Plastics production alone will doom climate goals
Plastics production alone will doom climate goals
Manufacturing plastics is a highly emissive process. The world needs to shrink production rapidly to stay within the 1.5 °C global temperature rise.
In the big, big grocery store I use, there isn't much choice about plastic. Over (I estimate) 80% of the products (outside of fresh fruits & veggies) either are containerized in plastic, or is boxed or canned food which is wrapped-in plastic (e.g. cereal) and covered with or wrapped-in plastic. We need to see a big turnaround in this situation.
I don't see much recognition - from manufacturers or consumers - of how many tens of tons of tossed-away plastic are carried out of most of these stores every day. Consumers have few alternatives ... no sign that food packagers give a damn ... or that stores (most are corporate-owned) are struggling to make wiser choices.
It's a lot bigger problem than what container we use to carry our purchase to the car.
Not excusing it, but food packagers care about durability of goods, and cleanliness of goods, in that order.
They don't want to lose money on lost goods, and they don't want to end up in the news for a sanitation issue
Any environmental concern comes as a different third to those 2 topics.
at trader joe's even the produce is wrapped in plastic
My dystopian expectation is we'll probably settle on all plastic should be white so it can reflect light back into space, replacing albedo effect we got from all the snow we used to have