Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process. I mean, I'll take a frozen package of ribs out of the freezer and microwave it for a minute so the surface softens enough for me to cut the plastic and peel it off before thawing or brining the meat.
No, I think I'll just take my chances and not have yet one more thing to stress out about.
I can stick a package of meat in the microwave and hit a couple buttons and then go do something else instead of running water for a few seconds until it heats up, possibly having to fill the sink or a bowl and put the meat in. All of which takes more time and effort for basically the same result.
There are all kinds of industrial heated plates, continuously running pots on stoves, or always on ovens, etc restaurants use to keep the day's food heated or slightly reheat it.
Almost every restaurant uses microwaves for some part of food prep. Go work in a kitchen for a bit.
If "almost every restaurant microwaves" in one's area, they should probably move to a better area.
Though I'm not sure what you call a restaurant. Does it include fast food "restaurants" for example? Or some 2x-3x the local price tourist trap in places like Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris (say, Montmartre) or the Greek isles?
In much the same way that I take a stick of butter out of the fridge and nuke it for exactly 9 seconds to get it (at least the bottom) to spreadable consistency. In fact, this is 90% of what I use a microwave for.
Honest question - is there something wrong with microwaving ceramic bowls? Literally every bowl intended for eating (rather than for mixing cooking ingredients) that I have ever owned or encountered has been ceramic.
And it depends on stuff you won't be able to discover.
> > For most Americans, they don't have glass plates/bowls at their work
As a note, most people I've seen microwaving their leftovers at work were microwaving plastic because that's how they packaged the leftovers from home. If there aren't dishes at work, let alone a full kitchen, then leftovers are transported, heated, and eaten from the same container.
Fair! I've been lucky enough to always work in places where the kitchen has a decent amount of crockery and cutlery into which leftovers could be transferred for heating, but I can see how this could be an issue. Thanks for pointing that out!
Some bowls are more prone to this than others, but it's not obvious and requires experimentation to determine. It's a pain.
Microwaves work pretty well for saucy Chinese food, for example. (The alternate method is usually steaming, which is even soggier.)
But the warmth in the food heated on a burner is nicer than the warmth generated by the microwave (more even, cools slowly).
Maybe we slow down and expect our lunch to take 10 minutes to heat and 5 minutes to clean up?
These glass containers will likely last forever.
They are more expensive than the cheapest plastics, but it's buy-once, so not a significant long-term factor.
E: obviously I can spend extra effort to handle a hot glass container, but I'd rather deal with container without that property. Even with plastic containers there are some that gets suspiciously soft / weak after a few minutes in microwave, and then there's ones that stay sturdy and cool enough to handle. Half the point of microwave is convenience.
Where did you buy them? Were they name brand?
I also have little doubt that IKEA will be around in 10 years compared to some random Amazon brand.
Glass is fragile, dangerous, heavy, slippery, expensive, loud, and space-wasting.
Plastic containers are light, resilient, durable, portable, compact, and efficient.
I usually cover them with a plastic designed for this purpose which doesn't come in contact with food.
I use it all the time for potatoes unless I’m baking them. It shaves a lot off the cooking time with no I’ll effect
Could also be "the high adverse effects we pay for with extra cancers, higher inflammation, even lower fertility maybe, but were too preoccupied with some received idea of convenience to notice and attribute to such bad habbits".
>Even if I were to stop putting stuff in the microwave, that won't account for all the other foods I eat outside the home that may have had microwaving as part of their preparation process
Whether at home or "outside the home", microwaving is just not seen in a good light in most of Europe I know, and is seldom a thing except as a low-class convenience when you're like a student or something. Though most fellow students I knew would never go for it either, and would start to cook simple but proper food themselves after the 2nd year or so.
Most smokers I know still smoke inside their houses.
>Plastic pollution is a systemic problem, and has been for decades.
Sorry, this gets uncritically repeated so much that it's bordering on propaganda. Like it's just doing free work for oil companies at this point. This kind of stuff is exactly what I'd say as someone working for an oil company's social media team after realizing that individual choice is not something that happens in a vacuum. Corporate propaganda on the personal-carbon-footprint issue backfired - they thought they would be able to demoralize people, but it slowly grew into a movement that continues to grow. It's honestly kind of funny they thought people wouldn't attach their morality to decisions about environmental destruction.
"individual lifestyle choices don't cause systemic change" is a bastardization of the original concept. And it's actually doing the original intent of corporations - to demoralize people about seeking an oilless future.
The original concept was that one should not feel guilty if they can't make an individual lifestyle choice because something is preventing them from doing so. It was never meant to demoralize people from using their own moral compass to decide not to participate in certain behaviors. I don't get why "I want to use less petroleum-derived products and eventually none at all" is exempt from spreading through the social network as a worthwhile idea when literally everything else does.
Again, people aren't individually responsible for the systemic results of their choices, but their individual choices do create signals that result in systemic change. Our choices don't operate in a vacuum, our peers, friends, and family all look at what we do; their peers, friends, and family do the same.
Not microwaving plastic isn't a moral failure, it's a safety hazard due to the plastic falling apart. But if everything you consume is full of microplastics, then worrying about these microplastics is likely a waste of time.
Saying that the environment is so full of microplastics that conscious efforts to avoid them will be a waste of time is the opposite of excusing companies for filling the environment with microplastics. It's saying that the only thing that will be effective is to attack the sources rather than lifestyling your way out of it.
You've confused health for morality, then gone on to give a lecture about it.
No, it's not. The only thing rote here is the repeated argument that individual action doesn't lead to systemic change. It's also not misplaced, it's a direct response to the grandparent saying "we can't lifestyle our way out of exposure to microplastics".
