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Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#21

Post by adrianN »

Ensorceled wrote: post #16

We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago. Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brow…

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, in that order. A lot of things don't need so much packaging in the first place.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#22

Post by masklinn »

chongli wrote: post #19
masklinn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love Pringles tubes. We reuse them all over the place around the house. Never really thought of recycling them. Seems like a terrible waste to destroy a perfectly good container just to get a ~penny’s worth of materials out of it. Recyclers are downstream from consumers. They can’t stop consumers from throwing away their pringles cans, and until Kellogg’s starts bulk-selling Pringles in bags… people will throw ca…

That’s where the first R comes in. Only buy as many Pringles cans as you can reuse. People don’t want to do that either, though, because Pringles are addictive. That may be the root problem. There’s no way they’ll sell Pringles in bags though; they’re way too delicate for anything but a purpose-built rigid container.

> That’s where the first R comes in. Only buy as many Pringles cans as you can reuse. People don’t want to do that either, though, because Pringles are addictive. That may be the root problem.

The first R is already not an option, people who buy pringles want pringles, otherwise they wouldn’t be buying that. Short of making pringles illegal you’re not going to change this.

> There’s no way they’ll sell Pringles in bags though; they’re way too delicate for anything but a purpose-built rigid container.

Pringles were literally invented because potato chips were too fragile at a time when shipping bags of chips and having them survive the transit was basically a bad bet. Chips remain sold in bags to this day.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#23

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

The thing is they don’t need that plastic lid. They say without it the food would be spoiled but if you have a big bag of crisps, you open them and eat them or they go off - this is no different.

Kellogg’s seem to believe they have invented a type of crisp that can only be eaten over a period of time.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#24

Post by ed_elliott_asc »

adrianN wrote: post #21
Ensorceled wrote: post #16

We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago. Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brow…

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, in that order. A lot of things don't need so much packaging in the first place.

We need a www.packagingdisasters.com which name and shame the worst packaging disasters.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#25

Post by ja27 »

Lays Stax come in an equivalent all-plastic tube and it's insane how much plastic that is compared to a bag of regular chips. The other one that bothers me is the larger Crystal Light packets which come in a very sturdy plastic container that's at least five times bigger than it needs to be. Even the generic knock-offs at ALDI come in a similar plastic container. Why not cardboard?

Here, a good bit of our trash is burned and used to generate electricity before the ash is buried, so I feel a bit less guilty about single-use plastics but it's still not good. I'm sure plenty of our recycling stream ends up there too, either due to contamination or lack of buyers for it.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#26

Post by masklinn »

Ensorceled wrote: post #16

We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago. Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brow…

> We need to focus on the second R, reuse.

That means you need to end both single-use containers and selling stuff in containers entirely.

There’s only do much of one type of reusable container you even can have a use for, and that’s assuming you do even have a use for them in the first place: I don’t make jam at home, I buy it, I don’t have a use for a new jam jar a month, and every jam-making friend has more jars than they could ever use (seriously, I used to stock jars for my parents until they stopped canning, then tried giving my stock away, about a third of which found I interest, the rest went to recycling).

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#27

Post by throwaway2245 »

burke_holland wrote: post #7

Given that most recycling ends up in landfills anyway, I’m not sure it matters much. We have a much bigger recycling problem. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/climate/recycling-landfil...

It matters because these problems feed into each other.

If a tonne of recycling is not financially viable because the Pringles cans are too difficult to extract, then none of it gets recycled.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#28

Post by dmos62 »

Ensorceled wrote: post #16

We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago. Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brow…

Those are really good points. A good approach to incentivize everyone to do the right thing is to make it the least expensive option. That either requires some lucky tech breakthrough (super unlikely) or a strong government.

A recyclability tax, where the producer pays a tax that corresponds to how much it will cost to recycle their product. Maybe collect data of how much of their product is actually recycled. That would force producers to consider reuse, recycling, etc.

Banning disposable packaging. Want potato chips? Bring a special reusable (and relatively expensive) bag to the dispenser, have it unload some chips and do whatever trick is necessary to keep the chips dehydrated and crisp.

You can also only ban disposable packaging that could have negative environmental effect. Maybe something made out of some fungi or hay or something could just be treated like compost waste.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#29

Post by ja27 »

Ensorceled wrote: post #16

We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago. Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brow…

There's a Classico pasta sauce line that uses jars molded with Atlas Mason on them and fit Mason jar lids but are not designed to be reused for canning. Just for marketing.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#30

Post by FroshKiller »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #24
adrianN wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, in that order. A lot of things don't need so much packaging in the first place.

We need a www.packagingdisasters.com which name and shame the worst packaging disasters.

We need legislation with teeth.
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