Plastics and acids don't get well together? Is there some science behind this? Very strong acids are often stored in plastic.

You're right ... that's just an assumption I've held for whatever reason. Couldn't find a source either. Edited the post. Thank you.

I'm almost embarrassed to ask this, but what did people use for trash bags before plastic was invented? I've tried Googling this a few times with unsatisfying results. Trash bags by definition need to be disposable.

Trash burning is still pretty common in some parts of the world.

It's incredibly bad when plastics and disposable batteries start getting burnt, as is inevitable when burning is the primary trash disposal strategy.

Thank God it is. Burning trash is much better than landfills. Modern incineration plants are not very dirty and they don't poison ground water and wreck nearby ecosystems.

Uncontrolled burning of trash is much worse than a proper landfill. Modern landfills are constructed with water barriers and do not poison ground water. Old trash dumps were a problem but that is not what is happening in developed nations.

Of course, in some areas of the world, both uncontrolled trash burning and unregulated trash dumps are used.

I think you're talking about two different things.

I think the other post may be talking about people who burn their trash at home, instead of at an industrial scale? It seems like a neighborhood of people burning their batteries and plastics would not be great, compared to an industrial incinerator.

Or maybe I'm way off base.

Don't think this is what was meant by trash burning.

Tell that to the methed out assholes burning their trash in our neighborhood.

Burning trash is bad. Incinerating properly is crucial.

I assume they just threw the trash into the bin and probably kept it outside.

My neighbor is in his 80s and we live in what used to be a rural area before urbanization caught up. He told me there wasn't any garbage collection, they put rubish in a small bin and just dumped everything in a hole in the garden when the bin was full. They didn't use any plastic so everything would just decompose. When the hole was full they'd dig another one and that was it.

In rural areas they commonly composted the organic garbage and burned much of the rest. Food scraps were also fed to animals so there was generally very little food waste.

My uncle used to pick up all the food scraps from a local restaurant and feed those to his pigs. It made a mess in his pickup truck, but it was a lot cheaper than commercial pig food.

We still do it. Every kitchen waste goes to the chickens, everything that's compostable goes to a pile in the back of the garden. With two adults we have about three bags going in the recycling bin and one bag in the garbage bin per month. We still have a bit of progress to do by buying less packaged items.

You had a trash can/bin/bucket at home and you'd empty it into a dumpster or garbage chute.

Before wide availability of plastic bags, reusable bins/buckets were used for trash. It's not even that historic, for example, 1980s USSR did it that way if I recall it correctly.

New Orleans does it in streetside garbage cans.

Throw trash in the bin without a bag. Dump trash in your big trash can outside (that still doesn't have a trash bag). That can gets dumped into the garbage truck (truck also does not have a huge trash bag). Wash bin when it gets too dirty/stinky.

Trash bags are just a great time saver and more sanitary. I sure like them.

I'm an old enough gen-Xer to remember using paper grocery bags as a kid. There is a "standard" rectangular kitchen trash can size that used to fit grocery paper bags perfectly. Toss the bag in the galvanized steel trash can and the can is dumped out once a week.

Its a little more labor intensive, you can't dump liquids in a paper bag at least without paper towels, etc.

Exactly. But, you left out lifting your kid into the galvanized can to stomp down those paper bags and make space towards the end of the week...

I was born in the 80s and plenty of people were still just throwing it 'over the hill' or 'in a hole'. There are still remnants of it lying around if you know where to look. About 10 years ago when China was buying lots of scrap iron and steel, the scavengers dragged away all of the metal that was in these places which at least made them look better. You can still spot some old tires now and then.

Burn it and dump it into pits. Of course while that is not really a problem when 95% of your trash is organic with a bit of random iron scrap and most people live on low density farms, it is a problem with modern materials like plastics and other hydrocarbon products and increasing population densities.

On the other hand, what would the the environmental impact of stopping plastic use? I have to assume that producing a plastic bottle requires a minuscule fraction of the energy (and has a fraction of the greenhouse emissions) of creating a glass bottle?

Not that single use plastic items isn't an issue; it clearly is. But I'm guessing that the solution isn't generally to replace the single use plastic item with a single use wood/glass/textile item.

I could also be wrong. If producing plastic stuff has a much larger impact than what I'm assuming here, please do correct me.

