Just read a story about microplastics being found in people

As someone who was young in the 80s and 90s as all that glass and metal was gradually being replaced by plastic, I can only that at the time, it seemed like an advancement. Not defending plastic, just telling you how it seemed at the time.

Plastic is lighter than metal and a LOT lighter than glass. What was 200 pounds of groceries in 1980 was maybe 120 pounds by 2000. It made your trash a lot lighter as well. Also: drop a plastic peanut butter jar on your bare foot and you might get a bruise. Drop a glass peanut butter jar on your bare foot and you'll might break bones.

Plastic is squeezable. No more sticking a knife into a mustard jar or beating a ketchup bottle. No more carefully trying drizzle salad dressing out of a wide-mouth bottle. Now you can squeeze a controlled stream of Zesty Italian.

Plastic is cheaper than glass, and believe it or not, they passed that savings onto the consumer. "Now 20% more" or "15% bigger" was a common thing to see on labels through the 90s as they changed packaging materials.

It's much harder to break plastic. No more worries about dropped bottles and jars. No more anxiety bringing the groceries home to see what broke on the drive home -- because one thing or another always broke on the drive home.

And of course we were all sold the lie of "plastic recycling" which at the time assuaged our guilt about the environment.

So yeah, it did seem like a good idea at the time. Nobody had heard of "microplastics" or could imagine them ending up in our bloodstream and screwing with our hormones and giving us cancer. We had no idea that fish and birds would end up full of plastic and suffer reproductive problems as a result. We had no idea there would be a plastic garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific bigger than the state of Texas.

Clearly no option is great and we need to keep looking for new solutions. But in the meantime, going back to glass is not a bad option. Getting cut by glass bottles is pretty easy to avoid by handling them carefully, or their shards if they break regardless. But avoiding microplastics in our water, food and air is simply impossible.

Glass is more expensive to produce probably