Comment by sustainalady

4 days ago

As someone who works in sustainability, and life cycle analysis, it's quite frustrating to see someone who is clearly not technically trained lay out an argument for single-use based on LCA data. Establishing a functional unit is critical for this type of analysis, otherwise yeah, it looks like every single-use item is "more sustainable" than a reusable. That isn't actually how you measure a sustainability scenario in this context. Also, the simplification of these vastly complex problems being presented as if we have been over reacting or too dumb to solve them -- be, as the kids say, so for real. It is exhausting to have non-technical sustainability folks write these articles as if they've provided some insight on how simple this all can be, as if we eggheads got too caught up in our science textbooks. Now we have to spend time undoing the perception that "it's just so simple, landfills and single use aren't that bad" instead of moving forward into better systems and effective action. Either spend 5 minutes talking with someone who actually works in sustainability or don't write these nonsense articles.

Any good blogs or articles you can recommend?

  • I'd like to 2nd schiffern' s comment. Your comment gives a persuasive perception of competence. But that's not sufficient to accept your point. I'd love to have more data and details to work with so I can decide which viewpoint to trust here. So any sources you could provide would be really helpful. otherwise it doesn't sound responsible for me to just trust the "experts" either.