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pelican_chorus t1_jai5lfw wrote

While I 100% support all waste-reduction incentives, what's interesting is that our instincts may actually often be backwards when it comes to plastics.

Take single-use plastic bags. If you have an organic cotton bag, it would need to be re-used hundreds of times to have the same carbon impact as a single-use plastic bag, and thousands of times to have the same water impact as that plastic bag. (Source 1, Source 2)

If, like me, you have 5-10 reusable bags, you need to use them tens of thousands of times to offset the emissions and water impacts they had, compared with if you had used single-use plastic bags the whole time.

And paper bags, from that source, would have to be reused 40 times, which is unlikely ever to happen.

(Note, my take-away from that study is not to not use my reusable bags, but to make sure I use them as many times as possibly possible. But also, if I forget my bag, I should use single-use plastic rather than paper (bad) or buying yet another bag (much worse).)

Our instincts usually come from a "visible trash" perspective, we assume that what we see littering is the worse thing. But actually from a climate change and water freshness perspective, this is not always correct. (And, interestingly, studies have shown that all plastic bags make up less than 1% of litter.)

I'm not sure the point I'm trying to make: initiatives to stop trash and waste are definitely good. But that our good intentions aren't always correct when it comes to plastics, so we should try to look at the available research, and let that guide our decisions, more than our gut instincts.

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noob_tube03 OP t1_jai6l7a wrote

For sure. This is very much the "electric car" problem. Electric cars are terrible for the environment, but electric cars are still a good thing because we need to push for renewable energies. It's more about framing and making sure you know what issue you are addressing. In this case, it's about reducing plastic waste, especially microplastics in our water and plastic in the ocean. While paper bags don't necessarily help the forests, they do reduce microplastics

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SesquipedalianPossum t1_jak9811 wrote

Since you seem to be anti-climate chaos, I wanted to say, think it's important for everyone to understand that EV passenger cars are not a good choice. EV passenger cars are meant to save the car industry, not us or the planet.

The materials required to create batteries to power EVs--cadmium and lithium--are in quite limited quantities on the planet, we really, really need to reserve those small amounts to use for batteries that will store energy for the power grid and large-capacity vehicles, like buses and trucks. If we waste it all on private passenger electric cars, we'll have none left for the grid or public transit.

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bostonguy2004 t1_jamddnw wrote

So what about the lack of Climate Change-causing emissions from EV cars? Can you explain how not emitting CO2 is bad for the planet?

And, this criticism of EVs seems like a lot of speculation and lacks sources. Could you provide some valid and reliable source links (e.g., peer-reviewed scientific research) about your points?

What if massive deposits of cadmium and lithium ore are discovered in the future?

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