Imagine how bloody annoying it would be if we had to bring a bag full of empty glass bottles to the supermarket every time we wanted them refilled. Thank God for plastic
i do this and it is not as annoying as you're making it out to be. you get used to the process and, as a reward, you and your fellow earth inhabitants don't have to deal with all of the waste later.
Yeah but this doesn’t scale. Like, there’s an assumption in these conversations that okay — glass bottles are better, but does that mean that now I’m going to hold on to and reuse every single glass bottle I ever receive from now on? Realistically? Then extend that to everything you use.
I can imagine ending up with a house full of glass bottles. Where does it reasonably stop for the individual?
The conversation also highlights that our intuitions about what the most environmentally friendly thing is can’t be trusted.
Back before plastics took over everything, not all products were packaged in glass containers. Many were packaged in metal, paper, or cardboard containers. Examples:
Glass container (not reused): Ovaltine
Paper container (not reused): Chips Ahoy cookies
Cardboard container (not reused): washing detergent powder
Metal container (not reused): Hershey's chocolate powder
The easiest option of dealing with plastic waste is just throwing it out your window and letting the litter pile up. Obviously people don’t do this because it has negative externalities that are undesirable.
Imagine living 5 minutes from the supermarket. Then you could walk 5 minutes one way, and 5 minutes the other, adding up to 10 minutes total. Problem solved.