[thrawn0r]

What bugs me most is the use of long-living plastics in fast moving consumer goods. I have to buy 12g of plastics to get 80g of Prosciutto. From packaging to EOL its lifespan is max. 60 days, most of the time more like 20 days I suspect. Why does it need to be in a container that degrades in 300+ years?

[crazygringo]

> Why does it need to be in a container that degrades in 300+ years?

Because there's no other cost-effective material we've invented that keeps the prosciutto airtight (so it doesn't dry out in hours), won't puncture/rip easily, holds up to shipping+stacking, and is transparent (to examine for fat percentage, slice thickness, etc. -- always essential for meats and veggies).

Can you provide a material that does all that but starts degrading after 60 days? If you can, you stand to make a lot of $$$.

Obviously, the main alternative is having someone slice it at the deli counter for you, but that means you could only ever buy prosciutto at places with a staffed deli counter, including the 15-minute wait for the deli counter if you're going grocery shopping at the end of a regular workday...

[michaelbrave]

There are bio-plastics(usually made from corn) that degrade fairly fast, the problem is they cost less than a percent of a cent more. This is really a thing where government subsidies that are forward thinking about the environment could help.

[tomcam]

> they cost less than a percent of a cent more

Citation please? I have dealt with packaging products for 35 years now and it’s expensive. In my experience anything close to what the parent poster described would result in packaging costs an integer multiple price increase per unit if biodegradable. Storage requirements would also increase because 60 days is not a long enough shelf lifetime for prosciutto or anything similar

[lordgrenville]

There was a piece in The Economist a couple of weeks ago about how some scientists made disposable coffee cups out of bagasse (wasteproduct of sugar production) which were basically as good as plastic on all the metrics GP mentioned but just fractionally more expensive. https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/11/14/...

[macspoofing]

Come on, be serious. These kinds of science-y puff pieces come out every day, on all kinds of topics (I can't count the number of times claims around cancer cures, fusion reactors, new battery technology that's 1000x better, etc. are made). This is one engineering group making very preliminary case (that they may have embellished for the media attention - wouldn't the first time - see: recent "life on Venus claims"). It takes time and lots of effort to figure out if this new material can satisfy all the necessary constraints in order to scale to the market.

[economusty]

And they ignore the viability of producing the object at scale. Making one and making one billion are worlds apart.

[TheAdamAndChe]

I think they're referencing PLA, polylactic acid. It takes a while to fully break down, but it still does degrade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylactic_acid

[ksdale]

Are bio-plastics really a big improvement though? Growing corn burns a lot of fossil fuels. I think there's a case to be made that plastic that ends up in a landfill after few carbon emissions is better for the environment than plastic that degrades after lots of carbon emissions. Not saying that's definitely the case, just that I'm not sure it's so clear.

[lenkite]

> Growing corn burns fossil fuels

Head-scratching a bit there. Corn absorbs CO2 while growing right ?

From https://www.agweb.com/article/corns-carbon-cowboy-busts-outs... ...At 200 bu. per acre, every acre of corn absorbs 8 tons of carbon dioxide. In 2012, U.S. farmers grew almost 100 million acres of corn and absorbed 800 million tons of carbon dioxide...

[ksdale]

Tractors, combines, trucks - there's a lot of heavy equipment that gets used to grow corn, and then there's emissions related to both producing and applying fertilizers.

[njarboe]

There's the old quip that corn is just one small step in the chain of converting oil into something people can eat.

[Loughla]

The assumption there is that plastic emits less carbon when it's being created than corn. Is that accurate?

[ksdale]

I believe that pulling oil out of the ground is way less carbon intensive than growing the necessary amount of corn, and I believe plastic is made from some tiny fraction of the petroleum that isn't used as fuel, so the petroleum would be extracted anyway, but the corn would not be grown anyway. I'm assuming the actual production of the good itself is similar in either case.

[X6S1x6Okd1st]

There is also a land cost. I'd be surprised if we determined that plastic is better than bio-plastic, but until we are making bio-plastic with a low land footprint land will continue to be a factor here.

[Loughla]

This might be a really stupid question, but how does land factor into carbon emission?

[Broken_Hippo]

In some ways, yes, and in others, definitely not. I think we'll get there: I also think some plastics are made using byproducts of fuel (gas/diesel) production, and as long as that's the case, we should probably use and recycle that (or find something else to do with it). Kind of like using every part of the animal, except with oil.

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-truth-bioplastics.html

[mikem170]

Does it need to be a big deal to wait a few minutes at the deli counter?

In our rush to maximize everything for efficiency we are causing numerous small problems that are adding up, a tragedy of the commons and loss of our humanity. Our culture seems to value efficiency above too much else.

[CountSessine]

we are causing numerous small problems that are adding up

Those numerous 15 minutes waiting in a deli line and waiting in a bakery line and waiting in a butchers line add up too. We value efficiency because we need it and you’ll learn the value of time efficiency once you have kids that need to be fed every day and a 9-5 job with a commute.

How did we solve this before? We deprived half the population of their right to work for a wage and had them run around doing all this waiting and cooking. That’s over now and the rest of our lives need to be more efficient.

[loco5niner]

> We deprived half the population of their right to work for a wage and had them run around doing all this waiting and cooking.

Here's the funny thing though. Your perspective changes when you have kids.

