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Recycling is an industry psyop to convince the public that plastic can be consumed ethically and sustainably. Unless we ban disposable plastics altogether, the problem will only get worse. Plastic has only been around for 100 years; imagine just how bad things will be in 500.

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They even designed their plastic type symbol to look like the recycle symbol, even though most plastics can't be recycled.

> The “chasing arrows” symbol we see on plastic containers and products does not necessarily mean the product is recyclable.

https://www.acmeplastics.com/content/your-guide-to-plastic-r...

When we have built entire civilizations that require orders of magnitude more burning of gasoline to get through a day, plastics are the least of our worries, IMHO.

If my fellow Americans were forced to lift and pour the 20 gallons of gasoline when they refill their tanks, they might start to realize the true source of the vast majority of their environmental damage.

(And as far as waste, tire microplastics are a far bigger concern than any plastic packaging waste.)

Then ban oil and cars, too. I'm deadly serious.

"Deadly" is the operative word, as that would cause incalculable suffering and damage.

Cars do cause absolutely untold amounts of death and suffering. Something like 60-80 millions deaths and 2 billion injuries have been caused by cars.

It's one of the major causes of early death. Most of our fire departments' time in the US is spent dealing with the carnage and bodily mutilation caused by cars, and only a tiny fraction spent on actual fires.

That may well be true, and yet, getting rid of oil and cars would be much worse by many orders of magnitude.

You think getting rid of oil and gasoline cars would kill 6-8 billion people and injure all the rest?

Getting rid of oil and cars would be much more likely to lead to civilizational collapse than climate change in my opinion.

Friend, I am right there with you. Its a long political battle ahead of us...

Hah just imagining having to help fill the jet fuel before ascending the stairs to the plane.

Same idea as slaughtering your own animals. Problem is that there is still a lot of other invisible uses from companies. Can't force Shell execs to bring paper towels to clean up an oil spill (well, maybe we can, but you get the point).

It's mind boggling to ponder a world without any plastic products though, isn't it? I work in ag irrigation, and the degree to which plastic has taken over irrigation implements in the last 20+ years is mind boggling. I sometimes wonder what it would mean for our company and industry in general if plastic suddenly became toxic.

If plastic becomes toxic, it won't _become toxic_, it will become recognized as toxic, which would mean that it's toxic right now, and while that's true for some plastics, it doesn't seem to be true for the majority of food-safe plastics in use.

I think it's more likely that there's some kind of subtle effect from the introduction of microplastics into the ecosystem that we haven't identified yet, but as of right now, there's no conclusive evidence that I'm aware of that microplastics are toxic, only that sufficient accumulation of them can impair biological function, just the same as any contaminant would.

Agree 99%, but as plastics break down there's a chance that they do become toxic.

For example, a chemical used in tires is extremely toxic to salmon, but only after breaking down a bit:

https://www.science.org/content/article/common-tire-chemical...

Oh wow, that's really interesting. I wasn't aware. Thank you!

After the stone, bronze and iron age, we are definitely in the plastic age now.

I imagine in 500 years there will be nanobots and engineered organisms that recycle plastic in the environment.

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