[HN Gopher] Tokyo's trash-collecting samurai takes a fun approac...
___________________________________________________________________
Tokyo's trash-collecting samurai takes a fun approach to cleanup
Author : zdw
Score : 164 points
Date : 2023-05-22 19:01 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (theworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (theworld.org)
| realjohng wrote:
| Very cool.
|
| But I'm surprised they're finding trash-- Japan is very clean and
| orderly country
| weberer wrote:
| Yeah, but there are almost no public trash cans anywhere. Lots
| of bins for bottles and cans though.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| And now you know why!
| flyinglizard wrote:
| I've been in Tokyo just now and there are barely any trash cans.
| It's annoying to no end. There's simply nowhere to throw your
| trash.
| mattwest wrote:
| There are trashcans outside of practically every convenience
| store, which exist about every 100 feet. They don't expect you
| to go walking off eating or drinking whatever you just bought.
| People hang outside the store, eat/drink/smoke, discard their
| waste and carry on. It's just a different culture and societal
| expectation.
|
| When in Rome.
| jstarfish wrote:
| That was my expectation too, but recent experience at the
| tail end of COVID (~5 months ago), this was absolutely not
| the case-- I assume to stop people from congregating during
| the pandemic.
|
| There are always trashcans _in_ the convenience stores
| though, especially near the microwaves and coffee machines.
| RajT88 wrote:
| You put it in your pocket and throw it away at home.
|
| IIRC, part of the reason for no trash cans is that eating in
| public is sort of taboo - you do it at a resto or at home. Food
| wrappers are quite a lot of trash people need to throw away.
|
| From my last trip to Tokyo I recall vending machines having
| both garbage and recycling bins. So just keep an eye out for
| vending machines.
| weberer wrote:
| >From my last trip to Tokyo I recall vending machines having
| both garbage and recycling bins
|
| They do not. They're all recycling only.
| noree wrote:
| > part of the reason for no trash cans is that eating in
| public is sort of taboo
|
| Not really. The main reason there are no trash cans in public
| is the 1995 sarin gas attack.
|
| "A Terrorist Attack Led Japan to Remove All Its Trash Cans.
| Now They're Making a Comeback."
|
| https://psmag.com/environment/trash-cans-are-coming-back-
| to-...
| matsemann wrote:
| > _Food wrappers are quite a lot of trash people need to
| throw away._
|
| Agreed, but ironically Japan is the country I've visited that
| was the worst for this. Everything is wrapped, inside
| something wrapped, inside something wrapped. Each individual
| piece of candy is wrapped. Then 5 pieces are wrapped
| together. Then you have multiple of those again in a bag,
| etc. etc.
| enqk wrote:
| humidity
| sithadmin wrote:
| Eating/drinking in public isn't a taboo, it's moreso that
| actively walking while eating or drinking or creating a mess
| in public is frowned on. Nobody really cares if you're having
| a drink or snack while stationary standing somewhere that
| doesn't impede pedestrian right-of-way if you're being tidy.
| enqk wrote:
| it's frowned upon at the very least
| neom wrote:
| Same deal in Korea. Theory is if the provide trash cans people
| will use them for household waste vs the incredibly annoying
| household trash system.
| Larrikin wrote:
| Society has decided that you shouldn't need to have to throw
| out trash while out and about. You're not doing something
| inconceivable, like eating or drinking while walking are you?
|
| Sarcasm aside, eating and drinking in public is considered
| rude. Every single station will have places for tossing most
| recyclable, nearly every vending machine has recyclable trash
| cans for the products they sell, and outside of the most
| drunken areas the conbinis will have trash cans on the inside
| for all forms of garbage.
| sithadmin wrote:
| I've always found this criticism to be overblown. Most conbini
| have trash and recyling bins out front, and in urban areas
| there's generally a conbini every few blocks, if not more
| frequently. It's not uncommon to see recycling bins near
| vending machines either.
| rtpg wrote:
| A couple of things:
|
| - The convenience stores closest to areas that tend to have a
| lot of tourists, along with not allowing access to toilets,
| tend to not have their trash cans out either.
|
| - You have to know to go into a convenience store
|
| - The trash bins near vending machines are for cups, so when
| you have the rice ball wrapper on you, it's a whole thing.