As a personal anecdote, we just had our first baby 3 months ago. My wife had spent the last 3 years getting her masters degree and getting her teaching certificate. She pushed hard. It was important to her. She got the email that her certification came through the day after the birth. She didn't care. All she want's to do right now is take care of her baby. That will likely change, and she'll probably work part time sometime in the future. But saying we've deprived half the population of their right to work is missing another perspective. The joy and privilege of raising a family. Yes, the efficiencies are wonderful, and for my wife (and for me), that means more time with our family.

Who is being deprived now? I would hate to see my daughter deprived of her time with Mom so Mom could sit in an office all day. And I feel like our society is suffering because kids aren't being raised by their parents anymore.

[52-6F-62]

> She pushed hard. It was important to her. She got the email that her certification came through the day after the birth. She didn't care. All she want's to do right now is take care of her baby.

I had a similar discussion with my brother the other day. After multiple miscarriages, they're finally pregnant, 17 weeks in and healthy.

He worked from the time he was a teenager joining military reserves, degree in criminology and kinesiology, and finally a provincial constable around 6+ years in to get to where he is.

An hour after their latest ultrasound, his only words were: work sucks.

[loco5niner]

Congrats to your brother! We can share in both their grief and their joy, as we've suffered through multiple miscarriages too.

[gus_massa]

The time with the father is also important. Did you consider to take a one year sabbatical to be with your daughter instead of sitting in an office all day?

[loco5niner]

I would if I could. I'd retire and be full-time Dad (among other things) if I didn't have all these dang bills to pay ;-) I did consider a 12-week sabbatical, but couldn't afford it since we just bought a house. I do plan on prioritizing daddy-daughter time though, because it's important to me. When I mentioned the efficiencies meaning more time for family, that was including myself.

[emj]

I'm very privileged to have gotten 12 months paternity leave, even in Sweden that is a bit unusual but not unheard of. I had 7 months at 70% pay financed from the goverment, so I had to pay a lot and it was a bit risky. In the end my girl got a better job because of the time I spent with my daughter, and I had a wonderfull time.

So for me personally getting those 12 weeks alone with the child would be worth every penny, and can be very liberating for your wife, but the first two months were hard on me. Good luck, what ever you decide.

[jonfw]

It's great that she's made that choice, and it's also great that it's her choice to make. That wasn't the case before.

[robertlagrant]

Not because of people forcing other people to not do things. Because most of the things were super dangerous, and there wasn't enough value sloshing around to have lots of nice time-flexible desk jobs.

[crazygringo]

This x1000.

There's nothing romantic or natural or virtuous about wasting time waiting in line and visiting multiple shops and having less items available.

It's just boredom and tedium.

It's a good thing when we're able to free up time from mundane tasks so we do things that are rewarding to our soul -- whether it's spending more time with your family, playing sports with friends, going to the theater, reading a good book, whatever it is.

[mikem170]

There's also nothing virtuous or efficient about the typical modern middle-class American lifestyle, double the house size of fifty years ago, three cars, college as status symbol, etc.

I think most people would say that all this new efficiency is crushing peoples souls. Isn't everyone talking about the loneliness of the modern age, the scary amount of people who are depressed at any time, hiding with drugs, the loss of clubs and other social institutions?

I tend to think that we've been selling our soul for efficiency. We'd have so much free time if we we didn't need to consume so much.

[polishdude20]

That first paragraph is funny. More and more young people are renting more than ever. Three cars to a household is not common.

Although, yes I do agree that wanting to consume and have more items is causing us to suffer.

[crazygringo]

Absolutely none of that has to do with how efficient your grocery shopping is.

What you choose to spend your extra time on is your choice. But that's the point -- it should be your choice to be able to spend it on hanging out with friends, rather than standing in long lines waiting to buy food.

If you want to spend in on working extra hours to buy a third car, I mean that's your choice too I guess. But it's not like wasting your life waiting in line is any better.

[souprock]

I got three cars so I could be more efficient. Use the right size for the job.

For minor little trips around town, I use the Fiat 500L. It has 5 seats in 2 rows.

For high speed, or a bit more stuff, I use the Subaru Ascent. It has 8 seats in 3 rows.

For traveling with the whole family, I use the Ford E-350 extended-length passenger van. It has 15 seats in 5 rows.

Before I bought the smaller cars, I had to drive the van everywhere. It's a beast, 3 tons empty or 5 tons full. I think I get about 12 MPG, which is efficient per-person when I'm bringing a dozen kids. As a commuter car, the van is horrible.

[whiddershins]

I feel the same way, but it’s worth noting not everyone does.

[jazzyk]

So efficient = working 12 hrs/day and being able to afford everything ready-made/shipped for/to you (frozen and flavorless, on occasion past expiration date).

Even if you have an exciting/fulfilling job (a relative rarity) it gets old very quickly after a few years because most people need some variety in their lives.

Every time I vacation in southern Europe, I love going to markets, picking fruit/vegetables, having prosciutto cut for me. I think the time you claim it takes exagerrated - usually there are 1-2 people in line.

People dream to retire and tend to their garden (very "inefficient"), cooking their meals from scratch everyday, etc.

Lots of cooking shows and shows like "Escape to the country" (BBC) seem to prove my point.

[crazygringo]

What are you even talking about?

Most people work 8 hrs/day, not 12. If you go to your local supermarket, you'll see tons of people shopping for fresh produce and meat, not frozen or flavorless or expired (???).

