What would happen if the production of plastic and Styrofoam was made illegal?

Industry would have to make products out of new and never before seen materials.
Such fantasy materials like “metal”, “wood”, or “glass”.

Styrofoam is forgettable. With plastics, some products may no longer be possible, become completely impractical, or just prohibitively expensive. We would be forced to use natural materials but that comes with a heavy price as well.

Plastic is extremely important in medical care, so that would be a drastic and very inconvenient and very difficult change. Styrofoam is used too, but that is easier to get around.

As far as outside of medical care, we can change easily from plastic bags when shopping, but a lot of packaging uses plastic, some more easily changed than others, and maybe plastic is easier to recycle than some other options, I’m not sure.

@JLeslie Most plastic is not recycled at all. You may put it in the recycle bin, but what happens after is a little shocking.

So much in the building trades is plastic. So much in the medical field is plastic So much in auto manufacturing is plastic. So much in food production and storage is plastic. I think it would be disastrous. It would be very hard to revert to metal, wood and glass only.

I think there are some applications where plastic is really the only material possible (like in certain healthcare applications), but in other areas it’s the preferred material because of cost. In these cases, it’s only inexpensive because the producer can externalize the cost of the waste onto the planet. If a plastic straw cost $0.0001 to produce, but had a $10 surcharge for the cost to fish it out of the ocean, or to treat the cancer the microplastics cause in someone 50 years from now, then we’d see plastic straws being made out of stainless steel and being cleaned/reused like we do with forks and knives, or at least being produced out of biodegradable materials. I’d be all for that.

Products would be heavier, causing an increase in petroleum consumption.

There would be severe culture shock. Everything we use plastic or some form of it today would suddenly be banned. Everything from band-aids to eye glasses and cars would be suddenly having to be redesigned. Of course it would remove the question “Paper or plastic?”

@Blackwater_Park Yes, I know. My area stopped trying to pretend it was being recycled and out plastic is incinerated.

The supermarkets do supposedly recycle plastic grocery bags. I don’t recycle them much, because I mostly use reusable shopping bags, and the few plastic bags I do get, I use for trash bags.

I was reading an article about a year ago, where a US admiral was responding to a reporter asking about ways the military could stop using so many toxic substances.
His response was that we essentially have to use lots of bad stuff, or our military would disappear overnight.
We can choose a awesome military, or a clean environment.

With 3D printing just coming into popularity, we will be using all kinds of materials.
We can probably figure out some benign substances to use instead, but capitalist corporations would likely make less profit so that won’t happen.

Whatever we replace anything with, will probably turn out to be worse than plastic. We just won’t figure that out until THAT is everywhere.

3D printing uses…..Plastic as the primary medium.

I wonder why jams and jellies are in a jar but everything else, like mayo, is in plastic?

The mayo I buy is in jars.

@Blackwater_Park
But you can print with metal and meat, too.

Tradition I suppose. Some mayo does come in a jar. We Americans like to squeeze condiments out of plastic rather than spoon it out.

I know, but the “3D” printing most people talk about is just extruded plastic.

@Dutchess_III Some jam and jelly is in plastic. I think putting it in glass jars is to give a better impression (glass is more quality than plastic). The good jam and jelly is in glass. Mayo, too, sometimes is in glass jars or can be in plastic, just like ketchup and mustard.

@Blackwater_Park “I know, but the “3D” printing most people talk about is just extruded plastic.”

For now… One day we’ll be 3d printing our kids and pets…

Forests would be depleted at a much faster rate.

@gorillapaws and new livers, kidneys, food… Those days can’t get here soon enough.

We already 3D print houses with cement. Not sure if it is being done yet, but I know there was talk of 3D printing with bio materials for organ replacement.

When I went to a presentation here where I live about recycling I remember back then we recycled plastic, but not glass. Also, the plastic had to be rinsed clean to not wind up sorted into the trash. Rinsed clean?! I never did that. Peanut butter or mayo rinsed clean? I did recycle soda bottle plastic, so I assume those actually made it to being recycled. I had about two bottles a week, but all the other plastic? I figure it almost all went to the trash ultimately.

