Or maybe hold companies accountable for the damage their products do to the environment and stop allowing the blame to be shifted to individual consumers?
>hold companies accountable for the damage their products do to the environment
What does this mean? The environment is damaged because so much plastic is consumed. It then follows that to reduce damage to the environment, less plastic must be consumed.
So we have come to the conclusion that we need less plastic to be consumed, the question is how. Obviously no one wants to consume plastic, since plastic is nice and convenient and most importantly, cheap.
Therefore, if you make plastic more expensive, people will consume less of it (since they have limited amounts of money). Also known as a tax.
Nearly everything in American grocery stores is packaged in plastic. How do we ensure that the companies producing consumer staples find better solutions for packaging and distribution, rather than just continuing to use plastic and passing the tax on to the consumer?
If wrapping something in plastic makes it so expensive (through taxes) that it causes the end product to lose competitiveness with something not wrapped in plastic, companies will be incentivized to not wrap their product in plastic.
Also, plastic is not one material. Taxes can be based on the re-usability of the plastic in question. So very durable goods could still be made of plastic and not have restrictive taxes. This could make it easier to achieve because we can re-purpose the existing plastic manufacturing industry without having to build up entirely new production techniques.
If the tax is high enough, at least one company figure out better packaging solutions to avoid the tax and offer cheaper products. Customers will prefer the cheaper product. Other companies will be forced to follow suit or lose market share.
Why not both? There's also a big difference between one time usage of plastic and reusable/reused plastic. For example, used in packaging, its almost all one time usage. However in say a laptop or smartphone, the product gets used for years.
That would be silly - most of the products we create can harm the environment.
Probably 95% of what I have at home (plastics, electronics, furniture's paint and glue, chunks of relatively special metal like aluminium, chemicals used to clean anything, etc...) would harm the environment if I would just dump it anywhere without control => if you would want to hold companies acountable for all that stuff then we would be back to the stone age => in my opinion a combined organized disposal by endusers + more taxes on products which are "difficult" to dispose of (difficult to implement? most taxes target "consumption" and not "production") + a general "push" (by media & social) to be aware of problems related to such products are the only option.
Well you kinda are. Let's say a $4 item that normally is packaged in plastic now is required to cost $4 + $25. I think a lot of companies would quickly migrate packaging.
That only reduces the problem a bit though, it's not a sustainable solution. We also need to produce plastics that can and will be recycled. Taxation and legislation could be drivers for improvements.
> That only reduces the problem a bit though, it's not a sustainable solution.
Why not? We lived quite happily with a fraction of the plastic usage 60 years ago. It's possible to continue using plastic for critical use-cases like medicine, or engineering uses like aircraft or automobiles where there are no good substitutes, while phasing out consumer usage.
I'd happily take my refillable shampoo bottle, soy sauce bottle, and milk bottle to be filled at the store.
I actually want to do that. I do purchase refills whenever possible, and I hope such mechanisms are more accessible.
It's ridiculous how many things are thought of as "disposable" today.
For instance, any hand wash comes with a pretty good and durable dispenser. But rarely do I see refills being sold, except when you specifically search for it online.
And pens, especially ball pens. The outfit is perfectly reusable, while rarely do I see the refill being sold. Instead, it's just 20 ball pens sold in a giant bundle. It's like they want to encourage you to throw away everything.
I'd like the fresh-ground coffee model for soap, shampoo, detergent, cleaning products, food products. Aisle filled with dispensers that I can fill my own bottle with, have it weighed at checkout. That's way less waste.
I want cheap and refills. Reuse should be cheaper than buying new everything. Pricing today is backwards because it externalizes the costs of throwaway everything. We collectively pay the price of cheap, unrepairable, unrefillable, un-re-usable goods.
Using a fountain pen, refilled from an ink bottle, is not too expensive. Buy a $20-30 Lamy Safari as a good first pen (the shape of the grip helps to ensure you hold it correctly). Unless you're writing novels by hand, a smaller ink bottle will last a long time. I've not had to buy new pens or new ink for a couple years (I'll need to buy more ink soon). I keep a couple ballpoint pens around for random things where that's easier (what they can write on, not all papers take fountain pen inks very well). I don't buy those, they're usually the freebies given away by car dealerships, doctors, banks, whatever. I use them until they stop writing.
> We also need to produce plastics that can and will be recycled.
We need to use recyclable and biodegradable materials or at a minimum, just biodegradable materials (Or relatively bio harmless materials like glass). Even in the best cases, some percentage of material won't get recycled. In many cases, plastic should be replaced by something other than more plastic.
It's a pain but we could switch to glass containers or wax-lined cardboard for a large portion of things that come in plastic containers almost overnight.
That's ignoring things as basic as: if I need a plastic shampoo bottle... let me refill it? Why am I throwing that away after one use? For that matter why is it plastic instead of stainless steel?
Convenience. It's easier for people to throw away the plastic bottle, green wash it because it gets "recycled", then buy another one.
On an individual level, one can reduce their plastic consumption by using things that are not packaged in plastic (eg. powdered laundry detergent, bar soap, powdered shampoo, and so on). It's a bit trickier for many perishable foods in the US (eg. milk, yogurt, frozen foods), since many things are not available in non-plastic containers, but this could be solved by regulation.
I prefer to think of plastics that break down easily. Some plastics can be composted. Landfills already capture methane emissions, so a plastic that breaks down to methane and other simple (safe) things in a landfill is ideal: we get energy out of waste. (Breaking down in a landfill is a tricky problem)
> There is no solution other than reducing consumption. Which can most easily be accomplished by increasing taxes on the consumption you want reduced.
The ocean pollution in the article is due to shipping plastic waste to other countries, who subsequently let it shed into the ocean.
Couldn't this problem be eliminated in a near instant by disallowing export of that low value plastic waste, and landfilling it in the US? It doesn't solve the oil / carbon problem, but neither does exporting it. It does solve the ocean pollution aspect pretty completely though.
I'm not saying it's the best solution, but it does seem like a stepping stone.
My understanding is that in the past decade or so costs to recycle have exceeded costs to landfill for most cities, since the value of the plastic has dropped and China became unwilling to accept it.
> Which can most easily be accomplished by increasing taxes on the consumption you want reduced.
Or you could make monetary changes to prevent constant inflation. Hyper-consumerist culture with cheap disposable plastic garbage is largely caused by constant inflationary monetary pressure.
There is no solution other than reducing consumption. Which can most easily be accomplished by increasing taxes on the consumption you want reduced.