85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics | Hacker News Reader

85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

worldwildlife.org

183 pointssharpshadow255 comments

I was skeptical of whether it was representative of 85% of the global population, or just the first-world.

I've often thought (and heard that) environmental concerns are secondary to economic, and that people in less prosperous countries don't care as much about environmental concerns as people in first-world countries who are secure in most areas of their lives. Surprisingly, this data says the opposite!

Sample size was: North America: 2000, Central & South America: 3500, Europe: 8000, Africa: 3000, APAC: 7700,

On banning unnecessary single-use plastics being 'important': Australia: 87%, South Korea: 86%, Mexico: 94%, Uganda: 93%,

This may be obvious to some, but I really had the opposite notion until seeing this data.

The response rate is so low as to be entirely meaningless. If you're content with sampling only 0.000001% of the population, you can get any results you want by simply selecting for the people who care the most by taking a bunch of time to lecture the individual if they seem like they'd vote the other way (oh no, you have to leave? but we didn't even have time to submit your vote yet... :( ), and wording the question in such a way to make the answer you want be the only reasonable response.

> The response rate is so low as to be entirely meaningless.

This calculator says you need a 385 sample size for a billion (or infinite) population: https://www.calculator.net/sample-size-calculator.html?type=...

Please check the theory presented below the calculator, it explains why such a low number is enough for a confidence level of 95% that the real value is within ±5% of the measured/surveyed value.

Yes, if you had a list of all 8,000,000,000 people in the world and went to visit 385 truly randomly selected from that list and didn't leave until you got an answer, yes the theory says that would be a reasonably trustworthy sample.

But that theory is useless in practice, when the efficacy of the survey is entirely determined by the sampling bias. Here we have a survey of a few thousand people who had internet access and were on whatever websites promoted this survey and chose to click through the survey and had their votes counted by whatever "spam filtering" logic was used, and multiplied by whatever "population correction factor" was selected, and they're trying to somehow pass it off as "85% of People".

Its bogus through and through.

That's extremely dependent on who the 385 people are.

TFA goes into this a little

> The samples in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United States can be taken as representative of these countries' general adult population under the age of 75.

> Due to the fact that the vast majority of the data was collected via Ipsos' online panels (India being the only exception, in which 1,800 were interviewed face-to-face and 400 were interviewed online), participation tends to consist of those who have access to the necessary technology. The samples in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Indonesia, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Nigeria, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey and Uganda are more urban, more educated and/or more affluent than the general population. While not nationally representative, the survey results for these countries provide a useful and unique indication of the direction of public opinion.

> Weighting has been employed to balance demographics and ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to the most recent census data.

> The precision of Ipsos online polls are calculated using a credibility interval with a poll of 1,000 accurate to +/- 3•5 percentage points and of 500 accurate to +/- 5.0 percentage points. For more information on the Ipsos use of credibility intervals, please visit the Ipsos website.

Ipsos is fairly reputable in the field, FWIW.

The calculator also assume random selection. Don't trust statistics math too much. Even in acccounting where only arithmetic is being used, with legal auditing done yearly or quarterly basis, fraud is incredibly common (working in corporates for decades, they even termed it as massaging numbees by financial engineers). This kind of surveys without any audit and legal framework backing it, at 385 sampling is just inviting fraud. At least 2 to 3Mil needed and back by local election boards or local enforcement agencies. If this is done even in communist countries like China or Vietnam will still be way more legit than done in California or Oslo.

Yep, asking people vague questions about the boogieman du jour is a questionable excercise at best.

If a competing research team had gone out and done a survey with the question rephrased as, "Do you want a global ban on medical syringes and bottled water?"

You might find out, amazingly, 92% of people strongly support single-use plastics!

The actual question was [0]:

> The United Nations agreed in 2022 to develop a global treaty to end plastic pollution. How important or unimportant do you believe it is to have global rules to…

> Ban unnecessary single-use plastic products, e.g., shopping bags, cutlery, cups & plates?

As survey questions go, this is actually a pretty precise question.

[0] https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Providing the context about the UN treaty makes it unnecessarily loaded. People are biased towards being agreeable, if you start out saying "everyone in the world agrees X, do you also agree X?", people are more likely to say yes than if you asked the question in isolation.

The word "unnecessary" also adds bias, and skews the results: "Of course we shouldn't unnecessarily use plastic. Oh, but my personal water bottle and the bag I get my food in and the cutlery I use to eat it and the... well not those, those are very necessary: I need them to eat and drink!"

That's a horrible question. What exactly is "unnecessary"?

> e.g., shopping bags, cutlery, cups & plates?

Are trash bags nessesary or unnecessary?

In what context? It's certainly possible to live without them given the existence of large bins, small bins, compost bins, etc.

At a huge cost to public sanitation - rats, etc.

That’s my point. These simple things are NEVER as simple as these trite push polls imply.

> At a huge cost to public sanitation - rats, etc.

Not in my six decades of experience.

The majority of people about where I live don't use plastic trash bags and are well accustomed to keeping mice, rats, cockroaches, etc. at bay.

I must say, I'm surprised the rats of which you speak are apparently unable to chew through a plastic bag ... why are they so disabled wrt other rats about the globe?

What do you think is a good sample size? How would you arrive at one?

If your question is asked entirely free of bias from a truly randomly selected population, you can use standard statistical methods to come up with a number based on your desired confidence interval. On the other hand, if you're an organization with your funding tied to the perception that people support your mission, and you're surveying whether people support your mission, I'm going to need damn near everyone in the population to respond to your survey before I'll buy it.

There isn’t one. Some things are not measurable by this standard and the stats relatively meaningless. 3000 people from a whole continent? Cmon

please see the introduction to statistical methods linked above at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40590633

You should consider that this is obviously a "study" meant to manufacture data to support the organization's favored position not a real investigation into what actual people think.

Their conclusion is based on multiple surveys with different questions and methodologies but consider they did things like ask first, ": Before today, had you heard about a challenge called Plastic Free July, which encourages people to refuse and reduce single use plastics?" Told them about the harm single use plastics cause and then asked them, " How important or unimportant do you believe it is to have an internationally binding treaty to combat plastic pollution?" To which a large percentage of people obviously responded that yes it is important.

In another survey they asked, "The United Nations agreed earlier this year to develop a global treaty to end plastic pollution..." with the following question then referencing this treaty, "The treaty will include global rules for participating countries. How important or unimportant do you believe it is to have global rules to:" To which one of th responses was, "Ban unnecessary single-use plastics.", another was, "Ban types of plastic that cannot be easily recycled", etc.

And then they interpret agreeing that there should be a treaty to stop plastic pollution immediately after being given information about how bad it is to be the same as "Ban on Single-Use Plastics" which by and large no one surveyed actually said they wanted explicitly, nor were they asked.

Keep in mind that in the methodology [0] the survey company emphasized that "the samples in Brazil, Chile, [...] Mexico, [...] and Uganda are more urban, more educated, and/or more affluent than the general population." It was an entirely online survey, so respondents in poorer places are more likely to be those with internet access and the spare time to be poking around on the internet.

If you restricted the survey in wealthy countries to only the comparatively affluent I would expect you'd see similar percentages as we have here in poorer countries.

I do love that Japan is such a major outlier (only 60% say it's important). They don't have the litter problem that the rest of us have constantly reminding us about the problem.

[0] https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Opinions/desires expressed and actual behaviours are very much two things.

