Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

Post by chiara87 » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

filesystem wrote: post #85

sjwright wrote: post #50

There’s an easy solution: tax landfill by 1,000+%. If consumers had to pay a significant amount for each load of trash removed from their home, you’d see the market for ultra low waste products skyrocket. And then the economic value of recycling—from careful sorting by homeowners to the processing of material by recyclers—would immediately make sense.

I don't understand how that is really that easy. I personally don't know of anywhere (at least in the US) that measures the trash output of individual homes. So all existing curbside trash pickup infrastructure would need to be overhauled to implement measurement at the time of collection. Additionally, since trash pickup is handled by municipal / city governments currently, a new system needs to be put in place to p…

Post by KozmoNau7 » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 1:30 PM UTC

nosianu wrote: post #104

javajosh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developing countries around the world that have extremely good reuse programs for their bottles, and it works extremely well. In fairness, Germany is a developed country with extremely good reuse programs. Glass beer bottles are often totally reused. You can, if you want, avoid plastics entirely and just buy drinks glass containers. The local supermarkets all have return bins; all restaurants will take them, althou…

The current German system is nothing compared to the former East German bottle reuse system. Disclaimer: I grew up in East Germany, and during a summer break when I still was at school I worked in a small local brewery in the bottling facility at various machines for a few weeks, seeing the system in action. In East Germany we only had very few bottle designs that were used throughout the entire country and all firms…

Post by javajosh » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

_Microft wrote: post #122

javajosh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. They don't sell that at Lidl - and are you sure the containers are reused? I don't see the tell-tale scuff ring.

You can find them at Rewe or Edeka for example. It is a Mehrwegflasche which means they are cleaned and reused instead of being recycled. What is a scuff ring by the way? Is it this ring that tears off from plastic caps at e.g. Coca Cola bottles when opening them?

Post by NeedMoreTea » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 2:32 PM UTC

beowulfey wrote: post #111

mc32 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the economics. So they can sort things well. It means they can put them in a dump neatly. Most things that get put into recycling don’t make economic sense to recycle -except aluminum and some other metals. Most plastics under cheap (but still uneconomic) recycling suffer from heat history and becomes less useful.

That’s where the reduce/reuse part of the old term comes into play. Recycling was never meant to be the end-all solution. We need to reduce use of waste that is NOT easily recycled (plastics) and focus on using materials that are (metals, glass)

Post by mxfihdsgyxegaas » Sun, Dec 22, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

_Microft wrote: post #95

javajosh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> developing countries around the world that have extremely good reuse programs for their bottles, and it works extremely well. In fairness, Germany is a developed country with extremely good reuse programs. Glass beer bottles are often totally reused. You can, if you want, avoid plastics entirely and just buy drinks glass containers. The local supermarkets all have return bins; all restaurants will take them, althou…

Milk in returnable bottles exists here. The bottles usually look like this: https://contentpool.wirtschaftsverlag.at/files/uploads/image... From the look it is a half-liter bottle (we usually buy cream like this), there are 1 liter bottles for milk that look almost the same.