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.
Getting rid of Internal combustion engined cars more reasonable. EVs aren’t perfect, but they are much better than ICE cars as far as pollution goes.
In the context of micro plastics, it’s the same. It comes from the rubber tires wearing out.
Then instead of roads let use tires made of metal and put them on some kind of road that also has metal. Let’s make it electric too…
Maybe we could connect many cars together on this system, and make it so the front or the back car is a special one thats more powerful and pulls the other cars behind or pushes the ones in front of it that carries all the passengers. For convenience, we could make nice loading and unloading areas.
Right, but we’re talking about microplastics here. Those mainly come from tires and braking systems, so the switch won’t help this specific problem.
Serious question, do brakes emit any plastic particles? I was under the impression they were mostly ceramic these days (or asbestos way back when)
An important source of plastics is road traffic emissions. Kole et al. reported global average emissions of tyre wear particles (TWPs) of 0.81 kg year−1 per capita, about 6.1 million tonnes (~1.8% of total plastic production). Emissions of brake wear particles (BWPs) add another 0.5 million tonnes. TWPs and BWPs are produced via mechanical abrasion and corrosion.
[…]
Most car braking systems consist of a disc or drum with either a pair of shoes or pads mounted in callipers. Brake linings consist of binders, fibres, fillers, frictional additives or lubricants and abrasives. Thus, BWPs are a complicated mixture of metal and plastic. BWP emissions depend on the bulk friction material on the frequency and severity of braking speed, weight, condition and maintenance of the automobile and the environmental conditions.
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.
Start with the easy wins and replace the others as options come available. We don’t have to fix everything at once.
I don’t think individual shrink wrapping of utensils is a necessary use, every time I pull that thin plastic off something I think we are all going to hell.
But as others have noted, we don’t need to eliminate all use, we need to radically reduce use and find a technology to deal with the remaining amount.
And the plastic on some of those shrink wraps have a terrible squeak.
Bioplastic - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
The solution is not perfect though…
Life cycle analysis studies show that some bioplastics can be made with a lower carbon footprint than their fossil counterparts, for example when biomass is used as raw material and also for energy production. However, other bioplastics’ processes are less efficient and result in a higher carbon footprint than fossil plastics.
Obviously. I doubt bioplastic had even 1/100 of the money and research of their fossil counterparts.
That might also be true.
It’d be better to come up with ways to efficiently break them down chemically so they can be remade into new plastic.
I’m probably going to hell for saying this, but… I’m not that worried about plastic pollution? Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to minimize single use items and plastic ending up places it shouldn’t, but if it’s the best option for food / medical safety or cheaply producing something with a lower carbon footprint… we should probably just use it without too much guilt? The world is almost certainly better because of plastic in my opinion.
How can we get away from plastic as a safety layer?
We don’t need to get away totally.
It will be good enough if we avoid most of it.
You can buy bamboo utensils individually wrapped in wax and brown paper. For most one time use items we already have a non-plastic alternative, it’s just less convenient.
The answer is that we’re not going to get away from plastic
Everyone should read the Plastics Paradox. It’s good to be well informed.
We did rather fine in ancient times without plastic. We will find a way.
Lots more people died of easily preventable and treatable diseases, so fine is pushing it.
Yeah, that’s what a lack of medical knowledge does. Not sure how that’s dominantly related to plastic.
No we didn’t.
Plastic was invented in 1907.
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I wasn’t sure what else you could be implying. We certainly survived from ancient times up to 1907, or we wouldn’t be here today, so it’s difficult to see how plastic is an absolute necessity. Helpful, yes, but not required for prosperity.
Interactions like this certainly explain my ratings though :( Qucikest exile (for a lack of a better word) I’ve ever received.
Let me kick your teeth in and infect you with COVID. Afterwards tell me how you got along fine because you didn’t die.
Let’s not be rude against each other, okay?
Narrator voice: We didn’t
Plastic was invented in 1907.
I feel like the more my desire to escape plastic intensifies, the more plastic I see around me everywhere
Congrats you learned something about how your brain works. My advice is to stop freaking out about plastic.
We have an enzyme that eats the stuff now. Everyone calm down.
Where?
On Google. PETase if you want the nerdy stuff, or “plastic eating enzyme” if you want news articles.
My point was that, while it exists, it doesn’t exist.
It can’t be released widespread into the wild to eat microplastics because it would severely damaged infrastructure. So while it’s a neat toy in the lab, and might make it’s way into waste disposal processes, it doesn’t exist where we need it to exist. And it can’t. So it’s not a solution.
It could be used at recycling centers, and at the largest “customers” of those recycling centers, the landfills…
Do you separate your plastics? The practice is waning. You see it done in less communities these days, specifically because there’s nowhere for that plastic to go, and it’s gonna end up in a landfill no matter how effectively or avidly you separate it, and people are realizing that and simply not bothering.
If there was a big ass bin somewhere that ate plastic, we could actually do what we’ve been pretending to do for 40 years and remove it from our waste disposal systems. We could separate plastic, and the plastic could get hauled off to the big plastic eating bin to be depolymerized… Hell, you could just run all the trash through it and landfill whatever got left.
I’ve played Stray, I know where that one ends.
LOL, I got downvoted into oblivion like you for sharing the opposite view. Classic.
How do you suppose that’s an opposite, and why are you stalking my posts?
One dismisses the supposed importance of plastics, the other dismisses the importance of needing to remove them.
If I seem stalk-ish, it’s only due to how engaged in this place I am. No harm my friend (or at least I don’t think so).
No. That’s not what this comment is.
