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110 sats \ 5 replies \ @SimpleStacker 15h \ on: Why Are Disposable Products Made From Materials That Last Forever? culture
Because it's cheap and because no one internalizes the cost of disposal
Hear hear and Ipso Facto- free unregulated markets do not solve all problems.
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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?
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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
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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.
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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.
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