The ideal solution you propose was often used when we used glass.

The only reason we could have started throwing our containers is because plastic is so much cheaper.

To be fair, when we used glass, fewer product were transported long distance.

Nowadays we can do like Germany who incentives to bring back bottles for recycling.

Or an even better alternative would be to use glass for individuals and another method for transportation.

Although i've seen some bio stores starting to refill plastic containers, wich isn't perfect but a nice middle ground to start changing habits.

I agree with all of your points, but the original picture was showing plastic pollution and you went on to compare it with carbon emissions. So when you use a phrase like "total footprint" it's difficult to interpret that any other way than we must make one problem worse to solve the other.

I don't see why we can't have solutions that are low/zero carbon AND don't result in plastic being dumped in the ocean.

Whatcha talkin bout Willis?

A study comparing the environmental impacts of various single-use beverage containers has concluded that glass bottles have a greater overall impact than plastic bottles

But... but... Glass is not single use. That is the whole point. I don't like this article.

This is not entirely wrong, but the OP is about garbage and environmental pollution with it. It's a fact that glass is basically just fancy shaped sand and turns back into normal sand with almost zero side effects, if it reaches the environment instead of being recycled.

If one makes glass with renewable energy (green hydrogen, for example) and the shipping is done with renewable energy (e.g. electric trucks), even disposable glass bottles become greener than plastics made from mineral oil can ever be.

There is no solution that involves billions of people buying things.

Why are tetrapacks so good?

I assumed they were terrible as laminated paper can't be recycled?

As I write this I start to think this might be one of those things I learned in high school that might be total BS.

The way you've worded that suggested to me that there isn't an actual solution so, for the people who didn't click through, I'll point out that the article concludes: "more sustainable alternatives to plastic bottles exist for all three types of beverage".

That said, in order to compare the environmental impact, there has to be some kind of weighting between the energy cost of manufacture and the direct environmental pollution (discarded plastic choking marine animals; microplastics; etc). I'm not sure it even makes sense to try to combine them. Climate change is an imminent existential threat, whereas microplastics are poisoning us but not obviously killing us.

I also wonder what they assumed for the energy source in the glass manufacture. It is mostly fossil fuels at present, but the industry is moving towards electrification.

The banning of plastic bag sees the rise of reusable bag...being taken as single use. Multiple times higher footprint, multiple times higher cost. People will do everything for their own convenient.

I remember seeing really old papers posted here where our current climate problems were being forecasted as early as 1920.

BP invented the carbon footprint term in an (successful) attempt to shift responsibility to the consumer in about 1990 I believe.

We're way past realisation and spreading the word.

This is pure ignorance we're fighting today.

The problem was realized decades ago, and yet we've accelerated our use. It's very similar to emissions. If only we had left that thick sludge in the ground, neither of these would be an issue.