Don’t worry about these big guys. The straws are gonna save the planet.

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.

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.

Regulation is fine, but people need to realize that there are always downstream effects that often result in a less efficient version of the same outcome.

For instance, say you just pass a blanket ban on plastic soda bottles and mandate glass. Production costs immediately go up (not to mention transportation and logistics), and those costs are naturally passed onto the consumer, so the prices of all sodas go up.

Has this really improved things? There are real questions about the environment impact of glass, since they're significantly heavier and thus require more carbon emissions to transport. Glass is better if it's reused, but there are situations where it's unlikely to be reused. Soda is now more expensive, just as it would have been under a plastic tax (and because lower income people tend to drink more soda, you've hit them extra hard relatively), but now you've also eliminated the ability for plastic bottles to be used in situations where they truly are called for; for instance, you probably don't want to be selling glass bottles at a music festival, so an organizer will need to instead purchase extra plastic cups instead, resulting in the consumption of extra glass and plastic.

I know people have this idea that the only factor that goes into a price is how greedy the CEO happens to feel that morning, but that's simply not the case. Prices are set by market circumstances, not greed. It's not like NYC landlords suddenly got less greedy in 2020; the market radically changed. They're already charging the most that the market will bear. In terms of regulation, it's almost always more effective to go after the market incentives - that is, price signals - instead of just taking a hammer to the thing you don't like and hoping it doesn't have any bad effects.

Ok, but i was taught as a child about the need to recycle. What percent of the population recycles? What percent even have access to recycle programs? What percent of recycle programs don’t just throw the bags into the normal trash dumps?

You say cost will go up if actual change is introduced and consumers will be upset. I agree, but the opinions and the cost are not being considered. Should they be? And if they make it untenable, what does that say about the product?

You frame this as a ‘there is no solution i can see that’s worth it so why bother’ and this tells me you are not interested in a solution. There are solutions out there right now we could be doing but don’t. And some progress is better then nothing. Not to mention drinking from plastic bottles has apparently been poisoning us.

As for housing, they are charging the most the market can bear…. After the land lords manipulated the housing market so that the market could be forced into bearing more than it could healthily. Again because they are not properly regulated.

You frame this as a ‘there is no solution i can see that’s worth it so why bother’ and this tells me you are not interested in a solution.

That is the exact opposite of what I'm saying. I'm saying that an externality tax to capture the actual cost of single-use plastics would do a lot to reduce their use without distorting markets and causing unintended side effects while likely being more effective than blanket bans.

So, you want to regulate the use of plastic via an indulgence tax. But instead of charging the corporation, you want to add an additional tax to every single individual transaction? Or do you want to tax the corporation once and have the cost of the product go up. The end result is the same, except one is more efficient.

The spot where you charge it really doesn't matter much except to the accountants; it'll always just be factored into the price of the product. There's no real difference between the company increasing the price by ten cents or a ten cent tax being levied at the register.

I really wouldn't call it an indulgence tax though. There are plenty of uses for single-use plastics that aren't sodas or indulgences.