|
| I do think it's very manageable when you know but It did not
| really "get" the trash strategy until someone pointed it out
| to me. Every day somebody is born that doesn't know to walk
| to the back of the Family Mart to find the trashcan
| bj-rn wrote:
| IIRC the trash cans got removed after the Aum sect sarin gas
| attacks.
| sithadmin wrote:
| They're less common, but garbage and recycling bins are
| easily found if you make a modest effort to look for them.
| They're just less ubiquitous than they usually are in the
| west.
|
| There's also a structural problem imposed by Japan's rigorous
| management of solid waste in urban areas. Single-stream
| disposal practically doesn't exist. If a municipality placed
| general waste bins on corners (as seen in many western urban
| areas), they'd have to have folks manually sorting whatever
| ends up in them, which isn't economical.
| gverrilla wrote:
| Reminds me of the brazilian clown Lixolino [0] ("lixo" means
| trash) who spreads eco and citizenship conscience, mainly to
| children in vulnerable conditions, by playing with garbage. A
| work of love.
|
| 0: @lixolino at instagram
| poo-yie wrote:
| I routinely go out and pick up trash along some of the nearby
| streets in my neighborhood. Unfortunately, my setup is not nearly
| as impressive. It's sad to see the amount of trash that people
| throw. Beer cans, drink cups, cigarette butts, plastic wrappers,
| beer bottles, etc. I pick up trash because I hate seeing it and
| the exercise is good for me.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I saw a reference recently to "plogging" which is a combination
| of picking up litter and jogging. Think it was a Chinese thing,
| but may have been Japan.
|
| edit: looked it up, apparently originally Swedish
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plogging
| ihateyouall123 wrote:
| [dead]
| jetrink wrote:
| Last year I moved onto a street that had a ton of litter. I
| lived with it for about a month before I realized how easy it
| would be to walk a loop and pick it all up. For the first six
| weeks or so, I would fill two 20L garbage bags and by the next
| weekend, there would be another 40L of garbage waiting for me.
| Then something great happened: the amount of litter began
| decreasing. Soon I only needed to take one bag with me and
| recently I've been coming home with it only half full. Keeping
| the street clean has actually led to fewer people littering in
| the first place. It's a really great feeling to see such an
| improvement for so little effort and I would encourage anyone
| who enjoys walking outside to give it a try.
| EricE wrote:
| broken windows theory
| poo-yie wrote:
| That's great! I was hoping that something similar would
| happen where I live. I think it has decreased, but still too
| much.
| theposey wrote:
| very cool of you to do this.
|
| I am on the verge of doing something like this along a
| through-way in our neighborhood. I think I could probably get
| a lot of buy-in from the community.
| cschneid wrote:
| I've seen similar situations too. It seems that people see
| minor social transgressions like littering as a percentage of
| guilt.
|
| Already 20 pieces of junk on the ground, whatever, one more
| is 5% of the total.
|
| Nothing there, My thing would be 100% of the junk on the
| ground, can't do that.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > Already 20 pieces of junk on the ground, whatever, one
| more is 5% of the total.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
|
| > In criminology, the broken windows theory states that
| visible signs of crime, anti-social behavior and civil
| disorder create an urban environment that encourages
| further crime and disorder, including serious crimes.
|
| The same probably applies to things like littering as well,
| somewhat.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Your link has criticism of the theory which is worth
| considering.
|
| That said, it's hard to imagine that excess litter
| collection could lead to minorities getting bashed by the
| police.
| kibwen wrote:
| Broken window theory gets (rightfully, IMO) criticized
| because it tries to make an unjustified logical leap
| between crimes of a wildly different degree of severity.
|
| I'm not trying to argue against the premise above that
| seeing litter makes people more likely to litter; in
| fact, I agree with it. Humans are monkey-see monkey-do
| creatures. The problem is that "monkey sees broken
| window, monkey does murder" is not how this works. It's a
| weirdly authoritarian way of thinking that suggests that
| criminality is not only objective, but a tidy spectrum.
| [deleted]
| winrid wrote:
| I love doing this. Mostly within a block or so. I get plenty
| this way - I think a lot of it blows out of nearby
| recycle/garbage bins...
| antihero wrote:
| Deposit schemes for stuff like bottles are great, I don't know
| why more places don't do them
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| They're ubiquitous in the US. All they seem to do is
| encourage the destitute to pick through other people's trash.
