Just 20 firms behind more than half of single-use plastic waste

Re:Just 20 firms behind more than half of single-use plastic... by technocratius on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @01:54AM (#27191629)

Your paraphrasing of the source you reference is slightly incomplete/misleading, as the claim pertains to non-biodegradeable bioplastics only.

Keep in mind that still significant portions of (fossil based) plastic waste are incinerated as well. And scale matters: in the country where I live roughly 30kg of plastic waste is per person per year. That's in the order of magnitude of a single tank of gas of a small vehicle. In other words: the sustainability problem with current-day plastics is not so much in it's carbon footprint, but more the damaging effect to various ecosystems and human health.

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Re:Just 20 firms behind more than half of single-use plastic... by qPM9l3XJrF on Tuesday May 18, 2021 @02:02AM (#27191672)

>the claim pertains to non-biodegradeable bioplastics only.

That's most plastic though. Your average soda bottle is not biodegradable on any meaningful timescale.

As the article puts it: "If we're going to extract carbon from the ground at all, far better that it ends up in a soda bottle that will last 400 years than in the combustion chamber of your car."

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