You are of course right it is a much bigger problem. But at the moment the choice is do lots of little things like reducing plastic bags that will add up and over time gather momentum or sit there putting people off by smart arse comments and let the issue get worse until we are fucked. Personally I prefer to be optimistic and positive and get behind changes.
There will of course be mis steps, there always are when learning to walk.
So what do you see as actually being the problem
If it's the narrative that's been pushed then it will be plastic full stop however it's an incorrect "truth", as i've previously posted plastic can be recycled (and should be recycled) then what goes in general waste the energy should be recovered by incineration rather than putting it in landfill.
Did you know for instance that a plastic bottle now needs to contain a minimum of 30% recycled material otherwise a "Plastic tax" or levy is imposed.
It's currently actually cheaper to pay the levy than the increased bottle cost for recycled material but no doubt the levy will increase over time (yes recycled plastic is more expensive than virgin plastic as there simply isn't enough of it in the recycling chain to satisfy demand which pushes the price up further)
Taking the flagship "Single use plastic bags", what a crock of shite that is, it must be 7 or 8 years since they were charged for however i'm still using some of the ones that i had back then so hardly single use if you choose to reuse them and are careful not to damage them when packing your shopping into them.
In contrast i've had some of the heavy duty plastic bags that only lasted a couple of months but contained way more plastic.
I posted on another thread years ago about single use plastic bags and linked to articles by Greenpeace and another similar source about using cotton bags instead of plastic, their conclusion was that the cotton bags needed to be used around 70,000 times before they became carbon neutral when compared to a single use plastic bag.
I now use the plastic charity bags that come through my door as bin liners rather than throw them straight in the landfill bin, I used to use the old tatty single use carriers and knew other people who also used to use them however they now buy specific bin liners.
If you weigh a specific bin liner you will find they contain much more plastic than a single use carrier bag therefore for anyone who used to think environmentally and get the maximum use from their plastic bags the amount of plastic being used and sent to land fill has actually increased, bin liners by their very nature are surely the definition of single use but apparently that's acceptable until it gets picked up on
Sales of bin liners increased once the levy was introduced, this article looks to have been published fairly soon after the plastic bag levy was introduced however i'd actually as a result of it that more plastic was used as people switched to heavy duty bags and resorted to buying heavier bin liners and also the switch to cotton bags etc will have increased CO2 emissions.
Cotton also uses a whole load of water to produce, the Aral sea is a man made environmental disaster due to cotton production
External Link/Members OnlyAgain plastic isn't inherently the problem but the poor disposal / end of life of plastic is
I'm actually defending plastic from an environmental point of view as I think we need to be doing as much as possible to protect the environment not just at a local level but on a world level so that includes overall CO2 emissions etc in which case plastic wins hand down
Sorry that you feel some of the comments are smart arse but once you dig down a bit into the detail of these things the actual facts are not necessarily what people are being conned into believing