You're inventing a total straw man. Yes some people work 12 hour days and eat frozen food but it's a small minority.

If spending lots of time at markets is what you enjoy, that do that. That's what farmer's markets in the US are for. But lots of people prefer to spend their free time doing other things they enjoy. Farmer's markets can get old very quickly too. Sometimes people want to spend just 5 minutes grabbing some ingredients and checking out to make a quick dinner, not 30 minutes visiting different stalls, waiting for the three people ahead of you at each one, and then haggling over prices.

[jazzyk]

Not inventing anything.

Northeast US:

Office hours: 9-6pm -> 9 hours (yes, includes "lunch" where people get a sandwich and eat it at the desk) Note that many people work longer, till 7pm or 8pm (startups, etc). Many people need 2 jobs to pay the bills.

Average commute time: 45 mins (you can google it) x 2 E-mail checking/responding at home after the kids go to bed: 1 hr

Total: 11.5 hrs easily (or more if you want to climb the corporate ladder)

So market-browsing/cooking is not your thing - that's fine. But let me just note that we invented all these life "efficiencies" - and are less and less happy (loneliness, drugs, etc).

What's the point?

[mikem170]

So how about we add the cost of proper disposal to that cheese? It is inefficient and unfair to pass the cost of someone's cheese to everyone else now and for three hundred years. Then if you have the money you don't have to wait in line. Does that sound fair?

[whiddershins]

Which was the deprivation?

Then or now? Running around and being efficient after spending your days working away in an office might not feel like an upgrade to someone who had the other option.

[mikem170]

Is this a catch-22 though? Would it be a less busy world if we the price of cheese packaging included the externalities of disposal?

Some people would choose the cheaper of more time consuming alternative, and what is wrong with that? Do we have to have everything possible asap, damn the consequences?

[mikem170]

But what is the goal of all these new efficiencies?

Many of the efficiencies the modern age brought us have been in service of "more" - more house, more car, more entertainment, more clothes, more disposable technology, more status symbols, etc. We totally live in a consumer society, our biggest companies revolve around advertising. The economy would fall apart if people stopped buying stuff they don't need.

Instead of all that we could have chosen the best modernity had to offer and only worked twenty hours a week. That would have been way more efficient than what we have now.

But no, everyone went for the prosciutto. The advertisers won.

[stronglikedan]

It's not always about just waiting in a line. If I have a small store selling pre-packaged meats, I may not have enough money to staff a deli counter.

[8note]

Cached cutting would make some sense?

You don't need to be waiting in line but the meats also don't need to be all precut and stored before they get to the store. Cut some off in the morning and put it in simpler packaging, and if that runs out, Cut a bit more

[crazygringo]

Plenty of deli counters do that with their popular items like ham, swiss, salami.

But prosciutto is more of a niche item that won't go bad quickly, which is why it's usually packaged at a factory in packaging that will last months.

[powersnail]

It's not always easy to find a deli that stocks actual Prosciutto; probably not enough people buy them.

On the one hand, I agree that efficiency is valued too high. But on the other hand, sometimes, efficiency is what makes things accessible at all.

[mariodiana]

Yes. Deli counter people are notorious for interrupting you while you have your nose buried in your phone. And then you have to actually talk to them. It's a big deal.

[minikites]

>Our culture seems to value efficiency above too much else.

Capitalism tells us that if we're not making money, we're worthless as humans. It's not about hard work or efficiency, just look at the lack of respect for work that doesn't make money (e.g. stay-at-home parents).

[Chris2048]

No it doesn't it says that the value of living in a capitalist society should be reciprocated with value, i.e. individuals providing value to society, as societal value is nothing more than the aggregation of individual contributions. I'm not saying this is entirely good/correct, but I am saying you misstate the message.

> just look at the lack of respect for work that doesn't make money

This conflates individual value with societal/communal. But why should anyone give a dam about stuff that doesn't benefit them? To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't give a damn, I saying why couldn't they i.e. why should they be forced if they choose not to.

There's also a nuance to value: Capitalism determines value on the basis on what money people are willing to spend. Firstly, if people go out of there way to ensure money is not involved with something, don't be surprised if it's value is miscalculated by a capitalist system: this is like not winning a competition you never entered. That said, the economic impact of packaging is undervalued because no one is attaching an accurate debt/penalty to it, which is arguably the real problem here.

Secondly, there is a notion that things of value create "market demand", so if little money is offered for something, then market doesn't want it, and people supplying it are refusing to offer what society actually wants. I think this makes sense: people have children even though parental benefits might be low suggesting they aren't really doing it for society, though I've discussed this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24423077

TLDR: Capitalism only deals with societal value; so it only determines your value (of actions, say) on the basis of value to society. People are free to value things outside that system; If you think "people don't care about X" because "people don't provide money for X" then it is you declaring the value of something to be its dollar amount.

[jschwartzi]

> To be clear, I'm not saying people shouldn't give a damn, I saying why couldn't they i.e. why should they be forced if they choose not to.

In a lot of these cases it's probably true that there's no direct, measurable, benefit. One has to look past the direct benefit to the indirect benefit to understand why we would be forced to do something that has no direct benefit to ourselves.

For example, a property tax increase to pay for improved schools doesn't have any apparent benefit if you're a single adult with no children in school. In fact the whole education system has no measurable benefit to you if you're an adult. It seems like a waste of money. So we can say it has no first-order benefit.

