[HN Gopher] California aims to ban recycling symbols on things t...
___________________________________________________________________
California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren't
recyclable
Author : elliekelly
Score : 510 points
Date : 2021-09-09 12:05 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| arwineap wrote:
| It seems like a much simpler solution to have the state impose a
| tax on products that use plastics which CA recycling programs
| cannot process
| nybble41 wrote:
| No need for an actual tax, just make the recycled plastics
| available on the market at cost. If recycling is actually
| useful, and the state isn't doing something stupid like
| subsidizing the production of non-recyclable plastics or
| penalizing the recyclable ones, then the "tax" will be the
| difference between the (presumed lower) price of recycled
| plastic and the price of new plastic.
| arwineap wrote:
| That only works if we can make the recycled plastic cheaper
| than the regular plastic
|
| I don't think the recycling bits remove costs, I think they
| add costs
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > That only works if we can make the recycled plastic
| cheaper than the regular plastic
|
| Then perhaps we shouldn't be recycling that plastic?
| blondie9x wrote:
| These sort of policies are why California leads the world.
| [deleted]
| llsf wrote:
| What does it mean for my friend who has a large recycling symbol
| tattooed ?
| alistairSH wrote:
| About damn time. I've always been confused by the sign - it's on
| pretty much all plastics, but only a fraction are actually
| recyclable. And like many people, I chuck it all in the recycle
| bin and hope some of it gets recycled and that the non-
| recyclables don't screw up the whole works.
|
| It really shouldn't be this hard.
| snarf21 wrote:
| Just fyi, this was _completely intentional_ [1]. There was a
| big concern about increasing plastic use in the 1990s. So, the
| plastics producers started producing ads and adding the
| recycling symbol to plastics. The consumer assumed they were
| doing "good" and left it for the municipalities and recyclers
| to figure out or to just dump in the landfill. A lot of
| plastics can be shredded up and reused to some degree but not
| recycled in the truest sense. I honestly think we need to be
| recycling only aluminum and cardboard (from the curb). We also
| need to start taxing all the excessive plastic packaging and
| single use mindset. As long as convenience is so cheap, we'll
| never consider alternativess.
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-
| misled-...
| bzbarsky wrote:
| > we need to be recycling only aluminum and cardboard
|
| And glass?
| [deleted]
| pr0zac wrote:
| Only about 30% of "recycled" glass is actually recycled in
| the USA and its going down with a lot of municipalities
| removing it from their programs completely.
|
| In short because glass breaks and contaminates paper and
| aluminum plus needs to be sorted by color it costs too much
| to handle and economics are more important than
| environmental externalities.
| snarf21 wrote:
| There are concerns about the weight of glass (energy cost),
| the energy required to create and recycle, the likelihood
| that even things like "reusing beer bottles by just
| washing" have risks with glass chipping or having cracks
| that extra costs to reuse. I'm less up to speed on all of
| these costs and risks so take with a grain of salt.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > energy cost
|
| It takes less energy to melt recycled glass than to make
| new glass from sand.
| nipponese wrote:
| More strangely, it's on many styrofoam packaging products.
| malexw wrote:
| Styrofoam actually is recyclable, though you'd have to check
| with your local municipality to see if it's accepted. For
| example, it's listed as a "blue bin" item in Toronto:
| https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-
| organics-...
| avh02 wrote:
| there are some biodegradable packing peanuts that someone
| like me thought was styrofoam - a way to tell is to take
| one and see if it "melts" in warm water...
|
| I THINK those can go in compost, but I'd check your local
| regulations
| stevesearer wrote:
| It is recyclable here in Santa Barbara, but you have to
| take it to the recycling center yourself.
| taf2 wrote:
| I stopped putting a lot of plastic in the recycle bin. The main
| reason because it's not recyclable - you're just increasing the
| cost to recycle. It needs to be sorted out and as a result cost
| more... It feels bad but I think it is better... For example a
| cereal box - has the plastic inside and the paper outside... I
| take the plastic out into the trash and put the paper into the
| recycle...
| robotnixon wrote:
| Whoever is picking up your recycling will have info on what
| can and cannot be recycled. If you're concerned I'd reach out
| to them and they should be able to give you a list of
| recyclable items. For me they only accept plastics with a
| number in the symbol except numbers 3 and 6, no plastic bags,
| and items must be thoroughly cleaned.
|
| It's also regional, so friends of mine a few cities away have
| a totally different list of what they can recycle because its
| based on the capabilities of the facility it ends up at.
| mook wrote:
| I'm surprised that they would accept symbol 7 ("other") in
| recycling for you.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_codes
| dboreham wrote:
| It's much more confusing and stupid than that. You can't
| rely on the symbol and the number because the forming
| process used on items like bottles and clamshell packages
| affects whether they can be recycled or not (which in
| addition is a function of the local recycling processes,
| which vary). I found this out because our recycling center
| posted notices saying that only bottles with narrow necks
| can be recycled, and if they find more than a fraction of
| the "wrong" plastic in a batch, it all goes to the
| landfill.
| jacknews wrote:
| It's astonishing that this symbol is allowed to used on non-
| recyclable products in the first place.
| caturopath wrote:
| The generous interpretation is that in these cases it's
| generally _possible_ to recycle the material, and the company
| is noting that and may well think it would be a really good
| idea of someone _did_ recycle the things, even though
| realistically it ain 't happening.
|
| The bar set by the bill is much higher than 'could be
| recycled'. It "ban[s] companies from using the arrows symbol
| unless they can prove the material is in fact recycled in most
| California communities, and is used to make new products."
| mrweasel wrote:
| Yeah, I got the same angry feeling that I get when a company
| write: "Made with real chocolate". Well... no you don't have to
| write that, it's the product made with fake chocolate that
| should have a label.
|
| Why would you even put a recycling label on a non-recyclable
| product, unless you're an asshole.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Most recyclable plastic that's collected isn't even recycled
| anymore.
|
| We might be better off burying it as a carbon sink.
| ___luigi wrote:
| Before reading this article, I thought it was trivial "recycling
| symbol is used for recyclable items", and "no recycling symbol
| means that the item is not recyclable", why do they allow them to
| mis-use it (or mis-use any symbol) in first place?.
| overcast wrote:
| Because companies probably found through research, that adding
| a recycle symbol, increases revenue by some percentage.
| echopurity wrote:
| The whole movement to recycle plastic was an industry scam to
| knowingly profit from destroying the planet.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dk3NOEgX7o
| q1w2 wrote:
| Because different cities have the ability to recycle different
| types of resin. So the number in the middle of the symbol is
| used by the recycling plant to separate what can and cannot be
| recycled.
|
| The ridiculous part is that recycling plastic generates more
| carbon that making new plastic, and burying it is actually a
| great way to sequester CO2.
|
| So the entire plastic recycling effort has been discovered to
| be counter-productive.
| mperham wrote:
| Why can't the AG sue based on false advertising?
| swiley wrote:
| I hope they're not confusing the resin symbols with the recycling
| symbol.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| Who is "They" that you hope are not confused? Are you worried
| about the legislators and their expert advisors?
|
| Certainly some experts at least are academically aware that
| U+2672 [?], three clockwise arrows in a triangle, recycling
| symbol which indicates the product can be recycled or is
| accepted by curbside recycling pickup programs, is not the same
| as U+2676 [?], three clockwise arrows in a triangle with a tiny
| number inside indicating LDPE resin, which typically means the
| product is not accepted for recycling.
|
| But this is not common knowledge. I hope you're not confused
| into thinking that the average consumer knows the difference
| between the resin symbols and the recycling symbol!
| asoneth wrote:
| Clearly the resin identification code and the recycling symbol
| are causing consumer confusion due to the fact that almost
| everyone confuses them.
|
| The US Society of the Plastics Industry designed their resin
| identification code in 1988 and made it similar to the
| recycling symbol which had been in use since 1970, even though
| many of the plastics thus labeled were not generally
| recyclable.
|
| According to wikipedia[1] they eventually changed the RIC
| "chasing arrows" to a solid triangle in 2013 to address
| consumer confusion, but I still see a lot of plastics sporting
| the chasing arrow symbol.
|
| I hope efforts like California's succeed so that the recycling
| symbol can be reserved for products that can be recycled in
| practice. (i.e. there are more than a token number of municipal
| facilities that process that type of plastic into a reusable
| form)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
| marcosdumay wrote:
| By 88 there weren't many products using the recycling symbol
| on their labels. The resin identification symbols were the
| first ones to get widespread usage, and I imagine they used
| the arrows because they are about recycling, even if they
| don't mean "this product is recyclable".
|
| The ideas about government policy on product labeling became
| popular a bit later than that, and the resin identification
| codes, together with food nutritional values were the main
| responsible for that.
| asoneth wrote:
| > by [19]88 there weren't many products using the recycling
| symbol on their labels.
|
| My understanding[1] is that in the 1970s the paper industry
| was the first to adopt a three-arrow symbol for paper
| products that could be recycled and later a slightly
| different three-arrow symbol for products that were made
| _from_ recycled paper products. These seem in alignment
| with consumer understanding of the symbol. I also recall
| seeing the three arrow recycling symbol on bins at school
| in the 1980s so it was certainly in use by that point.
|
| > I imagine they used the arrows because they are about
| recycling
|
| Had resin identification codes restricted their use of the
| three-arrow design to plastics that were widely recyclable
| or products made from recycled plastic then I would have no
| issue. But some of the resin symbols (e.g. 7) essentially
| mean "not recyclable" and that is obviously causing
| confusion to consumers because people keep putting them in
| the plastic recycling.
|
| It's confusing enough that the recycling center near me
| provides the following guidance: "The numbers on plastics
| are not great indicators of whether something can be
| recycled in a typical recycling program. Our advice is to
| think about the shape of your plastics. If they are clean
| and empty plastic bottles, jars, jugs or tubs, they are
| what we are looking for!"
|
| > even if they don't mean "this product is recyclable"
|
| Using a symbol to mean the exact opposite of its
| conventional meaning seems liable to cause consumer
| confusion.
|
| [1] https://medium.com/@shengmorni/1970-ad0c58b5a9dc
| q1w2 wrote:
| The Resin code was designed to help with recycling to
| determine what can be recycled.
|
| It says so in the article you linked. It's the last column on
| the first chart.
