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> it’s not like companies are making a bunch of product just to throw them in the trash

Sure they do. You even mention one in the venerable plastic bag. Is it the best bag? No, of course not. Is it a good bag? Absolutely not. Is it the cheapest bag to produce? You betcha.

Consumers are often presented the least expensive option with the worst outcomes. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

by usrnm3 hours ago|

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> Is it the best bag? No, of course not. Is it a good bag? Absolutely not

Plastic is absolutely the best packaging material ever created, it's so good, it feels like magic. It's light, it's cheap, it's waterproof, it's durable and doesn't just decompose, it comes in a miriad shapes and forms and so on. There is a reason it's everywhere

by timschmidt3 hours ago|

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> it's cheap, it's waterproof, it's durable

One of those adjectives describes the plastic bag I'm familiar with. Sometimes it lasts long enough to get the food in the house without spilling through a hole which spontaneously appeared in the bag.

by rtpg3 hours ago|

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The plastic bag is sold to businesses! If every supermarket in the world decided to never buy another plastic bag then they would no longer be produced!

There can be a futility to it all in that the “ideal option” simply isn’t produced of course.

I find boots theory is often a bit too convenient in this topic though. There is unlikely to be magic structural solutions that allow every part of your life to remain as convenient. At one point our lives will have to change in structure.

EDIT: to be extra clear, I think systemic coordinated changes is needed. I just think the “it’s the corporations doing this!” narrative to obscure the needs for reorganization of daily life on top of systemic change

by filoeleven3 hours ago|

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I remember when that switch at grocers from paper to plastic was taking hold, and you could choose. "Paper or plastic?" was the question asked. Some comedian (probably) had a good one liner: "That'll be 42.39. Kill a tree or choke a fish?"

by XorNot2 hours ago|

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It's mostly a good example of why comedians aren't a source of information.

Plantation lumber is a very sustainable industry, and plastic's environmental impact is highly context dependent.

by throw3108223 hours ago|

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Why don't you pay for a more expensive bag and bring it to the store?

by matthewdgreen1 hours ago|

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Many cities have banned plastic bags, and the results have been miraculous for waterways and wetlands. It turns out that shore animals don't benefit as much from "hope a few customers choose the better thing, but otherwise let them take home single-use crap that immediately blows off into natural settings."

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/19/climate/plastic-bag-bans-...

by timschmidt3 hours ago|

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Why do you assume I don't? Opinionated defaults matter, as that's what most users will end up using.

by throw3108222 hours ago|

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Would you be ok if stores offered the option between a cheap plastic bag and a more expensive non-plastic one? (All the stores here already do it, btw).

by timschmidt2 hours ago|

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I think the externalities of plastic recycling must be internalized economically by requiring all manufacturers of items to pre-pay for the recycling of said items up front, as part of the manufacturing cost. Similar to how bottle returns are managed, which has been very successful. Items which are provably biodegradable or designed to facilitate repair may be exempt.

by throw3108222 hours ago|

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Plastic bags are already taxed where I live. Consumers pay that tax, obviously. Other costs imposed on producers of plastic items will just be passed down to consumers.

by timschmidt2 hours ago|

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That's lovely, but it's not what I described. Bottles aren't just taxed. They have a refundable deposit. This ensures they don't end up in a landfill.

by matthewdgreen1 hours ago|

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Exactly. The point of this sort of tax should not be to collect revenue, it should be to ensure that non-biodegradable bags are being disposed of correctly. To the extent that this is not happening, any bag tax is malfunctioning. Such a tax is either insufficient or poorly-designed. (Our city just banned chain stores from giving out plastic bags under 4 mils thick, and stores now give out paper and sell re-usable bags.)

by filoeleven3 hours ago|

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> Society’s choices and lifestyles are the cause of fossil fuel consumption, at a very high level. The plastic bag exists because it has users.

Society's choices and lifestyles don't exist in some rational-individualistic vacuum. Companies advertise products while hiding known risks and side effects of what they're pushing. Cigarettes. Oil. PFOA/PFAS.

They all knew, and they did and continue to do it anyway. Regulatory capture solved all their problems by removing accountability.

by delusional3 hours ago|

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This presupposes that consumers have infinite capacity to ingest the minute details of every single product they come into contact with.

Yes, the plastic bag has users. Do you really expect every single shopper to investigate how the bag at <grocery co> was made and if the plastic is recycled? What if they also have to do the same for every single thing they interact with every single day?

It's much easier to ask the people that work with the minutia of plastic bags every day, namely the people who make them, to maybe fix this problem.

by GolfPopper2 hours ago|

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Let us not pretend that the billions and billions spent on advertising by corporations leveraging deep knowledge of human behavior means the lion's share of blame goes to the victims of said advertising behmoth.