The campaign against plastic is harming the planet and the public

For example, yogurt. Ubiquitous. Comes in nice little plastic cups, which will, at best, end up in a landfill. Suppose there is a wide agreement in society to phase these plastic cups out:

* Do we ban yogurt?

* Do we use recyclable glass instead?

* Do we use recyclable glass, and only dispense yogurt if you bring a recyclable container for an exchange?

* Do we use recyclable glass, only dispense in exchange for a recyclable container, and standardize container shape such that the recycling actually recycles, as opposed to sending the "recycled" container to a landfill anyways?

* Do we limit the amount of yogurt containers one can buy in a given timeframe?

* Do we create a heavy tax on the container, say 10x the price of the content?

Life is short and people may get overwhelmed by too many details. Problem which compounds if there is too much choice. Almost always better to have a standard recipe to follow, than having to figure out a recipe on a case by case basis.

I agree, (anecdotally) every time I go to the supermarket I notice that the vast majority of people walking towards the supermarket are carrying reusable bags. This wasn't the case just a year ago when it'd be very rare to see even a single person bringing their own bags.

It's so sad that the people who are growing up with this don't know its not normal, .. for the sea spray to be partially polystyrene,.. for the sand to be stratified with nets,

Now, digging into the points you make:

> 2. Focusing on recycling takes finite attention away from bigger issues, like meat consumption, flying, and coal power.

I have two issues with this:

1. The focus on recycling is itself a deflection maneuver from the Packaging and Petro-Chemical groups. Recycling and the shifting of responsability and 'guilt' from industry to consumers is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries.

2. All the examples of 'bigger issues' you refer are areas where there is more Carbon/Methane emissions. However, the issue everybody has against plastic was never the issues of emissions but the calamity of microplastics.

Microplastics have created a defacto man made plastic geological epoch. They have by now contaminated our food sources, our water supplies, and have contaminated the whole water cycle to the point that they can be found in alpine glaciar ice. More worryingly there is now strong evidence on the hormonal and fertility disruption in both humans and animals due to microplastic absorption/ingestion.

So Plastic is indeed a _huge_ issue not due to emissions but due to it's disruption in our ecosystems and our health.

Wait, but Environmental groups do focus on those things too. So They like Solar and renewables but it has nothing to do with coal?!?!

Why do you think they don’t focus on those things too? They aren’t one trick ponies.

Putting on my tinfoil hat...

There were quite a few past posts recently about how plastic is not that economical feasible to recycle, about how the Packaging and Petro-Chemical industry is offloading costs to the 'recycling movement', and about how plastic is creating mass scale health issues with hormonal disruption in both animals and humans.

Those posts gained traction because the issue is beyond obvious and the general population is concerned. This likely triggered the alarms in the industry who then payed to slip some "counter-argument" piece into HN.

I understand that there is no obvious technological solution and that there is no 'economically' interesting replacement for our society's plastic addiction. Nevertheless, going all 'tobacco industry' on this issue is only going to buy them time. They should put the money from their stealth PR into actual R&D instead, in order to solve this mess.

I have since switched to using soda cans. Cut the ends off, slice up the side, and flatten it. It makes for marvelous leak and flashing patch material. So far it has lasted for years :-)

N.B. medical supplies were exempt even in the earlier draft proposals. This was never a discussion point.

Single-use plastics should be banned where they are used purely for economic reasons. For cases where industry chooses to use plastic, then they should also take up the environmental cost of disposal/recycling.

The only reason plastic is economic in the short term is because industry is not paying for all the externalized costs associated with disposal, recycling, environmental and health degradation, etc.

For example: most of SE Asia burns their rubbish in their back yard, because there are no rubbish collection facilities. They also litter, throwing plastic waste into the gutter, because they're too busy dealing with other stuff to care. But the wealthier countries (Singapore is the classic example) don't do this and are fastidious about waste management.

It doesn't matter what issues (or proposed solutions) you look at - it could be GMOs, glyphosate, plastic, electric cars, nuclear power, bio-fuels, you name it - there is no easy answer. Some solutions are better than others, but all have some disadvantages.

It certainly doesn't help the environmental movement that many of its members display a very definite "green ideology". They go around spouting their preferred policies, ignoring or shouting down any objections (no matter how well founded). That really doesn't help our trustworthiness with the rest of society.

The nature of politics is such that we often have to pick sub-optimal solutions, and often on incomplete knowledge. But let's at least have a proper debate before settling on one solution - and not prematurely tout anything as "the only green way to go".

You can see the same thinking in his previous articles, as you noted.