[_qwfv]

Great. Regulation and reduction of plastic production is long overdue.

There are some places where it makes sense to use plastic, but we're far, far overproducing the stuff because it's convenient.

It's fantastically difficult to recycle in practice, burning it produces toxic smoke and carbon emissions, and putting it into the waste stream results in a bunch of it getting dropped on the sides of roadways.

[galangalalgol]

Is there a good list of what things we can reasonably replace? As I'm typing this I wonder what we would use for shock absorbant things like phone cases or water proof seals like cv boots on car suspensions.

Edit:. Looking around, electrical insulation, seals, and shock absorbers are the three things that I cant think of a good replacement for. Some seals like for weather proofing you could use spring bronze.

[Pfhreak]

Large, durable plastic use is less of a concern, if I understand correctly. Plastic use around food (and packaging in general), for instance, has a lifespan of approximately 6 months. Compare to the 13 years for plastics used by the automotive industry.

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782

There's TONS of packaging that could be replaced by other materials -- particularly materials that can non-toxically decompose in the environment in a reasonable time frame.

[lstamour]

Anything that can be made from paper, should be. Primarily bags, shipping containers, product packaging, etc. I've seen Amazon replace plastic bubble wrap with paper-based bubble wrap, for example. They use really fine bits of paper and presumably glue to create the "bubbles".

Instead of using plastic to wrap shipping containers, you could use a more re-usable material. Or perhaps we could come up with cardboard "rings" or other techniques to keep stuff together instead of wrapping it in plastic.

We might have to use more soap or other sterilization techniques, but where practical, using glass containers and aluminum cans would still make sense. I'm certain that if plastic single-use containers were eliminated in convenience stores for a country, we'd see a switch to cans, glass and waxed paper instead, almost overnight. Same as in alcohol stores, perhaps.

[robscallsign]

> As I'm typing this I wonder what we would use for shock absorbant things like phone cases or water proof seals like cv boots on car suspensions.

Respectfully, CV boots on car suspensions have a lifespan of several years, same with phone cases potentially.

As a first step I'm more interested in replacing the things that hundreds of millions of people discard multiple times a day. Starting off by thinking about CV boots and phone cases strikes me as being precipitously close to the "we can't replace everything so lets replace nothing" path.

[WheelsAtLarge]

The big problem is that there has been little to no effort on what to do with waste plastic. It's cheap to produce but it looks like it's expensive to deal with the waste. Right now it costs money to discard it so people and companies do their best to shift the burden to some one else.

Plastic is an important part of our modern society but we need to use it and get rid of it wisely.

[blihp]

Don't throw away your phone every couple of years and that phone case will last many, many years. Think of anything plastic that you throw away. The items you list are durable goods and are likely environmentally better and less toxic than what was used prior to plastic.

[datavirtue]

There is a process being developed where plastic can be recycled back into an oil be burning it and condensing the vapors/smoke into a liquid (capturing it). This is also very good news given the issues we have with recycling. This process would make it much easier since you would not have to sort.

[bogidon]

Curious if we can put said oil back into the earth we extracted it from, or if there are reasons that ecologically would be a bad idea. It’s interesting to me thinking about restoring the environment to a state prior to human interference.

[hateful]

The fact that there isn't a standard form factor for phones is a big part of the problem IMO.

[ArkanExplorer]

Phones are re-sold and re-used. They would account for a minor fraction of plastic use. It would be completely unreasonable to set a standard form factor and disrupt the market for an evolving product category.

What could use a standard form factor would be packaging, especially for glass jars and bottles which could be endlessly re-cycled.

[belinder]

Hopefully reduction of plastic production does not lead to reduction in plastic recycling.

[lstamour]

As TFA says:

> Plastic recycling was invented by the plastics industry in the 1970s to assuage environmental concerns without substantially reducing plastic consumption, according to Max Liboiron, an expert on plastic waste and a professor at Memorial University.

> It has never worked. Despite decades of effort, only about nine percent of Canada’s plastic waste is currently recycled, according to the 2019 ECCC-commissioned study.

[29athrowaway]

Reducing and reusing are much more important than recycling.

[Pfhreak]

Not sure why it would?