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Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

theguardian.com

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Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#41

Post by TecoAndJix »

siedes wrote: post #23
m3nu wrote: post #16

Just spent 2 weeks on Sabah, Borneo. Even the very remote beaches hours away from large human settlements are littered with plastic bottles and grocery bags. While diving you often see bags floating around. Both, on the surface and below. Ironically even the island hopping boat carried a tray of bottled water for anyone to take. Not sure what % of bottles gets left behind at the end of the day. Maybe a small deposit…

A small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.

The issue with that is it would be cheaper to produce counterfeit bottles, breaking the entire system

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#42

Post by neverartful »

technofiend wrote: post #35
m463 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like aluminum better. Glass bottles are not perfect. They are lots heavier, which leads to transportation pollution. They also break and hurt people. As to plastics - You are correct, they do not recycle and when you try to do it, even with a very low ratio of recycled to new plastics you end up with crappy weak plastic - think laundry baskets that have handles that break easily. i think we should just learn to bur…

I'm down for completely banning single use plastics: everything from shopping bags to clamshell packaging can go tomorrow IMHO. Same with styrofoam, frankly. Having said that glass bottles were a nightmare when I was a kid because of littering assholes who would toss them anywhere. Littering is less of an issue these days but I think going back to glass would need to both reward recycling and shame litter bugs. Walki…

Yep, the hazards of broken glass are one of the downsides of glass. However, we have that situation now mostly with beer bottles. I routinely pick up roadside trash in my subdivision and much of what I pick up is glass beer bottles.

The other downside (as others have already pointed out) is the weight of heavy glass containers built for reuse. It raises the cost of distribution.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#43

Post by saagarjha »

jerrysievert wrote: post #38
siedes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.

oregon has 90% redemption rate[1] at 10 cents per bottle, so there is obviously some incentive. 1. https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-bottle-deposit-redem...

I don't think this is the whole story, since as far as I'm aware the only people who get the redemption are people who put very low value on their time because it's inconvenient to actually redeem bottles.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#44

Post by PorterDuff »

That's an interesting article.

I remember that years ago a project at the University of Arizona was doing archaeological work on landfills. It turned out that surprising amount of the non-degrading material found once you dug down a bit was telephone books.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#45

Post by PorterDuff »

PorterDuff wrote: post #44

That's an interesting article. I remember that years ago a project at the University of Arizona was doing archaeological work on landfills. It turned out that surprising amount of the non-degrading material found once you dug down a bit was telephone books.

Hang on, here you go.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucson_Garbage_Project

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#46

Post by tapland »

youeseh wrote: post #5

Why don't more drinks come in reusable glassware and milk crates? Are single use cans and cardboard packages cheaper? Safer?

Because reusable usually means crushing the class and making new bottles. Recycled aluminium saves more energy than the glass process.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#47

Post by beenBoutIT »

amatecha wrote: post #25
m3nu wrote: post #16

Just spent 2 weeks on Sabah, Borneo. Even the very remote beaches hours away from large human settlements are littered with plastic bottles and grocery bags. While diving you often see bags floating around. Both, on the surface and below. Ironically even the island hopping boat carried a tray of bottled water for anyone to take. Not sure what % of bottles gets left behind at the end of the day. Maybe a small deposit…

That already exists in many places! Here in BC there's regulation around recyclables and minimum deposit pricing: http://www.bclaws.ca/EPLibraries/bclaws_new/document/ID/free... One interesting result of this program is you may find people scrounging around neighbourhoods and trash cans to collect the recyclables so they can collect the deposit on them :)

We have that now in the Berkeley/Oakland area.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#48

Post by 14 »

TecoAndJix wrote: post #41
siedes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.

The issue with that is it would be cheaper to produce counterfeit bottles, breaking the entire system

Oh but we could put each one on the blockchain!

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#49

Post by dijit »

saagarjha wrote: post #43
jerrysievert wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oregon has 90% redemption rate[1] at 10 cents per bottle, so there is obviously some incentive. 1. https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-bottle-deposit-redem...

I don't think this is the whole story, since as far as I'm aware the only people who get the redemption are people who put very low value on their time because it's inconvenient to actually redeem bottles.

"Pant"[0] is very common across most of northern europe- what you tend to find is that people will pilfer public trash cans to get bottles and cans to dispense, in Sweden where I live it's 1kr (or 10c in USD) for a can or small bottle, and large bottles being 2kr.

Not everyone is so fortunate to have gainful employment, especially not as gainful as the normal user of this site.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#50

Post by flyGuyOnTheSly »

Thank goodness.

Finally, somebody with some clout is pointing fingers at the largest contributor to garbage... the corporations who produce it.

I live in Canada and Tim Horton's cups literally litter every street corner in every big city in our country.

I have always thought that they should be responsible for the cleanup of those cups.

It is absolutely their fault that their customers are throwing their products onto our ground.

Why should our overburdened local governments carry the cost of picking up a profitable business' garbage?

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