[HN Gopher] Heinz's sustainable ketchup cap
___________________________________________________________________
Heinz's sustainable ketchup cap
Author : viasfo
Score : 243 points
Date : 2024-02-29 07:23 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lumafield.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lumafield.com)
| throw1231312 wrote:
| > Heinz has taken a major step forward for sustainable packaging
| with the introduction of ....
|
| > The new cap's uniform composition of polypropylene (PP)
| simplifies recycling and ...
|
| > Currently only about 3% of PP products are being recycled in
| the United States.
| obmelvin wrote:
| Until someone develops some sort of multi-spectral imaging that
| can reliably sort plastic based on it's composition there's
| little hope of recycling plastic. And then you still need
| different enzymes that can break down different compositions.
|
| It's sad, but realistically almost all plastic one disposes of
| needs to go in the trash can rather than recycling.
|
| You can't even rely on dedicated collection -
| https://abcnews.go.com/US/put-dozens-trackers-plastic-bags-r...
| asdff wrote:
| I wonder how much plastic you'd need to pile up to start
| pressing out oil again at the bottom of the pile?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| You mean ... by gravity? :-D
| robinwa wrote:
| Conventional multispectral and hyperspectral can't keep up
| (and integrate well) into existing sorting lines. They induce
| a slow-down in conveyer belt speeds or you have to install
| splitters and buy multiple $100K cameras.
|
| (we're working to solve this problem though in the classic VC
| backed way - DM for more information!)
| soultrees wrote:
| Ah, another factorio fan I see.
| robinwa wrote:
| Got me there...
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| How does Germany recycle 60% of its plastic waste?
|
| There is obviously hope, just not enough incentive because it
| costs.
| throw1231312 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation
|
| I can't even begin to imagine the discourse (and "experts"
| brought on-air at Fox News) that would take place if such
| legislation was proposed in the US.
| rocqua wrote:
| A few states in the US as per your link, do have this
| system
| throw1231312 wrote:
| Differences:
|
| * Single-use plastic bottle have a 25 cent deposit in
| Germany. This is 5x the 5cents in California.
|
| * Germany has enacted this legislation federally.
|
| * The legislation also requires that any retailer that
| sells plastic bottles (and glass bottles) must _also_
| facilitate the return of these bottles.
|
| I lived in California for a couple of years. I never saw
| a recycling machine at any Safeway, Walgreens or even
| Whole Foods while I was there. The closest thing to a
| "recycling machine" is the army of homeless people
| pushing trollies filled with bottles to take to a
| recycling center. I don't think that really counts.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Michigan does have the sorting machines at supermarkets,
| just like in Germany. Michigan also has a 10C/ deposit.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| We do. As Fox News likes to point out, it's hard to find
| a place that'll actually let you recycle for the full
| refund.
| distances wrote:
| In Europe the store that sold the deposit bottles has to
| also accept them back.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| That used to be true here, but they added so many
| exceptions that the law isn't really enforced
| gs17 wrote:
| In Michigan, I never ran into difficulty outside of
| needing to take it to a store that sells it (Trader Joe's
| is the biggest pain). Supposedly there were a lot of
| places putting arbitrary hours on when they accept them
| now, but I've never heard anyone not get the "full
| refund" unless a machine malfunctions.
| defrost wrote:
| Step one: virtually eliminate uneccesary plastic so there's
| far less waste and ideally most is of the type that can be
| recycled.
|
| I've not been in Germany for a long while, but I was
| impressed when last there by a near complete absence of
| excess packaging, nails in big boxes sold by weight rather
| than pre sorted into tiny plastic packets, etc.
|
| No idea if they kept that up.
|
| Addendum: Apparently so, and they have 5 types of household
| bins for seperating waste:
| https://greenendeavour.com.au/is-germanys-waste-
| management-s...
| skriticos2 wrote:
| Yea, that's basic culture here. The bins are also sized
| according, and using the recycle bins is cheaper. There
| is still unsorted/compound waste, but plastics + metals
| go into the yellow/recycle bin automatically. Same for
| paper. Municipal waste centers are basically recycling
| sorters, where you have to declare waste type. You can
| offload recyclables for free and other waste costs you an
| arm and a leg, so there most certainly is incentive to
| follow.
|
| Not that I'd take the recycling percentage at face value,
| there are certainly challenges. But the overall system is
| fairly solid.
| rapnie wrote:
| Culture and regulation, and.. enforcement. In the
| Netherlands we have separate garbabe bins for various
| waste streams for many years. Culturally accepted by now.
| But there's not much enforcement of people who make a
| mess in these bins. In Switzerland when hiring a vacation
| appartment I noticed how people are frantically trying to
| separate correctly, and you receive strict instructions
| to do so too. There's enforcement and fines if you are
| too lax.
| brnt wrote:
| German waste processing is however known for simply
| dumping things in Eastern Europe. In terms of actual
| processing I think only the Netherlands breaches 50%. I
| don't like the 9 trash streams though.
| frereubu wrote:
| Do you have a source for that? I'd be interested to read
| more, because there are similar statistics that only count
| the percentage collected, not the percentage actually
| recycled. e.g. there's quite a bit of "mixed" recycling in
| the UK, which firms count as "being recycled", but when
| they get to the recycling plant if there's "too much"
| contamination (e.g. food, non-recyclable plastic etc.) then
| it's sent to the incinerator.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| https://www.sustainableplastics.com/news/germanys-
| plastic-re...
|
| https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/waste-
| recyc...
|
| I am unaware of the percentage of rejected contaminated
| plastics you mentioned, but Germans being Germans I
| assume it is not scandalous
| frereubu wrote:
| Thanks, will take a look.
| n_plus_1_acc wrote:
| The number is greenwashing because it's including "thermal
| Recycling" aka burning.
|
| https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/daten/ressourcen-
| abfall/verwe...
| WilTimSon wrote:
| How is that even allowed to be called recycling? As in,
| is it genuinely a term defined legally and, if so, who
| allowed this to happen? Because burning is most certainly
| not recycling.
| blueflow wrote:
| Recycled as fuel. Its not that bad energy-wise. We have
| power plants running off that stuff.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Copenhagen recycles 70% of collected plastic, with the rest
| incinerated (used for heating homes, I think).
|
| Almost all plastic packaging is collected, including wrappers
| and trays.
|
| https://affald.kk.dk/affaldsfraktion/saadan-sorterer-du-
| plas... (in Danish)
| its-summertime wrote:
| The last time I saw such numbers for impractical-to-recycle
| stuff like thins and foamed plastics, it ended up that the
| companies were just lying
|
| https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-11-30/redcycle-soft-
| plastic...
| MyFirstSass wrote:
| It's just not possible in any way to recycle 70%!
| Politician number fudging like this completely destroys the
| reputation of these initiatives.
|
| I'm still not convinced after looking at the actual
| numbers, that "recycling", putting stuff into 6 different
| bins etc, makes any difference at all in the grand scheme
| og things. Instead it's a big show hiding the fact that the
| problem is with over-consumption and non degradable
| materials being legal in the first place. Bottle and glass
| recycling for money seems to be semi working though but
| then we'll need QR codes on each item, better but still not
| eliminating the transport and seperation issues, and the
| fact that a lot of recycling is actually dumping stuff on
| poor people far away, and that industry is polluting way
| more than end consumers.
|
| As some people have pointed out it's actually the opposite,
| a smokescreen invented by the industry in the 90's to shift
| responsibility to the consumer so you do "some magic
| complex performance" at home and think now it's ok while
| everything just continues as is defacto, ie. worse than
| doing nothing. Instead we should ban or tax non degradable
| materials, and stick to the few working areas while
| regulating industry and materials even though it'l be rough
| until we're forced to create better materials.
| mavhc wrote:
| I have 3 bins (rubbish; garden waste; paper/soft
| plastic/glass), and take thin plastic and tetrapaks to
| the supermarket to be recycled.
|
| Takes me months to fill the rubbish bin
| Symbiote wrote:
| https://cphsolutionslab.dk/media/pages/cc/about/behandlin
| g-o...
|
| The fourth page "PLAST" (plastic) has a pie chart showing
| the composition of collected plastic waste. The red 23%
| is "residue for incineration".
|
| The other text includes "The Municipality of Copenhagen
| has demanded that at least 75% must set aside for
| recycling and a maximum of 25% as residual fraction for
| incineration."
| coryfklein wrote:
| Does "recyling" include paying Chinese "recyclers" to take
| it? Because if so then I don't think it's actually being
| recycled.
|
| What, pray tell, are they doing with this low-grade
| recycled plastic? Putting park benches out into the
| environment that will degrade faster, distributing
| microplastics everywhere?
|
| Or are they investing a ton of time and energy to recycle
| the plastic into higher use (than park benches), which
| likely has significant input energy costs, which in turn is
| probably harming the environment?
|
| You can't get anything for free, and recycling plastics
| least of all. The most environmentally friendly solution
| I'm aware of today is to simply relocate it all into one
| contained location and incinerating it as cleanly as
| possible or burying it in a landfill with protective
| sheeting. We're not even close to running out of landfill
| acreage on this planet.
| Symbiote wrote:
| All your snarky points are answered in the linked site.
| coryfklein wrote:
| Hardly? It says the plastic is shuffled off to other
| recyclers in the EEA, but gives no indication how much of
| the material _those_ recyclers actually recycle. Maybe it
| doesn 't end up in a Chinese landfill, but substitute
| "China" with "Latvia" or "Estonia" and the point still
| stands. Show me the miraculous Estonian recycling
| industry where 90% of consumer plastics comes from
| recycled material and I'll take my words back.
|
| What are they _actually_ doing with the recycled plastic?
| Making it into pellets and flakes. They call out that you
| _could_ use these to make shampoo bottles, but dare not
| actually claim that such a thing is happening. My
| understanding of recycled plastic is that it is
| inherently lower grade than new plastic. If recycled
| plastic is that much cheaper but still as useable, then
| surely manufacturers are jumping at the bit to use it
| everywhere?
|
| Finally, there is _no mention_ of the energy cost or
| environmental impact of the recycling.
| lukan wrote:
| I would argue burning it (and maybe capture the generated
| CO2) is the only recycling making any sense with the plastic
| garbage we have. And then stop using it for everything and
| start classifying/labeling the plastics where we neee them,
| so they can be sorted automatically later so then you can
| recycle them.
|
| Here in germany some sort of plastic recycling actually
| works, because there is a deposit fee on all plastic bottles
| - you bring them back to the supermarket to get it back - and
| then there is one source of the same plastic, that does get
| used for new products.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| >Until someone develops some sort of multi-spectral imaging
| that can reliably sort plastic based on it's composition
|
| Funny you phrase it like that, because that's exactly what
| the STEINERT UniSort does. Plastic waste is finely shredded,
| dumped onto a conveyor belt, imaged, then passed over air
| puff sorters: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3QHa9oQshw
|
| Is it worth it? Of course not. Far cheaper and easier just to
| burn it. But for EU nations that are really dedicated to
| recycling, it can be done.
| dgellow wrote:
| A lots of recycled plastic (I mean what people put in the
| plastic recycling bin) in the EU ends up being burned. They
| are sorted, cleaned up, then packaged into burnable units,
| because it's the most cost effective way to reuse it
|
| I see 42% "energy recovery" from https://www.europarl.europ
| a.eu/topics/en/article/20181212STO... from 2018.
|
| I found this from January 2024:
| https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-
| new-b...
|
| > In Europe, about 40 % of post-consumer plastic waste is
| incinerated with energy recovery, and the rest is either
| landfilled or recycled. About half of the plastic waste
| collected and recycled is treated in the European Union;
| the other half is exported, mainly to China.
| squokko wrote:
| The recycling also doesn't achieve anything environmentally
| Ma8ee wrote:
| The recycling reduces the amount of oil that goes into new
| plastic, which eventually will be incinerated and contribute
| to the climate crisis.
| asmor wrote:
| the demand for non-virgin plastic is practically zero,
| while the cost is higher
|
| there are no economic incentives to use recycled plastic,
| and regulation mandating its use is minimal to non-
| existing. so most plastic that could be recycled isn't, and
| not because it isn't available/collected/sorted.
| seszett wrote:
| It seems though like many of the throwaway plastic
| containers I can find here like shampoo, water bottles,
| containers for sauces - NOT the Heinz ketchup bottle in
| my fridge though (which does say the body is recyclable
| but the cap is not) mention some percent of recycled
| plastic contents, from 90% to 20% in the items around me.
|
| So maybe it's more expensive but there seems to be some
| kind of incentive for these companies, even if it's just
| marketing.
| asmor wrote:
| Food containers are tricky. Huel ready-to-drink seems to
| be 49%, because they need the inner coating to be virgin
| plastic.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Yes, processes that are bad for the environment is
| cheaper. I find that a failing of the capitalist system,
| not the recycling process. If externalities were properly
| priced, we wouldn't be in this mess.
| yencabulator wrote:
| I fully expect that what's really happening here is that it's
| slightly cheaper to manufacture the caps as a single mold,
| rather than needing to combine two parts.
| lp4vn wrote:
| Very nice. I live alone and often I'm baffled by the sheer amount
| of garbage that my urban lifestyle generates. I was not alive in
| the 80's but I was told that people used to use more environment-
| friendly packaging like glass bottles. Sometimes I wonder why
| this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic
| happened.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Plastic bottles weigh less and can be made thinner.
| Transportation costs dominate the cost of most consumables
| bbarnett wrote:
| Which sort of highlights local vs national production and
| shipping.
|
| The local milkman of the 50s, did better with glass
| collecting and delivering milk. The national enterprise
| benefits, as you say, from weight reduction.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The enterprise "benefits" because it completely off-loads
| the environmental impact to the tax payers.
| bbarnett wrote:
| It does with glass, and the cleaning solutions, and the
| water used during re-use.
|
| I'm sure glass is far more environmentally sound, but to
| claim that glass production, glass cleaning(and the harsh
| chemicals and _their_ production cost to the
| environment), and water for flushing afterwards are not
| relevant, would be wrong.
|
| So _every_ business off-loads some environmental impact
| to the tax payer.
|
| My point? While your statement is true, it has nothing to
| do with how the business decision is made re: cost to the
| business. The metric used there is "what saves the
| business money".
| fendy3002 wrote:
| And as the cost of workforce increase, or in order to
| generate even more profit, using plastics enables
| industrial automation and removal of the delivery
| workforce.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| German Flaschenpost kindly disagrees.
