Interesting - in Singapore the widespread expectation in 2025 (at least among the elderly) is to get a plastic bag (sometimes multiple) from the shop whenever one buys something.
Comment on If we replace most plastic with a non plastic alternative and would that really be better?
Ziggurat@jlai.lu 1 day ago
A big issue is the single use. Why do you need a plastic wrapping in the cookies ? if you get cookies at your local bakery, and give them your own bag, they’ll put-it inside, no problem.
Note also, that a lot of things are already ongoing to ban single-use plastic. I am old enough to remember the late 90’s early 00’s when you would get a plastic bag from any shop, these have been outlawed a while ago and nobody miss them
Ardyssian@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl 1 day ago
There’s also a balance to be struck with single use plastics. Many products don’t last nearly as long without single use wrappers. For luxury products like cookies that doesn’t matter as much, but for certain vegetables getting a plastic wrapping early on can give them much longer shelf lives. There are only so many cucumbers you can consume between harvest and consumption, and ditching plastic wrappings would reduce food availability and probably cause more food to go bad and get wasted.
The worst part is probably that rich countries getting rid of shelf-life-extending plastic will solve the problem by just importing food products from elsewhere when local harvest season is done and the supplies run out. Poorer countries with less purchasing power will find themselves with more aggressive competition. Even though rich countries have an abundance of food, reducing the accessible food supply will still have an impact on the world.
As for bringing your own containers: that may work for some places, but not all. No grocery store will let you show up with your ceramic container to carry one of those ready-made salads to the till. The risk of getting into trouble for food safety and the general theft risk is just too great. We can get rid of those single use plastics, but it’d also mean getting rid of pre-packaged meals like that. As for cookies, I don’t get them from my bakery, those cookies are twice as expensive and last half as long. The closest bakery offers mostly-paper bags (though probably covered in PFAS) already.
Speaking of, for loads of single-use plastics, there aren’t many good alternatives without spreading more PFAS around. Paper isn’t all that great for storing anything that isn’t dry (and it’s still terrible when it rains). Glass can be an alternative, but making and recycling glass requires enough heat to melt it, adding to the CO2 problem. You also can’t store carbonated beverages like soda above a certain volume in glass containers, or you’ll end up with the glass grenades that made the world switch away from glass decades ago.
Here, plastic bags are still everywhere, but by law they now cost money. Certainly saves on plastic bag usage, but doesn’t eliminate them either. That said, plastic bags aren’t necessarily single use, you can just stuff them into your pocket and reuse them next time you go to the store unless they’re made from especially terrible plastic.
Of course you don’t need prepackaged individual slices of banana to have their own plastic wrappers, but a surprising amount of single use plastics is better than the alternative when taking other environmental factors into account.