The question sounds hyper stupid but hear me out.
We have an underwhelming volume of shit that relies on plastic. Plastic is cheap and versatile. If we replaced the vast majority of it, I presume costs for most products would creep up, and we would also shift our demand for natural resources (such as wood for paper ). Are there enough resources to sustainably replace our current volume of single use plastics? Or would we be sentencing all of our remaining forests to extinction if we did? Would products remain roughly equally affordable?
Let’s imagine we replace, overnight, all single use plastic in this hypothetical scenario with an alternative. All parcels are now mailed in paper; waxed paper if you need humidity resistance. Styrofoam pebbles are now paper shreds and cardboard clusters. No more plastic film, anywhere. No more plastic bags, only paper. No more plastic wrapping for any cookies confectionery, etc; it’s paper and thin boxes like those of cereals. Toothbrushes, pens, and a variety of miscellaneous items are now made of wood, cardboard, glass, metal, etc. The list goes on, but you get the idea.
Is this actually doable? Or is there another reason besides plastic companies not wanting to run out of business that we haven’t done this already? Why are we still using so much fucking plastic?
It’s doable. The world existed and functioned without plastic.
You would see glass for bottles, etc. We would adapt and be fine
Bamboo cutlery is honestly one of my favorite alternatives. Bamboo is cheap, strong, and grows crazy fast.
There’s also this newfangled cutlery out of metal, which is pretty cool. You rub it with soap water and it’s as good as new.
😋
What is this “soap water” you speak of? Is it a new magick spell?
I can eat anything with chopsticks. That’s just wood!
Soup is a bit challenging with chopsticks.
Tip the bowl to your mouth, use chopsticks to push the soup in
So you can’t eat anything with chopsticks! /s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLLyaiPoi5Q
If you think about it a soup bowl is just a big spoon
Here I was thinking you were in the pockets of “big chopstick” and now I find you’re secretly a plant for “big spoon”! Well played, sir!
My nickname in high school was “big chopstick”
The challenge makes it all the sweeter a victory.
This isn’t a good argument. The world existed and functioned without cars, computers, phones, electricity, etc - doesn’t mean it’s viable in the current time.
That is just a way of saying don’t change anything.
Interesting that you bring up these examples. Giving up some of these is easier than others, yet there was once a world where none of these was necessary.
I think it’s indeed not a good argument that we used to live in a world without these. The question is more, how much do we lose if we want to give up, say, plastic packaging. Can we lose a little convenience and gain _a lot _of sustainability?
deleted by creator
Yes, I understand that and I really wish we did things that way. But we as a society are a different beast than we were a century ago.
Plastics started to creep up in the 60s, maybe earlier than that, and back then not only we were a smaller population, but we also relied a lot less on parcels. Online shopping was non existent. Smaller scale and more local businesses made reuse and recycle easier (think glass milk bottles delivered to you; I also remember shopping cookies loose by the kilo when I was a kid, and I no longer see that as the norm anymore). This also made transport logistics easier and less reliant on packaging to endure long trips.
It’s good to see the positive replies here, but that also depresses me because it means the only reason we have so much plastic is corporate greed
Not just corporate greed, it’s very convenient
Degrowth and permaculture are growing movements. It’s good you recognize a problem, but only if you find ways to move beyond it in a way that really resonates with you