this post was submitted on 11 May 2024
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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