Stretchy seaweed, reverse vending machines, QR-coded take-out boxes: They’re how we can break society’s absurd addiction to single-use plastics.
These molecules are pliable and strong, which is what makes plastic so widely useful. And so durable: I unpacked the hunks of Camembert and Havarti and shoved the bag into the back of a kitchen drawer. When I stumbled upon it a few weeks ago, it was still pristine. Of course it was. Plastic bags can last, intact and usable, for decades.
chip to each container: Presto, students could now check one out by waving it near a checkout terminal. Returning would be just as easy. To create an automated return bin, Reusables hired Jack Gralla, a lanky self-taught hardware hacker—he’d worked on everything from “solar roadways” to robotics. Gralla showed me the prototype, a bin with a lid crammed with micro-controllers .
chip, to prevent people from dropping in, say, trash or dog poop. By the spring of 2024, the new system was working smoothly at Simon Fraser. Three return bins had collected containers from 7,389 meals. The university funds the system, and students only pay a penalty if they fail to return a dish. Mehta has ordered more smart return bins to scatter around campus, and he expects they’ll process tens of thousands of meals in the next academic year.
tags would get nuked, though, so Hawkins went back to Reusables’ QR code system. Both Godard and Mehta argue that systems like Reusables’—companies like it are popping up worldwide—will be a staple of the future. Like every other system for reducing plastics, though, they will really take off only if policy pushes it along. “The conversation is shifting from shaming and blaming bad behavior to, ‘Oh, this is an economic development opportunity, and there’s money to be made,’” Godard said.
tags and micropayment systems. They just put the milk bottles back on the front porch. Surely modern technology is up to the challenge. What’s next is, really, up to us: pressure on our elected officials, from presidential candidates on down to local city council members, to set up concrete targets and bans.
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