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85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

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Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#161

Post by ars »

Carrok wrote: post #106
ars wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you just take the containers back to a drop point. If someone drives to drop off the container they have uses way more resources than they would just using a disposable. I suspect this idea is just greenwashing. > thicker paperboard Which again uses more resources, and emits more CO2, than plastic.

You're assuming I'm driving it back to the drop point as a dedicated trip. A: I typically keep the containers until I order next time, you have a month to drop them off. So just drop them off when you're picking up your food. B: The drop off point is a short walk away, so you could just, you know, walk. I'm not worried about resources or emissions here, I'm more concerned about trash in the rivers/oceans, and micropl…

> I typically keep the containers until I order next time

Don't them smell? If you wash them by hand you end up using more resources than if you had disposable. If you put them in a dishwasher then, I guess that would work, but seems like a lot of effort for takeout.

> I'm more concerned about trash in the rivers/oceans, and microplastics

Are you dumping things in the street? I suspect you are not. River/Ocean trash is a huge problem, and is not being caused in the US or Canada.

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#162

Post by lolinder »

pembrook wrote: post #154
dumbo-octopus wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The response rate is so low as to be entirely meaningless. If you're content with sampling only 0.000001% of the population, you can get any results you want by simply selecting for the people who care the most by taking a bunch of time to lecture the individual if they seem like they'd vote the other way (oh no, you have to leave? but we didn't even have time to submit your vote yet... :( ), and wording the question…

Yep, asking people vague questions about the boogieman du jour is a questionable excercise at best. If a competing research team had gone out and done a survey with the question rephrased as, "Do you want a global ban on medical syringes and bottled water?" You might find out, amazingly, 92% of people strongly support single-use plastics!

The actual question was [0]:

> The United Nations agreed in 2022 to develop a global treaty to end plastic pollution. How important or unimportant do you believe it is to have global rules to…

> Ban unnecessary single-use plastic products, e.g., shopping bags, cutlery, cups & plates?

As survey questions go, this is actually a pretty precise question.

[0] https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#163

Post by sethammons »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #3

Is there a good substitute for cling wrap? I mostly store food in reusable containers. And I try to use foil as much as possible. But some things are irregularly shaped and need a tight seal, and I’ve struggled to find a good alternative.

I feel like there are two levels of single use plastics. Single use plastic for individual use like food preservation seems like a decent carve out. Though, I suppose any carve out would be abused. Something like "can't ship with single use plastic as a packaging utility"

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#164

Post by graeme »

MattGaiser wrote: post #93
Aunche wrote: post #47

It's not sexy, but the number one way to reduce plastic pollution is to build landfills and proper waste management systems in developing countries. Plastic bans are largely performative and often counterproductive. Instead of bringing their own bags, a lot of shoppers just treat the "reuseable" bags the they buy a the supermarket as disposable. https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2024/01/22/new-j... https://…

I’m curious what bags would need to cost to change that behaviour, as for all the complaining about inflation, many clearly don’t miss 3-4% a shop buying cloth bags here.

I bring a bookbag to stores, but if I forget one I buy a "reuseable" bag and then get rid of it. If you need a bag you need a bag.

Before plastic, stores had paper bags. Some stores offer these now but many don't. I find it surprising. They're certainly less useful than plastic bags but they're plenty useful. you can walk with 2-3 in your arms, they hold a good amount of things, and they're recyclable. And then if you need one with handles you can get one of the paid bags stores have.

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#165

Post by kragen »

ars wrote: post #135
kragen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thousands, really? that seems unlikely; it certainly isn't thousands of times cheaper

I guess I exaggerated. Plastic wrap: $1.97/200sf = $0.00985 Foil: $3.78/75sf = $0.05040 Looks like it's a bit over 5 times as much. However used foil can't be recycled, while used plastic wrap can be burned for energy. But that depends on the disposal options you have available locally.

you can burn used foil for energy, possibly more easily than you can burn used plastic wrap—high-quality plastic wrap is polyvinylidene chloride, and burning it produces hydrochloric acid, which is a hazardous waste product you have to properly scrub from your exhaust. possibly you have to deal with inferior polyethylene plastic wrap, which is much worse at blocking oxygen, but is easy to burn safely

you can recycle used foil, it's just generally not high enough value to be worthwhile. organic contaminants burn off in the crucible

aluminum-air batteries are one of the most intuitively appealing ways to burn used foil for energy, but they are not yet in wide use

it's possible there are externalities not adequately captured by the retail price, such as toxic emissions from the manufacturing processes, or occupational illnesses. but it seems unlikely that those are hundreds of times the retail price

