Spain will ban selling fruit and vegetables in plastic containers starting 2023
hortidaily.com
hortidaily.com
2. What's wrong about plastic packaging, exactly? The alternative use for oil is to burn it. Having it do something useful and then get buried doesn't sound so horrible.
I mean, I totally get why we wouldn't want to burn oil. We breath that air and it increases CO2. But why exactly shouldn't we extract it? After all, you can do a lot of useful things with it. Like, for example, food packaging :) Also half the device you're reading this on, most likely.
That said, the same can be said for a lot of other thing like natural resources we drain faster than we replace them. Perhaps those can be classified similarly.
Beyond the limited availability of resources in the forms what we can make use of them, there is processing of those resources which has its own set of problems, as well as normal use of processed resources and waste management of used resources.
Example: Aluminium as we know it takes a lot of energy to get to a state where we have a use for it (parts of machines, or foil for example) but once it is in that state and we treat it properly it can be used and re-used and recycled almost infinitely with comparatively minute amounts of energy. Imagine such a process for other resources where we won't have to constantly input new raw materials and energy to get more of the stuff we want.
This is really hard for oil after we have changed it to whatever form we wanted to use it for; turning it back into oil or turning used oil into usable oil isn't exactly a viable process.
Plastic packaging doesn’t always get buried either. Landfills aren’t exactly a solution because of toxins they leech into the surrounding soil. It could end up in bodies of water. It could end up burned in an incinerator which releases the CO2 + volatile organic compounds stored inside it (and volatile organic compounds are quite bad for human health)
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/13/science/earth/13trash.htm...
1. how much "toxins" are we talking about here? You'd think that if they were toxic enough to cause problems with the surrounding soil when buried along with tons of other stuff, that they'll make the food they're in direct contact with absolutely inedible.
2. Landfills are lined to prevent this specific issue.
2. Good point! Errors in foundations or any permeable gaps can still cause leachate to escape. There is also the concern of gases escaping during the lifetime of landfills as well.
You also have an issue of land usage. We have a limited amount of land and that amount is expected to decrease as sea levels rise. I think landfills don’t provide much bang for buck in terms of land value as opposed farms, parks, (I’ve heard of landfills being turned into parks but we still have the concerns of low to moderate containments in the surrounding soil) nuclear/solar/wind farms (although luckily you can still use landfills for these since contact with the public would be minimal), and wildlife habitats. Any ban on plastics, even if it reduces the waste going to landfills by a tiny or fractional amount. Sounds like a win to me
What about the plastic wrapped foods that last for years? Are those just low in toxin and the plastic clamshell packaging for fruits/vegetables loaded with toxins?
>Errors in foundations or any permeable gaps can still cause leachate to escape. There is also the concern of gases escaping during the lifetime of landfills as well.
Without getting more specific about what what "toxins" consistns of, it's hard to know assess the actual risk of them. eg. for BPA wikipedia says:
>Despite a rapid soil and water half-life of 4.5 days, and an air half-life of less than one day, BPA's ubiquity makes it an important pollutant.
It's probably fine even if it leeches out into a landfill, and there's some cracks? By the time it leaks out it would have degraded already.
>We have a limited amount of land and that amount is expected to decrease as sea levels rise.
America is definitely not running out of landfill space anytime soon. For asia/europe incineration is an alternative
>I think landfills don’t provide much bang for buck in terms of land value as opposed farms
That sounds like a non-issue given that we have a functioning market for land?
I appreciate a good whataboutism as the next guy, but please keep in mind that fruit already has short shelf life, and plastic packaging is not used for longevity or higiene but to protect the product from mechanical actions and to prebundle items.
> It's probably fine even if it leeches out into a landfill (...)
The whole point of using paper-based packaging is that this problem simply does not exist at all, it's recyclable, and the timespan it takes to biodegrade is not measured in geological time.
I fail to see how that's whataboutism. I'm not trying to justify one form of plastic packaging with another. I'm merely questioning how much stuff actually leeches out and how it compares to how much leeches out during normal consumption.
>plastic packaging is not used for longevity or higiene but to protect the product from mechanical actions and to prebundle items. The whole point of using paper-based packaging [...]
I'm not sure about you, but buying pre-packaged fruits from opaque bags does not sound very appealing to me.