Spent most of my life in Africa & actual behaviours line up a lot closer with your instinct. If you're close to the poverty line practicality trumps environment. Choice between paper bag and plastic? Plastic obviously - it's more durable and has more uses later

Poorer parts of the world have (typically) much worse problems with litter.

Poorer nations typically have no/few refuse collection services, and people often just pile up and burn their own refuse or dump it in rivers to take it away.

That means poorer people see directly the litter rather than an 'out of sight, out of mind' approach.

Poorer parts of the world also purchase a LOT more products packaged in single use packaging than industrialized countries. In the Philippines, pretty much every consumer product that could be sold in a multi-use jar, tube, or bottle instead comes in a single-use plastic sachet like you would get for ketchup in McDonald's. Laundry detergent, toothpaste, hair products, you name it. When you combine that with a lack of waste collection infrastructure, you end up with the Pasig river full of single-use plastic sachets every time it rains.

Here's a well researched report that dives into a lot of the issues of why these plastics are used. It is a combination of economic and societal factors.

https://www.no-burn.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Sachet-Ec...

And here's a article that names and shames which companies produce most of the single use plastic waste found in the Philippines.

https://www.rappler.com/environment/findings-philippines-pla...

https://www.newsecuritybeat.org/2020/09/turning-tap-plastic-...

> Poorer nations typically have no/few refuse collection services, and people often just pile up and burn their own refuse or dump it in rivers to take it away.

Would it not make sense then if they had a container with which to collect and responsibly dispose of the refuse? A plastic bag perhaps?

They have to put the bag somewhere. Paying for a guy to come around and haul your garbage away every week to be responsibly disposed in a secure landfill is laughably out of budget for a huge chunk of the world population.

Or maybe we could tackle the root of the problem, avoid waste that doesn't decompose on the human timescale.

Places that still have open defecation and garbage in the streets have bigger issues to be solved before we deduce plastic bags are the problem. E.g. third world.

Seattle and SF have banned plastic bags and the streets are still littered with human feces. Maybe for their next initiative they should pass out reusable bags for people to poop into. Sorry but a feel good measure to make grocery bags illegal doesn't move the needle for me when I still have to play hopscotch with literal logs of human shit.

These priorities are hilariously out of order.

More importantly, the folks who take the time to response to these surveys in poorer countries are much more likely to be the affluent class who spends time in the kind of areas the surveyors are willing to visit, and has spare time on their hands to talk to people.

Yeah, was going to say similar.

A decade ago I had the opportunity to visit Nairobi, thanks to my partner at the time.

The place is highly varied, the best looking like any western city, while the worst is basically people living on top of a not-yet-sealed landfill site:

https://www.google.com/maps/@-1.2785067,36.7500781,3a,71.6y,...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kibera_Nairobi_Kenya_slum...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MathareValleySlum.jpg

Her brother is involved with a startup whose mission is to help with this, might be interesting to some folks here: https://www.sargasso-reclamation.com

The key word is "unnecessary". Everyone thinks we should get rid of unecessary plastic. Everyone also disagrees on what is unecessary. ask them if they would pay some percent more for a good to not have some specific plastic and it will be a resounding near unanimous no.

Honestly, to me, the 85% statistic is meaningless because the survey is simply asking if you believe "plastic = bad" - a pretty common sentiment, especially in a third world country like India where plastic pollution is visible everywhere. I'd be more interested to see a survey that asks "would you be willing to pay 5% more at the grocery store for plastic-free packaging?"

In less prosperous countries, the majority of consumers are more interested in saving money than saving the environment.

Realistically 20-30% more if you pack for example a yogurt into glass instead of plastic. Glass would be like half of net weight.

Lots of medical supplies are single use plastics.

Medical supplies also tend to have much better-defined disposal processes and ends-of-life than, say, plastic bags or coke bottles.

Irony is depending on what country you're in coke bottles might have a better disposal process than even medical supplies.

I'll admit I was a little skeptical of plastic bag bans here in Canada, but it's had a noticeable effect on how much random garbage ends up stuck in hedges and fences where I live. Adapting to it wasn't too bad and good reusable bags are a lot more ergonomic and don't tear as easily when carrying heavy loads.

I fully agree, however if you're the kind of person who orders groceries, then what ends up happening is that you start collecting reusable bags that you have no way of reusing. I hope that someone starts some kind of "reusable bag recycling" system so I can give the scores of bags I have to a good home

If the bags are actually reusable, it doesn't seem very hard to coordinate to have the delivery person pick up the last delivery's bags next time they're at your house.

For home grocery delivery, I could imagine that using stackable or collapsible crates or similar containers might even make more sense, assuming the delivery is via car/truck. Why stick to a container optimized for walk-out customers at all?

Ocado does exactly that in the UK, refunds them too.

I had that problem, but then the supermarkets in Australia all switched to paper bags. Now I just chuck them in recycling. Even if they do end up in landfill or a creek, they are paper, in a month they will have disintegrated.

In my area, one of our grocery chains has "Compostable Bags" which they package the "Pickup / Delivery" orders in.

My area also mandates municipal composting so the discussion of "But is it _really_ compostable" is moot.

It does not matter much how they do in a landfill. What matters is what happens when left out in the environment, aiui they weather and breakdown pretty fast.

Anything that ends up either in a landfill or in the environment (fwiw landfills are usually part of the environment, but that's a different discussion) is something that doesn't get to amortize production costs over several uses, so arguably both are best to be avoided, if at all possible.

Yes I can attest to how quickly they start breaking down even just sitting in the container for about a week. Almost need a scheduled reminder to replace it no matter how full it is.

It's really a farce. The old bags were really, really thin. Now, they're reuseable, and so they have to be much thicker, but they're still only used once. This just means that we're making more plastic waste.

I don't know what the average number of uses for a reusable bag is, but it's certainly not one. We've got about a half dozen, including a few freezer bags that do most of the work, plus a few that have been repurposed as the "beach activities bag" and "kid's soccer stuff bag" and so on. The ones used for groceries have been used at least once a week for going on four years.

The old bags also averaged slightly over one use, but the mandatory "bag of bags" in the pantry got depleted much more slowly than it filled.

If someone is throwing their reusable bags in the landfill and getting new ones every time, they're using it wrong...which I admit isn't entirely their fault at this societal scale, but let's at least agree it's the expected way to use the tool.

The only grocery delivery service I've used let you return bags the next time they drop food off. I'm not sure how many of them get reused though.

Good idea! But unfortunately the reason I always have more bags is that I forget my bags in the first place.

Maybe you get a few cents back when you return them?

What’s wrong with paper?

making paper is much more environmentally damaging than making plastic

i'm not joking, look it up

It uses more energy, but doesn’t create plastics which last thousands of years.

Energy usage of shopping bags isn’t that big of a deal. The trash created after use is.

the trash created after use of shopping bags is not a big deal either; a typical non-reusable shopping bag weighs 200 milligrams, so if you use three per day for 72 years, you produce a grand total of 16 kilograms of shopping bags. that's less than even your own bones, which will also last thousands of years

the issue with paper mills is not their energy consumption, which generally is fueled by the same biomass they process (and is thus carbon-neutral), but the toxic waste they produce

do the math instead of just posting stuff without thinking

When I go fishing at the creek it is not a ton of paper bags littering it. Single-use plastic bags are terrible and people overly use them. Go get a pack of gum from a bodega and you'll be offered a plastic bag by default.

