> The real solution is sunsetting single-use anything...but $$$
Those $$$ correspond to real-world costs.
For examplee, we also want to lower car usage. Do you imagine that people who commute by bicycle or train are going to carry around durable versions of every single-use item they currently encounter? Cups, straws, plates, utensils, napkins, takeout containers, grocery bags, produce bags, tissues? Carrying around dirty versions of all the above until they get home to clean them?
Even if they do, detergent is also single-use, and damaging to aquatic environments.
I'm not some kind of hyperlibertarian, but I think we need to properly tax externalities (such as poisoning customers and destroying the viability of the biosphere), use the proceeds of that for mitigation, and let the market take care of the rest.
Straws are useless. Plates and ustensiles can be provided by and cleaned at the place you eat. Takeout containers don’t take more space than the non reusable container you will have to carry back anyway. They can also be provided by your place of work if you generally go for take out for lunch. Reusable tissue bags take no space or paper bags can be used for a cost.
Napkins and tissues are not made of plastics.
So, yes I fully expect people to carry around reusable things even when they bike. It’s not that hard. You know how I know? Because I do it every day.
Honestly stopping using single use items must be the easiest thing to do to limit the amount of trash you generate. It has absolutely no impact on your daily life.
Would you be surprised to learn that napkins and tissues and paper towels have all sorts of plastic coatings on them? It’s an untold story and I’d love one of these pubs to do some research the way they did about pizza boxes back in the day
Your 100% cotton sweater has petroleum-derived coatings on it too, which give it a soft handfeel in the store and keep bugs from eating it on its way over from SE Asia :)
I just want to be able to buy ketchup or mayonnaise in glass at the grocery store. But apparently that's not enough, you want me to bring my own container and have the grocer fill it up from the 55 gallon condiment drum?
Don't turn the argument into a parody of itself because you don't like what it implies.
No one is asking you about buying using refilable containers you bring to the store. That's not what's talked about when people talk about single use items.
I am 100% in favour of putting in place a container-deposit scheme however because these glass containers are actually reusable most of the time and should be collected back. Plastic overpackaging should just be banned. The whole thing is just a waste of ressource only possible because externalties are not priced in.
> because these glass containers are actually reusable most of the time
As far as I am aware, those are mostly obsolete/moot/whatever. Still used for pickles, to the best of my understanding. Tomato sauces (spaghetti, etc) have started to switch over already several years ago. Glass is mostly for premium products, the $12/qt organic-grass-fed-shoulder-massaged milk.
Even if I'm generous and assume you're not talking about grocery stores... it's practically impossible to have a fast food industry without single-use packaging. Most of the McDonald's in my area are designed around drive-thru and delivery. The closest probably seats 30 inside, but has two drive-thru lanes and a large rack right next to the counter for the Uber Eats bags.
> They won’t be if you start pricing plastic packaging generated externalities in the products prices.
Sure. let's make food more expensive for poor people. That's always grand policy. It'd be one thing if it was limiting how many Chic-Fil-A sauce packets they got in their drive-thru paper bag, but this also (believe it or not) affects those trying to eat at home with minimally processed foods. At some point the 72-serving Gigantosaurus bulk Hot Pocket box in the freezer section looks better than some of the stuff that resembles food people should eat.
> It’s so impossible it’s actually done in France if
I have no clue why people can't just magically wish themselves French and have entire centuries of French culture and habits imprinted on them just because people who played too much SimCity 2000 as a kid think that other people's lives should be micromanaged for a higher score. God save us from the technocrats.
> Sure. let's make food more expensive for poor people.
I know I started this whole argument by speaking up in favor of efficiently throwing things away, but I do want to speak out in favor of making (harmful) things more expensive for poor people; and giving poor people enough money to make up for it.
This also applies to a lot of other things, like taxing semi trucks for the insane amounts of damage they do to the roads compared to other vehicles, and then paying poor people for the increased price of goods at Wal-Mart. It may sound like taking extra steps to have the same result; but because you're reducing externalized costs instead of subsidizing them, everybody ends up better off.
> Sure. let's make food more expensive for poor people.