| oven9342 wrote:
| Glass bottles have to be reprocessed later. Forever
| pollutants offer more benefits for the industry.
|
| Short term benefit and profit margin dominate the calculation
| of if life environments deserve to continue unpolluted or
| they deserve to be destroyed in the name of compound
| interest.
| throwaway88409 wrote:
| Transport cost is one factor, but even in countries where
| glass bottles are sold alongside plastic ones they are
| unpopular to the end user themselves because of their
| inconvenience.
|
| The common 2kgx6 PET bottles format is too heavy for glass
| bottles, so you end up paying more for heavier 1.5kgx6
| bottles that are going to last you less.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Now check the price per litre and ask your decision makers
| to introduce a deposit system for glass and plastic
| bottles.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Ketchup should be in a jar rather than bottle really. You
| can't get the ketchup out of glass bottles. Or atleast 5yo
| me couldn't. And that was about the last time I had those.
| biftek wrote:
| I never understood why we put condiments in slim/squeeze
| bottles, I would love to buy a jar of ketchup.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > because of their inconvenience
|
| IMO it's simply habits
|
| no one would buy beer or wine in a plastic bottle, because
| it feels wrong (and it is if you ask me).
|
| Here in Italy nobody in their right mind buys tomato sauce
| in plastic bottles, our granmas would come to haunt us at
| night if we did.
|
| but we buy water in plastic bottles -\\_(tsu)_/-
| lupire wrote:
| Trying to make sense of the world is the surest way to go
| mad.
| callalex wrote:
| Boxed wine comes in a plastic container. Beer goes off
| rather quickly without excellent storage, which is why
| cheap beer has settled on aluminum cans which preserve
| well while being cheaper and lighter than glass.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > which is why cheap beer has settled on aluminum cans
|
| Where I come from beers come almost exclusively in glass
| bottles for the large ones (66cl), aluminum cans are only
| used for the small ones (33cl) but you can buy them in
| glass as well.
|
| There is usually no price difference whatsoever
|
| For example
|
| https://www.amazon.it/Peroni-Italiano-Moderatamente-
| Gradazio...
|
| https://www.amazon.it/Peroni-175-Anniversario-Birra-
| Cassa-dp...
|
| Many of the cheapest beers are imports, for example
| Bavaria, that you usually find in aluminum cans in
| Holland but in glass bottles in Italy.
|
| I can't explain why, but for us some things must be
| bottled in glass or they aren't "good".
|
| Tomatoes is another example: you can find cans of tomato
| pulp or peeled tomatoes, but not the sauce, it always
| comes in glass bottles (it exists of course, but it's a
| very weird choice to us).
| morsch wrote:
| > Transportation costs dominate the cost of most consumables
|
| That was surprising to me and, uh, no, they don't, unless
| you're considering building materials (i.e. rocks).
|
| It's not easy to find numbers, but for milk in Germany, it
| appears to be around 10%, about the same as packaging. Milk
| should be worse than many other products because it's cheap
| and heavy, on the other hand it's rarely shipped over great
| distances. [1]
|
| Another report [2] considers transportation costs relative to
| the value of the goods transported, which isn't exactly the
| same as "how much of the consumer price is transportation",
| but surely related, and has 2.7% for foodstuffs (and 55% for
| rocks).
|
| I mean, I'm sure it varies widely for different kinds of
| consumables, but overall, transporting stuff is _cheap_. I
| think even in terms of CO2, which is certainly
| underrepresented in cost currently, production dominates
| transport for most goods in a grocery store, apart from
| produce shipped by air.
|
| [1] https://www.agrarheute.com/tier/rind/78-cent-fuer-
| trinkmilch...
|
| [2] https://bmdv.bund.de/SharedDocs/DE/Anlage/G/MKS-
| Wissenschaft... (Tabelle 8)
| petepete wrote:
| In the 80s in the UK we had milk delivered every morning in
| glass bottles by a huge fleet of electric vehicles. The empty
| bottles were left out, collected by the milkman, sterilised and
| reused.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float
| cjrp wrote:
| The noise of the electric milk float was oddly haunting.
| Partly because it was generally still dark outside.
| darreninthenet wrote:
| There are still companies doing this, check out Milk and More
| kolektiv wrote:
| I just had a look at this (I'd been meaning to for a while,
| I miss the milkman leaving milk and other bits from my
| childhood). The milk is literally 4x the price I would pay
| in the supermarket. It's a lovely idea, but in this
| economic climate, most people are more price-conscious than
| that...
| darreninthenet wrote:
| Yes it is unfortunately... we used to use them as it
| supports a local farmer with a proper price for their
| milk and the delivery guy gets paid a fair amount but
| when prices shot up we went back to supermarket milk.
|
| I'm all for making sure farmers get paid properly instead
| of ripped off by the supermarkets but when it comes down
| to it had to count the pennies at home first
| IanCal wrote:
| There's often a few middle men with better websites but
| if you have a more direct option see if you can. The milk
| we get has a big creamy layer on the top, and tbh it's
| quite handy just getting a regular delivery of something
| we have commonly. We often add in some eggs.
|
| It's more than the supermarket prices but those are
| insanely low for the product. I understand many feel the
| pinch more but if you can, skipping the supermarket can
| mean more to the actual producers.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| I looked into this a while ago, but as I live in a block of
| flats with multiple locked entry doors needing the intercom
| etc it's sadly not an option.
| huytersd wrote:
| When my parents were kids in Asia they used to get all their
| club soda delivered in cartons in glass bottles that had a
| little glass ball in it to hold in the carbonation. You then
| pushed the glass ball down to open it up. They would then
| sterilize and reuse those and the glass ball would self seal
| once carbonated again.
|
| What a really nice, fully reusable bottle with no waste at
| all.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codd-neck_bottle?wprov=sfti1
| chickenchase-r wrote:
| the seal is waste depending what it is made of. ramune uses
| some kind of plasticy stuff, for example
| huytersd wrote:
| Ah interesting. I though it was glass on glass.
| beardyw wrote:
| Just collected the milk from the doorstep. Still electric!
| Milkman wears a headband light. 3 times a week because we
| have fridges now.
|
| In 70s after an all night party I nearly got run over by one.
| The only moving vehicle in sight!
|
| Was brilliant during lockdown because you could order food
| stuffs the night before 3 times a week as part of regular
| delivery.
| animal531 wrote:
| Same here in South Africa, albeit just with a normal truck.
| They also delivered Orange and/or Guava Juice depending on
| what tokens you'd put out.
| RowanH wrote:
| In NZ - ditto growing up had the milk delivery service. Now
| it was a long distance memory until we moved to a smaller
| town/city. To our surprise one of the independent milk
| companies had a delivery service and up until a few months
| ago there was a glass bottle based delivery service of proper
| milk (the kind with thick fat/cream on the top..). Absolutely
| magic.
|
| Alas cost of living took hold and they stopped the service,
| so sadly off to the store for the milk now. They didn't even
| put up an option of 'we can't afford to keep this going, so
| how much would you pay extra for it'
|
| I bet they would have been surprised what people would
| illogically pay to have their milk and eggs delivered...
| pfdietz wrote:
| I remember growing up when milk delivery in glass bottles
| was replaced by milk delivery in plastic bags (in cardboard
| boxes). All that ultimately went away when milk was just
| another thing you bought at the grocery store. I imagine
| the supply chain got fast and good enough that milk
| wouldn't spoil before it could be consumed, going that
| route, so the extra cost of home delivery became difficult
| to justify.
| jen729w wrote:
| And fizzy pop! I dare say every town had one. In Sunderland
| we had Sykes. They'd come round once a week; you left your
| old bottles out front and they'd be swapped out for new.
|
| I always loved dandelion & burdock.
|
| https://www.sunderlandecho.com/heritage-and-
| retro/retro/sars...
| nickt wrote:
| Villa pop FTW!
|
| https://sunderlandglobalmedia.org/made-in-sunderland-the-
| his...
| _joel wrote:
| Dom't forget Ireland (according to Father Ted)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSstu2tzrng
| icosian wrote:
| I can attest. We had a milkman (daily), and a vegetable
| man, an egg man and a bread man who came around every week.
| Only the milkman had an electric vehicle.
| vostok wrote:
| Do you know what percentage of after tax income people paid
| fir this? I'm curious how other compares to today's services.
| neom wrote:
| Paid for the service? I grew up in Scotland, milk and meat
| came from the farms every morning (90s), you'd put your
| order in the old milk bottle with the money and they'd
| leave whatever your order was. I seem to recall it was 50p
| for most type of milk and 75p for creams. (Except the BSE
| years.. _shudder_ ugh the BSE years.)
| adolph wrote:
| [Edit] Do you think that the Aphex Twin song Milkman
| makes reference to this lack of milk delivery during this
| period?
|
| _Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known
| as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal
| neurodegenerative disease of cattle. . . . Spread to
| humans is believed to result in variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
| disease (vCJD). As of 2018, a total of 231 cases of vCJD
| had been reported globally._
|
| _BSE is thought to be due to an infection by a misfolded
| protein, known as a prion. Cattle are believed to have
| been infected by being fed meat-and-bone meal (MBM) that
| contained either the remains of cattle who spontaneously
| developed the disease or scrapie-infected sheep products.
| The outbreak increased throughout the United Kingdom due
| to the practice of feeding meat-and-bone meal to young
| calves of dairy cows._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalo
| pat...
| neom wrote:
| I just looked into it a bit. Timeline makes a lot of
| sense, Milkman was released in 1996, right during the
| height of the precautions (some farm kids couldn't come
| to school, needed to get sprayed down with some chemicals
| when we went into the high school, every shop/library/etc
| had a bucket of alcohol you walked through. However, it
| seems James was living in London during that period, and
| I don't think the restrictions in the cities were are
| harsh as the country. Interesting theory tho, I like it.
| :)
| arethuza wrote:
| I can remember milk delivery in the 1970s in where I grew up
| in Scotland moving from glass bottles to rather ghastly
| plastic sachets.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| I remember how birds learned that the silver-top milk had a
| thick lay of cream so if you didn't fetch it in pronto, you'd
| find all your bottles would have the tops pecked through.
| yard2010 wrote:
| The answer is money ofc
| sema4hacker wrote:
| I was born in the 50's. Growing up, the worst thing about the
| garbage generated at home was that it had to go into leftover
| paper bags from the grocery store because plastic garbage bags
| didn't exist. And those bags went into metal garbage cans
| outside the house, because plastic garbage cans didn't exist,
| and those garbage cans were always dented, rusty, and with lids
| that quickly stopped sealing properly. What a mess.
| asdff wrote:
| They still sell the metal cans today but they are at least
| galvanized.
| notachatbot123 wrote:
| > What a mess.
|
| Nothing compared to
| https://www.google.com/search?q=landfill+plastic&tbm=isch
| trallnag wrote:
| Plastic trash is supposed to be burned or recycled
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| We don't live in a world where what's supposed to happen
| is what actually happens.
| piva00 wrote:
| Recycling of plastic is only even possible for a really
| low percentage of the total produced, it's not a fungible
| thing since there are seven different grades and each one
| is incompatible with the other in terms of recycling.
| Some of those grades are not recyclable at all.
|
| Currently we recycle 9% of plastics, sorting through the
| cheaper grades is non-trivial, we can't recycle our way
| out of this mess.
|
| Burning plastic will just create more pollution,
| capturing outgassing from burning is also non-trivial.
|
| We should instead use less plastic, the 3 Rs start with
| _Reduce_ , then _Re-use_ and only after that _Recycle_.
| Velofellow wrote:
| Thank you for remembering the other 2 Rs! I just had a
| conversation with someone last week where I brought up
| the two prior to Recycle, and they had completely
| forgotten.
|
| Even the ubiquitous 3 Rs logo with arrows has now become
| shorthand for just recycle.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Plastic trash is supposed to be burned
|
| Ah, nothing to worry about then
| notachatbot123 wrote:
| https://www.greenpeace.org.uk/news/incineration-burning-
| plas...
|
| https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2022/8/science-
| highlights/burni...
| lupire wrote:
| Plastic recycling is marketing myth to make you feel
| better about plastic trash.
| kostko wrote:
| Your lifestyle does not generate garbage. Companies that sell
| non recyclables and non compostsbles generate garbage. Why
| hasnt cocacola replaced their plastics with something
| compostable? There are new inventions for replacing plastics
| out each day, I wonder where those inventions end up.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Recyclable is a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry. You
| should be using reusable glass which is expensive to replace
| but cheap to refill.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Where I live only restaurants can buy glass bottle soda. It
| is quite sad, since I like those. They are way nicer to
| drink from.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Where I live, everyone can buy bottled water in glass
| bottles. I think there are now glass bottles with Coca
| Cola, too, though I'm not certain (I don't drink soda).
|
| The catch is they're obscenely expensive.
| mavhc wrote:
| There's free water in the tap
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry
|
| What does this actually mean and what are you basing it on?
| Without any sources or references it reads a bit like FUD.
| stavros wrote:
| There have been a few articles about that recently.
| However, you can notice it for yourself if you notice how
| many products claim to be "recyclable" but how few are
| recycled.
|
| If recycling were widespread, you'd expect the vast
| majority of products to be made with recycled plastic.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| The ineffectives of recycling is one thing, but the
| person above posited that the paid industry were up to no
| good as well.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I guess it might refer to the fact that 80% of the
| plastic produced ends up in landfills and it's not
| recycled, for different reasons, one of them is that
| recycling plastic is very expensive.
|
| Also there are several different types of plastic that do
| not melt together, or do not melt at all, and can't be
| easily recycled or reused. It also degrades and becomes
| more toxic on every cycle and, unlike glass, health
| safety of recycled plastic cannot be guaranteed so to
| package food the only safe option is to make new plastic.
| distances wrote:
| Is the 80% a number for the US? In northern Europe I
| assume that a small percentage is recycled and the rest
| is incinerated for electricity and heat -- landfill usage
| has restrictions in the EU.
|
| Some countries like Sweden and Finland use incineration
| to such extent that they have a lack of domestic waste
| and have to import it [0].
|
| [0] https://yle.fi/a/74-20076606
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| according to _Our World in data_
|
| _While we might think that much of the world 's plastic
| waste is recycled, only 9% is. Half of the world's
| plastic still goes straight to landfill. Another fifth is
| mismanaged - meaning it is not recycled, incinerated, or
| kept in sealed landfills - putting it at risk of being
| leaked into rivers, lakes, and the ocean._
|
| I misworded my first sentence, I meant that 80% _either_
| goes to the landfill or it 's not recycled, but
| apparently it's more like 70%.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| That's fine but calling it a scam by the plastic industry
| suggests intention, bad inventing, from the plastic
| industry. I'm asking if that's the case.