Maybe we shouldn't necessarily ban them, but we should definitely tax them to make people question "do I really need that bag?"

it sounds like your assessment of environmental harms is mostly guided by surface appearances, but things like paper mill pollution are not easily visible or understandable

When did I advocate for paper bags? I don't seem to see that anywhere. It seems like your argument is mostly guided by straw men and reading comprehension failure. How is paper mill pollution relevant then? There weren't paper bags available where I went either. So it's not like banning plastic bags increased paper usage.

Either way, we can also have regulations protecting against paper mill pollution. It's not like we have to have one or the other. We can do both!

But in the end my argument is we should do much to eliminate the wastefulness of single-use bags in general. Not that we should substitute one for another. Quit throwing so much shit away every day of your life is my argument.

I fully acknowledge there's absolutely useful places for disposable things. Medical equipment, certain kinds of packaging, etc makes a lot of sense; there's often not really any good alternatives. But being given a throw away bag after buying a pack of gum is a simple example of the egregiousness of our throw away culture.

Go kayaking on most rivers in the US and get absolutely inundated with single use plastic trash of the worst kinds and continue telling me how bad doing anything is. Fuck single use plastic shopping bags, I can't wait to see them disappear.

> you start collecting reusable bags that you have no way of reusing

I use them as trash bags for the various small trashcans in the home (office, bathroom, etc). Works great.

Also fantastic for any trash (like fish) you have that you don't want stinking up the big trash can for several days and needs to be taken out asap.

Our neighborhood has a stretch where people park and dump litter profusely. I go out once a month and clean it up. (Soooo many vape pods)

I think the biggest change is mostly in perception. Old plastic bags were lighter and blew around so they were very visible. The newer heavier "reusable" plastic bags use a significant amount more of plastic - they are heavy enough to stay near where they get dropped and sink to the bottoms of puddles. You don't see them floating around in the wind but they still get littered a ton.

This sounds like the UK.

In the UK everything is slightly dirty, but then there are these significant piles of garbage that just go unattended and grow in size. I think it shocked me when I first moved there. Years of rubbish in some areas, months in others, and it would be right in front of peoples houses and parks.

The UK really got left behind in terms of quality of life at some point. GDP doesn't buy nice living. I'm sure it's similar in other parts of (wealthy) Europe.

Why do people dump litter like this? I can't even really comprehend it in a developed country.

I'm skeptical. As it was pointed out to me, what percentage of things going in those plastic bags is already wrapped in a plastic bag, 90%? The single most useful plastic bag on the outside seems negligible in comparison.

If we can relatively easily reduce the single-plastic waste of those 10%, why not start there (while in parallel thinking about alternatives for product wrappers)?

There are also so many other product container types than plastic: Glass, metal cans (ok, these are often plastic-coated and I don't know how recycling for these works, but it seems to be possible), paper... It doesn't work for everything, but it does for many things – assuming the right incentives are in place.

Seconded. Plastic bag bans here in Colorado have been fantastic from my view. Far less trash everywhere, and we use better bags that can carry more without failing catastrophically in the parking lot.

The plastic bag ban in Colorado has been awful. I would much rather go back to before.

Why? I haven't used a disposable plastic bag in a decade, and don't miss them in the least. What issue do you have with it?

Those thin supermarket plastic bags were fantastic for disposing of cat waste and litter. You put the waste in the bag, tied it off, and threw it in the outside trash bin. Now, we buy quart food storage bags for disposing of cat waste.

What? No! They were TERRIBLE for cat litter because they frequently had holes in the bottom from the manufacturing process, and would dribble used litter all over your floor. We use the allegedly-biodegradable (but probably not) dog poop bags, at a grand cost of around 2 cents per each.

Double bagging solved the leaking problem. Thanks for sharing the dog poop bag solution. I'll give it a try.

On a recent trip to Canada, I really noticed the fact every stream and river didn't have any noticeable plastic trash clinging to all the roots and twigs and what not. It was pretty nice, and I quickly got used to not having disposable bags. And now I've got a Super C and Jean Coutu bag in my car.

It's not sexy, but the number one way to reduce plastic pollution is to build landfills and proper waste management systems in developing countries. Plastic bans are largely performative and often counterproductive. Instead of bringing their own bags, a lot of shoppers just treat the "reuseable" bags the they buy a the supermarket as disposable.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2024/01/22/new-j...

https://www.latimes.com/environment/plastic-bag-ban-waste-40....

Mexico City implemented a ban on single-use plastics on January 1, 2021, which has been almost completely ignored except outside of corporate chains such as Walmart, where indeed many people just buy the recyclable bags.

I’m curious what bags would need to cost to change that behaviour, as for all the complaining about inflation, many clearly don’t miss 3-4% a shop buying cloth bags here.

I bring a bookbag to stores, but if I forget one I buy a "reuseable" bag and then get rid of it. If you need a bag you need a bag.

Before plastic, stores had paper bags. Some stores offer these now but many don't. I find it surprising. They're certainly less useful than plastic bags but they're plenty useful. you can walk with 2-3 in your arms, they hold a good amount of things, and they're recyclable. And then if you need one with handles you can get one of the paid bags stores have.

I think bags would have to cost $10-$20 before the most people started remembering to bring one to the shop.

People simply don't think far enough ahead to plan to take a bag to the shop, and prefer to 'pay for convenience'.

Plenty of people pay $30 to avoid having to turn their oven on to cook something.

I'm actually pretty curious how they conducted the survey - you can't usually get 80% of people on a phone to admit they use the bathroom, let alone agree with a complex policy proposal. The attached report is high on charts but low on details.

Yeah I was hoping to see some more details on that. I'm in favor of a ban like this, but as with every big move like this, there are negative consequences that come with it (everything has trade offs).

I am very curious how they framed the question to get such a high percentage of agreement. Surely this ban would result, at least in the short term, in higher prices for a lot of goods.

A ban like that sounds good. But what would replace those plastics? For the take-out food containers a common alternative is PFAS-treated paper. Is it much better for the health environment?

In Germany, I've seen a multi-use container system implemented by at least some delivery companies and restaurants.

But even just reducing the staggering amount of single-use plastics in regular restaurant/bar contexts in the US would be a start. The amount of restaurants serving plastic cups, paper plates, and plastic tableware is absurd, and I'm not talking about festivals, outdoor food trucks etc – regular sit-down places with proper plumbing and enough space for a dishwasher that really have no excuse whatsoever for generating that amount of waste.

> regular sit-down places with proper plumbing and enough space for a dishwasher that really have no excuse whatsoever for generating that amount of waste.

They have an excuse; they don't want to pay someone to wash dishes.

This is why a ban is necessary. Businesses will always look for the cheapest way to operate.

Local restaurants here have started using DeliveryZero which is a reusable container program, you just take the containers back to a drop point.

That and plenty of places use non-PFAS-treated thicker paperboard. Those are also great in my experience.

Sadly it looks like DeliveryZero is still using plastic. :( I'd really love to see some companies using non-plastic takeout containers, especially for hot foods.

But even with cold foods, every study that has come out has shown microplastic shedding even from water bottles.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Could it be better? Absolutely. Is it a great starting point? Absolutely.

Ugh I've been to other countries that have such bougie takeout containers, the shit we have here in the US is insufferable by comparison.

It is funny, sometimes a new Chinese restaurant HQ'd in China will open up locally, and they'll start off using the same high quality takeout containers that are used in China, including such things as every order comes in an insulated bag (!!) but eventually they bow to economies of scale and adopt the same shit takeout containers everyone else uses in the US.

