Plastic seals food, sterile medical implements, medicine, beverages, etc… it’s seems like plastic is used as a way to seal things safely. Post pandemic rising, I see even more. My work used to be have plastic utensils in the cafeteria, for example, an already wasteful thing. Now, post-2020, every fork, knife, and spoon is individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper. I feel like the more my desire to escape plastic intensifies, the more plastic I see all around me everywhere.
How can we get away from plastic as a safety layer?
We don’t have to get rid of plastics.
Get rid of cars (which emit the most micro-plastics), fishing nets (which cause the most plastic pollution in the ocean), plastics in clothing and packaging where it isn’t needed.
Then use bio-degradable plastics for whatever’s left. And single use plastics only for the tiny reminder of use cases where it’s needed, like medicine.
Getting rid of cars is generations away in the US, at minimum.
Guess we’d better get started right away, then.
The best way to get people out of cars is to give them good alternatives, so I think you need to start by improving infrastructure and public transport.
Yep. The big issue is that the US landscape was designed for cars from the get go va Europe where cars were an afterthought. You don’t get rid of cars by making them forbidden or too expensive you get rid of them by making useless or less useful than alternative options a.
American cities were designed before cars as well. The difference is that the car and fossil fuel industries lobbied for cities to be completely redesigned around cars in the 50s and 60s. And governments all across the US bulldozed their own cities to do it.
Suburban areas were designed after.
Yes but the highways that connected them to urban and productive areas were made by destroying the old downtowns
Wait till energy costs 10x in the next decade. Car use will go to nothing real quick.
Nope
If energy costs 10x more everything else will be at least 8x more. It’s just inflation on everything at that point.
I don’t trust biodegradable plastics anymore. The in between stage of biodegration is micro plaltics. This may be an issue even if it’s from organic sources.
You don’t have to get rid of cars, my dude, just tires.
It’s called a train; just use a train.
Ready to go to the grocery store kids? All aboard the grocery store express!
You sound sarcastic but … https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tram
Lmao. Just use biodegradable plastics! So easy! You know jack shit about plastics my guy.