> creating a glass bottle?

Not to mention transporting it. I wonder where the breakeven point is on energy costs.

Soda did come in glass bottles when I was young. I don't know precisely why we stopped, but my guess is because people didn't like getting new drinks in beat up old glass.

They stopped using hard-PET plastics here for the same reason as glass: Higher cost (even environmentally) for maintaining and cleaning the bottles (min temp of 60c water is required afaik). The plastic is now separated and recycled as-is instead of reused. It's also one of the main reasons they want to get rid of glass beer bottles (as well as that cans do a better job of sealing it) but that is somewhat more difficult culturally.

> but that is somewhat more difficult culturally.

Also, changing the material changes the experience of drinking something. At least I find the experience of drinking from glass to be very different to drinking from plastic or drinking from aluminium cans, even if the properties of the liquid itself is completely unchanged.

(I dislike drinks with straws for the same reason; cold glass touching lips and liquid running out from it is a different and better experience than putting plastic in the mouth and letting liquid shoot up into the palate.)

To prevent glass breakage requires far more padding/thicker glass all of which increases transport weight even more.

Not only is glass breakage direct loss, its a health hazard. Always pissed me off when dumbasses did crap like break glass bottles in parking lots.

You still can around me- there's a company that specializes in making flavored sodas and encouraged returning empty bottles so they could be reused.

It's a fun novelty, but I think one of the first bottles that I had tasted like soap- probably didn't get fully washed or something. That also ended up being the last one I had. If I'm going to drink soda, aluminum cans are hard to beat.

If bottles are returned to be washed it doesn't take that much energy. An empty semi-truck doesn't consume that much less gas than one loaded with product because air resistance is the same either way. It isn't free, but it isn't very expensive or hard either.

>natural wax The only commercially viable wax is paraffin, which is petroleum derived

>bamboo All of the bamboo products for sale are glued together with petroleum derived adhesives and often finished with petroleum based products like mineral oil

Because mineral oil isn't a "drying" oil (it doesn't polymerize in air), it's an unlikely choice for finishing furniture because it stays greasy and will rub off on things.

More likely is a drying oil, like linseed, or a synthetic finish, like polyurethane or epoxy.

I was thinking of bamboo kitchen items. I know he said toothbrush so maybe I typed too quickly

Some use fish glue (though still using petroleum and causing a majority of microplastic ocean pollution via the nets).

Change my mind: 95%+ of what we consume/use isn't necessary.

You're begging the question: what is the definition of 'necessary'?

Do you mean necessary to live a risky and brutal life, or necessary to live a comfortable, long, and pleasurable one?

Plastic is useful for being an insulator so it's used in electronics a lot.

A lot is used in bio research labs as well

You're ignoring pretty much all industrial use of plastic, which is a huge contributor to plastic use.

All your other points are essentially "If you paid way more, then plastic wouldn't be necessary." However, if you paid more, then you'd have less money for other stuff. So clearly plastic is necessary for our current levels of consumption.

All over-packaging plastic use aren't at all related to paying more. In fact, it costs more to put additional plastic wraps around product to make “bundles” …

If the bundling prevents breakage, which prevents customer support requests / returns ...

Generally speaking when you see some boring industry with margins too tiny to indulge in cargo cutting doing something it's because that something offers measurable (and therefore quantifiable, unlike wishy-washy subjective stuff like "brand image") improvement to the bottom line, usually by undercutting competition.

I think you're both right: the current global level of consumption not sustainable, or necessary. Everybody wants a healthy planet, almost nobody wants to volunteer to consume less. Regulation is needed, and it will mean we have to consume less. I realize that's not what anyone wants to hear. On top of that, I think we need social safety nets that prevent the burden from simply crushing the poor while the rich continue to over-consume. In the climate crisis we are trying to pay off generations worth of CO2 debt and we haven't even stopped digging the hole deeper yet.

Sorry for the very kitchen focused comment but the kitchen is where I used the most plastic.

Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen.

To a lesser extent the same argument could be made for polypropylene deli containers (for food storage and kitchen prep, not as disposable food containers).

I use plastic wrap probably more than I should in the kitchen (when baking) which could obviously be replaced by lids that fit whatever containers I'm putting the plastic wrap on but in some applications I can't imagine plastic wrap being replaced without some special lid (proofing a bread loaf that you want to proof out of the top of the container).