Bleck.

I always think of when I went to Beijing, ordered a fruit soda, and they took out a real glass bottle, filled it up, sealed it, and gave it to me! 100% premo feeling.

> you just take the containers back to a drop point.

If someone drives to drop off the container they have uses way more resources than they would just using a disposable. I suspect this idea is just greenwashing.

> thicker paperboard

Which again uses more resources, and emits more CO2, than plastic.

You're assuming I'm driving it back to the drop point as a dedicated trip. A: I typically keep the containers until I order next time, you have a month to drop them off. So just drop them off when you're picking up your food. B: The drop off point is a short walk away, so you could just, you know, walk.

I'm not worried about resources or emissions here, I'm more concerned about trash in the rivers/oceans, and microplastics. There are more metrics to account for than you are allowing for.

> I typically keep the containers until I order next time

Don't them smell? If you wash them by hand you end up using more resources than if you had disposable. If you put them in a dishwasher then, I guess that would work, but seems like a lot of effort for takeout.

> I'm more concerned about trash in the rivers/oceans, and microplastics

Are you dumping things in the street? I suspect you are not. River/Ocean trash is a huge problem, and is not being caused in the US or Canada.

> Don't them smell? If you wash them by hand you end up using more resources than if you had disposable.

No. There is absolutely no way that rinsing out a container uses more resources than creating and transporting new disposable containers.

> Are you dumping things in the street?

I personally am not. I see plenty of people who are. I see plenty of trash in my local rivers and streams, so I'm not sure what you're basing your statement on.

> There is absolutely no way that rinsing out a container uses more resources than creating and transporting new disposable containers.

that's what i thought, too, until i did the math, and it turns out that i was wrong. rinsing out a bottle with hot water uses several times more energy than manufacturing a brand new plastic bottle from petroleum and transporting it (they're generally transported as preforms until the bottling plant, which keeps the costs down). in most cases, though, rinsing it out with cold water does use less

the high bit here, though, is not that you should stop using hot water to wash your dishes, or using reusable dishes. it's that the resource usage of food packaging is an irrelevant distraction from the real environmental devastation that's going on all around you

(actually no, the high bit is that you should base your beliefs and actions on objectively verifiable information and rational analysis rather than superstition)

I use cold water to rinse lol. Right, there are other issues so let’s do nothing about this issue. Got it.

in your case rinsing does use less resources than manufacturing and transporting a new container, then!

Of course transport 10 tons of paper product has zero energy consumption according to Law of Newtonian Physics. More weight, less energy. We successfully keep the ocean clean, but all turtles are dead by stopping ocean current with global warming.

Also as EV/Plugin-Hybrid adoption keeps increasing, the emissions generated from even a dedicated trip aren't an issue.

Mumbai has this solved, with the Dabbawala and Tiffin system. Tiffins are standardized reusable metal containers used for food delivery in Mumbai. The food can be restaurant takeout, or it can be a home-cooked meal someone sends you. Dabbawalas are the vendors who deliver the food, and collect the used tiffins/dabbas.

https://feedr.co/en-gb/c/blog/the-amazing-dabbawalas-of-mumb...

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-mumbais-dabbawalas...

It’s like shipping containerization but for actual food.

I love it.

Before we had PFAS paper there was wax coated paper. So long as you aren't using something like paraffin wax, it'll happily decompose with the rest of your trash.

The focus needs to be on containers that decompose in weeks/months/a year. Not thousands of years.

The EU have a new directive for that which comes after the single use plastics directive: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240301IP...

In my local area I'm seeing a move towards returnable containers.

Great graphic on the environmental impacts of different kinds of grocery bags: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

In short, single use plastic bags are very hard to beat.

"Ban unnecessary single-use plastic products most likely to become plastic pollution, e.g. shopping bags, cutlery, cups & plates"

Such a loaded question just weakens the point. That's why it's hard to take these efforts seriously.

I kind of agree. I feel like the word "unnecessary" in that sentence guts it. Of course we should ban unnecessary and wasteful things. If the question was "should we ban plastic bags completely in favor of re-usable ones" might get a very different answer. I would definitely say yes to the first question but I also sometimes forget to bring my reusable bags to the store and then definitely always get the disposable ones if it's more items than I can carry in my hands.

> Of course we should ban unnecessary and wasteful things

i strongly disagree with this; in almost all cases, the choice of what is unnecessary and wasteful should rest with the individual person most affected by it, not some kind of political authority or social consensus. even when it's legitimately a question of public policy—alcohol, for example, an addictive drug that causes massive amounts of crime and something like 5% of the world's human deaths—pigovian taxes are far preferable to outright bans. alcohol is a useful cleaning fluid, for example, and an effective antidote to ethylene glycol poisoning (though in rich countries safer antidotes are now available)

kim jong un has banned unnecessary and wasteful hairstyles, which is the road down which 'of course we should ban unnecessary and wasteful things' generally leads

i find it rather horrifying how casually people promote totalitarian ideologies like this nowadays

All I'm saying is the word "unnecessary" in that question clearly is a "weasel word" because, just like you're saying, it's subjective and also greatly weakens the statement. Usually unnecessary things with negative externalities are easy for people to say "sure let's get rid of that, it's not providing value". I think you're caveating something which only furthers that sentiment.

i agree that it's a weasel word, but it isn't enough of a weasel word to justify your conclusion. we should abstain from unnecessary and wasteful things, and perhaps in a few cases we should tax them, but very rarely should we ban things simply because they are unnecessary and wasteful!

Yah, I'd like to see the actual survey wording. All the weasel words they put in there make it seem kind of fake.

Is there a good substitute for cling wrap?

I mostly store food in reusable containers. And I try to use foil as much as possible. But some things are irregularly shaped and need a tight seal, and I’ve struggled to find a good alternative.

Beeswax wrap for things that don’t need a tight seal. Most things should just go into a container that has a proper lid. IMO you save fridge space that way because now things stack.

Slightly larger reusable containers?

There are also plenty of varieties of reusable ziploc-style bag out there, including ones in jumbo sizes.

That and being a bit more conscious of our consumer choices. If you jave that much left over, try keeping a food journal for the sake of getting a better idea of how much we actually consume in a month, then adjust your purchasing weights and quantities.

My wife and I did this about a year ago in effort to make some dietary changes, but it also happily resulted in less left-overs and slightly lower grocery expenses.

I guess it’s OK. The biggest problem are store-bought products. The once in a while use of very thin cling film used when preparing food is minuscule in comparison.

We keep a roll of plastic wrap in the drawer for the rare times it's actually necessary, but we've had good luck with the combo of two things: 1) pyrex containers with silicone replacement lids, and 2) stretchy silicone lids[1] for other containers (or directly on the ends of things like half-cucumbers or melons). We haven't found very many common use cases where cling wrap is actually necessary, but it's non-zero. I'm satisfied with our current state, but my bugbear is alternatives to ziplock bags.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/silicone-stretch-lids/s?k=silicone+st...

For freezing things, the ziplock bags are definitely hard to find an alternative for me as well.

Silicone stretch lids and bees wax wraps. Wrap foil around it for added protection, and re-use it since it won't get dirty. I sometimes use small plastic bags I already have lying around for the last part.

