Dunno how we're supposed to get by without plastic. Basic things like water bottles, any cups or utensils you might give a baby or young child. Plastic has been a really important technological advancement. We can't exactly start giving kids glass bottles. Metal and wood are also not great replacements. Microplastics and plastic poisoning are definitely convos we need to have but the solution is not as simple as "stop using plastic".
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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what's wrong with glass, metal, and wood? the way i see it, the only reason we changed to plastic is because as long as we have oil wars, the cost for plastic will be lower. go, capitalism. and all that.
- Plastic is a good insulater
- plastic is a safer material
- plastic is more cost effective for necessary single-use objects like syringes and other medical equipment.
- plastic is more malleable, easier to mould and twist into useful shapes
Wider use of plastic pre-dates "wars for oil" and metal and timber are commodities that imperialists want to control just as much. They just have better control over those than they do oil right now.
Capitalism results in just as much human misery with regards wood, metal and glass production as it does plastic. There's no ethical consumption under capitalism because there's no ethical production under capitalism.
Plasticizers are chemical compounds that make materials more flexible. “No matter who you are, or where you are, your daily level of exposure to these plasticizer chemicals is high and persistent,” Volz said. “They are ubiquitous.”
Well, at least all the microplastics invading my brain are staying nice and flexible...
Odd, because that doesn't shock me in the slightest.
Haha, sometimes Lemmy’s ‘nothing to see here' is prescient.
How are they shocked by anything any more? Ho hum, my world is full of carcinogenic hazards at every turn. The ocean is borderline too acidic to support life any more. The glaciers are melting far faster than our models predicted (because any model that predicted these rates was discarded as obviously wrong, politically unpalatable, and likely to prevent the receipt of future grants. Melting arctic permafrost now emits more green house gasses than Japan (#5 emitting nation). Except the worst and you won't be disappointed.
"The world is changed. I feel it in the water. I feel it in the earth. I smell it in the air. Much that once was is lost, for none now live who remember [literally anything that's free of plastic]."
The whole thing is microplastics is so wild, we're just running a huge global experiment here.