Some people don’t want to hear this but sometimes accessibility is not sustainable or eco-friendly. Disabled people sometimes need straws, or pre-made meals in plastic containers, or single-use items. Just because you can work with your foods in their least processed and packaged form doesn’t mean everyone else can.
I mean, if we're talking about a more...academic? rigorous? accurate? definition of sustainability, something has to meet human needs to be sustainable. A "sustainable" system that disabled people can't use isn't sustainable. Not distracting from your point just saying that "sustainability" is supposed to actually include the needs of people.
Also. In my opinion it's a good thing we invented plastic. Plastic is good at a lot of things. There are some applications where there really Isn't a more sustainable alternative. A lot of medical equipment needs to be single-use plastic and there's not really a way around it.
When we're talking material properties of a substance, plastic does stuff that other materials can't. It's not brittle. It can be flexible. It can be lightweight. It doesn't expand and contract a bunch with temperature. It can allow light through. And it doesn't corrode or biodegrade, which is bad but it's also good because it doesn't change or become contaminated while you're using it.
The best way I ever saw anybody put this was to say that we should be treating plastic like a precious substance in terms of how thoughtfully we use it, with the focus being on using it for things exactly like this, accommodations for people who really need it. I do see how that could be a little tricky in that by treating something as a precious substance but you run the risk of raising the price and making it inaccessible to the people who most need it, and also the inherent risk that you will wind up gatekeeping accommodations from people who need them and should be able to obtain them easily, but as for the concept of treating plastic as something to be used thoughtfully and with care, I really liked that as a starting point for slightly different way of thinking about it as a necessary material.
YES THIS
We do genuinely NEED plastic for some things! Plastic is amazing! Plastic is also a finite resource!
So it pisses me off that so much plastic is used for things can be made with other materials, usually because it's "cheaper."
I put quotation marks around cheaper because the cost of a thing isn't limited to the monetary price - add in all the damage to the environment and humans in the extraction, processing, and waste of anything made of plastic and the actual lifetime cost is a lot higher than whatever money paid for it.
Plastic has replaced a lot of materials that frankly shouldn't have been replaced, like wool in clothing, because of its "cheapness."
The other thing that makes me angry is packaging. Plastic absolutely should be used to packed food and other things that can spoil! So why are there two layers and a bunch of zip ties on, like, toys or tools? Yes we should ship fragile things in plastic bubble wrap, but also paper or rags would work as well or better for less fragile things! At the very least there should be limits to how much plastic can be in packaging, and it should be actually recyclable.
I believe plastic should be part of our everyday lives. It's an amazing material, and we should use it for all those things, medical and mundane, wherein it is completely unique and necessary. It should be treated as such!