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Comment by syspec | Hacker News Reader

At what point will one time use plastics be banned? Things such as bags, plastic bottles (such as water, or soda)

Until they're taxed at such a high rate as to make them not viable, it will never stop.

According to google: Coke sells 1.9 billion bottles per day

A huge portion of that is prob aluminium, but even lets say 1/3rd are plastic bottles that is still 630M bottles per day!

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It's slowly happening. Several countries have started to issue bans like Canada and Australia in addition to the EU and recently China, although a lot of plastic pollution in the ocean is from fishing gear. The California Plastic Waste Reduction Regulations Initiative proposition qualified for the 2022 ballot, and SB 343 was recently passed. There's also a federal bill in the US, S.984, but that's unlikely to get past the Senate filibuster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution#Reduction_in...

Just like gas as energy for transport, plastics are difficult to replace. Their main advantage is that they can package food and greatly improve their conservation and transport. This is also true for medical supplies.

A potential solution would be to use standardized glass packaging, and encourage consumers to return them and reimburse them, but it would be complex logistics, and it would be heavier to transport. It would also mean a change of shape for food packaging.

Even metal is not a perfect solution, since metal also has a plastic layer inside. To be honest, even the lid of glass bottles has a layer of plastic, too.

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