a part of the historical liberal party strategy would be to fund r&d with government money, but with single use plastics it's actually not that complicated, we just need to change our mindset. and, i think you might get the wrong idea about this by reading the corporate press.

research into plastics is very focused on the question of longevity. i mean, that's the point - it's supposed to last forever, because it was engineered that way. so, when we talk about plastics, we have this assumption that the material should be stable at room temperature for more or less ever. chemists would broadly consider the idea of a plastic that is biodegradable at room temperature to be a kind of contradiction in terms; it's not plastic then, right?

well, maybe not.

but, that's just the point: plastic wasn't intended to be used the way we use it. it wasn't intended to get thrown out after one use, it was intended to sit in the cupboard forever; that was indeed the point, and we've lost it somewhere.

so, you'll hear people argue that plastic can't degrade at room temperature, and that's largely true, but that's not a fundamental rule of nature so much as it's a purposeful engineering choice; it doesn't decompose because we designed it not to, and companies that produce plastic are going to need an extra push to modify their thoughts about that.

so, at the end of the day, if we want sustainable single use items, you might need to learn to put your straws in the fridge, and they might have a best before date, and they might turn into mush on the counter. and, that's fine. because we should have never engineered immortal straws in the first place; that's what we should have had from the start...

for a big company like mcdonalds, it shouldn't be much of a shift. so, you ship your straws and forks frozen; they move enough units that there shouldn't be an issue with thawing them out in the morning. and, hey - would you like your utensils heated? is kind of a cool question, when you're ordering your poutine.

it's a lot easier than the oil industry wants you to think it is - the technology is here, if we choose to use it.