These suggestions sound like a classic "central planners know better" attitude.
Would taxing/banning plastic actually reduce waste/pollution? or would the shift to more expensive replacements (paper/wood/etc) actually increase pollution and waste?
Banning chemical fertilisers would almost immediately cause a massive famine, enormous drops in agricultural productivity, etc. People consuming "organic" foods that don't use fertiliser can only do so from the position of privilege wherin chemically-fertilised crops are feeding 95%+ of the population. We even have a real example of the consequences! See Sri Lanka recently :(.
It's times like this I can't help but see why some people are so keen to keep the government away from things.
I should have clarified in my original comment, although I already mentioned this elsewhere prior to your comment. Chemical fertilizers, to my knowledge, serve no actual purpose other than vanity for residential applications. Thus, they should be banned for those purposes. For commercial agriculture, a more long-term approach is clearly needed, but an actual approach should be realized instead of doomsdaying.
Plastics are a nightmare and there is no going back from them. We have inundated ourselves and our environments with micro plastics, and they will not just go away. Paper and wood do not have this problem on the disposal side unless they've been treated with chemicals. I'm not sure where paper and wood come into a discussion with plastics and fertilizers, but I would also support using less wood.
Thank you for the polite response - I realise I was a bit harsh.
I don’t see an issue with chemical fertilisers, personally - I don’t think non commercial users of them are significant enough to be worth any consideration compared ro conventional agriculture.
I can’t say how consequential microplastics are - however banning them for use as packaging etc can have huge negative consequences because they are a very cheap (both in price and energy) packaging compared to most alternatives. I think that if microplastics are a concern, car tires and clothing are much more significant than “single use” instances as good packaging (which I would guess is actually usually disposed of properly most of the time).
I brought up paper because it’s a common substitute packaging (eg cardboard and the like), but is significantly pricier than plastics and more energy intensive to produce.
It’s not an easy Robles to solve, the more so because we use these things because they work so well. I just took exception to singling these things out because they are either critical to modern civilisation (fertiliser) or extremely useful (plastic packaging)
Would taxing/banning plastic actually reduce waste/pollution? or would the shift to more expensive replacements (paper/wood/etc) actually increase pollution and waste?
Banning chemical fertilisers would almost immediately cause a massive famine, enormous drops in agricultural productivity, etc. People consuming "organic" foods that don't use fertiliser can only do so from the position of privilege wherin chemically-fertilised crops are feeding 95%+ of the population. We even have a real example of the consequences! See Sri Lanka recently :(.
It's times like this I can't help but see why some people are so keen to keep the government away from things.