But suppose that the increased funding would help pay for things like civics education. There's a second-order or third-order benefit to paying those taxes. By ensuring other peoples' children are educated in how our Democratic institutions work, they are better able to navigate those institutions, and they will make more informed decisions about their elected officials because of this. If you care about maintaining and improving those institutions then that tax increase is very worthwhile even if you have no kids. But it has no measurable economic benefit.

I think our Capitalist system has gone insane because it no longer acknowledges those benefits that have no tangible monetary value. It also encourages us to think in terms of money above all else. We've gone so far into the weeds with Scientific Management that if we can't measure the direct monetary benefit it doesn't exist. And that's not true.

Being unable to measure something simply means we can't quantify the benefit. It doesn't mean it has no benefit. And that's at the heart of a lot of economic arguments against tax increases. They're arguing that being unable to quantify the benefit implies the benefit doesn't exist. And that's patently untrue in a lot of cases.

[Chris2048]

> But suppose that the increased funding would help pay for things like civics education

That why can't I just opt for that, the civics funding?

I'm not saying that only things with measurable economic benefit should be funded, I'm saying only things with measurable economic benefit OR that people want to pay for should be funded. One or the other, or both. But if neither condition is met, you shouldn't get funded.

and if your opinion is that there is a non-tangible benefit, you need to convince people of that. Our Capitalist system does acknowledge benefits that have no tangible monetary value - by allowing people to freely spend money on what they care about.

[mikem170]

> Capitalism tells us that if we're not making money, we're worthless as humans.

I agree that pure capitalism thinks that way, and some cultures are closer to that than others.

[undersuit]

If the only reason we're choking our planet with plastic is so we don't have to wait at the deli counter might I suggest we just start placing orders to the deli counter a few hours before we arrive?

[lhorie]

IMHO, material transparency is the only difficult to meet requirement. Paper works fine to wrap most cold cuts and it's already used extensively in packaging for fruits and vegetables.

People are already willing to pay premium for organic and other hard to inspect/certify labels; it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility that people would be ok buying paper-wrapped prosciutto that has some similar stamp of quality.

[crazygringo]

Paper also works fine if you're ordering your prosciutto at the deli counter.

But even waxed paper isn't going to prevent the prosciutto from drying out for more than a day or two. The whole point of the plastic that prosciutto is often sold in is to keep it good for months, since it's usually a low-volume item that may sit on the shelf for a couple weeks or more.

[quicklyfrozen]

Personally I find paper wrapped items from the local deli fine, but I'd be pretty skeptical of any food products shipped only in paper -- too easy to contaminate.

[SN76477]

Makes me wonder what our diets would look like if plastic was never invented.

[i_haz_rabies]

probably healthier

[hinkley]

If we solve the problem by proliferating plastic eating bacteria and fungi, then all of these qualities will be lost.

[ev0lv]

Couldn't we just augment the existing plastic with seeds/fungi is some way? That way, after some time in the trash, the fungi actually develops a colony which eats the packaging?

[peanut_worm]

Isn’t Cellophane biodegradable?

[minikites]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellophane#Material_properties

>Cellophane is biodegradable, but highly toxic carbon disulfide is used in most cellophane production.

[peanut_worm]

Oh well, I tried.

[minikites]

>Can you provide a material that does all that but starts degrading after 60 days?

What's the motivation (market pressure) to develop such a thing? Plastic is cheap, so without other external pressure, there's no reason for any company to fund the development of something new. This is why pollution and other society-scale problems need a society-scale solution (government regulation).

[ornornor]

> What's the motivation (market pressure) to develop such a thing?

That’s a good point actually. Up until now it was “impossible” to make a vaccine in less than 7-10 years. The epidemic happened and we were able to make one in less than a year. But there was a fuckton of money to be made in it so we found a way.

[gabuyabdabudabu]

Honestly, it's called a glass jar. Folks should eat fresh local meats and produce and make their own preserves. Less reliance on mass-produced products and support local farmers/producers. Back before the garbagization-of-food you'd go to the butcher and get high quality meats. You'd go to the market to get produce. And, you'd make your own preserves for the winter WITHOUT PLASTIC. Simple, and in fact they taste much better if seasoned well!

[slothtrop]

What will actually happen is they'll make the switch to biodegradable plastics. Too few will want to give up the convenience of ready-made packaged foods. It could also require more travel to reach small distributors who don't use plastic, which wastes CO2 and time.

The alternative would be more feasible if we had better-designed, walkable cities. But in North America places are built staggered, public transpo sucks.

[gabuyabdabudabu]

Yeah, it's unfortunate really. All I can say is, as a collective people are really lazy and stupid. Even smart people are stupid because they think adding an _unnatural_ amount of mushrooms to the world will solve the problem. Like, hello people, adding _a bunch_ of something to the _bunch_ of something else is not a solution. By bunch I mean _trillions of tons_. People just value money more than anything and it will be our undoing.

[walleeee]

> Obviously, the main alternative is having someone slice it at the deli counter for you, but that means you could only ever buy prosciutto at places with a staffed deli counter, including the 15-minute wait for the deli counter if you're going grocery shopping at the end of a regular workday...

This and a million other small inconveniences hardly seem too great a price to pay to avoid filling the planet's air and water (and by consequence our bodies) with plastic waste

[whiddershins]

I think this is overblown. The earth is already ‘full’ of oil and gas and minerals and lots of toxic things. We are just transforming one type of substance into another - more useful to us - type of substance.