| apendleton wrote:
| Here's an article:
| https://newrepublic.com/article/179267/recycling-doesnt-
| work...
|
| The gist: similar to Big Tobacco, etc., internally with
| the plastics industry, there seems to have been a much
| greater degree of pessimism about the long-term economic
| viability of plastics recycling, but it was sold to the
| public anyway via ad campaigns and lobbying to forestall
| regulation or legislation limiting plastics as public
| sentiment was shifting towards a greater sense of
| environmental awareness.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| It takes mere moments to google "how much plastic is
| actually recycled"
|
| You would have to be naive to believe that executives in
| the petroleum and plastic industries are unaware of how
| little plastic is actually recycled rather than
| complicit.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| I'm aware of how much plastic is recycled. I'm not
| convinced that the plastic industry conspired to pull the
| wool over the publics eyes about it.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Where I grew up the reason stated when they replaced glass
| with plastic was that the weight of the glass alone caused
| more pollution from transport than the plastic bottles that
| replaced them
| leadingthenet wrote:
| It's not just about emissions, though. Single-use
| plastics literally just accumulate in landfills until the
| end of time, while glass is highly recyclable (and one of
| the few economically viable ones).
| bombcar wrote:
| Arguably putting plastic back in landfills is just
| returning oil back to earth, but it's not a pretty site.
| kalleboo wrote:
| I've never lived anywhere that landfills garbage so I
| don't know about that.
| Solvency wrote:
| Ah, you throw yours right into the river then.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Incineration which generates power and/or district
| heating
|
| Homes that don't have electric or district heating are
| often heated with oil anyway, might as well have some
| utility to that oil before it's burned?
| ssl-3 wrote:
| Glass is infinitely recyclable, but is seldom actually-
| recycled since making new glass is often the least
| expensive route.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I view recycling schemes for plastics as a way to make
| burning the stuff more convenient. Which is not necessarily
| a bad thing.
|
| After fossil fuels are done, the reduced carbon in the
| waste stream (including plastics, but also cellulosic
| materials) will become more valuable as feedstock for
| various chemical processes. Garbage refining will be a
| thing. It will be an aggressive chemical endeavor, more
| akin to petroleum refining than to recycling.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| There's a book I read as a kid that takes place in the
| sort of near future after we've run out of oil.
|
| The only people that have plastic in this future society
| are extremely wealthy and poor people "mine" old
| landfills looking for plastic to sell.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ear,_the_Eye_and_the_Ar
| m
| pfdietz wrote:
| That's not plausible, IMO. Plastic may become somewhat
| more expensive, but it doesn't require fossil fuels.
| Overall secular increase in societal wealth should
| overcome any transient increase in price.
| lm28469 wrote:
| In Germany we have reusable thick plastic bottles, and a
| deposit system that's attractive enough for people to
| bother bringing them back (or for homeless people to
| collect them). Not perfect but much better than single use
| plastic
| lupire wrote:
| I don't think "army of homeless people" deserves a place
| in our comprehensive solution to social ills.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Glass bottles require local cleaning and filling
| infrastructure to make refilling economical. We don't have
| that infrastructure anymore.
| petemir wrote:
| Funnily/depressingly enough, not even supposedly compostable
| stuff is actually compostable [0]
|
| [0] https://www.research-in-germany.org/idw-
| news/en_US/2023/10/2...
| distances wrote:
| Indeed, I think/hope most people have now moved to paper
| bags for their bio waste recycling.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I particularly "admire" compostable cardboard hot food
| containers, which are coated with PFA forever chemicals to
| keep the food oils off the cardboard.
| speff wrote:
| If coca cola's your example, then I'm going to affirm that
| yes, it is the lifestyle that generates garbage. People don't
| _need_ soda. But they want it at a low price that's cheaper
| than Pepsi. You know what that means? Coke's going to be
| shipping in the cheapest container possible to keep the price
| edge - which is plastic.
|
| If soda drinkers cared about plastic consumption, they would
| switch to anything that has glass containers and spend more -
| or just cut the habit due to the waste generated. But that's
| not happening.
|
| Sure, there can be political will to force Coke to switch to
| something else - bypassing the need for the customer to do
| anything - but that would result in higher prices which makes
| people mad. Good luck asking a politician to do something
| that will upset their constituents
| lupire wrote:
| It's not Coke vs Pepsi and pricing competition (Coke costs
| more than it's competitors), it's using a useless
| manufacturered product and shipping water in a can instead
| of drinking from the tap and adding a scoop of sugar and
| spice of your want.
| speff wrote:
| It is still a pricing competition. Sure Coke costs more,
| but they're also riding on their brand recognition to
| bump up their perceived value. No amount of brand loyalty
| would save them if they had to undergo the price jump
| that comes with a massive logistics change of switching
| off of plastic without a proven alternative.
|
| It might cost a buck more per 6pack for Coke right now -
| but people aren't going to get it if it costs 2-3x more
| than Pepsi.
| conductr wrote:
| Not sure if that's true. Soda has tripled in the last few
| years mostly just due to corp greed and realizing people
| are very stuck (addicted?) to their preferred flavors.
| Pepsi and Coke are competitors but not substitutes.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/coca-
| cola-s...
|
| https://www.vox.com/money/23979340/diet-coke-price-coca-
| cola...
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Tea drinker here, but doesn't a lot of soda globally come
| in aluminum cans, which are actually recyclable?
| speff wrote:
| Yep. Though I'm hoping my point can be extrapolated
| outside of the soda example as well. Coke/Soda's just
| something I'm picking on
| panzagl wrote:
| Coke used to come in glass bottles that were returned to
| the store and reused. Consumers didn't change that, the
| Coca-Cola company changed that.
| vel0city wrote:
| Coca-Cola wouldn't be putting anything in plastic bottles if
| people stopped drinking Coca-Cola.
| asdff wrote:
| I go through a 64 gallon trash bin a week. By my back of the
| envelope calculation thats about 1.3 chevy tahoes worth of
| trash a year, and that's just me one American out of 400
| million so all told we are dealing with maybe half a billion
| chevy tahoes of trash a year we need to do something with or
| put someplace if most Americans consume like I do.
| seszett wrote:
| > I go through a 64 gallon trash bin a week.
|
| That seems absurdly large to me.
|
| 64 gallons is 250 litres. We're _four_ and we use about one
| 30 litres (8 gallons) bag for "rest" trash per week
| (everything not recyclable, including diapers which take a
| lot of space, so hopefully soon we can at least halve that
| trash volume) one 30 litres bag for recyclable plastic/metal
| every two weeks and maybe one 30 litres bag for compostable
| stuff (mostly just vegetable and fruit peels from cooking)
| every two weeks or so.
|
| That's about 60 litres or 15 gallons per week for a normal-
| sized family. I can see some of my neighbours having somewhat
| larger bags, some with smaller bags, but I feel like we are
| mostly average for our area (in Belgium).
|
| In fact, a quick search tells me that Belgians have produced
| on average 683 kg of trash per year in 2022, which comes to
| 13 kg per week per person and seems rather consistent with my
| numbers.
| brnt wrote:
| Check your municipal waste centre. Mine, in Limburg (NL),
| recycles diapers.
| seszett wrote:
| Interesting, I wonder how they process them and what they
| become after recycling. Here in Antwerp diapers are
| explicitly supposed to be put in the rest[0] though.
|
| [0]https://www.antwerpen.be/info/restafval
| brnt wrote:
| If you search for "luier recycling" you can find out how
| it's done.
| rolisz wrote:
| Also family of four: we fill a 120l garbage bin per week,
| to the brim, and a 120l compost bin every two weeks (this
| one maybe is not full, but it stinks by that time) and a
| ton of "recyclables" (cardboard, paper, metals, plastics).
| rightbyte wrote:
| Do you put garden waste (bushes, grass) in the compost
| bin? Otherwise it feels an order of magnitude off.
| distances wrote:
| > Also family of four: we fill a 120l garbage bin per
| week
|
| What goes into this since you already recycle bio,
| cardboard, plastics and metal? My "generic trash" is a 25
| liter bag that I empty about once a month or so. Since
| most things go to the specific recycling containers, the
| generic waste is dominantly just napkins and tissues that
| shouldn't go to bio.
|
| I don't have kids so no diapers or anything like that,
| but 120l weekly sounds still a lot after recycling.
| pfdietz wrote:
| We have a very small compost bin in the kitchen that is
| frequently (about once a day) emptied into a garbage can
| with lid in the garage, which is then infrequently dumped
| into a compost pile. The particular combination of
| materials going into the garage compost can (like coffee
| grounds, citrus peels) gives it a spicy rather than
| putrid odor when the lid is opened.
| seszett wrote:
| We put our compost bag in the bottom compartment of the
| fridge. It doesn't smell or leak there and for especially
| smelly things, we first wrap them in a smaller
| compostable bag before putting that in the city-provided
| bag.
| wil421 wrote:
| I tired to do a compost last year but I live near a
| stream and tons of small flying insects infested the
| compost bin. It would never get hot enough to compost,
| ants moved in after the flies left in the spring. My
| climate is hot during the summer but even compost started
| wouldn't help.
|
| I have lots of kitchen waste, grass waste, and plenty of
| brown organic matter I can add that's around my yard. The
| bugs love it.
| pfdietz wrote:
| I also live near a stream. I don't notice lots of insects
| in the pile, but I'd only really worry about flies on
| meat, and I don't put meat scraps in the pile.
|
| How large is your property? I can put the actual pile
| some distance away on a > 1 acre lot.
|
| In the past, I composted cat litter (paper variety, not
| clay) in a compost pile, and that did cause serious odor
| problems. Don't do that.
| zdragnar wrote:
| > t would never get hot enough to compost
|
| Sounds like too much water content and/or not enough air
| for aerobic bacteria to get to work. Tossing the pile
| with a pitchfork somewhat frequently should help it.
|
| Unfortunately, compositing when you live with wildlife is
| a challenge. I don't bother because if the raccoons
| didn't get into it, the bears would, and both are
| annoyingly messy when they do. I even had a bear do
| structure damage to my garage when she broke in to get at
| the garbage one year.
| wil421 wrote:
| I have a special compost barrel that was given to me. It
| has rollers and small holes. Raccoons and other animals
| are not able to get into it. Bears are not much of a
| concern.
|
| I'll try again with more dry leaves. Spring is close to
| starting in my area.
| zdragnar wrote:
| Cardboard strips, egg cartons, and (untreated) sawdust or
| animal bedding style wood shavings can make for some good
| dry material as well if your compost is in fact too wet.
| Good rule is to layer it while you are building the pile,
| then turn twice a week once it is going / ready to go.
|
| Your local hardware store may also have some compost
| kickstarter liquids as well, which might be helpful if
| you want to get it going before too many flies or ants
| come out to infest the pile.
| dirkf wrote:
| (Fellow country man here!) That still sounds like a lot to
| be honest. According to the yearly stats we receive from
| our trash collector: in 2021 our family of 4 produced
| 27,50kg of non-recyclables. That's not per month or per
| person but for all of us for the whole year. Granted, no
| diapers anymore here; that takes quite some space (and
| weight, which is more important since we pay per kg).
|
| We saw a significant drop after they started collecting
| plastics separately. We have a 120 litre bin that we put to
| the curb every two months or so. I don't quite understand
| what people are throwing out all the time that you can fill
| a large bin every week...
| jerf wrote:
| We _nominally_ go through a garbage bin a week... but if
| you compact it down it isn 't anywhere near full. It's just
| effectively impossible to compact as an end user without
| special appliances.
|
| I think a lot of people make the mistake of looking at a
| quantity of trash and measuring it by apparent visual
| volume, but that's not a very useful measure. Mass is a lot
| closer to a useful number. Many things that visually appear
| enormous are in fact not that big a deal, many things that
| visually seem small actually represent a lot of resources.
| te_chris wrote:
| That's obscene. My family does maybe 1.5 small bags of non
| compostable/recyclable each week - Brabantia X size
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| And my household of two produces 20l of regular non-
| recyclable trash every month, 40l of plastic trash every
| month, maybe a couple of kilos of organic waste per week. But
| we buy a lot of organic and glass where possible.
| piva00 wrote:
| Chiming in to also state how absurd this sounds to me.
|
| I live in a household with 3 adults generating trash, we
| don't even fill up a 190L bin every 2 weeks in between
| pickups, usually when I roll the bin to the street it will be
| about 1/3 to 2/3 filled. We have a compost bin about the same
| size which also gets about 1/3 to 2/3 filled every 2 weeks.
|
| Apart from that our recycling bins (about 60L for the
| paper/plastic ones, 20L for glass and metal) gets filled in
| about 4-6 weeks which I then take to the recycling station.
|
| In summary as 3 adults we generate in the absolute top end
| about 117 gallons of non-compostable trash a month (those are
| very rare instances), so about 30 gallons a week for 3 adults
| even when adding up all the recycling we do.
| bombcar wrote:
| That would be 1.2 cubic miles a year uncompressed. Quite a
| lot but also not that much.
| remotefonts wrote:
| Cubic miles? Strange measurement unit...
| scbrg wrote:
| We're in a thread that opened with chevy tahoes... I'd
| say it's an improvement, even if there's some way to go
| still :)
| bombcar wrote:
| I wanted to go with cubic acres ...
|
| https://sundaycomicsdebt.blogspot.com/2015/02/scrooge-
| math.h...
| queuebert wrote:
| Hogsheads are more intuitive.
| lightedman wrote:
| That's an insane amount of generated trash. My husband and I
| combined might fill our 13 gallon kitchen trash can once
| every four days. Is your lifestyle primarily eating
| out/prepackaged foods?
| rusticpenn wrote:
| In my country growing up, there were always random health
| issues popping up because the reused packaging or storage
| without packaging was not always hygienic.
|
| In the beginning of 90s, when plastic packaging became popular,
| it was a huge change as we did not have to worry about many
| health issues ( food poisoning etc).
| 7734128 wrote:
| Glass is in no way environmentally friendly. It takes a huge
| amount of energy to produce glass, and a singel glass bottle
| requires a lot of it. PET bottle recycling is the closest we
| got to a functional plastic recycling system.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| No micro plastics though which is quite nice.
