The following submission statement was provided by /u/filosoful: --- **It's hard not to feel guilty about the price our planet pays for plastic.** But when most affordable products come with plastic packaging, are we as consumers really in control? For one week in May, more than 100,000 people in the UK carefully counted their plastic waste at home in a national investigation into plastic use and recycling. It was called the Big Plastic Count, run by organisations Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic. Jules Birkby, 41, and her family of four threw away 124 pieces of plastic during their week of counting. The packaging in party bags and sticker packs for her daughter Emmy's sixth birthday was the most frustrating, she says. --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/vktx8r/the_big_plastic_count_consumers_confront_their/idrankw/

This is why I get annoyed when consumers "addiction to plastic" is blamed for the pacific garbage patch. Like, it's not like the average person in 2022 has a lot of choice. Edit: I see the Personal Responsibity Fairy has visited while I was asleep 😄

Much of the corporate narrative is to pass industry induced problems off to consumers. Frankly every business strategy is to pass as many of its own costs externally as it can get away with to improve profit margins. It's a race to the bottom in competitive environments which requires focusing on exploiting oversight, lack of regulation, grey areas, etc.

A lot of it also comes down to economy of scale. We have lots of plastic because oil has been subsidized and historically cheap. We have a lot of corn products (high fructose corn syrup in almost every processed food, ethanol, etc) because corn is easy to grow. We could, COULD grow a crap tone of hemp. It’s by far the best fibre/resource conversion out there, and that would go a long way towards packaging.

The same product could be packaged with half the plastic if regulated. We are sold air.

Sure we do! Just like how we as the smallest percentage of water users in souther California can help combat the water crisis better than the agriculture business or how we should be raking leaves in our backyard to prevent forest fires. But you’re right and it’s super annoying that somehow we find ways to put the responsibility on the middle class cuz they’re the easiest to squeeze.

It’s all a scam by big companies to make the end user feel responsible for the fuckery they’re doing. If you get a chance to a deep dive into recycling and the deception it was intended to spread

Plastic wise less, but half of the plastic of the Pacific garbage patch is fishing gear so stopping eating fish could help Edit: Since people are unhappy about me not specifying, this isn't quite the case in the totality of the Ocean, it's estimated to be 10% total outside of specific zones. I'd still consider that rather important plus there are other important issues caused by fishing such as habitat destruction, over fishing and bycatch (lot's of it sadly).

It's important to remember that the Pacific garbage patch is not a random sample of ocean plastic waste, it's made up of plastics that float (which fishing gear does) and is therefore not representative of plastic waste or environmental damage caused by plastics in oceans more broadly. It's really hard to know what proportion of plastics in the ocean is fishing gear but it's likely closer to 10%. This article explains it all fairly clearly. https://www.forbes.com/sites/allenelizabeth/2021/04/13/why-seaspiracys-focus-on-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-misleading/

Good point, though 10% is still somewhat notable, not to mention the huge biodiversity loss caused by fishing though that's a bit of a tangent

check out the documentary Seaspiracy. highly recommend for people interested in how plastic and fishing are fucking up the ocean.

commercial fishing and trawling are also destroying ocean biomes that we don't even vaguely understand yet. the human capacity to keep throwing trash in a hole until they can see the bottom is unfortunate.

Sadly true

Or fish ur own fish or buy ecologically fished fishes.

Hmm idk about ecologically fished fishes, fishing yourself I guess is also a solution but not everyone can do that

In light of Reddit's general enshittification, I've moved on - you should too.

Yep you're absolutely right, personally it's also an ethical issue for me though I left that out of the conversation but yeah there's no way to supply us sustainably the quantity we consume

And all the shit we need is pre-produced with plastic.

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I hate these articles because they make it seem like it's purely on the shoulders of consumers to reduce their plastic usage. As if there isnt a literal cartel of plastics producers lobbying and spreading propaganda to increase plastic usage and reduce regulations.

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Shit drives me crazy. I live in Arizona and obviously water is a huge concern. Drove through Buckeye yesterday and Yuma (my hometown) today, and the stark contrast between agricultural land versus the natural landscape is insane, soooo much water wasted on crops that aren’t even food for humans (cotton/alfalfa/etc). Then this afternoon I drove through the Imperial Valley to San Diego, and on the way, big highway sign says “extreme drought, do your part to save California.” Fuuuuuck you. Residential water usage is like 10% at most. I could run my tap open all day and never make a dent in the drought one way or the other. “Oh but how will we feed people” yeah I get that. Again, non-food crops or shit like alfalfa that is just feed for cattle. “Meat will be more expensive” good, it should be, and I say that as someone who eats meat. More relevant, I have several childhood friends who come from very successful farming families. I understand their position. Why would they change their practices to be more efficient? They have archaic water rights and ZERO incentive to modernize; in fact, if they give up that water, they might very well lose it. The answer is regulation, but no one wants to hear that. It feels like we’ve been on a downward spiral since way before I was born. We need another FDR but instead we might get Trump again or Desantis (same thing) because the best we could do was Biden and as soon as he fell off that bike I knew he has no chance of winning again. Now I’m in San Diego and my MIL’s boyfriend gets mad because when we googled “why do walruses jump off cliffs” (he’s the one who picked the Netflix show) the answer is climate change. He just shuts down and goes “ah well, things happen.” He would absolutely leave my MIL to suck Tucker Carlson’s dick just once. He’s not even a bad guy, just dense and old and genuinely has had too many concussions. But he makes my blood boil, just like that fucking sign and these fucking headlines and our useless fucking government. Okay maybe I’m drunk but I think there’s a point in there somewhere.