The issue is when the waste gets in to places where it wreaks havoc, like especially waterways.

Currently, afaik, this problem is primarily driven by a few countries in Asia, so I think the effort that would have the most impact is figuring out how to convince those particular Asian countries to stop throwing plastic in to rivers.

And anyone else who gets it in their head to throw plastic in to rivers.

As long as waste is contained properly it doesn’t seem to make so much of a net change in the earth.

[walleeee]

> Currently, afaik, this problem is primarily driven by Asia, so I think the effort that would have the most impact is figuring out how to convince Asian countries to stop throwing plastic in to rivers.

The west could start by not exporting a huge portion of its plastic waste to said Asian countries.

> I think this is overblown. The earth is already 'full' of... toxic things.

The earth was certainly not "full" of macro-, micro-, and nano-plastics 50 years ago.

Americans ingest and inhale tens to hundreds of thousands of microplastic particles per year[0]. Microplastics likely impair cognition in hermit crabs[1]. Nanoplastics accumulate in plants[2]. It's not just waterways.

Nobody really understands how this might affect human health. We're all participants in a planet-sized experiment to find out.

[0]: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0030

[1]: https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.9b01517

[2]: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-020-0707-4

[crazygringo]

> The west could start by not exporting a huge portion of its plastic waste to said Asian countries.

That's not how it works. Worst-case scenario that winds up in landfills instead of being recycled.

The problem in Asia is 100% domestic, with citizens and households and apartment buildings dumping their local plastic trash on the side of the road, burning it in backyards, dumping it in the river.

[walleeee]

> That's not how it works. Worst-case scenario that winds up in landfills instead of being recycled.

It's a problem even if it ends up in landfills. Plastics can leach chemicals into groundwater. My point is that the "Asian countries are responsible for most of the world's pollution" narrative is simplistic and unhelpful. Most of the plastic in the oceans is indeed from Asian countries. But plastic concentrations are 4-20x higher on land than in the oceans. The United States has the highest tapwater contamination rate in the world (94%).

> The problem in Asia is 100% domestic, with citizens and households and apartment buildings dumping their local plastic trash on the side of the road, burning it in backyards, dumping it in the river.

You're of course correct to point out that this happens, but calling the problem 100% domestic is disingenuous.

[foobiekr]

Traditionally, that would be cellophane.

[hairytrog]

The ham itself will protect it, wrapped in Aluminum foil or even a hemp bag for shipping. The packaging is simply an artifact of people not wanting to buy a whole ham and wanting it presliced, which is perhaps an artifact of the fact that most people in the US will heat the majority of their meals by themselves and do not like to prepare meals. Sad.

[crazygringo]

Maybe you don't know what prosciutto is...? It's not just ham.

Buying an entire prosciutto costs hundreds of dollars, obviously people don't want to buy a whole one.

It's also usually not heated, by the way. This has zero to do with not liking to prepare meals... most people who buy sliced prosciutto are doing it as part of the meal they're preparing. We're not talking about hot pockets or frozen lasagna here.

[aaronblohowiak]

Maybe they know what prosciutto is but don’t know that in USA we use that term to only refer to prosciutto crudo?

[Broken_Hippo]

Even when I ate meat, I wouldn't buy a whole ham. What the heck am I going to do with a whole ham?? I literally do not have the freezer space for this. I've never had children, and have only been in a house with one other human.

That's a lot of food waste. Heck, I sometimes lament that I can't buy smaller amounts of spinach because I hate seeing half the bag go to waste.And I'll add that this has nothing to do with cooking or not cooking: I like to cook, and do so most days.

That packaging keeps food waste down because it breaks things into smaller portions - not to mention that many food places seal them in ways to make them last longer (example being adding a mix of gasses to help it not oxidize).

[powersnail]

It's not sad; it's practical. A whole ham is giant, expensive, hard to store, and might take months to get through, unless you eat it every meal.

I prepare my own meal, and I don't need meat to be pre-sliced, but I do need it to be in a small enough portion that can be put into my fridge.

[janlaureys]

This drives me crazy as well. Even sillier is that at my local supermarket where I can either buy regular tomatoes in bulk and take them home in a paper bag that the store provides or just in my reusable bag or I can buy the biologic organic tomatoes that are packaged by 6 in a little cardboard tray and wrapped in plastic.

[rini17]

When manufacturer was asked about this, they did try to sell organic tomatoes in bulk. But these tomatoes are too soft and usual bulk handling by customers resulted in too much waste.

[tt433]

Sounds like a fundamental problem with the organic product, on top of the existing lower expected calorie yield per acre.

[blix]

If you actually want to optimize calories per unit land, you should be considering neither organic nor non-organic tomatoes, as both produce significantly fewer calories per unit land than crops like wheat, corn, and soybeans.

[redisman]

Or any kind of product other than plants producing edible oil. Maybe lentils and soy and wheat.

[ZephyrP]

I'd imagine the honor of "most efficient yield" would belong to root vegetables like sugar beets, yams or potatoes

[lopis]

I hit this dilemma often. Do I buy bulk regular produce or organic produce invariably wrapped in plastic or in plastic bags?

[bluGill]

Organic is a buzzword that doesn't mean anything useful. They can't use some chemicals so they substitute others which are often more harmful. Or they destroy the soil because they can't replace the nutrients that they are taking out.