| asoneth wrote:
| The charitable interpretation is that their original intent
| of using the well-known recycling symbol around the resin
| code was to provide consumers with information to help them
| recycle more effectively.
|
| However the fact that recycling programs (at least in my
| state) advise consumers to ignore the number and focus on
| the shape of the plastic means that (at least in my state)
| these symbols are not serving their intended purpose.
|
| For example, many forms of polyethylene terephthalate are
| not recyclable even if the product is labeled with a
| RIC1/PETE symbol. In fact, the only time the RIC number is
| helpful to me is when confirming that a product is most
| definitely _not_ recyclable. Of course, in those cases the
| use of the three-arrow recycling symbol to indicate a
| product 's non-recycleability seems liable to confuse
| consumers.
| q1w2 wrote:
| > The charitable interpretation is that their original
| intent of using the well-known recycling symbol around
| the resin code was to provide consumers with information
| to help them recycle more effectively.
|
| This isn't the "charitable interpretation" - this was the
| stated and official purpose of the symbols with the
| numbers.
| mywittyname wrote:
| In reality, it the resin code was a deliberate attempt to
| confuse consumers by the plastics industry to prevent
| consumers from making an informed decision to move away
| from plastic packaging on the grounds of it's bad for the
| environment.
|
| Similar to how the junk food industry is all about telling
| people to "balance what you eat and what you do", and
| shrinking portion sizes while also selling "shareable"
| packs. They are trying to avoid customer ire and/or
| regulations against them.
| q1w2 wrote:
| This is a cynical opinion that isn't based on any facts.
|
| unless you have evidence of this "great resin code
| conspiracy"?
| corpo_punisho wrote:
| Why were they allowed to change their symbol to resemble the
| recycling symbol?
| sp332 wrote:
| The recycling symbol is in the public domain. It's not even
| trademarked.
| corpo_punisho wrote:
| That doesn't mean the plastics industry should be able to
| pass off their materials as recyclable. This is is a good
| move by California.
| recursive wrote:
| As a regular guy who sometimes decides to put things in the
| recycling or the trash, I _absolutely_ am confusing them. I had
| no idea, until reading this comment, that those are separate
| things. Now I don 't understand anything.
| gruez wrote:
| That's exactly what's happening. They're banning the use of the
| resin symbol unless it's also recyclable (by California
| standards), to reduce consumer confusion.
| tantalor wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
| hiidrew wrote:
| smh this is some evil shit. damn plastic industry.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| The resin symbols were purposely made misleading to let
| consumers think that plastic was recyclable even when it
| wasn't. I don't think banning them would be that bad.
| q1w2 wrote:
| No. They were made to help communities separate plastics into
| those that can vs cannot be recycled.
|
| That's why they are on the plastic, and why they have the
| recycle shape.
| throwaway2214 wrote:
| Such a waste of time.
|
| Now we will spend a decade arguing which plastic is really
| recyclable, and if you can recycle it once is it enough, or
| should be 2 times? or does it degrade on its own? bio plastic
| (which turns out sometimes is worse than current common plastic)
| and etc.
|
| Coca Cola's 'Please Recycle' on the caps makes me boil with rage,
| how about 'Please Don't Make it'?
|
| There must be supply chain changes, probably 95% of my plastic is
| from the supermarket, it is increasingly more difficult to buy
| without plastic.
|
| This must be banned, it will take decades until the free market
| regulates itself.
| Jesus_piece wrote:
| The free market does not regulate itself. The big plastic
| producers have lobbied and muddled the waters endlessly to
| confuse the public and blame consumers on their awful
| environment damaging products. Less than 10% of all plastics
| across the world have ever been recycled
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-p...
| throwaway2214 wrote:
| i think it will regulate as the new generation is growing to
| be more and more aware, and they (hopefully) they will hurt
| the plastic producer's bottom line, but it is super slow, and
| this is assuming that plastic producer's propaganda wont grow
| in sophistication
|
| look how long it took for tabacco, and it still lost despite
| all the lobbying, but it is incredibly slow
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Even tobacco is still going strong after all these years of
| exposure to the reality (and ads on rehab programs).
| skybrian wrote:
| You should follow the local rules on recycling. Only the
| company picking up the recycling knows what they can really
| handle.
|
| Unfortunately this information isn't always as easy as it
| should be to look up. It should be a simple web search away.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they
| can really handle.
|
| Yes unfortunately they never tell you. Sure they'll tell you
| the easy stuff like cardboard, paper, cans etc. But there's a
| near infinite variety of stuff that you _might_ be able to
| recycle. What about a metal coathanger? What about a plastic-
| coated metal coathanger? Etc.
|
| We have to put paper and cardboard in different containers.
| What about card? No idea!
| skybrian wrote:
| If they don't explicitly say they can take it, assume it's
| not recyclable.
| IshKebab wrote:
| I doubt that is true. Surely anything with significant
| metal content is separated magnetically for example.
| _Card_ isn 't explicitly mentioned but I'm pretty sure if
| they can recycle cardboard and paper then they can
| recycle card.
| skybrian wrote:
| This is an example of "aspirational recycling" where you
| guess what they will do.
|
| Unfortunately we never get any feedback about whether we
| were right or wrong. It could all be sent to the landfill
| and we will never know.
| throwaway2214 wrote:
| Here they mainly incinerate it, and the goal is to make 25%
| recyclable by 2030 (which is for some definition of
| recyclable).
|
| The reality is: reduce, reuse, recycle, where recycle is
| absolutely last resort and I actually consider it harmful as
| it releases some kind of valve from people, and they think
| everything is going to be alright.
| [deleted]
| alex_young wrote:
| Why don't we ban the production or import of products which can't
| be reused or recycled, and for which alternatives exist?
|
| For instance, soda bottles. We used to have a closed loop system
| for these. All of the bottles were glass, the same dimension and
| color, and one exchanged them at the store you purchased them at.
| Similar systems exist in other countries for beer and wine
| bottles.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _For years, the United States also shipped much of its plastic
| waste overseas, choking local rivers and streams. A global
| convention now bans most trade in plastic waste_
|
| Most of this article is fine, but I can't believe this specific
| misinformation continues to be printed.
|
| Exported plastic waste virtually entirely goes into _landfills_
| overseas, or is incinerated.
|
| Whereas the waste choking local rivers and streams e.g. in Asia
| is virtually entirely _local_ waste -- people littering, etc.
|
| I'm 100% on the side of the environment -- which is why I want us
| to make policy based on actual fact, so efforts go towards what
| actually matters.
| titzer wrote:
| > Exported plastic waste virtually entirely goes into landfills
| overseas, or is incinerated.
|
| You are just hoping this is the case. With absolutely no way to
| verify this, you are just spreading more misinformation. I can
| attest from personal experience that many of those countries
| are hopelessly inept, corrupt, and unable to handle the entire
| incoming volume. They can't even handle their own "domestically
| produced"[1] garbage.
|
| The facts are that an estimated _8 million tons_ of plastic
| waste enter the oceans every year, with the majority of that
| waste coming from the _exact same_ countries to which the US
| exports its plastic waste. There are definitely unscrupulous
| importers who just dump the crap right back into the ocean.
|
| [1] Of course, most of these countries are not producing their
| own local plastic. They are actually importing those goods too!
| We sell them food wrapped in garbage, and pure garbage too.
| What a deal for them!
| Cd00d wrote:
| You're making an interesting point, but I do wish you'd support
| it. You're making a a counter-claim to TFA, but you don't have
| more credibility than the Times.
|
| I would love some validation that our exported plastic waste
| goes into landfills, as you're stating, but I'm also skeptical
| that _all_ the places we ship waste to have well designed
| landfills with proper water runoff management.
| honksillet wrote:
| Well when waste is shipped, it is compacted and bailed. If it
| ends up not in a landfill, recycled or incincerated it is a
| deliberate act of illegal dumping.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The loophole was that people didn't ship recycling, they
| just shipped trash.
|
| People still pay good money for recycled plastic, but
| apparently it was too much of an incentive for people to
| knowingly ship in mixed trash, use low cost workers to
| extract a few highly valuable elements in hazardous
| conditions and burn or discard the rest.
|
| Yes, most of the consumer trash in local rivers will be
| from locals, but its still not great to have a mismanaged
| landfill of plastic near you thats full of inported trash.
| dieortin wrote:
| Could I have a source on the waste on local rivers being local?
| ortusdux wrote:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803
| ejstronge wrote:
| > https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803
|
| I don't see a comment in that article about the original
| provenance of the waste in rivers - can you paste it?
| nashashmi wrote:
| I doubt you can create legislation to ban a symbol from a product
| if you don't hold the trademark rights.
|
| However they can create a new symbol and legislate what products
| are eligible for that symbol.
|
| Edit: I stand corrected. There are other paths for this
| legislation
| sokoloff wrote:
| I think this is a bad law for other reasons, but do believe
| that CA has (read: should have) standing to say "packages
| bearing these marks, which the Legislature believes mislead CA
| consumers, cannot be sold at retail in CA".
| torstenvl wrote:
| > _I doubt you can create legislation to ban a symbol from a
| product if you don't hold the trademark rights._
|
| Uhhh... where do you think trademark rights come from, if not
| legislation?
| dubcanada wrote:
| You can create legislation to do what ever you want, it's up to
| the courts to decide if it is valid or not.
| obblekk wrote:
| Wouldn't this violate free speech laws? I'm all for regulation to
| disclose information, but regulation to prevent people from
| saying something is a bit more dicey.
|
| Even trademarks to an extent feel unfair (should you really be
| unable to say the word Google in a TV Ad?).
| caturopath wrote:
| There are lots of exceptions to free speech: false advertising,
| all manner of fraud, libel, falsely shouting fire in a theatre,
| incitement of violence, etc.
|
| You can say "Google" in a TV ad without violating their
| trademark. You can't use the word "Google" in every way (you
| can't pretend to be Google so people trust you, for instance).
| The legal thing that causes folks to be scared of doing this in
| practical situations is being sued for libel, not trademark
| infringement.
|
| Do you think that false nutrition facts should be printable on
| the same crinkly plastic packaging as a misleading recycling
| symbol?