I think that's it though. In general, I agree that single-use plastics (or "re-use for a while and eventually throw out") are unnecessary but if something can be used indefinitely (I've had my cambros for something like 5 years at this point and they still look new) then I don't see it as an unnecessary plastic.

>Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros")

Heavily impregnated with BPA. I would avoid putting anything warmer than room temp in there (yes I know they're in widespread use in restaurants)

>I can't imagine plastic wrap being replaced without some special lid (proofing a bread loaf that you want to proof out of the top of the container).

Cheese cloth tied around the lid with plenty of slack in the cloth in the middle

Unfortunately the cheese cloth solution doesn’t work if you’re cold-fermenting an enriched/fatty dough in the fridge, as it can pick up “fridge flavor” without a lid or plastic wrap.

For very long ferments (cold proofing sourdough for example) it’s also liable to dry out.

All other situations it works fine for in my experience.

How about this? https://www.beeswrap.com/ My wife uses as an alternative to clingwrap.

Proof bread with a cloth. Glass containers for food are very durable, I've yet to break one.

How long have you been cooking? I've broken pie dishes, 9x13 baking dishes, measuring cups ... probably other things. Maybe I'm a butterfingers but that doesn't change matters.

30ish years.

Question for both of you: what are your floors made of? Wood and linoleum often won't break dishes. Tile eats dishes like the cookie monster eats... ummm... carrots I guess.

> Polycarbonate is a very useful plastic for food containers ("cambros") because it's lightweight, durable, and can be transparent. Sure, glass could work but it's a lot more fragile, especially if you were to try to constantly stack/unstack them in a commercial kitchen.

Cambro will happily sell you polypropylene bins, too. They even stack with the polycarbonate ones.

Plastic wrap is also far easier than finding the correct matching lid, in my experience.

There are now silicone lids you can purchase for pyrex storage containers. As a bonus, they stay supple and don't crack. Even so, lids do not touch food as much as the container itself.

Sadly, silicon freezer bags have yet to work as well as plastic ones. Give them time.

Where do you find them? I have many cracked pyrex lids.

In South East Asia, you can buy a lot of different prepared foods in banana, lotus, or bamboo leaf wrappings. Additionally, corn husks are used for wrapping tamales in Mexico. I wish I knew what the equivalent would have been in Europe. I would love to see traditional packaging getting popular in supermarkets around the world.

Risk adversity in the US will pretty much never allow this to happen. The moment one of those leaves has listeria or something like that on it, they'll be back in sterile plastic wrap.

You're probably right. Its related to the question of whether to wash eggs or not.

Lack of an air barrier is a huge limitation on shelf life. It’s not an issue for prepared foods you are about to eat but it is most things you’re buying at a grocery store.

It's not an issue for the fruits, vegetables, eggs, grains, "cured" meats, or many cheeses that I buy at the grocery store.

Relying on natural barriers to keep things from breaking down does limit shelf life, but its not a foreign concept to shoppers or grocery stores.

I’ve gotten all of those without them being wrapped in plastic. It’s not an environmental issue just a cost cutting one.

A lot of commercial kitchens use stainless steel for their containers.

Modern waterproof textiles are used by lots and lots of people that keep your basic infrastructure running, that allows you to stay in your warm, insulated, dry house. So they can stay reasonably comfortable while doing jobs like keeping the power running in a snowstorm, or keeping the roads clear for emergency vehicles.

I'm all for reducing plastics, but some of your ideas are quite naive.

Like replacing plastics with glas - I mean, you can do that, but glas isn't exactly an environmentally friendly material. Glas making uses a lot of fossil gas, the technology to make glas with renewable electricity does not exist at scale (it's been tried more than a decade ago and was a big failure), and it has emissions that cannot be easily avoided due to the use of carbonates.

Glass bottles and jars are pretty much infinitely reusable.

Recycled glass saves about 40% of the original energy.

My city has stopped taking glass in the recycling saying the cost to recycle it outweigh the benefits. It makes me wonder why we don't just clean/reuse them instead like we did in the old days when we returned glass bottles to the grocery store.

The relentless drive to make our labor available outside our local community in a single global labor market.

The trend of interconnected markets has pushed many families and companies to use more and more of their time getting cash instead of being productive in the home or local community.