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#166

Post by JumpCrisscross »

bagels wrote: post #136
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an inconvenience to actually reuse the bag that is inevitably covered in rancid meat juice Why do you have rancid meat juice in your grocery bag!? Why do you have rancid meat! > not caring about burying a few plastic bags in the landfill I don’t particularly care about this. I still have a couple reusable bags in the back of my car that I use to transport food from the grocery store home. (I never have to deal with…

You've never had a package of meat leak a little juice in to the grocery bag? If you have, you either wash it (inconvenient) or you have rancid meat juice if you don't (it doesn't start rancid).

> You've never had a package of meat leak a little juice in to the grocery bag?

Not frequently! If that’s happening, the butcher is doing a bad job sealing the package or the meat isn’t fresh.

I agree in those situations I’d likely toss the bag versus rinse it. But this is—and should be—a once every couples years problem. (And I buy meat almost every time I go to the grocery store.)

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#167

Post by AlexandrB »

ars wrote: post #135
kragen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thousands, really? that seems unlikely; it certainly isn't thousands of times cheaper

I guess I exaggerated. Plastic wrap: $1.97/200sf = $0.00985 Foil: $3.78/75sf = $0.05040 Looks like it's a bit over 5 times as much. However used foil can't be recycled, while used plastic wrap can be burned for energy. But that depends on the disposal options you have available locally.

Use foil can be trivially recycled - it's metal: https://www.calgary.ca/waste/what-goes-where/metal-aluminum-...

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#168

Post by LeifCarrotson »

bagels wrote: post #63
blackle wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fully agree, however if you're the kind of person who orders groceries, then what ends up happening is that you start collecting reusable bags that you have no way of reusing. I hope that someone starts some kind of "reusable bag recycling" system so I can give the scores of bags I have to a good home

It's really a farce. The old bags were really, really thin. Now, they're reuseable, and so they have to be much thicker, but they're still only used once. This just means that we're making more plastic waste.

I don't know what the average number of uses for a reusable bag is, but it's certainly not one. We've got about a half dozen, including a few freezer bags that do most of the work, plus a few that have been repurposed as the "beach activities bag" and "kid's soccer stuff bag" and so on. The ones used for groceries have been used at least once a week for going on four years.

The old bags also averaged slightly over one use, but the mandatory "bag of bags" in the pantry got depleted much more slowly than it filled.

If someone is throwing their reusable bags in the landfill and getting new ones every time, they're using it wrong...which I admit isn't entirely their fault at this societal scale, but let's at least agree it's the expected way to use the tool.

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#169

Post by SllX »

ganzuul wrote: post #36
SllX wrote: post #7

I’m someone that wouldn’t mind seeing single use plastics go the way of the dodo bird but 1) you should never trust issue polling even within a single country and 2) given that, I would trust it even less when the polling is “global”.

I see these studies as a first step in a Bayesian inference. Trust comes with more evidence but you have to start somewhere. Edit: Actually this is the third step. From the source: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/...

Let me clarify: you cannot make useful judgements on the basis of an issue poll alone. The information they obscure is just as important as the information they purport to present. This is why we have legislators who in their offices actually investigate and discuss issues of lawmaking with their base, and can even contextualize it within a framework of privileged or classified information they may have access to rather than take an issue poll at face value that says “most of support X on issue Y” and simply vote that way.

Re: 85% of People Want Global Ban on Single-Use Plastics

#170

Post by kaibee »

Carrok wrote: post #106
ars wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you just take the containers back to a drop point. If someone drives to drop off the container they have uses way more resources than they would just using a disposable. I suspect this idea is just greenwashing. > thicker paperboard Which again uses more resources, and emits more CO2, than plastic.

You're assuming I'm driving it back to the drop point as a dedicated trip. A: I typically keep the containers until I order next time, you have a month to drop them off. So just drop them off when you're picking up your food. B: The drop off point is a short walk away, so you could just, you know, walk. I'm not worried about resources or emissions here, I'm more concerned about trash in the rivers/oceans, and micropl…

Also as EV/Plugin-Hybrid adoption keeps increasing, the emissions generated from even a dedicated trip aren't an issue.
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