| nybble41 wrote:
| The issue is prior restraint. If you sell someone a product
| marked in such as way as to create an expectation that it
| will be recyclable, taking no steps to dispel that belief,
| and it turns out not to be recyclable, then you've committed
| fraud. The buyer would have a legitimate claim against you
| for any costs which resulted from the product not being
| recyclable, for example if they had to pay extra to dispose
| of it as garbage rather than recycling. This is _not_ the
| same as saying that it ought to be illegal to apply the
| recycling symbol to the product in the first place, since
| merely applying the symbol is not a sufficient condition to
| qualify as fraud. For example, there could be an accompanying
| disclaimer (or expectation that a "reasonable person" would
| know) that while the product _is_ recyclable, it may not be
| permitted in the regular recycling bins in the buyer 's
| region.
| himinlomax wrote:
| False advertising is not protected speech, not any more than
| defamation.
| bacan wrote:
| I don't get why are things allowed to be sold, without ensuring
| the packaging is 100% recyclable
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| From my European point of view, the problem is not necessarily
| the almost invisible symbol but the government endorsement of
| recycling. Being forced to collect rubbish in some centralised
| way with tons of stupid rules made me think that recycling was
| working and that plastic was a relatively green choice (for
| something coming from oil).
|
| This propagated down in the economy with brands using more and
| more plastic in the last 30 years. Everything is plastic
| nowadays, even what used to be glass (like milk containers).
|
| Both government and mainstream media were all about people
| following all the dumb rules (I wonder how many hours of lost
| productivity we collectively lost as a species) or you hated the
| planet.
|
| In the last few of years it turned out recycling is mostly
| useless, even if we had the evidence for it since the beginning.
| Most of it is unrecyclable, some of it get shipped to China to
| burn, a minor part of plastic gets recycled (and it can even be
| recycled a limited amount of times).
|
| The government trying to intervene now is doing too little too
| late. The only thing I can understand is that big oil bought our
| governments officials and media. What they bought is 30 years to
| make money selling oil and enough time to shift their investment
| to something greener for the next cycle of corruption and
| profiteering.
|
| Incidentally I know a family in the oil business and the new
| generation is investing the family empire in renewables,
| pocketing all the government's incentives for solar energies,
| while they're at it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _I know a family in the oil business and the new generation
| is investing the family empire in renewables, pocketing all the
| government 's incentives for solar energies, while they're at
| it._
|
| This is actually reassuring to hear. It's an indication that
| maybe, just maybe, the oil industry won't hold on to their
| current source of profits all the way until it's too late.
| Ottolay wrote:
| Aluminum and steel actually make quite a bit of sense to
| recycle. The big energy cost is in the processing of ore to
| metal. Re-melting the metal is relatively low energy.
| clairity wrote:
| > "Both government and mainstream media were all about people
| following all the dumb rules (I wonder how many hours of lost
| productivity we collectively lost as a species) or you hated
| the planet."
|
| that applies word-for-word to covid measures. almost none of
| them do much in practice, but there has to be a bevy of rules
| to keep us mollified and distracted from the raw machinations
| of power and money.
| Steltek wrote:
| I would much rather incentivize non-plastic alternative
| packaging. Consumers should have better options for metal cans,
| glass bottles, etc for mainstream goods, as those materials are
| far more effective targets for recycling. But they're no where
| near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't
| account for the total lifecycle.
| jedimastert wrote:
| While we're at it, can we get rid of cloth packaging that isn't
| explicitly made to be reused? Like how Tom's come in a box and
| _a cloth bag inside of that box_! It 's so resource intensive;
| it's like the definition of virtue signalling.
| tantalor wrote:
| What do you think virtue signaling is?
| alistairSH wrote:
| I agree that we must incentivize packaging that's better for
| the environment. The problem is who gets to define "better".
| Cloth bags were once thought to be better than plastic for
| grocery use, but that might not be the case - the cloth has a
| larger environmental cost to produce (cotton is water-
| intensive) and has to be used a lot more than one might expect
| before it surpasses the basic plastic bag. And if the plastic
| bag is reused a few times, then used as a garbage liner, it's
| cost is reduced quite a bit.
|
| It's really not easy for a consumer to figure out what's
| better.
| twoodfin wrote:
| Letting the price mechanism work (externalities accounted
| for) is a great way to do this.
| [deleted]
| ceh123 wrote:
| > externalities accounted for
|
| Well yeah, that's kinda where the problem is. How do we
| price in all the different kinds of externalities for
| cotton bags and plastic bags in a way that is consistent
| and everyone agrees with?
|
| Debating these externalities and how they should be
| accounted for is exactly the hard problem the parent
| comment was talking about.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| A carbon tax would go a long way, even if it wouldn't
| capture everything.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I agree - but that isn't a consumer decision (not a
| decision made at the time of consumption). A government
| agency has to determine the cost of the externalities
| (where the science and economics isn't easy) and then set
| taxes accordingly (not always politically viable).
| nybble41 wrote:
| _Taxes_ are not the right answer. If you are impacted by
| a negative externality then you have legitimate standing
| to sue the source of the externality in civil court
| (individually or as a group) in accordance with how much
| the side effects of their actions cost you. If you can 't
| demonstrate that you were actually affected, or the
| damage is too trivial to be worth taking to court, then
| for all practical purposes there is no externality and
| the government has no business getting involved.
| alistairSH wrote:
| In theory, that works. In practice, I can't afford enough
| lawyers to take on Big Business. I'm also not sure how I
| prove damages for something like climate change. But yet
| climate change is real. And by the time I have obvious
| damages, it will be too late.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Civil courts are not equipped to deal with this issue. At
| best you will get a lot of very rich lawyers. At worst
| you will get inaction _and_ a lot of very rich lawyers.
|
| Taxes are a traditional way of pricing in a market
| externality. It seems appropriate here.
| nybble41 wrote:
| _Politicians_ are not equipped to properly assess the
| externality incurred in each case and see that the
| affected party is compensated in accordance with the
| degree to which they were affected. Taxes paint with a
| very broad brush, do nothing to compensate the victims,
| and essentially make the government an accomplice in the
| externality--once the tax is in place, anything which
| actually _reduced_ the externality will negatively impact
| their revenue.
| stickfigure wrote:
| It is impossible to enumerate the individuals affected by
| carbon output. So who cares about compensation?
|
| The point of taxing carbon is simply to get less carbon.
| Full stop. Economists ( _especially_ the free-market
| economists!) broadly agree that it will work. Why are we
| still having this conversation?
| CWuestefeld wrote:
| Better, the government agency could be removing the
| reason that the cost can be externalized in the first
| place.
|
| Admittedly, this is difficult to do for resource
| extraction or pollution costs. But consider that we can
| recover the costs of pollution in the ground and (to a
| lesser extent) the water. The reason we can't internalize
| the cost of CO2 emissions is because we won't recognize
| any ownership interest in the air. I'm not sure how to do
| that either, but I'm hopeful that we could think of
| _something_ if we 'd at least acknowledge this.
| aeturnum wrote:
| Using cloth bags as an example feels so frustrating to me
| because banning them seems to so obviously be addressing
| things other than the embodied carbon represented by the
| particular container you bring your groceries home with.
|
| A low-quality, low-reuse solution will almost always be the
| lower carbon solution if you analyze it from the point where
| someone picks up the product. It also ignores the question of
| if the embodied carbon in bags is a large factor (I doubt it)
| and sets aside the question of the impact of generating and
| disposing of many plastic bags. The latter question is
| further complicated by comparing how we could, in theory,
| design an efficient and environmental disposal system v.s.
| the patchwork reality of the world and the plastic shoals in
| the oceans.
| peapicker wrote:
| I bought five cloth bags (strong canvas) at my food co-op in
| 1992. Still using them now, 28 years and many washes and many
| many shopping trips later.
|
| I agree that some of the lighter weight 'cloth-like' bags
| made today would not be able to stand that duty cycle.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Washing them increases their impact.
|
| Might be better overall still, but that's the direction it
| goes in.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I also use fabric bags, most of which were acquired at no-
| extra-cost when purchasing other things. Some are quite HD
| and I expect they'll last a decade or more. But, some are
| quite flimsy and not something I would purchase on its own.
|
| I suspect that HD hemp bags (or some other blend of
| material) are the best option, but finding a definitive
| answer isn't easy. It appears the lighter cotton bags need
| to be used for two decades to account for the cost of
| farming the cotton - and many won't last that long before
| they begin to fail.
| miniatureape wrote:
| https://theconversation.com/heres-how-many-times-you-
| actuall...
|
| Links to two studies which place the number of times you
| must reuse a cotton bag between 130-7100 times.
| mc32 wrote:
| Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of
| energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might
| last 20 uses. Glass is also much heavier requiring more energy
| to transport.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Places with cheap energy (e.g,. the Columbia River with
| hydroelectric power) could inexpensively recycle glass,
| aluminum.
|
| Of course it does take energy to get the recyclables to these
| places. Curious -- are trains no longer efficient?
| bequanna wrote:
| > Places with cheap energy...
|
| I've always wondered about colocating manufacturing near
| cheap power sources. Is this actually possible? Isn't the
| power generated already being used? If it is possible, why
| doesn't every manufacturing plant just do this to reduce a
| huge input cost?
| Ekaros wrote:
| Energy transfer losses are pretty marginal around 2%.
| Compared to labour availability, shipping resources and
| products; and land, it is not so big deal. Unless it's
| very energy intensive industry.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Pretty sure aluminum extraction plants do this. As well
| as Bitcoin miners. ;-)
|
| Recently ... where was I, Eugene, Oregon? There was a
| shuttered Coca Cola bottling plant. I remember a huge one
| in Kansas City as well. Maybe someone with expertise can
| weigh in -- but it seems like we used to, as an example,
| bottle things a lot more locally. It meant factory jobs
| in the area, transportation (of Coke) was shorter since
| there was probably a bottling plant in your state (or a
| neighboring one).
|
| I don't know. I feel a lot was lost.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Most major metro areas in the US continue to have soft
| drink bottling plants (though they're using plastic
| bottles and aluminum cans these days), since transporting
| huge volumes of water is more expensive than smaller
| amounts of flavoring and coloring. Eugene OR (pop ~175K)
| may be slightly too small for that to be practical, but
| here in Portland I bike to work past two active bottling
| plants.
