So what?
They maybe a source of packaging but they aren’t the source of pollution.
Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
151–160 of 210 posts
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#152Earlier 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...
It's actually a problem at the moment. After the raise to $0.10 deposit, some people started hauling bottles over from Washington. The way the program is funded depends on less than 100% of bottles being returned. We need something national. And just bottles isn't going to cover it - single use plastic products are cheap enough, and companies have no incentive not to use them, so of course everyone else ends up deali…
The return rate is still less than 100% though?
Ultimately 100% of deposits were collected, the aim should be to pay out 100% again. That's the aim, that's what success looks like. Now I have no idea how these systems are usually funded, and this probably is quite usual. But you can't complain when your system does what its supposed to. When the return rate reaches 100% then you can celebrate success and start complaining about imports.
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there's Singapore and...? That's about it. Of course as well as extreme and draconian legislation, like banning gum, they're a tiny city-state. Yet Singapore employs vast numbers of cleaners and street sweepers clearing up - which surely shouldn't be necessary? Far more per-capita than any Western city. So even they seem to recognise it will happen anyway.
Add Japan to the list. Littering is extremely rare. When traveling, I've been impressed by the cleanliness of Zurich, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and several cities in Germany. If as a society we can't do something as simple as not throw garbage on the ground, I think we have a very bleak future.
Never visited Japan, but when I have been in Germany, Denmark and Sweden (nearest I've been to Finland!) they seemed to employ more cleaning - or at least more noticeably - than I expect to see in say modern day UK. I do notice, because UK and many other places are bleak in terms of litter compared to what I remember from childhood and early adulthood, in both extent and type. Nowhere has been nearly as bad about litter as the US though. I haven't visited for well over a decade so maybe they got better.
A vast transformation of the amount of packaging and type along with far fewer bins (who the hell thought that a good idea?) and cleaners, gardeners, and people mowing verges. All of which now seem to go by the benchmark "as little as we can get away with". Now add the disowning of any part of blame by business and producers as I mentioned originally. We certainly used to accept that some would always happen and employed enough to make sure the place stayed nice regardless, and the tidier places still seem to. We also presumed reuse far more often, and systems were built to expect that.
We also have a different attitude - more accepting of litter, though not as bad as in the eighties and early nineties when apparently no one in the UK gave a shit, and it was everywhere. Amsterdam, Stockholm and Paris have changed similarly, though none as much as here. Paris is perhaps worst of those.
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#154The survey found that 10 companies were responsible for more than half of the identifiably branded rubbish found on the UK’s beaches." But are they? Isn't this shifting the blame from the end user that improperly disposes of their trash to the company? Sure, they could do more to reduce packaging issues, but in the end, it is the consumer that is tossing these things out rather than recycling them.
If 1% of billions of plastic bottles end up in the environment, that's still a lot of bottles.
I bet that accidental litter, for which no one person is "to blame", is more than 1%.
This is stuff like a bag tearing open, a trash can falling over, stuff falling off the truck.
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data... ...in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so e…
Your design example doesn't apply because the end user in this case isn't directly effected by their negligence. There is clear evidence that littering is societal. See how clean Japanese cities are despite almost everything being wrapped in plastic.
Japanese cities and streets may look clean, but I'd bet dollars to donuts that Japan still contributes a big chunk to the world's plastic pollution through "leaks" in the system.
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data... ...in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so e…
On the otherhand I have tons of first hand experience with bottles, and its a very simple task to take care of your own trash. Its just a matter of doing it.
What do you mean by "take care of"? Carrying it to the trash can? What happens to it after that? Oh, I guess it's not your problem anymore...
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
So now instead of a single bottle, you have a plastic bag, a straw, and a rubber band as litter all the while destroying any guarantees of not getting food borne illnesses.
I'm old enough to clearly remember when Coca Cola was distributed in glass bottles. There was no plastic of any kind, except for maybe a gasket inside the metal cap. Individual serving size bottles had bottle caps and larger size had metal screw caps with metal safety-seal thingies that broke off when you opened it for the first time. All of them had deposits that were refunded when you turn them in. I don't know abo…
I'm old enough to remember when all drinks came in standard 0.5 and 0.3L bottles, which were returned for a sizable deposit, shipped back to the factory, steam-cleaned, and reused...
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#158The survey found that 10 companies were responsible for more than half of the identifiably branded rubbish found on the UK’s beaches." But are they? Isn't this shifting the blame from the end user that improperly disposes of their trash to the company? Sure, they could do more to reduce packaging issues, but in the end, it is the consumer that is tossing these things out rather than recycling them.
I remember reading (yeah, not much of a citation, I know...) that recycling was invented so people wouldn't feel so bad about disposable packaging. Considering recycling can mean shipping trash to a poor country, it's not the ultimate environment rescuer. (Doesn't mean we should stop doing it, obviously)
Most plastic packaging is not recyclable.
Most plastic packaging is not recycled.
Most "segregated" bins look about the same inside. (Personal experience, I'm a freegan.)
Most "recyclable" shit is just shipped to another country.
Yeah, I have to agree with you there.
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ban plastic bottles. Make them use glass bottles in a closed cycle where the bottles are constantly cycled and then turned into something else when they can't be cycled... or use aluminum which is recyclable. And let's call out recycling for the sham that it is. Recycling is a lie for plastics, plastics can not be economically recycled. They must be banned and the polluters made to internalize the externality.
> Recycling is a lie for plastics, plastics can not be economically recycled. That is simply not true, just go to most of Europe. In Switzerland 83% of PET bottles get recycled. 0% ends up directly in landfills. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-w...
How much of the plastic packaging is PET?
Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Shouldn’t the consumer be responsible for throwing their trash away properly? The local government is a government of the local people: if the people would stop throwing stuff on the ground, there wouldn’t be so much trash to pick up. That burden is created by the local people. Should paint companies be held responsible for graffiti?
This is the HN state of mind, where the other is responsible for 100% of the world's problems, and individuals are completely ruled by passion and reptilian instinct.
Could you please stop posting unsubstantive flamebait to HN so we don't have to ban you again?