[furyg3]

Classic example I saw was Chamomile farming in Egypt. Traditionally done along the Nile. 'Sustainable' in terms of family owned farms for literal millennia, community works projects of maintaining the nile flooding irrigation, etc. Of course there are issues, but the families live close to their fields, kids go to school, they make their own business decisions, don't want to deplete their soil, and there are social frameworks in place for solving collective problems. BUT! Doesn't work for organic: if a neighbor 3 fields up uses pesticides, and a tiny amount blows over onto your field, your crop isn't organic.

No problem! We found an aquifer (fossil, non-renewable) in the middle of the desert, we'll pump up the water and irrigate the ground out there where we're far away from pesky neighbors. Of course this is a big operation, so we need big investment, and thus a big company. Also we need workers, since nobody lives out there. We'll bus them in. They'll need a place to stay, so we'll put them in camps.

After my evening yoga I like to have some warm chamomile tea to wind down before bed. I like this one because it's organic and has a haiku on the inside about how we should take care of the planet.

[tweetle_beetle]

I suspect the picture does vary somewhat around the world, but in the UK there are eight government approved organisations which are allowed to certify for organic labelling [1] and the EU has something similar[2]. Because the organic logo adds financial value to products, there is a significant interest in protecting its usage. You may disagree with the content of the legislation, but it does mean something.

In any global industry there are going to be outliers and people breaking the rules, but suggesting that organic farming destroys soil and uses more harmful chemicals than non-organic farming as a general rule sounds very much like FUD.

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/organic-certifica... [2] https://ec.europa.eu/info/food-farming-fisheries/farming/org...

[realce]

This doesn't feel like an accurate representation of organic farming. My family has 2 organic farms and neither of them do what you're saying.

Not difficult to rotate crops.

[NateEag]

I think the complaint is meant to be "organic doesn't mean anything".

I read GP as saying that while an organic product might be produced responsibly, as your family's farms do, it could also be factory-farmed using pesticides worse than Roundup.

If that is true, then the word "organic" is not meaningful for consumers who want to support sustainable, low-impact farming.

[robotbikes]

There is certification and regulation required and a fair amount of promises to become USDA organic or even use organic on the label of a food legally in the U.S. So if they were using pesticides they would be engaging in fraud. There is large scale organic farming that is probably not sustainable though and this is likely the source of a lot of organic produce that is not locally sourced, but it also probably doesn't have pesticides on it. O. The other hand fraud does happen and there was a big organic grain trader who was found to be substituting non-organic grain for grain and I think he was prosecuted for it but he got away with it for years. There are also local sustainable farmers who grow organically but can't afford or can't justify the cost of organic certification. So while it does mean something it isn't doesn't always mean what you might think it does.

[bluGill]

Crop rotation is a useful technique that both organic and non-organic farms use. However there are lots of other farming techniques. By being organic you are limiting yourself out of them all.

[joekrill]

It's a buzzword, but that doesn't mean that what people think of as "organic" - in the good sense - doesn't exist. I'm sure you didn't mean it, but your comment gives the impression that all "organic" food is a shame. There are plenty of sustainable farms that don't use harmful pesticides. It's unfortunate the word has become what it has, but it's not a catch-all one way or the other.

[svachalek]

Agh, I hate choosing between differently correct. Do I buy the paper towels that are giant sheets of recycled paper, or the little sheets of bleached paper?

[nojokes]

Most bio dairy products I can buy here come in plastic cans that have cardboard clued around of them. I guess it is done to make the look more organic but of course it makes it worse because it makes the recycling more difficult and introduces more waste of resources.

[bjarneh]

I guess the only reason this happens is due to price, but we could force a "plastic tax" on those types of products unless they came in something that was biodegradable.

Seems like a solvable problem, but only if we make it harder to pollute; otherwise price will dictate.

[laci37]

Hungary has plastic tax, still it's every where. In the case of prosciutto I guess it's because sliced up meat needs to be protected from drying out even if it is preserved. You can't prevent this with paper, so the shelf life would be short. So you either need a deli counter in the shop, or have customers buy the meat in bulk.

[devilbunny]

Plastic just lets you see it. Wax paper works perfectly well for protecting things from desiccation.

[Broken_Hippo]

Does it spoil faster with wax paper since it is open to the outside air and oxygen and microbes that are about?

[undersuit]

You enclose the product in the wax paper and seal it closed with the slightest amount of heat.

[Broken_Hippo]

Yup. sure, sealed, but is it sanitary enough?

They used to seal jellies and jam with wax over the top. Unfortunately, this method made it more likely that you would get food poisoning (and it is still an issue with home canning, but we are a little safer).

Hence the question about if it keeps out microbes and such.

[varispeed]

Tax will not make it go away, only make it more expensive to people on a budget. You gotta buy food and at some point you don't care how it is packaged as you must eat.

[mikem170]

But is it fair to pass the externalities onto someone else - you get your prosciutto and someone else gets the mess? That's doesn't seem right to me.

As opposed to an arbitrary tax discourage something I would whole-heartedly support that the cost of all products includes the cost of all externalities.

Maybe people on a budget should wait in the deli line for their prosciutto, or buy something cheaper.

[varispeed]

Only fair is to ban non-degradable packaging altogether. Give companies a year or two of transitional period and then heavily fine companies not implementing the ban.