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| In every part of Canada I've lived in there has been a well
| developed reuse system. In Ontario, for example, a beer
| bottle is used around 100 times on average. Reuse should be
| way better integrated into our systems. If I could bring a
| resuable bag back to any supermarket to get the $1 fee back,
| it would be so much easier to justify buying reusable bags
| that really last a long time. The trouble is I never remember
| to bring it with me in the morning before work and I grocery
| shop on my way back home.
| fnimick wrote:
| I keep a couple in every bag I use regularly (gym bag, work
| bag, briefcase, etc) so I'm never without if I decide to
| stop by the store on the way home. That way you don't have
| to proactively remember to bring it!
| arsome wrote:
| Beer bottles are typically only reused if you say, bring
| them to The Beer Store or something similar.
|
| If you toss them in your municipal bin like me, my
| understanding is they basically just smash them and use the
| glass bits in other products like asphalt as it's just not
| worth the energy cost to actually recycle it.
|
| Aluminum cans are probably a better bet for recycling if
| you're just using the municipal bins. They're profitable
| enough that people routinely come steal the cans from my
| bins.
| cloverich wrote:
| But if the bottles, or even a subset of them, were
| standardized, it would be possible to have some bottle
| specific re-use (not recycle) programs. OP was I think
| giving an example of one that works. Perhaps it would be
| possible to extend it. I can understand there are some
| product specific's that limit this in some cases, but if
| I drink beer and topo chico and a few other similar
| drinks, it seems unlikely they couldn't all use the same
| bottle.
| mc32 wrote:
| A lot of beer bottles conform to an industry standard
| (the ones with paper labels where anyone can slap their
| own label) and get reused. However, the reuse frequency
| is from 15 to 20 times before they begin to fail
| inspection tests and have to be taken out of circulation
| (and recycled or dumped). Recycling that glass is
| expensive. The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov
| is that its inert and does not react with contents.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that
| its inert and does not react with contents.
|
| This is a pretty significant advantage, but the
| disadvantage is that sometimes you drop it.
| gruez wrote:
| >In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100
| times on average.
|
| fact check: no, only 15
|
| https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_avera
| g...
| 3pt14159 wrote:
| Oh, ok thanks for updating my view. I clearly remember
| hearing it was 99% but must be either misremembering or
| the original source was wrong. I'd still rather have re-
| use via glass or recycling via aluminum than plastic.
| [deleted]
| loonster wrote:
| My family stores the bags in the trunk of our car. They are
| always available for random shopping trips. Public
| transportation would make reusable bags much more
| inconvenient for our family.
| hatchnyc wrote:
| You are not wrong, but in some countries they collect, wash,
| and and reuse glass (and even special kinds of plastic)
| bottles. According to my parents that used to be standard
| practice in the United States. Someone should do the math
| first obviously but it seems like a great idea to me. If
| bottling is done locally you aren't transporting the bottles
| long distance, and quite significantly in my mind glass is
| inert so if it does get into the environment, it isn't
| leaching microplastics into the environment for the next
| thousand years.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| >According to my parents that used to be standard practice
| in the United States.
|
| You're making me feel old. I used to sort bottles as a kid.
|
| Soft drinks are just another example of gigantism in
| corporate life, economy of scale uber alles. There was a
| time when practically every small town had one or more
| bottling plants, the owners were pillars of the community
| sponsoring softball teams and the like. Delivery trucks
| typically had shelving rather than bays.
|
| Following that there was a huge spate of consolidation.
| Small distributors/bottlers had their franchises taken
| away, canning became owned by the mothership and absolutely
| huge. The more centralized the more of a pain it becomes to
| sort/return/clean bottles.
|
| I suppose it's like the history of car dealerships as they
| become fewer and larger. For that matter, a significant
| (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed
| instead of wage slaves.
| gruez wrote:
| > For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of
| the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves.
|
| Are you sure that's not just due to people moving away
| from agriculture? A family farm is a thing, but not
| really a family factory.
| panzagl wrote:
| More likely retail- in my town the bookstore, stationary
| store, newsstand, hardware stores, etc. were all family
| owned until the big box stores opened up two towns over.
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| Both (farming and retail) of course.
|
| When I was a kid the only businesses I can remember being
| non-locally owned were a Safeway and branches of two
| state-wide banks. This is in a town of 20k or so (at the
| time). There were small local manufacturing firms, 100%
| of restaurants were local (no chains), nearly all grocery
| stores were family owned, you could still make a living
| as a rancher.
|
| Obviously there were franchises (gas stations, a small
| Sears store mostly for catalog ordering) but not very
| many.
|
| The difference from modern times is remarkable.
| mc32 wrote:
| And local druggists whose pharmacies also provided other
| services. It's not a particularly American thing, this
| transformation is everywhere --that does not imply it's
| good for everyone.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Finland has that system for glass bottles. Plastic bottles
| also are in system but those are shredded and aluminium is
| crushed. Used to be that they were washed and re-used, but
| I think there were some calculations that it was worse than
| single use... Or might have been some EU thing...
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > But they're no where near competitive with plastic because
| the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle.
|
| I don't know what you mean by this.
|
| If you bottle stuff into PET bottles (the usual stuff, being
| shredded after one use), then you have to buy one new PET
| bottle for each bottle you produce.
|
| If you bottle stuff into reusable glass bottles (98+ % returned
| intact, cleaned and reused), then you mostly don't buy new
| bottles, just replacements for bottles falling out of the cycle
| (reuse limit reached, not returned, broken).
|
| Why and by what mechanism would the price of a single new glass
| bottle account for the lifecycle of the bottle? It just doesn't
| make sense to me.
| RyEgswuCsn wrote:
| I think what the parent comment meant was that for the
| environmental impact of producing and transporting a glass
| bottle (glassware are heavy), one can produce and transport
| many PET bottles. The ratio can be high enough to the point
| where producing a glass bottle is more environmental
| impactful if they are not reused enough.
|
| For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0
| p_j_w wrote:
| >I would much rather
|
| Why not both? Is one mutually exclusive of the other?
| tmountain wrote:
| "the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle"
|
| Until that issue is addressed, plastic will reign supreme.
| elliekelly wrote:
| I think this is the goal of Maine's new recycling law (briefly
| mentioned in the article) where manufacturers are responsible
| for the cost of recycling. Although I'm not sure Maine's law
| really allocates the full social cost of plastics:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/maine-bec...
| m0llusk wrote:
| Correctly labeling materials could be a firm foundation from
| which to base incentive programs.
| burkaman wrote:
| One way to incentivize recyclable packaging would be to make it
| illegal for companies to put a symbol on their non-recyclable
| plastic packaging that 98% of consumers associate with
| recycling.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I favor letting them do whatever they want, and then charging
| them whatever it costs to recycle, pick up, and/or safely
| dispose of the packages.
|
| No opportunity to blame the consumer or play games.
|
| Make the "this is not recyclable" message small and fuzzy and
| green next to a planet giving the thumbs up? I dont care,
| because you'll be getting the bill for every senior citizen
| you confuse.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Isn't part of the problem though that recycling facilities
| vary greatly in capability or breadth in the things they can
| manage, and are necessarily regional? Couple that with the
| fact that some facilities turn functionality on or off
| depending on market prices at any given time (esp. with say
| single use plastic grocery bags).
|
| I mean, a #n plastic may be easily recycled with your
| curbside pickup, but be a processing issue with mine. I don't
| know how that can be handled better.
| burkaman wrote:
| > Products would be considered recyclable if CalRecycle,
| the state's recycling department, determines they have a
| viable end market and meet certain design criteria,
| including not using toxic chemicals.
|
| I think that's reasonable. If a particular material is
| viable for recycling but many facilities can't handle it,
| CalRecycle can work with them to resolve the issue. They'll
| probably update the standard every few years, so producers
| don't need to worry about the rules changing every week as
| market prices fluctuate.
|
| It's certainly better than allowing companies to slap a
| recycling symbol on any kind of plastic just because the
| technology to recycle it exists somewhere in the world.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| Further - I don't understand why we don't just have mandated
| bottle/jar form factors.
|
| We broke the fucking loop by claiming that people could just
| throw plastic containers away and "somewhere, somehow (over
| the rainbow!!!) people will recycle them into new goods".
| That story is bullshit - even for most plastics that _can_
| actually be recycled.
|
| I want legislation that lays out a set of standardized form
| factors that are as re-usable as possible (NOT RECYCLABLE -
| Literally washable and reusable), and if companies use those
| - great! No extra taxes for you.
|
| Want to use your own custom packaging? Fine, but you pay for
| the whole fucking product lifecycle up front, before the
| customer ever touches it: Collection, Cleaning,
| Recycling/Disposal, Reprocessing, Redistribution. The EU
| estimates those costs for plastic at about 800 EUR ($950) a
| ton.
| gruez wrote:
| >I want legislation that lays out a set of standardized
| form factors that are as re-usable as possible (NOT
| RECYCLABLE - Literally washable and reusable), and if
| companies use those - great! No extra taxes for you.
|
| Is that seriously the impediment to plastic container
| reusability, that they're not standardized? People don't
| reuse plastic containers because there aren't that many
| uses for them around the house.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Good point.
|
| My wife and I went through a period of trying to
| maximally reuse otherwise disposable packaging we had
| around the house, and we quickly discovered two facts:
|
| 1. There's surprisingly many things you can use
| disposable containers for around the house.
|
| 2. Even if you go out of your way to find more uses for
| the waste, in a month or two you'll just run out of
| applications.
|
| The problem of consumer waste is that it's a continuous
| flow of trash. At-home reuse is not a sink, it's a buffer
| - it fills up quickly, so it doesn't alter the overall
| dynamic of the system.
|
| Any waste reuse scheme needs to recirculate it on the
| market - new products need to be put in old packaging.
| rvense wrote:
| The obvious solution is to make it possible to bring the
| containers back to the store and refill them with stuff
| you need.
|
| There's a farm close to me that sells eggs and encourages
| you to bring your own tray, but it can easily be extended
| to dry goods.
| duckmysick wrote:
| Not just plastic, but glass too.
|
| I'm canning a lot of vegetables and fruits. I reuse jars
| and lids from store-bought products like mustard or
| mayonnaise. The lids aren't interchangeable. In fact,
| there's a huge variety in the lids' shape, size, and
| thickness. It's especially frustrating when those custom
| lids lose the sealing and grip over time or they rust.
| Hunting an exact replacement is often impossible, so you
| can't reuse this specific jar anymore.
| pwg wrote:
| I read @horsawlarway's comment as "reusable for the
| original use" as in how the US used to have glass soda
| (soft drink) bottles that were collected at stores,
| returned to the bottler, who would wash them out, refill
| them with new soda, and put them back out on store
| shelves or in vending machines.
|
| The return of the empty bottles to the stores was
| incentivized via a ten cent per bottle "deposit" one made
| upon purchase, which one received back when one returned
| the bottle to a store that collected them. This was the
| mid 1970's as well, so that ten cent deposit would be
| about 45 cents per bottle today.
| sroussey wrote:
| Still done at Erewhon for various things they make
| themselves.
| madacol wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if the environmental impact of
| glass bottle maintenance, storage, replenishment-
| production, ends up being higher than the impact of
| single-use plastic bottles
| Jolter wrote:
| Bottle deposits are still in force around the world. For
| instance in parts of the EU. They provide the most
| benefit where they support re-use (glass bottles) but are
| also used for recyclable PET bottles.
| rvense wrote:
| Denmark used to have a system for reusing glass beer
| bottles. There was one standardized size that all the
| breweries used, and they were reused.
|
| At some point in the last decade or so, the system was
| changed so now the glass gets recycled instead. The bottles
| are thinner now (lighter to transport, less material used)
| and allegedly it works out to less impact, based on some
| model.
|
| (Though I've also heard it was mainly because breweries
| wanted to be free to decide the look of their bottles, for
| branding reasons, and something about EU harmonization to
| make it possible to sell imported beers.)
