But those more durable goods have a cost in hydrocarbons as well, don’t they? Lot of energy input in a hunk of steel. Are we really saving any fossil fuel conversion by swapping over? Has anyone measured?
The price of something usually reflects the energy needed to produce it. But it does not take account the externalized cost on the society and environment.
On the other hand, there are areas where other materials like cotton are only a bit more expensive but do not have such a negative effect on the environment. In those areas, like textiles, a ban on synthetic material is probably a good thing.
The problem with the environmental impact of plastics is not the production, it's where it ends up. So the question is how to incentivize keeping a closed system where plastics ends up being burned.
Minimizing the use of plastics requires a complete change of how the economy works. It would require a society of citizens, not consumers who throw away things that are still fine and there are certain areas where plastics can not be replaced by other stuff.
Forcing a cap on plastic production means hurting the emerging markets most but also the wealth in western countries.
All the environmental degradation is in the developing world, where they… do not value the environment in the same way. We didn’t either when we were developing. It took a while.
But western advanced economies dispose of their trash well. It’s not even close to the top of our list in terms of what we could do for the environment. Seems to capture our collective imagination tremendously though. Maybe because of guilt for consumer culture, maybe because making a meaningful impact would hurt too much.
It's just not visible immediately. But you can actually easily collect hundreds of kilograms of plastics next to a 1-2km long part of a road on the countryside.
If there’s a plan for remediating tire shavings over the course of tires wearing down in any of these threads I must have missed it. Please correct me?
As far as the rest it’s just not true. Landfills in the west are fine. Nothing is perfect but they’re not impactful at all ecologically. (Developing world not so. Lack of robust waste management contributes massively in the developing world.)
It's the west who's shipping the plastic waste to Asia where it ends up destroying the environment and the health of people.
And that is fine. We would have to fix a whole RAFT of serious serious problems before landfills are anybody’s radar. We will never see it our lifetime and I hazard that we may never see the day.
Other countries have tighter land requirements and they might be more forward thinking, but the idea that plastic packaging is impacting the environment is just not supported by data.
As long as you’re not throwing it in the river, plastics waste just doesn’t matter much.
https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
But yes, I do expect significant progress on this in the next few years!
That's a total fiction. There is plastic trash in my yard right now which came from somewhere else. I don't even know where it came from; my entire neighborhood and the park downstream are littered with plastic trash almost year-round.
Steel and glass won't give you cancer, wool won't destroy your hormonal system, &c.