Climate

1000% this. I've been trying to get my household switched over to dry detergents whenever possible. I simply hate the idea of shipping water around, since it is bulky, heavy, and makes up like 70-90% of most household cleaners.

And set up a bottle deposit and return system that only needs to function at a local level. Haha, the solution to one of the big problems I saw with using glass instead of plastics for packaging. Just don't ship it that way, ship it at scale dry in a paper container that collapses to nothing for the return trip, or holds some other good going back.

Could also reduce the shipping needed on these by requiring standard container shapes that can properly be emptied. So many consumer product containers, even food containers, are designed so it is difficult to fully use the product. Companies see it as an uptick in sales because you'll be buying that soap/ketchup/whatever more frequently since you can't use 4 ounces out of the bottom, rather than seeing the cost-savings of not shipping 4oz x thousands of containers of weight pointlessly. (Personally, I go out of my way to empty every container fully, but many see it as a waste of effort.)

Plastics are a waste product of converting oil to useful fuels. That's why they're so cheap and used in the most unbelievably wasteful ways. They'll remain inextricably linked. Fuel is expensive, plastics are incredibly cheap. If we ban the use of fossil fuels but still rely on oil based plastics, plastics will become very expensive and we'll still be creating the fuel. We'll just have a growing supply of worthless energy sitting around and decaying in storage.

I'm not saying it's a bad idea as I'm not an expert by any means, but to keep plastics for essential uses like in medicine will likely require a heavily subsidized plastic industry at least. But hey we already subsidize the fossil fuel industry directly and by externalizing the planet destroying effects of their use...

They're not problems that need to be solved. If we cut fossil fuel use by 90%, there's hardly any impact on these uses.

Never said unsolvable by any means, but they need to be solved yesterday. Blows the mind too, for all those capitalism-minded people, they have all this untapped "wealth" they could be getting into on the ground floor instead of clinging to oil.

Asphalt for pavement and shingles is amaong the most recycled materials on the planet.

Not how you think. The asphalt is ground up for the mineral content then mixed with new bitumen.

Soap and shampoo can be made from animal fat or vegetable oil.

Most of it is. Cheapest way to do it.

Hydrogen can be made from water. You get oxygen too.

By wasting a lot of electricity.

There is indeed propaganda going on, but there is also a reality that many supply chains need conversion, and that money needs to come from somewhere. Not saying it is right, nor that it is unsolvable, just a reality. Most often, the smaller businesses are destroyed by expensive switches to new methods. Which is all we need, more megacorps owning everything.

In a world with functioning governments, processes, grants, tax breaks, and such could be set up to help companies switch.

Whoa, seriously? Okay that's awesome to know. And pretty cool.

-- Frost

They don't have to be though. We do not need petroleum to make plastics.

Yeah, didn't want to hit every note. Medical specifically requires a higher tolerance and quality level that makes it more challenging to be replaced with alternatives like bioplastics. For most items, I'd be fine buying them in glass or cans again.

It was literally the byproduct of fuel production. They had to find uses for it and created the petrochemical revolution.

The issue was we already had ways of making all our products without petroleum byproducts. They also didn't cause cancer which is kind of nice.