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How will we ever get away from plastics when they are ubiquitous for safety (lemm.ee)

submitted 11 months ago by littlecolt@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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Plastic seals food, sterile medical implements, medicine, beverages, etc... it's seems like plastic is used as a way to seal things safely. Post pandemic rising, I see even more. My work used to be have plastic utensils in the cafeteria, for example, an already wasteful thing. Now, post-2020, every fork, knife, and spoon is individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper. I feel like the more my desire to escape plastic intensifies, the more plastic I see all around me everywhere.

How can we get away from plastic as a safety layer?

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[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 18 points 11 months ago

Bioplastic - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic

[-] 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 months ago

The solution is not perfect though...

Life cycle analysis studies show that some bioplastics can be made with a lower carbon footprint than their fossil counterparts, for example when biomass is used as raw material and also for energy production. However, other bioplastics' processes are less efficient and result in a higher carbon footprint than fossil plastics.

[-] PupBiru@kbin.social 22 points 11 months ago

the plastic problem is separate from the carbon problem though… we don’t ban plastics because we’re concerned about climate change; we ban them because we are worried that microplastics are causing significant health effects to both humans and most other animals

[-] 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Still, there is that other thing to worry about as well. The eco system is a system, doesn't depend on one thing only.

[-] gregorum@lemm.ee 4 points 11 months ago

Likewise, we will always have products and processes which have some carbon footprint. The hope is that we have enough others that don’t or are carbon negative that the net effect is one of balance.

[-] PupBiru@kbin.social 3 points 11 months ago

of course, but they are complex problems and you shouldn’t poo poo a potential mitigation to 1 because it negatively impacts another

the solutions to complex problems shouldn’t require being solutions to every complex problem

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 11 months ago

Obviously. I doubt bioplastic had even 1/100 of the money and research of their fossil counterparts.

[-] 0x4E4F@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago

That might also be true.

this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2023

209 points (94.8% liked)

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