If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better?

Submitted ⁨⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Mothra@mander.xyz⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

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?

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HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world ⁨26⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
20 years ago:

"We need to stop using paper bags! They’re cutting down all the trees!” (a renewable resource)

"We should use plastic bags instead! They’re recyclable!” (so is paper, and it’s far more economically viable, but plastic is made from petroleum)

So now we use plastic bags made of a much heavier material, so we can reuse them, or cloth bags for a similar reason.

Cloth bags are made from cotton, like paper is made from trees.

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WolfLink@sh.itjust.works ⁨21⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
If you use reusable bags, bottles, and other containers, that’s way more sustainable than any single use product.

But using paper is still better than plastic, and yes, trees can be and are sustainably farmed in many parts of the world.

I have seen some shifts away from plastic. For example, Apple seems to have removed almost all if not all plastic from their packaging, replacing it with paper.

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nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
An oft-overlooked part of this is the fact that it is also a socioeconomic issue. Due to half a century of wage suppression, the diminished purchasing power of the majority of the population would not be able to handle the shift to more durable goods. Wealth/income inequality is a major hurdle for reducing single use plastics and disposable goods.

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- Plesiohedron@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Ah. Nobody can afford un-enshittified products anymore.
  
  It’s progressive invisible poverty.
  
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  - nickwitha_k@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
    Exactly. The actual cost of durable goods tend to be pretty consistent, when corrected for inflation. It’s just that wages are so terrible compared to what they should be, if they were not completely divorced from the value created by labor.
    
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UNY0N@linux.community ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
This is already being done in Europe to an extent. It is doable, but it requires a shift in thinking and more investment as well as planning. It’s not really about getting rid of plastic. Just single-use plastic.

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Sanctus@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The real trick to make this better is moving away from a consumerist mindset. Which isnt really possible in capitalism at its current stage.

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- undefined@lemmy.hogru.ch ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  And a small part of that I think is realizing that a ton of stuff we use plastic for is totally unnecessary. How many times have you opened something and thought “fuck that’s a lot of plastic?”
  
  To me it’s unbearably frustrating how much companies use plastic.
  
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- orbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  It’s possible, but difficult to achieve fully. You can greatly diminish consumption though.
  
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Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
OK, with what would you replace the materials of LEGO bricks?

This is not a trick question, but one that LEGO has already spent millions on research on. They found an oil-free alternative to the soft plastic used for leaves and other plant parts, but are stuck on other types of plastic they use.

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- Mothra@mander.xyz ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Okay we can make an exception for LEGOs… But it’s illegal to dump them as regular trash!
  
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  - rockstarmode@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I don’t know if this is common, but in my family Legos are a common gift for children, and they never get thrown away. When kids age out (usually because they move out or go to uni) the bricks get tossed in a big mixed bag and handed down to the next round of youngsters. After at least 3 generations of this, the kids now inherit literal full sized trash barrels of mixed Lego. It’s awesome!
    
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  - Treczoks@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    If you would not mind, before you dump them, hand them to me.
    
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adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The solution isn’t so much to replace plastic as it is to eliminate “single use” from our way of life, except as needed for emergencies (eg, situations where the only way to be sanitary is by destroying the object after use).

If you eliminate the majority of non-reusable stuff from your life, the rest becomes much easier. The volumes of plastics would be much lower such that much of it could actually be recycled at least once.

The second bit is to always incorporate end of life into a product’s lifecycle. Shrink what’s allowed to go in landfills. Provide a system to reclaim and often re-use damaged or worn out materials. Design things so they can be easily parted (broken up into parts) so that if a battery dies, you take the old ones in for servicing and either get them replaced or refreshed, instead of tossing the entire device.

Groceries? I no longer use bags; I get the store to give me the flats it gets its stuff in, and I fill those up with my groceries. General shopping? I have a set of cloth bags that stay in my car and another I can shove in my pocket when I’m walking.

I’ve got a metal water bottle I take with me when I go places.

