Is there any question at this point that plastics are the next lead paint / asbestos? We should be moving to ban single use plastics, especially in products consumed by humans.
No, plastic is not as bad as either of those things. That's not to say it's all good. But plastics have some upsides: cheap, durable, sanitary, lightweight, moldable. Switching back to aluminum/steel/glass for containers and paper and cardboard for packaging would have its own set of environmental and economic consequences.
Fleece blankets and clothing should go though. How many fleece hoodies do you need with your company logo embroidered on the breast? Why do we hand these things out at every company meeting as gifts when 90% of them sit in a closet or get thrown away.
Stop buying plastic junk. But plastic is not going away.
Not just single use, but all things with short lifecycle. Cheap electronics, plastic toys, fast fashion clothing with 100% polyester (good bye, Zara, lock‘em up Shein) etc etc. It must be illegal for businesses to offer plastic merch to customers and employees as a gift (all that ugly branded stuff is a crime against humanity committed just to spend some HR or marketing budget).
NOOOO! Please don't take away yoga pants. They have done great things in this world.
Seriously though, nearly everything we use today is made with some plastic. Banning short lifecycle plastic would be extremely disruptive to life in general. Like many things, a better product needs to be made to dethrone plastic. It's really hard to beat the combination of cheap, moldable, light, and durable.
Define cheap. A piece of clothing for 10$ that you can wear 10 times is more expensive than the one that costs $100 and lasts 500 wear cycles. A glass container for food may be heavier and more expensive, but it will last much longer. There’s often a hidden trade-off for longevity with plastic things that consumers ignore or don’t notice.
Yep, right here on this forum you'll have people argue that we can't know they're bad because:
1. Ethically you can't really do interventional studies where you're putting pretty well-established toxins into people
2. Practically you can't do observational studies very well because a) observational studies generally are atrocious, especially for understanding intake of a substance and its biological effects and b) there aren't any natural control groups because the entire globe has microplastics
3. We can ignore the fact that in-vivo and animal studies show very similar effects as to what we're seeing at population-scale in humans, because... well there are other variables that are hard to control for (and it'd be super inconvenient to have to refactor these out of our global supply chain)
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Is there any question at this point that plastics are the next lead paint / asbestos? We should be moving to ban single use plastics, especially in products consumed by humans.
No, plastic is not as bad as either of those things. That's not to say it's all good. But plastics have some upsides: cheap, durable, sanitary, lightweight, moldable. Switching back to aluminum/steel/glass for containers and paper and cardboard for packaging would have its own set of environmental and economic consequences.
Fleece blankets and clothing should go though. How many fleece hoodies do you need with your company logo embroidered on the breast? Why do we hand these things out at every company meeting as gifts when 90% of them sit in a closet or get thrown away.
Stop buying plastic junk. But plastic is not going away.
Not just single use, but all things with short lifecycle. Cheap electronics, plastic toys, fast fashion clothing with 100% polyester (good bye, Zara, lock‘em up Shein) etc etc. It must be illegal for businesses to offer plastic merch to customers and employees as a gift (all that ugly branded stuff is a crime against humanity committed just to spend some HR or marketing budget).
NOOOO! Please don't take away yoga pants. They have done great things in this world.
Seriously though, nearly everything we use today is made with some plastic. Banning short lifecycle plastic would be extremely disruptive to life in general. Like many things, a better product needs to be made to dethrone plastic. It's really hard to beat the combination of cheap, moldable, light, and durable.
Define cheap. A piece of clothing for 10$ that you can wear 10 times is more expensive than the one that costs $100 and lasts 500 wear cycles. A glass container for food may be heavier and more expensive, but it will last much longer. There’s often a hidden trade-off for longevity with plastic things that consumers ignore or don’t notice.
Two levels down and nobody has mentioned car tires, wat
My fault. I never owned a car and use public transportation too often to remember about them.
Yep, right here on this forum you'll have people argue that we can't know they're bad because:
1. Ethically you can't really do interventional studies where you're putting pretty well-established toxins into people
2. Practically you can't do observational studies very well because a) observational studies generally are atrocious, especially for understanding intake of a substance and its biological effects and b) there aren't any natural control groups because the entire globe has microplastics
3. We can ignore the fact that in-vivo and animal studies show very similar effects as to what we're seeing at population-scale in humans, because... well there are other variables that are hard to control for (and it'd be super inconvenient to have to refactor these out of our global supply chain)