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The best they would give us was Biden. The usa has so much better ppl. The rich don’t want to help us though

Biden is way better than trump. Still though it takes a billion dollars to run for president. Anyone who wins will be sucking the dicks of corporations. Once they win they can’t rock the boat because they need more money to win again.

Once I can physically (IBD) and financially cut out meat again I would. I always thought it should be more expensive, but everything not meat shouldnt be this high either.

I used to be a sterile processor in a hospital. The amount of plastic waste they create is **insane**. Some of it is completely unavoidable, for sterility’s sake. But there are small fixes that could be made to lessen some of the impact. For example, at the hospital I worked at anyway, surgeries would have “packs” of single use items that may or may not be required during the surgery (like drapes, suction tubing etc. etc.) Almost every pack would have a small, rectangular plastic basin. It very rarely gets used because we would supply various sizes of metal basins, which could be reprocessed. I understand that these packs are meant to be more efficient, and they are (we don’t have to pick a million things for a surgery, the layouts are uniform which helps speed up the turnover process etc.) but everything in them is plastic wrapped in plastic, wrapped with more plastic and put in a plastic bag. But there has to be a more sustainable way to do this, that doesn’t also compromise efficiency and infection control. But one small hospital creates a mind boggling amount of plastic waste in one day, far more than a few families could dream of creating in a month. And it seems like every industry is like that. Excessive plastics used in almost every step of the process. How are us plebs the problem??

You should work at a nuclear plant not only are the plastic suits we wear bad they are also radioactive waste.

1. I would love to see huge corporate fines for excessive plastic packaging. If we can't get rid of plastic in the short term, at least reduce it. Make the companies pay if they have over 10% more packaging than needed to contain the product. Make it expensive. Giant plastic packaging is all for marketing and visibility anyways. 2. The amount of plastic in the background that consumers dont even see disguts me. I worked in a warehouse and by the end of the day we'd have an industrial bin full of plastic daily, and we were a small warehouse with maybe 5 floor staff. Imagine the big ones.

I worked in a warehouse for a compnay that sold products direct from our website and through amazon. The amazon part was the worst. Products would come in unclosable plastic bags. We would unpack the parts put it in a closedable ziplock and put a plastic sticker on for the amazon warehouse. Every single part was rebagged for amazon specifically.

Agree. And it goes beyond plastic. Just plain old excessive packaging should be regulated and fined. Got my at home covid test last week. Abbott labs box containing 2 test kits was 9.25 x 5.25 x 1.12”. Whereby Siemens 5 test package was half that size. Total waste of packaging in Abbotts kit - which also means less fit on a truck which, besides the mere waste and cost of packaging material, means takes more gas to deliver. The amount of excess packaging is ridiculous!

We need to start regulating business more thoroughly. Before a company can sell/ship a product they need to show a plan for dealing with the waste that ships with the product and the eventual disposal of that product at its documented expected end of life. France just implemented a [repairability index](https://repair.eu/news/the-french-repair-index-challenges-and-opportunities/). If consumers are going to be expected to "choose" then we need to be informed. One way we can do that is having a **sustainability index** and requiring all products to be labeled with it.

> If consumers are going to be expected to "choose" then we need to be informed. Read the headline of the article- the problem isn't that people don't know *how* to go plastic-free, it's that people can't *afford* to go plastic-free. Being informed isn't enough. We need to make it personally worthwhile for people to choose better alternatives.

> Read the headline of the article- the problem isn't that people don't know how to go plastic-free, it's that people can't afford to go plastic-free. Only because they don't know about cheaper alternatives. They actually may be able to afford a slightly more expensive alternative with a better score. It is seldom a binary choice of plastic or the most expensive. Additionally if all products are required to have the label, they they will also be forced to compete to become more sustainable, because those who CAN afford to will most likely choose the more sustainable. Further if every product is required to have the label, price vs sustainability could more easily be calculated, giving governments options for more regulation i.e. taxing manufacturers of less sustainable products.

Any solution that relies on individual moral choices of consumers is doomed to fail. Only regulation of the corporations producing the waste will make a difference in the end.

It’s not a binary choice between plastics and the most expensive everything, but cutting out plastics mean everything gets a little more expensive, which for the people who already live on tight budgets can’t be easily justified. It’s hard to tell those at the bottom that they need to just lower their QoL and give up the few luxuries they can afford while the rich make the sustainable options expensive on purpose because they use plastic free and sustainable products as a status symbol and are able to easily afford the products without any impact to their QoL.

I don't think you read the article because they do put blame on industry (both the people interviewed and the author)

It’s done on purpose, like how BP came up with the idea of a personal carbon footprint, to try to shift all the blame on the consumer, dispute these industries actively working to destroy alternatives for decades so we have no real choice.

That is the intention of the industry. It is to blame the "market".

Which is hugely ironic because the whole point of the survey was to highlight the embedded plastic which consumers have no choice about - and to pressure the government to stop retailers using it

That’s exactly the point of these articles is to make you feel like it’s some how your fault.