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I agree with the spirit behind your comment, but:
|
| > _The EU estimates those costs for plastic at about 800
| EUR ($950) a ton._
|
| This sounds surprisingly _little_. In this range, making
| companies paid up front will have negligible impact on
| their behavior. Rounding up to $1000 / ton of plastic,
| that'll come out as few cents for most products. E.g. quick
| Googling suggests that an empty 2L bottle of Coca Cola
| weighs about 50 grams, making such tax translate to $0.05
| extra cost to company/consumer. That's negligible, and well
| within the range of the usual business shenanigans
| companies do with prices.
| bko wrote:
| > But they're no where near competitive with plastic because
| the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle.
|
| What's not included in the "total lifecycle" that's not
| accounted for in cost? Presumably these alternative packages
| won't save any landfill space.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/ma1Ob
| s_dev wrote:
| In Ireland there's a recycling symbol for plastic products that
| can be recycled.
|
| But if you put that recycling symbol in a green circle it means
| something else -- "that the companies that produces the product
| is committed to recycling" -- whatever that means.
|
| This to me is beyond infuriating. Absolutely in favor of these
| sorts of measures.
| detritus wrote:
| You mean 'The Green Dot'?
|
| This piece of shit thing? https://www.pro-e.org/the-green-dot-
| trademark
|
| How this has been allowed to exist for so long is beyond my
| ken. The logo should look ENTIRELY different as it's basically
| false-advertising for the vast majority of people who have no
| idea what it actually represents.
|
| - ed spelling
| s_dev wrote:
| >You mean 'The Green Dot'?
|
| Yup -- another business trick is in McDonalds -- the company
| that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100% Irish Beef"
| and thus they put that on the packaging even if the beef
| doesn't come from Ireland.
|
| I've seen this don't with the equivalent of "100% recyclable"
| as the name of the company to pass the product off as
| environmental.
|
| However the main problem is still consumer knowledge of whats
| recyclable. If people think there is a small chance that
| something is recyclable they will throw it in the recycling
| bin -- this is the complete wrong approach. Put everything in
| the trash unless you're 100% sure it's recyclable. Otherwise
| you'll "contaminate" the whole batch like throwing a bad
| apple in on top of a barrel of good apples.
| detritus wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. The recycling trucks here in LDN have a
| campaign on the side of them that has words to the effect
| of "if you're unsure - leave it out!" because as you say,
| even partial contamination screws entire bales of reclaimed
| material.
|
| My eternal bugbear is Pizza boxes. Used greasy pizza boxes
| can often be recycled in many municipalities, BUT only in
| the organic or food waste. Greasy card in the paper
| recycling stream screws everything up.
|
| .
|
| I used to live in a fairly large warehouse community and
| 'made myself responsible for the recycling', so I have
| greyer hair than I should and a slighly less shallow
| awareness than many people of the problems in all this...
| :\
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| What you say, plus occasional reminder to wash your
| recycleables before throwing them into the bin, is why I
| consider the whole recycling scheme to be worthless
| distraction.
|
| Nobody in their right mind has the time and space to
| properly sort and clean the trash. For the rest,
| inefficient use of water and detergent has an
| environmental cost too.
|
| This stuff should be all handled by a combination of
| centralized work at sorting plants and alterations to
| packaging. Containers can be cleaned more efficiently in
| a centralized location, and as for the pizza boxes,
| perhaps it should be mandated that pizza boxes must be
| _fully_ lined with aluminum foil on the inside - this
| would be a win for both recycling _and_ product quality,
| as the pizza would stay warm for longer.
| asiachick wrote:
| Japan, or certain cities in Japan, have pretty complex
| recycling rules, at least relative to California.
|
| You're required to separate glass, PET plastic, other
| plastic, aluminium, clean paper (books, magazines,
| newspaper), burnables (food, soiled paper), unburnables,
| and then also large items and electronics require extra
| fee and an appointment.
|
| Further, it's arguably part of the culture to clean your
| trash. This is probably because burnables are collected
| twice a week, unburnables once a week, recyclables once a
| week, and, if you live in an small apartment complex, of
| which here are many, there is no place to put the trash.
| You're required to store it in your apartment until the
| day of collection, which means if you don't clean it it
| will stink up your apartment.
|
| So, people do have time or make time.
|
| But, I 100% agree with you that this stuff should be
| handled by the trash companies. They could do it much
| more efficiently. They can do it correctly. Having it
| done in a few locations is also much easier to monitor,
| regulate, enforce.
| detritus wrote:
| If you wash up manually in a bowl, you can use the
| remnant liquid to do your recyclable washing before
| pouring it down the sink, but .. well, as you suggest "I
| ain't got no time for that".
|
| As for your pizza box idea, I'm not sure that's not
| simply complicating things - now you'd have two
| independently-recyclable materials tha most consumers
| will simply leave together and dump in the box, leaving
| you with sorting problems, and oil going from foil to
| card anyway.
|
| Also, I think the quality of the pizza might be impacted
| - my gut thinks that a pizza that's allowed to release
| some of its heat/grease into card makes it less squidgy
| and sweaty than one left to sit on foil. I haven't
| researched this though! :)
|
| I mean, for crissakes - a neighbour in my block thinks
| that actual pizza crusts and leftovers are recyclable.
|
| People!
| lfowles wrote:
| I've heard that Pringles tubes (foil lined cardboard with
| plastic lids) are a bit of a recycling nightmare for that
| reason.
| detritus wrote:
| Yep, which brings us full circle here, as Pringles tubes
| prominently display that bloody Green Dot logo. My
| partner likes the occasional Pringle, and she keeps
| putting the used packaging in the recycling.
|
| Drives me nuts!
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > I mean, for crissakes - a neighbour in my block thinks
| that actual pizza crusts and leftovers are recyclable.
|
| Live in an apartment and oh the things people throw into
| the recycling dumpster. Plants, chairs, mattresses,
| clothes, you name it. People toss it into the recycle.
|
| I honestly would not be surprised if 10% of what gets
| tossed into that bin actually gets properly recycled.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| > Nobody in their right mind has the time and space to
| properly sort and clean the trash.
|
| How do folks have time to clean their glasses but don't
| have time to wash a milk bottle or whatever? It takes
| like 15 seconds...
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _How do folks have time to clean their glasses_
|
| They don't. They put it in a dishwasher.
|
| > _It takes like 15 seconds..._
|
| Not counting setup and cleanup times afterwards. Given
| the two are large enough and most packaging isn't
| dishwasher safe, it makes sense to clean a bunch of trash
| in one run, which requires having space for extra trash
| containers at home...
| jdavis703 wrote:
| Wait people batch clean their recyclables? That seems
| more time intensive since the food is going to
| dry/harden. It's much quicker to wash when everything is
| still wet.
| someguy321 wrote:
| 15 seconds isn't worth it.
| littleweep wrote:
| Interesting to come across the word "bugbear" -- would
| you mind sharing which part of the world you are posting
| from? I'm not sure if I've heard that word before.
|
| Edit: is LDN London?
| detritus wrote:
| My apologies! Yes - from the UK, and LDN is short for
| London.
|
| I've somehow gotten myself into the habit of using that
| shortcode over the past few years. I should really stop -
| the energy saved from not using three characters isn't
| really worthwhile :)
| soupajoe wrote:
| They could be posting from the Forgotten Realms part of
| their imagination. It's a Dungeons & Dragons setting
| where Bugbears are abundant.
|
| https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/bugbear
| subandi wrote:
| that's not true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-
| check/mcdonalds-100-beef/
| detritus wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the same problem. I think Parent
| means that beef from elsewhere arrives in Ireland, is
| processed there and becomes 'Irish beef', which is
| clearly a bit of a stretch of the truth.
|
| It's the same in Europe with many types of olive oil -
| much of it is grown and extracted in Iberia, but then
| sent to Italy, etc, for processing, becoming 'Italian'
| olive oil..
|
| Doesn't bother me though - my favourite olive oil comes
| from Spain...
| Closi wrote:
| > I'm not sure that's the same problem. I think Parent
| means that beef from elsewhere arrives in Ireland, is
| processed there and becomes 'Irish beef', which is
| clearly a bit of a stretch of the truth.
|
| The problem is that it isn't true - the 100% British &
| Irish beef is _actually_ beef from Britain & Ireland.
| It's a myth that it's the company name.
|
| English & Irish law on the country of origin of products
| is pretty strong and certinally does not allow processed
| beef from other countries to be labelled/marketed as
| British. Also a 5 minute google search shows this is just
| simply an urban legend.
| subandi wrote:
| Yeah I'm not disputing the general point that some people
| would do something like that. But the specific claim
| about a company called "100% Irish Beef" sounded a bit
| outlandish, so I googled it.
| detritus wrote:
| I can't respond to your response to my response (!). but
| clearly I misread parent's post. d'oh.
|
| As you were!