It's textbook whataboutism, in the letter and in the spirit. The proposal consists of replacing plastic-based packaging with paper-based packaging for fruits and vegetables, which have a notoriously short shelf life. You, on the other hand, tried to divert attentions to "plastic wrapped foods that last for years", as if it was relevant or meaningful. That's a totally unrelated usecase, which has zero to do with the discussion.
One should keep in mind that degradation and half-life are technical terms with specific meaning - while the original substance is no more, in no way does it mean the products are less or more toxic. Often they are less toxic or even degrade fully (into CO₂, H₂O etc), for the most part, but not always and all of it.
Landfills are one of those places where numerous funny reaction take place, creating wondrous chemicals, that people haven't even dreamed of.
That being said, I don't worry much about chemical composition of fruit packaging and their degradation products in non-smoldering landfills.
In the chain of raw resources -> refined resources -> partial assemblies -> assembled products -> used products -> waste all steps are finite, and it's just a matter of which limit we hit first. Instead of waiting and "hoping for the best" it would make much more sense to plan ahead and start limiting the growth and acceleration towards that finite limit so we have a chance at mitigation.
What timespan are we talking about here? Literally the next generation? Or a few hundred years from now? With the available space in the US I'm leaning towards the latter. With that in mind and recognizing the net present value of landfill space a few hundred years from now is close to zero, I can definitely get behind "lets push the problem forward and have the next generation deal with it".
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jul/09/toxic-fo...
Nuclear energy produces some of the most dangerous, long-lasting byproducts imaginable, but appropriately handled it's preferable to almost every traditional form of energy production.
While reducing our meat intake is vogue, the impact it will have on climate change is depressingly incremental. Dishonest ideological documentaries like Cow/Sea-spiracy frustrate scientists dedicating their lives to fix these problems. 92% of the carbon impact reduction of going vegan can be achieved by switching from beef to pork/chicken/fish, before considering that plants are grown in animal waste and vast parts of manufacturing rely on animal products. http://environmath.org/2018/06/17/paper-of-the-day-poore-nem...
We need to examine our assumptions here. Are we short on land? Can we build adequate containment facilities? Is the carbon impact of properly transporting/containing these long-lasting products greater or lower than fast-decomposing paper products that can immediately release carbon into the environment?
Unfortunately there are huge financial/personal interests here and it's hard to get past the misinformation. Recycling was one of the biggest lies sold by corporate interests. It's rarely a moral or environmental good, in spite of all the propaganda for it. (Aluminium and paper are exceptions).
The answer depends on having the right facilities to handle the waste products, whether hydrocarbon or paper-based.
But people arguing about landfills are just idiots. Put it in a secure landfill in some geologically stable desert and stop worrying if that's really a problem.
Properly disposed of, minimal plastic packaging can prevent damage and therefore waste, resulting in a smaller environmental footprint than alternatives, including no packaging and reusable materials.
The problem is that packaging is not always disposed of properly, and is not always minimal or justified by reasons other than marketing.
Also, not all plastics are the same, some are more environmentally friendly than others and you may need more or less of it.
Why do people insist that the thing that allowed the USA to become prosperous and go from a poor former colony of the British Empire to a world power wouldn't be feasible?
I've heard that for many mass products China can get things onto the shelf for less than US manufacturers would have to pay for raw materials. On that extreme end I just can't imagine us producing those items.
Of course it's a sliding scale, I pay a lot more for certain types of goods that are made close to where I live but it seems foolish to extend that approach to everything.
I'd say that it's feasible to have mass manufacturing return to the US, but not a mass of manufacturing jobs in the short to medium term. Manufacturing with automation that is cheaper than the world's cheapest labor is feasible in the US. But, until the US standard of living converges with parts of the world that have large, organized sources of cheap labor (today that mostly means Asia), the cost of US labor will not allow competitive prices on manufactured goods.
There are partial exceptions to this. For example, it can make sense to do final assembly of cars in the US. This has many reasons... parts can be sourced from all over the world, there has long been investment in automation around auto assembly so the cost of labor is a smaller fraction of the consumer price, shipping cars across oceans is expensive, etc. Even in this example, far less US labor is used in the end to end production of a US assembled car than was the case decades ago.
I realise this is quite a complex question, and I'm sure that there are many reasons why it's a bad idea. Can anyone link me to a good explanation?
