Just today I watched a video about Papa John's where they proudly proclaimed moving from cardboard packaging to plastic for "visuals" (https://youtu.be/9RXObjS639M?t=457). This just wouldn't wash in Europe.
We should absolutely use the existing nuclear reactors until they can't be maintained anymore, but it's economics never really made sense. It was only viable because the construction was essentially socialized and the storage for the waste never included in the calculation.
But I'm not a specialist on the topic, so I'm not talking with authority here.
Millions of people die a year from fossil fuel burning. Effectively zero for nuclear.
Cost of living is a big issue here, what to do with all those used chicken wing packages is not.
I’m not saying we don’t dislike single use plastic, we’re moving away from it somewhat too. But it’s just really not much of a problem.
In many cases, plastic packaging is better for the environment. A friend of mine owns a sauerkraut company that switched from glass jars to plastic bags. Glass jars need a lot more energy (and thus co2 emissions) to both create and transport. One truck of plastic bags probably holds as many packages as 20 trucks of glass jars.
Of course, there’s the issue of induced demand which makes everything murky. And certainly, there are many cases where we simply could go without packaging entirely.
But it’s not nearly as clear cut as “plastic bad”
It's a joke but depicts the reality of plastic usage.
Personally I carry my own metal straw around (especially for hot drinks…I’ve never understood people who drink hot drinks with plastic straws and I’d suspect whatever keeps a paper straw from not collapsing with hot drinks is likely to be something I don’t want in my system either) but am not sure if that’s a scalable solution? Is that what Europeans do?
Alternatively, of course, you just don’t use straws. Glasses exist…
This is what I do. Not sure why straws are so popular. I heard restaurants pushed them because it made people drink more/faster, but most places have free refills these days so that doesn't really make sense anymore.
What's hard about it? I seem to have no trouble.
At some point restaurants realized they could offer free refills as a competitive advantage, (or save labor and have customers fill their own drinks) and now everyone does it. At that point, straws were just something that was expected.
not using straws?
Now that I eat more fiber, from sprouted legumes, fresh fruits and vegetables, and microwaved-in-a-little-water root vegetables, I find I can go a lot longer without drinking water.
What percentage of people drink who drink beer or wine drink it with a straw?
What percentage of people who drink sugary beverages use straws, and why the difference?
Plastic bags, plastic cups, plastic cup lids, styrofoam, plastic packaging, plastic candy wrappers, etc, frankly speaking, the average consumer does not give a shit about what these things are made of. Which is also to say, the average consumer would not mind at all if any of these things were required to be renewable. These are all things a manufacturer, restaurant, supplier, etc cares about, they are the ones on the hook for solving the problem of making these renewable, they are the ones who are usually impacted by most bans like this.
But plastic straws are something that the average consumer does care about, they stick this into their mouth, it effects the quality of their meal. For people with certain medical conditions, all their meals must be consumed through these things. When you ban plastic straws you push a bunch of neutrals off the fence.
Plastic straw bans don't effect the usual industries, so bans are naturally going to be easier. I'm sure that plastic straw manufactures would be upset, but largely speaking the usual lobbyists for this kind of thing are unlikely to care. This deceives environmentalists into thinking this is a low hanging fruit. So legislation is passed, consumers get pissed, and now the people who care about the environment are less likely to get re-elected.
Was it worth it?
Where I live supermarkets now only have paper bags or sturdy multi-use bags.
There will also be some EU wide legislation pretty soon.
The bigger supermarkets (Kroger, etc.) all default to using single-use plastic. They will give you paper bags if you ask, and of course you can bring your own but it doesn't seem very common.
As long as the markets provide disposable bags free/cheap, people will tend to do that out of convenience.
Anecdotally, the fee seems to work well in both places, or at least single-use plastic bag use seems relatively low as most people seem to bring a reusable bag or use a backpack or similar.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/carrier-bag-charges-retailers-re...
https://assets.ctfassets.net/bffxiku554r1/4TNPmg4tzrgoH39Iev...
You kind of have to explain yourself to the cashier if you want a plastic one.
If norwegians care so much about the environment or climate change, let them take out their oil platforms first.
Personally I agree that we should stop the oil and gas extraction as the more oil stay in the ground the better, and the country is split about 50/50 on this issue.
Unfortunately, the major parties have been against so far but the conservatives are finally starting to debate it internally and if they come down on the planned phase out of oil and gas it will happen. The major left wing parties are not interested so far.
There has been some movement the in the legal route, the supreme court recently declared some recent exploration licenses invalid due to a clause in our constitution, however we'll see how long that ban lasts.
In any case, not being fast enough in one area does not mean you have to pollute max in other areas.
Turns out there's a black market for plastic grocery bags.
Anecdotally, 100% of grocery-store plastic bags I get are reused as trash bags and doggy poop bags. Same for most other people I know. Very few actually get thrown away after one use. And as it turns out, people in areas where such bags are banned, they buy other kinds of plastic bags to use for those purposes.
[0] They claim it does, but I'm not sure I notice any difference.
People have no idea how little their personal choices and what they see in consumer facing products actually matter in the grand scheme of environmental impacts. Most of the efforts we see (plastic straws banned, caps that don't detach, "recycling") are just cosmetic. It's design to distract us from the real issue of industrial consumerism and preventing actual meaningful change.
But probably everything-consumption is really high, with a toxic transportation system (sand for roads), land use, electronics use (rare earths), etc. Fucking up the planet is the easiest way to increase GDP.