| Gh0stRAT wrote:
| People picking through trash beats recyclables going to the
| landfill. (assuming the trash-pickers don't pull trash out
| of the can and throw it on the ground in their haste to
| find recyclables, anyway) So from that perspective, I'm
| glad someone is doing it.
|
| But on the other hand, it's tragic that people are so
| desperate for the small sums to be had from recycling that
| they spend their days digging through other peoples' trash
| like that.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > But on the other hand, it's tragic that people are so
| desperate for the small sums to be had from recycling
| that they spend their days digging through other peoples'
| trash like that.
|
| Not all of them are destitute. There are collectors who
| now own homes thanks to bottle and can deposits. My
| neighbors across the street moved in few years ago and I
| saw the garage open - front to back, side to side, top to
| bottom PACKED with bags of bottles and cans. Thousands of
| them. Spoke to their neighbor and they told him
| collecting bottles paid for most of the house. Few blocks
| down there's an apartment building with ground level
| garages and again, one of them is fully packed with bags
| of bottles and cans - plans in motion. This is in NYC
| too.
|
| Imagine how clean the planet would be if all packaging
| had a deposit.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| dunno why you're being downvoted. I had homeless people
| rummage through my trash. at first I was ok with it but
| they would just leave it strewn out everywhere like racoons
| and I'd have to clean it up. so I had to lock it up.
| codyb wrote:
| The alternative might be to lock up everything but leave
| the cans in a separate bag for the people who want to
| collect them? Aluminum's one of the few things that does
| get recycled well and it's pretty energy intensive to get
| new aluminum. That's the one I always try to recycle,
| plastic and the rest... I'm not convinced it doesn't end
| up in the landfill anyways.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| 10/50 states have them, though as two are California and
| New York it's slightly higher then 20% of the population.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| _They 're ubiquitous in the US_
|
| Not really. I think only 10 states have plastic bottle
| deposits, and I have really no clue if those are convenient
| for folks. I'm not from one of those states: You could take
| aluminum cans to get money, but it isn't convenient.
|
| (In my current location, I can just take plastic and
| aluminum bottles to a grocery store to get the deposit back
| by feeding them into a machine. And most folks do this)
| jstarfish wrote:
| I haven't seen the "un-vending" machines outside of NY.
|
| We have to take everything to the recycling center, wait
| in a long-ass line and they pay by weight, not item.
|
| It's not worth my time to bring single bags nor worth the
| space to hoard them at home so I just trade them to the
| neighborhood homeless guy for expired dog food and other
| sundries.
| weberer wrote:
| I've seen them outside supermarkets in Boston.
| atdrummond wrote:
| Vermont has them as well (or at least did when I lived in
| Burlington a few years back).
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| So the 'other people' are too lazy to take the bottles back
| to the store that they are already going to?
| gertlex wrote:
| It does vary quite a bit in implementation, with
| corresponding differences in results.
|
| In Michigan (10c deposit), grocery stores have dedicated
| areas for machines that receive the bottles and give you
| the credit back. I grew up setting cans aside for return
| (and having dedicated bins for folks parking for sport
| events, with proceeds going towards e.g. Cub Scouts and
| similar)
|
| In CA (5c deposit), apparently you have to take your
| recyclables to a recycle center, where I think they pay
| based on weight. I've never bothered.
|
| And it is true there will be people picking through public
| trash cans, in both situations.
| meesles wrote:
| I agree with your second statement. I've never known anyone
| in the US that is employed+housed that keeps their bottles
| for returns.
|
| On the other hand, in Belgium it's pretty normal to keep
| your case of empty beer bottles and return them at the
| grocery store when you go the next time.
|
| There's definitely something cultural at play. I wonder if
| the strong capitalistic ideals in the US make it seem like
| a low-return effort or if it's looked down upon like going
| through trash. We also simply waste a lot of things in the
| US (food, throw-away culture, fast casual clothing,
| disposable electronics), so it may just be an extension of
| that too.
| dunham wrote:
| We always saved ours and returned them when I was a kid
| in Michigan - they were about 10 cents each and were
| returned to the grocery store where you bought it. I also
| remember we once had a teacher in high school tell us he
| made $1000 picking up cans, and a smart-ass kid asked if
| he reported that on his taxes.
|
| But this varies a lot state-to-state. In San Francisco,
| it seemed to be the poor with carts picking up cans. (And
| the recycling company wanted you to report people for
| digging through the bins.) I think the deposit was rather
| low there and had no idea where you can return them to.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I'm also a trash picking up guy, got a bucket and a grabber
| stick I take on my dog walks.
