Sometimes makes me consider the question of "optimal human population size" vs just "How MANY humans can the planet support?" Is it all just self-regulating, in ways we have not even considered? We invent things that "inadvertently" kill us or reduce the population size... because some mechanism senses there are "too many of us."
How do we get rid of plastic, or reduce it? Buy food and other things that come in glass containers, rather than plastic. Tastes better, anyway, and is almost infinitely recyclable and reusable. "But it's HEAVY!" Oh, boo-hoo-hoo... "But it BREAKS!" Sure, and maybe there's a lesson to treat things with more respect, and not just as an eternal chain of "throwaways..."