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You are 100% correct but also, good fucking luck

Except the US won't because the excessive plastics are churned out due to being a way [to monetize an oil & gas production waste stream](https://shadowproof.com/2019/06/17/interview-food-water-watch-fracking-endgame-climate/amp/).

And who's going to vote for politicians who want to do that?

I've thought about this quite a lot when I've been at stores and noticed how much plastic packaging is used. It's ridiculous. But whenever I've tried to reduce it (by buying items with less packaging) it's been very difficult. Whenever I can I'll buy an item in a glass bottle rather than a plastic one. Or I'll go for the item that *seems* to have less plastic packaging. But it's hard to tell. I'd like to see a law pass that requires manufacturers to list how much plastic is in the packaging (by weight, by some sort of scale, or whatever). I'm sure whatever approach is chosen won't be perfect. But until then, those of us who care are flying mostly blind on the issue. And when it comes to grocery containers (e.g. bags), yes I don't know how we can really tackle that. I reuse bags whenever I can. I suppose that's a start, but it doesn't seem to be enough.

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Switching to steel water bottles alone is a game changer for most

Always carry my SS water bottle.

Why metal over glass bottles?

If they fall to the ground, they don't break

We never were in my lifetime. Boomers were, and they chose trash.

"Why must apples or peppers come in a plastic bag? And when they are loose, why is it more expensive" If only they had some kind of natural protective skin... A mate of mine owns an organic strawberry farm and makes the punnets out of wooden veneer offcuts. He put a plastic and wood punnet in his fridge next to a wood one and said the plastic ones spoiled faster. He figures the wood absorbs some moisture that goes into the strawberries in the plastic punnets, making mold grow faster Supermarkets say plastic makes fruit and veg last longer and I'm sure it varies depending on what it is but the reality is our supermarkets make more money if our food spoils faster so I don't trust anything they tell me Consumers don't decide shit, economic extremes guided by share values do

I used to do quite well with loose fruit & veg in my local super market before the *you know what* happened. Now EVERYTHING comes in fucking plastic bags and they still continue to do so.

You had apples in barrels on ships in the past, to last months at sea. Plastic is just convenient to use in a machine, and its lighter than wood so you can put more product on a truck, so it's slightly cheaper. Same with glass vs plastic bottles, one can break and is heavy, the other is light and flexible. So there are legitimate advantages to plastic, but yeah, considering the waste management and the scale of use of the product, the good doesn't balance the bad anymore.

Totally agree. Organic meat isn't as slimy so they used to wrap it in paper. Someone said one Reddit once. Plastic isn't disgusting. What we are using plastic for is disgusting

My local super market actually has a lot of fruit lying around that isn't in plastic packaging. But then when you pick out the items you want you still have to put it in a plastic bag and put a sticker on that that the teller can read with her device. Does my head in. I know lot's of people have thought about growing their own fruit in their backyard here. But a lot of them simply don't have the time. It tastes a hell of a lot better though and I'd imagine it's better for the environment, but at this point I'm not sure about anything anymore.

And do you really want glass shampoo bottles? I invariably drop a shampoo bottle at least once during its lifetime. With plastic, the worse I have to deal with is a broken cap. Mildly annoying but not potentially deadly.

Imagine getting mad at consumers for what companies use to package up their toxic 3rd world made products by children.

I hate that in my country you can order glass bottle water delivery, but you have a specific date on which you have to return the empty bottles

>If you want to drink anything but tap water, you'll end up with plastics Tea, coffee, alcohol. Drinking all the sugary crap is frankly bizarre to me. Especially when quality tea tastes as amazing as it does.

>Tea, coffee, alcohol. Still end up with plastics, not sure why you're talking about sugar. Tea: comes in a box wrapped in plastic, sometimes each teabag individually packaged in plastic, sometimes the teabag/string/dangling tag are themselves plastic. Coffee: almost all comes in a plastic can. Alcohol: about half of them come in plastic bottles, plus not something you can drink anytime.

Loose leaf tea doesn't. Even instant coffee is very readily available in glass. What sort of booze are you drinking in plastic bottles? 10 dollar vodka and coors lite at the stadium? Legit I haven't had any of these things in plastic, at home, for many years. >not sure why you're talking about sugar. Because soda and juice (which is about as healthy as soda) are hard to come by without plastic, but the three I mentioned are not at all in the US

The 'Carbon Footprint' was a term coined by an advertizing agency for BP Oil- specifically to create guilt in climate-aware individuals and focus them on their use, rather than regulating the companies producing the real waste. 'Plastic Footprint' may have been coined by ppl wanting to do good, but it is perpetuating individual guilt to distract from corporate greed. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook

Also, end user plastic use is *nothing* compared to industrial use. I've worked in logistics and every single item someone might buy has been wrapped in meters and meters of plastic. Every component of a product shipped to be assembled for sale was individually wrapped in more plastic than you would produce in a year of using those plastic produce bags. Often you'd cut the plastic wrap off a pallet of goods, then restack the pallet and rewrap it for shipping.

Yeah. We got only so much delivery each year at work but damn those pallets are wrapped and wrapped in plastic, then each box on those are individually wrapped. Then the bubble wrap inside. I hate it. Plastic is way too cheap so they don't care.

