Why is plastic everywhere?

[Veggierevolution]

Hello guys,
So, I ordered food yesterday (great set of vegetarian sushi) and once again was absolutely astonished by the amount of packaging that I got with the order. I mean, at least four different packs of some sort of plastic, all of them going straight to the bin. It's something I noticed more and more recently and it I am seriously puzzled by this. Is there no alternative packaging (reusable, bio-degradable)? As as pure consumer (no familiarity with restaurant operations) my view is definitely very constraint, so I was wondering if someone can share with me why single-use plastics are so dominant? is it just the price? or are there other factors that a consumer just would not think of? Appreciate your thoughts on that

 

[David3]

Plastics combine low cost, moderate-to-high strength, waterproofness, corrosion/rot-resistance, and durability. In these ways, plastics are far superior to paper. These same properties are also what make plastics so terrible - they require hundreds of years to biodegrade, and their combination of low cost and good durability makes them ubiquitously useful. Plastics and polymers are everywhere - containers, furniture, vehicles, paints, adhesives, clothing, shoes, medical equipment, household furnishings, electronics, tools, packaging - everywhere.

Plastics can be recycled, but plastics recycling is made complicated because there are so many types of commonly-used plastics: Polyethylene terephthalate, High density polyethylene, Polyvinyl chloride, Low density polyethylene, Polyproplylene, Polystyene, Nylon, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, Polyester, and many others. These plastics can closely resemble each other, but they cannot be recycled together. If plastics were valuable, then it would motivate industry to diligently separate/recycle them. However, because plastics are so cheap, they are generally thrown away.

 

[Dreaming]

There are so many options for companies to switch but they won’t. They now make plant based packaging. People coped on paper bags years ago I don’t see why we can’t. Bottles can be made of plants because glass is too easy to break.

 

[shyvas]

An interesting read :

What's the real price of getting rid of plastic packaging? - BBC Worklife

 

[silva]

Work in manufacturing a day and you'd lose your mind. Small parts bagged in plastic, everything bagged in plastic, then built and packaged in more plastic- tons of bubble wrap, peanuts, more bubble wrap, shrink wrap, plastic wrap stretched around and aroudn and around the boxes on skids before stocking or shipping.
Our dept is now changing from using easy cardboard inserts in the cartons to bubble wrap, and my opinion was discounted. It's all for a measly savings and a narcissists promotion and harder on me!

 

[Tom L.]

.......Plastics can be recycled, but plastics recycling is made complicated because there are so many types of commonly-used plastics: Polyethylene terephthalate, High density polyethylene, Polyvinyl chloride, Low density polyethylene, Polyproplylene, Polystyene, Nylon, Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene, Polyester, and many others. These plastics can closely resemble each other, but they cannot be recycled together. If plastics were valuable, then it would motivate industry to diligently separate/recycle them. However, because plastics are so cheap, they are generally thrown away.

They seem to be making some effort to solve this problem: most plastic containers I see (not bags so often, though) have a stamp identifying the polymer they're made of. But these stamps are very small and hard to find. I might have heard something about a type of light sensor that can detect what polymer something is- or maybe a big flotation tank/area were some plastics float up at different rates and can be separated that way. But someone I spoke to (who works in recycling regulation) said a big problem with plastics is contamination.

 

[David3]

They seem to be making some effort to solve this problem: most plastic containers I see (not bags so often, though) have a stamp identifying the polymer they're made of. But these stamps are very small and hard to find. I might have heard something about a type of light sensor that can detect what polymer something is- or maybe a big flotation tank/area were some plastics float up at different rates and can be separated that way. But someone I spoke to (who works in recycling regulation) said a big problem with plastics is contamination.

.
In the United States, only 6 plastics are labeled with recycling stamps. Recycle symbol #7 ("other") is not useful, because it is used on a wide variety of plastics that can't be recycled together.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Those "recycling stamps" are kind of a lie since they are meant to convey the impression that the product is recyclable but are actually just a product identifier and don´t mean that the product can necessarily be recycled, or at least not in your area or country. However I do strongly agree with everything else David said.

Plastics recycling is mostly a scam (so that large corporations don`t have to reform) since the majority of it just goes to landfill or gets burned. However, it still makes sense to recycle plastic since a minority of it actually does get recycled.

What this means is that it´s much more important to reduce the amount of products with plastic you buy in the first place, and recycling should be a secondary concern.

