Comments

1
By all means, ban plastic containers. People should also consider having fewer children, preferably zero or one. At the very least we could end subsidies past the first child.
2
@1, We should probably limit who can have that one child based on income, various testing to ensure the prospective parents are capable and loving individuals.

3
Getting rid of plastic bags means people would have to pay a few extra pennies for stuff... most people would prefer to destroy the entire planet as long as they can have a few more cheap trinkets.
4
Can we just talk about glitter?
6
Would the ban of plastic bags also be applied in the produce section? Will there be individual plastic bags for a pound of carrots or mushrooms? Some stores offer paper bags at 5 cents apiece yet you can go to a downtown department store and purchase a shirt that is then placed in a plastic bag or a pair of shoes that goes into a cardboard box-no deposit. Perhaps milk will return to being sold in glass bottles with a deposit and a deposit on disposable pens. Our whole society is based on disposable merchandise; there are many consumer items that can require a return deposit. Even a computer, buy a computer pay and extra $10 deposit; want a new one turn in an old one and avoid the deposit.
7
@1 & especially @2 before we get all nazi about it, how about we just make free, universally-accessible birth control?
8
How about we force amazon to take back all their packaging and reuse it?
9
I work in a Seattle Hospital that touts itself as Green. The throw-away of plastic is on a scale larger than I've seen in any other industry. It is obscene and sickening--literally.
10
GOD HATES BAGS
11
I shop at Aldis, which doesn't bag your groceries at all. Not plastic, not paper. They just stick the stuff in the cart and you wheel it out to your car and figure out the transport yourself. I was surprised by it the first time, but after that, found it easy.
12
Aldi in the US or in Europe? Aldi's no-bag culture is a thing to get used to, but great. In Europe, people sometimes just grab an empty box from the shelf and put their stuff in it. It's basically a no-frills retail shopping experience that feels like you are in a warehouse, but with lower ceilings. They just put a box of about 8 containers of apple juice or 24 boxes of granola bars right on the shelf, when a normal supermarket would unpack it all and make it look nice. You can easily notice an empty box before a staffer does and take it. Solves their problem, and reduces your need for bags.
13
With effort, I think I know how to get rid of almost all disposable plates in my life. But it requires a lot of time, planning, sometimes more money, and often just going without. As an experiment with my former partner, we kept all the plastic we accumulated for a year. Even the stuff that we'd eventually recycle or reuse. It was a lot of effort, but doing it for a whole year also helped make some things easy. Like it's just totally natural for me to ask for drinks with no straw at restaurants. Also talking to some restaurants about their packaging and a couple did switch from styrofoam to paper. But some things will always be too hard for me to fit into regular life, like making my own crackers and chips. And ordering almost anything online usually means at least a few plastic pillows.

I know my impact is small on the whole, but I'd rather try than to just say, "Fuck it all." And sometimes my friends and co-workers have changed in small ways because of my anti-plastic weirdness.
14
Yeah plastics are bad but the good feeling of not using plastic bags(which take less energy and carbon to produce than tote bags) could be better placed by ending meat, egg, and diary consumption, industrial animal agriculture is by far the worst industry for deforestation, pollution, CO2, and the rise of antiobiotic resistant bacteria. That should be what NGOs focus on but then people would actually have to change their habits in a major way.
15
San Francisco banned plastic bags many years ago, and I'm glad. My roommates and I all got backpacks that we use when we walk to the grocery store, and also have tons of canvass bags for overflow. We charge for paper bags, initially just in grocery stores but now in all take-out, too. We charge even more for other take-out containers, too (like pizza boxes, etc.). And everything has to be compostable or recyclable. Yeah, the exception continues to be the flimsy plastic bags in the produce section. Fortunately, San Francisco now accepts those in recycling, though I'd rather stores went with renewables, either paper or corn/plant-based faux-plastics. There's a burger place that started in my neighborhood but is now a small chain where 100% of their to-go packaging is municipally compostable, even the utensils, straws, and the packaging that looks like foil.

Yes, ending meat, egg, and diary consumption, and industrial animal agriculture, would be great. It's also irrelevant to not using plastic bags. If we ended 100% of meat-related consumption tomorrow, it doesn't change the devastating impact of plastic on our environment, an impact that will literally last for millennia if we don't take steps to reclaim plastics in our environment.

I know that using paper, corn-based, or other bio products as a plastic replacement (hemp!) also has an environmental impact (clearcutting, cost of corn for consumption, etc.), but these problems are surmountable in ways that letting plastics degrade in our environment for hundreds to thousands of years are not.
16
"I'd rather stores went with renewables, either paper or corn/plant-based faux-plastics. There's a burger place that started in my neighborhood but is now a small chain where 100% of their to-go packaging is municipally compostable, even the utensils, straws, and the packaging that looks like foil."

Hear hear. I first encountered plant-based plastic in a rather flimsy fork, at the place I was working. Its tines became totally useless as I was eating my hot meal, but it seemed like switching to a second fork was a pretty small price to pay (technically, for my employer to pay) to not have the plastic product in the first place. Those products have only become more robust and ubiquitous in the intervening years. Frankly, I'm a bit surprised our society hasn't switched over to it entirely by now.
17
It looks like most of the plastics that end up in the ocean come from rivers in Asia:
https://www.theoceancleanup.com/sources/
some river in Indonesia is probably the direct source for the trash in the video
You can recycle most any plastics at Terracycle.com. We do it for all the stuff not collected by our city's recycling services.
18
I recycle, buy only what I know I can cook and eat to limit waste, limit plastics by reusing containers, and shop with reusable bags. Although I had to battle my ass off over the past three decades to defend my stand on having no kids, am blessedly still childless by choice. I am doing my part to help preserve the Earth for future generations and make it a better place for all.
Now if we could just safely dispose all the toxic industrial waste stinking up the WHite Trash House........

Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

Comments are closed.

Commenting on this item is available only to members of the site. You can sign in here or create an account here.


Add a comment
Preview

By posting this comment, you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.