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Survey finds that 60 firms are responsible for half of world’s plastic pollution
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 01 May 2024
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Don’t worry about these big guys. The straws are gonna save the planet.
Said no one ever.
People so mad about straws act like you cannot possibly work against a problem in more than a single way.
The problem is we are not trying multiple ways. We only try the ineffective ones to avoid trying the effective ones.
Banning straws (generally, single-use plastics) as well as non-attached bottlecaps is the most effective way to keep EU beaches clean. They had a look at what's out there and those were the big offenders that could be addressed so they're doing it.
...also the only bad thing about those silicone straws I bought is that they're too short for bottles. It really is the ideal material for the application.
Yeah, the beach nearest to me just had a coal power plant reactivated last year. Nothing we can do about that though.
Is that coal power plant producing plastic waste or are you perhaps talking about an entirely different problem that need to be addressed by separate legislation?
I'm sure that something could be done, but it surely isn't going to help with beach littering. Even if some coal ends up on the beach that's really not an issue.
And by "we" you mean actually "corporations"? Of course they aren't willing to blame and fine themselves for saving money.
By "we" I mean the governments we elect.
Which are basically controlled by the corporations. My point is that there are many people who want to do more and several groups trying to make it happen. They aren't up against an easy fight. So when a small win happens like plastic straw bans, maybe we can want more without dismissing it as bullshit.
You could always not buy their completely non essential products, but suggesting that rarely gets a good reception from the "obsessively whining about straws" crows.
I've been trying this for decades, but it hasn't put a dent in the global growth of waste.
Yeah you pretty much need to end Citizens United and ban corporate lobbying to even start talking about regulating correctly.
That's what's always a bit maddening about these conversations. It's not like companies are just shredding plastic into the atmosphere because they're cartoon villains who love evil.
They're making cheap plastic shit because we love cheap plastic shit. They're making this stuff in response to explicit consumer prioritization of low costs above all other factors. If consumers broadly demanded soda in glass bottles and expressed a willingness to pay the extra cost that this entails, every soda company would use glass.
I'm not saying that you individually should be blamed for all environmental pollution, but we have to realize that companies are responding to the exact same incentives that we do. They're obviously operating at a much larger scale, but they use cheap plastic shit for the exact same reason we do. If you're looking for policy solutions, a great option would be to introduce an externality tax on plastic so that this environmental cost is actually factored into the production and end price and can fund remediate the damage, similar to carbon taxes. Of course though, the moment you say the word 'tax' people's brains completely shut off, so this is probably a non-starter.
I don’t think consumers in general have a direct say in the matter though, regardless of their impact. Blaming every individual for it is inefficient, and ultimately is only useful for deferring blame when you don’t want to solve the actual problem.
If you are interested in an actual solution you go to the source, and regulate the corporations.
Regulation is fine, but people need to realize that there are always downstream effects that often result in a less efficient version of the same outcome.
For instance, say you just pass a blanket ban on plastic soda bottles and mandate glass. Production costs immediately go up (not to mention transportation and logistics), and those costs are naturally passed onto the consumer, so the prices of all sodas go up.
Has this really improved things? There are real questions about the environment impact of glass, since they're significantly heavier and thus require more carbon emissions to transport. Glass is better if it's reused, but there are situations where it's unlikely to be reused. Soda is now more expensive, just as it would have been under a plastic tax (and because lower income people tend to drink more soda, you've hit them extra hard relatively), but now you've also eliminated the ability for plastic bottles to be used in situations where they truly are called for; for instance, you probably don't want to be selling glass bottles at a music festival, so an organizer will need to instead purchase extra plastic cups instead, resulting in the consumption of extra glass and plastic.
I know people have this idea that the only factor that goes into a price is how greedy the CEO happens to feel that morning, but that's simply not the case. Prices are set by market circumstances, not greed. It's not like NYC landlords suddenly got less greedy in 2020; the market radically changed. They're already charging the most that the market will bear. In terms of regulation, it's almost always more effective to go after the market incentives - that is, price signals - instead of just taking a hammer to the thing you don't like and hoping it doesn't have any bad effects.
Ok, but i was taught as a child about the need to recycle. What percent of the population recycles? What percent even have access to recycle programs? What percent of recycle programs don’t just throw the bags into the normal trash dumps?
You say cost will go up if actual change is introduced and consumers will be upset. I agree, but the opinions and the cost are not being considered. Should they be? And if they make it untenable, what does that say about the product?