Rejecting single use will get us much further than rejecting plastic.

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- hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Exactly. Outside of, medical supplies that have to be single-use and can’t be made of any other material, there is nothing that has to be made of plastic.
  
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hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Why are we still using so much fucking plastic?

Capitalism, gotta make that line go up.

Let’s take clothing for example. It’s way easier to say, make a polyester shirt that breaks in a few months in a sweatshop than make a linen shirt that lasts for 20 years.

Now, let’s say that these two shirts have been made and now they are in a store. Someone goes there and chances are that they will take the polyester shirt because it’s cheaper. (also: plastic fibers feel soft at first, but soon become rough and itchy, while natural fibers like linen or cotton are rough at first and become softer with time. For example, the linen clothing I’m wearing right now was very rough and kinda uncomfortable at first but now is soft.)

Another reason is that plastic can be made into nearly any form. Combined with the fact that plastic items are cheaper to make than longer-lasting and/or enviriomentally friendly items, this leads to companies making a lot of plastic items.

I presume costs for most products would creep up

Yes, they would. But the thing is that in a world where items weren’t made of plastic, they would be more durable, especially if we made items to be actually used not just to be sold. Companies don’t care if your new shirt breaks the very next day, all they care is that they got that sweet, sweet money.

And if there were only, say, well-made, durable linen shirts instead of polyester ones sewn up by a Vietnamese child in 50 minutes, they would be way more expensive, yes, but you would need to buy new shirts very rarely. If all shirts could last 20 years, you wouldn’t have to buy that many shirts.

Last but not least, in order to achieve this kind of world, we’d need to let go of the “buy, buy, buy” consumer mentality and replace it with quality over quantity, because chances are that in a world like this, you would have less stuff than you do now. For example, if you look back a couple of centuries, clothing was very valuable. You’d have like, three shirts unless you were really rich, but those shirts would last you decades, assuming you or someone else would mend them and moths wouldn’t find their way to your wardrobe. (of course, with modern farming technology and mechanised spinning and weaving, clothes would still be far less expensive)

So in conclusion: there’s so much plastic shit because it’s cheaper to make plastic shit than actually good products. And yes, prices would go up, and we would need to have less stuff over all, since the amount of stuff we have nowadays is ridiculously unsustainable.

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Ziggurat@jlai.lu ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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

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- skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  There’s also a balance to be struck with single use plastics. Many products don’t last nearly as long without single use wrappers. For luxury products like cookies that doesn’t matter as much, but for certain vegetables getting a plastic wrapping early on can give them much longer shelf lives. There are only so many cucumbers you can consume between harvest and consumption, and ditching plastic wrappings would reduce food availability and probably cause more food to go bad and get wasted.
  
  The worst part is probably that rich countries getting rid of shelf-life-extending plastic will solve the problem by just importing food products from elsewhere when local harvest season is done and the supplies run out. Poorer countries with less purchasing power will find themselves with more aggressive competition. Even though rich countries have an abundance of food, reducing the accessible food supply will still have an impact on the world.
  
  As for bringing your own containers: that may work for some places, but not all. No grocery store will let you show up with your ceramic container to carry one of those ready-made salads to the till. The risk of getting into trouble for food safety and the general theft risk is just too great. We can get rid of those single use plastics, but it’d also mean getting rid of pre-packaged meals like that. As for cookies, I don’t get them from my bakery, those cookies are twice as expensive and last half as long. The closest bakery offers mostly-paper bags (though probably covered in PFAS) already.
  
  Speaking of, for loads of single-use plastics, there aren’t many good alternatives without spreading more PFAS around. Paper isn’t all that great for storing anything that isn’t dry (and it’s still terrible when it rains). Glass can be an alternative, but making and recycling glass requires enough heat to melt it, adding to the CO2 problem. You also can’t store carbonated beverages like soda above a certain volume in glass containers, or you’ll end up with the glass grenades that made the world switch away from glass decades ago.
  
