Thread by @gauravsabnis

Yo @k_rupal we need to start doing this! Such a small thing but never thought of it! Take our own durable takeout containers to a restaurant, given how we are #ZeroFoodWaste people anyway. Why ask them for disposable takeout stuff made from oil? Let's bring our own reusables!

https://twitter.com/rons1212/status/1511279800643584002

The biggest marketing triumph of the plastic industry is that even though many people theoretically know that plastic comes from oil, few actively think of it that way. People only worry about the disposal of plastic, not where it came from. It came from oil! It is oil!

While it is true that the disposal of plastic causes its own vast number of problems, especially destroying our oceans, and possibly our lungs as we speak, the focus on the disposal is kind of a result of gaslighting campaigns by Big Oil (which basically is Big Plastic).

Get us all busy trying to figure out the disposal problem. Give us a few tiny wins by joining in on few small campaigns like straws. Sure, plastic straws seem to do bad stuff. And they are literally our smallest product. Barely affects the business. Sure, let's all talk straws!

As I've been working on my syllabus for next semester's brand new "Marketing, Sustainability, and Society", I've been doing deep dives into the industry structures and wall street incentives of plastics and oil. It's a pretty sophisticated hoodwinking happening in plain sight.

And the reason is kind of mind-blowing if you think about it. The real reason is that plastic disposal is actually not the huge problem we think it is, and could have been fixed decades ago with legislation. It being long drawn out, with the elaborate recycling scam, is Big Oil!

The simple truth is, there is no real practical feasible or even desirable way to "recycle" plastic". It just can't be done without burning even more oil.

So Big Oil happily pushes plastic recycling, cos that means they sell more oil, which is needed for the recycling.

And plastic,

if properly disposed off and collected so it doesn't clog waterways or end up in the oceans,

can just be put in landfills while we slowly wean ourselves off our overuse of it, especially single use plastic.

Remember, the biggest problem is single use plastic.

The real problem, my fellow carbon-threatened primates, is that the plastic industry I.e. big oil industry, keeps finding newer ways to add more plastic to our lives for uses we never needed plastic for before. And we buy.

Take the floss stick!

For decades and decades, people were flossing their teeth with plastic floss strings anyway. But the church of shareholder value demands constant growth. So big oil needs to keep selling more big oil or its share price drops & people get fired.

This is a way to sell us more oil

So this floss stick, a product that didn't exist when we were growing up, comes and says "hey, stop wasting 1-2 feet of floss every morning! Think of the turtles and the polar bears! This floss stick uses just half an inch of floss, and is easier on fingers!"

What do you think that green hard holder is made of?

Single use plastic. Oil.

You buy a bag of floss sticks thinking you're preventing floss wastage.

You're just buying a bag of extra oil you didn't buy a few years ago. And often paying a premium for the privilege.

I'm not saying there is some secretive cabal of evil folk conspiring to sell us more plastics which is more oil. The hard truth is plastic does make everything easier. Floss sticks did get more people flossing.

But at the end of the day, climate change is tied to oil production

And all plastic is oil. See how much more oil is there in our lives today than just 5, 10, 20, 50 years ago.

A lot of stuff we used metal for, for thousands of years. And most metal actually *IS* quite recyclable and rarely single use.

We are extracting & using oil to replace.

And a lot of it is being done because of the economic structures and incentives we have in place. The scientists designing these new products aren't some evil people who are unaffected by climate change. Nor are the shopkeepers who sell them. Or the ad agencies who convince us.

The only long term solution to this is if consumers change their habits in numbers large enough to actually change the economic incentives.

And in recent decades, there are actually positive data points. Of that happening on a big enough scale to move the needle somewhat.

Twenty years ago, the segment of customers who based their decisions on environmental impact was tiny. Enough to beat rounding error.

Over the years, as younger generations grew up, that segment is about 10-20% in the US, big enough to move at least some markets.

Twenty years ago, banning single use plastic bags seemed like a pipe dream anywhere.

Today hundreds of jurisdictions across the world have actually more or less gotten rid of single use polythene shopping bags. Most haven't.

But it's a heartening start.

Eventually more and more people actively eschewing fossil fuels in all forms, including plastics, is the only hope of saving the planet.

The businesses & politicians won't change until that happens. And will change if enough of us do.

Why anti plastic anti oil activism is key.

And "zero plastics" is just not a practical goal to chase. Plastics are here to stay. Let's just not use it in pretty much every single thing we do? And it's crazy how much of it we still use everyday even if we carry cloth shopping bags and metallic straws everywhere.

At the end of the day, plastics are NOT primarily a disposal problem, though the disposal is a problem. Plastics are a demand and supply problem. Until we actually stop making and buying so much plastic, the disposal will just be a conscience massaging marginal effort.

A good mental exercise for self discipline in this is to just look around yourself right now in whatever room you're reading this. Try to inventory every piece of plastic you see around you that might not have been there before you were born. And think of it as oil. Which it is.