Not sure which assumptions you're referring to. AFAIK it's well known and accepted that there's a trade-off between plastic and non-plastic choices - e.g. cardboard packaging typically weighs more and is bulkier, increasing transport costs (both financial and environmental), and so on.

"Greenhouse gas emissions" is of course but one factor - minimising or even eliminating GHG emissions won't do anything to solve other plastic-related problems - be it large plastic items persisting and harming wildlife, to more subtle microplastic contamination, to air pollution from burning waste plastics (e.g. chlorine from burning PVC). Again widely known and understood I would have thought. If anything plastic (from fossil) sequesters an amount of carbon that would have been released if the original oil had been burned as fuel instead. Often the optimal "answer" is multi-faceted - e.g. use cardboard instead of plastic to solve one problem, then de-carbonize transport and reduce food miles to mitigate the next, and so on.

  - Andy.

Not sure which assumptions you're referring to. AFAIK it's well known and accepted that there's a trade-off between plastic and non-plastic choices - e.g. cardboard packaging typically weighs more and is bulkier, increasing transport costs (both financial and environmental), and so on.

"Greenhouse gas emissions" is of course but one factor - minimising or even eliminating GHG emissions won't do anything to solve other plastic-related problems - be it large plastic items persisting and harming wildlife, to more subtle microplastic contamination, to air pollution from burning waste plastics (e.g. chlorine from burning PVC). Again widely known and understood I would have thought. If anything plastic (from fossil) sequesters an amount of carbon that would have been released if the original oil had been burned as fuel instead. Often the optimal "answer" is multi-faceted - e.g. use cardboard instead of plastic to solve one problem, then de-carbonize transport and reduce food miles to mitigate the next, and so on.

  - Andy.

You are obviously aware of the realities of this and the various compromises involved. Most people evidently are not and just follow the dogma:

- Oil is automatically bad ‘Just Stop Oil’

- Plastic is automatically bad. Metal, paper and wood do not consume resources.

- Renewable energy sources do not consumes resources and always deliver free energy.

- Nuclear is bad.

As an example of dogma over reality:

Switzerland is holding a referendum on 9th June, the Electricity Law.

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss-politics/switzerland-needs-energy-but-what-kind/75894168

This shows the split between the wind and solar, ignore nature group and the more pragmatic nuclear group.

The main text is ‘Renewable Energy Always Delivers’ and above ‘Regardless if it is sunny, if it rains or if the wind blows, with the new Electricity Law there will be electricity whatever the weather’.

Plenty of people believe that and will vote for it. A similar mentality exists for packaging