unlike computer nerds who will upgrade their computers just to feel current, businesses don't throw around money unless they have a very good reason.
Edit: so it's more about the willingness to require cost for upgrades then there being costs for upgrades, I thing.
A few years ago NFC terminals weren't really popular around here, but nowadays it's hard to find a terminal without the support. I think this applies for quite a few EU countries.
NFC technology is less secure, but every purchase above 25 EUR requires PIN verification, so there is a limit on how much can be stolen.
EDIT: Btw. they lifted that limit temporary to a much higher value (something >50€) so that less people have to touch the numpad when shopping (at least in/for larger grocery stores).
I deliberately own (special ordered from my bank) a card that has no contactless, and it's also the card my phone "is" so all contactless transactions with that card are through the phone, the bank never issued a contactless card so it's literally impossible that the card itself was used for a contactless transaction.
Using the phone this way allows me to walk around the supermarket, scanning product codes with the phone, then walk to the checkout, scan the "I'm done" code and hold the phone near the contactless checkout as payment. No human interaction, very little touching stuff, only need the phone which I'd carry anyway, no cards or cash.
I got contactless cards about 10ish years ago, then when those renewed, it was back to stripe (and embossed) only; then chip and stripe and embossed; then chip and stripe but mostly flat; now this year I'm getting chip and stripe and contactless and apparently only Amex is embossing for carbon copy imprinters.