Replacing Plastic

Cassava root, corn, soybean, and hemp could re-make sustainable packaging and are all in fact proving to be promising feed stocks for new containers.  Scientists are exploring, companies are investing, and new factories are cranking out product. And yet a major caveat remains, one what hints at the actual problem of the problem:

Containers made of NOT PLASTIC are more expensive, but they are better for the environment.

Seeing the environment on its own terms, do we do anything beneficial – do we help, do harm, are we ambivalent? It seems clear and simple that some among us might choose to help, to maybe even do the right thing.

Seeing our relative individual wealth on its own terms, it also seems rather obvious that we would only and ever choose to spend the least to get the most, consequences be damned. This is our actual problem.

The video at the link clearly lays out the plastics problem – especially the ‘tossed away minutes after use’ issue. But the selfish short-shortsightedness of this tendency requires a deliberate decision on our part, a habit of decision-making, really. Is it a difficult choice to use a more expensive, inferior product because it’s better for the earth? It’s a choice we don’t want to talk about – unless we’re complaining about the government. It’s also a choice we don’t want to make, definitely. But one we are making by not making all the same, which in turn makes everything else more difficult and more expensive, not to mention less fishy and more polluted.

So the worthwhile efforts of clever companies aside, there are far more options for replacing [your] plastic, and not all of them have to do with new plant-based bowls for your to-go salad.