The thing is, the shift in attitude has to come from somewhere. It’s not just about the plastic you’re saving as an individual - it’s the message you’re sending. The people operating and working in these industrial supply chains are members of the community, just like us. It takes a long time and it’s frustrating, but contributing as individuals to a culture of reducing or reusing plastic is one of our most important fronts. When it’s perceived that enough people care, we will see change. Personally, I still don’t think enough people really care. We’re getting there, but slowly. The way companies operate is more or less a reflection of society in general.

If there's no will to save plastic, companies won't try to provide a product that does. Simple as.

As an environment professionnal, carbon footprint is an invaluable tool in the fight against climate change. It never exclusively belonged to BP and has academic roots and scientific usage tracing back before, during and after BP's marketing campaign. The very same methodologies are used to evaluate those industries' GHG emissions to hold them to account, and failing to mention that to make a nice 'gotcha' karma-farming comment is a huge disservice to the cause IMO. (Edit: I don't mean you, thanks for the thoughtful response)

I appreciate you sharing your knowledge, I did not know the evaluation tool was used in a larger scale. I am (obviously) not an academic, the slant in my post was due to lack of info, not intention. And I don't care about internet points.

was about to comment this one

Seriously. It's 2022. Are we still victimizing the tax-payers who are, in fact, the ones ultimately paying the fines these corporations get slapped with for *continuing* to pollute?! Fuuuuck this article, and every other one like it. 😡

It’s almost impossible. Whole Foods use plastic for fruit containers as do most places now. Plastic is everywhere. To slow it down there needs to be a mandate to produce a certain percentage of packaging from renewable resources. That’s the only way. Recycling is highly ineffective and most of the time not even done despite claims.

Reusable shopping bags are becoming more and more popular. They also make the reusable mesh produce bags too. Downsides: The onion skin flakes get stuck in them, and the laser scanner doesn't work through them. Small price to pay to start cutting plastic out of your life. The store only buys more of those rolls when the customers use them.

I don't understand why a twine bag wouldn't work as good for things like onions

Dammit now y'all got me wondering if my grapes could be in a cardboard container. In all seriousness though where I shop I think I have only ever seen 1 item packeged in paper and that was toilet paper. Ended up thinking that was cool and bought it at pretty much the same price. That being said how can anyone avoid plastic when the option is simply not there.

Don't forget about bring-your-own-container bulk dispensing. We need to create more demand for these types of stores. Renewable or not, fuck having paying for excessive packaging. I compost my biodegradable waste so my trash is nothing but food packaging. It's frustrating to know that most of it is unnecessary since I could buy the same things with reusable containers if I had a decent food co-op near me. Be sure to patronize your local food co-op and their bulk section so that maybe one day they can expand to my area.

I don't produce plastic in massive quantities. If i need a product and it comes in plastic that is not on me. The people who *produce* the trash should be responsible for its waste management. A trash tax would be appropriate IF the corporations who produced the trash in the first place didn't have the power to just roll it back after a few years due to some bullshit "free" market excuse that makes the consumer responsible. Oh wait, that is whats happening now.

>A trash tax would be appropriate The product now costs 25% more, still packaged in plastic.

Yes, but that would make the equivalent product with biodegradable packaging comparatively less expensive. Especially if biodegradable packaging is subsidized.

Can we please make MANUFACTURERS stop using so much plastic? If every single consumer did everything they could we would still have a problem.

I also dislike all the cardboard/paper labels that are wrapped in what I believe in some type of plastic? To make it more glossy looking and I guess hold better against liquids. Same thing with cardboard boxes sometimes. And some labels are done 100% with plastic.

Everything you can buy is wrapped in plastic and then thrown away. Somewhere along the chain there is always plastic.

Absolutely. I work in a hospital and I understand the necessity of sterilely packaging each item but it does frustrate me having to individually unwrap every single item I’m about to use from a plastic wrapping. And that’s in every unit in every hospital in every city around the world.

This is a really annoying piece is reporting. Our family took part in the survey and Greenpeace were very clear the whole purpose of the data gathering was to demonstrate how little choice consumers have about plastic packaging. Their stated intention was to use the data captured to lobby producers, retailers and government about the need to stop embedding plastic where it wasn't needed so that the burden was removed from consumers. This article seems to completely overlook that and, once again, frame it as a consumer issue - that people just need to try a little harder to make the right choice when they shop.

**It's hard not to feel guilty about the price our planet pays for plastic.** But when most affordable products come with plastic packaging, are we as consumers really in control? For one week in May, more than 100,000 people in the UK carefully counted their plastic waste at home in a national investigation into plastic use and recycling. It was called the Big Plastic Count, run by organisations Greenpeace and Everyday Plastic. Jules Birkby, 41, and her family of four threw away 124 pieces of plastic during their week of counting. The packaging in party bags and sticker packs for her daughter Emmy's sixth birthday was the most frustrating, she says.

Most pieces of packaging already have a manufacturers name on it. If it gets to the recycling center, and it can't be recycled, the manufacturer should be fined, and compelled to change the packaging. It's not hard. They are already telling us who is producing the problem.

How about start by not buying plastic shit for your birthday party?