In Germany they have the Pfand deposit scheme, where almost all beverage bottles and tins have a deposit charged on them, and shops have automated bottle and crate collecting machines, which you feed your bottles into and get out a receipt which entitles you to the deposit money off your next shop. You see very few stray bottles on the street, and those you do see are set neatly beside the bins for bottle collectors to pick up

yes that is almost exactly what we used to do in the 80s/early 90s (and probably before that), minus the automated part.

A couple US states have bottle deposit returns also, and they are highly effective programs. I don't understand why more places don't do it, and some places that do use it could increase deposit amounts slightly to get far better return rates.

Probably because they don't have the infrastructure setup to wash and reuse glass due to the competition from plastic. Most glass recycling is instead just smashing it which is a huge hit to the cost effectiveness of glass.

And increases the hospital bills (and more plastic waste) dramatically.

If you didn't come from a generation that had glass bottles everywhere you just don't know how bad it was. Even to this day there are still issues with beer bottles broken on beaches and stuff, but typically drinking alcohol is much more highly regulated then drinking soda from a glass bottle.

Say no to glass.

> - what have i forgot?

Electrical insulation is a pretty big use case. Both rubber and paper breaks down in some really unfortunate ways, ceramics are great but aren't really viable if you want to make a cable or wire. Laquer isn't really up for the job either.

And the soy plastic alternatives have caused huge problems in practice. Squirrels and mice totaling entire brand new cars by eating the insulation. Not to mention terrible longevity.

Yeah in a lot of ways the things that make plastics bad for the environment makes them good for electrical insulation. Primarily how they don't break down very easily, aren't particularly chemically reactive, don't rot, etc.

The knob and tube wiring in my 1930's house was still working fine. That tech would need to be updated for modern safety requirements (ground wire, etc) but worked without plastics for about 50 years. Much high cost though, I would guess.

Old wire is usually fine if it just sits there, but it may no longer be water proof or turn hard and brittle. That's why the failure mode is so unfortunate, it loses the properties you'd want in an insulator while still appearing safe.

Of course you're ignoring all the houses that burned to the ground because knob and tube sucks.

> polystyrene for home insulation (why not support plant based alternatives, like hemp / hempcrete)

Not a class-II vapor retarder. Can't build a comfortable and energy-efficient home without air barrier vapor retarders. (You can build an uncomfortable one, or one which uses far more energy).

> tooth brushes (what's wrong with wood/bamboo ?)

They all still use nylon brushes.

> food wrappers

You must be unfamiliar with warehouse conditions if you're willing to eat unprotected food like that.

> not a class-II vapor retarder

No time to elaborate, but from what I've read about it, hempcrete houses were built in different environments, even on seashores, as the hemp will petrify and turn the lime back into stone, but keeping the good properties. I've yet to hear about problems with water vapor or about one where it's uncomfortable to live in. Hempcrete has superb insulation properties, it may easily be the best material for home construction.

https://insidergrowth.com/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-he...

https://greathemp.net/advantages-and-disadvantages-of-hempcr...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/science/hemp-homes-cannab...

> they all still use nylon brushes

Or boar hair ... and that's obviously not good either. Don't know what the best material is. But with using just the nylon brushes, and replacing the rest with wood, we'd save apx. 98% of the material.

> You must be unfamiliar with warehouse conditions

I'm not. But if you eat plant based only, that's maybe less worry than if we were talking about meat/cheese, I assume.

There were no individually packed deli/cheese cuts when I was young. The shops instead had a counter with a shop person preparing orders, packing them into waxed paper. I've seen some counters recently, so it's still practiced somewhere. And people buy it and live, even without plastic.

In most cases, I would bet the CO2 impact of the alternatives you list is on the order of 2x - 10x.

So long as plastics are not being burned, at least their carbon is not going into the atmosphere.

They touted the plastic as a way to protect the trees. It didn't stop the deforestation.

They told us they're inert. Then we've learned about bpa, pfas and microplastics.

They told us they're recyclable. Now we now that's not really the truth.

They tell us it's for saving CO2. Now we have the shit in our seas, on beaches, in rain and wind, there is no place on earth free of it (not even the most remote areas).

The only reason why it's used is money ... to make & wrap stuff we don't need, and we (shall) pay for it with our health and poisoned environment.

