I grew up in beach cities in the 1960s and ‘70s. Broken glass was an omnipresent hazard to feet and bicycle tires. I don’t miss that. Plastic litter sucks, but I’ll take it over what I grew up with.
Me too. Glass was never an issue. (But I did have to watch out for pull tabs.)
Sounds like a market inefficiency. Plastic is only cheaper to produce than recycle because the cost of disposing of the plastic is shunted entirely, and in the end it doesn’t get recycled anyway. Classic externality problem.
One could imagine a system similar to carbon credits that would put the eventual cost of disposing of plastic onto the manufacturers of plastic products; this would capture the cost of externalities, increase the price of plastic products somewhat (which in the idealized free market should reduce use), and encourage innovation in techniques in plastic recycling and disposal.
Of course, it will likely never happen, and even if it did, it would likely be implemented in a way that runs into many of the same issues that make carbon credits less effective than they could be.
Modern small canning lines are cheap. The beer stays fresher in cans due to light protection. All of the local breweries around here have their own canning lines in back and can can anything they pour on request.
I don’t buy soda very often but when I do, I buy it in 20 ounce plastic bottles so I can drink some and then cap it for later, so I’d like to see it in those aluminum bottles I see water and beer sold in.
Can a match box?
The only soda I buy is Monster Zero Ultra in the 20-ounce cans. They have screw tops.
If a crowded sardine in a tin can,
Baby, you can can-can too.
It seems like that’s a relatively recent development. I remember when microbrews pretty much always came in glass bottles. IIRC I recall one brewery saying they’d like to put their beer in cans, but the companies that make aluminum cans required an extremely large minimum order, way larger than what a small brewery would ever need. I’m guessing the can companies have changed that policy in recent years, because I’ve been noticing a lot more small breweries using cans recently, too.
I was curious, so I Googled for canning systems for microbreweries and found systems that can process 10-15 cans per minute. Most sites don’t include prices but one system was $32,000 for one that could do twelve cans per minute.
The plastic industry has apparently been putting out “educational” materials targeted at children that frames the issue as a false choice: “Ban all plastic whatsoever” vs. “Use exactly as much plastic as we currently are.”
I have no problem with plastic products that are meant to last a long time; like you say, the problem is single use plastics. But the plastic industry is telling kids that if they don’t like plastic, then they’ll have to give up their smartphones.
Sorry, I couldn’t find a transcript of the story I heard, just the audio version.
No one has commented on the extent of plastic pollution. Here’s a CNN report from seven years ago, and I doubt anything has made the situation any better. - https://youtu.be/lsJqMmuFWO4?si=RAYNAo90Xsea091-
Simply my opinion, but if it can’t be reused and it can’t be recycled, then it shouldn’t be manufactured or sold.
Ultimately, this is a social problem, not a technological one - do we have the collective will to lessen our impact on the planet, or don’t we? Who is more powerful - corporations or elected governments?
I have a couple of Tupperware containers (without the lids, of course).
You left out the real culprit. Lazy selfish publics.
Of which I am certainly a member.
Anything can be reused sorta for a lower purpose. Successfully defining that in legislation tightly enough to matter is a tall order.
And anything can be recycled. The problem is “recycled in an economically efficient manner”.
Or in many cases “recycled in an ecologically beneficially manner”. I can recall a brief fad for recycling so-called styrofoam packing materials.
Which led to cargo jets flying mountains of styrofoam across the country to recycling facilities. And thereby consuming far more petroleum and emitting far more greenhouse gasses than making new styrofoam from fresh crude oil.
Returning to glass containers is anti-green everything. More fuel costs to transport fewer items, more water for cleaning, more costs for every stage on the production and distribution.
It seems like returning to reusable containers would be the most Earth freindly thing, but it would be the opposite.
And that’s the problem.
The way to go green enough to be ecologically sustainable is to reduce total human headcount, and also per capita consumption of *everything *. And each of those factors by maybe 75%.
That’s a darn tough sell to the 25% who’d survive the cull and an even harder sell to the 75% who won’t.
Seriously? Do you have a link to an article about that?
The Frontline episode I linked-to above discusses this a little. Here’s a more in-depth report on shipping plastic waste (not styrofoam) overseas where it ends up not being recycled, but burned and/or buried:
We may as well just do that here and save the cost and resources needed to ship our crap across the ocean.
What’s wrong with throwing plastic in a landfill? Landfill space is incredibly cheap, and we’re not going to run out of it.