Does seem like a lot of carbon for a kg of plastic, though, how does that compare to normal plastic’s carbon footprint?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whey_protein#Microbial_product...

It's not theoretical either. You can buy vegan dairy products made from this method today.

So it's not out of the question we could scale that up to meet plastics demand.

If this is counting the methane emissions of the cow itself, that’s not a fair or complete accounting. The cow produces methane in her digestive system after eating grass, and the grass grows by, among other things, extracting CO2 from the air. Then the cow burps methane, the methane combines with atmospheric oxygen and breaks down to CO2 and water, and you have a closed loop; the cow cannot belch more carbon than she eats, and that carbon came from the air in the first place.

Also, one of the most widely used plastics is PLA, polylactic acid. Which is made from lactic acid from sugarcane, beets, or cassava, and is biodegradable.

Oil based plastics are generally a lot cheaper than the above though, and they are typically not decomposable. Depending on your use this can be good or bad (I don't want my plastic plumbing pipes to decompose, but other plastics are used up and I want them to decompose)

Behold, a plastic! holds up a rock

But then I got out in the real world, and noticed plastics just falling apart all around -- including stuff that is not intended to fail and which is otherwise still within its useful life.

Like: One year, I bought some used pickle buckets from a local burger joint to use as planters. Within 6 months, they were falling apart: It was easy to break them apart in chunks with my bare hands.

Or the plastics used for cars: They often eventually turn brittle and fall apart, whether interior or exterior. Plastic lenses on USDM cars turn foggy and useless; some types of wire insulation disintegrate. (If we want to talk about environmental cost, can we also talk about the the impact of building a new car?)

In some areas, we once used polybutylene water pipes. These tended to fail and damage homes. There was even a billion-dollar lawsuit about it in the 1990s. It was not good.

Meanwhile, a red Solo cup or a plastic drinking straw, once landfilled, will be there a very long time -- but eventually, they will also decompose.

And the UHMW cutting boards I use in my kitchen will probably outlive my grandchildren's grandchildren before they start falling apart on their own accord.

Plastic isn't always forever, even though some people seem fond of saying that it is. Plastic isn't necessarily cheap, either, even though "cheap plastic" is a common expression -- some plastics are very expensive and resoundingly durable (and there's only partial overlap of these two qualities on a Venn diagram).

The truth is somewhere in the middle, but is rather nuanced and variable and difficult to pin down in absolutes.

But plastic (as a noun) does, broadly speaking, have the material property of being plastic (as an adjective).

But I generally agree. The big issue here is we as a society have moved away from biodegradable packing and distribution. I get it, plastic prevents waste and mold. That's why we use it. It's also dirt cheap. It's a byproduct of oil refining (literally cheaper than water).

The ultimate solution to the plastic problem is making plastic more expensive, and the way to tackle that is by reducing oil consumption. Fortunately, that's sort of just naturally happening.