Plastic seals food, sterile medical implements, medicine, beverages, etc… it’s seems like plastic is used as a way to seal things safely. Post pandemic rising, I see even more. My work used to be have plastic utensils in the cafeteria, for example, an already wasteful thing. Now, post-2020, every fork, knife, and spoon is individually wrapped in a plastic wrapper. I feel like the more my desire to escape plastic intensifies, the more plastic I see all around me everywhere.
How can we get away from plastic as a safety layer?
We don’t need to ban every single bit of plastic. It’s fine to keep it where it’s absolutely necessary. Some of the examples you provided definitely aren’t necessary though, like individually wrapped cutlery (wtf) or beverages (can use glass).
So many things are unnecessarily wrapped in plastic. We use bubble wrap in situations where paper would be a perfectly fine buffer for shipping. We use plastic bags when paper and reusable bags work perfectly well.
I get so frustrated about it not even because I’m scared of the environmental impact of all this plastic floating around, although that does suck, but because plastic is currently absolutely crucial for modern medicine. One day maybe we’ll find alternatives but until then I think a rational society would be preserving the limited life-saving miracle material for uses that aren’t as basic as “use it to take home groceries, then throw it away.”