Economics on this scale is one of my shortfalls of knowledge
If I understand your question... the tax would, for example, be paid by Apple on their products sold in the US if they continue to build their devices in China and it would be based on the difference in the cost of labor between the US and China. Let's assume the administrative details could be worked out, which does not seem trivial (e.g., If you want it proportional to the labor savings of manufacturing in China, how many hours of labor are spent on an iPhone and how is that audited? And how many hours would it take to make in the US with different worker protection laws / expectations?).
Apple would not just absorb such a tax. It would be reflected directly in the prices of their products. So prices go up for products sold in America, regardless of whether they are made in China (prices go up to cover the new tax) or they start being made in the US again (prices go up enough to cover more expensive labor).
Apple would now have the choice of continuing to manufacture in China or bringing manufacturing "home". They still want to sell to the rest of the world. To be competitive in the rest of the world, the non-US products still need to be made in China to keep prices down. So bringing US-bound production home means managing a more complex supply chain. I think I'd want to just pay the tax and keep logistics simpler by continuing to manufacture everything in China, even items bound for the US. One way around this would be for the government to charge US companies the tax for products sold outside the US as well. This would almost certainly be a disaster for the US because non-US companies now have a price advantage everywhere in the world except the US. Apple now has two choices... cede the global market to non-US competitors or move themselves outside the US.
So, if the result is that this doesn't help American labor much, then we're left with Americans paying higher prices for products with little offsetting increase in income. So Americans' purchasing power drops relative to the rest of the world. Revenue does increase for the US government and some of that will benefit the people who would have liked those manufacturing jobs, but certainly not all of it.
In the long term I can see the US getting more competitive in the global labor market because of such a tax, but not in a way that many would choose. It's not hard to see this dropping the standard of living in the US to some extent. If it drops enough that Americans are eager to work for the same compensation that Chinese workers get, manufacturing jobs could start coming back. Be careful what you wish for?
I sincerely hope you check your history and read this :-)
First off, thankyou for the in-depth response.
I, personally, think the race to the bottom style economics hurts everyone. It promotes a style of business that isn't healthy to employees, and allows companies to find loopholes to abuse Labor.
I
I completely agree about the downsides of the race to the bottom - I think it's inherently short sighted on a number of fronts (humane treatment of workers, wise use of natural resources, long term success, etc.). But I also see it as an almost inescapable consequence of US style capitalism. US capital markets reward companies who squeeze out every last penny and punish those who don't. Executives in public companies that are seen sacrificing short term revenue or short term profits for anything don't often keep their job for long. And those executives exploit this by making sure they have golden parachutes.
I think it goes way beyond race to the bottom. It's the effort to optimize the exploitation of everything for money. There is so much money to be made by exploiting every nuance of every law and regulation (or lack thereof), that I don't see companies pulling back willingly for any length of time. And the people who are already benefitting most from this have accumulated so much wealth and power that I don't think there's much hope of establishing laws or regulations that don't have exploitable loopholes designed in. I fear it will take something on the scale of the Great Depression to get meaningful change in this regard.
You grow your industrial base by ignoring it
https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/07/20/new-california-ballot...
> The measure is opposed by the plastics industry. Tim Shestek, a spokesman for the American Chemistry Council, a trade association that includes large companies such as Dow, DuPont, 3M and ExxonMobil Chemical, called the measure “a massive taxpayer-funded giveaway of billions of dollars to fund a variety of special interest pet projects.”
> He said it threatens small businesses like restaurants and that the plastics industry is committed to reducing plastic waste.
Oh, good, the plastics industry is coming to help reduce how much plastic they sell. It's transparent to the point of being satirical!
It's also just funny to me that the slightest price signal ($0.01 per piece of packaging) is deemed completely untenable, and further a 'giveaway' of funds. Give me a break!
The market works on price signals. We are allowed to create signals to indicate our preferences (less trash everywhere please) in order to have the computer (the market) solve for a more optimal solution. Collective action (eg legislation like the one mentioned) is the way to do this!
These aren't the same! For instance, a plastic grocery bag costs minimal energy but produces infinite-lifespan waste, while a reusable cloth bag costs like 10,000x energy to produce (between farming cotton, spinning it, weaving it, etc), but if left outside would only last for several years (ie a 1/10,000 lifespan).
We have to consider both these tradeoffs! Bioplastic probably is somewhere closer to a happy middle: costs 2x the energy of a tradplastic but lasts 1/10,000 shorter.