You frame this as a ‘there is no solution i can see that’s worth it so why bother’ and this tells me you are not interested in a solution. There are solutions out there right now we could be doing but don’t. And some progress is better then nothing. Not to mention drinking from plastic bottles has apparently been poisoning us.
As for housing, they are charging the most the market can bear…. After the land lords manipulated the housing market so that the market could be forced into bearing more than it could healthily. Again because they are not properly regulated.
That is the exact opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that an externality tax to capture the actual cost of single-use plastics would do a lot to reduce their use without distorting markets and causing unintended side effects while likely being more effective than blanket bans.
That and an indulgence tax does not solve the problem. The intention is not to get more money from taxes, or to lower the pores access to normal goods, it’s decentivise its use. And by definition the amount you would have to tax to achieve this has to be so much that it destabilizes the market. Thats the point.
Okay, so imagine you just ban plastic soda bottles. Now plastic bottles cannot be used in any circumstances, no matter how genuinely warranted, even if a user is willing to pay all costs to ensure its environmental impacts are offset. Also, all soda is now significantly more expensive, so "the poors" still have less access to it.
Potentially, yes. The entire point is that these artificial low prices are only possible because the negative externalities are being inflicted on other people in the form of pollution. By actually factoring this impact into the cost of the good, its true cost emerges and the market will settle into whatever the equilibrium is. If the only thing enabling mass access to cheap soda is a ton of pollution, then you either accept mass pollution or you lose the mass access to cheap soda. There's not really any way around that fundamental trade-off.
Not potentially, the market MUST be disruputed. If the market is not disrupted, the same goods are being bought, if the same goods are being bought then the same trash is created. Upsetting the market is the whole point.
Putting an indulgence tax on plastic may help stop the poor from contributing to the pollution problem, but unless the cost is prohibitively expensive for the majority it’s not going to work. Also you are not factoring that the use of the plastic can be how it’s regulated. I do not envision it being outright banned from all applications. Just all the single use applications. And i would also posit that some single use applications could be changed to a reusable use without reforging the container. It is being done else where and soon we won’t have a choice but to comply anyway. We are just talking about how dystopian that time will be at this point.
So, you want to regulate the use of plastic via an indulgence tax. But instead of charging the corporation, you want to add an additional tax to every single individual transaction? Or do you want to tax the corporation once and have the cost of the product go up. The end result is the same, except one is more efficient.
The spot where you charge it really doesn't matter much except to the accountants; it'll always just be factored into the price of the product. There's no real difference between the company increasing the price by ten cents or a ten cent tax being levied at the register.
I really wouldn't call it an indulgence tax though. There are plenty of uses for single-use plastics that aren't sodas or indulgences.
That and an indulgence tax does not solve the problem. The intention is not to get more money from taxes, or to lower the pores access to normal goods, it’s decentivise its use. And by definition the amount you would have to tax to achieve this has to be so much that it destabilizes the market. Thats the point.
No. They're making cheap plastic shit because their constant lobbying against common sense regulation and a living wage means that the cheap plastic shit is all most of us can afford.
Also known as a consumer prioritization of being able to survive without being TOO crushed by debt. You're really slathering the victim blaming on thick.
Bullshit. You have the power relationship backwards. The vast majority of humanity can't afford high quality sustainable packaging because the premium companies demand for it is ridiculous. Because they know they can as long as useful fools blame the consumers.
Sounds awfully close to just that, though.
They absolutely are not. A company has the option to make the packaging better at the same price in exchange for a couple cents less profit per bottle. A customer, who already doesn't have the vast resources with which to choose that a company has, would have to pay several times that, often several dollars, extra to get the "premium" glass bottle.
That's like saying that the Sultan of Brunei's palace is obviously much larger than my apartment: while technically true, the difference of scale is so vast that any direct comparison is effectively meaningless.
Nope. They produce cheap plastic shit to maximize profits because they're allowed to. We buy cheap plastic shit to minimize costs because we have to. Those are not the same reason.
Yes! This better be good..
Companies would just pass the cost on to consumers as always. If you do that AND price control, then we have something!
Another example of something that's a great idea in theory but end up not working as intended because it's too easy for big companies to avoid the intended consequences. Carbon taxes with no transferrable carbon credits and the aforementioned price control could work, though.
Taxes work. You just need additional mechanisms too, to prevent the kind of fuckery companies get up to.
