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How Plastic Goods Took Over the World, Creating a Throwaway Culture
vendredi 10 octobre 2025, 22:01 , par Slashdot
![]() Excerpts from a Bloomberg story: After World War II, the plastics industry made a conscious pivot. Lloyd Stouffer, an industry figure, openly said plastics should move from durable goods to disposables because companies make more money selling something a thousand times than once. The industry sold consumers on hygiene, convenience, modernity and easier household management. McDonald's dropped polystyrene clamshells in the late 1980s under activist pressure but simply swapped one single-use product for another. Paper containers still cannot be recycled well once food soaks in. The old diaper-service model disappeared. Companies collected, washed and returned cloth diapers like the milkman, but plastics helped kill that business model. Chaudhuri argues companies built their businesses on disposability and will not change unless regulation forces everyone to move together. Executives admit that if they launch a reusable product but competitors do not, they lose market share and face shareholder backlash. Packaging standardization would improve recycling economics. Colored plastics like red shampoo bottles cannot be recycled in a closed loop and are down-cycled into gray products like pipes. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/10/10/1746232/how-plastic-goods-took-over-the-world-creating-a-th...
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Date Actuelle
sam. 11 oct. - 06:52 CEST
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