I don’t come across a lot of styrofoam being used. Last week my leftovers from a restaurant were in styrofoam, but that’s the only place I usually see it is leftovers take-out from a restaurant. Sometimes I think about bringing my own container to a restaurant.

@JLeslie I remember when I worked for a large, affluent local county government, they made a rule (or a law) that there was no styrofoam allowed in County buildings. I asked the boss, and told her that I wanted to be clear because I didn’t want to break any rules and be subject to discipline. I said sometimes when I get lunch from a place it comes in styrofoam containers, or if I get coffee, sometimes the cup is styrofoam. She said “oh, that’s ok, I think they just mean if we have a party, we shouldn’t use styrofoam plates.” It was one of those bullshit “rules” that sounded good on paper but it wasn’t actually enforced and nobody paid attention to it.

@JLeslie It’s often worse than just ending up in the landfill. A lot of plastic intended to be recycled gets exported to third-world countries where it just sits in endless piles or worse, gets dumped into the ocean. IMO, unless people demand transparency and accountability with plastic “recycling” you’re better off throwing plastic into the landfill. Paper and cardboard actually do get recycled though.

@Blackwater_Park China stopped taking a lot of “recyclables” about ten years ago. That’s partly why my area went to incineration.

Where I live, they comingle everything and incinerate it all.

Easier to incinerate everything. Hopefully, it’s as “clean” as they say. Our trash company sells of electricity generated by the incineration process. The metals are recycled.

@ragingloli, you’re right. I’m old enough to remember that when I was a youngster, everything that’s plastic now was made out of metal, wood, or glass. Not to mention fabrics made of natural fibers such as wool and cotton. We simply learned not to drop our glass shampoo bottles in the shower, or cut ourselves on the thin sheet metal toys when they came apart.

When plastics started to move in, I remember seeing an ad in a comic book that promished I could win a wallet made of real vinyl. It sounded so exciting and desirable!

When they say the bottles and jars have to be clean totally, for example a peanut butter jar, it takes a lot of effort and resources (hot water or dishwasher) to clean out something like that. I know that it’s nobody’s fault, but it’s just not too realistic for the majority of jars and bottles, except soda and water bottles and cans.

It was realistic for me @jca2.

That’s great, @Dutchess_III For me, cleaning out cat food cans so there’s not a trace of grease on them, or peanut butter jars, not happening.

And you asked why I set our tankless water heater up so high. I:D

I recently was part of a survey asking various Q’s about if I would do bottle return for beverages. Would I buy glass over plastic, etc.

@JLeslie
Here they charge a collateral for bottles and cans when you buy them, which you get back when you return the empty ones to the store.

@ragingloli Some states in the US have it. When I lived in Michigan I saved all of my soda cans and bottles and returned them.

@JLeslie China is not a third-world country. We are still exporting a lot of plastic even though it is less than it was.

@Blackwater_Park Yes, I know. I was just acknowledging we sell off recyclables and trash to other countries. I really have no idea how much is still going out of the US and where. It seems ok if a country actually can use or profit from recycling, but so much of it I think just ends up in landfills and waterways.Terrible.

Not sure how to make it all much better.

I stay on Marriott family hotels usually and a lot of them switched from mini shampoos to large bottles mounted on the shower walls. I have no idea if it winds up being less plastic? I just wonder how often things we do seem helpful but aren’t.

@JLeslie I travel a lot, and most hotels have recently switched to refillable wall-mounted hygiene products. I assume it saves quite a bit.

^^I’m fine with the switch, especially if it reduces plastic. I also use my towels a for a few days, maybe that reduces plastic too? If the detergent comes in plastic.

I did see a show that less bar soap in the hotels is reducing how much soap gets gifted or sold to the homeless and poor. I saw a show about one of the companies that recycles the bar soap into new bars. It was great. I’ll see if I can find it, I saw it a while ago.