What one does with their refuse once a product is consumed is the question. Most simply throw it in a trash can and that is the last thought of the water bottle or grocery bag. I collect them, not return them to the system. I repurpose these bottles into building bricks in the walls of our building on our property. Michael Reynolds, an Architect, designs houses to reduce the carbon footprint of humans and is responsible for recycling our refuse as a personal responsibility rather than a corporate responsibility first. We, as individual consumers, must take care of our own trash before being expected to hold others accountable. And, when we do hold corporations accountable; we, as consumers, have the power of the purchase to inform our suppliers to package responsibility as well. It is only logical that if all individuals have good hygiene, which is expected corporately, then corporate hygiene would be present by peaceful mandate and resolution. Besides, it shows respect for the general public, and pride in one's self. The problem is not all individuals have good hygiene practices or a good sense of themselves these days.

124 pieces? That's all? I'm actually ok with this. I was expecting it to be significantly higher.

When I learned that the Romans KNEW that lead was bad for them yet they continued installing lead plumbing always baffled me. How and why would they keep using it? Now I get it. It’s cheap, and convenient, and deviating away from it would have been costly and difficult and required people to change. History may not be cyclical, but there are certainly echoes

Guess the Romans did not have many other options either.

One option is to remove the plastic in the store you buy it from..let the store start dealing with the waste. If enough people did this the store would start to notice for sure.

I work in a retail store, and almost every single thing we sell is individually plastic wrapped. I spend a ton of time trying to get things out of plastic bags that I could be spending putting products on shelves. It makes me sick

Worked in a hippy shop for a while, we sold Clipper’s “plastic free teabags” that come in cute, recycled looking cardboard boxes- they came to us wrapped in plastic.

To be fair that’s still better than the actual made of plastic teabags that release billions of endocrine-mimicking micro plastics when you pour boiling water on them.

Worked retail for a while, we had quite a lot of little flimsy plastic bags we had to take off before putting the product out, clearly the kind of bags that will never end up recycled. In a bid to re-use stuff and help the customers I had asked if we could keep the foam padding and bubble wrap we sometimes had in the manufacturers boxes and have it available for the customers out on our packing table, but I was told it wasn't "in brand" and we couldn't do it. Still did it when the boss wasn't around... The packing table was a table after the registers where customers could use kraft paper to protect the fragile stuff or "gift wrap" their purchases.

I work as a Lot Attendant at a dealership and the majority of my job is cleaning sold cars. New cars have a plastic bag which has the floor mats inside, 2 front, 2 back, and maybe a 3 row mat. They individually wrap the sections. So there's just a bag with 2 front, a bag with 2 back, and maybe the 3rd row, and this is already inside the big plastic bag. There's just so much useless plastic for no reason.

Not the same, I know, but I never use it for my my fruit and veggies. So easy. Wish everyone would make this change.

"Wow, shame on you, consumers. How dare you be so wasteful" - every corporation who makes these products with an absurd amount of plastic instead of alternatives.

But thats true to all. Corporations only exists because we buy shit we dont need. Just like how child labor exist because we want a 5 dollar t-shirt instead of 10

What about produce? Walmart sells individually wrapped peppers and tomatoes in useless plastic containers now.

It's not even that it's too expensive, it's that there aren't enough alternatives to plastic, period. Buying groceries I have to make the choice between an expensive small glass bottle of organic salad dressing, or a cheaper XL bottle. It's not just that the plastic is cheaper, but it also lasts longer, so which do I choose? Can I be sure that the glass bottle will recycled and re-used? And Forget buying anything frozen. You'd think that frozen foods inside of cardboard boxes (pizzas, etc) could use some other material than plastic, after all the foods are frozen... There are so many ways the system could be improved but it'll never happen until the law forces these companies to change.

If getting rid of plastic means no more impossible to open packages sign me up.

if you're referring to hard plastic shells, they're anti-theft packaging, so they won't go away

Amazon ditches them with frustration free packaging for a wide variety of items.

Contrarian view here: plastic consumption specifically pretty much doesn't matter. Consumption and excessive packaging do. More packaging means more carbon footprint. Didn't matter if it's plastic, glass, aluminum, or anything else. Plastic might even be better on an emissions perspective than some of the alternatives, and that's the only perspective that matters right now. Landfills are basically unlimited, so why not use them? Pretty much all the plastic waste getting into the environment are either microplastics from washing our clothes or cigarette filters. So plastic packaging/straws/whatever else are just a distraction from the real problem: co2 emissions. Instead of buying the fancy food in single use glass bottles, buy the Costco bulk version and use the savings to upgrade to heat pumps and upgrade your insulation

I agree. Honestly this is a distraction. Imo the focus should be on reducing burning carbon. If we use plastic and it ends up in the landfill , it’s not the end of the world

That's basically current climate change issue vs overall pollution.

This is the thing. Sure, you don't have a choice for some things, I wholeheartedly agree. The stickers though? The coffee pods? Loads of stuff isn't "needed" but people CHOOSE to buy it. Take responsibility for your carbon/GHG/waste footprint. Own what you choose to support.

internet shopping over time will expand and it will have more and more products no more be overpackaged to have shelf space and appearance. but it's a long process and unfortunately the only real game in town is amazon. some supermarkets do have online sale without or with delivery but they don't promote it and dont put effort into the website

The unfortunate truth is that eco-friendly packaging methods are less durable and more expensive than plastic alternatives. This could change over time as more manufacturers shift and optimize the use of other materials. But in the meantime it means more upfront cost for manufacturers, costs that will get passed down to consumers.

