Cartons have plastic too, yeah? Cause plain cardboard isn’t staying mess free for long if you fill it with milk. That said, it’s probably less plastic, though this is also less plastic than just making the whole jug non-recyclable. Why they don’t just make the label recyclable too is beyond me.
The problem is plastic is great for food safety. The way it makes air and water-tight seals, that can easily be broken, is hard to replicate. If cans could open, on their own, the way sealed plastic bottles do, then we could have easier recycling via metal containers. But the self-open cans make sharp edges and nobody’s invented a way around that yet.
They also make Aluminum “Bottles”. There’s going to be a plastic gasket on the metal cap, but that’s magnitude less plastic then a whole bottle and I already know what salad dressing looks like. Lighter to transport then glass as well. If the supply chain is short, glass can work, but the longer it is, the more sense aluminum is.
There are so many other plastic use cases in food storage and transport. Like sure, we can bring back milk men but what about everything else?
So we have all this plastic waste because people can’t be bothered to operate a can opener?
Because people like you can’t be bothered to respect their fellow humans in terms of use case design.
But yes. Until we find a way to use can openers to keep small amounts of ketchup sterile, it’s because people can’t be bothered to use a can opener.
Depending on the type of wax used, it could be better, or it could be the same as plastic.
Wax or plastic coated paper is still going to use less plastic then a whole plastic judge. Don’t make perfect the enemy of better.