#and yeah current recycling systems are largely inefficient and unreliable but they should be improved and prioritized

[lurkiestvoid]

Before disposable containers and packaging, companies were generally responsible for collecting and reusing product waste like glass milk bottles, or for ensuring the reusability on the customers' end, like patterned fabric flour sacks. There was very little household waste as a result, and any 'waste' that couldn't be composted or reused was mostly burnt/buried (not necessarily ideal but it was still a comparatively very small amount overall, and usually harmless to burn like paper and cardboard).

When companies began to switch to disposable products and packaging to save money, the onus for end-product waste passed to the consumer, but it was too much to burn/bury and very little of it was reusable. It did pile up, because there was nowhere for it to go. This is how the modern system of collecting and hoarding our garbage began, so that customers who "saved money" on disposable products still ended up paying with their taxes to "solve" the problem, by gathering it all up and dumping it into fields and mountains of trash which leech chemicals and gases into the surrounding biomes and populations. imo it's one of the biggest grifts we've come to accept as a normal part of modern life. Some places are now even touting "eco friendly" garbage trucks that run on the methane produced by all that garbage.

People do need disposable products from everything to conveniences and disability aids to sterile medical supplies. Those things will always have to exist. But it's not just the ocean trash we have to minimize but also the land trash, and for both, one way or another we need to shift the responsibility for end-of-life product waste and management back to the companies that produce them, and end the linear product cycle in favor of a circular one.

Sorry this is just one of my ✨interests ✨ and I remain passionately angry about this and the companies that blame us for using their products as the reason waste exists. Waste will continue to be a problem until companies have financial incentives to minimize or abolish it.

Plastic Straws are Vital for Disabled People

Neurodivergent_lou