2y ago

How will we ever get away from plastics when they are ubiquitous for safety

Plastic seals food, sterile medical implements, medicine, beverages, etc... it's seems like plastic is used as a way to seal things safely. Post pandemic rising, I see even more. My work used to be have plastic utensils in the cafeteria, for example, an already wasteful thing. Now, post-2020, every fork, knife, and spoon is individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper. I feel like the more my desire to escape plastic intensifies, the more plastic I see all around me everywhere.

How can we get away from plastic as a safety layer?

103 comments

- Getting rid of cars is generations away in the US, at minimum.
  
  Guess we'd better get started right away, then.
  
  Getting rid of Internal combustion engined cars more reasonable. EVs aren't perfect, but they are much better than ICE cars as far as pollution goes.
  
  Wait till energy costs 10x in the next decade. Car use will go to nothing real quick.
- You don't have to get rid of cars, my dude, just tires.
  
  It's called a train; just use a train.
- I don't trust biodegradable plastics anymore. The in between stage of biodegration is micro plaltics. This may be an issue even if it's from organic sources.
- Lmao. Just use biodegradable plastics! So easy! You know jack shit about plastics my guy.
We don't need to ban every single bit of plastic. It's fine to keep it where it's absolutely necessary. Some of the examples you provided definitely aren't necessary though, like individually wrapped cutlery (wtf) or beverages (can use glass).
- So many things are unnecessarily wrapped in plastic. We use bubble wrap in situations where paper would be a perfectly fine buffer for shipping. We use plastic bags when paper and reusable bags work perfectly well.
  I get so frustrated about it not even because I'm scared of the environmental impact of all this plastic floating around, although that does suck, but because plastic is currently absolutely crucial for modern medicine. One day maybe we'll find alternatives but until then I think a rational society would be preserving the limited life-saving miracle material for uses that aren't as basic as "use it to take home groceries, then throw it away."
  
  the same issue is happening with helium. its crucial for a lot of forensic processes and scientific research but we are rapidly running out of helium. but haha balloon go up!
Well for one: most of the things listed already have a solution:
Food? Glassware and Metal containers. Or Even reusable single type plastic containers, like a tupperware.
Sterile medical supplies already are packed in a paper bag. The ones that are in plastic actually aren't.
Medicine can also be packed into glass and metal containers.
Beverages can be put in cans or Reusable Glass bottles or you simply drink tap water. (I know in some countries that's not safe but it should be)
And honestly your cafeteria is the most ridiculous example. Get a dishwasher and use real cutlery. Or bring your own cutlery from home. (Is it actually a cafeteria or just a glorified break room?)
- Sterile medical supplies already are packed in a paper bag. The ones that are in plastic actually aren't.
  Uh... What? Sterile medical instruments are absolutely packed in plastic, paper is too permeable and will lead to contamination. Even if it looks like paper it's still lined with plastic. Have you ever worked in a medical setting before?
  
  Same for science. I have autoclaved thousands of things. Most get packed into something like these.
  
  Me putting paper into the autoclave for the sake of the environment
  
  I'm pretty sure it's wax lined paper they use
- My only note here is that canned beverages have a layer of non-recyclable plastic on the inside to prevent chemical interactions between the contents and the metal. Glass bottles are fine though as (aside from plastic labels) they're fully recyclable.
  
  Even better, they are reusable
- I loathe plastic waste, but here's a conundrum I read about.
  Elementary school kids learned about environmentalism, wanted to do better. They got the school to dump plastic utensils and plates in favor of steel. No brainer, right?
  Turns out the energy cost for making the steel meant they would have to wash those items 1,000+ times to make up for the plastic energy production. Still, no brainer, right?
  Then they added in the energy costs for washing those items 1,000+ times. Not remotely worth doing. (Factor in loss, it's even worse.)
  We got ourselves in a hella mess. Getting off plastic is going to mean cheap, clean and abundant energy. I mean shitloads of power. I'm all in for nuclear, at least as a stopgap.
  
  The primary concern with single-use plastics is not energy consumption but plastic waste. That, of course raises the question of how to weigh one kind of environmental harm against another, and I do not have a good answer.
  My instinct here is that not generating so much trash is the energy use in this case, but I can't prove that.
  