| anchpop wrote:
| I'm not sure this is true. I've previously heard the exact
| same thing referring about "100% beef" in the US, but
| mcdonalds explicitly says on their website that it isn't
| true [0], which I assume they wouldn't do if it actually
| were true. I can't find anything about "100% irish beef" ,
| but I kind of doubt it's true unless you can find some
| source talking about it.
|
| [0]: https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/18916-is-
| beef-a-...
| Closi wrote:
| > Yup -- another business trick is in McDonalds -- the
| company that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100%
| Irish Beef" and thus they put that on the packaging even if
| the beef doesn't come from Ireland.
|
| This isn't true, it's an urban myth. The original myth was
| actually that a company called "100% beef" was a company
| owned by McDonalds, and this is simply a variant. See:
| https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/18916-is-
| beef-a-...
|
| McDonalds Sourcing Statement - "We work with over 23,000
| British and Irish farmers to source our ingredients. Our
| beef, eggs and milk all come from UK farms."
|
| > I've seen this don't with the equivalent of "100%
| recyclable" as the name of the company to pass the product
| off as environmental.
|
| Can you give a source for a company using this? I can't
| find anything about it online and suspect it's just an
| urban myth like the first one.
| vxNsr wrote:
| > _If people think there is a small chance that something
| is recyclable they will throw it in the recycling bin --
| this is the complete wrong approach. Put everything in the
| trash unless you 're 100% sure it's recyclable._
|
| I disagree with this, there are some municipalities that
| will fine you for putting recycling in the regular trash.
| donarb wrote:
| > Yup -- another business trick is in McDonalds -- the
| company that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100%
| Irish Beef" and thus they put that on the packaging even if
| the beef doesn't come from Ireland.
|
| Yea, I'm going to call bullshit on that. "100% Irish Beef"
| is a marketing slogan by Irish beef producers to signify
| that all of their beef comes from Ireland.
| entropyie wrote:
| > However the main problem is still consumer knowledge of
| whats recyclable.
|
| Strongly disagree here. Expecting average consumers to know
| the difference between polypropylene, polyurethane and
| polystyrene etc..., just by _looking_ at something, is
| beyond the pale. That doesn 't even take into account
| bonded materials, like paper coffee cups lined with
| plastic.
|
| The "main problem" is manufacturers / supermarkets using
| any kind of packaging that is not recyclable by default,
| and vague / ever shifting standards from one private waste
| company to the next on what can be recycled.
|
| There should be a massive tax on using non-recyclable
| materials for ordinary packaging, and it should have a
| mandatory skull & crossbones style symbol to show that it
| is hazardous to the environment.
|
| On a positive note, Ireland just pushed through legislation
| to accept all kinds of plastic in recycling bins this week:
| https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/household-
| recycl...
| detritus wrote:
| I strongly feel that governments should intervene and
| mandate a limited subset of plastics - including
| colouration - that can be used for food and beverage
| packaging, etc.
|
| My bottle of sparkling water doesn't _really_ need a
| green top. The bottle itself doesn 't _really_ need to be
| a light colour tint.
|
| Put branding on paper labels, or better yet - go
| monochrome and laser-etch/mark everything. Have QR codes
| on bottles that can have fancy interactive digital
| marketing/advertising/information.
| asiachick wrote:
| That would make it so no one can introduce a better
| plastic
| u801e wrote:
| Pharmaceutical companies still introduce new medications.
| They just need to submit documents/applications to the
| relevant government authorities. The same could be done
| with packaging when trying to introduce a new type.
| asiachick wrote:
| great, super easy for regulatory capture. Just bribe the
| inspector to not approve your competitors.
| uuddlrlr wrote:
| I'd rather not be a scan+network request away from
| knowing which flavour of drink I'm holding.
| detritus wrote:
| The QR code would just facilitate all the fancy branding
| shite beloved of marketing departments. Obviously you'd
| still have all the essential details marked on the
| product directly.
| atatatat wrote:
| Lasers can be used to put words into your ears, read your
| heartrate and listen to your conversations from miles
| out...
|
| and you're concerned about people knowing your favorite
| sugar?
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _The "main problem" is manufacturers / supermarkets using
| any kind of packaging that is not recyclable by default_
|
| Packaging should be biodegradable by default. Assume that
| it's going to end up in the ocean, or the woods next to
| the highway, and we don't want it to be there in 1000
| years.
| dheera wrote:
| > Consumer knowledge of what's recyclable
|
| There's also a huge disconnect between what's actually
| recyclable across California cities, unfortunately.
|
| As far as I know San Francisco recycles clean plastic
| food containers, plastic cups, plastic plates, and
| utensils [0], but backwards Mountain View specifically
| does NOT recycle utensils [1], black-colored containers
| [2], and fruit containers [2].
|
| [0] https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/your-
| three-c...
|
| [1] https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/recycling_and_z
| ero_was...
|
| [2] https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/recycling_and_z
| ero_was...
| mig39 wrote:
| > another business trick is in McDonalds -- the company
| that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100% Irish
| Beef"
|
| This is definitely not true. And it's a common myth in
| Canada as well.
| conistonwater wrote:
| Is that actually true? According to [1], McDonalds (in
| 2020) was buying EUR160e6 worth of Irish beef accounting
| for 20% of its beef sales across Europe. It would make
| quite a loss for them if they shipped beef into Ireland
| while buying that much locally and exporting it. I can't
| find anything that mentions this "100% Irish beef" theory.
|
| [1] https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0323/1124769-c
| orona...
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > EUR160e6
|
| Deliberately obtuse way to write EUR160 million. Why
| write that like?
| coryrc wrote:
| Because people near Ireland use an obtuse definition of
| million/billion. Engineering notation is precise and
| unambiguous.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| > The meaning of the word "million" is common to the
| short scale and long scale
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,000,000
| conistonwater wrote:
| If you're going to use the scientific notation for
| billions, you should just use it for everything. I don't
| think it's so obtuse anyway, it's exactly how I'd spell
| that number in code.
| genera1 wrote:
| Arguably, the short scale, not the long scale used in
| Ireland is obtuse. 12 zeroes for billion and 18 zeroes
| for trillion, 24 for quadrillion etc is 6 _n where n is
| numerical value of Latin prefix, with short scale you 've
| got 3_n+3
| frumper wrote:
| I'm just curious what 160 million Euro would mean in
| Ireland. Can you explain, please?
| Ellipsis753 wrote:
| I think "1 million" means 1e6 everywhere. But the
| confusion might be because "1 billion" means 1e9 in USA
| but 1e12 in UK/Ireland. "1 trillion" similarly is 1e12 in
| USA but 1e18 in UK/Ireland. This is called the short/long
| scales. It's a headache.
| frumper wrote:
| I knew billion was different, but the commenter mentioned
| million specifically as having a different meaning.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| > But if you put that recycling symbol in a green circle it
| means something else -- "that the companies that produces the
| product is committed to recycling" -- whatever that means.
|
| Presumably you're referring to the Green Dot / Der Grune Punkt
| [1]. Its often confused with the symbol that indicates
| recyclabililty. I'm never sure whether that's intentional or
| not.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)
| q1w2 wrote:
| > Its often confused with the symbol that indicates
| recyclabililty.
|
| Are people _actually_ getting confused by this? It looks very
| very different from the recycling symbol. It 's a different
| shape both inside and out, a different color, has a different
| number of arrows, and the arrows abut. It doesn't look
| anything the same to me.
| anamexis wrote:
| I've definitely always assumed it means "recyclable."
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Yes. This is pointed-out in the wikipedia article.
|
| Also, anecdotally, I know multiple people who believed (and
| in some cases still insist) that it indicates
| recyclability.
|
| Metalized plastic film (as used as packaging for potato
| chips / crisps) is particularly aggravating because it will
| often be printed with a green dot but is very rarely
| recycled, and it effectively poisons the genuinely
| recyclable material that it is often mixed with.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Are people actually getting confused by this?_
|
| Yes. Until about 3 minutes ago, I believed this symbol
| meant "recycleable", and just assumed that it's another
| case where producers can't (or don't want to) agree on a
| single symbol scheme.
| dheera wrote:
| The other thing is, how does California define recyclable?
|
| As far as I know San Francisco recycles clean plastic food
| containers, plastic cups, plastic plates, and utensils [0], but
| backwards Mountain View specifically does NOT recycle utensils,
| black-colored containers, and fruit containers [1].
|
| [0] https://www.recology.com/recology-san-francisco/your-
| three-c...
|
| [1]
| https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/recycling_and_zero_was...
|
| https://www.mountainview.gov/depts/pw/recycling_and_zero_was...
| farmerstan wrote:
| I've been putting everything with a recycling symbol in the
| recycling waste. I find it reprehensible that it's not
| recyclable.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Good chance it did not matter because recycling does not
| happen many times.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/aug/17/plastic-.
| ..
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-
| misled-...
|
| I am under the impression it mostly used to mean plausible
| deniability for consumers whose consumption could be exported
| back to China for "recycling".
| danschumann wrote:
| Are those dumpsters recyclable? I am picturing a big robot
| throwing those dumpsters into a giant shredder or something. I'll
| let myself out.
| HPsquared wrote:
| They appear to be made of sheet steel, so almost certainly yes
| and that's how they would be recycled. Probably wouldn't
| involve a robot though...
| kibwen wrote:
| In case anyone isn't aware, while plastic recycling may be a
| scam, metal recycling is extremely effective. To use cars as
| an example, 95% of cars end up being recycled, 80% of a car's
| materials (by weight) can be successfully recycled, and the
| average car is composed of 20% recycled material.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I hope they don't get rid of the symbol entirely! It's useful to
| know what resin a product is made of.
|
| Things like PLA (which is kinda sorta compostable) are not often
| recycled, but they can be. If you don't know what resin the
| plastic is, then it's even harder.
|
| Keep the resin symbol. Remove the arrows on it. We get better
| with recycling stuff over time, so eventually more resins could
| be recycled.
|
| But. Part of me wonders if it is actually BETTER to not recycle.
|
| Imagine if we made plastic by pulling CO2 from the atmosphere
| (which we do for PLA!). If the cost were the same and the
| processing energy the same, wouldn't it be better for the climate
| to bury that plastic (sequestering the carbon) instead of
| recycling it? That is, after all, how we got fossil fuels and
| reduced the CO2 to preindustrial levels! Burying a bunch of waste
| carbon from dead algae or trees before fungi evolved that could
| efficiently break down lignin. Recycling that carbon would've
| meant higher CO2 levels today.