[bjarneh]

> Tax will not make it go away, only make it more expensive to people on a budget

This is a matter of the size of the tax. If a Snickers bar was slapped with a $30 plastic tax, you can be sure Snickers would not come wrapped in plastic tomorrow.

[varispeed]

It would come "from the back of the van". If there is a demand and supply vacuum (product not available at a price majority of people who wants it can afford), then you'll find brave people wanting to make extra money on the side and simply dealing these.

[DenisM]

That piece of plastic will spend its hundreds of years of retirement buried in a hole in the ground in the landfill. It produces no harm to whatsoever, and we are not going to run out of land for millions of years.

Whenever I bring this up someone inevitably brings up polluted oceans, so I might as well address it now - if you don't throw your plastic bags into the ocean and neither does your local waste management those bags will never make it to the ocean. They will be in the landfill.

[kitcar]

In many cases that's a function of food safety regulations, re: minimizing bacteria growth on the food while traveling though the logistics chain.

[lotyrin]

The logistics graph probably needs to have fewer edges, and the average path be quite a bit shorter, but then we can't all have whatever we want whenever we want wherever we want.

[leetcrew]

since you used prosciutto for an example, we ought to discuss how absurd it is to need a special container to keep slices of cured meat fresh in the first place. the block of prosciutto is already a container! perhaps the big block needs some sort of protection in transit to meet modern food safety requirements, but buying 80g at a time of prepackaged prosciutto creates a needless inefficiency. we ought to be able to go to the meat counter and buy a few days worth of prosciutto wrapped in paper.

[gnopgnip]

If there were carbon taxes, plastic taxes, or more generally if the externalities were priced in this would be less of an issue. Plastic would still be used where it is economical, or where it is really needed, but cardboard, paper, and other materials that can be recycled or reused would be cheaper and more common. Glass jars or wax paper could both work, but currently the glass is more expensive than plastic, and wax paper would probably give a shorter shelf life. And these taxes don't need to be for 100% of the cost to change behavior.

[murukesh_s]

It's too much in developed nations. Went to Tokyo and almost every thing is wrapped in plastic over plastic without guilt. They say its burned/recycled but not sure how much is true and how much impact it is bringing to the surroundings.

The volume of packaged foods in developing nations are comparatively lower but can't imagine the footprint it could cause when those nations also develop into heavily packaged FMCG consuming behemoths.

[zorba20002]

True, in Iran everybody buy their fruits and vegetables from designated stores that only sell those. you can have even bring your own container to consume zero plastic. in Denmark it is not even an option. Day to day groceries are bought in supermarkets with insane amount of plastic wraps.

[tombert]

I wish it were more acceptable to simply bring your own packaging to the grocery store and let them do a tare-weight.

My wife and I tried this a few years ago for a few weeks, either bringing in our own Tupperware or Mason jars to do it, and each time the person working in the deli area had to get a manager involved, and one time they accused us of stealing their tupperware, since they sold that same container in the shop. We did this partly for environmental reasons, but mostly for "meat packaging gets really stinky in your garbage can after a few days in a small apartment" reasons. After awhile, we decided it wasn't worth the headache to us.

In NYC (and California too I think?), they're starting to encourage bringing your own bag instead of buying them at the register, so I might retry this experiment again.

[titanomachy]

Probably depends where you shop. At the more expensive, bougie, "socially-conscious" grocery stores in the US, this is pretty normal or even encouraged. Whole Foods is the most prominent example of the kind of store I'm thinking of.

[tombert]

In my case, it was in Washington Heights, not typically considered the yuppie-stronghold, and I've since moved to another similarly non-yuppie place.

Next time I go to C-Town or Food Bazaar or something maybe I'll make another effort and try again...there isn't a Whole Foods near me.

[undersuit]

I really like glass growlers for beer. I can walk across the street and buy a canned 6-pack of a local beer or I can ride my bike to the brewery and have a drink while I wait for my growler to fill. It's about the same price for me.

[agentultra]

For me it's the sheer volume of the stuff and how casual people are about buying it. My kids have more toys than they know what to do with and they're all plastic. Every week I buy produce wrapped in plastic. All of our dental care products: plastic. My tools: have plastic in them!

That lego set my kid builds for Xmas? It'll be here for thousands of years and Lego is manufacturing billions of bricks each year.

Fungi are great and all but we have a destructive behavior we need to fix. We can't rely on a quick fix or a miracle cure.

[leetcrew]

I loved lego as a kid and I now have an embarrassingly large pile of bricks collecting dust at my parents' house. I don't quite know what to do with them. in theory, they're worth a decent chunk of change. looking at used sets on ebay, I'd estimate it's somewhere in the four figure range easily. trouble is they're all disassembled and jumbled together. I can't even find someone who would take a bag of random bricks for free, let alone the whole pile.

[jonfw]

I got rid of my childhood legos when I was like 15 in a garage sale. The lego bucket was completely disorganized and it was easily the hottest commodity we had there- there was a woman who showed up 5 minutes early to buy it and the next 6 hours of garage sale we had people showing up a few times an hour asking about it from the ad.

Throw that up on Facebook marketplace or something and people will pay hundreds for it

[leetcrew]

good to know, I've just been trying and failing to give them away to friends with young children.

I probably ought to just donate them like the sibling posters suggest. it's not like I get any use out of them now, but psychologically it's kinda hard to think about just giving away something that was so important to me as a kid to someone I don't know and might not even meet.

