Yeah I agree, it's not a simple or black and white issue. There's absolutely no doubt that plastic is ubiquitous and an extremely useful, versatile substance in modern life. It's in so much. We'd be completely lost without it. I don't romanticize about plastic/oil free environment, have plenty of plastic in my cupboards yikes lol. I drive a very old petrol car and I don't care. I'm not driving a diesel and defo not going electric. We've been sold a con with automobiles, so we make the best of it out of necessity.
I think what we have to do as a society is look at where it is causing the most harm. Is using a plastic container to put some cookies in a major problem. Personally, I don't think so and environmentally, provided it's good quality plastic and lasts a decent amount of time, it's probably not a major issue. I think it's the plastic that's being used is in items / products / substances that that we just aren't aware of. i.e. plasticisers are prolific, used in paint and all sorts of things. Endocrine disruptors can mimic female hormones. As a female, I can say this is a huge problem for women and many are dealing with horrible side effects. It's not something we talk about, in fact we actively hide it because it's not cool or acceptable to talk about those things and there's a hush hush culture. A lot of women are also unaware themselves of what could be causing them so many issues. For men, well let's look at sperm counts compared to 1970. Of course, we have sooo many forever chemicals (think The Devil we know and Dupont) and endocrine disruptors in our environment now that some might argue you can't put the blame squarely on plastic and I would have to agree but I do believe it's one the big ones. Then there's the wider use of oil/petrochemicals, which is the bigger can of worms 🫣
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