| badcppdev wrote:
| People used to (and still kind of do) worry about glass
| chipping... ironically we can see that and deal with it.
| Unlike micro-plastics. Human nature right?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Glass is also very heavy, which means that transporting
| glass-packaged goods requires much more energy than
| transporting e.g. plastic bottles.
| morsch wrote:
| Though transporting stuff large distances requires a lot of
| energy either way.
| thlr wrote:
| The difference is that glass bottles were consigned and re-
| used. Also energy use does not tell the whole story and one
| should consider the impact of plastic that is not recycled or
| worse, left adrift in the sea or in our rivers.
|
| You make a good point and it can be interesting to know how
| many use of a bottle are required until it becomes more
| energy-efficient compared to disposable plastic, etc.
|
| The shift to the all plastic packaging paradigm was made when
| companies found out that they could simply let the consumers
| deal with the packaging once the product was consumed instead
| of having to get it back from their hands and process it.
| Hence the modern plastic dystopia.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The glass bottles of Heinz are available right next to the
| plastic ones. So in the case of ketchup at least I think people
| choose the plastic ones.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| not where I live - Heinz and the major local brand here
| (Idun, I think?) tend to sell only in plastic bottles.
|
| I can sometimes find fancy ketchup in glass bottles, but
| considering that I only buy ketchup once or twice a year, I
| just can't remember. The glass bottle available isn't the
| Mutti ketchup that I bought years ago, so I'm just buying
| Heinz.
| vel0city wrote:
| At many grocery stores I go to, there are no glass bottles of
| ketchup available. The few that do have them, the glass
| bottles are significantly smaller than the plastic while also
| being more expensive. They also don't have the reduced sugar
| or no HFCS choices in glass bottles. None of the generic
| brands sell in glass bottles around me.
|
| Even then, in the end I'd still end up buying it in plastic.
| The plastic squeeze bottles are just way more convenient. I'd
| probably be fine buying it in bulk and fill my own squeeze
| bottles to reduce plastic consumption, but buying smaller and
| radically more expensive glass bottles isn't really a winning
| choice in my book.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-
| packed-in-plastic happened
|
| I don't get why people keep pretending plastic being widely
| used today is due to some conspiracy instead of it's just
| better at its main function, even without factoring in cost.
|
| Compared to glass container, plastic ones are _much_ lighter,
| harder to break, flexible, malleable, .. the list goes on.
|
| In the 1980s, the use of glass containers was more out of
| necessity than preference. People didn't opt for heavy glass
| containers to be environmentally friendly; they simply lacked
| alternatives.
|
| The appeal of single-use (plastic) containers lies in their
| convenience. Although they are undoubtedly more wasteful, their
| ease of use cannot be denied. People favor them for this
| convenience, with their wasteful nature being an unfortunate
| byproduct. If we refuse to acknowledge this fundamental truth,
| progress in environmentalism will never be done.
| diggan wrote:
| > I don't get why people keep pretending plastic being widely
| used today is due to some conspiracy instead of it's just
| better at its main function, even without factoring in cost.
|
| I don't know how you read parents comment and concluded that
| they're talking about some conspiracy. They seem to genuinely
| ask a question that I'm sure they're not the only one
| thinking about.
|
| > In 80's people use more glass containers because they
| didn't have choices, not because they love to carry heavy
| glass containers around to help the environment.
|
| Again, don't think they said that people used glass
| containers back then to help the environment, just that for
| whatever reason they used those containers, it was less
| harmful to the environment. Not because that was the reason,
| that was just a side-effect of glass being the only choice.
| Then they ask the community what the reasons could be for
| everything being wrapped in plastic now.
|
| As it reads right now, your comment doesn't seem to assume
| good faith of parent comment, but instead you're arguing
| against some position that isn't even talked about.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > some position that isn't even talked about.
|
| There are already lots of sibling comments saying the heavy
| use of plastic is "forced on people" by companies, so yes
| it is talked about. And that's exactly what OP implied.
|
| I'm not even saying this point is entirely false, just want
| to emphasize that people actually prefer convenient things
| regardless if it's forced on them or not.
| diggan wrote:
| > There are already lots of sibling comments saying the
| heavy use of plastic is "forced on people" by companies,
| so yes it is talked about. And that's exactly what OP
| implied.
|
| Reply to those comments instead then? Instead of assuming
| bad faith like "OP implied". I cannot be the only one who
| doesn't think parent implied anything at all and instead
| just asked a question why the change happened from glass
| to plastic.
| lp4vn wrote:
| I already replied to this guy. I honestly think his
| concept of convenience is overrated. I know a lot of
| people who would rather drink from glass than plastic.
| Surprisingly this convenience has never reached the beer
| industry and you can always have beer available in glass.
| I can never find milk in glass bottles though and I can't
| see why, I'm literally forced to use tetrapak due to the
| lack of options.
|
| I think that in a lot of cases plastic is a poor
| container and that's why I asked the question, for me
| it's not obvious the convenience of the plastic nor why
| plastic is the only available packaging material for
| almost everything.
| callalex wrote:
| >Reply to those comments instead then?
|
| Not every reply to a comment you make is a personal
| attack, and it would behoove you to recognize that.
| Sometimes people just want to enhance a discussion with
| relevant and topical information, and may even just be
| curious about your thoughts on related topics.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| > Compared to glass container, plastic ones are much lighter,
| harder to break, flexible, malleable, .. the list goes on.
|
| Yes but they also have the huge waste issue and society isn't
| doing enough to deal with it. The drawbacks are also huge,
| the cost just isn't an issue for the companies putting the
| plastic out into the world. It's more cost effective because
| we allow it to be, because we subsidise the oil industry,
| because we don't tax plastic waste highly enough etc etc.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > they also have the huge waste issue
|
| That goes without saying.
|
| The point is plastic is not only cheaper but also better
| (in term of functionality) and that's a problem we need
| solving to actually get ordinary people on the wagon.
| Reflecting their environment impact into cost with tax etc.
| is cool, but that's not enough.
|
| Eating out and food delivery being 2x or even sometimes 10x
| more expensive than making food yourself never stop (some)
| people to do that anyway because of its convenience factor.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| It also goes without saying that's its materially
| preferable in many cases. But for a business preferable
| generally comes down to profitable. The point I was
| driving at is that by withdrawing subsidies from these
| industries we can nudge the trade off point to a place
| that more often selects for environmental options.
| piva00 wrote:
| > The appeal of single-use (plastic) containers lies in their
| convenience. Although they are undoubtedly more wasteful,
| their ease of use cannot be denied. People favor them for
| this convenience, with their wasteful nature being an
| unfortunate byproduct. If we refuse to acknowledge this
| fundamental truth, progress in environmentalism will never be
| done.
|
| Yes, they are much more convenient in multiple ways (ease of
| transportation due to weight, flexible and malleable to take
| any shape or form, etc.) but there's no pricing of the
| externalities, if plastics would cost as much needed to take
| care of their disposal in environmentally friendly ways this
| convenience would have a much higher cost, naturally
| diminishing its uses.
|
| While the side-effects of using plastics are not priced into
| the material it won't ever be solved.
| lp4vn wrote:
| I think you can speak for yourself.
|
| I prefer glass bottles to plastic ones and I always buy soda
| in glass bottles if they are available(and this means almost
| always since they are available in the supermarket close to
| my home).
| digging wrote:
| I don't actually expect consumer preference is or ever has
| been a primary factor. It's _cheaper_ and _more reliable_
| to ship plastic bottles. Manufacturers will use them for
| those reasons and then we 'll buy them because it's what is
| available. Or it's cheaper. Or we have a preference. But at
| that point, it hardly matters.
| callalex wrote:
| The carbon impact of that vs cans is enormous.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Plastic is essentially a byproduct of fuel production. My
| understand is that a lot of companies will pay others to take
| that plastic off their hands. Not only is it cheaper to use
| plastic than glass, it's positively subsidised.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Where "fuel" there includes natural gas.
|
| If ethane (the feedstock for ethylene production) were not
| useful for plastics, it would just be left in the natural gas
| and burned with the methane.
| wil421 wrote:
| A realtor friend found a lucrative side business in plastic
| recycling during the Great Recession. She still makes around
| $100k a year off of it.
|
| I wish I knew how it worked but her and her business partner
| don't talk about it much. Probably for good reason. Pretty
| sure they take plastic off people hands and sell it to
| someone who uses it, paid to take it away and then paid again
| by a buyer.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Probably exporting it to someone that uses it as fuel, but
| not labelled/indicated for such use.
|
| It's basically crude oil when it comes to energy/kg.
|
| Lots of shipping containers going back empty to lots of
| places.
| batushka3 wrote:
| Plastic is a superior packaging material. It delivers superb
| cleanlines and posibility to use packaging gas(Nitrogen) in
| automated lines. Cleanliness is essential for shelf life, and
| many products have it now unheard compared to 80s paper
| packaging - only due to package. Amount of food spoilage
| prevented by plastic packaging is enormous, it is very sad to
| see this no plastic hysteria. Like seing dark ages returning.
| megaman821 wrote:
| I agree with you. Plastic is one of those weird issues where
| it gets much more prominence than it deserves. Plastic
| reduces food waste and items damaged in shipping. If you
| don't litter and have a good landfill system, there is
| nothing to worry about.
| reactordev wrote:
| Convenience. In the 80s, people were starting to get over
| worked and so conveniences like plastic packaging, microwave
| meals, lunchables, plastic bottles, etc started popping up.
| Easy, just grab one. When you're done, just throw it away!
| Except, then there was a garbage problem - so they campaigned
| for recycling! Then reality of recycling hit and so they say -
| separate and clean it first. Meanwhile people like you are
| wondering how we got to this madness. Convenience. And some
| really good marketing. Only about 9% of plastic has been
| recycled.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The Kodak Fling had to be renamed Funsaver because people
| were taking out the film and throwing away the cameras. That
| interfered with their plan to refill the used cameras.
| verghese wrote:
| I remember growing up in India and plastic was introduced to
| "save the trees". It took us decades for us to fully grasp the
| environmental devastation it caused.
| unregistereddev wrote:
| Growing up in the United States, I remember plastic being
| introduced for the same reason. For example, there was a huge
| push to get people to accept plastic shopping bags rather
| than paper ones. There were news stories talking about how it
| not only saved trees, but also used less fuel because the
| paper bags are bulky, heavy, and expensive to ship from the
| manufacturer.
| infecto wrote:
| Its cheaper and easier to ensure sanitary products.
|
| We love to be romantic about glass but I don't think as easy of
| a calculation for the total environmental use. Glass is heavier
| and more expensive to transport. Glass is harder to shape into
| sizes that make for efficient transportation, for example
| Costco square milk jugs. I love to use glass when I can but I
| don't know if using this glass jar which may not even be
| recycled is better or worse than a plastic container.
| bayindirh wrote:
| Glass is recycled infinitely more easily and more widely.
| Pasabahce sells upcycled and recycled products here, and mark
| them clearly. Also, we have glass collection bins which has
| different compartments for clear and colored glass. These are
| periodically emptied.
|
| Even if they are not recycled, a glass jar is used for more
| than five years in an household, only by replacing the caps
| in the process. If we don't need the jars, we give them away
| to people who need them, adding more usable glass to
| sneakernet of jars.
|
| Glass is finicky in some forms, and expensive to make it
| durable during production and transport, but rarely, if ever,
| ends up in a trash bin.
| pxx wrote:
| It's well-known the total environmental impact is much less
| for plastic than glass. Just the weight alone should allow
| you to understand this [0] [1] [2].
|
| Glass is not recyclable widely. It is a contaminant in
| single-stream recycling because broken glass is a hazard
| for sorting, and even if you are able to recycle it, the
| transport costs are extremely high [3].
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230427-glass-or-
| plastic... [1] https://ecochain.com/case-studies/case-
| study-packaging-plast... [2] https://earth.org/glass-
| bottles-environmental-impact/ [3]
| https://www.wastedive.com/news/when-its-cheaper-to-trash-
| gla...
| Solvency wrote:
| I like how you completely ignored the environmental
| impact of microplastics and PFAS.
| infecto wrote:
| I don't think anyone is completely ignoring it. I think
| it is an extermely complicated equation. Factoring in
| PFAS and microplastics gets even more difficult. I don't
| have research in front of me but it would be interesting
| to look at regions like Japan that have very tight loops
| on plastics. How many microplastics get out in the wild.
| The other problem there is the microplastics from tires,
| huge issue since those could get in the drinking water
| eventually. Its a difficult problem.
| infecto wrote:
| That works in some parts of the world but I still don't
| believe the total environmental cost is as easy to
| calculate even in your scenario. The total cradle-to-grave
| environmental cost of a product has many variables and its
| not always as clear. Those variables can also have
| different weightings depending on the user (maybe
| microplastics is a greater concern that total environmental
| cost).
|
| In the past, even when accounting for recycling of the
| glass, plastic bottles for example had a lower
| environmental impact that glass.
|
| edit: And I enjoy using glass myself, especially for items
| I am storing longer term but I also try to think about the
| total environmental cost of the item. I know in the US
| people often do things that feel good, like buying reusable
| shopping bags instead of plastic bags given my the store.
| The problem is the number of times that reusable bags needs
| to be used to be better for the environment is often many
| more times than they often get used.
| digging wrote:
| What's the definition of environmental impact you're
| working with?
|
| I think microplastic pollution is horrible. It's arguably
| worth putting extra carbon in the atmosphere to avoid
| plastic pollution. I'm not actually sure.
| infecto wrote:
| Up until most recent history the equation has been
| something about net energy cost or co2 cost. There is
| indeed a new variable which is microplastics. Something
| that needs to be researched more. For all we know that
| ketchup bottle has little to no impact on your health but
| it's plastics further upstream in processing or the farm
| itself.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| There's a practical concern there which is really relevant
| with little ones running around: glass breaks easily. A
| plastic bottle or cup or whatever vessel can fall from a
| shelf or counter to the floor and be unharmed and not harm
| any people. Glass containers, not so much. It's only viable
| for sensible humans with good coordination, and a lot of
| fully-grown ones don't even have that!
| azemetre wrote:
| Should plastic containers shedding millions of nano particles
| be considered sanitary? The only reason it's used is that the
| externalities aren't properly taxed (or not banned IMO).
| Maybe we should not use things that are "easier" when they're
| contributing to a massive amount of pollution. I mean there
| was an article posted here about finding microplastics in a
| human fetus. Yet we still continue to use it.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Biologically it is. You could argue on long term effects of
| microplastics but it's clearly less of a risk than food
| poisoning.
| azemetre wrote:
| We're seriously going to say that a substance that was
| very recently introduced to human society is as risky as
| food poisoning? How often do the commoners have to suffer
| through businesses ill-attempt to save money while
| poisoning us?
|
| Leaded gasoline, chlorofluorocarbons, asbestos, pet food
| laced with poisons and filler, baby food laced with heavy
| metals, opioids, cigarettes, campaigns about seat belts
| being unsafe, round up, fracking that poisons the ground
| water, etc.
|
| Excuse me if I doubt the corporations, that continue to
| poison the the world around us unless literally forced by
| nation states not to, are being honest when they safe "oh
| it's not harmful" and not the reality of the situation.
| Wanting to save a buck, repercussions be damned.
|
| Why are you saying "clearly" as if it's 100% guaranteed?
| We have no idea the repercussions of introducing a new
| substance that has literally infiltrated all organic life
| on earth. This is completely new territory and acting
| like it's all "solved science" is extremely disingenuous.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| People die from food poisoning. No one has died from
| microplastics, so far as we can tell.
| asadotzler wrote:
| you don't actually know that. if, imagine, the increase
| in dementia or cancer or any major illness is increased
| at all by microplastics, and we will find this out before
| long, and it will indict Big Plastic and Big Oil, we will
| learn it's killed far more of us that you whoring for Big
| Oil and Big Plastic suggests.
| bullfightonmars wrote:
| Do bottles shed microplastics?
|
| Manufacturer > store > pantry > garbage can > dump.
|
| Isn't the majority of this buried in the ground in dumps
| that are sealed off from groundwater?
|
| I suspect our clothes, cars/tires, houses, and other things
| that live outside contribute more to microplastics than
| food containers.
| azemetre wrote:
| Yes, they shed plastics:
|
| https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2024/01/12/plastic-
| bottles-n...
|
| The question should be reversed, is there anything made
| of plastic that doesn't shed particles? It seems likely
| not, they all tend to shed.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Do air molecules in gaseous form colliding with the
| plastic contribute to micro-plastic production? Oxygen is
| a notoriously active element....