Admittedly I've made up all these numbers but: all compromises aren't equal, we can do better than we do now, the multipliers matter
Indeed they are, and I'd argue that in current situation, we can and should ignore one of them.
Climate change is an immediate existential threat to human civilization. Long-living, mostly inert waste is an inconvenience. As long as we're still sourcing majority of our energy from fossil fuels, more energy use = more carbon footprint = worsening the crisis. The issue of plastic waste is irrelevant relative to that - we can clean the house up after it is no longer on fire.
The vast majority of the containers work just as well as the plastic ones did.
It's adorable that CA thinks that manufacuters will be the ones bearing this cost.
One of the reasons why I oppose VAT style taxation
Each citizen should at minimum see on a itemized bill the amount of money the government is collecting from them, IMO each citizen should be forced to write out a check to every government entity that needs to collect money
Automated, and hidden taxes is one of the reason the government can actually steal errrr collect as much money as it does, because if people had to pay their taxes like they do their utility bill there would be continual protests in the streets
We have that. It's called a "tax return".
> each citizen should be forced to write out a check to every government entity that needs to collect money
You do understand how that would increase government bureaucracy, right? Whereas I'm sure your goal is the opposite.
> if people had to pay their taxes like they do their utility bill there would be continual protests in the streets
Maybe you would protest. Most people likely would not - they bear far worse from their governments on the daily.
I believe GP's point is that a tax return only lists a small subset of the taxes being collected from a citizen, giving the impression that the amount is smaller than it is.
Social Security taxes are a great example of this - for W2 employees they don't show up on their tax return at all. And even if the employee looks at the box labeled "social security tax" on their W2, that's still only half of it, because the other half is a "payroll tax" that the employee never sees, even in their "gross income".
When you add consumption taxes, making sure to include both the ones that show up as "sales tax" on a receipt and the ones that get baked into the price (e.g. gas taxes), it becomes extremely difficult to come up with an individual's fully-loaded tax rate.
Frankly "taxes are theft" is a narrow-minded point of view that I have little time for. Complain about how high your taxes are, complain about how the government wastes money. But it's not "theft", at least in democratic countries. It's the price of living and working where you do.
Frankly the rationalization that taxation, specially income taxation is anything other than theft because of "democracy" is absurd
The fact is that the government, like a theif, says to a person: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat.
The government does not, indeed, waylay a person in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
The theif takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber.
He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes a person's money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travelers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these.
Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.
The government creates, and then rents to us (usury), the money we all use [1]. It holds a monopoly on money creation.
Governments can create money to build infrastructure, hospitals and housing (many leftist governments in Europe have [2]) at will. Government doesn't need to collect taxes to do any of the things I mentioned, that's a myth. External constraints on national budgets are a myth. National budgets are just monetary debts by the government carried by citizens. [3]
[1] Inequality: Why are the rich getting richer? | Positive Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzCegQVljdY
[2] What could Vienna’s low-cost housing policy teach the UK? | Rent controls mean public sector workers and those on lower pay can afford to live and work in the Austrian capital: https://theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/12/vienna-housing-p...
[3] The truth is out: money is just an IOU, and the banks are rolling in it - David Graeber, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/18/truth-...
Fiat Currency requires a careful balance of fraud like pozi scheme to convince people that is is worth something, if they did away with the "myth" as you call it then the entire fraud would collapse like pozi schemes normally do
So you are objectively wrong that the government can create money at will, while technically true they do so at the risk of complete monetary collapse
Its adorable that you think that a activist groups having enough money (ballot signature gathering up to the small minority needed to qualify a ballot measure is pretty tightly correlated with spending on the purpose) to qualify a ballot measure says anything about what California thinks.
Also, adorable that you think that the measure’s authors thinking that manufacturers are the most efficient place to collect the a Pigovian tax on plastic packaging says anything about who will bear the cost; the point is to make the use of the packaging more expensive to influence consumer behavior away from products with it, of course consumers bear the cost (though not exclusively.)
Here[1] is a polystyrene case of 200 for $28.99 retail, this would make that cost $30.99. The eco-friendly version is $57.99: [2], and that doesn't even have the compartments that the foam does; if you want those it's closer to $90. I'm sure the costs to the manufacturers themselves are lower than that.
