Comments | matrixmann: Shopping carts made of plastic (No joke!)

matrixmann

Shopping carts made of plastic (No joke!)

Feb 17, 2019 01:52

Anyone's already seen the latest craze - shopping carts with the basket area entirely made of plastic?
Only the wheel area and their legs that connect to the basket made of metal?

One of those things which make you ask how much the appeals to you personally to use less plastic in life to go easier on the environment are actually meant seriously...

technology, life, reform, environment, networks, politik, economy, system

Comments 14

kanzeon_2040 February 17 2019, 02:55:34 UTC

I don't think I noticed when that happened here. But the entire procedure of shopping is something I'd rather never do.

matrixmann February 17 2019, 03:15:59 UTC

I got see these when in a neighboring town a store of a particular chain was rebuilt in another place and therefore received new extras and everything.
Made me go like "WTF?!". Didn't think there was a technical way to realize that even...
And ironically the store was reopened at a time, at a few weeks, were the talk about how bad plastic is for human health was pretty big...

benicek February 17 2019, 06:54:40 UTC

Internet shopping is a great thing.

matrixmann February 17 2019, 14:44:48 UTC

Doesn't work for groceries.

By the way, I don't think it's too environment-friendly letting all that servers running day and night. Electricity doesn't grow like fruits on trees, you know...

Thread 8

onb2017 February 17 2019, 20:27:53 UTC

I never notice cause I hate shopping. Definitely a chore.

But I would say it is done obviously to save on the cost of producing the carts. Do they claim it is better for the environment?

matrixmann February 17 2019, 20:37:03 UTC

Cost saying is some reason I considered too.
If I think back to the fight over cheap steel from China which there was a fuzz about last year...

Other than that, I can't come up for a reason why one should start to make those parts of plastic.

They aren't that weight-heavy while pushing around, but seriously, put two bags of potatoes in it or a six-pack of any sort of drinks of your choice and then this thing gets harder to push around again... So, what the heck...?

maadmike February 18 2019, 21:05:00 UTC

The most ecological could be the wooden carts as it couldn't be not sounding strange - the wooden - we are wishing lately and going to save the forests so how we could save them doing everything from wood? But to produce any metal - iron for example (not to mention aluminum) we have to burn much more than the forests - we should burn incredible amount of coal which is very dirty and extra amount of carbon oxide in our atmosphere and it is a question what is more harmful for ecology the metals or the plastics cause we have to count the amount of energy we are spending on making them and their time of working after. The metals are wonderful with melt down them again and again while plastic is much cheaper and have many incredibly different capabilities.

matrixmann February 18 2019, 23:11:09 UTC

Over here they had the habit (in GDR times) to radically keep reforesting the woods once they cut anything down, so they could cut trees down again in 30 years (I think they also did research and picked tree sorts which grow big relatively quickly and are modest in cultivation ( ... )

maadmike February 19 2019, 04:55:03 UTC

"Metal - you melt it in a big pot again, do the mixture you want to have and pour it into a new form. "

Yes, but the energy spent on producing metals is tremendously higher than making plastic, I did not research but the price on both shows it well. There are nowadays the ideas to stop using fuel and use more wind and sun energy but people not counting all the circumstances. Using recoverable fuel and material sources as algae, grass, wood for fuel could be much more economically and ecologically effective but oil companies will always saying it is a bullshit and you shouldn't even try but always buy and buy...

matrixmann February 19 2019, 10:20:54 UTC

Hm, prices are a wobbly thing... I don't trust these too much anymore these days.
In practice, I'd think that metal is the thing easier to produce.
You just need to heat something up warm enough, that's literally "all" that there is to do. Ways to generate high temperature I would think you can find a couple, while getting differing hydrocarbon compounds to link each other is a more difficult thing to achieve.

Another thing you can do with plastics, of course, is producing such that last for a longer amount of time. You know, not producing lots of these use&throw-away items...
I know there's a huge difference between household items made of plastic made in GDR compared to such from Western production these days.
GDR buckets made of plastic - or a laundry tub to transport washed clothes -, they can make it to turn 30 and 40 years old without showing those signs of becoming porous from too much sunlight. And the plastic is thick!