The magic of deposit refund system is that you only pay more once. Plus really poor people can actually collect unreturned items to make some change. Have you ever considered how things worked before plastic?
> I have no clue
That much is pretty clear.
I’m very happy to see that you are able to claw at anything so that your initial impossible as actually been exposed as entirely possible. I think it’s nice that you are so afraid of change you can’t even fathom taking such large steps as using reusable containers to limit trash.
> The magic of deposit refund system is that you only pay more once.
Your insight into the economics of this is shallow. If plastic is cheaper than glass, a "deposit refund scheme" doesn't fix the fact that forcing everything to glass makes it more expensive. Glass jars aren't just washed and reused, they have to be melted down to be reused at all. There's a big fuel usage penalty there (not to mention this is fossil fuel, so all the climate change connotations). In some really pathological scenarios, the single-use plastics can actually be better for the environment, since once the plastic is landfilled the carbon stays out of the air.
> That much is pretty clear.
Cheap shot. About all you have, isn't it? Just big dumb ideas that make you feel good, that you've never much contemplated to any depth, that would make things worse for everyone.
> Glass jars aren't just washed and reused, they have to be melted down to be reused at all.
Glass, unlike plastic, is impermeable. In Germany, the pfand system incentivizes bottle return by around $.10 to $.50 per glass bottle; and they're washed & sterilized, then re-used.
This does work as a subsidy for poor people with time on their hands; pfand bottles are often left next to outdoor trash cans instead of in them, and they usually disappear very quickly.
> Glass, unlike plastic, is impermeable. In Germany, the pfand system incentivizes bottle return by around $.10 to $.50 per glass bottle; and they're washed & sterilized, then re-used.
Glass jars tend to have small fractures, especially around where the lid/cap are, making them unfit for reuse. Inspection is tedious and manpower-intensive. Melted down and put back into the blow molds, if reused at all. Industry works differently than the political perception of it. You might want them to be reused, but it's just not the way the world works.
Instead of jacking off over political videos, go watch some of the non-political ones of the "how it's made" variety once in awhile.
I live in Germany and I see glass bottles that have been obviously re-used--e.g., beer from one brewery in glass embossed with the slightly-raised lettering of another brewery.
I couldn't tell you whether it's economically efficient or energy-efficient to do things that way, when you consider all the direct and indirect inputs; any more than I could tell you how to make a pencil. But I can tell you that Germany does it.
At present, yes, I believe bicyclists are more likely to carry some reusable items with them.
Some of the reason being that they are planning their trips and know what they can carry, and know that they don't want to carry more. Reusable water bottles in a work backpack are an example.
The other aspect is you don't have to carry all of these things. If you eat in a restaurant or at a house you are more likely to have reusable options available (ie washable plates and dinnerware). In many ways, car culture is linked to takeaway culture, which causes single use culture.
Top of mind; it's easy to picture the American automobile with bags of fast food trash.
> Do you imagine that people who commute by bicycle or train are going to carry around durable versions of every single-use item they currently encounter? Cups, straws, plates, utensils, napkins, takeout containers, grocery bags, produce bags, tissues? Carrying around dirty versions of all the above until they get home to clean them?
Doesn't seem uncommon at all to me, that's what my colleagues and I do, same for my wife and her colleagues (and we work in very different environments and places, different countries even).
Some of my colleagues wash their dishes at work, I just bring them back and put them in my dishwasher a home. My wife has a dishwasher at work so they just put their stuff there. The products we use for washing at home or at work claim to be biodegradable and not harmful for the environment.
Properly taxing externalities is an obvious thing to do though of course.
Those $$$ correspond to real-world costs.
For examplee, we also want to lower car usage. Do you imagine that people who commute by bicycle or train are going to carry around durable versions of every single-use item they currently encounter? Cups, straws, plates, utensils, napkins, takeout containers, grocery bags, produce bags, tissues? Carrying around dirty versions of all the above until they get home to clean them?
Even if they do, detergent is also single-use, and damaging to aquatic environments.
I'm not some kind of hyperlibertarian, but I think we need to properly tax externalities (such as poisoning customers and destroying the viability of the biosphere), use the proceeds of that for mitigation, and let the market take care of the rest.