> My local grocery store recently switched to paper bags. So I got curious. Turns out you have to re-use a paper bag 43 times for the energy use to be the same as plastic grocery bags. This is impossible since they are made of paper.

This is true, but thats just one side you of a tradeoff you have to make. The main concern with plastic waste is the duration it takes until it degrades. Also, microplastics are an issue too. And even the plastic waste that makes it to recycling facilities is often impossible to recycle due to the material composition, its often just burned instead, releasing Co2 in the air.

> Then when you look at plastic pollution and see that for the most part North America is quite good at properly disposing of plastic you wonder why we are so obsessed with this as a problem.

> Plastic waste really isn’t a big problem unless you’re talking about developing nations. North America is responsible for about 3% of mismanaged plastic waste. Asia and Africa account for 86% of it.

So are most parts of Europe, but properly disposing the waste is just one part of the equation. The other more challenging part is actually getting rid of the waste we produce. And an important cornerstone of the waste strategy is to export it. In January to June 2018 the US alone exported 150,000 metric tons of plastic waste to Malaysia, 90,000 to Thailand, and a considerable amount to other nations [1]. With the EU countries, its even more extreme with 362,000 tons plastic waste being exported to Malaysia in 2020 [2].

So I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that a significant portion of the plastic waste that is sent to the ocean in developing countries is actually the export of developed nations.

> Don’t get me started on plastic straws. They make up 0.03% of plastic waste in the ocean.

thats true, thats just virtue signaling.

> If we want to make a difference here we should be helping developing nations to better manage their plastic waste so that it doesn’t end up in waterways.

The best way to go into the future is to just quit producing so much plastic waste. Plastic is a great material, its super durable while also being super cheap. That makes it useful for a lot of purposes, but also pretty unsuited for many others. Look at how much (unnecessary) product packaging is made of plastic. It's a material that can easily last decades and is instead used massively used to produce single use items just because of the low price.

My best guess as to why plastic is so massively used:

As the world moves towards renewable electricity sources and away from fossil fuels, plastic production is one of the biggest (growing) markets that will remain interested in oil. Stopping to use plastics that excessively would of course hurt that growth. [3],[4],[5]

> Like many environmental initiatives I worry that we’re more concerned about making ourselves feel better than actually solving the problem.

Unfortunately, that is very often the case. I guess it's easier to make one feel better by sacrificing something like plastic straws instead of actually trying to change the own lifestyle to drive actual change.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/892470/us-exports-plasti...

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1235938/annual-plastic-w...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-petrochemicals-iea-idUSKC...

[4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/664933/oil-demand-plasti...

[5] https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21419505/oil-gas-...