• TerkErJerbs@lemm.ee
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    3 months ago

    I find it strange that more people haven’t put it together yet. The stuff plastics are made of is literally toxic byproduct from the O&G industry. Yes some of the products have extremely functional uses, but for the rest of it, they’re literally selling us their toxic waste and trying to make us responsible for disposing of it.

    They might as well be standing outside the grocery stores with a barrel of goo and offering you a portion of it (for a price of course!) on your way out. So then you take it home and try to figure out what to do with it, and feel bad when you realize there is no way to dispose of it in an ethical way which is why they’re shoving the responsibility onto you.

    • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
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      3 months ago

      Yes some of the products have extremely functional uses, but for the rest of it

      Don’t you think most plastic products are used because it’s convenient?

      I fight against it, but it is hard to not recognize how a plastic bottle is much lighter than any other bottle material, how convenient it is to get a plastic bag at the shop when you forgot yours, how convenient it is to get a ready meal in a cheap plastic box instead of an expensive and/or heavy washable container that you may have to bring back etc. Even compared to paper bags, plastic bags are more resistant, lighter and more compact.
      There are probably much more similar convenience uses in the industry.
      Plastic is mostly used because it’s convenient, not because of a big plastic conspiracy.

      So to solve the issue, we need states to make it expensive enough that people will overcome the inconvenience. Making people pay for plastic bags at shops works very well, for example.

      I speak as someone horrified by the over-abundance of plastics in Japan. Some fruits have 3 layers of plastic around, even bananas come in plastic bags, because modern Japan is all about looking clean and being convenient, zero fucks given to ecology.