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Fair point, but I don't store very much of my food in a
| tire and I rarely, if ever put food in a shirt before I
| microwave it.
|
| In the other hand, I probably have about a pound of
| Tupperware in my body. I guess my point is that you're
| right about micro plastics in the environment, but I'm
| more concerned about the ones in me.
|
| (Strenuously agree that both are bad).
| infecto wrote:
| I don't know the exact sources and that's what we should
| be studying. For all we know it's tires to roadways to
| rain runoff that makes it into ground water or bodies of
| water that we eventually treat for drinking.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Fair point. Needs more study before dummies like me make
| assumptions.
|
| (Still not buying any Tupperware, though).
| infecto wrote:
| Me too! I use glass at home.
| c22 wrote:
| Use the same rule for tupperware that you apply to
| shirts! I store and buy food in plastic containers often,
| but I always move it onto a ceramic dish before I
| microwave it.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Ditto here but only recently. Currently working all the
| plastic I can put of my food prep workflow. Insidious
| situation we find ourselves in.
| infecto wrote:
| Unfortunately your kind of argument is what often comes up
| in ecological debates. I am not denying the impact of
| microplastics but raising the point that it is a
| complicated equation. Banning plastics is just a silly
| comment. What about tires, medical devices, plastic jugs to
| get water to people with no access to clean water. It is an
| easy argument to make if you might be in a place of
| privilege and you can hand wave most of those problems
| away. My posistion is that yes microplastics pose a
| possible issue on a go forward basis, I don't know the
| totality and I believe that humans are still better off
| than we were before plastics.
| azemetre wrote:
| I'm not talking about just banning plastics (it should be
| banned involving anything food related IMO) but actually
| taxing these materials as the hazardous materials they
| surely are.
|
| Why would you ever expect a bottling plant to move away
| from plastic when there is no incentive? Why would anyone
| move to better materials or continue researching when
| there are cheaper alternatives that aren't rightfully
| taxed against their externalities?
|
| Why are we as a society, one which has banned lead from
| gasoline (resulting in lower crime rates across the
| world) or banning CFCs to repair the ozone layer, feel so
| helpless trying to hold these corporations accountable
| for not polluting our world around us today?
|
| Is it really that impossible?
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| It's possible but there is no voting solution to achieve
| it
| infecto wrote:
| I don't think I generally agree with a plastic tax but
| lets imagine there was one. I am honestly not even sure
| how you would set the price, my whole point is the
| externalities are hard to measure. I also suspect the
| cost of the implementation will be on the shoulders of
| the consumer. We can hand wave it away and say we can
| create more rules to prevent it but at the end of the day
| that is most likely what will happen.
| ezrast wrote:
| There's no reason the tax needs to directly reflect the
| environmental impact. We figure out an amount that is
| enough to change corporate behavior without bankrupting
| them, maybe with some kind of sliding scale to put more
| responsibility on larger businesses who would otherwise
| benefit from regulatory capture, throw in some exceptions
| for the aforementioned medical devices, etc. "Pricing the
| externalities in" is a nice political justification but
| in reality this kind of thing happens because we've
| already decided that plastics are significantly worse
| than the alternative and we want to incentivize change.
|
| Regarding consumers shouldering the cost - well, yeah,
| regulation drives prices up; even my liberal self agrees
| that that's broadly true. Those same consumers will be
| shouldering the cost of an environment permeated by toxic
| microplastics, which we are increasingly being driven to
| believe will be a greater impact than that of more
| expensive consumer goods.
| asadotzler wrote:
| and when they jack up prices, we use the tax revenue to
| subsidize the poor so only the well off pay that
| assholery, we can do this for carbon in all forms.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| For someone so skeptical, why buy the 'cost increases
| will be passed on to the consumer' BS? Clearly that's not
| true.
|
| First, price increases depend on elasticity. I'm guessing
| that ketchup demand is pretty elastic; it's not diabetes
| medication or higher education.
|
| Also, we can assume Heinz, being sophisticated, has
| already priced it for the highest possible marginal
| return; there's not necessarily room for increasing the
| price without reducing return (by driving down sales).
| infecto wrote:
| Yeah that will never happen in many countries.
| plussed_reader wrote:
| Banning micro-plastic sources from consumer purposes
| isn't so silly if it contributes to dementia and other
| neurological issues long term.
|
| They're finding they stuff embedded in utero lining; your
| argument strikes me as the same old rebuttal to the
| things we can't political agree to study. You can't deny
| there is a lot of business momentum to keep plastics in
| production, no? And yet the more we learn the more
| checkmarks in the minus column for petro-chemicals
| accumulate.
| infecto wrote:
| Not sure why you are bringing politics up. This has
| nothing to do with it.
|
| We most definitely need to fully study the impacts of
| plastics on the human body. We don't know the full extent
| of what it's doing and it's important we figure it out.
|
| It's a complicated equation that we do not fully
| understand. It's easy to say just ban it but there is are
| a lot of other negative consequences that will come out
| of that decision. That's my point, none of us know the
| exact outcome either way so it's silly and all too easy
| to just make proclamations like yours and then sprinkle
| in some dementia with it. I am certain you can pull out a
| study that has a link between the two but I suspect we
| still don't know the true origins of dementia and we do
| not know the full impacts of plastics on human health.
|
| I bet you don't even know the source of microplastics
| fully. I sure don't. For all I know it is from car tires
| that makes it into the water ways and we eventually drink
| it or consume meat that has drunk it.
|
| We don't know the equation enough to know what concerns
| we should weight heavier on a global/population scale.
| xnyan wrote:
| > Not sure why you are bringing politics up. This has
| nothing to do with it.
|
| Politics is the struggle to gain, retain, and use power.
| The use of plastics creates a huge amount of wealth and
| power for many, by definition anything that could affect
| this is political.
| infecto wrote:
| Sorry but that drags this conversation in such a wild
| direction. You have gone so off track that it no longer
| makes sense.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Most microplastics in your environment are from tires and
| textiles. Blow molded PE is way down the list on what I'm
| worried about.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Should plastic containers shedding millions of nano
| particles be considered sanitary?
|
| It's not really on the scale of sanitariness. It's a
| pollutant and a problem. You can even say it's not worth
| the tradeoff. But no, plastics are not unsanitary because
| they can produce microsplastics.
| ska wrote:
| I've read the main contributor to microplastics is car
| tires. Do you have an idea if these types of consumer
| containers are a significant source?
|
| Agree the incentives are screwed up, and that could help.
| Hizonner wrote:
| You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the product
| in bulk and dispense it into the customer's container.
|
| And a lot of products could actually be formulated on site,
| because most of, say, your cleaning aisle is various
| combinations of relatively few standard components. The
| biggest barrier there are certain people's desires to control
| information and to create the perception of distinctions that
| don't exist.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > You know what's more efficient than glass? Ship the
| product in bulk and dispense it into the customer's
| container.
|
| yeah, that would be a great use of everyone's time. line up
| at the olive oil station, line up at the beer station, line
| up at the flour station, line up at the coffee station,
| line up at the ketchup station, ....
|
| and then on top of that, add up the time and expense of
| everyone getting a different price based on how much their
| unique container holds.
| InSteady wrote:
| Better go on polluting up the world for generations to
| come. Wouldn't want to make anyone wait a few moments for
| essential goods.
| ddejohn wrote:
| Bulk sections have existed in grocery stores for a very
| long time, and work perfectly fine lol.
| tshaddox wrote:
| They're common, but A) generally make up a tiny portion
| of floor space (at least in the U.S., apart from rare
| specialty stores) and B) I would hazard a guess that they
| are less sanitary and even less fresh on average than
| comparable packaged foods.
| boudin wrote:
| You clearly have no idea about what you are talking
| about. I've been buying bulk everything I can for a long
| time and I don't see any downside to it.
|
| It's smarter in every single point: - I buy what I need
| instead of what was decided by the packager. - I don't
| buy a package to throw it away and buy a new one next
| time. What a waste of money on top of the environmental
| impact. - It's way more efficient for shopping. When
| things are organised in bulk it's visually much easier to
| spot in comparison with packaged stuff with random
| designs in aisles. - Never experience "queues at
| stations" so this is a non problem in my 2 decades
| experiences of shopping in bulk in various
| cities/countries
| jgalt212 wrote:
| Your time is worth zero, and other folks time is worth
| non-zero. That's one way to get your conclusion. The
| other way, is you're just wrong.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Many (most?) nicer grocery stores in the US already do
| bulk packaging for coffee, to no discernible detrimental
| effect.
|
| Compared to narrow aisles and decision paralysis from 60
| different plastic bottles with the same ingredients but
| different scents/dyes, I think any inefficiencies in bulk
| shopping are probably pretty small.
| ecshafer wrote:
| This might be a local thing for you. The only store
| around me that has bulk coffee is the very bougie food
| co-op. Even nice stores like whole foods, wegmans, trader
| joes don't have that.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Possibly. I know for a fact that Whole Foods in NYC has
| bulk coffee, as well as bulk rice and other grains. It's
| also the norm in local mid-range chains (Westside Market,
| Fairway) and greenmarket-style stores.
| Steltek wrote:
| Wegman's definitely has bulk food sections. The memorable
| part is the candy but there are other foods. I'm not sure
| if they have bulk coffee? Their name brand coffee bags
| have the roast date on them (vs. "best by" BS dates) so I
| zeroed in on that and didn't look back.
|
| Also Stop'n'Shop, a very much NOT a bougie food store,
| has bulk coffee with a grinder. At least in some
| locations.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Wegmans has always had the bulk candy, nuts, etc. as far
| back as a I can remember, I've never seen coffee though.
| vel0city wrote:
| I'd love if there were just dispensers for the soaps and
| juices and what not I buy. Just tap my credit card, press
| a button, and fill a big jug. I agree I probably wouldn't
| want _everything_ sold as such but loads of staples where
| I am probably going to go through a lot of it all the
| time or are already going to have a short shelf life,
| sure.
|
| And yeah, I actually do go with the "line up at the beer
| station and get bulk beer", a number of breweries around
| me have walk-up growler filling stations. It is pretty
| nice getting fresh beer straight from the source. A few
| groceries near me fill growlers as well.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Sorry, I just got Black Mirror flashbacks to the Merits
| episode...
| yunwal wrote:
| You know what's actually a waste of my time? Cleaning out
| my fridge of all the food waste generated because I
| couldn't actually buy just 1 carrot, I have to buy 3
| pounds wrapped in plastic for some reason.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| I know this will blow your mind, but where I do my
| shopping (France) this exists in many places and there
| are no queues.
|
| It takes 1 minute more to fill a bag or bottle. But it
| prevents a heck of a lot of packaging. And I can take
| precisely the quantity I want, in the container that I
| want.
|
| Perhaps you prefer the "old" way. Perhaps it is faster.
| But if we can not make tiny changes like that, how will
| we explain ourselves in 30 years time to our
| grandchildren?
|
| "Yea I know sweety we messed up your planet. But I'll be
| dead in 5 years and in the mean time it was really
| convenient. Sucks to be you"
| coryrc wrote:
| Do you know why medicines have a seal on them in the USA?
|
| https://www.packaging-gateway.com/comment/tylenol-
| murders-fo...
|
| There are psychos all over America. Wanton violence and
| anti-social behaviour are cultural norm. You can get shot
| because someone else looked at another person. https://en
| .m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Kansas_City_parade_shoo...
|
| We can't have nice things because we don't enforce any
| standard of conduct. Progressives are more concerned
| about git branch names than ensuring children actually
| learn something in school.
| xnyan wrote:
| >Progressives are more concerned about git branch names
| than ensuring children actually learn something in
| school.
|
| Source on this?
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > It takes 1 minute more to fill a bag or bottle. But it
| prevents a heck of a lot of packaging. And I can take
| precisely the quantity I want, in the container that I
| want.
|
| 1 minute for each product, vs like 1 second for each
| product. I think it's a similar efficiency loss as
| containerized vs break bulk shipping.
| tpmoney wrote:
| While I'm a big fan of being able to buy quantities in
| bulk, it's worth remembering we did just go through a 3
| year period that should illuminate why "every Tom, Dick and
| Harry brings their likely barely washed if not fully
| contaminated packaging from home and uses the community
| ladle to scoop out of the community bin into their bag"
| might not be the best default. At least with factory ->
| sanitized individual wrappings you can spend a lot of
| effort stopping contamination at specific points in the
| supply chain. Bulk -> consumer reused packaging is much
| much harder to prevent contamination.
| queuebert wrote:
| Are you aware that fruits and vegetables are sold
| individually without packaging?
