But acting like plastic isn't 100% bad goes against the narrative, and happens to align with those who don't think carbon needs capture. Just throw it away.
Making it into a boogeyman has ironically caused the remaining chemicals to be more leechable, as the substituted hardeners don't work as well, yet likely have similar negatives as the BPA replaced.
It's the unlearned lessons from asbestos all over again.
The farmers have to fight off the same pests and weeds, just with “natural” compounds instead of strong, tailor-made artificial ones.
But surely the natural spray and the artificial spray has to have either the same active ingredient, or ingredients that are chemically very similar? And if it doesn’t work as well, the farmer will surely end up using even more of “natural” compounds than he would’ve if he just went with RoundUp?
That was the original definition of "organic" farming. It's not the food that's organic; it's the farmer.
That has since become captured by agribusiness, who wrote the rules to exclude the kinds of small farms that practiced organic farming before it became a buzzword.
It's unreasonable to expect 100% of our food supply to come that way. But we can do a lot better than we do, and actually looking at the numbers instead of guessing makes that clear.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2021/07/09/organic-vs-con...
The most important advantage traditional agriculture has is that it uses less land and frees up space for nature.
It’s much more efficient than other materials in many ways.
If every single-use plastic container/wrapper had to be replaced by some kind of paper or waxed paper doing the same job, we’d need dramatically more of that material than plastic (barring clever inventions).
That comes with its own side-effects. More dead trees if it’s paper vs plastic, more metal mining if it’s metal vs plastic, more weight being shipped around, in many cases more energy being used to produce the alternative packaging in the first place. And all that to have packaging that’s functionally worse than plastic.
That does not matter if it's poisoning us. And if we end up in a situation where energy is cheap (thanks to PV or whatever), it might be much better to use less efficient less poisonous materials, like glass or ceramics (and so on).
But I think that's a tiny % of plastic waste and the vast majority comes from the production processes.
Factories wrap things up heavily before sending their items along to the next step in the value chain.
Farmers sometimes lay down plastic sheets on the ground.
I hate it as much as anyone but removing any of it will have knock-on effects.
It's better to wrap that pallet in an extra pound of plastic rather than it getting damaged and having to re-produce the whole 1000-2000lb amount of goods.
It might be better to lay down the sheet and use less pesticide & water, or be able to grow crops closer to the point of use.
Now if I want organic apples or something, I may be forced to choose a pre-bagged selection of far too many; take it or leave it.
No it will not, stop pushing junk science. Vinyl Chloride is a chlorinated double-bond. PVC is made by opening the double bond to form connected monomer units (i.e. polymers).
PVC doesn't "degrade" back into a higher energy state compound.
Even if you left it you in the sun where UV might re-double bond it, the molecule itself is incredibly reactive - it's environmental lifetime is basically zero under those conditions since it'll oxidize and break down in air in a few days at most, and photochemical reactions are amongst the slowest and most inefficient.
Buried PVC doesn't even have the energy to do that.