We have cardboard and paper for when you want packaging to eventually decompose. And plastic for when you dont want it to. Which is why no decomposable alternative for plastic has caught on, plastic is mainly used in those situations we dont want it decomposing. A lot of people have developed plant based, biodegradable plastics, its actually not that hard. Theyre just all prone to decomposing

[–] YungOnions@sh.itjust.works 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Glass? We used that for decades.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago

Of course, glass is brittle and in most cases loves to break into sharp pieces, so people don't love it for a lot of applications, particularly in packaging/shipping. When glass is involved, it generally demands more packaging to protect the glass from breaking.

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Almost all of the plastic I use at work so ship orders, is used for less than a day. Tape, plastic bags, wrap, strapping.

We use so much of it to just contain things for extrememly short periods of time, its all disposable plastic that isnt needed for more than a day usually, often hours.

Nothing about does anyone think even once we dont want it to decompose too soon

We we are one industry, and just one branch of one player in it. And we are one of the few areas that has rules about recycling.

Industry can change if they want but they dont.

We could easily switch to paper tape and start there at least eliminating one entire product line from waste. But if we can just straight up swap oil-plastic tape for biodegradable-plastic tape it would be one example of something we can do right now that we won't until we are forced to

All it would take is the product be available and the cost not more than what we are using. So subsidize the cost of using the product we want to lower its price and get people using it. When they do scaling and maturing of this new product will also bring the cost down which will reduce the need of subsidizing it, over time or sudden advances, and make the bad product less appealing because of cost.

But you have to make that transition as easy as simply ordering a different part number when ordering supplies.

Its never going to be industry that makes this happen unless it costs less. So it will likely need to come from government whether it be economic policy or legislative policy