To a restaurant, it's a 2-dollar fee on a 30-dollar case that doesn't make the 60-dollar alternative a smart financial decision. Alternatively, it's a 1-cent fee on a 14-cent product, compared to a 29-cent product.
I like when a restaurant gives me my food in an eco-friendly container, now I know that it cost them about 15 cents of my purchase to do so.
[1] https://www.webstaurantstore.com/dart-90htpf3r-9-x-9-x-3-whi... [2] https://www.webstaurantstore.com/ecochoice-9-x-9-x-3-biodegr...
Will adding this disposal cost make certain products prohibitively expensive? Sure. But if no one can (or will) pay for your product after all the associated costs are baked in, then that's just the market's way of telling you that you shouldn't be making that product.
This enables the workflow where anyone can simply walk up to a retailer and hand them their old white goods free of charge - and they legally have to collect it, even if they didn't originally sell that item.
You can use the same bag for many, many salads until one leaks and then you get a new bag. That is significantly better than supermarkets using a new bag for every salad.
Or this for potatoes? https://ijrorwxhniojmj5p.leadongcdn.com/cloud/mrBppKjpRmmSnj...
Or this for onions? https://cdn.w600.comps.canstockphoto.com/onions-on-pallets-s...
How many examples do we need? All I see is you asserting something not evident in the real world.
I usually buy cucumber with intention if preparing something, but get to it like 1-2 weeks later when it starts to get already soft, while it's shrink wrapped, so I really doubt it's really matter of "weeks" unless you mean 2 weeks
I doubt it. In my supermarket, all the fruits in plastics bags/boxes are damaged more or earlier, because as soon as one of the fruit is in bad shape, no one buys the box and all fruits get ruined.
The irony is that the organic fruits are put into a container (because they're more expensive and the store don't want people checking out expensive food as cheap) so if you want to buy organic for the environment, you're the one paying for plastics and for good waste.
Those plants aren't going to fertilize themselves LOL.
As with most greenwashing announcements, the net result will be increased, not decreased, environmental damage. Burn more diesel planting and transporting food, make more fertilizer out of natgas, then wash it into rivers to cause algae blooms and dead zones...
The other environmental effect will be decreasing the amount of fresh produce poor people have access to, eventually resulting in higher profits for health care industries. Think of it like an investment in turning pain and suffering into profit.
I'm not sure when it happened exactly, but Spain went crazy for over-packaging supermarket fresh fruits and vegetables in plastic. When I lived there as a kid, it was basically just thin polyethylene bags. When I went back about three years ago.. it was much worse than here in Britain, which I already thought bad.
I know I'm at constant loggerheads with my Italian partner who keeps putting soft plastics in the recyling here in London, even though it's supposed to be filtered out!
Are we talking "paper bags" or "bio-degradable plastics" here? The former is trivially compostable, whereas the latter requires industrial composting conditions, and depending on the polymer type, might just end up "composting" into microplastics.
Plastic recycling is not great though and it's better to use plastic sparingly.. One time use plastics are the worst offenders for the environment.
The effect is similar to the 'Tax to the Sun' in the last years that destroyed by design most public interest into solar projects after deliberately making the life of the independent solar domestic producers a bureaucratic nightmare.
Now they try to convince people to adopt it, but there is a lost of distrust by people risking their money aware that a change in the government would block it again, because some people have an economic interest into blocking the adoption of clean energies.
Most people interested in nature conservation had been punished and burnt a few times yet, so much of the momentum has been lost.
People promoting "Two time use" plastics forgot that mold loves fruit, so you need to protect your product from spores and bruises that would destroy totally your investment. You would wrap a second fruit on the same plastic and is like bathing it into rooted stuff, is spoiled really quick.
To made illegal to wrap in plastics the same fruit that is cultured in the so called 'sea of plastics' is heartwarming but also a perfect irony. To compensate the loses in spoiled fruits we would need to increase the surface covered in plastic to culture more fruits.
Promoting to eat more meat and less fruit would be a much more efficient way.
Pollution produced by EU/West is drop in ocean compared to pollution produced by Asian/African countries, but let's annoy everyone with smallest things, while people in Asia just dump trash into rivers/oceans.
I really love when politicians flying in jets, riding limos tell me, someone doesn't even own car, how my few plastic bags per week or packaging of grapes is destroying the planet.
