https://restoration-news.com/green-machine-targets-plastics-at-consumer-expense
By Kevin Mooney
Anti-trust investigations target pressure groups teaming up with corporate America.
Your casserole went stale, and your mayo turned bad, along with a few pastries. But that’s okay since you’re taking one for the team and doing your part to save the planet! Those nasty plastics will bring about death and destruction.
Or, so you’ve been told.
In reality, green activists operating in the name of “sustainability” have joined forces with corporate interests to increase consumer prices and coerce inferior products into the marketplace. All in the name of combatting plastics—and the motivations are not difficult to understand. Green activists who have lost ground on their climate agenda under President Donald Trump have repackaged that same agenda under a different name. As to the corporations, they are only too pleased to limit competition and charge consumers more while giving off the appearance of being concerned about the environment.
Here’s the deal
Pressure groups, including the U.S. Plastics Pact, the Consumer Goods Forum, and the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, have joined with heavy hitters like Coca-Cola, Target, Unilever, Mondelez, and Nestle to impose burdensome environmental targets. These include: arbitrary recycled-content quotas and directives to redesign everyday packaging — just to make certain products are as expensive as possible.
Fortunately, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has entered the fray to take on the “sustainability agenda.” Earlier this month, he initiated an anti-trust investigation and issued Civil Investigative Demands (CIDs) to the plastics trade groups and the corporations complicit with their agenda.
In a statement Uthmeier said, “Environmental groups are pressuring corporations to abandon free market principles and raise prices on consumers for products they don’t want.”
Contrary to what green activists would like the public to believe, plastics come with significant benefits as a direct result human innovation. They keep food fresh, alleviate waste, make products lighter and therefore more affordable. They also contribute to life-saving medical devices.
If environmental activists turned government bureaucrats were genuinely interested in environmental improvements, they would focus on more efficient waste management, enhanced recycling infrastructure, and biodegradable innovations. But none of those solutions are on the table. Instead, the radicals push a top-down policy approach that suffocates the free market.
Bonner Cohen, a senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, took down the concept of “sustainable development” in an interview with Restoration News, saying:
What needs to be understood about ‘sustainable development’ is that what is being peddled is itself unsustainable. Absent government mandates, industry collusion, and interminable lawsuits, the alternatives to plastics could not stand on their own two feet. The marketplace, which reflects consumer preferences, is the best place to separate the sheep from the goats. Just as the PC vanquished the electric typewriter, and internet transmissions quashed the fax machine, superior products prevail over inferior ones. But this is an arena the anti-plastics lobby does not dare to enter. They know they will lose. Florida’s attorney general sees this game for what it is, and is to be applauded for taking appropriate action. May other state AGs follow his example.
“Sustainability” is an invention of the United Nation’s Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) held as part of the “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 1992. The agenda aimed to spur action at the international, national, regional and local levels with the common goal of achieving “sustainable development,” which the U.N. defines as an approach to growth and development that satisfies contemporary needs without undermining the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
At a time when the climate agenda is running up against scientific facts, and economic realities, let’s not give that agenda new life under a different name.
Time to face facts. The war on plastics amounts to nothing more than a war on modern conveniences made possible by the innovations inherent in the free market. The green cultists would prefer humanity return to a time when casseroles and mayonnaise spoil in hours instead of days, and cell phones use inferior materials and fall apart in months.
Just the reduced food waste is more than enough to justify the use of thin film plastics on a fuel emissions basis, if such is really a problem, not to mention the containers that keep food fresh for a lot longer in your refrigerator.
Spoiled food gives off CO2.
I wonder how they will eliminate the more than 150 products sold in grocery stores that come in single use plastic?
