I have confidence humanity will solve the disposal issue soon enough no hand wringing will be required. See: rapid renewables deployment across the globe and the hockey stick EV adoption curve.
It’s not as if this is nuclear waste. Toss it in the ground, wrap it up nicely, and we’ll revisit it in 50-100 years.
>>I have confidence humanity will solve the disposal issue soon enough
Hubris my man. Pure hubris. I'm not saying it's not possible, but when there are strong financial interests tied to NOT doing exactly that, it doesn't feel like something I'd say I'm confident in.
Also "soon enough" to undo all the damage that things like the Pacific Garbage Patch have done to the environment? Soon enough to remove all the mercury in food chain? There's literal things dying because of this. I think the hand wringing is justified. You can make it a value prop (we save X human lives because of products packaged in this manner, so fuck these bees) but there's still actual consequences to our planetary roommates.
One person's hubris is another person's faith in human ingenuity.
Your pacific garbage patch example is disingenuous. It would not occur if poor countries had proper waste disposal infrastructure (ie collection and landfills).
>> It would not occur if poor countries had proper waste disposal infrastructure (ie collection and landfills).
Sure, and if we just provide food for everyone then nobody will be hungry.
That's some high quality hand waving there my friend. The whole "don't worry, we'll figure it out" attitude just comes across as useless. There aren't realistic solutions in place right now. People are working on solutions though. This doesn't mean that there's any reason to assume these solutions would work on a global scale.
When dealing with problems like this, we're going to require extraordinary solutions. Confusing "possible" and "probable" is my issue here.
It's insignificant for eye glass frames, but not so much for other stuff, like packaging.