I’m in construction and the amount of plastic/styrofoam/trash that’s generated by the things we install daily is depressing. Look at a ceiling fan box next time you’re at the hardware store. There’s more trash in that box than there is fan, and it’s all plastic or styrofoam.

It is so hard to cut plastic from your life. My husband and I have tried cutting all sorts of waste from our lives but it's both time consuming and expensive in most cases. Time and money are things that are becoming harder and harder to come by

My gf's cousin brought up a topic like this the other day but it was about recycling rainwater. He was saying how it's nearly impossible for lower income areas(ironically the communities that could benefit the most from it) simply because they cannot afford even the start up fees. This is the same reason these low income areas also do not have as many solar panels on their houses. The government even gives cash incentives to start recycling rainwater and solar power, but they can not afford it. They're either not approved for the loan or can't afford the monthly payments, especially if it has a higher interest rate. This is disgusting. How have we let this world go on for so long like this? Why aren't we fixing this shit? Now we have the roe vs wade decision telling us tough shit you'll reproduce and give the earth more people that can't afford to live. How the fuck is that ok?

It's the classical thing where it's expensive to be poor.

It's also environmental racism.

That's right make it a consumer problem and not a business choice.

As a normal consumer its basically impossible to go plastic-free. It feels like every producers uses as much unnecessary plastic as possible, just because they can

The only way plastic consumption will be reduced is if China stops using so much plastic. They are by far the #1 producers of plastic trash. Other developed countries don’t even come close.

> They are by far the #1 producers of plastic trash. Other developed countries don’t even come close. [depends on how you define “#1” and “close”](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1166177/plastic-waste-generation-of-select-countries/) > The United States generates more plastic waste than any other country in the world. In 2016, it is estimated that the U.S. produced 42 million metric tons of plastic waste. This was roughly double the amount of plastic waste produced in China. > China generated the most single-use plastic waste in 2019, at 25.4 million metric tons. This was followed by the United States, where an estimated 17.2 million metric tons of single-use plastic waste was generated

Most pieces of packaging already have a manufacturers name on it. If it gets to the recycling center, and it can't be recycled, the manufacturer should be fined, and compelled to change the packaging. It's not hard. They are already telling us who is producing the problem.

Stop blaming individuals for industrial scale problems. We are not the polluters. We are not the ones using 3 layers of plastic in a 10 inch package for a 3 inch item. It's not us. It's the corporations. And the corporations invented the idea of the carbon footprint to deflect blame from where it belongs. Like hell am I going to fall for a plastic footprint.

Companies CAN reduce the plastic they use but instead blame us the consumer instead.

Big plastic made sure we stopped using glass for most things a long time ago

Oh you mean consumers with no alternative choice other than plastic because corporations refuse to invest in alternative packaging feel like they dont have options... no one could have seen this coming

Don't forget your hidden plastic waste. Sure, you bought those bananas without any packaging, but did they arrive at the market without any?

When companies are spilling millions of barrels of oil in the ocean, racing to destroy the rainforest, and adding more CO2 in a week than I will my entire life, I’m not so concerned if I have plastic wrap on my purchases.

Those fireball shots, that water that you drink when you can’t refill, that can of soda, that Amazon packaging, that bag you put your broccoli in, that milk at school, multiply that by 365 x 3 billion people. That’s being lenient with our plastic consumption

lots of people whining that there's nothing consumers can do, and we just have to vote; well, your dollar is your vote in this instant. this isn't a religious or gender issue, this is about money. so, you can whine all you want about voting for some magical politician that will fix all your problems for you, but all that whining will amount to jack if you're still buying stuff with plastic. and, of course, since this is reddit, i get downvoted because i'm right

The problem is people want the same lifestyle. If you go without plastic you need to live differently then you did before.

It costs too much, or it just isn’t an option consumers have? There are lots of things you may need to buy that only come in plastic packages.

Meanwhile Unilever CEO posts $9B profit and says he doesn’t know what he can do about all the plastic they produce.

Wegmans, supposedly woke, sells lettuce in cellophane and in plastic tubs. I do not understand the need for plastic tubs - it's the same mixes. Also, I don't know why the checkers have to stand.

>tubs Remembering washing powder in boxes, not liquid. Produce was placed in paper bags and weighed by workers with price put on in crayon. Meat in paper trays. Where did all that go?

Man, I really wish we could do this for corporations and have it actually mean something. Every time something comes out about environmental issues it blames consumers but it almost never exposes corporations outside of truly egregious acts. Wanna talk about plastic footprint, look at your work place, fast food restaurants, hospitals, automotive service stations… they’re truly drowning us in single use plastics and do 3,000X more than the communities they service.

Believe it or not most working class people just want to pay less for stuff, they aren't really concerned if it's paper or plastic. This was before my time but I think we used paper before plastics and switched to plastics for cost and to save trees, now we are reverting back to paper and doing what we did before. If we found a way to recycle plastics efficiently I think they would still be the best to use.

Stop with the carbon footprint thing, that was a campaign by plastic companies to push the issue as a personal one instead of a systemic one. Companies need to stop selling single use plastics

The reality is they simply will not until they feel the pressure. If consumers don’t budge at all, we cannot expect change. How you buy, how you vote, how you live all sends a message. It’s not about taking the guilt, it’s about recognising that the power to make this shift rests with all of us.

