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?
This isn’t a good argument. The world existed and functioned without cars, computers, phones, electricity, etc - doesn’t mean it’s viable in the current time.
That is just a way of saying don’t change anything.
Interesting that you bring up these examples. Giving up some of these is easier than others, yet there was once a world where none of these was necessary.
I think it’s indeed not a good argument that we used to live in a world without these. The question is more, how much do we lose if we want to give up, say, plastic packaging. Can we lose a little convenience and gain _a lot _of sustainability?