|
| I do not find it sad but it does give me endless stuff to think
| about.
|
| One thing is that when people litter (or leave dog poop on the
| grass) they sort of think they're "getting away with it"
| because no one will catch them. I realized that's a childish
| perspective on morality, the reason not to litter is that it
| improves the quality of your community- not to avoid
| punishment!
|
| Another thing I think about is how we're all interconnected,
| and there are a million dimensions where you have to pull your
| weight or else someone else ends up with your extra burden.
| This is again especially apparent with children, who innocently
| leave messes or avoid chores, without realizing that what
| they're doing is assigning the chore to a parent.
|
| I think of all these people littering as not pulling their
| weight in the dimension of litter, but that makes me think that
| in other areas they might be pulling extra weight, like they're
| in a rush because their employer doesn't pay enough for them to
| outsource their tasks, or they're using alcohol as a coping
| mechanism and need to sneak their beers in the car and can't
| bring the cans in the house to throw them away. And the worst
| case is someone who is sort of burned out on the web of
| interconnectedness, and not pulling their weigh in any
| dimension, being a burden on everyone else. That's kind of sad
| but it doesn't make me hate those people because I've been that
| guy at times in my life, and now I can at least pay back the
| loans I've taken in some small way.
| fasouto wrote:
| I have a small farm on the outskirts of the city where nobody
| lives. When I'm there I usually pick up other people's
| rubbish and it gets on my nerves to see that the next week
| it's full of shit again.
|
| Thanks for sharing your perspective, I think I'm going to
| look at it differently from now on.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| Any tips on the best gear for picking up trash? Right now my
| setup is pretty simple, I just have a trash picker, a trash
| bag, and disposable gloves. I want to me able to pick up more
| trash per unit time, so while the samurai back baskets are an
| interesting idea, I'm not sure I'd want to risk putting
| garbage over my head/face. A lot of trash I pick up is bags
| of poop so :/
| jacquesm wrote:
| Spot on, it's the whole attitude towards not caring what is
| right but what you can get away with. Endless frustration
| with that.
| snapcaster wrote:
| This was a really great comment, thanks for taking the time
| to post it gave me food for thought
| prmoustache wrote:
| I am considering mounting a bucket and a grabber stick on my
| paddle surf board. The amount of plastic shit I see in the
| sea while paddle surfing is depressing.
| latchkey wrote:
| Don't go to SE Asia.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Do it! feels great to empty a bucket of trash into the
| trash can after picking it all up.
|
| but it also feels bad if you see more trash you could grab
| and can't fit it in the bucket anymore
| mc32 wrote:
| Great comment. One disappointment is many people will not
| outgrow the borrower phase even when they have the resources
| to do so and become a lender. Also it's okay if you neither
| borrow nor lend, it's neutral.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Better than lender = giver.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _the people never grew to realize the reason not to litter is
| that it improves the quality of your community- it 's not to
| avoid punishment!_
|
| It's very frustrating to see people comment about this stuff
| on a neighborhood subreddit or next door. It's a predictable
| cycle. Whether it's people littering or whether there's a
| windy trash day, people complain about trash on the sidewalk
| and about how it's a sign the city has gone to the dogs. I
| will suggest _they_ can pick it up if it bothers them so
| much, let alone out of a sense civic pride, they act like I
| took their first born! I just don 't get it...
| jstarfish wrote:
| > I will suggest they can pick it up if it bothers them so
| much, let alone out of a sense civic pride [...] I just
| don't get it...
|
| It's actually really simple.
|
| Imagine you have a co-worker that doesn't do their job. You
| complain about it and are told "well, you have time enough
| to complain, maybe you could take on some of his tasks."
| Now you're doing the job of two people and the colleague
| continues avoiding accountability for his incompetence.
|
| It's bully logic. The problem isn't that I'm punching you,
| it's that you're being too loud in crying about it.
|
| Burdening critics with extra work is not the solution to
| upstream problems. The problem is _people littering_ , not
| a lack of people willing to pick it up.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Your logic is flawless, the problem is that you're using
| it to come up with a reason why _not_ to clean up the
| yard /neighborhood/etc.
|
| This means things don't improve!