Like
Many meat products
Bread
Toilet Paper (Some larger sized packs are group wrapped and 4 or 6 pack wrapped)
Paper Towel Rolls. (Some larger sized packs are group wrapped and individually wrapped)
Fruit rolls
Jerkey packs
Cookies
Crackers
Rice
Pasta
Packaged berries
Potato Chips
Tortilla Chips
Tortillas
And numerous other products
Even Vitamins come in plastic bottles
Virtually every thing in bottle or jars is in plastic–mayonnaise, salad dressings, oils, some pasta sauces, milk, yogurt, sour cream, cheese and cold cuts. even single serving wine bottles and small bottles of alcohol. Also everything in a hospital room is made of plastic–right down to the coverings on the walls. (I have spent way too much time in hospital rooms of loved ones in the past several years, so I have noticed this.) Much of the hospital equipment is single use–IV bags, tubes, bed coverings and linings, even a cooler for circulating cooling water to a surgery patients legs, and all the tubes and lines associated with it.
If I get meat at the local supermarket, it is ALWAYS in pre-packaged plastic containers, except for “deli” items such as ham slices etc.. When I get those, the shop assistant used disposable plastic gloves, new pair each time, and puts it into a plastic bag before wrapping it in plastic lined paper.
If I go to the butchers in the next town, I can choose my own meat, which the butcher picks it up with plastic disposable gloves, new pair each time, then puts it in a plastic bag. Several plastic bag wrapped items may finally end up in a large paper bag.
Lego now sells their very expensive plastic in paper bags.
Maybe Lego should switch from making plastic building blocks to making “Lincoln Logs”?
Oh the trees!
I had a biopsy last week, where they take out a little bit of me for testing. Every piece of equipment they used came in plastic, which kept it sterile and therefore safe to use. A lot of the equipment had plastic parts which were light and effective and made the equipment easier to use and more cost-effective. They did a preliminary check on the sample, using chemicals in plastic bottles, which don’t shatter into sharp shards if you drop them, and are lighter than glass too. The medic and pathologist put on plastic gloves for better protection both ways. Just as in every other use of plastic in today’s society, plastic played a highly valuable role. Plastic is incredibly good for society, right across the board. The only major problem is that it is often poorly disposed of, especially but not exclusively in Asia and Africa. Trying to ban plastics is downright anti-social. The problem is disposal, let’s just work on that.
Obviously I didn’t read far enough. See my note above.
At some point in time I suppose activists did some good, I don’t see it today.
Activists have never done good. They are all about control.
Advocates, on the other hand, are reasonable people striving to make the world better.
I remember a day when every tin, any size, was valuable in India. Food came home in cloth bags, meat and spices wrapped in newspaper. Drinking water was in an earthen pot so that evaporation could keep it cool.
Give me a fridge, wrapped lettuce, and meat that does not ooze through the paper and a washing machine instead.
If only plastic waste could be burned for its energy value rather than buried.
The word, “recycle” appears once in this post and its comments. Now twice.
My city supplies us with two containers for our trash — one for recycling and one for things that cannot be recycled. Every week when I wheel them to the curb I wonder how and if the recyclables are … recycled. Is there a machine that can sniff the difference between dirty paper and dirty plastic and dirty anything else? Do they pull nails out of discarded two by fours? Are there people who spend eight hours (with appropriate breaks) every workday sorting trash? And what does all this cost?
Its funny how the “worriers” complain about domestic use plastic going into landfill…
.. but have no concerns at all about the massive landfills needed to dispose of plastic/resin wind turbine blades.
Green logic is an oxymoron.
The disposal of their green dream systems is one glaring example.
Another is how California deals with oil. California has the 3rd largest oil deposits of the 50 US states. After the gold rush, oil fueled the state’s population growth. The environmentalists twisted logic demanded that California should not utilize it’s own natural resources. Somehow it makes sense to ship crude oil into California from the Middle East to California’s refineries.
Over the past 3 decades California’s onerous regulations have made it uneconomical to continue operating refineries in the state. We have gone from 40 to 6 operating refineries. Today California’s much of our gasoline, diesel and jet fuel arrive in our fuel stations by:
Somehow the bone headed politicians who came up with this plan think that decarbonization means ocean shipping almost all of our crude and a growing portion of our refined fuels literally half way around the world via tankers burning Bunker C fuel.
As I said above: Green logic is an oxymoron.
Story Tip..
This could get interesting.