In no universe is coca cola "all you can afford". You could replace it with tap water and be better off in every way.
Yeah because there's nothing physically, mentally and even socially addictive about the number one brand in the world, packed with sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and/or questionable sweeteners 🙄
Next you're gonna share the brilliant insight that it's cheaper to not smoke tobacco..
Are you suggesting people should not be encouraged to quit smoking?
No, I'm saying that it's not that simple to just forgo something addictive.
I'm an ex smoker (and ex drinker) myself, so while I would never recommend smoking (or drinking to excess), I have very little patience for people assuming or implying that addictions are easily kicked.
That shit can control significant parts of your whole life, sometimes in subtle ways you weren't even aware of.
So, you agree people should not start drinking Coca Cola, and for their own health and finances they should make every effort to stop drinking Coca Cola.
Yeah, but it isn't that simple, is what I'm saying.
You're pretending that it's a completely unencumbered choice. That there's no social and societal pressures making lifelong coca cola abstinence viewed as evidence of being in a cult or mentally unwell.
Likewise, addictions fight you hard when you try to get rid of them, much harder than anyone who's never been addicted can even imagine.
Fact is that it's NOT an unencumbered choice at all, and pretending otherwise doesn't help anyone.
Oh yay, blame the consumers not the ones making the trash, worked so well the past 50 years
Nah consume consume consume, shirk blame
Actively reject education, then refuse any blame. That sounds like the best plan!!
If everybody individually behaved correctly, we wouldn't need any laws.
But as the entire human history has shown us, that is not the case. Which is why societies have passed laws even before recorded history.
Thanks, I truly had no idea why these "laws" exist
Or we can acknowledge that our society is not conducive to the type of living required to effect change in the way necessary to solve this. That boycotts do not work, and historically the best course of action would be to put controls on the corporations backed with actual teeth. Blaming the consumer is ineffectual if the goal is to actual solve the problem. But works if the goal is to defer blame to not have to fix the problem
More than one person is to blame. For example, within every single corporation, decisions are often made by committee and even when it's a unilateral decision, others can speak out if it's an immoral one.
Yes obviously companies being irresponsible is the biggest problem, but sitting on our hands at home because we can't make as much of a difference adds up and I'm sick of seeing it excused. Your argument will be used as an excuse to be lazy more often than not.
Trick, unless you want to go all ecoterrorist right now, which I admit is looking enticing, the best plan of action is to put up corporate regulation. Finding a path forward to that, where individuals can sign petitions and get those enacted into laws, is probably the best path forward as destroying existing infrastructure will also hurt people and society.
uh what?
Obviously. People apparently just can't seem to understand nuance. Either it's all one group's fault or all another's. Also, it has to be a blame game. As if suggesting people try to minimize their home waste is somehow justifying corporate negligence...
I am not excusing laziness. I am just not interested in assigning blame. I am recognizing that when given the choice people will choose what they are used to, what is easy, and what is cheap. It is not in human nature to sacrifice the tangible to achieve nebulous and incalculably small overall change, especially when it’s out of sight out of mind. You are wasting your breath attempting to guilt every individual on the planet into living in a commune. You don’t even practice what you preach. It is a waste of time, and It. Will. Not. Work.
On a practicality standpoint. If you really want to solve this problem, the single most effective route is to regulate corporations. In places that the government did not regulate the use of asbestos, it is still in use for example.
I hate corporations so I am going to continue buying sugary bullshit that I don't need, and get pissed off at anyone who suggests I give the worst polluters less of my money
-the anti corporate position.
You did not listen to what i had said, you just repeated what was said above.
There are problems with blaming the individual. One is that you are not naming the individual, when you appeal to a nebulous blame, no one is at fault. Also, the sugary drinks you are referring to, are laced with the worlds 2 most addictive substances, has their impact on people lies about in falsified studies, and lobbies against its regulation by…. Corporations.
Blaming the individual is inefficient. And not conducive to actual change
so instead we get pissy about plastic straws, a regulation imposed on corporations by the government.
As far as i know there have been no regulations from the government over the use of plastic straws. Some companies use paper straws, but the market for plastic straws have largely not noticed, meaning the choice alone has not solved the problem. The problem remains. Regulation on the sale of plastic straws would have an immediate impact on the amount of straw plastic waste
Nah nah see if we can't solve it ourselves at home fully then we should just point our fingers and pretend that's all we can do. /s
Dafuq
deleted, wrong thread