The question sounds hyper stupid but hear me out.

We have an underwhelming volume of shit that relies on plastic. Plastic is cheap and versatile. If we replaced the vast majority of it, I presume costs for most products would creep up, and we would also shift our demand for natural resources (such as wood for paper ). Are there enough resources to sustainably replace our current volume of single use plastics? Or would we be sentencing all of our remaining forests to extinction if we did? Would products remain roughly equally affordable?

Let’s imagine we replace, overnight, all single use plastic in this hypothetical scenario with an alternative. All parcels are now mailed in paper; waxed paper if you need humidity resistance. Styrofoam pebbles are now paper shreds and cardboard clusters. No more plastic film, anywhere. No more plastic bags, only paper. No more plastic wrapping for any cookies confectionery, etc; it’s paper and thin boxes like those of cereals. Toothbrushes, pens, and a variety of miscellaneous items are now made of wood, cardboard, glass, metal, etc. The list goes on, but you get the idea.

Is this actually doable? Or is there another reason besides plastic companies not wanting to run out of business that we haven’t done this already? Why are we still using so much fucking plastic?

  • snooggums@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    biodegradable plastic

    Pretty sure that is bullshit just like how ‘easy’ plastic is to recycle.

    • Ephera@lemmy.ml
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      6 days ago

      I think, it’s possible to find alternative materials which behave similar to plastic in certain use-cases.

      But yeah, I can’t see a one-for-one replacement happening. It’s part of the appeal of plastic, that it does not degrade.

      • snooggums@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        It exists to perpetuate the the continued production of plastic as a whole, just like ‘clean coal’ and vaping and recycling lies exist to make people fine with consuming all of the similar stuff that isn’t even pretending to not kill us.