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Because they (usually) have their own natural skin which
| protects the flesh. You can wash it too!
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Ale-8-One[0] sold their feature soda/pop/coke/soft drink in
| some areas in returnable bottles at least as late as 2010. Word
| was that if their bottle washing and sanitizing machine died,
| they'd have to stop that. It turns out nobody's making parts
| for those machines any more.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ale-8-One
| gs17 wrote:
| I know they were still accepting returns back in 2020 (I was
| looking forwards buying some on a road trip and returning it
| as we came back through KY), but their new website redesign
| doesn't seem to mention it anymore.
|
| EDIT: The bottles for sale on the website are specifically
| "non-returnable", not sure if that implies no more returns,
| or only store-purchased bottles are returnable.
| Fnoord wrote:
| I remember that as kid, custard in glass bottles. I'd let them
| fall out of my hands from the fridge and my parents would get
| angry.
| cubefox wrote:
| There are concerns that breathing in and ingesting
| microplastics from clothing, car tires, and packaging is
| causing some of the health epidemics we see in the last
| decades. Like rising rates of obesity, cancer, mental disorders
| (autism, ADHD, gender dysphoria) and decreasing sperm count and
| quality. But no definitive evidence exists yet. If this turns
| out to be true, there is a case against plastic even if it is
| economically superior to the alternatives.
| lupire wrote:
| There are "concerns without definitive evidence" that
| everything causes everything. If this turns out to be true,
| there is a case against everything.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| With ketchup (and mustard, mayo, etc.), squeezable bottles are
| way more convenient. Gone are the days of wanting to get X
| amount of ketchup out of the bottle but ending up with either
| 0X or 10X.
|
| Aside from the ketchup dispensing utility, you also escape
| tedious discussions about the best way to get ketchup out of a
| glass bottle. Do you tap the side? Shake the bottle? Angle it?
| Smack the bottom? Just sit there patiently? Warm it up? Stick a
| knife in it? You can be pretty sure that if you use any of
| these methods, someone is going to tell you about one of the
| others.
| natoliniak wrote:
| > best way to get ketchup out of a glass bottle.
|
| i store the ketchup bottle upside down and when i open it, it
| is immediately ready to pour and is mostly controllable
| specialist wrote:
| I've mostly switched to pressure cooker, bulk foods (25 lb bags
| of rice, beans, porridge), and the local produce stand (BYOB).
| Both my food and packaging waste is now minimal.
|
| Most of my plastic waste is from prescriptions. OMG so
| wasteful. Wax paper bags would be just fine.
|
| YMMV.
| callalex wrote:
| Remember that these days "waxed" paper is actually PFAS.
| specialist wrote:
| Right you are. I did forget.
|
| Last time I bought parchment paper, I settled on
| Costco/Kirkland brand, for that reason. I dimly recall it
| has a silicon-based coating for non-stick feature. Quick
| look at the box has no info.
|
| I anticipate we'll learn that all this fancy new silicon is
| toxic as well.
|
| FML.
|
| I still think paper is preferable to plastic. IIRC, Amazon
| Rx is using paper now.
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| Glass containers are heavy. Switching to plastic containers was
| lighter and reduced shipping expenses.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Sometimes I wonder why this massive change to everything-
| should-be-packed-in-plastic happened
|
| Easy - it's way cheaper.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| In fairness, for ketchup specifically, glass bottles are an
| incredible nuisance.
| queuebert wrote:
| That used to be part of the excitement.
| asadotzler wrote:
| you got scammed by Big Oil. that's what happened.
| londons_explore wrote:
| It does mean this cap is practically impossible to clean, and
| provides a lot of surface area and crevices for mould to grow or
| plasticizers to leak from the packaging into the product.
|
| All engineering is a tradeoff, and I would be interested to see
| how those factors were considered when doing the redesign.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > and provides a lot of surface area and crevices for mould to
| grow
|
| Isn't the whole reason Heinz ketchup is self stable is because
| it's too high in acidity for mold to even grow
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| It's probably from added stabilizers and not acidity. Molds
| do well with acidic food, as well as sugary and salty
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Heinz ketchup ingredients: TOMATO CONCENTRATE FROM RED RIPE
| TOMATOES, DISTILLED VINEGAR, HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, CORN
| SYRUP, SALT, SPICE, ONION POWDER, NATURAL FLAVORING.
|
| -- https://www.heinz.com/products/00013000006408-tomato-
| ketchup
| reportgunner wrote:
| I checked for my country (Slovakia in Europe) just out of
| curiosity:
|
| - tomatoes (148g for 100g of ketchup)
|
| - distilled vinegar
|
| - sugar
|
| - salt
|
| - spice and herb extract
|
| - spices
|
| https://www.grizly.sk/heinz-paradajkovy-kecup-jemny-570-g
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| It does look like there's no preservatives added to
| heinz. It appears the lack of mold growth in ketchup
| comes down to a combination of lower pH from the vinegar,
| and low water content by cooking it out of the tomatoes.
| According to some food safety experts, it's possible for
| mold to grow on ketchup, less so for pathogens. Keeping
| it cold will definitely extend the time it would take
| mold to root.
| justusthane wrote:
| Molds and bacteria do not do well with acidic foods --
| that's why you can leave an opened jar of salsa in the
| fridge for, like, a year. It's also why it's safe to can
| tomato sauce in a hot water bath, versus other less acidic
| food which need to be pressure canned.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Wrong! Both bacteria and fungi can thrive in a variety of
| pH. Acidophiles are a group specialized to highly acidic
| environments, and there are alkaliphiles as well. Fungi
| and bacteria also have methods to both change the pH of
| their environment, and adapt to it. Google it, there's
| plenty of research papers.
|
| Both bacteria and fungi prefer more acidic than alkaline
| environments, with a "happy range" for each. Tomatoes are
| only weakly acidic, at 4.3 to 4.9. But molds commonly
| grow at pH 3.5 to 8. Aspergillus niger and Penicillium
| funiculosum can grow at pH 2 and below.
|
| Extremely low pH is certainly useful at inhibiting some
| forms of life, but the world contains many different
| forms of life, and some are a lot more adaptive than
| others. Research shows that the best way to preserve food
| is a combination of chemical preservatives and low pH.
| Which is why the commercial food industry uses
| preservatives...
| cobertos wrote:
| Are the mold that grow at acidic pHs common in the
| household?
| coryfklein wrote:
| If mold is growing on the cap, it's probably growing on the
| inside too. Throw it out.
| tempestn wrote:
| Couldn't be worse than the old caps with the silicone-it's
| impossible to get a small squirt from those things. You've either
| got nothing, or you're swimming in ketchup.
| obloid wrote:
| I always popped out the silicone valve for that very reason.
| You would have to squeeze until the pressure overcame the
| resistance of the silicone valve then the ketchup would squirt
| out at high velocity. It was nearly impossible to get exactly
| the amount you wanted. With the valve removed it only takes a
| gentle squeeze.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| That 3D scan WebGL viewer is sooooo good.
| ImHereToVote wrote:
| It's Three.JS r152. It doesn't look like it even has an
| acceleration structure. That's just raw rendering of 3D
| textures.
| addandsubtract wrote:
| Doesn't load in Firefox (macOS), though.
| lucioperca wrote:
| Is recycling really worthwhile and is burning such waste and
| using it to generate energy not more efficient?
| Culonavirus wrote:
| Last time I looked this up, I found out that recycling being
| worth is is highly dependent on where you live and what laws
| and regulations apply there. Don't quote me on this, do your
| own research, but I think some of the "recycled" plastic just
| ends up being shipped overseas and then ends up in the ocean.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Meh. Still plastic, it just piggybacks on the semi big lie of
| "recycling plastics works!"
|
| I guess they are trying. But still more of a "shuffling deck
| chairs as the Titanic sinks" than actually addressing a problem
| midtake wrote:
| All my ketchup comes in glass
| Neil44 wrote:
| My grandad worked for Heinz in the big 57 factory. When I was a
| student he used to get me loads of cans of food, all without
| labels, you had to just know the little codes stamped on top to
| know if it was sponge pudding or chicken soup. I don't think they
| stamp the codes in the metal any more.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Maybe I'm alone in this but I always found the silicone cap
| design choice to be particularly disgusting and unappetizing.
| Having your sauce fired to the plate at high velocity thin stream
| with a gross noise just isn't what I want when I'm about to eat.
| Doesn't take much imagination to think what it resembles in
| nature when you look at it.
|
| Think I only used one of these bottles once when they were
| introduced what 15-20 years ago? Then I've taken the entire lid
| off every single time since because of how unappetizing it is.
| Always go with the glass bottles too if I can for the same
| reason.
| blueflow wrote:
| Sustainability talk being about ketchup caps while rich people
| fly to climate conferences in their yachts. Weird world.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Don't forget to stop eating meat, while we heavily subsidize
| the resources industry and frack the land.
| mc32 wrote:
| Certain senators flying in private planes too!
| abdusco wrote:
| > fly to climate conferences in their yachts. Weird world.
|
| Yachts that fly. Weird world, indeed :)
| blueflow wrote:
| Its a reference to this meme format:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/me_irl/comments/11ayxqc/me_irl/
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| It's missing a Porsche hanging below on ropes. Someone fix
| the meme.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "We can't do everything, therefore we should do nothing". This
| kind of thing is just content-free dismissal.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Given the budget, resources, and executive power I have - yup
| - nothing is exactly I can do.
| blueflow wrote:
| Bad straw man. The ketchup cups are green-washing and its
| right to call them out as such.
| the_third_wave wrote:
| It is rather baffling that there are no zillionaires flying
| airborne yachts yet, you'd have thought that one of 'm would
| have gotten others to build him a modern Graf Zeppelin or
| similar.
|
| Apart from that, yes. Do they not realise that their hypocrisy
| makes their supposed engagement for the 'climate' and 'planet'
| null and void? Probably not or possibly they imagine they'll
| have enough money and power to force their ideology down the
| throats of the general population.
| illegalsmile wrote:
| The Ministry for the Future presents these ideas where the
| ruling class and then the proletariat is forced into using
| ecofriendly modes of transportation like fast yachts and
| dirigibles for long distance travel. I imagine a future where
| we'll see this but it's going to take some serious unrest
| before the ultra wealthy give up their private jets.
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and
| flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly.
| It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I wonder how many cross country business trips were necessary
| while designing the cap.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| Never knew i needed a CT scanner.
|
| Wonder how much this costs? Medically speaking they're pretty
| damn cheap (compared to other modalities anyway)
| viasfo wrote:
| The company where that article is hosted sells the CT scanners
| used to create that scan. Starting at $75,000/year (industrial
| CT is much less expensive than medical)
| zcw100 wrote:
| I'm willing to bet this has nothing to do with recyclability and
| everything to do with less expensive manufacturing.
| maccard wrote:
| It can be both.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I don't think so. There's a huge push for recycling in EU.
| Every recyclable item either says to be put in the correct
| recycle bin, or has information about reusing with concentrated
| refills or by repurposing.
|
| Maybe the same push is not present in the US, but creating a
| new cap for European market makes sense. Also using the better
| cap across the whole world to save costs makes sense again.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I hope it is less expensive.
|
| Cost savings often benefit sustainability. You probably heard
| the "reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order" thing. The "reduce"
| part also reduces costs.
|
| Here it looks like there is one less part (the silicone ring),
| which I believe makes it cheaper to build, cuts on supplies (no
| more need for silicone), and improves recyclability, which is
| good for the image and maybe some regulations. I don't know how
| good it is at delivering ketchup, but if it is as good or
| better, then we all win. Granted, it is still disposable
| plastic, but I don't see why that design would be unsuitable
| for a reusable bottle.
|
| Exactly the kind of R&D I like.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| > I hope it is less expensive.
|
| So do the shareholders. Less cost == more profit.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| You say this as if it's a bad thing? I don't see the need
| to be pesemistic about this.
| alt227 wrote:
| The issue is in a capitalist society that saving of cost
| is not going towards a more efficient production method,
| or even being passed on to the consumer, its going in the
| pockets of the board and shareholders.
|
| Effectively this news story can be reduced to 'Plastic
| lid swapped for new plastic lid which makes company more
| money.'
|
| Its not cynical, its the truth.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| 'The public' does accrue benefits from a cheaper and less
| environmentally toxic production method though.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Wealth creation isn't zero sum. If it was we'd still be
| quibbling over sticks in caves. In a competitive
| environment, innovations can and does lead to lower-cost
| products for consumers, especially from new entrants in
| the market.