| jstarfish wrote:
| Thanks, but nothing I said should lead to that
| conclusion. There will always be incidental debris. It
| helps when more than just a handful of people bother to
| clean it up. It also helps when people don't deliberately
| add to their workload.
| jerf wrote:
| This is like the opposite of the Tragedy of the Commons.
| If everyone in your neighborhood pitches in and picks up
| trash, it will be clean. If nobody does, it will
| inevitably decay. Doesn't even have to be littering;
| things blow in, accidents happen, trash blows away, stuff
| happens.
|
| The residents of your neighborhood will collectively
| decide what kind of neighborhood they live in by the
| actions they take. Whether you find this morally
| offensive, morally harmonious, or some complicated other
| combination doesn't affect the brute fact of the matter.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I get it. Before I was injured in a car crash I didn't have
| the grabber stick, and it was such a frustrating, gross
| experience to pick up trash people left on my parkway- had
| to touch it with my hand and then carry it in my house to
| clean it.
|
| I got the grabber stick in physical therapy though, and
| found a bucket in the alley and it clicked. That made
| cleaning stuff far more realistic.
| hooverd wrote:
| There's always gloves.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| It might be the implication, "If it bothers them so
| much"...
|
| I pick stuff up occasionally but I can't make up for a city
| of people who don't care to pick up their own trash. If I
| complain about it and you suggest in anyway that if I cared
| I should pickup after grown adults who don't care to act in
| a basic civilized manner I would find that very grating.
|
| Civic pride needs to be collective.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| David Sedaris, the American writer/satirist, has made a name
| for himself in the UK by picking up litter on the street:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/shortcuts/2014/jul/31/davi...
| endisneigh wrote:
| Littering can be solved easily. Put a 1% deposit on all
| consumables with a minimum of a dollar and you will never see
| trash on the street again. (for those unfamiliar, a deposit is a
| fee that you pay upon purchase that is refunded to you upon
| bringing back the packaging).
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| Sounds like a tax that disproportionately punishes the poor.
| Not everyone has the financial/time flexibility to spend an
| extra dollar on every consumable until they have the time to
| return it to the store.
|
| Imagine the person going from the night shift at Walmart to
| opening a Wendy's, they're getting a coffee and a packaged
| breakfast at a convenience store on the way to work - they need
| to give up a buck on each item out of their minimum wage
| income, then stop at a deposit location on their way home in
| the brief window between shifts and childcare.
|
| I see where you're going with the idea, but at least in America
| I don't think it works in practice with the current state of
| income and financial stability disparity.
| endisneigh wrote:
| trash also disproportionally punishes the poor. said poor
| also would benefit from picking up said trash and redeeming
| the cash. consumables tend to be more unhealthy, which you
| guessed it, also disproportionally punishes the poor. if we
| hire more people to manually pick up trash or add more trash
| cans, that results in more taxes or reduced spending on other
| things, which, well, you get the idea.
|
| I doubt any meaningful reform on any issue will not
| disproportionally affect poor people.
|
| this is probably why the government simply does nothing
| instead due to the endless bike shedding by constituents.!
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| >if we hire more people to manually pick up trash or add
| more trash cans, that results in more taxes or reduced
| spending on other things, which, well, you get the idea
|
| I don't think I get the idea. Do you have any evidence to
| support the claim that charging a poll tax on the purchase
| of all consumables is a more efficient and effective way to
| assist the poor than to provide jobs for unemployed people
| to pick up trash? Introducing such a policy would add a
| flat tax to _tons_ of the purchases in our economy, I think
| declaring outright it 's the best solution for the
| impoverished demands a little more supporting evidence than
| logical sounding rhetoric.
|
| >the government simply does nothing
|
| I guess it depends when and where you grew up, but in my
| lifetime litter improved significantly compared to how it
| was when I was growing up in the 90s in Connecticut, and
| from what I understand it was the result of government-
| funded marketing campaigns and increased fines and
| enforcements for littering on public roadways. "Don't Mess
| with Texas" actually started as a government-funded anti-
| littering campaign.[0]
|
| Neither of us are in the government (as far as I know), so
| I think all we can really do right now is discuss our bike-
| shed designs for solving this problem. If you have any
| information about why you hold these opinions, I'd be
| interested to read it - otherwise I don't think we have
| much to talk about.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Mess_with_Texas
| endisneigh wrote:
| > I don't think I get the idea. Do you have any evidence
| to support the claim that charging a poll tax on the
| purchase of all consumables is a more efficient and
| effective way to assist the poor than to provide jobs for
| unemployed people to pick up trash?
