Shopping carts made of plastic (No joke!)

[matrixmann]

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...

Comments

[maadmike.livejournal.com]

"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]

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!