Fighting plastic packaging is not about climate change.

It's about pollution and waste and environmental damage generally.

Not sure why people keep getting this confused.

I'm not really clear on the whole downside part.

Pollution? It comes from underground, does something useful, gets buried again.

Waste? Uhh... It may "feel" wasteful, because it's more durable than paper, but if it's both cheaper and better than paper, I don't really see the issue. Plus if I want to pay to buy something, it's kinda by definition useful.

Environmental damage from fruit & vegetable plastic packaging. Again, not clear on the how. Plastic is very chemically inert to the point of being used as food packaging. It may at worst be visually unappealing in the wrong context, but that's a disposal issue.

And please, please, for the love of all that is still logical, don't tell me about plastic in oceans. A ban on packaging in Spain will do absolutely nothing about how municipal waste is disposed of in Africa and Asia. Both wrong problem and wrong continent.

How big is the problem with plastic in developed countries with functioning waste management?

Does the use of plastic reduce food waste?

This is what happened with the straws kerfuffle. We are absolutely willing to give up things that we don't care much about. Like what is alluded to, we don't really want to have to consume less, which would have far reaching consequences beyond plastic.

So like covid restrictions.

The article doesn't mention climate change.

The progressive mindset is more and more dominated by the politicians syllogism: "We must do something! This is something, therefore we must do it!"

Progress has no feedback loop, either, which combined with the above is a recipe for disaster.

It's like software code churn. A bunch of git commits must indicate we're really getting some serious work done!

Nice strawman you got there, shame if something were to happen to it.

>It's like software code churn. A bunch of git commits must indicate we're really getting some serious work done!

Is this seriously a thing? ie. people refactoring stuff for the sake of refactoring? Maybe the company I work at hasn't progressed to that stage yet, but the type of "change for the sake of change" that you're talking about I mostly see with designs/layouts.

I'm not sure how much of a thing it is now, but managers would use github/lab metics to measure productivity.

Any metric that becomes a stand in for success will be gamed.

Oh yeah, because the conservative one is not all about "we have to do something".

Progressist use plastic bags and conservative migration.