Thank God.

On the bright side, wages should go up. Oh no. Wait. All that worker demand will go to something that can work longer hours with far fewer defects or failures in output, no expectation of better working conditions or workers safety, other than the usual maintenance which is completely mutually beneficial and probably 100% automatable, doesn't require pay or benefits, won't likely be the object of or the instigator of sexual harassment, most likely would consumes far fewer overall resources per unit of output especially when you add in the defect/error rate, as far as anyone can tell really likes what it does and never tries to do anything else (no job ghosting or moonlighting), and a million other reasons I don't have the time or patience to detail, but I think ya get the point. Finally, we'll be able to what we want instead of what we have to too.

Good catch on the "not" actually solving problem. I hate having to use qwerty and autocorrect.

Absolutely the environmental impact issue and human sustainability crisis is much broader than this, but this post and ensuing debate was focused on plastics. Plastics are 100% a human created problem and requires a human solution, because the impacts are broader than to just humans. I agree we shouldn't use shitty metrics that are meaningless or left undefined. And please stop with the replacing one product with an inferior or worse product. Only a crazy person would do that. Oh shit, I just realized that is really about capitalism. The feasibility or cost of effort to do what is obviously right versus what is cost effective. Because inferior products are brought to market all by the time because there is demand for cheap, lesser quality and convenient, right?. That may be a current reality, but it is not and should not be a constraint to the solution. Inferior products on any dimension, simply should not be produced. The issue isn't if a plastic spork is replaced by lead paint coated uranium spork (I know I'm being ridiculous). It's that plastic shouldn't even be an option, let alone any uranium based consumer products 😉 It's lunacy to create lesser quality product of any kind if a product of equal or greater exists and meets the demand, especially one that has poor sustainability and environmental impacts It's absurd that we consider ourselves evolved beings and yet continue to put a monetary cost and thus price to our excess, greed and gluttony. But I digress .. But this debate has long departed from the core.

I think the statement holds that the planet and all entities within this diverse ecosystem we call home would be much better off if plastics could be completely eliminated. I know that should be the goal, which is an easy metric to count, plastic production= 0. Anything less is inadequate.

Anyways, it's been a pleasure. I wish you all the best!

P.S. - you hd a few decent points. Wrong, but decent. ,😄

This seems like an irrational rabbit hole in which one wants to defend that plastics should continue to exist because they exist today. The statement of would the environment be better off without them completely than with them, then I think that one should just trust their gut and they will be correct. To say that a family needing wash plastic sports from KFC because of their socioeconomic status is an example of plastic reuse best practices and a viable method of mitigating environmental harm, well, not really sure how to address that, but find the example disturbing to say the least. I'm sure the executives of the manufacturer of those sporks and at KFC are thrilled that someone finds the catastrophe of both organizations existence a benefit to the environment and mankind are ecstatic though.

Humans existence is part of the natural order, thus all natural activities get accounted for, breathing, eating, and natural human excrement. I believe I said "pre-human" influenced state. That means that implemented a human bias into the condition, i.e. a landfill, which without being an expert cannot fathom any mutual benefit to any other thing on this planet other than say maybe pollution and landfill companies, if you want to count a human created category as thing. Exhaling CO2 is a mutually beneficial process. All plastics will degrade eventually and typically into horrible compounds like vinyl chloride. All landfills will leak eventually. To say that returning the environment to a natural order is an impossible goal is just a deflection of the argument. There are a number of examples around the globe of places that were environmental disasters than have more rapidly than expected returned to a natural, thriving condition, like Chernobyl. To discount the hard as impossible is a weak tactic which keeps us locked into actually solving problems rather recrafting the problem in some new meme of the day like upcycling or environmental impact You are impacting the world by denying that the solution is impossible and continuing to operate in denial that continuing with the problem, but changing the definitions is a viable solution. Maybe that's why the importance of product longevity is lost. Can you tell me the definition of environmental impact? Product longevity is the duration of a product from its inception to the point it is no longer used. Oh, to ever replace a product with a worse product on any attribute, is asinine and not worthy further discussion.

Kicking cans and wasting effort was for the 80s. We are well beyond the point in which our efforts can be inefficient and ineffective whether that's for the environment or for social change like socioeconomic inequality. Have actual solutions. Elimination of the use of plastics by creating products that dramatically extend their viable lifespan is a solution and does not kick the can on any level. What were your solutions, I don't recall?

Product longevity is not arbitrary, but an actual objective metric. Every products longevity can and should be measured, whereas total environmental impact is not, it's currently a subjective metric that is essentially anecdotal at best and completely meaningless at worst. The entire environmental impact of a products lifecycle is nearly impossible to objectively quantify. If you want to actually impact a metric, you better pick one that you can actually measure. Either way, the elimination of plastics is a given as better for the environment than the continued use. Reduction of environmental impact as a strategy to the given that elimination of plastics is better than even reduction, does nothing that can be quantified. Even in the title of the strategy is reduction versus elimination, which means it will fall short. The damage is already done to the environment and further damage eliminated, not reduced. Elimination, regardless of strategy, can be measured quantitatively. The rest of the argument seems nitpicky on wording or didn't allow for the complete thought to be expressed before challenging. On the landfill issue though, are you saying that modern landfill management mitigates.all environmental risk and puts the landfill at an equal state of mutual benefit to all things on this planet that it was likely in before it became a landfill? Because the standard cannot be to human negligence, but to natural order, pre-human influence.

The solution is not improving recycling efforts or reducing the use of plastics, but the near elimination of plastics through better product design that eliminates disposable products. All products should have a design objective of maximum lifespan versus minimal. Non-consumable products should be designed to outlive single, individual users so that even if a product must be created to meet the need of an individual, its cost to society, the raw materials and effort to produce, get spread across the greatest amount of time possible, thus reducing excess. Components that wear or become obsolete need to be able to replaced and upgraded and fully recyclable to ensure maximum lifespan. Think of men's razors, the old school kind that flip out like a knife. There are still tons of them in antique stores all around and the vast majority with a decent sharpening could produce a good enough shave that the casual observer would never know it was done with a razor made in say 1800. Those were nearly a perfect design in that it really needed no packaging, instruction, lasts 100s of years with adequate care and every component could be disposed without harm to the environment or completely recycled. Instead, we have how many Bics floating in the ocean or filling up landfills? Having this simple design objective of maximum lifespan would immediately reduce the plastic problem and allow us not to figure out cleaner, better plastic recycling, but use that effort and energy to clean up the plastic mess properly, a one-time effort, and recreate a product development lifecycle that eliminates disposable completely. No wasted effort and a lot less waste. Any effort that focuses on the lessening of disposables impacts versus elimination is wasted effort.

What's wrong with the Asian approach? Where a couple of hotties approach you on the beach flashing some nip. Ask if you want a taste. Next thing you know you woke up with one less kidney. What's wrong with that? If it's not broke, don't fix it.

That's just delusional thinking.