|
| I did not claim that a poll tax (which again is called a
| deposit fee) is more efficient than providing jobs for
| unemployed people to pick up trash.
|
| In any case bottle deposits are already known to be
| effective:
|
| https://www.bottlebill.org/index.php/about-bottle-
| bills/myth...
|
| In any case your entire argument could be made about
| taxes in general. why tax poor people at all? why should
| the poor pay sales tax? tax does disproportionally affect
| the poor. if so, how do you plan on making up the
| revenue? I would assume taxing the middle class and rich?
| the mere math is such that any sweeping action will
| disproportionally affect the poor simply because most
| Americans are poor. the only viable thing then is to do
| nothing.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I misread your comment - I assumed you were pointing out
| that alternatives would be less effective than charging a
| minimum of a buck for every consumable purchases, but
| rereading it I see that was just my assumption.
|
| Retail sales tax is not universally implemented across
| the United States, so is at least not essential to the
| financial solvency of a government. My objection isn't to
| the general notion of taxing poor people, but of
| introducing taxes that disproportionately burden the
| poor. A poll tax disproportionately burdens the poor
| because it introduces a flat bill paid by everyone
| regardless of income. A tax introducing a flat bill on
| all consumable purchases disproportionately burdens
| people who make more consumable purchases and who have
| less opportunity to return consumable purchases for the
| deposit, in addition to disproportionately burdening
| people for whom 10% or a minimum of $1 is a bigger and
| more essential portion of their daily income.
|
| Your source from the Container Recycling Institute is
| supportive of bottle deposits, but bottle deposits are
| usually 5c a container, not 10% or a minimum of $1, are
| far less universal than a tax across all consumables, and
| only implemented in 10 states so far.
|
| >In any case your entire argument could be made about
| taxes in general.
|
| Only if you simplify it to the point of reducing it to a
| strawman. I'm trying to be as specific about my critique
| here as possible: I don't think charging everyone a "a 10
| percent or at least a dollar deposit" on every consumable
| is going to reduce litter effectively without
| disproportionately burdening the poor, and I think
| proposing such an egregiously steep and broad tax as a
| reasonable policy ignores the realities of the people it
| would disproportionately punish.
|
| Edit:
|
| >any sweeping action will disproportionally affect the
| poor simply because most Americans are poor. the only
| viable thing then is to do nothing.
|
| I would request some evidence on this one, too. 55% of
| workers are paid hourly, and only 1.5% are on minimum
| wage. Obviously the poverty line excludes a lot of people
| we would probably consider "poor" but that's still 11.4%
| of the country. From what I can tell, this claim and your
| defeatist conclusion from it have no basis, like your
| earlier claim that the government "does nothing" to
| address litter.
|
| [0]https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/
| p60-27... [1]https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-
| wage/2020/home.htm
| endisneigh wrote:
| your fixation on $1 in particular is irrelevant. your
| entire point stands even if it's 1 cent. do you support
| deposit fees or not? do you support poor people paying
| any taxes or not? that's the crux of the issue.
|
| not to mention, again, it's not a tax, it's a fee, that
| is given back to you if you want the money back. poor
| people inherently would be most incentivized to return
| the packaging thus making the issue moot and your issue
| irrelevant. or, more pleasantly, stop the consumption of
| consumables such as soda and fast food that affects them
| the most anyway in the form of disproportionally high
| rates of diabetes, obesity and low life expectancy.
| ekanes wrote:
| While you could be right, just want to mention that the
| comment you're replying to said 1% rather than $1.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| They said 1% or a minimum of a dollar, so really, I'm
| describing the _best_ case scenario up above.
| ekanes wrote:
| Darn it, you're right. I missed that and stand corrected!
| neilv wrote:
| I like the idea of (mostly) tying it to inflation. (US 5 cents
| beverage container deposit made more sense in the 1970s than in
| 2023.)
| qiqitori wrote:
| I'm somewhat acquainted with the German deposit system. While I
| don't know if littering decreased after it was implemented, I
| saw a lot of people leaving their bottles and cans in parks on
| purpose so bottle collectors can get them, as a kind of
| donation I guess? The deposit is just about a quarter though,
| not a dollar.
