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this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
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Why do people only ever talk about the carbon footprint when plastic bans are discussed?
Plastic waste is lying around everywhere, microplastics have been found in placentas and brain stems, the great pacific garbage patch is larger than some micro states.
The environment consists of more than just the atmosphere and we should reduce both greenhouse gases and plastic waste.
Also
That may be so but many people do not recycle or reuse their plastic bags. I would assume this measure is aimed more at them then at you.
To remind people they pollute in multiple ways, and reducing one way might increase the other way.
However I’ve never seen a good comparison of the relative severity, only opinion. Is the apple worse for the environment , or the orange?
As I've said before, why not try to reduce both?
And let's be honest: Whenever someone post a sarcastic 'good thing we banned plastic straws' under a topic about CO2 emissions, they're not doing it as a good faith argument that one pollution might avoid the other.
The garbage patch is mostly fishing gear
To be fair that is not what occurred. The comment was significantly more rounded than that.
Microplastics are the big focus right now, so actually bringing up carbon footprint diversifies the discussion. You’re actually saying stop - don’t bring that up?
I’m old enough to remember when plastic bags were considered the friendly option because they cut down trees to make paper. Anytime people focus only on one aspect, we come to the wrong decision.
This is not the case. Ai, crypto, airplanes, cars, meat production, fertilizers, etc are more are on my radar than bag bans. Suggesting otherwise feels combative. I agree that we should reduce both greenhouse gases and plastic waste. I didn't say or even suggest we shouldn't reduce plastic waste. My last sentence ("... we need to foster a culture that consumes less and reuses more.") is inclusive of reducing plastic use and waste.
And that's why my response was about the behavioral and cultural change. The unintuitive fact about plastic vs paper bag carbon emissions was something I heard about a decade ago and it helped push my understanding of environment impact beyond simply "plastic bad, paper good," and focusing only on waste and not manufacturing and distribution, as well. Regulation is just one tool, and a blunt one at that, but individual choices matter and can operate with more nuance for better results. To be clear, that's not an argument against regulation, it's an argument for acting beyond the baseline that regulation sets.
Edit: formatting, brevity, clarity, typo
I'll grant that everything else you said were valid considerations but here I disagree.
We need regulation because relying on individual choice doesn't work.
We wouldn't need regulation for emissions if individuals would always chose emission free products.
We wouldn't need regulation for animal welfare if individuals would always chose cruelty free animal product or become vegan.
We wouldn't need speed limits if individuals would always drive safely.
But people are assholes and idiots. They make choices that hurt the environment, society and often even themselves.
I wouldn't say that we disagree. I'm not against regulation. I apologize if I was not clearer about that.
I do think it's a blunt tool, but I also think blunt tools are necessary. I didn't mean to undermine that, I wanted to communicate that a cultural and behavioral shift is an additional tool we need.
Besides the "assholes and idiots," there's also well-meaning but ignorant folks out there. Understandably, too- we're dealing with complex supply chains. It's easy to think switching to paper is better- and it is, on the waste front- but it isn't on the carbon front, not without reusing them a few times. I regret not being clearer and to the point in my original reply.
Growing up, I was focused on the waste problem but it wasn't until I heard an estimate about how many people would die globally in the next few decades if temps rose 2° C instead of 1.5. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find the source again, but I remember it was orders of magnitude more than the holocaust. And those are going to be people in vulnerable parts of the world, not the biggest polluters. It really woke me up to the stakes of greenhouse gases. Of course micro plastics are a concern, as well, but I'd have felt much better about the posted news if it were targeting the plastic around food which is so abundant now and harder to reduce, reuse, or recycle.
Anyways, thank you for your pushback. It's helped me realize that I need to be clearer and distinguish my stance from sounding too much like Plastic PR talking points.
By which he means he used it as a bin bag and threw it into landfill on the second use
Smh