Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?
They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.
But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.
Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.
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Do you remember when Quaker Oatmeal containers were all paper/cardboard? You could pull a paper tab, and it made a little paper lid for the cylinder.
About 10-15 years ago, they replaced that with a plastic pull tab that is glued on to the paper tube.
The paper has to be cheaper than the 2-part plastic, right?
Yeah im not sure if its cheaper. plastic is crazy cheap and paper by and large comes from trees which is its own problem. still I would prefer paper/cardboard. and yeah I remember how it used to be and it did work fine