I feel like there are two levels of single use plastics. Single use plastic for individual use like food preservation seems like a decent carve out. Though, I suppose any carve out would be abused. Something like "can't ship with single use plastic as a packaging utility"

You use foil instead of cling wrap? And you do this for environmental reasons?

I'm struggling to understand here, why in the world would you do that? Foil consumes thousands of times more resources than plastic wrap.

thousands, really? that seems unlikely; it certainly isn't thousands of times cheaper

I assume the cost of plastic is about zero, and what you're paying for is shipping, storage, markup, all the middle stuff. Using numbers provided, 1000 sqft of plastic is $10.00, which could be $9.99 logistics and $0.01 material. 1000 sqft of foil is $50.00, with the same $9.99 shipping cost, and $40.01 in material. So that's 4000x. Numbers are kinda fake, but you get the idea.

wholesale plastic is surprisingly expensive, typically several dollars a kilogram. (even fairly raw petroleum distillates like gasoline cost about a dollar a kilogram at retail.) it's not like gravel and sand where shipping costs are most of the cost of the material; petroleum is precious enough to be routinely shipped intercontinentally, and plastic is an added-value product on top of that, requiring several capital- and energy-intensive purification and processing steps

to take an especially cheap example, polyethylene, as i understand it, is made by polymerizing ethylene (with <5ppm contaminants) on a ziegler-natta catalyst; the ethylene is mostly produced by steam cracking of hydrocarbons at 750°–950° followed by multiple distillation steps

so, using slightly less fake numbers, if we multiply four dollars a kilogram for the plastic, 50-micron thickness, and one gram per cc, we derive 20¢ per square meter (or, in medieval units, 1.9¢ per square foot). this is actually twice the retail price given upthread, so it's reasonable to think that nearly all the cost of the plastic wrap is the actual materials. also probably the plastic is thinner than my guess

(i'd be delighted to hear from ars what kind of plastic their plastic wrap is and if they can fold it in half six times to measure 64 layers of it with some calipers)

we can get more accurate numbers for aluminum; https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-aluminum.p... says 130¢ per pound last year (287¢/kg in modern units) and it's 2.699g/cc and typically 10μm thick. this works out to 7.75¢ per square meter, giving a raw materials cost estimate that's actually lower than my estimate for the plastic. the higher finished product cost is probably because of the cost of operating the rolling mills

I guess I exaggerated.

Plastic wrap: $1.97/200sf = $0.00985

Foil: $3.78/75sf = $0.05040

Looks like it's a bit over 5 times as much.

However used foil can't be recycled, while used plastic wrap can be burned for energy. But that depends on the disposal options you have available locally.

Use foil can be trivially recycled - it's metal: https://www.calgary.ca/waste/what-goes-where/metal-aluminum-...

most recyclers don't want it because most of its weight is rotting food; the aluminum is ten times thinner than a sheet of paper, a human hair, or (most relevantly here) a beer can

but yes, there's no technical difficulty in recycling it; it isn't like greasy paper where the grease messes up the recycling process

you can burn used foil for energy, possibly more easily than you can burn used plastic wrap—high-quality plastic wrap is polyvinylidene chloride, and burning it produces hydrochloric acid, which is a hazardous waste product you have to properly scrub from your exhaust. possibly you have to deal with inferior polyethylene plastic wrap, which is much worse at blocking oxygen, but is easy to burn safely

you can recycle used foil, it's just generally not high enough value to be worthwhile. organic contaminants burn off in the crucible

aluminum-air batteries are one of the most intuitively appealing ways to burn used foil for energy, but they are not yet in wide use

it's possible there are externalities not adequately captured by the retail price, such as toxic emissions from the manufacturing processes, or occupational illnesses. but it seems unlikely that those are hundreds of times the retail price

Also, most foils are coated on at least one side with a petroleum-based wax anyway.

perhaps that is true in some sense of 'most foils', but i have never in my life seen a roll of aluminum foil sold in a grocery store with petroleum-based wax on it, and i've bought grocery store aluminum foil on something like four continents

maybe you're thinking of some other use of aluminum foil which vastly outweighs common household use, and uses a different kind of foil that does come with wax on it?

Yup, and you can't recycle food stained foil, nor compost it like a pizza box

> Is there a good substitute for cling wrap?

In my area there has been "compostable" cling wrap available

I have no data about the veracity of the claim

There are beeswax based resuable clingwrap alternatives although I haven't tried them myself

We've tried it. I wouldn't call it a cling wrap replacement because it's a wax-coated paper and therefore not watertight/airtight in the same way plastic wrap is. It's fine for some things, but we never found ourselves choosing that when we could use a rigid container. It's very good as an external wrap for a sandwich you first wrapped in wax paper, though.

parafilm, which is even less reusable than cling wrap

vacuum containers

I have a vacuum sealer, but their bags are plastic. Is there an eco-friendly Food Saver bag that doesn’t require commercial composting?

There are hard plastic containers, like regular reusable food containers, that have good seals and little vacuum pumps on the lid. You actuate the lid pump a bit and it removes enough air from the container to keep food for a bit longer.

It's not magical, it won't keep food forever. But neither does cling wrap.

I bought re-usable vacuum seal containers from Foodsaver. I hate the thing. It cannot keep a seal and will always slowly let air in, in a few days.

I keep looking for alternatives since I vacuum seal a lot and I hate using a new plastic bag for each, but have yet to find a suitable alternative that doesn't defeat the entire purpose.

Can anyone explain to me how this works in practice? Eg if i now buy meat or cheese or pre-cut vegetables or bread at the supermarket, it’s in plastic packaging. What do legislators propose we replace that by? I understand (and use) reusable shopping bags but keeping sliced ham fresh sounds less practical. For clarity, I’m not skeptical, I’m all for the strictest plastic ban that’s remotely practical. But I don’t get how it would work. Do we all take tupperware into the butchers?

And garbage bags. How the hell are we going to handle garbage without plastic bags? Garbage caused a lot more pollution even in developed countries before everything could be neatly bagged up and buried in a landfill.

I don’t think proponents of the ban have really thought through the society-wide consequences of a single use plastic ban. I wish there were better alternatives but plastic is a bit of a miracle material and who’s to say we’re not going to face the same issue with any other polymer that we use to replace it.

That said, I don’t think we’ve ever properly priced in the externalities of all the garbage we create so maybe it’s time we had a major rethink of how we approach our refuse.

Butchers used to use wax paper. Many still do. A wax paper without a petroleum based coating can compost.

You could get them individually packed, but I believe that shelf-life would likely be affected significantly. Meaning that food waste would also go up. Packing anything with nitrogen or like is really hard without plastics. Same goes for vacuum.

So end result would be more traveling and emissions to go to stores more regularly and lot more wasted food. Again significantly increasing emissions.

People bought all of these things before plastics.

When I get meat it tends to come wrapped in (waxed?) paper.

>People bought all of these things before plastics.

Yes, and that was dangerous and inconvenient.

Reusable containers will work for all of these, except maybe pre-cut vegetables. You pay a deposit fee, and take your stuff in reusable containers.

Still in practice with milk bottles. Why not with everything else.

Glass jars and tin cans were the old solution.

Perhaps some modern deep eutectic chemistry can improve on the old energy economy of glass.

deep eutectic systems seem a lot more likely to help with synthesizing organic plastics than with synthesizing glass

Which ever is more profitable.

I’m taking this with a grain of salt because 85% of people adopting such a hardline environmentalist stance defies reason. I think the poll’s design and authors probably had something to do with it. Context matters!

