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Comment by Ajay-p | Hacker News Reader

What is the solution to recycled plastic? Asia is no longer buying it from America (1) and it's more carbon polluting to use recycled plastic (2) so.. what is the answer?

1) https://www.npr.org/2019/08/20/750864036/u-s-recycling-indus...

2) https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/sep/24/lego-ab...

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The answer is to stop using plastic where its material properties confer no functional advantage. More metal, more paper, more glass, perhaps more high-quality plastic. Of course, this makes everything currently packaged in cheap, mildly toxic plastic more expensive.

It's the defining trait of the 21st century, our global economic pursuit of the lowest prices possible for everything is starting to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The solutions are all inflationary, whether paying for decontamination/medical treatment after the fact or using higher quality materials, so if we do fix the problem people will generally bitch about the increased cost and poor people will be stepped on yet again through cost inflation; because a financial asset can go up and down automatically with inflation, but inflation-matching salary increases are only extracted at economic gunpoint. Maybe the would-be Neo-Aristocrats will wake up and realize it isn't the 90s anymore, and keeping the herds healthy is in the ranchers' best interest; but they're stubborn enough to force that realization to be a violent one, so it'll be a while yet before we truly turn the corner.

Or, in some cases, just less packaging in general. Plastic is so cheap that it's seemingly used "because we can" in many instances. How important is it that nobody else's fingerprints are on the case of your brand new DVD?

Careful, the 'Reduce' and 'Reuse' part of the 3 R's are deeply unpopular. How dare we not cover everything in useless plastic wraps? It's practically a jobs program. Do you wanna make the plastics workers unemployed???

Here in Germany at least, I see less plastic packaging than there was when I came 10 years ago. For example, locally, you can take your container to the supermarket deli counter and they will fill it with cheese or meat. This is a big national chain (Edeka). I assume awareness is better in most countries than it was, and companies follow demand.

The vast majority of plastic is in packaging industrial purposes, i.e. moving stuff through factories and warehouses. It's not the brand new DVD that have the majority of it, it's the plastic CD-transporters, plastic dvd-case molders/holders/transporters, plastic wrap holders, etc.

What do you mean you don't find joy in thrice unwrapping your printer ink cartridge from a sealed plastic bag inside a cardboard box inside a thick plastic clamshell case?

> How important is it that nobody else's fingerprints are on the case of your brand new DVD?

How important should it be? Zero.

How important is it to your sales, when your competitors product on the shelf has zero fingerprints and yours does? Critical.

This can be educated/advertised. A label saying "finger prints on our dvds prove they are safer for you(r children) and the environment" would be enough I suppose.

If only marketing were so easy.

And yet that kind of thing is done all over the place all the time

Who is buying new DVDs?

We also need to somehow prevent those alternative materials from being coated in plastic, as many metal and paper "replacements" for plastic often are.

"Reduce, reuse, recycle" is in priority order. Recycling is supposed to be the last resort

Sequester the carbon in properly lined and maintained landfills.

It is better off there than being shipped to the other side of the planet just to be kicked into the Yangtze when the bail has too many dirty peanut butter jars in it.

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