>Not microwaving plastic isn't a moral failure, it's a safety hazard due to the plastic falling apart.
This is a disingenuous reduction of what I've said. The original comment wasn't discussing specifically abstaining from microwaving of plastic, but of lifestyle choices to reduce exposure to microplastics in general.
>But if everything you consume is full of microplastics, then worrying about these microplastics is likely a waste of time.
You seem to think that I believe that avoiding plastic has a direct effect on my exposure to microplastics. I'm confused why you think that since I specifically mentioned social actions whose effects obviously lag behind concrete systemic change. The intent isn't to reduce exposure to microplastics in a physical way, but in a social way. It's about circles of social influence effecting change through ceremony and symbolism. The ceremony of not microwaving plastic (and more specifically, trying to avoid plastic as much as is practicably possible) is something that gets discussed and repeated through many social circles. The symbolism of avoiding specific companies - making them the faces of microplastic contamination - gives people their enemy. Duh, it's boycotting.
>Saying that the environment is so full of microplastics that conscious efforts to avoid them will be a waste of time is the opposite of excusing companies for filling the environment with microplastics.
Absolutely and unequivocally incorrect. This is the exact demoralization I'm talking about: "avoiding microplastics exposure is a waste of time". It excuses the companies in the abstract because demoralized people don't talk about/look for alternatives, it is excuse granted by inaction. Which is better for Microplastics Inc - someone who says "well I'll just be exposed to microplastics anyway so I might as well buy from Microplastics Inc" or "I'm not buying from Microplastics Inc because they are really hurting the environment". There is a reason why there are so many companies that try to depict themselves as green. They still don't fear being depicted as greenwashers but that's going to be their new fear.
>It's saying that the only thing that will be effective is to attack the sources rather than lifestyling your way out of it.
Which is incorrect. Attacking the source requires a social movement. Trying to lifestyle your way out of it is what creates the social movement. I don't genuinely think riding a bike to the coffee shop reduces global carbon emissions in any meaningful way, but the ceremony of doing so creates connection and resilience with other environmentalists. And it works. Just this year, we got massive improvements to both our bike infrastructure and public transit.
>You've confused health for morality, then gone on to give a lecture about it.
What does that even mean? Health is obviously connected to my morality, not confused with it, - I don't want to be hurt by reliance on petroleum, I don't want others to be hurt by reliance on petroleum and I don't want future generations to be hurt by reliance on petroleum. This goes for health and everything else.
I intentionally use stainless steel cookware, a stainless steel thermos (although there's plastic in the cap/spout), and glass containers for meal prep/food storage. I use this stuff on a daily basis, so any bio-accumulation will add up. Just because I can't 100% lifestyle-choice my way out of microplastics contamination doesn't mean I can't 20 or 40% lifestyle-choice my way out, and it's 99% as convenient.
A good friend of mine who used to do hazardous waste disposal said the industry developed a winning mantra: mitigation, not elimination. Or to put it in more familiar terms, don't let perfect be the enemy of good.
I cook at least 50% of my warm meals myself and I learned to prepare meals in advance and to freeze or sterilize them. Not so much to save money but because I prefer good food with known ingredients. I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to reduce my intake of microplastics by further phasing out the plastic containers I usually use and use relatively cheap glass containers.
It’s a little like democratic elections. A single vote has negligible impact, but all those single votes combined? They have the power to make or break the future of a country. An individual decision not to use plastic is not unlike that.
Awaiting numbers as to how much plastics in the water which comes out of my tap is from washed microwaved plastics.
not sure where you got this part from, but your entire argument depends on it being true, and it isn't
reminds me of the people who said facemasks and vaccines do nothing (meaning literally 0% effect) because they weren't 100% perfect virus force fields
And you claim that it isn't true makes no sense either since this isn't a claim about a fact that can be true or false
> you claim that it isn't true makes no sense either since this isn't a claim about a fact that can be true or false
actually, it makes total sense, because your factual claim was that, for a nonzero number, "you've achieved 0", which is obviously wrong. It's simple logic, friend.
maybe try tying your post back to reality, where the effect isn't actually zero? Fill in the analogy, since it's clear we can reduce our microplastic exposure a non-zero amount (your personal opinion that it's not enough for you is what is irrelevant here)
Single source municipal recycling is typically a process of sorting and selling certain kinds of waste to other people, with little processing happening locally. This process is way more wasteful than people would like to think, with changing and opaque rules about what is acceptable and what will wind up just being thrown away. I'd give that as an example of a policy that promotes a certain amount of effort to make people FEEL like they are making a difference, vs actually making a significant difference.
You don't have to do anything and there's no shame in that. Just don't disrespect the people who do.
This article is talking about heating plastic in a microwave which is something a lot of people do but I suspect fewer people have unloaded skids from the back of a tractor trailer in the summer. That stuff that is at room temp on the grocery store shelve has gone through a tone of heat cool cycles before it makes it to you.
For instance, I've been using reusable shopping bags for 25 years and buy most of my food through farmers market, never touching plastic bags or packaging in the whole lifecycle. That's probably at least 10,000 fewer plastic bags. Sure there's some wasteful people that probably use that in a month, I see how people shop.
This isn't a virtue contest - it's a lifestyle commitment just like deciding not to smoke for health reasons. At scale these things have impact.
Also I'm not anti-plastic - I just don't like making a bunch of trash and appreciate higher quality materials.
(I get holes in pure cotton sheets too fast)
There are reams of information out there about how age affects plastics, and how. It's all based on basic chemistry.