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I know it’s early but not a single comment about microplastics when discussing plastic vs glass? Y’all slacking.
Whatcha talkin bout Willis?
Wasn’t he like 30 when they were filming that show?
I think it’s worth pointing out here that there are some major downsides to glass.
Weight. Glass is heavy, more weight means more energy (and emissions) required to transport it, and a lower product mass to packaging mass ratio.
Durability. Glass bottles have to be much thicker than plastic bottles to achieve the same strength, which means thicker glass and/or additional packaging is required to get the product to the consumer.
It would be interesting to see the total life cycle emissions for packaging types, and to figure out how many re-uses (if any) are required for a glass bottle to offset its pollution footprint compared to a disposable vs recycled plastic bottle.
I can’t really advocate for plastic/aluminum/glass packaging, since I’m not aware of a study the considers the total footprint for each.
Ideally, we’d purchase our own containers, and then fill our own containers from a local bulk supply. Minimizing the weight and distance traveled while maximizing re-use is key.
The ideal solution you propose was often used when we used glass.
The only reason we could have started throwing our containers is because plastic is so much cheaper.
To be fair, when we used glass, fewer product were transported long distance.
Nowadays we can do like Germany who incentives to bring back bottles for recycling.
Or an even better alternative would be to use glass for individuals and another method for transportation.
Although i’ve seen some bio stores starting to refill plastic containers, wich isn’t perfect but a nice middle ground to start changing habits.
We should also switch away from liquid based detergents. My partner gets liquid dishwasher detergent, and it bugs me a bit because we’re paying extra money, and buying extra plastic, just to ship a dilute version of the powder that I’d rather buy.
Reusable plastic bottles or metal are great, it’s the single use plastics that are really terrible.
The banning of plastic bag sees the rise of reusable bag…being taken as single use. Multiple times higher footprint, multiple times higher cost. People will do everything for their own convenient.
Whereas I miss the old Aldi “single use” plastic bags because I’d use them a few dozen times (not necessarily at Aldi) before they either got holes or a strap broke or something. I’ve still some stashed in places for when I need a decent plastic bag to hold something.
I think realizing that there is a problem is the first step to fixing it.
I remember seeing really old papers posted here where our current climate problems were being forecasted as early as 1920.
BP invented the carbon footprint term in an (successful) attempt to shift responsibility to the consumer in about 1990 I believe.
We’re way past realisation and spreading the word.
This is pure ignorance we’re fighting today.
The problem was realized decades ago, and yet we’ve accelerated our use. It’s very similar to emissions. If only we had left that thick sludge in the ground, neither of these would be an issue.
I don’t think it is as urgent as the media makes it seem. For the media it is all about sensational stories. Yes long term it is something to be concerned about but it isn’t something you should freak out over.
Also if it gets bad enough some company will profit from it. If there is money to be had with solutions suddenly you get the best minds working on it.
Konvinient!