Here is the video about recycled soap. I found it very interesting. https://youtu.be/6qJV34pcOaw?si=IM5RQmC6pmAE3Lxq

Disney uses one of the companies. https://youtu.be/hDUHw16S7Qc?si=hti67E3I1JC3L9QF

I used to think about hotel shampoos all the time- all the little bottles of shampoo, conditioner, soap, lotion, and if you wanted more, they’d just hand you a handful- all those bottles in the garbage because the hotel cleaning people just throw it all away, because they have to be speedy and don’t have time to sort things out and rinse out little bottles.

Did you know that the communists in east germany invented a glass that was virtually unbreakable?
It became the defacto standard drinking glass in the country, and are still being used today, despite the company that made it being liquidated right after the fall of the wall.
They even tried to sell it to the west, but the capitalists were not interested, because they want their glass to break, so they can sell replacements.

Plant based technology can be improved, such as using hemp for many items that currently use wood, and looking at new uses for tumbleweeds, rubber, sand, animal parts that are currently not being used.

Wood is plant based @YARNLADY.

I agree with @YARNLADY We can make certain plastics out of potatoes now believe it or not. Hemp is a superior natural fiber. The thing to be careful with though, is the agricultural footprint required for this.

When I was a teenager I worked at a grocery store, for basically my first job.
I worked unloading trucks, and “processing,” and was a daytime stocker.
This was in the mid-late 1990’s, and back then a lot of things did come in glass containers.
Mayonnaise DEFINITELY used to come primarily in glass jars.
I know, because I’ve cleaned up more fucking Mayonnaise than most people see in a lifetime.

I was at a grocery store just the other day, and I saw a stocker boy drop a plastic bottle. He was a young kid, and I decided to ask if he had developed his foot catching skills.
When we used to drop things, but our hands were full, we would try to slow the decent of the item with a foot.
After it became a reaction for me, I could stop most things from at least breaking by catching it with the top of my foot, essentially turning a 3–8ft fall to a much easier landing.

As if to prove my age, he said “oh, I can’t imagine if things came in glass.” Most things definitely are in plastic now.

I guess I’m saying that glass is definitely superior for most food items. But as far as shipping goes, I bet they switched to plastic to reduce the amount of damaged product.
Most people don’t think about all the hands an item goes through, before they pick it off of a shelf.

Some workers care. It only takes one person, out of the 12 people who touched it, to negligently (or angrily) damage the product.
With the wages, and subsequently young employers, there’s a great chance that there will be many people who rough your stuff up before it gets to you.

But that day, after talking to the kid, as I shopped I started realizing exactly how many things come in some form of plastic.

I have seen on YouTube (so it must be true) that China feeds their people “plastic” rice. There was even a video of the process of making it. It’s literally plastic.
Fake eggs, fake meats. Crazy.

Styrofoam had been banned in NJ since 2022. I just got a gift that was packed in styrofoam and realized how long it’s been since I’ve seen it. It is nasty stuff.

@janbb I googled and some food service items, it’s banned for and some not. Ironically, for some types of items, the ban expired 5/4/2024.

https://business.nj.gov/bags/plastic-ban-law

Yes it’s nasty @jca2. My siding dudes used Styrofoam for insulation and bits and pieces are all over the yard.
My father’s wife used to send packages packed in those damn peanuts and that frustrated me, especially when the kids were toddlers. Pack it in newspaper!!

@jca2 That didn’t make sense to me so I Googled and it looks like for those few items that were exempted, the exemptions have ended.

:“1–877-WARN-DEP. EXEMPTIONS FROM THE BAN ON POLYSTYRENE FOAM FOOD SERVICE PRODUCTS (ALL EXPIRE MAY 4, 2024): Disposable, long-handled polystyrene foam soda spoons when required and used for thick drinks. Portion cups of 2 oz. or less, if used for hot foods or foods requiring lids.”

As I said above, I haven’t seen styrofoam in quite a while in NJ.

Yes, @janbb. My link is from NJ Government. My original link was to a PDF from a NJ government page but when I linked it, the link didn’t work.