|
| (Also I have 666 reputation right now, please don't ruin it)
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| Isn't this a net good thing? The objective is to make sure
| the object is returned and either recycled or disposed of. It
| doesn't matter if someone casually returns their own bottles
| or one guy walks around with a cart and collects 1000s of
| them. They all get returned.
| alfanick wrote:
| Unfortunately I moved out of Germany but I loved this system.
| In Dresden-Neustadt [quite funky party areal], it was quite
| common to leave beer bottles or alcopop cans neatly outside
| of the trash bins. So people who make money from collecting
| them don't have to dig in trash. Pure humanity.
|
| I used to work at FAANG there, one of the managers was a fun
| guy. For a month he committed to do the same thing as the
| people who collect cans - every 04:00am he went around town,
| collecting bottles and cans. Turns out you can easily make
| 100-200eur a day with this. But it's a highly competitive
| business.
| detaro wrote:
| > _it was quite common to leave beer bottles or alcopop
| cans neatly outside of the trash bins._
|
| There even was/is a bit of a campaign to promote that, e.g.
| with slogans on bottle labels. Some places also have
| started putting up small "bottle racks" with trash cans.
| spyremeown wrote:
| >So people who make money from collecting them don't have
| to dig in trash. Pure humanity.
|
| I've lived in Germany, and this was one of the things I
| quickly adopted after seeing the locals doing it. An
| interesting anecdote is that can/bottle collectors always
| approached me asking if I'm finished with my drink (I had a
| drink outside almost daily), but I never felt threatened or
| anything. They were generally super polite, I'd usually
| reply with "I'll leave it here" and they went along their
| way. Very different experience than anywhere else!
| detaro wrote:
| AFAIK German estimates are that ~95% are returned. 0.25EUR is
| for single-use containers, multi-use containers (e.g. glass
| beer bottles that get refilled) are 0.08EUR or 0.15EUR
| depending on type.
| Symbiote wrote:
| In Denmark it's 92%
|
| https://danskretursystem.dk/en/sustainability/
| lkbm wrote:
| If I rip my candy bar wrapper in half, it seems non-trivial to
| determine how much to give me for each half.
| endisneigh wrote:
| in that scenario why should you get anything? rip it in a way
| that leaves it in one piece (albeit ripped) and return it.
| people will get with the program soon enough. after all the
| entire point of what I propose is to fix the behavior.
| lkbm wrote:
| Okay, but who is checking your wrapper to make sure it's
| not ripped? If I bring in a bag of two hundred candy
| wrappers, does someone sit there and carefully check each
| one? This doesn't seem easily automatable. Is this a small
| candy bar wrapper, or half of a big candy bar wrapper?
|
| It's not an occasional wrapper. It's the block of cheese I
| finished off when cooking dinner yesterday, the container
| of mushrooms I emptied, the bag of tortillas. Most
| household trash just changed from "toss in the trash and it
| gets dumped somewhere" to "bring to someone to check each
| item for completeness"?
|
| I'm sure we'd end up with a lot less single-use packaging
| as a result, but we use single-use packaging for a reason
| and your proposal amounts to a near-ban. Let's not pretend
| this is a simple "just charge a deposit and littering
| stops". It's "charge a deposit, discover the deposit is
| non-viable, and single-use packaging as a whole stops".
| zanecodes wrote:
| Put a QR code on it, if it scans then you get the
| deposit? I would've suggested using the existing barcode
| but since they're 1-dimensional they could be ripped many
| times and each piece would still scan...
| nathancahill wrote:
| Correct. No one crushes empty soda cans in Michigan because
| you lose the deposit.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| In MA we tried to raise the bottle / can deposit via a ballot
| measure.
|
| It went over like a loud fart in a crowded church.
|
| (I voted for it because so many homeless and poor people
| collect bottles and cans for income.)
| nashashmi wrote:
| The system exists in NYC. It is terrible. Sure there is a
| profession of people going through garbage and picking certain
| trash. But I pay for a whole bunch of bottles. and then i throw
| them away in my house. i don't go to the nearest depositry. it
| hurts me.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| You could just return the bottles? The same system exists in
| Germany - I would just collect bottles in a crate or Ikea
| bag, and then when full take it to the return machine in the
| supermarket.
|
| I don't know what the implementation is like in the USA, but
| perhaps it's an inconvenient implementation that's to blame,
| rather than the entire concept?
