Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielHB | Hacker News Reader

I don't think so, plastic wrapping is a massive boost for keeping food hygienic in transport and both to avoid waste and reduce pathogen contamination. Probably a much bigger benefit than the microplastic contamination.

It might be they will be like "shame they didn't have this awesome new material that has 0 environmental/health impact that we have today" though.

There are no clear substitutes for plastic in a lot of applications even when you disregard price.

View on HN

We will see. It's microplastics in semen and brains that may be seen as negligent pollution. Our generations haven't inherited much active pollution, futures have more opportunity for it.

The future is not known. Let's see. We obviously didn't all die of food poisoning before the invention of plastic.

I think most people would be okay if "only" the 80% of food that could manage paper packaging switched.

If asked their opinions, probably true.

If you watched their actual choices, when confronted with shiny transparent-and-or-colorful familiar plastic vs. paper replacements...yeah.

(And as soon as you have paper packaging, the big companies want to "improve" it with 57 varieties of chemicals & coatings & treatments & crap. Not to say that manufacturing paper is anything resembling clean & green, either.)

I'm curious what paper packaging you have in mind, that isn't also lined with plastics. Maybe we could use more wax lined items? I don't know. But it is down right comical how people will avoid some macro plastic things only to be using something that has micro plastic by design.

For that matter, what's wax? I bet at least some waxes are basically plastic these days.

Waxes are pretty similar to plastics and can be produced by similar processes from the things. The main difference is that they're a lot more biodegradable.

I think that if people are trying to avoid plastics but unknowingly using them anyway due to misleading design or greenwashing then their heart is in the right place and we shouldn't sneer at them. At least they're conscious of the problems and trying to do better. Call out the companies who are doing this. Don't blame people for being confused by something designed to be as confusing as possible.

Totally fair. My exposure has been large on folks that virtue signal that they avoid plastic things. To the point that they are largely sneering at people that don't make the same choices they do.

To your point, though, we could use less sneering overall.

> I don't think so, plastic wrapping is a massive boost for keeping food hygienic in transport and both to avoid waste and reduce pathogen contamination. Probably a much bigger benefit than the microplastic contamination.

One can make even grander claims about having plumbing vs. the effects of lead poisoning.

Isn’t the better material for transport, silicone?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com