Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

Post by d0gbread » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 1:42 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #96

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…

Sure, but all the glass that gets used for reuse is for liquids , which are also all heavy to begin with. Do you have examples of successful packaging reuse for solid dry food such as Pringles? Or cereal? Or sugar? Or chocolate? (And that's before even getting into packaging of meat, fish, etc.)

Post by pessimizer » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

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.

Post by Fiahil » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #93

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…

> ... all soda bottles of size x, must come in shape y, made out of polymer z. This style of legislation is exactly how we get articles like this posted. Where we can't have new headlight technology in the US because the law exactly prescribes the types of headlights permitted. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24042266 We need to find a way to manage this while still allowing science and technology to do its thin…

Post by morsch » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 1:45 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #96

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…

Sure, but all the glass that gets used for reuse is for liquids , which are also all heavy to begin with. Do you have examples of successful packaging reuse for solid dry food such as Pringles? Or cereal? Or sugar? Or chocolate? (And that's before even getting into packaging of meat, fish, etc.)

Post by mellavora » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 1:50 PM UTC

rlpb wrote: post #37

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…

> The only containers which are infinitely recyclable are aluminum and coloured glass (nearly), but that takes energy. I've heard people say that the environmental cost of producing the clean water necessary to wash bottles for reuse is also harmful. I'd really like to see a side-by-side comparison of the environmental cost of the different available "obvious" options. > We need to just force manufacturers to bear th…