Give me the glass, and reuse it and or recycle it. Energy is (soon will be) free.

> So long as plastics are not being burned, at least their carbon is not going into the atmosphere.

Keep it in the ground, then.

I mean, I understand the sentiment. At the same time, most of the consumers of said plastics are living longer than previous generations. I don't think it's as bad as you make it out.

Granted, at some point the human race will need to act more holistically about their resource usage, but I think that will take a very long time and probably not until it has become a much more painful problem.

> most of the consumers of said plastics are living longer than previous generations

Can we say, for sure, that this is true? My grandma just died a few years ago. I couldn't tell you exactly when the plastic revolution happened, but I would say it was significantly long after she became an adult. I'm not sure we are at the point of knowing yet whether my plastic generation outlives my grandma's non-plastic generation, statistically speaking.

Use of plastic started exploding in the 60s and 70s, so it would depend on how old your grandma was. But sixty years is a fairly substantial length of time for exposure.

> tea bags made with plastic (yes, they're there, not biodegradable, lots of microplastics in your tea)

I would imagine every time you scrape off the lint from your dryer's lint trap you inhale orders of magnitude more microplastics than these food/drink examples and and swallow more too from nasal drip.

Is this intuition off?

Don't know about the comparison with dryers, but teabags leak billions of particles

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49845940

A huge barrier to eliminating plastic use is making people aware of their plastic use. Prior to thinking about it and investigating, I was unaware of how many plastics I was using.

How many people think their clothing is plastic? They probably think it’s “some textile” and that’s all the thought they ever give it. How many people consider the plastic in their dishwasher or laundry pods, or in packaging? They’re all unconscious decisions that people make because they are using what corporations give them.

Also, related, reusable stuff is great and disposable stuff sucks. I always joke about wondering what the sales pitch was for disposable razors: “have you ever wished you had to replace your entire razor every time the blade dulled?” Not only is it wasteful but it simply makes no sense in many cases.

> probably think it’s “some textile” and that’s all the thought they ever give it.

Even when aware it can be a challenge to find replacements. I bought https://www.patagonia.com/product/mens-pile-lined-trucker-ja... a year ago and while I put reasonable effort into finding an alternative that didn't use "pile" or "sherpa wool" (fake wool), it was hard to find any at all. The very few results I did find were a totally different style. Ordinary shirts seem to be a fair bit easier but I would love suggestions for high quality jackets made of natural materials.

I’ve got the same problem with socks. It’s quite literally impossible. Even brands that sell “100% cotton” socks have a small amount of polyester or spandex, etc.

Glass is a lot heavier than plastic. Would using glass require more fuel to transport heavier loads?

Cars are mostly plastic by weight. Remember every extra pound means burning an extra Y gallons of fuel over the life of the car. Replacing plastic with steel would likely be a net loss environmentally speaking.

There are other materials we could use.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kgg0zpckGRU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx8OTH0eEM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srgE6Tzi3Lg

What?

A lot of the saved weight in cars is probably plastic, but the metal parts of the care pretty obviously make up the majority of the weight.

Engine, transmission, axles, suspension, frame/unibody, frequently body panels are steel, etc.

-textiles:

I think as soon as you recommend to reduce someone’s quality of life you can forget about it. I agree with a lot of the other recommendations, but telling someone to stay home sounds a lot like dismissal. However, anything where behavior can be changed without changing QoL should be done.

> use glass

I really enjoy soft drinks (terrible ik) and will never buy plastic bottles or cans instead of glass bottles. I really don't think I'm crazy or alone in thinking glass-bottled tastes better. My local convenience store sells Jarritos but not the glass-bottled Mexican coke and as a direct consequence I only buy the Jarritos, otherwise I'd mix it up a bit.

I assume glass is also better environmentally but I do wonder how much of the benefit is offset by taking more energy to produce (I assume) and to ship.

>plastic shopping bags (use textile bags

iirc you would have to use a textile bag several hundred times to have a lower impact that plastic bags, maybe reusing plastic bags is a better option. Or polyester idk.

same for cotton, water use and carbon dioxide emissions are huge and debatably polyester clothes are better environmentally (it's hard to compare as there is no conversion rate between plastic waste/microplastic pollution and carbon dioxide) emissions)