Kind of like that "4 out of 5 dentists" claim from back in the day - it involved some very heavy editorializing:

https://nowiknow.com/who-was-the-fifth-dentist-that-didnt-re...

I don't want a ban, I want a tax on them. There's a strong use for single use plastics - medical goods being one of the important ones that I highly suspect people don't want a ban of. They define these as "necessary" versus "unnecessary" in their poll (ie the 85% figure is specifically for "ban unnecessary single-use plastic products, e.g., shopping bags, cutlery, cups & plates"). Things get murky really quickly when we bucket items. Are single use water bottles bad? Probably. Are all plastic liquid containers bad? Almost certainly not, you wouldn't want to store a corrosive acid that eats through glass in a glass bottle.

So either the option is create a giant database of what is/isn't single use, which then can be gamed in its own way, or simply tax all single-use plastics such that necessary cases still leverage them, but it quickly doesn't become cost-effective for the main offending category of them.

> Are all plastic liquid containers bad? Almost certainly not, you wouldn't want to store a corrosive acid that eats through glass in a glass bottle.

I'd argue that most, especially containers in regard to food item, are. You don't have to have a database to figure this out, you can start simple by just banning the use of single use plastic with regards to food. There aren't many (any?) items that are highly corrosive and intended for human consumption.

Plastics in medicine could wait for another round of legislation. Single use plastics used for shipping consumer goods and food are the 80% of plastic production problem.

> There aren't many (any?) items that are highly corrosive and intended for human consumption.

Pop cans have a plastic liner so it doesn't eat through the metal.

The tax might not have to be monetary. Putting geolocation QR codes on stuff could help mitigate the super-polluters by taxing perception.

I can't trust a plastics poll that doesn't also ask who wants the old straws back.

Just because people say that doesn't mean they'll actually want it in practice.

As well, asking people how important they think something is may not equate to their support for sweeping legislation.

My city banned bags once and had to immediately figure out how to unban bags because it caused outrage. They talked about it for 2 years and people supported it. Until the day it took effect that is.

My city talked about banning "Single Use Items" from drive thrus and such, but what they failed to communicate was this also meant "Paper Bags" like what McDonalds would hand you out the window.

It was _that_ part which sparked outrage. The overly-simplistic definition of "Single Use" items included items which are _actually_ recyclable like paper (or compostable if covered in food-stuff).

They undid the ban "for re-evaluation"

See e.g. Brexit

Yes yes instead of single use bags at the store I now get more durable plastic bags that I throw away after using once. Well done.

Obviously that's not how they're meant to be used, but you bring up a good point about the interaction of policy and behavior. These policies cannot be made without consideration for what behavior they will incentivize. In the case of disposable grocery bag bans, requiring that said disposable bags be made of more sturdy plastic so as to technically qualify as reusable is only going to harm the environment more as consumer habits won't change. The solution, of course, is not to throw up our hands and declare that nothing can be done. Banning the sale of these technically-reusable bags at point-of-sale very well might solve the problem and cause consumer behavior to shift as the sustainable practice of bringing your own bags becomes the most convenient one.

Some people find utility in these sturdier plastic bags, so a general ban would only do harm. They just specifically shouldn't be sold at checkout like disposable bags used to be.

Why don't you use reusable bags? I have a couple that fold up and go in my back pocket.

That's utterly ridiculous and highly inconvenient for nearly everyone that isn't proselytizing about reusable sacks or needs to purchase more than a few items. What works for dedicated urbanists doesn't fly for the other 85% of the population.

Reusable bags are nearly universally unsanitary. People let their cats play in them, never wash them, then place them on the same conveyor belt where you put your vegetables.

I don't think it's utterly ridiculous for most people. It's very common here in the Netherlands and I'm not sure the average Dutch person is so extremely peculiar to the rest of society. It's really no more inconvenient than carrying the bank card I need to pay for my purchase and in the worst case scenario if I forget it I can just buy a new bag to reuse with my other items.

Regarding how clean they are, I just wash mine in the washing machine and I wash my vegetables as well.

> Because that's utterly ridiculous and highly inconvenient for nearly everyone that isn't proselytizing about reusable sacks

Here in Aotearoa they are completely normal

> Reusable bags are nearly universally unsanitary...place them on the same conveyor belt where you put your vegetables.

Golly. Given the habits of growers you really should wash your vegetables before you use them. Pesticides

Not just growers, I don't think grocery store employees are washing their hands religiously when they're putting this stuff out.

I worked in a supermarket. They aren't washing their hands at all and they might well be playing football with your bread rolls.

These days I often see the grocers using gloves when stocking shelves.

Single use plastic gloves?

> Single use plastic gloves?

Probably.

Clean hands are better, IMO, than those gloves

Indeed. I used to work in a supermarket and we used those gloves. It just meant that the hands got really sweaty and nasty before the gloves inevitably ripped and put your manky hands in contact with the product anyway. By the end of my tenure I just washed my hands before each task.

Pesticides are water soluble. Cat feces is not.

When you wash something you're not dissolving contaminants - you're mechanically removing them. Most bacteria are not water soluble yet we manage to wash them off our hands.

> Most bacteria are not water soluble yet we manage to wash them off our hands.

We use soap.

Well, I do

someone else's chicken blood is probably worse to get on your veg than pesticides. The bacteria can infiltrate the veg.

If the grocery store made plastic bags that didn't have holes in them all the time, they make a good pooper-scooper bag and thus reusable.

We used to use them for this all the time!

Yeah, I used to keep all my grocery bags and use them as garbage bags, at least that got a reuse out of them.

I get doggie poop bags that are allegedly compostable. I never have to worry about the condition of the bag, they come in neat rolls for the dispenser on my leash. They're way handier than disposable shopping bags and cost a few pennies each. I buy a case of them and they last me a few years at a time.

They do seem to be somewhat water soluble. I left some out in the rain one time and they got oddly mushy and weaker, different from regular plastic.

How much do you pay for them?

For bags, there is no reason for a store to give them out. You had to pay for a wallet to hold your cash and cards, a purse to hold them if you don'f have pockets. No need for bags to be a cost center for a store.

$40 per bag here, too little to worry about

You are throwing away durable, reusable, functioning products after one use? .. Why?

The only situation where OP isn’t an idiot is food delivery. If you get your groceries delivered, I don’t think there is a formal feed back mechanism. (Though your grocery store would almost certainly accept them back.)

It's an inconvenience to actually reuse the bag that is inevitably covered in rancid meat juice. Calling people idiots isn't constructive, and besides, one may not be an idiot for simply not caring about burying a few plastic bags in the landfill. It's just different judgements about what's important.

> an inconvenience to actually reuse the bag that is inevitably covered in rancid meat juice

Why do you have rancid meat juice in your grocery bag!? Why do you have rancid meat!

> not caring about burying a few plastic bags in the landfill

I don’t particularly care about this. I still have a couple reusable bags in the back of my car that I use to transport food from the grocery store home. (I never have to deal with bags breaking. And my town charges for single-use paper bags, which I think is a fair compromise.)

When rancid meat juice raises its head, it’s rare and immediately dealt with by cleaning out the fridge. I’d be worried for a friend citing exposure to it as not only a regularity, but inevitability.

You've never had a package of meat leak a little juice in to the grocery bag? If you have, you either wash it (inconvenient) or you have rancid meat juice if you don't (it doesn't start rancid).