| endisneigh wrote:
| sounds like you should stop buying it if it hurts you and
| switch to reusable containers. I do agree though, that the
| way it is implemented isn't great. ideally every store that
| collects a deposit fee would also be a place to give back the
| item.
| Symbiote wrote:
| What is the case if it's not that?
|
| In Denmark, small shops must refund at least the bottles
| they sell. Normal or large shops must refund all deposit
| bottles and cans.
|
| Most people take the empties to a supermarket. People
| drinking in a public place often leave them for bottle
| collectors (often homeless etc) to gather.
| aio2 wrote:
| I remember recently, one of my friends had to do community
| service, and picking up trash. They knew a few skills like these,
| but was yelled at by the manager not to do them.
|
| Suffice to say, he barely picked anything up.
| 11235813213455 wrote:
| it's not just about not littering (which is of course very good
| to do, else plastics gets in water/ground and in our food, then
| our cells), but also about not buying anything with plastics (or
| very rarely), because recycling is not very effective (only 2
| iterations and changes of classes of materials)
| kderbyma wrote:
| This is great. I have started to pick up trash when I am out for
| walks when I think about it. I realised that the small act of
| picking up one piece of garbage means you get to protect the rest
| of the world from that one piece of garbage forever. It's O(1) to
| pickup but gets benefits for eternity and have infinite gains
| henearkr wrote:
| If people believe they have fun picking trash, I'm afraid that
| wouldn't be very dissuasive against more littering...
|
| I often pick trash left by other people, and I always make a very
| annoyed face, not really because I'm annoyed but to signal that
| it is not OK.
| mitko wrote:
| I am reminded of one of Matt Mochary's teaching: when you have to
| do a task, which takes away your energy, and cannot be delegated
| to someone else, them make it "exquisite".
|
| Next time I have to "pick up trash", I will try to think "what
| would these samurai do?"
| cm_silva wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sRuHr_O6RyQ
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| > The two men glide through Tokyo's bustling Ikebukuro district
| in full-length samurai outfits, while wielding objects that look
| like swords.
|
| I didn't know samurai wore denim coats, leather boots and fedora
| hats!
| rideontime wrote:
| They do now.
| Malic wrote:
| I'd watch that anime.
| probably_wrong wrote:
| Have you seen Samurai Champloo?
| GOATS- wrote:
| Genuinely recommend seeing it if you haven't already. Such
| a great show!
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Samurai were abolished in the 1870's during the Meiji era. It
| was a gradual process. The Samurai were converted to a new
| social class called Shizoku which loosely translates to
| 'Warrior families'
|
| I know it's disappointing, sorry to be the bearer of bad news.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| It wasn't that smooth:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%8Ctsu_incident
| SapporoChris wrote:
| Interesting article, but non sequitur I think. While Tsuda
| Sanzo was born into a Samurai family, he was not Samurai.
|
| I do completely agree that it was not a smooth time period
| by any means.
| scintill76 wrote:
| As a consolation, maybe "there was a 22 year window in which
| a samurai could have sent a fax to Abraham Lincoln"
| https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2154725-a-samurai-could-
| have...
| cwkoss wrote:
| did abraham lincoln have a fax machine? google is clogged
| fully of reposts of the tweet, but I suspect not. At
| minimum the samurai would probably have to cross the ocean
| and send the fax from mainland US, right?
| twic wrote:
| Related to how Dracula could drink Coke and play Nintendo:
|
| https://twitter.com/lunasorcery/status/1271537553842323463
| nashashmi wrote:
| So United States Commodore Matthew C. Perry came to Japan in
| 1853, with a show of might, to open Japan to outside trade.
| This led to Japan phasing away Samurai culture in favor of
| Western law. And the Imperial Military seeking military
| advances. This led to more political prowess at the
| Versailles Treat. And gave Japanese Empire a taste of neo-
| imperialism called colonization. That led to WW2 and finally
| the atomic bomb.
|
| I see a trend.
| melony wrote:
| I have seen fedora hat samurais at Comic con
| pjc50 wrote:
| I love those outfits. They're a great bit of cultural fusion.
| Denim has always been popular for workwear, and it's
| interesting to see it in a kimono cut.
| notfried wrote:
| Video: Meet Japan's Trash Collecting Samurai:
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=sRuHr_O6RyQ
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