This is incredible! I just feel like I’ve seen this headline a trillion times and yet the biodegradable stuff is never used (at least in the US, I’ve seen biodegradable packaging being used in Mexico quite a bit).
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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I just feel like I’ve seen this headline a trillion times and yet the biodegradable stuff is never used
Biodegradable alternatives tend to have two big problems over traditional plastics. The first being that we've spent 50 years engineering plastic manufacturing. So there's a huge economic inertia to overcome (although not so huge that we haven't routinely overcome them with paper and particleboard alternatives in many other instances). The second is that the alternatives are biodegradable, which tend to limit shelf life, raise sterilization risks, increases the shipping weight/volume, and undermines product durability. Again, this goes back to paper as a popular substitute for plastics. Glass - a very popular precursor and still popular alternative to plastic - has this problem in spades.
You see this problem in grocery stores all the time, with respect to paper/glass versus plastic bags or containers.
In a country that prioritized the value of waste management, reuse, and recycling, I suspect we'd see a lot more durable glass and paper products to replace plastics. And, where plastics do exist, we'd see more methods for reusing and recycling existing containers, rather than generating mountains of single-use disposables.
But so much of this isn't an issue of technology. Its purely economics.
The second is that the alternatives are biodegradable
This alone is an obstacle. Long ago, I could buy "trash" bags based on potato starch. Anything wet would dissolve them, but ideally we would pit green waste in compost. I loved them, but even that market that catered to "hippies" had to quit selling them because they weren't durable enough. They were better than paper! But whatever.
Meanwhile, “the west” is working out how much protection they’re going to give the poor fossil fuel companies and their dependents.
Invest in the future!
Excited to add this to the list
I think the worst part is that some of them could actually be interesting discussions if it wasn't just china bad. China isn't good, no empire can be. But it's also not pure evil existing only to murder capitalists or something like western media seems to think.
China isn’t good, no empire can be.
Chinese Socialists have found a profit motive in maximizing quality of life for billions of people.
How long that lasts? Idk. You could have said the same about FDR's America 80 years ago, and still be outraged at our treatment of interned Japanese and American Natives and our Caribbean colonies. Clearly, we're worse now.
The quest to abolish Communism drove Americans insane. I hope Chinese politicians and proles aren't dragged into that abyss in another generation.