The Eruption of Mt. Dukono is a Global Wake Up Call…
Getting rid of plastic bags here in Maryland was a Godsend. No more putting items into numerous small plastic bags, which were hard to open. We have self service mainly at my store. After a few weeks, I got used to making sure I have reusable bags in my car. And, if I forget, 10 cents per nice, strong paper bag is no issue.
Keep plastic bags out of the stores!!!!
Don’t you use Glad Kitchen Trash Bags…like Most People?
Or Glad Bathroom Waste basket liners?
Or Glad Yard Waste Bags?
Or Glad Sandwich bags?
Or Sliced Bread in single use plastic bags?
You can’t keep Plastic Bags out of stores they’re in stores surrounding many food products that get placed into your vaunted 10¢ paper bags…which get wet and weaken in the rain.
That’s why you bring your own cloth bag
Buy proper bread from a bakery.
There’s the local totalitarian socialist… telling everyone what to do… again !
You could also lead by example and bake the bread yourself, I take the liberty to either:
do the same when I so choose
ignore you and your virtue signalling
tell you to effoff
or all of the above
Free consumer choice trumps nudging
judges?
PS while we’re at it don’t forget to carry the flour and yeast in your cloth bag, the water in your hands and of course roam the forest for some firewood.
Plastics and fossil fuels are here to stay until we run out of supplies/substitutes or hell freezes over (the real one, not the Eagles album).
Where I come from flour is sold in paper bags.
So -why not go back where you came from?
What are you talking about?
“paper bags”
Tree killer!
Anyone who thinks plastic grocery bags are “single use” never owned or walked a dog.
I re-use plastic grocery bags for many things. They are very useful and save the cost of buying new bags.
My grocery store offers free plastic bags for produce at no charge.
So, it is not all of Maryland.
There are applications for reusable bags that make sense (I have several) and applications that make no sense at all (deli).
Incinerate plastic, don’t recycle.
Trash-to-energy plants are mainly used for cities, where landfilling can be a problem. The energy produced is simply used to offset the costs. Only some plastic is recyclable, unfortunately. They reduce the cost of tipping fees, but there are handling costs and trucking costs, so in the end, probably don’t save much, if any money. But ultimately, we need plastic.
No wonder. As the climate nonsense may soon be less funded, if at all, UN bureaucrats, hand-feed “experts” and other “saviors” are urgently designing a new feeder.
chatGPT says:
However, the conclusion changes if:
I bring plastic bags to Walmart for recycling or burn the filthy ones in my wood stove. Carrying wine bottles in double paper bags is a serious drop hazard. Just do what makes sense.
I remember back in the 1960’s I visited a trash burning plant in Germany. They had to add fuel in that process for proper burn. But, the overall cost was net zero. So, a useful way to dispose waste and minimize landfill. It should be more efficient today, because of higher relative plastic content of waste.
Gosh golly! I just found out that businesses who sell in Europe must comply with the LUCID act. Gotta calculate the packaging environmental and waste disposal cost and pay the amount to waste management companies. Hard to understand the implications and how and where to and how often payment is required. Anyway, this is a hard core intrusion on free market by some stupid bureaucracy. It certainly stymies export to the EU, and in a sneaky way.
Actually, an abomination.
The shift away from plastic is curious because previously (Western) society shifted to plastic because using paper was bad for the environment – too many trees cut down. Cutting trees is still supposed to be bad, but apparently less bad than using plastic?
Then there’s the issue that some plastic alternatives are just terrible!
Now there is one area that I do think is an improvement – plastic forks are pure garbage! Disposable wooden chopsticks are vastly superior, so the next time you need to eat a salad, a slice of chocolate cake, or whatever, sans hands, dump the pathetic plastic (cake) fork and practice your Oriental dining technique! 😁
As for reusable bags, yes they work, but anything leaking like meat creates a nasty mess, and they aren’t recyclable so they ultimately result in non-biodegradable waste. But apparently it’s the good kind of non-biodegradable waste or something?
Ecofascists are really confusing!!!
“and cell phones use inferior materials and fall apart in months”
If they had there way, cell phones would only be available to the ordained elite.