At least 90% with kids I know regularly use car, but hey, I am destroying planet because unlike them I don't use those useless single use paper bags, but use for grocery same few plastic bags for years, same with recycling, God forbid to admit you just dump your stuff without recycling (let's ignore the fact you are just helping recycling companies to make money, since they have to sort out recycled trash anyway, you just make it cheaper for them, recycling is good business).
EDIT: thanks in advance for downvotes from people who never been to Asia to see how clean it's there and who ride their car everywhere to preach me
We need 1.) more travel distance labels that show where things are from, while 2.) at the same time showing how much of the costs are government subsidized, as well as the emissions generated by the transportation costs.
Of course we need corresponding shifts, e.g. in helping communities learn how to cook with seasonal vegetables etc.. Living in the Netherlands, I don't need to eat asparagus from Peru in December.
But yeah, like in the airline and oil industries, it's the use of subsidies that's one of the root problems (although we all know that the US military industrial complex alone is one of the biggest polluters [1]).
We need more signaling systems that show the real costs; not to shame the working class who buy food (or pretend they have any real power to effect change), but to help reveal to them the wastefulness and destruction of the current system.
"Many urbanised people have lost touch with the sources of their food, and may not realize that the distance their food travels has been steadily increasing. In the US, the average pound of food now travels 1,500 miles before it reaches the dinner table, and the distance continues to grow.
Much of this transport is needless: every day, identical commodities pass in opposite directions, criss-crossing the globe. The ‘logic’ of the global economy leads the US and other nations to import hundreds of thousands of tons of staple foods each year, while simultaneously exporting roughly the same amount. In an era of dwindling fossil fuel reserves and rising CO2 emissions, this is both senseless and wasteful. But it is a trend that is accelerating as governments systematically promote a single, globalized food system."
- Helena Norberg Hodge [2]
[1] https://qz.com/1655268/us-military-is-a-bigger-polluter-than...
But yes more government regulations, more labeling, and shaming poor people into buying more expensive food is the better path ...
Once again government creates a problem, then people look to government to solve the very problem it created which creates even more problems
//When my "Local" farmer is charging 4-5x more than the supermarket for the same food, guess where I am shopping... hint it is not local
What? And your answer is the private sector? Yeah i totally love how Bill Gates is trying to make Indian and African farmers dependent on Monsanto/Bayer's toxic GMO seeds. [1][2]
I don't think that the dichotomy that you allude to, between the government/state and business/companies, makes much sense:
1.) A national government is what creates the laws and maintains the registry of land/resources (land/resources which are owned by companies)
2.) A company is literally a database entry in a government database, the state issues the 'birth certificates' and 'death certificates' (folding a business or bankruptcy) for companies.
3.) When a profit-seeking company builds up knowledge today they want to enclose it by using intellectual property laws (useful for a monopoly).
4.) Competition between nations leads to useless competition, because often the same research and development has to be done twice (or just, every time again for each new country) - wasting resources and labor. The working class pays for all this dearly, since they are not part of the propertied class and are thus completely at the mercy of their whims and with only their labor to sell.
So yeah, the nation state needs the concept of companies, and companies are only possible by having a state. Capitalism and nationalism/patriotism is the name of this game.
Imagine if all of humanity pooled all it's non-scarce resources, removing all knowledge gatekeeping apparatus that blocks the diffusion of innovation by creating artificial scarcity where none need be. Imagine all technology and science open access for the benefit of the working class. What a dream. [3]
[1] https://grain.org/en/article/6511-why-the-bill-gates-global-...
[2] https://grain.org/en/article/5910-under-the-cover-of-philant...
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/j...
1. Plastic containers need to be manufactured from raw material, shipped to the packaging site, and recycled or disposed of after use. So there is that.
2. Increased shelf life of food products also have an induced demand behavior (similar to highway lanes) which might result in more overall food being shipped and spoiled then if the shelf life would have been shorter.
3. Increased shelf life allows food to be shipped further, which might sound like a good thing, but not if you factor in the same product is available from a closer source. This also encourages large scale mono-culture as local farms have a harder time competing against larger farms farther away.
So it is definitely not as simple as increased shelf life == better carbon footprint.
Because that site is awful
The ban on plastic packaging will apply to fruit and vegetable products weighing less than one and a half kilograms.
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So it not for bigger packages. Wonder what the package size mix is? If most packages are more than one and a half kilograms?
