[asdff]

You hardly have a choice to avoid the plastic crap in life. You can't even buy salami without it being packaged in plastic. No sense in putting the onus on the consumer, when it was industry looking to cut costs who set up this environment in the first place.

[wiz21c]

Naaahhh you didn't get it. They do it because the consumer (you, me) ask for the convenience of those packages.

</cynical>

[Sabinus]

If, say, the price of plastics rises to account for legally mandated recycling and disposal efforts, then plastic use will fall despite demand for convenience of plastic packaging.

[KozmoNau7]

They do it because convenience sells and because marketing has indoctrinated us to constantly desire Fresh! New! Pristine! Shiny! products.

Using plastic is the cheapest way for them to do it, since they don't care about the externalities and don't have to pay for the long-term damage they cause.

The solution is regulation. Make the manufacturers bear the costs of responsibly handling every bit of waste they produce, every bit of plastic. Make them responsible for taking back their waste, perhaps with a deposit system like on empty bottles. This will make them reduce their use of plastic packaging, in favor of better designed and actually biodegradable/reusable packaging.

And follow up hard to make sure they actually meet their promises, and don't just ship it all to a third-world country, because they will do that, given the chance.

[Arnt]

Close, but you confuse these emissions with those.

Shell pumps oil out of the ground, refines it, transports and sells it, and that oil eventually becomes your emissions and mine. But Shell's production also causes emissions that it controls. IIRC (from very fuzzy memory), if Shell does what the court says, its production-related emissions will be <10% of what its customers emit using what Shell sells them.

[marcus_holmes]

Consumers wanted CFC's in our fridges too.