  It's a balancing act for sure. You have to understand what's good for the climate isnt necessarily good for the environment. However I believe we have to understand that cleaning up the plastic in the world is imho harder than recapturing co2 since you can't just build a big machine wherever you want and it does it's job. Plastic you have to hunt down manually, and good luck doing that for micro plastics
  But I don't think your example works as well as eg plastic Vs glas bottles. Your energy dilemma can be solved simply by having photovoltaic panels and/or hooking the dishwasher up to a renewably generated hot water supply.
  Also even in your calculations which I assume are not optimised 2000+ wash cycles is only like 6 years of use. And I still think that's a no brainer.
- Glorified break room with a shop area, convenience store food/snacks. Sometimes catering comes in from places but otherwise, yep, big break room. I never use their awful cutlery. I've been known to purchase pizza rolls because yum. And hey, those come.in a totally cardboard container lol
  
  Man, I spent a short while in the states and what I miss most is Pizza rolls and the quesarito from Taco Bell. Ridiculously large milkshakes from sonics drive thru are probably also up there
- Tangentially related, I work in a medical laboratory, and the amount of daily trash we generate (not talking plastic specifically) is quite frankly horrifying. But there isn't a good solution for my field.
Canada is in the process of "banning single-use plastics". Although you still see them everywhere, there are many places that have switched some stuff like plastic grocery bags, plastic straws and plastic utensils to cloth grocery bags, paper straws and wooden utensils.
Start with the easy wins and replace the others as options come available. We don't have to fix everything at once.
One way is to keep the plastic but make it out of something renewable instead of out of petroleum products. It can have the same short term properties but eventually disintigrate instead of turning into microplastics or releasing harmful particles when burned.
- What does the source of the monomer have to do with disintegration, microplastics and harmfulness when burned? PE is the most commonly used plastic in the world. It's made out of ethylene, which is about as simple as a molecule can be. Nothing prevents you making renewable PE, except it's cheaper to make from fossil sources.
  
  They're called bioplastics.
- This maintains the problem of microplastics, which are now a ubiquitous chemical contaminant that we should be trying to reduce and remove.
  
  They're called bioplastics and they eliminate the threat of microplastic.
I don't think individual shrink wrapping of utensils is a necessary use, every time I pull that thin plastic off something I think we are all going to hell.
But as others have noted, we don't need to eliminate all use, we need to radically reduce use and find a technology to deal with the remaining amount.
- And the plastic on some of those shrink wraps have a terrible squeak.
Ban them and let the market figure it out. They always do.
- And forget all the people who will die in the mean time!
  
  That's why you announce the ban a year or two before.
Single use consumer plastics should be banned.
Bioplastic - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
- The solution is not perfect though...
  Life cycle analysis studies show that some bioplastics can be made with a lower carbon footprint than their fossil counterparts, for example when biomass is used as raw material and also for energy production. However, other bioplastics' processes are less efficient and result in a higher carbon footprint than fossil plastics.
  
  the plastic problem is separate from the carbon problem though… we don’t ban plastics because we’re concerned about climate change; we ban them because we are worried that microplastics are causing significant health effects to both humans and most other animals
  
  Obviously. I doubt bioplastic had even 1/100 of the money and research of their fossil counterparts.
It'd be better to come up with ways to efficiently break them down chemically so they can be remade into new plastic.
I’m probably going to hell for saying this, but… I’m not that worried about plastic pollution? Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to minimize single use items and plastic ending up places it shouldn’t, but if it’s the best option for food / medical safety or cheaply producing something with a lower carbon footprint… we should probably just use it without too much guilt? The world is almost certainly better because of plastic in my opinion.
How can we get away from plastic as a safety layer?
We don't need to get away totally.
It will be good enough if we avoid most of it.
You can buy bamboo utensils individually wrapped in wax and brown paper. For most one time use items we already have a non-plastic alternative, it's just less convenient.
The answer is that we’re not going to get away from plastic
Plastic isn't the problem, capitalism is.
- IMO this is an unpopular opinion mainly because capitalism is a terribly polarizing word which now means different things to different people. On the left, it's associated with imperialism and oppression. Among moderates and liberals it means the flawed ideology which beat something even worse, i.e. communism.
  But the original meaning of capitalism was basically: accumulation. In other words, economic growth. And I think the jury is now in on this one. In the end, exponential growth is just not compatible with a living planet. The evidence is mounting on all sides. One example: the only period in recent history when the environmental indicators were all pointing the right way was the short deep recession that followed the financial crisis. That says an awful lot.
  As a liberal I've changed my mind on this subject and I now agree with you.
Everyone should read the Plastics Paradox. It's good to be well informed.
I feel like the more my desire to escape plastic intensifies, the more plastic I see around me everywhere
Congrats you learned something about how your brain works. My advice is to stop freaking out about plastic.
We have an enzyme that eats the stuff now. Everyone calm down.
- .... We've known of various organisms that consume plastic for over a decade. Nothing has come from it.
  
  Why not?
- Where?
  
  On Google. PETase if you want the nerdy stuff, or "plastic eating enzyme" if you want news articles.
- LOL, I got downvoted into oblivion like you for sharing the opposite view. Classic.
  
  How do you suppose that's an opposite, and why are you stalking my posts?
- I've played Stray, I know where that one ends.
We did rather fine in ancient times without plastic. We will find a way.
- Lots more people died of easily preventable and treatable diseases, so fine is pushing it.
  
  Yeah, that's what a lack of medical knowledge does. Not sure how that's dominantly related to plastic.
- No we didn't.
  
  Plastic was invented in 1907.
- Narrator voice: We didn't
  
  Plastic was invented in 1907.

103 comments