Yup and these 60 companies are using their insane profits to lobby the government to ensure nothing ever changes.
Yay capitalism.
Lobby? They basically own government. I don’t think people realize how big business’s only fight is amongst other big business. They don’t fight with law makers, they make them.
Yes. Lobby. That is HOW corporations own the government.
They pay people off. They even plant them. Either way they are using their huge sack of cash to manipulate the world around them to their benefit.
The two tobacco companies Altria and Philip Morris International combined made up 2% of the branded plastic litter found, both Danone and Nestlé each produced 3% of it, PepsiCo was responsible for 5% of the discarded packaging, and 11% of branded plastic waste could be traced to the Coca-Cola company.
Imagine how much plastic waste could be eliminated if Coke and Pepsi just went back to glass bottles?
Imagine how much plastic waste could be eliminated if we just boycotted these companies.
You are going to have a much harder time convincing people to give up on their soda addiction than you are finding a way to get the soda addicts to get Coke and Pepsi to switch back to glass.
Perhaps so, alas. And the rates of obesity and diabetes continue to rise. sigh.
That’s the thing about addiction. You keep using even though it’s really bad for you.
I did notice Altria / Phillip Morris were also in that list. :-(
I haven't had a drop of either in 20 years and the mess has only grown larger.
Really? That's strange. I could have sworn the fault was on individuals and not the companies producing these mountains of shit.
Well, you see, you complain about society and yet you are part of it.
Don’t worry about these big guys. The straws are gonna save the planet.
Said no one ever.
People so mad about straws act like you cannot possibly work against a problem in more than a single way.
The problem is we are not trying multiple ways. We only try the ineffective ones to avoid trying the effective ones.
And by "we" you mean actually "corporations"? Of course they aren't willing to blame and fine themselves for saving money.
By "we" I mean the governments we elect.
Which are basically controlled by the corporations. My point is that there are many people who want to do more and several groups trying to make it happen. They aren't up against an easy fight. So when a small win happens like plastic straw bans, maybe we can want more without dismissing it as bullshit.
You could always not buy their completely non essential products, but suggesting that rarely gets a good reception from the "obsessively whining about straws" crows.
Oh yay, blame the consumers not the ones making the trash, worked so well the past 50 years
You could always not buy their completely non essential products
I've been trying this for decades, but it hasn't put a dent in the global growth of waste.
Yeah you pretty much need to end Citizens United and ban corporate lobbying to even start talking about regulating correctly.
That's what's always a bit maddening about these conversations. It's not like companies are just shredding plastic into the atmosphere because they're cartoon villains who love evil.
They're making cheap plastic shit because we love cheap plastic shit. They're making this stuff in response to explicit consumer prioritization of low costs above all other factors. If consumers broadly demanded soda in glass bottles and expressed a willingness to pay the extra cost that this entails, every soda company would use glass.
I'm not saying that you individually should be blamed for all environmental pollution, but we have to realize that companies are responding to the exact same incentives that we do. They're obviously operating at a much larger scale, but they use cheap plastic shit for the exact same reason we do. If you're looking for policy solutions, a great option would be to introduce an externality tax on plastic so that this environmental cost is actually factored into the production and end price and can fund remediate the damage, similar to carbon taxes. Of course though, the moment you say the word 'tax' people's brains completely shut off, so this is probably a non-starter.
I don’t think consumers in general have a direct say in the matter though, regardless of their impact. Blaming every individual for it is inefficient, and ultimately is only useful for deferring blame when you don’t want to solve the actual problem.
If you are interested in an actual solution you go to the source, and regulate the corporations.
Yay, all the ones to their eyeballs in regulatory capture.
Again? Guyyyyyys 🙄
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