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?

  • jet@hackertalks.comEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    It’s doable. The world existed and functioned without plastic.

    You would see glass for bottles, etc. We would adapt and be fine

  • Ziggurat@jlai.lu
    0·
    8 days ago

    A big issue is the single use. Why do you need a plastic wrapping in the cookies ? if you get cookies at your local bakery, and give them your own bag, they’ll put-it inside, no problem.

    Note also, that a lot of things are already ongoing to ban single-use plastic. I am old enough to remember the late 90’s early 00’s when you would get a plastic bag from any shop, these have been outlawed a while ago and nobody miss them

  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    8 days ago

    In the beginning, things would suck, because low prices come from economies of scale, and the petrochemical industry certainly has scale. Once you’ve ramped up glass, paper and metal packaging factories, it should be tolerable.

    There are also new materials such as biodegradable plastic and even mycelia. That would be useful.

    If we also ramp up various carbon capture technologies, you could technically turn that carbon into plastics, so you won’t need any more oil. Obviously, that wouldn’t solve the climate crisis. You need CCS for that. Probably not going to happen within the next century, but it’s technically possible.