> You've never had a package of meat leak a little juice in to the grocery bag?

Not frequently! If that’s happening, the butcher is doing a bad job sealing the package or the meat isn’t fresh.

I agree in those situations I’d likely toss the bag versus rinse it. But this is—and should be—a once every couples years problem. (And I buy meat almost every time I go to the grocery store.)

> You've never had a package of meat leak a little juice in to the grocery bag?

No, and if it was a common occurrence I'd find a different butcher that can actually package the meat properly.

There have been a few times I've washed a bag because it got dirty. It wasn't really inconvenient. I just tossed it in the laundry with the rest of my clothes. Or do you also just throw away clothes once they get a little dirty?

Yea, taking 5 seconds to rinse the bag out in the sink is _such_ an inconvenience. Life is rough.

I stopped buying meat for environmental / water usage reasons a while back, so no, this isn't an issue for me anymore. Guess I'm just a stupid hippie.

> Yea, taking 5 seconds to rinse the bag out in the sink is _such_ an inconvenience.

The old "you're just not doing it right" chestnut, where have I heard that one before! Hey, by any chance have you noticed how many of those silly face masks made it (or didn't make it) to landfills?

> I stopped buying meat . . . Guess I'm just a stupid hippie.

You said it not me!

You're assuming the bag actually makes it to the landfill. MANY do not. Also, the rancid meat juice issue sounds like a problem specific to you. I certainly don't have that issue.

Walmart have made their bags ridiculously small to make you buy more

sounds like a skill issue

Oh wow, I haven't heard of theis "plastic pollution treaty" it sounds super promising! I think one of the things that makes this issue so popular is just how obvious it is to see plastic trash all over the place. Climate change and carbon emissions can be a bit abstract, but plastic pollution is everywhere, and extremely visible.

I think pretty much everyone wants this yet we still use these plastics… we want to end global warming yet we still drive cars. We care but to what degree do we actually care? Not much.

There’s huge business interest pushing the usage of environmentally damaging products forward because it generates money. This against consumer laziness, progress will be slow

> There’s huge business interest pushing the usage of environmentally damaging products forward because it generates money.

The converse (pushing green products) is also true so we have to consider whether the environmental impact is as big as is claimed, whether it's worth it even if it is (single issue reductivism is a dangerous way to craft policy), or whether banal financial and power incentives are the true moving force behind the lobbied solution.

Yeah positive incentive and/or negative deterrent is just not strong enough for people to act on it over the current convenience. If "reusable" bags cost $10 at the store, but you get it refunded if you bring your own, I bet people won't forget to bring their own. The laws just arent strong enough

64% of the people surveyed in the US "agree" or "strongly agree". Maybe it's because I spend most of my time in less affluent parts of the country, but I almost never see people bringing their own bags to the grocery store.

Checkout clerks usually seem surprised when I pull out my canvas bags.

Don't need a survey for that. Just go to the nearest supermarket, stand near the cash register, and count how many people buy plastic bags, and divide by how many bring their own multiple-use bag. You will get the true picture, which I suspect is 10:1 in favor of single-use plastics.

The last time I was in a place that had a disposable shopping bag ban for a while, I was the only one seemingly grabbing some of the bags for sale as I was a visitor and did not have any of my own bags yet. I didn't see a single other person who actually lived there buy any bags on any of the trips I took to the grocery.

When I was in New Zealand, they had a single standard reusable metal cup for all their coffee shops. That is, you can pay to refill the cup, and if the cup is dirty, any coffee shop will exchange it with a clean one for free. Consumers pay a small deposit for the cup, and can get the deposit back by returning it.

Unfortunately, common-sense solutions like this one require tremendous political coordination to even get started. In most countries, environmentalism is far less creative - levy new taxes to change consumer behavior (e.g. single-use bags), or ban something entirely without consideration toward the alternatives (e.g. paper vs plastic straws).

You don't need to wait for a ban. There is a company that sells wonderful cherry tomatoes. They sell them in an elaborate non-reusable plastic container. It keeps the product from being damaged and it presents the product well. However I cannot justify throwing a large plastic container in the landfill so I can have a dozen cherry tomatoes. So I don't purchase them anymore. I wrote to the company letting them know the situation (I haven't heard back). We can make choices in our day-to-day lives to reduce plastic. Let the levers of the market pressure producers.

If we could get the total cost of product disposal built into the checkout price. I think single use plastics would solve it's self along with a litany of other garbage disposal problems.

What would you estimate the cost to be? In my locale, bags are charged at $0.25 each.

While I agree in principle, I don't think this quite solves it. For example, disposable bags are extremely cheap to dispose of - they compress well and would take up minimal landfill space. The problem is how many of them "escape" between the initial purchase and getting to the landfill. How do you include that in the cost?

Ideally this would be factored in and included in the cost of disposable. E.G. the cost of employing litter collection and disposal. The cost needs to be placed on the producers so they have incentive to solve these problems. Many plastic containers and recycling processes could be standardized but currently there's no reason to do.

How does this work, practically, at the grocery store?

Many foods are sold in a disposable plastic wrapper. Cereal, meat, frozen foods, etc.

What is the alternative? We bring a bunch of tupperware and everything is sold in bulk?

they could sell you a glass jar with the food in it; in rich countries the extra cost of the disposable single-use glass wouldn't be significant to most consumers, although it would produce more pollution, hazard, and waste than the plastic alternatives. we've had returnable coke bottles since they started bottling coke

Doing this will involve a dramatic reshaping of how society works.

All of the food packaging that is plastic needs to go away. This would entail large shifts in supply chains, how we buy groceries, and economics of scale for certain goods. We know it is possible (glass bottles were the norm even just 30 years ago), but doing that transition now will be huge.

Then there are all the plastic bags that food comes in. From cookie sleeves to protein bars, all those plastics need to go away. How products are made shelf stable will need to change, which means flavors will change, and some products may no longer be viable.

I hope we make the change as a society, but it will be absurdly complicated to do.

Edit: I'd love if the restaurant industry had standardized reusable takeout container sizes that could be washed and handed back to a restaurant for (sterilization and then) reuse! It would not only improve the quality of takeout food (better insulation), but be more environmentally friendly.

> All of the food packaging that is plastic needs to go away

Most of it can be swapped to bioplastics with minimal loss of utility.

Only if they are 100% bioplastics, and 100% biodegradable in nature, not just in an industrial facility, or else you can end up with the same microplastics pollution problem. Although different chemicals are likely to have dramatic different impacts on the environment, hopefully by now we've learned that "dumping a bunch of microparticles into the environment and hoping everything is OK" is a bad way to go about things.

I always use my reusable bags,

On the other hand, I found that sometimes I run out of plastic bags when I need them at home.

In some situations, a plastic bag is super useful: store a wet paintbrush overnight, wrap something that needs to retain moisture, lock up some smelly stuff, etc.

In those cases, I go to a store that still has plastic bags, then buy some stuff there and generously pack them into plastic bags.

I would love for it to happen since if it were to finally just happen maybe enough money will be pumped into figuring out the alternatives.

But it would need to be done with a hard cutoff date but far enough for those things to be figured out.

There are still some areas that we seem to not quite have an alternative. Or the environmental impact of the alternative is not quite as rosy as it appears.

I guess only with the exception of medical use.

Yes, that's how it's implemented in the EU directive at least.

Why can't they use reusable containers that can be sterilized just like their contents? Just asking. I don't support such a seeping ban, because I know the ramifications.