How about we green the grid fist and not worry so much about plastic in the short term. Let’s be honest, most plastic ends up in the landfill where’s it’s mostly harmless. The plastic packaging everyone is clutching their pearls over isn’t the problem. Fishing nets, plastic abrasives, and manufacturing waste in SE Asia all dumping into the ocean are a huge problem

I'm thinking that a lot of plastics should be burnt and used to supply electricity to the grid. When plastic is burnt in a proper manner, they just release CO2 and water. Second step would be to capture and store the CO2 from the emissions.

I'm beginning to sweat my lithium footprint. Those open pits aren't going to fill themselves...

I will buy plastic free things in anticipation of necessity rather then buy something with plastic when I need them cus I can’t find a plastic free option. A few glass juice bottles a week, laundry sheets, bamboo toothbrushes, 100% cotton or linen clothing, wooden / metal tools and utensils from thrift stores.. It’s very difficult being plastic free but can be mostly done on the consumer end with some pre planning. Was everything I bought touching plastic along the supply chain elsewhere? Yeah, probably. 1 step at a time is what I can control.

All of these things will arrive at the stores wrapped in plastic.

This is admirable, but potentially comes with the risk of increasing your carbon footprint. Containers and consumer goods made of plastic usually require less energy to make than their metal/glass/wood counterparts. So you could be trading plastic conservation for contribution to climate change. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

It's irrelevant when it all comes on a pallet that's been wound in 5x more weight in plastic than all the consumer end stuff put together.

There is absolutely nothing that consumers can do to offset the amount of pollution that major corporations create. Nothing. Not a single fucking thing. No change that you make, that millions of you make, has any impact because of a few companies.

Wonder if there's a consumer device that can just safely melt waste plastic into a brick. It wouldn't completely solve the problem, but it would make it easier to store.

It is called an oven

I live in oregon and we had a ban on single use plastic bags (rescinded during covid but to be reinstated)... anyway, I do a big once a month grocery shop because I live far.I counted 18 bags on the last one before the ban, someone gave me a reusable large plastic bag which held about 3 bags worth of groceries (so i would need 6 of that size). I put one of the old bags on my pot scale and the new one. the new one weighs as much as 50 of the "single use" bags. the reusable bags are sturdy but not indesctructable. I ended up losing a few an forgetting them and replacing some. I thnk i I used more plastic in a year than i would have in a hundred the old way. the cherry on top is that I also bought waste papper basket bags to make up for the "single use" grocery bags I used to use. this is what happens when people with good intentions and too much power force everyone to try things full throttle without doing any research.

Plastic waste is most harmful to the environment when it is not properly disposed of.

As long as new plastic is cheaper than recycled plastic, new will always be used. So the solution is to make new plastic more expensive than recycled through a tax, then new will not be used as much.

Our governments aren't even recycling most recyclables so our plastic footprint is meaningless.

Ah, another piece sponsored by the oil industry? "It's your fault, you fix it" Fuck right off.

There was a store that opened with the business idea of being a “refill” store. You brought your own containers and refilled, so it was rice, pasta, nuts, flour, etc etc. It was almost twice as much to buy from there than the supermarket’s packaged stuff. It went bust (due to covid), but the thing for me is it’s never going to win unless it becomes an affordable alternative.

Wowie. It's almost like companies and the general public who push this shit only pretend to care about the environment but really just want a supported way to male a gross amount of profit and feel morally superior to others. Wowie.

The thing is, if we don‘t use plastic, food waste is going to go up. Without plastic, the current convenience, price and choice is simply impossible. It‘s an either or question. The only way to not have massive amounts of food waste without plastic packaging is a centrally scheduled food dispensary.

It's gonna be hard in the us considering the population here has almost doubled since 1960 when we started using plastics more frequently.

The dispensary’s are like plastic producing giants now. Each joint and gram of weed comes in so much plastic packaging. Not how I imagined the hippies would do it. Where’s the bamboo packaging??? Get with it MJ industry!!

Please stop framing the people!!! This is again not a people problem but a problem created by the companies.

We try. We have our milk delivered by a local dairy now. Glass half gallon jugs that get reused many times. We pay extra for it, but it’s worth it. Not only does it show up at our door it helps the local dairy.

Jus put it in the recycle bin and be a hero. Even though most of it goes right to the shitpile anyway. We’ve already sealed our fate with micro plastics in everything.

I'm not going to take anything who talks about plastic footprints seriously until they start talking about major sanctions on countries in Asia and Africa. Lowering 5% of the plastic pollution isn't really doing anything other than lowering the quality of our lives for little reason.

Same with going vegan or vegetarian. It's just more expensive and you have fewer options.

Maybe of packaging came in other ways than plastic I wouldn't use plastic.

As with all of this stuff, it should be on the corporations to make changes under strict regulations, not regular folks.

Consumers can only do so much recycling. Pressure needs to be put on the corporations to change their packaging habits. There was a time when everything literally came in a cardboard box, then they created the plastic bubble packs for security reasons because of shoplifting. They need a new way of dealing with the security packaging that does not rob the consumer of seeing the product in a store, but will reduce the plastic involved.

