As an economist in some alternate universe, and as a plastic waste hater in this one, I just can’t understand why as a society we don’t do much to reduce the plastic waste.
It is clear that one can use paper packaging for most of the cases. Eggs have figured it out, so did sugar and flour — and those are some the most tricky produce on the shelves. For the producers, it is a question of cost/benefit.
Plastic is incredibly cheap to make, and plastic packaging guarantees the quality of the produce in it. Paper packaging is more expensive and less durable.
Given these facts, how to we reduce plastic waste? Well it’s easy, really. This is a textbook example of the negative externality: for each individual producer there is a financial incentive to use plastic, but collectively as a society we suffer from the consequences of using plastic packaging. The solution is also a textbook one: internalizing the externality with policy. There simply needs to be a tax on plastic packaging — enough in size to make using paper package significantly cheaper. This way the producers are have a financial incentive to use paper, and that’s what they will do, while still allowing to use plastic in the corner cases where it’s absolutely necessary.