When I point out that you, the reader, can make a difference, this community usually responds that you can't, that only government action will make a difference or something like that. That's where government action comes from. Besides, if it improves your life, you personally benefit from reducing your consumption anyway.
The article's most important point I saw was that recycling hasn't shown to reduce production of virgin material. Without reducing production, reusing and recycling only shuffle plastic around. Burning it creates dioxin and other pollution. My podcast episode 183 describes how reusing and recycling are only tactical. Reduction is strategic http://joshuaspodek.com/guests/rants-raves-monologues-volume....
However snarky and cynical people here can be -- I'm sure they consider themselves practical and realist -- if avoiding buying plastic will improve your life and reduce demand, why not do it anyway. Besides it will lead others to change and can lead to politicians realizing voters want regulation. Legislators and heads of companies are people too and will change when people around them do, which is you and me.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/inadequately-managed-plas...
The comment was not addressed to westerners specifically. I’d be willing to bet a lot of the travel that is increasingly occurring is happening in the developing world as people leave their communities to find work.
> plastic waste generation tends to increase as we get richer. Per capita plastic waste at low incomes tends to be notably smaller.
Avoiding commercial flight, and pushing for the public to do the same, seems more ostentatious than practical. Why not push for carbon offsets instead?
I'm not sure why so many people interpret suggestions on acting in one area as exclusive of others. I expect that people/voters acting on their values will lead others to follow.
Regarding carbon offsets, I've seen no evidence they reduce emissions and believe they increase them by motivating people to fly more.
Taxing carbon emissions as well as extraction, I think would help. I think individual behavior changes will contribute to them passing, so I promote individual reduction to help promote them (I've learned I have to clarify not only individual reduction every time to avoid misinterpretation).
Whilst I agree in good part with the theme of having little impact on the world, we should be good guardians after all, I have to say you completely miss the right target. You even mention a good part of why - the community that we once depended on, and gave leverage, is mostly not there any more. Not there as a matter of policy.
40 years of neoliberal Thatcherite, low regulation reform has given you more freedom of choice, or the illusion of choice, without individual or communal power. Markets value the behemoths wrought by globalisation, and trade agreements that place the corporate above the government. The individual whether individual householder and shopper or the individual nation matter less. I can't remember a time in my life where the end customer was less powerful, their views and wishes less relevant. Communal or community bodies died on that hill too.
When my parents went shopping the baker, butcher and greengrocer etc were usually individual shops, sourcing from a local wholesaler or farmer, and there were fewer national products. Five or ten people complaining about the bags or wrapping would probably at the very least have the shop keeper questioning his choices. You think Walmart cares about a dozen people buying their loose veg elsewhere? They'll win on monopoly or price in the end anyway.
It's reflected in the choices coming from every multinational that serve their need far more than ours - and in consumer frustration in those limited choices whether phone size, fixed batteries, non-repairable laptops and fridges, using plastic to cheapen and shorten life, DRM in the car, or just every single simple item coming in shrink wrap or plastic pack.
> if avoiding buying plastic will improve your life and reduce demand, why not do it anyway
Sure improving one's own life is valid, but it won't reduce demand. Not unless you get 125,000,000 of your closest friends to join in. Individually you are so irrelevant you are not even a rounding error. Achieving change needs a popular Twitter movement not individual action. What you might get is countless examples of greenwashing.
Even a popular boycott against a multinational may not matter much if they can just start promoting in other parts of the world instead. See the tobacco industry for examples.
The USA discovered and started to exploit fracking, and it's transformed US oil security - that's well known. The American Chemical Council (the industry trade body) are delighted to tell of the hundreds of billions invested in new plastic production on the back of that. Here's a 2017 piece of $180bn in new plastic production[1]. It's now well past $200bn of new production. You will have more plastic in your life - you just haven't been marketed to yet. You won't be given a choice. Check the ACC's news pages[2], filled with pushes against any hint of responsibility of use. I'm sure many nations have equivalents. I'm sure they are spending extensively on lobbying.
> Besides it will lead others to change and can lead to politicians realizing voters want regulation
This really, really is not how it works.
Food safety legislation, the clean air acts, our pollution laws all came from the top. Not from individuals trying to not buy coal, or avoiding alum laden flour. From government and politicians realising it went too far and were willing to constrain commerce. From demonstrations and meetings in constituencies having them realise "do something or I may not get elected". Politicians who often still actually gave a shit about making the world a better place anyway. In a world that was lobbied far less, and the revolving door between commerce and politics was at least discrete.
Regulation has been made unacceptable bugbear. We have to rediscover some, and soon. 40 years of reacting against the oil-shock caused chaos of the seventies is far more than enough.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/dec/26/180bn-in...
[2] https://www.americanchemistry.com/News_and_Resources/?topic=...
I'm learning that I have to clarify every time that I'm not suggesting one solution as exclusive of any other to avoid misinterpretation.
Plenty of legislation emerged from popular behavioral change.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/595434/plastic-materials...
Some of it is in your bloodstream. And your children's, messing with your and their endocrine systems, among other problems. Some of it is in the bellies animals around the world. How do you plan to get it?
We can't beat the laws of thermodynamics. The stuff is out there and dispersing more.
I've been told that the plastic companies would prefer to burn it for energy for disposal, the idea being that it was destined to be energy, and that path had a short detour as a cup. Not saying its a great plan, but it's a plan that let's them sell more plastic.