  Here, plastic bags are still everywhere, but by law they now cost money. Certainly saves on plastic bag usage, but doesn’t eliminate them either. That said, plastic bags aren’t necessarily single use, you can just stuff them into your pocket and reuse them next time you go to the store unless they’re made from especially terrible plastic.
  
  Of course you don’t need prepackaged individual slices of banana to have their own plastic wrappers, but a surprising amount of single use plastics is better than the alternative when taking other environmental factors into account.
  
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- Ardyssian@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Interesting - in Singapore the widespread expectation in 2025 (at least among the elderly) is to get a plastic bag (sometimes multiple) from the shop whenever one buys something.
  
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markovs_gun@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is a non-trivial problem. The best thing for the environment is for all of us to stop buying so much shit we don’t need, but that would require a dramatic shift in how society works and the cultural values of pretty much everyone. Cookies coming in metal tins again would be way worse for the environment than plastic, but you also have to remember that when cookies came in metal tins, they were luxury items people would buy for holidays and special occasions. The only way to meaningfully improve things for the environment in terms of packaging is for all of us to buy less pre-packaged food in general.

Expanding access to goods is both good and bad, and plastic containers are a big part of that process. I think it’s completely unrealistic to replace all single-use plastics with non-plastic alternatives, and I think that efforts to do so have largely backfired in unexpected ways. This problem is best solved by reducing the amount of useless shit we buy but in the meantime I think biodegradable polymers are a good bridge technology. We actually already know about a lot of biodegradable polymers because the earliest polymers were based on biopolymers such as cellulose, resin, and rubber, and these have remained commercially important enough to maintain a high degree of knowledge of their chemistries.

Another problem, of course, is that most people don’t actually want truly biodegradable polymers. You don’t want a ketchup bottle that starts breaking down while you’re still using it or impacts the taste of the ketchup, but you also don’t want to buy it in a thick, non-squeezable glass bottle. So from an engineering perspective we have to devise plastics that are biodegradable, but only when we want them to be. There are a lot of advancements in this field, but it’s still not enough on its own to fix things. This issue also applies to paper, since almost all “paper” packaging products also include polymers as sealants to improve performance precisely because paper has all the same issues without it.

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- AugustWest@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I get your point, but I gotta say: I do want to buy my ketchup in a plastic bottle. And I do, mostly because the ketchup is 10 times better than then generic crap that is Heinz or whatever major name.
  
  But I don’t mind shaking the bottle, it’s not hard.
  
  Most things I don’t want plastics for, and in the case of viscous fluids, why not jars?
  
  It would be nice to drop off the jar with the local mustard maker and get a fresh one. Standardizing on glass sizes would help a lot, but then of course we gave water issues for cleaning all of them.
  
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humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Plastic is not a climate problem. Ocean pollution is mainly fishing nets. There is a garbage problem that automation can help with recycling. Making fishing nets out of cotton instead of nylon would be a big improvment.

Wood and paper is a renewable resource that could be used more. Global warming is especially a threat to vast northern forests with fire that are paper sources, while also permitting more/bigger tree growth in the regions. Harvesting trees is a solution to fires, and more demand an incentive to prevent fires.

Manufacturing with compressed sawdust could be a cost competitive alternative to plastic, but the binder could make the wood product less recyclable.

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phant@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is less to do with single-use plastics, but plastic is often a really good option from a functional POV. It doesn’t conduct heat like metal, it doesn’t break like glass/ceramics and has better moisture resistance than timber. (Not saying plastic couldn’t be replaced a lot of the time, but some times it’s a frustratingly good option).

In terms of complete single-use plastic replacement, I’m not sure, but would also be interested. I’d hope it’s mostly possible.

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- kersploosh@sh.itjust.works ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  often a really good option from a functional POV
  
  This right here. Electronic devices are full of plastics because they are often the best, or only, way to make those devices function and remain safe. You’re not going to make a car that meets any modern crash safety standard without plastic materials. Your not going to replace medical tubing with paper or cloth. Etc., etc.
  
