I'm so effing done with plastic food packaging.

"Pensez au tri! Barquette à jeter"

Translates to: "hey you, consumer, don't you forget to recycle, this whole pollution crisis lies in your hands now. Also, this plastic packaging we use, can't recycle that."

@yarmo Soncidering that plastic is a secondary product made as a waste product from gasoline it really doesnt address the problem if you reduce plastic or recycle it. The quantity produced isnt determined by the quantity purchased as it is already a waste product. If people dont buy plastics it is made anyway and just sent right to the dump.

@freemo @yarmo Jesus, that’s depressing. I’d hadn’t thought of it that way. So the current attempt to reduce plastic consumption at our house is ultimately pointless?

@danny

Mostly yes, that doesnt mean you cant have an effect, it just means you reduce plastic by reducing gasoline and oil consumption and just consume plastic normally without trying to reduce.

Eventually if gasoline is reduced enough there wont be enough plastic (and it wont make sense to make it as primary product) so we will see plastics naturally replaced with alternatives or reduced.

But yea sadly directly reducing personal plastic consumption really has no positive impact.

@yarmo

@freemo @yarmo Ugh, that is discouraging. But it makes sense I suppose. Are there other less damaging uses of the byproduct? For example is it just as easy to make more permanent plastics at least, that could be used for longer-term products that aren’t disposable? Or is the process/input material different for making those sorts of plastics?

@danny

You could largely use the same material to make long-term use plastics. But is that really solving anything? The same amount of plastic is produced even if less of it is one-time use plastic. If the total daily plastic is not going to change does it matter how you use it?

That said the big thing I can think of is if plastic is used more in ways that are unlikely to wind up in the oceans or floating on the wind. A one time use plastic is kinda ok **if** you are sure to dispose of it properly, but if your tossing it out the car window not so much.

So I'd say the only real thing to do ecologically when it comes to plastic is:

1) use less fuel, bike more
2) dispose of your plastic properly (even recyling wont help much, just make sure it winds up in a proper dump)
3) Avoid using plastics to do things like building roads, or as microplastics in products which ultimately will just wind up in the wild.

@yarmo

@freemo @yarmo can you elaborate on why recycling single-use plastics won’t help much? Is it because they’ll end up in products that can’t ultimately be recycled?

We’re doing our best - I haven’t used shampoo in a year and we’re about to start making our own soap. I also make my own natural conditioner now. But every trip to the grocery store is an exercise in futility. It’s so damn depressing. Biking more definitely seems like a good option for multiple reasons.

@danny

Because recycling doesn't effect the amount of new plastic produced, so what is it fixing. If the amount of plastic produced is the same no matter if you buy plastic or recycle it, then the total amount of plastic int he world increases at the same rate regardless.

So that being true when you recycle, what problem is it fixing? If I recycle it or bury it in the ground both of them ensure that plastic never makes into the wild, and neither option effects whether or not other plastics become discarded to the wild.

The point of recycling is to conserver limited resources. That doesnt fit the description of plastic. It makes sense to recycle metal however because when you do it means we will mine and manufacture that much less new metal.

@yarmo

@freemo @yarmo I see your point that it doesn’t change the upstream problem because the total plastic output remains unchanged. But I also feel that we need to tackle the problem from both ends. While we’re trying to move away from fossil fuels we still have to manage its by products in the least damaging way. At one end of the spectrum micro plastics are disastrous and often unnecessary. Plastic casing in a medical scanner that could be in use for 20 years feels more justifiable.

@danny

I agree tackling it from both ends is great. My point though is that how you tackle it from the consumer end, if you wish to have a positive impact, looks a lot different than people think it does.

On the one hand avoiding microplastics is a must, as is throwing trash out your window and not in a dump to be processed. But recyling, I cant see how recycling plastic has any positive impact.

In fact since recylcing probably consumes more energy than working with fresh new plastic I wouldnt be surprised if the numbers worked out to suggest that recycling causes **more** harm in the case of plastics. Just speculation, but either way I cant see how recycling of plastics is improving the situation (unlike the other suggests)

@yarmo