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Which is why my local water treatment plant built a brand new pipe so they can dump directly into the river rather than the local nature reserve.

I'm so glad we privatised that...

If I had to choose glass or plastic, I am always choosing glass. Glass is such a good material. It is infinitely recyclable, the bottles can be reused for several years, and if they are buried they don't release microplastics.

That's still the way it works in Denmark, but with plastic bottles too. Something like 98% of all bottles are recycled.

The two problems have a decent amount of overlap though. For example, I recently learned that car tyres are a huge contributor to microplastic pollution. This means that improving public transport infrastructure will reduce CO2 emissions and microplastic pollution.

But we still have microplastics in our brains, which does warrant some concern I think.

Hey, maybe all the plastic will lead to such significant fertility issues, populations will crater, and ARGH won't even matter anymore!

Not to absolve capitalism, but it's pretty easy to add market incentives to at least slightly address climate change. The concept of "externalities" has been around for a while, where something has a net social impact outside of its sale. It's normally solved with taxes and levies.

The real issue seems to be nobody havong the appetite to even attempt the most basic solutions to the problem, mainly thanks to lobbying.

They'll blame woman for being too slutty and fucking everyone BUT THEM.

Unfortunately they'll just claim not praying to god enough and the existence of trans people causes ED and shrinkage...

Have we considered calling it a tariff instead of a tax? Tariffs on all new plastic. It might work.

Most plastic can’t be recycled into something usable. Plastic degrades quite a bit with each recycling, leaving a bunch of microplastics behind (same thing with “biodegradable” plastic). It would be better to tax it enough (or ban it) to make it not used in certain applications.

Yes... plastic recycling can work, in theory, but the financial incentives are not naturally inclined to be in a way that recycling is feasible, since externalities encompassing the damage that plastic production has to our world are not accounted for in its price. (Caveat: the products that can be made from recycling are physically unable to be perfectly like the previous products they came from)

Like the cost burden of tobacco use being put on both users and producers, plastic must be dealt with the same way in terms of taxation levies so that plastic alternatives and plastic recycling are competitive compared to new plastic from oil by-products.

Sad that NPR is not considered "mainstream" these days. Maybe Joe Rogan will post something to Facebook about it?

unfortunately they never make it to mainstream media

Sounds like this "mainstream media" is not doing its job. This might have some kinds of implications for the current state of affairs in the USA. Can't put my finger on exactly what though.

They also both have the advantage of being things that will naturally degrade over time if left outside instead of just sticking around forever

Correct. Paper (PS: or at least brown cardboard), glass and alu will always be great candidates for recycling.