  The world can certainly use less plastic, and should use less. But eliminating it completely will require either (a) developing some novel new replacement material, or (b) giving up a lot of useful things humans have developed in the past century.
  
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surewhynotlem@lemmy.world ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

Is this actually doable?

Not at the same price.

Why are we still using so much fucking plastic?

Profit margins.

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southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Well, the more I think about it and the more I look into it, “better” is likely not the best term.

What it would achieve is a likely decrease in harms that aren’t controlled.

The stuff that would replace plastics, where it’s possible, all come with their own environmental impacts. But, they’re easier to control, so are also easier to minimize or mitigate.

That comes with a price, though. Monetary mostly, but also in reshaping our expectations of things like food storage. Not that we could entirely do away with even single use plastics, much less longer term uses.

But, as an example of what I’m talking about with different more than better.

We switch everything we can from plastics to glass. Bottles, whatever. So, you’re increasing the costs of transportation, right? It’s heavier, you can’t pack as much in the same space. That increases energy use, no matter if it’s diesel in a truck tank, or via power. But, if we also switch even more to EV trucks and trains, that’s still a net positive because now that energy can be better regulated, reducing pollution alongside the reduction in plastic pollution.

But, now you’re going to need more bottles of glass. That’s more energy to make per bottle (can’t remember the numbers, and I’m too tired to go digging), though not a huge amount. You also can’t perfectly recycle a bottle without some new materials, and you’ve also now got an increased demand in silicates for new and recycled. So now the sand is even more in demand, and there’s a shortage of it. Luckily, the transportation costs of raw materials is roughly the same, on average.

But, again, at least the sand issue is tighter. Easier to control for than random plastic shit blowing everywhere.

So, it’s a net positive in terms of reducing the impact of plastics on the environment because that impact is more dangerous as well as less predictable. But it isn’t necessarily better just because it isn’t plastic. It’s a trade off weighted with that specific goal. If there was a magic wand to guarantee all used plastics be centralized and consolidated, the balance of things isn’t a net positive, it’s just a difference in what problems are occurring.

That ends up applying to pretty much every replacement material for a given use. Swapping out plastic films for waxed paper means you’re now increasing paper production, and that needs more trees. Swapping plastics out for paper in shipping protection is the same. Swapping out to metals brings the same weight issues as glass, and adds mining problems.

There’s always a price to pay. You can’t have the benefits of a modern world without some cost to the environment.

But, yeah, we haven’t started a serious switch because plastics are petroleum and there’s a shit ton of money and power tied up with that. It’s entirely doable, though it would take time and cost a shit ton. Eventually, we would cut plastics in the environment down to a level that’s more acceptable, and maybe even low enough to be unimportant (not that anyone has figured out what that would be yet afaik; we just know the shit is everywhere and causing trouble). But it has to start at the top, not from the bottom. Trillions of dollars are involved, and that kind of money wins, period.

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- lemming741@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  A 12 oz glass bottle takes roughly 1100 BTUs to melt the glass for. That is conveniently, roughly, 1.1 cubic ft of natural gas.
  
  60,000 BTU/hr is a very common size for natural gas HVAC furnaces. That’s basically a bottle a minute, just to give people an idea.
  
  There are other inputs of course, but furnace net efficiency is around 2200 BTU/lb
  
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  - Tywele@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    In the case of glass bottles don’t forget that they can be reused instead of recycled. Which reduces the amount of energy you use for them.
    
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Stillwater@sh.itjust.works ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
And the reason we still use so much plastic is that everything is driven by capitalism which only cares about maximizing profit

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sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Yeah so you can’t have environmental sustainability and capitalism. The logic of infinite growth demands that the cheapest route must eventually be taken in order to provide value to shareholders. Plastic is cheap in a way that nothing else is.

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- hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Louder for the people in the back!
  