The problem nowadays is that recycling tends to be slightly more expensive than making new materials. The solution should be that you either force the manufacturers of the materials to pay for the recycling, tax the production or mining of new materials to the point where they are more expensive, subsidise the recycling (i.e. private companies are allowed to invoice the government for a portion of the cost, or get tax writeoffs or whatever), or add a tax - for example if we add $0.50 tax to every plastic bottle sale that would solve the problem. Basically single use plastic is slightly cheaper. You have to change that and make it more expensive which is what every one of my ideas in this paragraph does. Until that happens, it will continue.

However think about the negative consequences you know of from plastic and compare that to the negative consequences of climate change. It´s not even close. I wouldn´t worry about your plastic consumption until you´ve already addressed your carbon footprint.

By the way, "carbon footprint" was a PR term invented by BP, a fossil fuel company once again to put the onus on the public so they don´t have to reform. Same as what happened for the recycling scam.

Recommended viewing for the topic of plastic recycling being mostly a scam:

 

[Jamie in Chile]

If you´ve got another 20 minutes, this video explains how a few years ago China stopped accepting plastic for recycling and how as a result, since then, most plastic goes to landfill or gets burned. It´s pretty good if you are really interested in this topic.

 

[David3]

Those "recycling stamps" are kind of a lie since they are meant to convey the impression that the product is recyclable but are actually just a product identifier and don´t mean that the product can necessarily be recycled, or at least not in your area or country. However I do strongly agree with everything else David said.

Plastics recycling is mostly a scam (so that large corporations don`t have to reform) since the majority of it just goes to landfill or gets burned. However, it still makes sense to recycle plastic since a minority of it actually does get recycled.

What this means is that it´s much more important to reduce the amount of products with plastic you buy in the first place, and recycling should be a secondary concern.

The problem nowadays is that recycling tends to be slightly more expensive than making new materials. The solution should be that you either force the manufacturers of the materials to pay for the recycling, tax the production or mining of new materials to the point where they are more expensive, subsidise the recycling (i.e. private companies are allowed to invoice the government for a portion of the cost, or get tax writeoffs or whatever), or add a tax - for example if we add $0.50 tax to every plastic bottle sale that would solve the problem. Basically single use plastic is slightly cheaper. You have to change that and make it more expensive which is what every one of my ideas in this paragraph does. Until that happens, it will continue.

However think about the negative consequences you know of from plastic and compare that to the negative consequences of climate change. It´s not even close. I wouldn´t worry about your plastic consumption until you´ve already addressed your carbon footprint.

By the way, "carbon footprint" was a PR term invented by BP, a fossil fuel company once again to put the onus on the public so they don´t have to reform. Same as what happened for the recycling scam.

Recommended viewing for the topic of plastic recycling being mostly a scam:

.
Agreed. Even large-scale recycling centers generally only accept the first 2 of the 7 labeled plastics. Plastics 3 through 7 go in the trash.
.

 

[feather]

Since we use glass jars for canning, and reusable lids for most, we have so much less waste going into the un-recyclable recycling bin. We use fruit and veg containers from fresh from the grocery store for growing some plants, onions in particular do well in veggy containers with a lid, though we can only grow 1000 onions before we have too many. Tofu also introduces plastic waste and those aren't covered and pretty useless. (If you have a use for them, please clue me in.) We re-use plastic bags from shopping as trash bags. I haven't had a full bag of recycle-ables in ages. Most of it when I ate the Standard Diet came from milk and meat. 90% of our groceries are fresh produce.

The only canned vegetables we've bought in cans have been mushrooms and beets. I'm making an effort this year to can both of them in addition to what I regularly can.

 

[Jamie in Chile]

Just 20 firms behind more than half of single-use plastic waste - study - BBC News

This article says that "20 firms behind more than half of single-use plastic waste".

If that´s true, a possible solution to plastic might be to get the EU, US and China to make an agreement to all tax the production or sale of plastic above a certain level. If you sell more than x kilos or plastic or make more than x million dollars from plastic, you have to pay a tax above that level. And set the tax to a number that makes recycling and reducing the amount of plastic in packages profitable.

 

[Tom L.]

However think about the negative consequences you know of from plastic and compare that to the negative consequences of climate change. It´s not even close. I wouldn´t worry about your plastic consumption until you´ve already addressed your carbon footprint.

I don't see that it's either/or here. Someone's carbon footprint might have a larger overall impact on the environment than the unrecycled plastic they use and send to a landfill- but I'm thinking that reducing their carbon footprint will involve much more effort or inconvenience overall: driving less, or maybe using public transportation; setting the thermostat to a lower temperature in the winter, and maybe not using air conditioning in the summer...

I'm not saying that both aren't important- just that they don't necessarily interfere with each other. I might be posting something relating to this in the "Confessions (Anon if you like)" thread...