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| No, I state the fact.
| throwawaaarrgh wrote:
| Reduce, reuse, recycle. If they really want to make an impact,
| they should sell ketchup in bulk at grocery stores, with us
| bringing in our own reusable ketchup bottle to refill. Disposable
| packaging creates unnecessary waste.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I just got this new cap recently (before reading this article)
| and it snapped in half when I first opened it. So not too
| promising lol
| fedeb95 wrote:
| you know what could be sustainable? A bring-your-own bottle
| policy in stores. Deliver big dispensers to stores, and let
| people refill.
|
| All the rest is a very marginal reduction unlikely to have an
| effect in the long run.
|
| In a complex environment, where we can't make predictions, is
| better to be cautious.
| throwaway143829 wrote:
| Stores don't have the space for that currently. Though it may
| be possible to redesign them in such a way that they do.
| sp332 wrote:
| A lot of stores have a "bulk food" section where you can get
| nuts or granola this way. It takes less space than the same
| amount of product in individual packages.
| lupire wrote:
| Bottle exchange is better than that. People don't want people
| bringing filthy containers into the store.
| tristan957 wrote:
| The term I have heard used is Refillery. I have seen small
| businesses do this for soaps, shampoos, and conditioners at
| farmers markets. Check your local area!
| emilfihlman wrote:
| As a side note regarding bottle caps, the new EU bottle cap
| regulation that requires soda bottle and milk carton etc caps to
| be captive is absolutely idiotic, and just causes more problems.
| coryfklein wrote:
| In the third paragraph:
|
| > The new cap appears as a uniform color in Voyager's range
| map... compare it to the old cap, whose silicone valve is denser
| than the surrounding plastic.
|
| Author: you must be completely blind. Both photos show a wide
| gradient of colors including blue, green, yellow, and deep
| orange!
|
| Why does orange in the left photo mean "it is silicone" but
| orange on the right means "it is PP"?
| s3p wrote:
| I agree with what you're saying, but the general statement by
| the author seems to hold up. They don't appear to be the exact
| same shade of orange, as the silicone tip is a bright, deep
| orange, and the cap on the right only has little mixtures of
| orange in the overall shape.
| swashboon wrote:
| In the right image the dark orange is the bottle which is a
| separate (uniform) piece.
| adrianmonk wrote:
| I believe both photos must show the cap _while screwed onto the
| bottle_. In the photo of the new cap, the orange stuff is the
| bottle.
|
| The picture shows the screw threads of the bottle opening
| meeting the threads of the cap. And you can see some asymmetry
| where the part on the left side of the bottle opening is
| vertically lower than the part on the right side, which is
| consistent with the thread being a spiral shape.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > Currently only about 3% of PP products are being recycled in
| the United States, but it is becoming more widely accepted
|
| So now the relatively small amount of mass in the cap is just as
| recyclable as the bottle itself -- neither are actually going to
| be recycled.
|
| There's nothing to see here but marketing. And a an interesting
| engineering puzzle solved, sure.
|
| "How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be
| Recycled"
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
| ddejohn wrote:
| Based on the title, I had originally assumed clicking on this
| thread that it would be about their glass bottles with the
| white metal caps.
| whycome wrote:
| And those caps were probably fully recyclable.
|
| I expected to at least see photos of the cap and the one it's
| replacing.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think this is about newer upside down bottles, the one
| that has a giant flip open cap with a gasket that don't
| open until the bottle is squeezed hard enough.
| audunw wrote:
| But PP is one of the plastics that _CAN_ be recycled, and _IS_
| recycled, often at a much higher rate than in the US.
|
| One of the barriers of effectively recycling PP is the mixing
| of materials in packaging. I know some brands in my country
| switched labels to make sure the bottle was uniform and
| recognises by recycling machines as PP. So what Heinz is doing
| here is _actually_ meaningful.
|
| The other problem USA has is poor education and lack of well
| separated waste streams. I've personally experienced ridiculous
| "wishcycling" from my extended family in the US where they just
| throw whatever they want to feel good about throwing away in
| the recycling bin without looking up what should go in there.
| Not to mention that the idea of a "recycling" bin is ridiculous
| to start with. You need one bin for each type of material.
|
| The ideal solution is the bottle recycling machines (like
| Tomra) found in Northern Europe, that only accepts aluminium
| and plastic cans/bottles, which goes right back to making new
| cans/bottles. Well, the plastic bottle part is work in
| progress, but there are bottles made from 100% recycled
| materials now, and the key to that is to have a clean well-
| separated stream of recycled materials coming in.
|
| Funny story: I saw a documentary from a local advanced
| recycling centre, where they mentioned that the bales of
| plastic that actually went to be reused in new products/bottles
| smelled really nice. Because a big portion of them was PP
| shampoo bottles.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Bottle and can recycling machines are common in the United
| States as well, although only in places with bottle/can
| deposits.
|
| Many recycling centers in the US use single stream recycling
| where the waste is separated into separate streams at the
| recycling plant. I'm sure this only works well for glass and
| metal items but I don't see any reason that it eventually
| wouldn't get better.
| lobochrome wrote:
| The first principle hack here is to put the waste stream
| separation burden on the consumer.
|
| Here in Japan we are sorting and packaging our trash all at
| home and putting it out to be collected individually.
|
| There is
|
| - cardboard (to be cut flat and bundled with string)
|
| - unlaminated and clean paper (to be bundled with string or
| collected in a paper bag)
|
| - PET (clean, no bottle cap, label removed)
|
| - Milk cartons above 1l (cut open, flattened and tied up
| with string)
|
| - glass
|
| - cans
|
| - aluminum
|
| - other plastics (if clean)
|
| - other metals
|
| Of the top of my head ;)
|
| What's left over is classified as Burnable or non-Burnable
| and collected separately.
|
| Collection happens at central points shared by a few
| houses. So if you fuck it up, your neighbors will know.
|
| Collection happens through individual small trucks and the
| guy check the items and sort them directly into larger
| bins. If you made a mistake they will label it and leave it
| behind.
|
| I spend about an hour sorting trash each week. Given the
| opportunity cost, I really consider what to buy, order
| online etc.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > I spend about an hour sorting trash each week
|
| That gets to the clear difference between Japanese
| culture and US culture.
|
| Americans will sort their trash, but they won't spend
| that much time sorting their trash.
|
| Japanese culture has an immense amount of civic pride and
| responsibility that isn't present in the US.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >Collection happens at central points shared by a few
| houses. So if you fuck it up, your neighbors will know.
|
| >Collection happens through individual small trucks and
| the guy check the items and sort them directly into
| larger bins. If you made a mistake they will label it and
| leave it behind.
|
| Part of it is the fact that neighbors police each other.
| Culturally we tend to reject when others are intruding in
| our business. Note the disdain for HOA and busybodies.
|
| Having that culture might be a good thing in respect to
| recycling but it is also a brake to other societal change
| as it is a consecutive force.
| lobochrome wrote:
| But one of the beautiful things of living here is to
| witness (positiv) societal change happening in crazy
| speed.
|
| It used to be that people smoked everywhere, 10 years ago
| certain districts started prohibiting smoking in the
| street and relegated smokers to certain corners, today
| this corners have been replaced by closed containers with
| air conditioning and filtration systems.
|
| It sometimes feels magical...
| numpad0 wrote:
| And we burn most of it anyways. It's not like Japan got
| plastics and glass recycling to work, some of us hoped
| around the turn of the century that with the rapid
| progress of technologies at the time we soon will and did
| the legal prepwork. At the end of the day it was a bit of
| a dedicated self driving lane.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Is that so? Do you have any sources for that? Honestly
| curious.
| numpad0 wrote:
| There won't be readily available and easily digestible
| English sources for these topics but... ~20% of total
| wastes are recycled[0], of which: - 86%
| of plastics are "recycled", of which 56% is "thermally
| recycled", the rest 25% is only quoted as "chemical
| recycling and material recycling combined" in most PR
| materials, which I think is enough indication that it's
| not going back into bottles.[1][2] - I was wrong
| about glasses: 70% of glass bottle source materials comes
| from recycled materials[3], and use of reusable bottles
| have declined over the years and converging into
| 50%[4](by numbers of bottles?). - Papers and milk
| cartons[5] are fine as had always been; I think those
| were recycled to toilet papers.
|
| ... but the bottom line is 76% incinerated, 1% buried[0],
| rest recycled of which major part is by "thermal" means.
| So most of it is burned. Personally I think there won't
| be rapid drastic changes in this front and it's possibly
| more worthwhile to find green sources of plastics such as
| grain straws and fruit skins(but I think I did see a lot
| of such presumably failed attempts at it in the past
| couple decades)
|
| 0: https://www-
| cycle.nies.go.jp/magazine/kenkyu/202008.html
|
| 1: https://www.sustainability-hub.jp/column/learn/about-
| chemica...
|
| 2:
| https://www.wbsj.org/activity/conservation/law/plastic-
| pollu...
|
| 3: https://www.glass-3r.jp/data/
|
| 4: https://kyushu.env.go.jp/content/900177400.jpg
|
| 5: https://www.jpa.gr.jp/states/used-paper/
| Mistletoe wrote:
| I'm just laughing to myself considering the thought of
| getting Americans to cut open milk cartons, flatten them,
| and tie them up with string. It will never ever happen. I
| don't know why. They think they are too busy or they are
| too messy. Why? I don't know. It's a very complicated
| long question and I don't know the answer. Not all cons,
| maybe the American economy leads the world because the
| people here left their home countries because they are
| gamblers and they aren't the type to tie milk cartons
| with a string, as much as I would want them to.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Agreed. In the beginning it's a bit strange, but by now
| it's a cherished Saturday morning ritual. I also police
| the family if they don't cut them up nicely.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| In America about 2/3 of your neighbors would not put in
| that sort of recycling effort. About 1/3 of your
| neighbors believe there are no benefits, only downsides
| to recycling. Maybe 5% just throw pizza boxes and dirty
| diapers into the recycling stream ruining the paper
| materials in that truck load. Maybe 2% of them just drop
| trash on the ground wherever they stand as long as it's
| not their own home. For the remaining altruists to
| recycle, they need to live in an area that collects
| recycling, doesn't quietly dump it in a landfill or ship
| it to China.
| duderific wrote:
| > Collection happens at central points shared by a few
| houses. So if you fuck it up, your neighbors will know.
|
| > Collection happens through individual small trucks and
| the guy check the items and sort them directly into
| larger bins. If you made a mistake they will label it and
| leave it behind.
|
| See, that's the key. In my area, we have compost,
| recycling and trash bins for each home. What you put in
| it is up to your moral compass. Nobody is checking or
| seeing what you put in there. If there was some peer
| pressure around that, things would change rather quickly,
| I'd imagine. Though I can't see such a system emerging in
| the states. People like to do their own thing,
| individually, and not be bothered with it.
| lobochrome wrote:
| Yes. It's a delicate net of social control. I really wish
| social scientists would study this more. Can't be genetic
| after all.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > Nobody is checking or seeing what you put in there
|
| The trash men check our bins in Seattle (although not
| very thoroughly). We can be fined for throwing
| compostable material in the trash (has never happened to
| me) and your recycling can be rejected for throwing away
| non-recyclables (has happened to me when someone dumped
| their trash in my recycling bin.)
| ArchOversight wrote:
| In my local jurisdiction (a part of the US) the recycling bin
| is only allowed to be filled with cardboard and metal cans.
|
| Glass/plastic/contaminated cardboard and others are all
| required to go into the trash.
|
| Which makes no sense, glass is infinitely recyclable, yet it
| is not, it is instead brought to the local dump.
|
| Now here's the kicker, I was talking the to the trash
| collection people around the winter break (tip your trash
| collection folks well, and they will make all kinds of stuff
| disappear) and they mentioned to me that because there is no
| demand for cardboard/metal recycling while they load it into
| two different trucks, they end up at the exact same dump.
|
| This was confirmed not too much later when I went with my
| contractor to the dump to get rid of a ton of construction
| material, where I saw two dump trucks right next to each
| other, one filled with trash and one with recyclables.
|
| So very little actually gets recycled in the United States.
| Most of it ends up in giant piles, buried...
| phil21 wrote:
| > Which makes no sense, glass is infinitely recyclable, yet
| it is not, it is instead brought to the local dump.
|
| It's reusable, sure. Glass milk bottles you return to be
| washed and refilled are great.
|
| Glass recycling though makes little sense in many areas of
| the world. You are basically trucking sand around. Just far
| less efficiently. Glass takes about 40% less energy to melt
| than sand does, so you need to have a relatively efficient
| recycling supply chain to make up for that.
|
| I haven't looked into it for over a decade, but the RoEI on
| that was exceedingly negative for my locality when I did.
| donatj wrote:
| Yes, but
|
| https://theweek.com/news/science-health/960931/why-is-
| the-wo...
| 0xffff2 wrote:
| I only skimmed this particular article, but the problem
| it discusses isn't relevant to glass, in which the
| particle shape doesn't matter. Am I missing something
| that makes it relevant?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| > Glass takes about 40% less energy to melt than sand
| does
|
| Energy is not the only metric. We need metrics to roughly
| quantify ecological destruction due to mining, and
| account for those in our calculations.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| Mining sand for glass is really negligible environmental
| destruction. Extra energy needed for recycling vs fresh
| glass has worse environmental impact.
| khrbrt wrote:
| Mining sand has terrible effects on riverine ecosystems.
| You can't just use the sand at the beach.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > tip your trash collection folks well, and they will make
| all kinds of stuff disappear
|
| Mine even stops, gets out, and puts my bins away. Only for
| my neighbor and me, because we take care of him at the
| holidays.
| lamontcg wrote:
| > The other problem USA has is poor education and lack of
| well separated waste streams. I've personally experienced
| ridiculous "wishcycling" from my extended family in the US
| where they just throw whatever they want to feel good about
| throwing away in the recycling bin without looking up what
| should go in there. Not to mention that the idea of a
| "recycling" bin is ridiculous to start with. You need one bin
| for each type of material.
|
| Yep, its all our fault.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I would say a significant portion of the burden, perhaps the
| majority, lies on food companies for using so many different
| types of packaging. Sorting discarded packaging into N bins
| is exactly the kind of overhead in day-to-day life that a lot
| of people simply don't have time for and causes friction that
| makes it less likely to be adopted by the people who do.
|
| Regulations that greatly limit the total number of packaging
| types may be of help here.
| OtherShrezzing wrote:
| >The ideal solution is...
|
| The ideal solution is surely that the waste management
| industry figures out how to deal efficiently with two streams
| of waste, one perishable and the other not.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > The other problem USA has is poor education and lack of
| well separated waste streams. I've personally experienced
| ridiculous "wishcycling" from my extended family in the US
| where they just throw whatever they want to feel good about
| throwing away in the recycling bin without looking up what
| should go in there.
|
| In normal economy, the key to success is specialization.
| Instead of training each worker on each task, we divide work
| into chunks, and have t different workers specialize in
| different work. This increases efficiency tremendously.
|
| However, since most of recycling is based on positive
| emotions, shaming, and wishful thinking, and not sound
| economic principles, it shouldn't be surprising that instead
| of centralizing sorting work to make it more efficient, we
| demand that society wastes a lot of collective time, to
| offload the cost sorting onto regular people (with great
| inefficiency), and to shame them into getting a feeling of
| stake in the whole process.
|
| Imagine what would the rest of the economy look like if it
| used similar model. You'd go to grocery store and waste time
| picking through produce to find fresh, undamaged fruits and
| vegetables, because the store can't bothered to pre-sort it.
| You would manually add additives after filling up your car,
| because the gas stations only sell regular gas and can't be
| bothered to premix and offer the premium. You'd go to a
| restaurant, and your waiter would tell you what ingredients
| you need to bring to get the meal cooked (by the waiter
| himself).
|
| People shouldn't need to sort recyclables by category,
| treflop wrote:
| I mean your analysis isn't taking into account the high
| cost of reducing entropy.
|
| Picking damaged fruit from undamaged fruit or mixing a low-
| entropy fuel with a low-entropy additive to make a high
| entropy product is cheap.
