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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'

#71

Post by 317070 »

ekianjo wrote: post #62
alexanderthe- wrote: post #35

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see a good reason why government can't introduce legislation to enforce standardized packaging across product "classes" to streamline reuse and recycling - for example, all soda bottles of size x, must come in shape y, made out of polymer z. The obvious financial impact would be companies having to potentially retool their factories to facilitate that, but there can also be sensible tax r…

> made out of polymer z. Wow, sounds like you really want to encourage innovation in materials. The variety of polymers we have serve multiple uses and different functions because of their numerous unique properties (and costs).

But it is the variety of polymers that make them so bad. Surely, it is better to standardize to one material (or rather, standardize for the recycling process), than to ban the whole class of materials altogether.

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

#72

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

andrepd wrote: post #67
dmos62 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Your "chips model" works perfectly well for thousands of products. Want detergent? Bring a bottle to a machine that fills it up rather than taking home a brand new plastic bottle every time. Ditto for fruits and vegetables. Biscuits. Candy. Anything that doesn't need a plastic bag for health and safety reasons.

How would fill-your-own-bottle work with online shopping and home delivery, which more and more people are doing even for groceries?

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

#73

Post by Ensorceled »

kilroy123 wrote: post #65
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…

Most countries around the world do this by default. For example, those big jugs of water that get delivered. In most places they are clean and reused. Where I'm living right now, in Turkey, those big bottles are made out of glass and it just gets replaced with a previously used glass jug. Same with the beer, all the bottles are collected, cleaned, and reused.

Agreed. The “first world” really needs to get it’s act together on this.

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

#75

Post by Shacklz »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #43
awiesenhofer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Recycling mentioned on Hacker News always depresses me. Same here. Especially as someone from central europe where most recycling just works and noone even thinks twice about it. Heck, a lot of landfill dumping is even banned here already and anything dumped must be thermally threated first anyway.

Actually, I'm not sure how well recycling works in "Central Europe". In Czechia, at least, although waste sorting seems to work fairly well, as far as I'm aware, the share of plastic waste that gets recycled is negligible. Most of it gets burnt or pyrolysed for heating and electricity.

> Most of it gets burnt or pyrolysed for heating and electricity.

Well, at least it doesn't get shipped around the world to then be dumped into the ocean...

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

#76

Post by csunbird »

kilroy123 wrote: post #65
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…

Most countries around the world do this by default. For example, those big jugs of water that get delivered. In most places they are clean and reused. Where I'm living right now, in Turkey, those big bottles are made out of glass and it just gets replaced with a previously used glass jug. Same with the beer, all the bottles are collected, cleaned, and reused.

Exactly, we take the “reuse” and repurpose parts of three R’s very seriously in Turkey. Our flower pots are usually used empty cheese containers and all the plastic bottles are reused for containment of homemade stuff, tomato paste/olives etc...

We do not recycle although.

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

#77

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Schwan wrote: post #46
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #14

Recycling mentioned on Hacker News always depresses me. The way problems with it are treated as fundamentally unfixable always strikes me as against the site's ethos, yet people love pointing them out. Recycling just gets dumped in landfill! Ok, lets ban that. But, actually, its more environmentally friendly to landfill it! Are you sure? Science doesnt really agree. But anyway, can we make recycling more efficient? N…

I grew up in a normal german household on the 'countryside'. I alwasy recycled. Never thought about it much and my family is not 'alternative or whatever'. 3 Years ago i see a documentation telling me, that dark plastic can't be recycled and gets burned. Thin plastic can't be recycled and will be burned. We have a system called 'green point' which basically means that the producer has to pay a little bit of money for…

Burning is better for the environment than landfill. It's getting less good comparitavely as grids become carbon free via renewables, but especially for district heating its probably going to be a good thing for a while. Half recycled and half used to avoid burning coal seems a pretty good deal, especially if its paid for by the producers. So why the big overreaction?

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

#78

Post by mc32 »

pkphilip wrote: post #70
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…

One of the key issues with using bottles is the cost, weight and the fact that there is a lot of breakage. The weight alone increases the cost of the supply chain by several times. One key invention which could really help here is flexible glass packaging. Interestingly, one of the lost technologies from the Roman era is flexible glass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass Corning does have flexible glass, bu…

The story of flexible glass had contemporary doubters. My guess is it’s likely apocryphal but created as a fable with political and economic undertones.

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

#79

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

exabrial wrote: post #9

Wouldn't it be better to use as much paper as possible in the packaging and certify the paper is sourced from sustainable forestry? They we use the package as a carbon sink.

Besides what the other person said, paper packaging is often bleached with dioxins because consumers like clean white packaging. Dioxins are really nasty stuff.

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

#80

Post by conradfr »

csunbird wrote: post #76
kilroy123 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries around the world do this by default. For example, those big jugs of water that get delivered. In most places they are clean and reused. Where I'm living right now, in Turkey, those big bottles are made out of glass and it just gets replaced with a previously used glass jug. Same with the beer, all the bottles are collected, cleaned, and reused.

Exactly, we take the “reuse” and repurpose parts of three R’s very seriously in Turkey. Our flower pots are usually used empty cheese containers and all the plastic bottles are reused for containment of homemade stuff, tomato paste/olives etc... We do not recycle although.

Which is not necessarily safe depending on the type of plastic (not sure how it goes in Turkey though).
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