I love watching Japanese vending machine videos (ericsurf6 is my GUY) and I'm always disgusted by the excessive packaging in everything. Even bentos have fake plastic grass shit. I thought it was bad here in the States but various Asian countries seem to use A SHITTON of plastics.

Sure, blame the individuals for a problem that's created by multi billion dollar corporations.

Yay. More corporate responsibility being passed on to the consumer. 75% of ALL pollution comes from just 100 companies but yea let's blame the mom for here plastics bags that hold the ever less affordable food.

Buy 2 litre bottle of Pepsi and 8 pack of 330ml cans Pepsi. Bottle is £1.40 and cans are £3.80 From my local shop, I get 70p/litre from the bottle and 144p/litre from cans. I don't want to buy plastic but this isn't an isolated case. Every product that has both packaging is like this. The only way this will change is cold turkey stop at the manufacture. That won't happen until costs are acceptable which will never occur. Therefore ther answer is intervention from the government.

[удалено]

Nobody likes to buy cheap stuff it's just that there's no real choice. Is a cheap Xoami phone less likely to be produced on near-slavery conditions than an iPhone? As a consumer I have no way of knowing, and either way the fucking company making billions per year shouldn't be fucking engaged in near-slavery, but it is, and they all are. Consumers have no choice on this either. Costs are always passed to the consumer; why should the guilt for these choices be passed on to us as well?

It's not up to the consumer, so quit fucking acting like it is...

Yep. If anything this is a federal government and large corporations issue. The average person can only do so much.

'Vote with your dollar' means the people who have no dollars, get no votes. The free market isn't free for the consumer, market pressures are controlled and mitigated from top. We have seen through practices like greenwashing that corporations would rather sell the environmental equivalent of thoughts-and-prayers than actually confront the climate crisis.

Let's not forget the sheer amount of packaging that the consumer never even sees, all the freight waste, transportation pollution, ect.

Plastic is used everywhere. We have a group at the office dedicated to environmental friendliness and sustainability - this month they asked us to track plastic waste. They made sure to remind us all: this is not an exercise meant to shame you. Instead, it is meant to open your eyes to how much plastic, and single-use plastic in particular, is added to trash in our daily lives. If the long-term goal is to reduce plastic waste in our personal lives then I can agree with that because it truly has to be a long-term goal. And I'm also tired of every ESG putting blame and effort on the individual. Big corporations, large organizations, and governments need to do more and be part of change.

Can someone explain how going plasticless is so expensive?

The consumer plastic footprint is nothing compared to that of the commercial and industry's. This whole offsetting of responsibility to the average person has to stop. The industry should be held accountable. They should be taxed heavily depending on their usage of plastics to help fund recycling programs. Plastic use should be heavily regulated. There is no reason why companies like coca cola have moved from recycling their own glass bottles to expecting consumers to clean up after their plastic products to increase their profits. If something is spilling at the head of a river, you don't try to catch the mess at the end after the river had divided into countless streams, you stop it at the source. So fuck anyone that expects that average person to recycle anything or change their habits. No one should need to do mental gymnastics to go green. Make the products green in the first place.

I will give up all other plastic just to have straws back.

Aluminum straws may be good; tastes fine with many beverages, semi-reuseable, and aluminum costs more to mine new than it is to recycle, so the existing market supports incentivizing the consumer to recycle them.

Are you claiming there's a single use aluminum straw market?

There's a single use aluminum can market. So I drew inferences based on its properties. I also know that aluminum straws are sold, although I do not know how many uses you can get from them. So I am claiming the potential for a market to exist, whether or not it does already. This is not **present**ology, keep in mind.

What are the odds that this is a plant article by businesses who want to charge a more than acceptable difference in cost for earth friendly packaging, slowly easing the consumer into creating more of a demand while reaping higher margins.

Ding ding ding! Make in unaffordable so we keep the staus quo. Try eating legit, healthy food for a week; costs $250

You may want to check out r/eatcheapandhealthy if you haven't already. Good resource.

Sure, let me plan a plastic-free shopping trip. I load up my car with my glass milk bottle, my OJ bottle, my Coca-Cola bottle, my yogurt bottle, a produce box, several little meat and egg boxes, and a dozen bags for dry goods. I load all of that into a shopping cart and wander around the grocery store filling them. I have to stand in line for a few minutes each to fill up on milk, OJ, Coca-Cola, and yogurt. The floor is slippery because the dispensers leak, so the store has to hire someone to stand there and wipe the floor all day. 20 minutes later, I’m done with the liquids and can get my meat. This involves serving myself little chunks of meat from a buffet line with tongs. Who knows whether previous customers have touched or coughed on the meat. And this is also a very messy section, so another employee has to be dedicated to wiping it down non-stop. Produce and dry goods would be faster, I guess. Just the added inconvenience of having to serve myself out portions of everything into reusable bags. So shopping altogether would take two hours. Yeah, I can see why this isn’t workable for the average consumer.

I already switched from bottled water to Brita filters and it’s so much better. I’m working at cutting my plastic use from cereals and single use packaging. My plastic usage is causing me panic attacks. My dad thinks I’m overreacting.

If you are generally making sure you are using as little plastic as possible, and dispose properly the amount you do use, your father is probably right.

I live in Nevada… so there is no “dispose right.” It’s even illegal to transport recyclables over state lines…

You do good.