How do you prove the sterile field hasn’t been broken? Also glass is a big hazard in a hospital… it will get dropped and shattered.

Sterilization doesn't solve all. Prions for example survive an autoclave.

We're not going back to the days of glass bottles for IV bags. The end.

Yes, but who wants to pay more for them? It's very hard to beat single use plastic bags for environmental impact: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/grocery-bag-environmental...

I am OK with plastic bans but they need to be implemented smartly. Near me, bans on single use plastic bags have resulted in all the stores handing out extra thick plastic bags that are treated as single use by everyone anyways. So I feel like it’s made the problem worse.

I wonder if all of these 85% people simply already refuse any single use plastic item. And never use such? Like no more plastic bags for anything, or not single plastic utensil. Or no single plastic cup. No single use medical devices like syringes.

Those people clearly vote differently, otherwise this (and other problems like this climate thing...) would have been solved a long time ago.

Maybe they forgot to also ask 'what if it will cost you some money in the process or diminish your convenience'.

The All-In podcast mentioned research on the concentration of micro plastic particles in human body. I was wondering if banning single-use plastics can somehow reduce that concentration as well.

I thought the majority of ocean plastic pollution was fishing nets? is everyone on the same page about what "single-use" plastic means here?

Those numbers are so highly skewed it seems improbable.

How do they choose people for these surveys? And can 24k people from 32 countries (so, 750 in each) be representative of 8 billion in 200+ countries? I know only a minority locally who could support a plastics ban, due to low awareness.

Certainly a guesstimate in other countries I can think of who are likely responsible for high plastics pollution, would be far lower than 8 or 9 out of every 10 people, as it's a contributor as to why the issue exists in those places, surely?

> can 24k people from 32 countries (so, 750 in each) be representative of 8 billion in 200+ countries?

Yes, assuming they are sampled randomly. If they aren't, a bigger sample size won't help anyways: https://sample-size.net/confidence-interval-proportion/

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

"These are the results of a survey conducted by Ipsos on its Global Advisor online platform [...] they are more urban, more educated, and/or more affluent than the general population. The survey results should be viewed as reflecting the views of the more “connected” segment of their population"

So basically it's people who have internet and accepted to be paid to answer surveys.

Like a Twitter poll.

It's nowhere meant to be representative of the population.

Oh, that's an awesome result! I wonder how many of these people want to pay 20-50% more for their goods, repackaged?

If this is true then is a ban even necessary? Or are just 15% of the people responsible for all single-usage of plastic?

Weren't plastics and the recycling movement supposed to be good for the environment?

The FMCG companies will oppose it and have deep pockets.

I have spent nearly ten years developing robotics to bring complex food production to the edge so that perishable logistics can occur instead of distributing non-fresh products in single use plastics.

When consumers shift to better product, change will occur.

Fuck that. Journalists had to go to the far east to film plastic laden rivers in order to shape public opinion. It isn't our problem. Now if you're going to accuse us of just exporting our waste then that might be true. In that case we should stop the recycling scam and just burn it like we do with all other oil.

Crap. Most of the substitutes have a bigger ecological footprint, even if you don't care at all about cost and comfort. Those reusable shopping bags need to be actually reused, several dozen if not hundreds of times, to be ecological. How many times have you used your last one?

> Those reusable shopping bags [...] How many times have you used your last one?

This reply blew my mind ... when you realize someone must have the exact opposite experience ...

of course I use the reusable bags,

they are in the trunk, and first step after pulling into the parking spot is to take these out the trunk and head into the store

in the last 5 years used only my reusable shopping bag every time except in a few cases when I forgot to put the bags back in the trunk for some reason (usually, I needed to transport bigger things)

> How many times have you used your last one?

Every shopping trip for 4 years now. It tore, but my partner was able to patch it since it's made of pretty good quality fabric.

Have you smelled them? Do you wash them?

I use reusable bags for many years as well, and I wash them every so often. I of course, wash all the produce before using anyway, so a little bit of dirtiness of the bag is negligible.

Yes and yes. It's fabric - you just stick it in the washing machine.

> Most of the substitutes have a bigger ecological footprint

Only if you insist on single-use things, in many cases. A reasonable substitute for a single-use plastic bag isn't a single-use paper bag: It's a multi-use bag.

> even if you don't care at all about cost and comfort.

I care a lot about comfort, which is why a single-use utensil ban can't come soon enough in the US.

This argument is so absurd. I have reused my reusable bags more times than I can possibly count. It's really not hard or unrealistic. How does everyone else seem to have such a hard time with this?

To pile on here. I reuse my reusable bags hundreds if not thousands of times. I purchased a set of high quality bags that stuff into a small bag. They are better in all ways than any other bags I've used. The ergonomics are excellent.

Substitutes like reusing shipping boxes like they do at Costco?

What a load of shit, paper straws cant even get through a single drink. Come up with some kind of useful alternative before just doing random reactionary dumb things

Straws are a negligible [0] part of plastic waste, and the idea they aren't stems from research by a 9-year-old child [1].

We don't have to replace all single-use plastic, just those that matter.

[0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/news-...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/business/plastic-straws-b...

You know what's the worst -- paper boba straws, especially for kids.

Reusable metal straws do exist. They don't solve the problem for takeaway, but I assume straws are the least to worry there.

> World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace

Ah yes, the open-minded beacons of impartiality.

Next ask college lefties about rivers and seas. Ahem.

Sure, until they realise how much this would cost, then you’ll rather quickly see that number go down

The only exception is people that know the consequences on their every-day life.

What makes you say that? I support a ban and I totally understand that it will involve some pain until we adjust. Why would you believe others don't understand this?

People are already in power to ban single-use plastic, they can buy stuff that is more expensive or less convenient to get.

This gives a signal to the market that if a lot of people does it, they should move in that direction to meet the demand.

However, this is not what it's happening, and that's because people appreciate that something is cheaper thanks to single-use plastic of because they are not so interested in single-use plastic that they are willing to do an effort to go around it.

Basically, what people reveal when in the everyday use is that they are fine with single-use plastic, and if they say otherwise is to signal some kind of virtue because they decide not to put effort into it.

People bought lead paint and asbestos in droves too before those were banned.

Just because something is cheap and accessible doesn't mean people understand how it impacts their lives. With studies coming out routinely showing the dramatic damage microplastics are causing to our environment and even inside our own bodies, it's only a matter of time before we come to our senses and stop it.

those studies mostly show the dramatic presence of microplastics rather than dramatic damage, which is still mostly speculative. most of the microplastics inside our own bodies come from washing synthetic clothes rather than from single-use plastics

you mean like how we used to live? like when we used mostly glass and paper?

And metal!

I know them and am pro a ban... So: ex falso quodlibet

I’m someone that wouldn’t mind seeing single use plastics go the way of the dodo bird but 1) you should never trust issue polling even within a single country and 2) given that, I would trust it even less when the polling is “global”.

I see these studies as a first step in a Bayesian inference. Trust comes with more evidence but you have to start somewhere.

Edit:

Actually this is the third step. From the source:

https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Let me clarify: you cannot make useful judgements on the basis of an issue poll alone. The information they obscure is just as important as the information they purport to present. This is why we have legislators who in their offices actually investigate and discuss issues of lawmaking with their base, and can even contextualize it within a framework of privileged or classified information they may have access to rather than take an issue poll at face value that says “most of <nation’s population> support X on issue Y” and simply vote that way.

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