|
| And the waste in river thing is primarily about what happens to
| plastic BEFORE it ends up in a bin (trash OR recycling). Things
| like water satchets, which really are a compensation for having
| crap tap water.
| jacknews wrote:
| Yes, I've come to the conclusion that it's better to bury most
| plastic waste.
|
| Most plastic comes from oil, which means 'biodegradable'
| plastic is essentially the same as burning the oil. Actual
| recycling can work in some cases, but even after all the
| expense and energy of recycling, the recycled product is
| usually much lower grade plastic, so it's not sustainable.
| Better just to bury it (in leak-proof pits), where it will turn
| back into oil eventually.
|
| The real problem with plastic waste is _COLLECTING_ it, making
| sure it doesn 't wash into the oceans, etc.
|
| At least the recycle logo might help with that, even a fake
| one.
| irrational wrote:
| Wait, does plastic really turn back into oil over time? How
| much time are we talking about here?
| [deleted]
| coryfklein wrote:
| I'd really like to know the answer to this as well. From
| all the research I've done in the past 10 minutes, you'd
| think that plastic is simply immutable and indestructible,
| and that even after millenia has passed it will still be
| plastic (even if in smaller pieces). But the Google SEO on
| this is dominated by environmental groups trying to
| emphasize the short-term life cycle of plastics, and it's
| hard to find anything with a longer-term perspective.
|
| I think if you wait long enough (billions of years) then
| the landfills will eventually be under miles of earth and
| subjected to high enough pressures that they fundamentally
| change; in the same way sedimentary rock can change into
| metamorphic.
| neltnerb wrote:
| Not our lifetime. I disagree with the original poster.
| Often times manufacturing fresh polymer, while cheaper,
| uses many times the carbon content of the polymer in
| process energy.
|
| Just as an example I know about offhand, isoprene rubber
| takes five times the carbon content of the product to
| process from petrochemical feedstocks. That said, recycling
| isn't very good either, so better would be to just not use
| it unnecessarily in packaging.
|
| I do think it is better to incinerate than to recycle wrong
| and contaminate the entire recycling stream though. To me,
| ruining all the other recycling on top of lying about it
| being recyclable in the first place is way way worse.
|
| And no, you cannot generally recycle PLA... I'm not sure
| where that is coming from. I hate that PLA (often labeled
| as 7 even though that just means "other") confuses
| everything even worse when people try to just toss it into
| typical compost and thus ruin the compost too. Of course it
| would also ruin the recycling... it would literally be
| better to just throw it away to be incinerated or else use
| good old numbers 1 and 2.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| You can recycle PLA into recycled PLA filament for 3D
| printers. You can buy it online; it at one time was
| cheaper than new.
| neltnerb wrote:
| I don't doubt it, but not in standard curbside recycling
| bins basically anywhere.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > Better just to bury it (in leak-proof pits), where it will
| turn back into oil eventually.
|
| What's the time scale of turning back into oil? How long
| those pits are estimated to stay leak-proof?
| smileysteve wrote:
| Given our best sealants are plastics, this is the best
| question.
| hotshiitake wrote:
| > Yes, I've come to the conclusion that it's better to bury
| most plastic waste.
|
| Alright, here is a controversial hot take - we should
| probably just burn plastics - and most garbage actually - as
| fuel. Done properly, incineration is a simple way to limit
| environmental contamination caused by plastics and other
| waste materials. The extra GHG production would be partially
| offset by savings from simpler logistics for processing (no
| more shipping barges of waste plastic going to overseas
| dumps) , and significantly reduced methane emissions from
| landfills. And - depending on how cost-effective incineration
| is - we may be able to take savings from waste processing and
| double-down on removing emissions from other industries (e.g.
| Energy, transportation).
| JeremyNT wrote:
| In a world where fossil fuels are still a thing, how does
| burying it stack up against just burning it as fuel?
|
| I get that it's sequestered if it's in a landfill, but it
| seems like it might be more efficient to burn the carbon
| already extracted and turned into plastic than it would be to
| dig up new stuff and burn that (i.e. you get to leave more of
| the already-sequestered oil-carbon in the ground rather than
| digging it up and sequestering the plastic-carbon).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The scientific consensus is that recycling > burning with
| energy recovery > well managed landfill > badly managed
| landfill > open burning. Nations not under the control of
| fossil fuel groups have been putting this into action for
| decades.
|
| Landfill seems to be the contrarian's choice but this
| appears to some anti-regulation propaganda after effect.
|
| Headlines like "Thing you do to save the planet actually
| hurts the planet" is like catnip for some people, and they
| dont ask any awkward questions about who is claiming this
| and why.
| [deleted]
| bratcomplex wrote:
| Gasification, using it as a fuel makes more sense. Reducing
| it down to basic carbon constituents. At least in this forum
| it's productive and photosynthesis can turn it into organic
| mater.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I hope they don't get rid of the symbol entirely! It's useful
| to know what resin a product is made of.
|
| They should use a different, non-similar symbol for this, since
| the current batch of recycle symbols have all become synonymous
| (to the layman) with "put it in the recycle bin".
| 09bjb wrote:
| Would it surprise you to hear that the plastics industry came
| up with that symbol in order to make it confusing to the
| layperson to differentiate between recyclables and single-use
| plastics?
|
| "Source" (not a primary source):
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJnJ8mK3Q3g <-- which has
| some links to further reading/viewing and a few sources.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Sure, use a square instead of a triangle. That's a good idea.
| Actually, we should use marks that are easily recognized by
| machine vision so they can be efficiently sorted.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| If you make plastic by pulling CO2 out of the air, then it
| would still be more efficient to recycle that into new plastic.
| You'd still be storing the carbon, just in things that are in
| active use.
|
| There's some potential methods when you can just extract the
| carbon, which in turn you could also bury, but why not use it
| for something instead?
|
| I feel the "lets put it in a hole" thing has been artifically
| boosted by fossil fuel interests who just happened to be
| emptying a hole as they dug it up anyway. If that wasn't the
| case I'm not sure storing stuff underground would be an obvious
| solution.
|
| Using it for plastics, concrete or other things we need that
| contain carbon seems like it'll likely be always be a better
| choice than burying.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > You'd still be storing the carbon, just in things that are
| in active use.
|
| The idea is to extract carbon from the air, make something
| useful out of it, and then bury the plastic when the item
| reaches the end of its useful life, thus sequestering the
| carbon. Recycling the plastics would compete with pulling
| more carbon from the air and reduce the amount being
| sequestered. The energy-intensive recycling process might
| also release more CO2 as a side effect, offsetting the amount
| captured in the plastic.
|
| The goal is to get the carbon into the ground, not to create
| a closed cycle reprocessing previously captured carbon.
| Immediate burial would also work, of course, but then there
| wouldn't be any economic incentive to extract the carbon from
| the atmosphere in the first place.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's no logical reason why connecting the three steps of
| the process make sense, unless you start with the premise
| that you really want to bury post consumer plastic and work
| back from there.
|
| It would only possibly make sense if recycling was
| fundamentally a dirty process but since we've got enough
| zero carbon energy available to suck carbon out of the air
| we've got enough to recycle. We can then use that energy
| saved by recycling to suck carbon out of the air.
|
| Unless there's some weird process or catalyst that makes
| atmospheric CO2 to consumer grade plastic the absolutely
| cheapest way to extract CO2 it'll always make sense to save
| energy and redirect that energy to the most effective
| method of getting CO2 out of the air whatever that is. I
| have no reason to believe plastic production will be that
| and it seems unlikely.
| civilized wrote:
| This seems... not hard. For non-recyclables, just use the same
| recycling symbol, but put a diagonal bar through it, like on a
| no-smoking sign. And then provide whatever info you want
| underneath, same as when it's recyclable.
| DFHippie wrote:
| > If the cost were the same and the processing energy the same,
| wouldn't it be better for the climate to bury that plastic
| (sequestering the carbon) instead of recycling it?
|
| Even if it pollutes more to make virgin material than to
| recycle it -- and I think that's your problem -- _if_ the non-
| recycled material goes into a landfill instead of the ocean or
| biosphere, there 's a small consolation in that the carbon in
| the plastic is sequestered.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| I don't think it's a small effect. There are something like
| 300 million tons of plastic waste per year, which is about 1
| Gigatonne of CO2, or about 3% of global emissions... more
| than global aviation!
|
| If we cut down all sources of emissions to zero, that would
| mean humanity using non-fossil plastic (like PLA or
| electrolytic syngas derived regular plastics) would be carbon
| negative.
|
| The cost of PLA is about $2/kg, or equivalent to about
| $600/tonneCO2. About how much Climeworks currently costs for
| direct air CO2 capture.
| gruez wrote:
| >The cost of PLA is about $2/kg, or equivalent to about
| $600/tonneCO2. About how much Climeworks currently costs
| for direct air CO2 capture.
|
| It's probably even better than that, if the PLA cost is for
| ready-to-use PLA, because presumably dirty/unprocessed PLA
| costs even less.
| billytetrud wrote:
| I was thinking about this yesterday when I saw a pizza box with
| the recyclable symbol on it. It's infuriating that intelligent
| people can't seem to understand that pizza boxes aren't
| recyclable after they've had pizza in them. What about oil soaked
| cardboard says "recyclable" to people?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| It's infuriating to me that people like you keep perpetuating
| this myth. Pizza boxes, even contaminated with some oil and
| cheese are recyclable (just take any leftover pizza/crusts
| out). I have family in the recycling industry, here's research
| on the matter: https://www.westrock.com/greasecheesestudy
| billytetrud wrote:
| Well, it seems you're right that soiled pizza boxes can be
| recycled: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/yes-you-can-
| recycle-your-p... . But I think calling it a myth is not
| accurate. A significant fraction of recycling operations
| still refuse soiled pizza boxes (whether for good reasons or
| not), and it was widely held guidance until very recently
| that pizza boxes are not generally recyclable. So thanks for
| spreading the (relatively new) information!
| reaperducer wrote:
| The trash company where i live specifically tells its
| customers that soiled pizza boxes can't be recycled. It's
| even on a sticker on the supplied recycling bin.
| nineplay wrote:
| I think the relationship between food and recycling is
| justifiably unclear to most people. Can you recycle cans of
| refried beans? Prior to today I would have thought yes, but now
| I see I'm supposed to rinse them. For refried beans I'm already
| wondering about the water wasted washing the can vs. the
| benefit of recycling it. I live in a drought region so I'm
| probably going to chuck it.