I would not say it is the majority but it's absolutely usual. Most likely they will become bigger so as to weigh more than the limit.
Single use plastic on the other hand takes the scenic route straight into the ocean…
It’s not like it isn’t possible today.
This seems a bit unbelievable to me.
Here in Germany the bio tomatoes in the supermarket are already in cardboard boxes, the normal one are often in cardboard with a plastic wrapper.
Dia/Amazon Prime already do this.
Fighting plastic packaging is one of the environmental issues that get an unreasonable amount of attention.
It is more "look we did something" than "look we actually make an impact"
Progress has no feedback loop, either, which combined with the above is a recipe for disaster.
It's like software code churn. A bunch of git commits must indicate we're really getting some serious work done!
Progressist use plastic bags and conservative migration.
Is this seriously a thing? ie. people refactoring stuff for the sake of refactoring? Maybe the company I work at hasn't progressed to that stage yet, but the type of "change for the sake of change" that you're talking about I mostly see with designs/layouts.
Any metric that becomes a stand in for success will be gamed.
It's about pollution and waste and environmental damage generally.
Not sure why people keep getting this confused.
Pollution? It comes from underground, does something useful, gets buried again.
Waste? Uhh... It may "feel" wasteful, because it's more durable than paper, but if it's both cheaper and better than paper, I don't really see the issue. Plus if I want to pay to buy something, it's kinda by definition useful.
Environmental damage from fruit & vegetable plastic packaging. Again, not clear on the how. Plastic is very chemically inert to the point of being used as food packaging. It may at worst be visually unappealing in the wrong context, but that's a disposal issue.
And please, please, for the love of all that is still logical, don't tell me about plastic in oceans. A ban on packaging in Spain will do absolutely nothing about how municipal waste is disposed of in Africa and Asia. Both wrong problem and wrong continent.
Does the use of plastic reduce food waste?
What are we talking about here? Bananas in plastic boxes? Because in my supermarket in Germany, nearly everything is without packaging, except maybe berries in cardboard containers.
There was a public discussion about organic cucumbers in shrinkwrap, I think for differentiation reasons. But many switched to simple stickers here.
cucumbers should be shrink wrapped, they go bad MUCH faster if unwrapped, so you will eliminate any benefit of removing plastic by much more food waste
For example, you could tax plastic to be sold to consumers per gram.
We could both ban plastics (e.g for food) and tax it (for other uses, e.g medical).
Now, how can banning be less effective than taxing? Otherwise, we would have taxed murder instead of outlawing it right?
If you're a billionaire and commit murder, you will probably pay the top lawyer in the world and get away with it on a technicality.
I'd prefer there just be a tax on murder. $100M plus 10x the value of the estate of the deceased ought to do it.
Otherwise, you would have seen far higher taxes on fossil fuels around the world decades ago.
made entirely of recycled pulp to provide a sustainable alternative to plastic products... it is compostable
https://www.webstaurantstore.com/ecochoice-2-5-qt-green-mold...
Also, if you absolutely need greens that are more robust and last longer, there are options like cabbage that will last quite a while just sitting in the fridge.
We have had a penchant for food that doesn't go bad for very long periods of time for ages (why do you think meat was salted?). Achieving it, especially without ruining the food, is a very recent accomplishment, which naturally the environmental people are looking to take away.
Yeah, but it's cabbage. So there's already an issue there. You forcing/suggesting someone to buy cabbage because it lasts longer than spinach, arugula, etc is not going to fly well with people that don't like cabbage.
Why are hackernews posters so awful and weird about food? Do you even listen to yourself? I mean, jeez, just put a wet towel in the pack like a normal person to get an extra couple days out of it instead of ranting about "tyranny" because somebody thinks that maybe it's okay that your spinach goes over in five days instead of eight and you should just buy less and get over it.
I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a pandemic currently going on and you should reduce your shopping frequency. Going to the grocer every week to get new produce is counterproductive.
I mean, the nerve, wanting a bag of quick already shredded lettuce that they can use for tacos tonight, a salad for lunch tomorrow, and finish out on Friday night burger grilling.
Horrible people they are.
Source (in Spanish) https://elpais.com/clima-y-medio-ambiente/2021-09-21/la-vent...
It's time for political "no future" parties that focus on those that are currently alive.
Don't mind if you see a little pushback by a youth who would like to have a future themselves.
In the US that party already exists, it's the GOP.