|
| Sorting through trash is much more expensive because the
| entropy in a trash stream is massive, and it only gets
| worse downstream in the chain. You've got all sorts of
| different types of things mixed together, some possibly
| dangerous.
|
| And we already offload a lot of this sorting to third-world
| countries and this is not exactly an ethical solution.
| drewdevault wrote:
| The only genuine path to sustainability is reduction. There is
| no sustainable way to have disposable single-use packaging that
| you throw away when the bottle empties. Glass bottles with a
| deposit to incentivize bottle return, following which they are
| washed and refilled with new product (ideally locally, with
| fresh ketchup arriving to local distribution centers in bulk),
| is a much more reasonable approach.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| There's a cost associated with bottle return as well.
| Consumers also may feel weird about buying used packaging.
|
| What I have seen work quite well is bulk filling stations in
| hippie groceries. So far liquid dispensing is limited to non-
| food e.g. laundry detergent but if people can grasp that
| model I think it can expand to a lot more items.
| sandos wrote:
| Consumers _always_ feel weird about reused packaging? That
| is probably not true. Here in Swede we used to have an
| awesome system of plastic containers for a about 20 or so
| glass bottles of soda. These were always recycled (and so
| much cheaper than PET for some reason!), and it was obvious
| due to the wear on the glass bottles. Literally nobody
| cared about it. Google for "drickaback" to see how it
| looked like.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Consumers also may feel weird ...
|
| Any change requires doing things that people are unfamiliar
| with. Most of human history - 99.9..% of it - didn't have
| single-use disposable packaging, and did heavily reuse
| 'packaging' (containers).
| cptcobalt wrote:
| If I saw more packaging like this in my local stores, even if
| slightly more expensive, I'd pick it up every time. I think
| the overall friction is more in the return process, and
| that's where the space for innovation really lies.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Glass bottles are considerably heavier and bulkier enough
| that shipping becomes a non-negligible expenditure of energy.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think deposits or a meaningful motivation for return
| in the US. More of a grift or sin tax than anything else.
|
| I wonder if even 1% of the charge is paid out to consumers
| gs17 wrote:
| They worked pretty well when I lived in MI (although non-
| deposit containers would still become litter). Now I live
| in TN, with no deposit, and cans definitely get recycled
| less, even in relatively liberal parts of Nashville.
|
| https://www.infographicsarchive.com/which-states-
| recycling-t... (which in turn cites
| https://www.ball.com/sustainability/real-
| circularity/50-stat... ) seems to show deposits correlating
| with better recycling rates. MI got a poor score overall,
| but in cans it's on top.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| 89% of deposit bottles are returned and recycled in
| Michigan
| slothtrop wrote:
| Bio-degradables are one way. Some companies are spearheading
| this, but investment doesn't appear very high. GDNP.V in
| Canada.
|
| I think a multi-pronged approach that includes but is not
| limited to reduction will be necessary.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Or let people refill their bottles at the shop/mall like from
| a beer keg. But it probably would be a hassle to deal with
| for the seller, so it won't probably won't happen.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I get a significant chunk of my food here in Canada from
| Bulk Barn - where you can go and refill your containers
| with what you want. Besides grains, dry fruits and spices,
| I also get peanut and almond butter from there. The peanut
| butter is made right there with a nut butter machine - so
| you can be sure there are no additives or ultra-processing.
|
| If these guys also started selling sauces like ketchup or
| mustard etc, where I could fill my bottle with them, I
| would absolutely get it from there. I guess most sauces
| can't be made on site, but its still a net win for the shop
| to get a bulk keg for them and customers to refill their
| bottles.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| Americans revolt at reusable shopping bags which are leaps
| better than disposable ones. They just have to be stored
| and carried to the store. Resuable bags don't need the
| rotten ketchup cleaned out before the next use. You don't
| need a hundred different proprietary styles of resuable
| bags for every brand and type of contents.
| juujian wrote:
| Yup. recyclable != will be recycled. If recyclers don't know
| that the cap specifically is recycable, it won't be recycled.
| In fact, if only this brands cup is recycable, the chance of it
| being recycled is probably 0
| asadotzler wrote:
| worse recyclable != recyclable most of the time .it's all a
| scam. wake up.
| buildsjets wrote:
| eli5:
|
| The bottle is PET and is easily and commonly recycled, if it
| actually makes it to the recycling facility. About 30% of PET
| sold in the US actually gets recycled. It's the clear soda
| bottle plastic.
|
| The cap was previously 99% PP and 1% Silicone and was not
| recyclable at all.
|
| The cap is now 100% PP and therefore recyclable in theory, but
| in practice there are limited facilities that can recycle PP.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Do we honestly with a straight face tell ourselves that
| consumers are going to remove this cap before recycling and
| place them in the right bins or there is a recycling facility
| somewhere with workers removing caps from ketchup bottles?
| It's a ludicrous greenwashing idea from the get go.
|
| I love the idea of recycling but I just don't do it anymore
| when I realized my city's single stream recycling was likely
| just ending up being shipped to Asia with fossil fuels and
| dumped in the ocean eventually and adding to the Pacific
| plastic gyre. Burying it in a landfill seems highly more
| optimal than that.
| sandos wrote:
| Works in the EU. I wonder how the cultures can be so
| different!
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Does the EU have reactionaries who deny anything and
| everything is possible?
| coryrc wrote:
| It doesn't matter in Seattle, it's too small for the machines
| to sort. Only recyclable lids over 3 inches are allowed.
|
| And if you can't even recycle it in Seattle...
| asadotzler wrote:
| but the 30% is the tip of the spear of a scam so fuck them
| because plastic recycling is a joke and they've put the
| burden and blame on us for failing when they never had the
| science or the tools to do it at scale and won't any time
| soon. that you're so easily sucked into their scam with
| selective statistics is sad but don't spread your imaginary
| industry to others. got an STD, keep it to yourself. this is
| no different.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Can't a metal/aluminum cap be endlessly recycled? Looks more
| like a cost cutting venture versus a lets save the planet
| venture.
| ccc3 wrote:
| This is a pessimistic, anti-progress perspective. As you point
| out, there are plenty of other problems in the recycling chain.
| But this is a small step in the right direction. And the
| investment here is pretty small too. $1.2m probably covered a
| handful of engineers for around a year plus the cost of
| tooling. Given that Heinz sells a lot of ketchup, I would
| expect that the impact/dollar here is pretty high.
|
| Also, I'd bet that the new cap is cheaper than the old one. I'm
| sure that helped justify the investment to management. Kudos to
| the engineers who made this happen for finding a solution that
| is palatable to management and also makes the packaging more
| sustainable.
| rekttrader wrote:
| My bet is that it is just cheaper to make without the
| silicone and as an added bonus it's more recyclable.
|
| It's just cost savings that can be greenwashed.
| gs17 wrote:
| But is that so bad? Assuming it works about as well, it's
| likely more resource efficient to make in general, too.
| asadotzler wrote:
| But you don't know that. All the previous equipment
| obsoloeted and tosssed somewhere. All the previous
| workers retrained or fired. It could be far worse.
| Trusting plastic makers to tell you the truth about
| plastic recycling is like trusting WWE to tell you the
| truth about sport.
| gs17 wrote:
| And you're assuming they weren't redesigning it anyways.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Nice! It's cheaper _and_ less bad? Seems like a win /win.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| My bet is that jurisdictions with Extended Producer
| Responsibility laws were going to charge them money to
| clear up their mess and it became a sensible business
| decision to make this change to save them money.
| rsync wrote:
| No.
|
| This is what the bargaining stage of grief looks like.
|
| We - all of us - want to believe that life can continue on as
| it has _if we just take the right special steps in our
| kitchen_.
|
| In fact, the rituals of modern consumers straining to be
| "sustainable" is reminiscent of a rain dance - and about as
| effective.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| :) Funny rhetoric, but there's no fact or argument there.
|
| The application of ridicule and dimissal to everything
| associated with progressivism is a common pattern these
| days. Effectively, it's reactionary; the reactionaries have
| done a great job at spreading their messaging and
| demonizing their perceived enemies, and at the same time
| making people argue for their own powerlessness.
|
| Demonization, despair (powerlessness), and ridicule are
| tools for people whose agenda loses on the merits.
| s_dev wrote:
| Yeah -- it's sort of like those people who complain about the
| plastic lining on compostable coffee cups making them
| pointless.
|
| Like if a 100% plastic and a 1% plastic end up in a landfill
| or elsewhere the 1% coffee cup is just going to two orders of
| magnitude less damage than the pure plastic one, we can't let
| perfect be the enemy of good but OP does have a point about
| the oil lobby push but that is a separate but related issue.
| asadotzler wrote:
| nah, it's all a scam and that they can get you back into
| the scam so easily with a little bit of marketing is a
| serious indictment of our education system and the ability
| of our population to reason effectively.
| slothtrop wrote:
| It isn't anti-progress. It's identifying a lack of it. A step
| in the right direction would be developments that either
| definitely lead to more recycling in practice, or a reduction
| in materials used.
| nerdponx wrote:
| On the topic of the interesting engineering puzzle...
|
| I went to a university job fair in 2014 and Heinz had a booth
| there. I remember asking the recruiter what kind of positions
| they were recruiting for, and her only response was "We are
| looking for top talent. Are you top talent?" I was pretty
| thrown off by that, so pressed her with "Top talent in what? I
| know statistics and programming, do you need anyone who can do
| that?" Her only response was "well, do you think you're top
| talent?" I think I tried to ask a couple more times what they
| were actually looking for, but she just kept repeating the top
| talent line. I think I eventually said something like "I think
| I'm pretty good" before dropping off my resume, grabbing a
| pickle-shaped lapel pin, and walking away.
|
| Totally weird experience, and very different from the usual job
| fair recruiter. If it wasn't for the lapel pin that I still
| have, I wouldn't even be sure it was a real memory.
|
| I sometimes wonder if my life would've been different if I had
| had the self-esteem and confidence to look her right in the eye
| and say "yes, I am top talent".
|
| I also wonder if Heinz is _actually_ hiring and retaining "top
| talent". When I look at their ketchup bottle design innovations
| over the years, I wonder if maybe they really are!
|
| Has anyone here ever interviewed there or worked there? Are you
| in fact top talent? Were you surrounded by top talent? Is a
| packaged food company secretly where all the really smart
| people go for jobs? That article about the Unilever ice cream
| factory the other day makes me think there's more to it than
| meets the eye.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The screening technique is straightforward and not
| surprising: They have to filter a few people from possibly
| hundreds of resumes. They need a way to narrow it down
| rapidly, even if imperfectly. They don't want to invest time
| in your resume if even you don't think you qualify.
|
| There's a false negative problem, as in all interviews:
| interviewing well is a different skill than engineering
| bottle caps. Still, confident, talented people who are on
| their toes and accustomed to pressure may respond
| convincingly. So will con artists and the self-deluding types
| like megalomaniacs, so there's also a false positive problem
| ...
| spandrew wrote:
| This is a weird take? It's not Heinz' job to solve every issue
| in the recycling supply chain. If more of their products can be
| recycled; more of their products will be recycled. That's still
| progress.
|
| Anyone with a modicum of product and process exp. knows
| progress > perfection.
| FpUser wrote:
| Me - grabbing a wallet and rushing to a nearest grocery store.
| Yeah right ...
| jimmar wrote:
| Really smart move by Heinz--if only for the marketing and brand
| awareness alone. I doubt the environment outcomes will be
| significant, but the Heinz brand name has shown up in my feeds
| quite a bit in the past 24 hours because of this change.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| All this work and plastic recycling still is a horrible and toxic
| practice.
|
| Here is an innovation Heinz can work on... go back to glass
| bottles.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2023/05/plastics-rec...
| sumtechguy wrote:
| and metal caps...
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Everyone hates those.
| specialist wrote:
| Maybe ceramics could provide a third choice.
|
| Traditional clay (earthen) "bhar" cups are pretty awesome.
| Sanitary (kiln fired), no glazes, durable, water proof, single
| use, non-toxic, etc.
|
| When you're done sipping your chai, just smash your bhar cup on
| the ground. It simply becomes earth again.
|
| Surely we can come up with some spiffy new modern variations.
|
| All it'd take is investment and policy.
|
| --
|
| For the eeyores:
|
| Startups are now developing and deploying out carbon-free cement
| and carbon-free steel.
|
| All it took was investment, cheap energy, and policy.
|
| --
|
| Aside: Since the early '90s, Howard Schultz (Starbucks) has
| promised us an eco-friendly coffee cup. Any day now, right? I'm
| _so tired_ of waiting.
| s0rce wrote:
| A glass bottle/jar with a metal cap is far superior if the goal
| was sustainability. Maybe the user experience isn't as desirable
| but more plastic that isn't going to get recycled doesn't' seem
| great...
| callalex wrote:
| How is packaging that weighs hundreds of times as much,
| requiring burning hundreds of times as much fuel to transport,
| more sustainable?
| s0rce wrote:
| Good point, might be bad for certain transport modes, I was
| mostly trying to reduce the impact of single use packaging.
| cschneid wrote:
| $1.2 million seems so low of a dollar amount, for an multi year
| effort. Isn't that just like... 1 engineer's salary? $150k/year,
| 1.5x multiplier to account for benefits and other expenses of
| hiring somebody.
| vuln wrote:
| Once we couldn't ship trash to China, American recycling became
| cost prohibitive.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| There is no sustainable or recyclable. If you want to reduce
| pollution and trash, you should reduce consumption first. Heinz
| and grocery store could move to allowing users to re-fill
| bottles, but instead they waste our time on stuff like this.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| And how would that work in a sanitary and efficient way?
| zeroCalories wrote:
| You ever been to a fast food place in the U.S? They have
| ketchup dispensers.
| cobertos wrote:
| And yet my mustard bottle uses a simple hole and I'm frustrated
| by the current ketchup silicone cap requiring too much pressure
| and over dispensing on the initial squeeze. So, worse!
|
| Is it really necessary to do all this engineering for this??
| lefixx wrote:
| Calling a polypropylene cap sustainable is a joke, right?
| eelcow wrote:
| Great to see some progress, I'm still quite disappointed with the
| innovation and speed of adoption of new sustainable materials.
| MagicMoonlight wrote:
| We had sustainable caps. They were made from metal. The bottle
| was made from glass. Both are infinitely recyclable.
|
| Instead, lets destroy the world :)
| stevage wrote:
| If it was actually made from recycled plastic, that would be
| something.
|
| In my area they recycle #5 but not something as small as a bottle
| cap.
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