Why Are Disposable Products Made From Materials That Last Forever? \ stacker news ~culture

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Why Are Disposable Products Made From Materials That Last Forever?

599 sats \ 10 comments \ @kr 10h culture

The other day I spoke with the founders of CW&T, a design studio in New York, and they shared an interesting idea with me.

Most of their products are built of metal, and many are designed to be heirloom-quality products that can last a lifetime (or many lifetimes in some cases). This makes sense. Metals can last many generations, and their metal products are expected to do the same.

But they were concerned that the same philosophy doesn't apply for disposable things. Why do we all just accept that disposable products (pretty much all plastic products) are made from a material that will take many thousands of years to break down? Wouldn't it solve like 90% of our environmental problems if there was a better balance here?

Durable products should be made of durable materials, and disposable products should be made of disposable materials. Simple. No more massive landfills full of everlasting trash.

Instead, we create this weird ritual called "recycling" to create the perception (much of recycling still ends up in landfill) that we're somehow doing the world a service, yet there is a far simpler solution right at our fingertips.

Why don't we just ask manufacturers to state the intended lifespan of their products right on their package?

This would accomplish a few things:

Manufacturers making disposable goods could be required to use disposable materials
Consumers would know how long they could expect a product to last before they bought it
If a product fails prematurely, consumers can go back to manufacturers or brands and ask for a refund

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110 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 10h

Because it's cheap and because no one internalizes the cost of disposal

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 3h

Hear hear and Ipso Facto- free unregulated markets do not solve all problems.

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @kr OP 10h

Yeah it's definitely cheaper, but wouldn't this solve nearly all our landfill issues if manufacturers needed to use materials that matched (roughly) the intended lifespan of their products?

Wouldn't that be a massive win for not only the environment, but also a cost-saving measure for government recycling programs?

10 sats \ 2 replies \ @SimpleStacker 10h

I suppose money spent on recycling could possibly be better spent on encouraging the use of more biodegradable materials. I'm not sure what's possible currently, though.

The experience of California banning plastic straws and plastic bags is an interesting example of the kinds of unintended consequences you get. Coffee shops like starbucks started making sippable plastic lids, which I heard requires more plastic than their previous plastic lids. And for grocery bags people started using bags with a lot more plastic that are supposedly reusable, but because they forget to bring their bags a lot they end up buying more of these reusable bags which just sit and accumulate... so again, more plastic.

I really think we just need to discover a cheap, biodegradable alternative to plastic

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @zapsammy 9h

have you heard about Goodyear's investment into tires made out of dandelions?

i think introducing solutions without proper education (like compassion, care, creativity, low-time-preference, humility) is not going to work, no matter how good the technology is. if people don't learn to think straight, they will pervert the use of any technology.

look at bitcoin for example: Satoshi made the perfect money, and people want to issue credit and loans on top of bitcoin.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @kr OP 10h

Yeah good point re: paper straws.

I'm pretty sure there are biodegradable plastics (based on corn starch) that already exist and could be more useful for making drinking straws from, but I'd imagine they're relatively expensive today.

I wonder what kind of cost savings we'd see for biodegradable plastics by 10x'ing the R&D dollars that went towards solving this problem.

1 sat \ 0 replies \ @zapsammy 9h

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @anon 1h

Im not sure that landfills are as problematic as you seem to suggest, certainly not in my neck of the woods. Landfills here are responsibly managed, and typically end up becoming nice beautiful self sustaining parks which provide methane based energy to nearby neighborhoods as well as open green spaces for adjacent communities.

In the first world, waste disposal doesn't really pose as much of a problem as people seem to reflexively assume when they hear the word "landfill".

I think the real issue is with things ending up in rivers and eventually the ocean because of irresponsible 3rd world waste management. And in those cases, the very fact that they are 3rd world means they don't care enough about the environment or non plastic single use products or any of those things enough to do anything about it. They're just tryna make a living with the options currently available. Most if not all of these places are impoverished because of anti free market conditions imposed by governments who think silly things like "Hear hear and Ipso Facto- free unregulated markets do not solve all problems" and then they end up making the problems worse, whereas places with free unregulated markets tend to have enough prosperity to spare the time to care about this kinda thing and the money to do something about it.

I can tell you first hand, ccaracas was much MUCH cleaner and better at waste disposal before the socialist revolution than after it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Solomonsatoshi 3h

People know plastic is not durable but its cheap because markets do not factor in external downstream costs and consequences of our actions. This is why governments and regulation can have a role in requiring responsible use of resources rather than the market rules mentality that will result in huge waste and downstream impacts. Climate change and the short sighted over use of fossil fuels is another example of this. Libertarians just don't get it - or don't care.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @tlindi 8h

Really neat!