zerowaste

I need to clean it to a concerning degree as well or risk being fined.

Also, where do those burned plastic fumes go after being burned also matter and I'm not confident they're not just being sent straight back to my lungs.

There's a bulk food store near me and it allows BYO containers (or you can use one of their compostable bags). It's great! A little bit more work (you need to tare your/container write down the empty weight), but you get your goods in the container of your choice.

You're exactly correct. I used to work in a manufacturing environment, and the amount of single-use plastic our production team used on a daily basis was staggering. I would estimate that company created as much plastic waste in one day as my household did in three months.

Consumer recycling or boycotts is only a drop in the bucket. Industry will have to shift away from single-use plastic if we're going to have any chance of saving ourselves from a future filled with generations worth of garbage.

Got a source for that?

Because you can grow plants just fine in hydroponics. Plastic trays. Plastic tubing. Nutrient mixture. Plastic everywhere.

I think plants would grow just fine in plastic given the correct nutrients.

But plants can grow in plastic containers in just water

I wonder if plants will evolve to deal with the increased microplastics or if there'd be a way to filter it out of soil. Life is always adapting. The most obvious solution is to quit manufacturing plastic but that's looking increasingly unlikely.

Water conservation is not bullshit, where are you getting that from. .ml users?

"is the "recycle" thing also bullshit? how so?"

The only honest answer to this is "it's complicated". If I had to give an oversimplified binary answer, I'd say yes, it is a bit bullshit.

To attempt to summarise part of why:

• There are so many different kinds of plastics that actually making recycling supply chains work is difficult
• At the household waste processing level, I've seen a few investigations that show plastic that could be recycled being sent to landfill, or incineration. This is in part because of inconsistent practices by households sorting their trash, meaning the waste processing plant has to do a heckton of work to ensure that everything is indeed recyclable. This may vary depending on one's local authority
• Plastic recycling is far more economical at the commercial/industrial level, especially because there's less work/error in the processing side of it.
• I think it depends on the particular plastic, but I think that plastic can generally only be recycled once, and recycled plastic is often lower quality than "virgin" plastic. This doesn't mean we shouldn't recycle plastic, but that we should be aware that it has its limits.
• Glass and aluminium have less of these issues than plastic, but it's still more complex than most realise. Logistics of processing recycling is hard and often expensive.

Along those lines, I think the main point I want to highlight is that the phrase that was often pushed is "reduce, re-use, recycle". I think that far too much emphasis has been put on recycling in recent years, especially given the complexities and caveats with recycling that I outlined above. "Reduce, re-use, recycle" is explicitly anti-consumerist, which is why I think the rhetoric has morphed to emphasise the recycling aspect, despite recycling ideally being the last item in that list. Reduce how much stuff you're using by being mindful in your purchases, especially with plastics and the like; then consider how you could re-use stuff that you already have; only then should recycling be entering the picture.

My opinion is that changes like this are less about reducing the waste products, but more about how this kind of mindful anti-consumerism shapes us; modern society has made consumers of us all, and we desperately need to resist that as much as possible. It's hard to do because corporations have become very skilled at co-opting eco-conscious rhetoric and "green-washing" consumerism: they placate us by advertising that the plastic products they're selling us are made with 10% recycled plastic, as if that makes much difference to the fact the product will probably end up in landfill

People just like to look a things in a binary way and to look at excuses not do annoying things.

Só since recicling doesn't 100% solve the plastic problem obviously we should stop even trying to do the thing.

And also throw in reduce and reuse in the bucket of things not to do because why try everything at all if we can just point a finger at someone and keep not doing anything besides complain.

No, but the ultra wealthy having the wealthy necessary to bribe politicians, buy all our media, and push endless disinformation with zero accountability are all a direct result of capitalism.

Publically owner companies, like the USPS, are extremely transparent with how they spend money and they are held to far higher ethical standards than private companies are.

We recently built a plastic recycling facility here in sweden which recycles.. 12 types of plastic i think? several of which were basically not possible before.

so yeah it's definitely possible to recycle plastics, countries have just been refusing to actually take measures to make it happen.

just collecting and combusting at high temperatures

You mean GHG pollution.

For the harm that's already been done? Time.

For the future? Regulation.

Get rid of them. I was very young but existed in the 70's and the grocery store did not have all the plastics and there was plenty of convenience in foods. Its amazing what glass, paper, and aluminum can do. Glass was not even recycled usually. Had a deposit added to the cost and got it back when you returned it to the store where the person supplying the item took them back and they were washed and reused. It was why bottle caps were so prevalent.

Significant reduction in single use plastics, banning plastic use in certain products (even non-single-use), and a drastic increase in accountability for producers and consumers.

I'm sure you called many...