[SteveGerencser]

Take them all to a local children's hospital and drop them off if they embarrass you. Sell them on eBay by the kilo/pound if they embarrass you but you want the money in exchange for them.

[detaro]

> I can't even find someone who would take a bag of random bricks for free, let alone the whole pile.

People sell Lego by the kilo on ebay etc all the time.

[antoniuschan99]

PBS Frontline has a good documentary called Plastic Wars. It’s part conspiracy where the Petro Companies need alternative sources of $$$ since the Energy $$$ is drying up with the advent of Renewables and EVs

https://youtu.be/lXzee3tIZco

[jonnycomputer]

It wouldn't practically matter if there were only 500m of us on the planet. I'm not advocating any particular policy btw, but a lot of pollution problems just go away when you minimize the multiplicative factor.

[robertlagrant]

Or if there were only 10000 of us. So what?

[jonnycomputer]

Certain things are possible with 10,000. Others with 10,000,000. Still others with 10 billion.

Certain things are impossible with only 10,000. Others with 10,000,000. Still other things are impossible with 10 billion.

We want rich, diverse, dynamic and satisfying lives. We do not want a crowded, polluted, impoverished world. 10,000 of us is certainly too few to sustain our civilizational accomplishments. My guess is that the numbers we have now are too many. What is the right-ish number?

[robertlagrant]

It doesn't really matter, is my point. We might need at least 30 billion to fully colonise the Solar System one day, or we might need to become a tiny colony that subsists off heat from the Earth's core hiding from super robots.

Ethically, we would need a pressure great enough to reduce the population for a horrible reason. We would never choose it.

[jonnycomputer]

It may be that a policy solution can be arrived at that is non-coercive, and gets around the temporary downsides of an aging population. I'm less pessimistic I guess.

[robertlagrant]

You're optimistic about a policy enforced on the world to get humanity to be reduced by 93%?

[speleding]

Counterintuitively, because food that's not wrapped in plastic spoils faster it's actually better for the environment to use plastic, owing to reduced waste elsewhere.

[Dirlewanger]

But it's not. Spoiled produce is biodegradable. Plastic is not.

[speleding]

Food takes energy to produce, transport and store, that releases (much) more CO2 for now than plastic packaging. Plastic is rather efficient, you only need a tiny drop of oil to create a lot of packaging.

If food production at some point becomes CO2 neutral you still have a lot of other detrimental effects to the environment from food production to account for. Plastic is a net positive for the environment when it comes to food packaging.

[panzagl]

But if you need to ship twice as much unpackaged as packaged you're harming the environment in other ways.

[swiley]

A lot of food is packaged in cellophane though isn't it? That's edible by earthworms just like cardboard/paper is.

[boringg]

Do we have enough earthworms in concentrated enough areas in order to eat all of this packaging were generating?

[smarx007]

I would guess packaging transparency is very important from the marketing PoV in retail?

[wolfi1]

unfortunately sometimes wax paper is proposed as an alternative but although the name suggests it to be ecologically it isn't. most, if not all, "wax papers" use paraffin instead of wax

[giantg2]

Paraffin is a wax, it's just synthetic (and all the issues that come with that). More concerning is that many "waxed" products contain PTFEs.

[lopis]

Also if you would use real wax, suddenly fruits and vegetables wouldn't be vegan anymore.

[giantg2]

What about soy wax?

[mattkrause]

Or carnauba wax (which is already used in some foods).

[whoomp12342]

because it makes a crinkle sound that makes you want to buy more

[JTbane]

What if a requirement was made for producers of products to handle the disposal of their packaging? I have no idea how much of a financial burden it would be but that could go far to help reduce waste.

[hairytrog]

Just nuclear waste?

[lkuty]

We should be able to buy things in bulk and it should be generalized. The norm, not the exception. And if it is not possible to sell stuff that way, then the goods should be forbidden to be sold (with probably some exceptions).

[JosephRedfern]

Bulk buying isn't always the solution though (perishable goods, for instance), and isn't always affordable. Your financial situation shouldn't dictate your ability to avoid unnecessary waste.

In my opinion, the move should be towards normalising reusable containers (where practical). Where I am, there are some more "specialist" shops who are doing great work in this area, but it's not mainstream and is often more expensive than just going to the supermarket.

[lkuty]

You're right, I guess I used the wrong word... "bulk". I wanted to say that we should buy food which has no container and as such no plastic container. Not that we should buy them in large quantities, if it's what has been implied by my use of the word.

Anyway, someone thought I should be thanked with another -1. Can we go to -Infinity ?

[SamBam]

Yeah, it's confusing terminology, because "buying in bulk" usually means buying large quantities, but the "bulk bins" of e.g. nuts at the grocery store really means "buy as much as you want."

But when the tomatoes are loose, we don't call that bulk.

Anyway, we can just say "without packaging."

[powersnail]

Fresh meat and vegetables, however, should be buy-able in small portions. Otherwise, you either have to buy a giant freezer and eat frozen food all the time, or go to a diner on a daily basis.

[samstave]

TOTALLY AGREE!!!

I personally think that long-life plastics should be illegal for quickly used items.

Glass and wax-cardboard should be our primary packaging methods for food.

It should also be required that all plastics be recycled. I HATE plastic.

Also, look at cars - whats the average lifespan of a car these days - and in all the millions of cars - with thousands of parts made from plastic that never get recycled.

[lkuty]

Completely agree! Probably going to 28 :-)