What I learned about a plastic-free life
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Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#2It's practically impossible to avoid plastic without great effort. I think even if we collectively don't do much towards that goal, each of us should think about it while we go about our daily lives.
For instance, there are times where the choice is wholly ours. Eggs, for instance, often come in plastic or cardboard, so aside from taking a few extra seconds to consider the kind of eggs we want, that's easy. If we want yogurt, though, we basically have little choice beyond considering the packaging that wastes the least plastic.
But there's still so much we can do. When we know that a store puts plastic utensils in an order without asking, and/or gives us our purchase in a plastic bag, it's simple to ask them for neither. It's also simple to carry a reusable bag or two, or a travel mug, et cetera.
Spending just a little energy can easily reduce default plastic use quite a lot. This story is a good reminder that perfect should never be the enemy of good, so at very least we should try where we can.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#3It's practically impossible to avoid plastic without great effort. I think even if we collectively don't do much towards that goal, each of us should think about it while we go about our daily lives. For instance, there are times where the choice is wholly ours. Eggs, for instance, often come in plastic or cardboard, so aside from taking a few extra seconds to consider the kind of eggs we want, that's easy. If we wan…
Car dominated societies inevitably will expose their inhabitants to micro plastics through synthetic tire rubber dust. There is basically no possible way to avoid them without regulation.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#4It’s a bit ridiculous that we’ve built a system to motivate change by distributing money, and that system fails flat when it comes to plastic use.
In a healthy society, avoiding plastic would be both cheaper and more convenient.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#5tl;dr: live like the (early) 19th century.
It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article.
Everything will get recycled eventually, and the majority of plastics are inert --- which is why they're used in the first place. People in the future will surely find a way to use what's in landfills again.
Plus, I had to haul a heavy tote bag of containers everywhere.
Now you know why plastic replaced glass containers in a majority of applications --- and if you're worried about carbon emissions from shipping, all that extra weight and volume should make you ponder.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#6tl;dr: live like the (early) 19th century. It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article. Everything will get recycled eventually, and the majority of plastics are inert --- wh…
Thing is- We’re only now starting to realize how bad plastics really are, because we only recently acquired the tech to measure this.
Unexplained fertility decline in the last 40 years? Probably plastic. They found that humans had 3x higher concentration of plastics in their testicles than their pet dogs, and that pet-dogs have a dose-dependent reduction in viable sperm count inversely correlated with the plastic concentration.
Have a plaque in your blood vessel body with high plastic concentration? Since this year we know it has a 4x (!!!) increase in a new heart infarct in the next year compared to when there is less plastic.
It’s starting to show that it is really bad, and it’s virtually everywhere in our body, most likely causing a ton of issues.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#7tl;dr: live like the (early) 19th century. It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article. Everything will get recycled eventually, and the majority of plastics are inert --- wh…
This is all speculative. You hope everything will get recycled and you hope that people in the future will find a way to use what's in landfills. I hold the opposing view. Most of what is produced today is not recyclable and I have no faith in people to find ways to empty landfills.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#8It's practically impossible to avoid plastic without great effort. I think even if we collectively don't do much towards that goal, each of us should think about it while we go about our daily lives. For instance, there are times where the choice is wholly ours. Eggs, for instance, often come in plastic or cardboard, so aside from taking a few extra seconds to consider the kind of eggs we want, that's easy. If we wan…
Plastic is too perfect to stop using. Honestly we need to find some miracle plastic that is completely biodegradable after say 10 years. The byproducts of the biodegradation process should be completely harmless as well.
I know people are going to say that we already have biodegradable plastic but the key point here is degrade more or less around 10 years, not earlier.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#9tl;dr: live like the (early) 19th century. It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article. Everything will get recycled eventually, and the majority of plastics are inert --- wh…
Plastic is a miracle material that should be reserved for when it's actually necessary. Plastic egg containers, for example, are insane when recycled cardboard does a fine job.
Re: What I learned about a plastic-free life
#10tl;dr: live like the (early) 19th century. It's perplexing to see people jump on this stupid "anti-plastic" mentality bandwagon when they probably owe their entire existence to plastics and other advances in material sciences. Trying to reverse these changes will only lead to societal collapse, as somewhat hinted at in the article. Everything will get recycled eventually, and the majority of plastics are inert --- wh…
This is all speculative. You hope everything will get recycled and you hope that people in the future will find a way to use what's in landfills. I hold the opposing view. Most of what is produced today is not recyclable and I have no faith in people to find ways to empty landfills.
Not only is it speculative, it seems internally inconsistent.
Somehow future people will figure out how to reuse stuff, but we can’t currently be bothered.
I believe in progress! So we should experiment and figure out how we can improve the current situation.