IMO the focus on plastics is a distraction. We'd be much better served by building buildings that last longer (I live in Switzerland and I'm surrounded by 50 year old concrete buildings being knocked down and replaced with concrete apartments at the cost of god knows how much co2) and need less energy (noticed how old cities with narrow streets stay cool in the sun? Much better than glass-fronted apartments), reducing land use change, taxing transport appropriately, taxing meat, and so on. But those are hard and complaining that too much clingfilm is used is easy, so here we are.

I'm sure someone will say "but we need to start somewhere!". That's true, but we don't really have time for starting small. And often the alternatives are no better anyway — lots of people bought cotton bags to replace single-use plastic ones at the supermarket but that's probably worse for the environment than just continuing to use plastic (a cotton bag needs to be used hundreds of times to have a lower impact). I know that people mean well but we're all just getting stuck on trivial but attainable micro-goals while the world slowly burns around us.

Unfortunately I believe that unless our economic and political systems ("grow the economy by digging stuff from the ground and making things to sell" and "don't do anything to annoy the people you need to vote for you in N years") change neither will the climate crisis, meaningfully. And this makes me sad and terrified.

>Go back to glass bottles for things. Give subsidies to companies that use glass for inventory loss and such. Bring back the milkman who refills your empty jugs.

Shouldn't we tax the externalities of plastic and let the market decide whether it's worth it? In your example of using glass bottles: sure it gets rid of plastic, but what about the costs of glass? eg. increased weight or energy/water needed to clean them. As for bringing back the milkman, how is driving a truck door to door delivering exclusively milk more efficient than picking it up on your way to the grocery store?

I have a friend who tried for a time to avoid all plastic in his consumption habits. Trust me when I tell you he is not a pampered individual, having once told me "as long as I'm still shivering I'm not 'too cold'". He deemed the task pretty much impossible, so wide-spread is the use of plastics.

Which is all to say that I totally agree.

Absolutely everything on store shelves should be in super-basic, cheap, easy to recycle cardboard (or similar) containers with a focus on how their packaging will live on in the, uh, "trash cycle". I know capitalism and "freedom" are in direct opposition to this, but the current system is just _so incredibly wasteful_ I can't help but fantasize about a better way.

Edit: there's a small glimmer of hope in the way some consumer goods are shipped from places like Amazon (in special ship-to-consumer only basic packaging). Then again those are coming from Amazon, which is ironic in its own way.