| I support the use of plastic for many packaging tasks. The lighter weight helps offset the other environmental impacts. Still support plastic bag and straw 'bans' though. One small factor to add to the mix is giving less money and power to fossil fuel producers, which I think has an outsize effect. So I'd like to see most plastics move towards non-fossil feedstocks and better recycling. Luckily, Extended Producer Responsibility laws lead to both less packaging, less harmful packaging and more recycling of packaging by putting the cost of disposal onto the people with the ability to make systematic change. The people pushing the "all regulations backfire" line are just anti-regulation because they know they can foist the costs onto other people. If they'd lie about climate change then they've kind of blown their trust with me. I agree environmentalalsim should be data driven, in both identifying problems and potential solutions. I believe that the meme that it's not is an obvious political fabrication by genuinely bad people. |
Only when the minimal amount is used. Clamshell packaging is almost always incredibly wasteful and could be replaced by less weight of cardboard. Plastic jars and similar could often be bags or pouches. etc.