|
| Cardboard sandwich containers? Is there a go/no-go depending on
| how much mayonnaise had dripped out?
|
| It's no surprise people are confused.
| jonahhorowitz wrote:
| Your recyclables don't need to be particularly clean when
| they go in the bin. Just clean enough that they won't make
| everything else in the bin dirty (particularly paper). During
| the last drought in California, San Jose asked people to stop
| washing their recycling since it already gets washed in one
| way or another as part of the recycling process.
|
| In your can example, it's going to get smelted down and
| anything organic is going to burn off.
|
| - https://ecology.wa.gov/Blog/Posts/June-2019/Recycle-Right-
| Ho...
| asdff wrote:
| If you live in a drought region even if everyone in the
| entire region rinsed their refried bean cans that probably
| wouldn't push the needle on water use on a statistically
| significant level. Industry is who is causing the drought,
| not your lawns and swimming pools and long showers, despite
| what the narrative in the industry funded press might say.
| When you look at the actual water use data from state
| agencies devoid of editorial bias, this conclusion is
| obvious.
| billytetrud wrote:
| The giant recylcing symbol on a lot of pizza boxes sure
| doesn't help.
| thih9 wrote:
| Sample size one, but my pizza boxes don't end up being oil
| soaked. I might order pizzas with less oil, or it could be a
| different way of handling. I also recall a bit of parchment
| under the pizza that helps keep the box free of oil.
| billytetrud wrote:
| I guess if you actually keep food material off the cardboard
| you put into the recycling, it should be fine. The vast
| majority of pizza boxes I've seen have way too much food
| material on them to be recyclable. TBH paper is hardly worth
| recycling in the first place. Sure it saves trees, but it
| adds a ton more chemical waste and produces low quality
| paper.
| MarkLowenstein wrote:
| I like the system at MOD Pizza. They give you your pizza in a
| paperboard box, but they also put a thin sheet of waxy paper
| on the bottom of the box before they put the pizza in. So you
| throw out a minimal amount of paper, but the box is ready to
| recycle.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| What infuriates me (along with all the other things!) is the
| practice of making packaging that consists of plastic bound to
| something else, e.g. foil. Or wrapping a plastic bottle in a
| film made from some other kind of plastic, that has had
| promotional material printed on it.
|
| Here, I can only recycle clear, colourless plastic (with the
| right recycling label). Of course, the promotional film has no
| recycling label, only the bottle itself. The printeed film _can
| 't_ be recycled. And it's the very devil to strip the film off
| the bottle.
|
| I have here a triangular sandwich pack made of cardboard; but
| with a plastic window glued to it. The window has no recycling
| label, but also it renders the box non-recyclable.
|
| I'm perfectly willing to sort my rubbish; but I'm not prepared
| to dismantle packaging that obviously wasn't meant to be
| dismantled - especially given that most "recycling" actually
| goes for incineration or landfill.
| honksillet wrote:
| Reduce, reuse, recycle... In that order! If we are serious about
| preserving landfills we will start using reusable bottles.
| sokoloff wrote:
| This is a case where the proposal is actually _worse_ than the
| headline, I think.
|
| From a non-paywall source:
| https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/08/california-recycling...
|
| > Despite the best intentions of Californians who diligently try
| to recycle yogurt cups, berry containers and other packaging, it
| turns out that at least 85% of single-use plastics in the state
| do not actually get recycled. Instead, they wind up in the
| landfill.
|
| The plastic resin is recycl _able_ , but is not commonly recycl
| _ed_ and this act seeks to remove the marks that serve to
| indicate the former because of the latter. I can't see how that
| will increase recycling in CA, nor be likely to leave CA citizens
| nor environment better off.
| burkaman wrote:
| You're misreading that quote. It's saying that Californians do
| put these things in recycling bins, but they aren't actually
| recyclable, so the recycling facilities have to send them to
| landfills. People are trying to recycle the wrong things
| because of the intentionally misleading resin identification
| codes, and California is trying to fix that.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I don't think I am misreading it, but rather thinking about
| the holistic solution differently.
|
| The waste processing that the various CA communities have
| contracted for is not recycling those resins, even though
| they're capable to be recycled and being presented for
| recycling.
|
| That gives me the view that the most effective action is not
| an on-the-street "consumers, please put these into the
| landfill stream" but rather a "communities, please choose to
| upgrade waste management practices on the blue stream".
| burkaman wrote:
| The goal is not to get people to put them in the trash, the
| goal is to get companies to stop using them. Basically, ask
| companies to be more responsible vs. let them do whatever
| they want and ask communities to clean up after them. It is
| not ethical to label something as recyclable when that is
| theoretically possible, but not practically possible in
| 90-100% of the state.
| jffry wrote:
| If you've only read the headline, here's a mirror:
| https://archive.is/ma1Ob
|
| The California legislature has appeared to take the non-
| recycling of most plastics into account: A
| majority of the state's assembly members voted to ban
| companies from using the arrows symbol unless they can
| prove the material is in fact recycled in most California
| communities, and is used to make new products.
| elif wrote:
| It will decrease the number of plastic goods people buy under
| ecological pretexts.
|
| For instance, when I learned about plastic bottle recycling, I
| switched to canned water.
| lttlrck wrote:
| I hadn't realized the numbers were that bad...
|
| https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-
| bottle-...
| sokoloff wrote:
| It will also lead to the landfilling of recyclable resins in
| communities where their waste management is capable to
| recycle them, which in turn will result in fewer communities
| adopting/adapting waste management practices to process these
| items properly because consumers won't put them into that
| stream.
| mikeryan wrote:
| Most communities in the Bay Area at least have separate
| recycling and trash pickup bins. This isn't to increase
| recycling it's so the sorting is better and more efficient.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Some JS stops me reading the article after the first paragraph or
| so. But it seems to about using that specific "three arrows"
| symbol.
|
| One annoying thing I've noticed in the UK is some products having
| a symbol that looks a lot like the recycling symbol but upon
| closer inspection is not the same symbol. It turns it can be
| processed in a specific plant of which only one exists in the
| entire country. I doubt many get sent.
|
| As many HNers are aware, plastic can't really be recycled at all.
| It can be reprocessed, but never recycled. That plastic tray your
| food comes in will never become another plastic tray that food
| comes in. So the recycling symbol doesn't seem to mean much apart
| from being a way to help people sort their waste.
| gambiting wrote:
| Also here in the UK - I noticed that annoyingly more and more
| items openly advertise, on the front of the packaging " NOW
| RECYCLABLE!" with an asterix next to it, and upon reading the
| small print it says it's recyclable, but only if brought into
| this special collection point, which they only have in like 5
| sainsburys across the country. So if you just throw it in your
| recycling bin it goes to the landfill.
|
| I don't understand how that's even allowed.
| interestica wrote:
| A similar thing is ongoing with the term "compostable" for
| some plastics -- often it only means through special
| municipal composting facilities. If you threw it in your
| backyard compost heap, it would not deteriorate quickly.
| OneTimePetes wrote:
| Germany. My mum never accepted this, she did wash the plastic
| waste partially in the dishwasher - because it would be
| "reused". She always pointed at those recycling videos, were
| people sorted through the trash by hand.
| GordonS wrote:
| > It can be reprocessed, but never recycled
|
| Huh, I didn't know that. TBH, I was pretty sure most of it was
| just going to landfill somewhere in Asia, with only a small
| portion _really_ being recycled. What does "reprocessed" mean
| though? Taking the example of a prepackaged meal tray, what
| might happen to it?
| Aromasin wrote:
| It gets processed into pellets which can be melted down and
| extruded. Generally these are lower grade materials, meaning
| they are used for different purposes [1]. This might be water
| bottles getting made into polymer fibers for cushion filling
| and the like, or disposable cups into plant pots. Eventually
| they get processed to the point where the grade is too low to
| be recycled any further, at which point they end up in
| landfill. Modern recycling practices have extended the
| recyclable life of plastics, but often by creating a lot of
| unusable byproduct which again, is chemically treated to then
| be put into landfill.
|
| [1] https://plasgranltd.co.uk/plasgran-guide-plastic-
| recycling-g...
| smallerfish wrote:
| Meal tray probably is going to landfill.
|
| Otoh plastic water bottles may end up as "carpet, clothing,
| plastic packaging."
|
| https://www.livescience.com/how-much-plastic-recycling.html
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| John Oliver did a rant on plastics recycling, a few weeks ago[0].
|
| TL;DR: Anything with a "Number in triangle" over 2, is probably
| not going to be recycled, and you might as well toss it in the
| trash, as that's where it will end up, anyway[1].
|
| Different from this symbol, and probably won't be affected, but
| recycling has a great deal of "PR spin" to it.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E
|
| [1] https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-08-16
| q1w2 wrote:
| Burying plastic is likely the best solution anyway as it's a
| CO2 sink. It's a great way to sequester carbon.
| titzer wrote:
| Except it is made from fossil fuels in the first place, so it
| is at best carbon neutral--but isn't, because making plastic
| takes energy. There's nothing green about burying plastics.
| omgwtfbyobbq wrote:
| That's a great point. Shred it and use it as infill.
| kiliantics wrote:
| What about adding "not recyclable" messages to things? Maybe
| along with images of the plastic bag islands or something, like
| those cigarette pack warnings. Give everyone that painful
| reminder whenever they buy these things.
|
| Or what about just actual economic incentives to get people to
| live sustainably? High taxes on carbon and plastic and highly
| subsidised public alternatives
| wiz21c wrote:
| This one million times.
|
| Down here, packs of cigarettes have horror pictures on them
| and, sure no smoker ever stopped because of them, but once you
| show that to your kids, they just don't feel like trying
| anymore...
| syncbehind wrote:
| You'd think this was obvious to do. Sometimes I absolutely loathe
| the performative nature of most recycling initiatives.
| newbamboo wrote:
| California will make any and all signage meaningless. Buy an air
| purifier in California; "this item has substances known to cause
| cancer and birth defects."
|
| What a mess is the golden state.
| qq4 wrote:
| I'm a fan of this but I still think we're so far away from a
| solution. I gave up on recycling at my apartment because the bins
| get filled with things like toilet paper, soiled pizza boxes and
| dog poop. Mislabeled plastics are the least of my issues.
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