Plastic is very versatile and it’s becoming a bit of a problem. I don’t know if using it to package food is bad since I’m not a scientist but I do know that its versatility has resulted in it being used in the production of almost everything. It’s light, flexible, robust, durable, fairly cheap to produce and can be shaped into almost anything. It can also be colored, printed on and even be transparent. It’s the ideal material for so many different use cases but because it’s so cheap it’s also very normal to mass produce things made out of plastic that are single use. At the same time the durability of plastic means it’s not bio degradable like paper and from what I know recycling it is also pretty difficult and there’s still research going on to figure out better ways. So as a result we have unfathomable amounts of plastic garbage and recycling only kinda works. Not exactly great. At the same time the resulting legislation that claims to tackle the problem are utterly ridiculous. I don’t really drink stuff out of plastic bottles or go to places where you’d get a plastic straw so for quite a long time I was blissfully unaware of the retarded new laws that have been put into place to “fix” the problem. Basically the best thing the brightest minds could come up with is… Paper straws and bottle caps that are attached to the bottle. The cherry on top with the paper straws is that for packaged drinks they are wrapped in plastic. When I first saw a friend buy a drink that had the paper straw in a plastic wrapper I almost had an aneurysm. I cannot fathom how people just accept something so incredibly stupid and I’m convinced that this is specifically done to taunt us. There is no legitimate other explanation to this. Now we can enjoy drinks out of slowly dissolving and soggy paper straws while being miserable and being told that it’s better for the environment while the fucking straw came in a plastic wrapper, you know the evil material we wanted to get rid of. The other thing are the non-detachable bottle caps. I don’t know what the idea behind that is but I guess it’s supposed to prevent them from getting lost or some shit. Once again makes drinking out of a plastic bottle really fucking annoying. Thankfully that’s not something I do on the regular but I do wonder how other people put up with this shit and if there is a point at which people will be fed up with this shit. I’m fairly certain that neither of these changes make any difference. Sure it’d be great if people would stop littering but neither of these changes will accomplish that at the same time literally everything is being sold in plastic packaging by large corporations but banning restaurants from using plastic straws is where the priorities are at.
So I personally don’t have to deal with the consequences of these idiotic laws too much right now but that could always change. What’s more interesting to me is that I talked to some people a while ago and they seem to not just accept this as normal, they’re also confused at why people would get mad at the this situation. Now I guess you could chalk this up to different backgrounds. They live in a very big city and are probably fairly left leaning. But I can’t fathom what kind of mindset you have to be in to be content with the government making these clearly stupid decisions that, while on their own resulting in just minor inconveniences, do absolutely nothing to combat what is otherwise a serious problem. On top of that they also for some reason cannot understand why people might come to the conclusion that these laws are retarded. In this specific instance it was someone’s parents that complained about the paper straws. It shouldn’t be too surprising that older people are annoyed at such laws since there’s a good chance they actually remember a time when the government wasn’t as bad as it is now. I don’t know if this sentiment is widespread but if it is then I might as well get ready for some more banger legislation to save the planet from the goober mint. Really can’t wait. I feel like styrofoam packaging for takeout food should banned next. It would really add to the experience if I could eat it out of a slowly dissolving leaky paper carton.
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