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lurch@sh.itjust.works ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
there’s so much that can replace it. tinfoil with or without cardboard, waxed paper or cellophane, wood for throwaway utensils, etc…

i suspect the biggest problem is toothbrushes. the ones made from animal hair and wood are barely usable and we have 8 billion people grinding plastic against their teeth multiple times each day and rinsing the particles out with water. this can’t be good.

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- hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  From what I know, wood (or bamboo) toothbrushes and hair bristles are just fine.
  
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  - lurch@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    i didn’t try bamboo yet, but the wood handles of the ones i tried a few years ago, wasn’t as smooth as plastic, especially when wet. this made my lips move with it, making it difficult to keep the foam in the mouth and can hurt.
    
    the bristles were from pigs/boars. they started out hard, but became increasingly soft while brushing. that was a bit annoying, but managable. it’s unfortunate they’re not vegan tho.
    
    in my region i couldn’t get bamboo ones with soft bristles, which i need, yet. that’s why i couldn’t try them yet. i saw some labelled “hard” a the store tho. gonna keep an eye on that
    
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spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
We could just have less stuff. Plastic allowed us to make massive amounts of stuff so we could have more stuff and stuff stuff stuff stuff stuff.

We need both less plastic and less stuff. We shouldn’t be replacing everything that is plastic, we should be replacing some of it and reduce consumption.

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TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ 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.

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- spankmonkey@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  biodegradable plastic
  
  Pretty sure that is bullshit just like how ‘easy’ plastic is to recycle.
  
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  - skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It exists, if just isn’t a solid replacement for normal plastic. It’ll crumble to dust and dissolve before you can actually get any use out of the material.
    
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  - Ephera@lemmy.ml ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    I think, it’s possible to find alternative materials which behave similar to plastic in certain use-cases.
    
    But yeah, I can’t see a one-for-one replacement happening. It’s part of the appeal of plastic, that it does not degrade.
    
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  - TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There’s plenty of variety within that term. Also, recycling some of them requires very precise conditions.
    
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  - Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    It’s worth looking into, the research seems promising
    
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FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The scenario is a bit misleading. We didn’t arrive at everything being wrapped in single-use plastic overnight so we cannot switch the other way that quickly either.

Perishable or hygienic reasons must allow for continued use for some products. But there are plenty of things that don’t fall under that umbrella where waxed paper or single-use bamboo could make sense. You have correctly identified cost as an issue. The reason why everything is still wrapped in plastic like a corpse in Twin Peaks is it’s cheaper. Plastic packaging is also more resistant to damage on the way to the consumer. So the calculations need to change. We need to raise the cost on plastic and lower it on other more quickly biodegradable items. That’s a political decision, one that would be heavily lobbied against by the big boys in packaging. Yet another reason why overnight simply won’t work.

The question about resources also hinges on the time frame. If the switch had to occur today, the answer is probably no. There aren’t enough paper mills and bamboo nurseries in the world to meet demand. But there weren’t a gazillion plastic factories from the start, they grew over time in numbers. One should also not forget that paper mills aren’t without environmental impact. And neither would bamboo toothbrushes be. Also if we increase the amount of arable land to grow bamboo, are we decreasing land for food or animal feed? What are the effects of growing bamboo on the land without fellow periods? What fertilizer would be used? What toxic insect killer chemicals would need to be in use to guarantee sustainable levels of production? It’s not like one option is the perfect solution to fix the problems with the other option.

A holistic aporoach would also have to include us consumers changing our behavior. That’s definitely not happening overnight.

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beerclue@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Not exactly answering your dilemma, but I was watching a cooking channel yesterday (Sorted), and they were talking about seaweed - it’s wild (heh). You can use it to make straws, bags, packaging and all sorts of stuff that’s foodsafe and biodegradable. And apparently, even if we replaced all the plastic used for that kind of thing with seaweed, we’d barely make a dent in the ocean’s seaweed supply - we’d use less than 1% of it.

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