Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare' • Hacker News Board

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

#131

Post by tallanvor » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

Mirioron wrote: post #114

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see a good reason why government can't introduce legislation to enforce ... You are being naive, even in the European Union which has a fairly contained level of corruption the Plastic and Petro-chemical lobby are incredibly strong. Many countries wanted to introduce a single-use plastic ban, almost immediately a campaign came out saying they were trying to kill people at hospitals wher…

> The natural progression of this is to create large plastic bootle/container deposits. Again this will never happen because it obviously stops the current externalization of costs in the plastic business. We already have that in a lot of EU countries. Every soda bottle has an additional deposit cost (10 cents) on top of the soda itself. You pay that when you purchase it and get the 10 cents back when you take the bo…

But even then, you often aren't returning the plastic bottles to be reused anymore, instead they're just recycled. --When I first moved to Norway in 2008, the soda bottles actually were collected, cleaned, and reused, but they stopped doing that, and now they're only recycled. --It's better than them ending up in landfills or being burned for energy, but as has been noted, plastic can only be recycled so many times, so it still ends up causing more plastic to be manufactured.

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

#132

Post by hinkley » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #124

Foil/plastic/paper juice boxes are my vote for 'recycling nightmare'. And kids use them by the dozen.

The waste processor in Seattle claimed to be able to recycle Tetrapac boxes, although I’ve no idea how they manage that or if it’s just PR.

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

#133

Post by Shivetya » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

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…

tl;dr you can recycle vintage goods as well into your daily life, start at home.

my entire kitchen is vintage glass, some of it lower in cost than buying new, that I snagged off ebay. In my case Anchor Hocking bubble glass. Combine with Corning Ware storage pieces for the kitchen you can "reuse" at home by buying what was made decades ago. Heck, my toaster is a 50s era Toastmaster.

Getting soft drinks out of plastic containers and the ever famous k-cups would go a long was as well. I do my best to only use cans and glass for for my food purchases. produce aisle is still stuck with plastic bags but I would love to see biodegradable paper bags or open top containers to stack goods in.

The soap/detergent aisles really need to go down the route of selling concentrated goods but this will require some incentive on manufacturer's part to sell them cheaper by end result.

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

#134

Post by zoobab » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:13 PM UTC

I propose a glass container as a replacement.

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

#135

Post by hinkley » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:14 PM UTC

kthejoker2 wrote: post #88

My immediate thought is it sounds like Kellogg's/Pringles could get a lot of free positive marketing by just switching to a "100% biodegradable" bag? Nobody likes Pringles because they're in a tube.

Kids might. Or at least did. Packing tubes were magic, and Pringle’s cans are musical.

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

#136

Post by throwaway0a5e » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:15 PM UTC

remote_phone wrote: post #121

pkphilip wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Let the costs increase then. All food containers must be recyclable or compostable. This should be a rule across the globe. We should also ban single-use plastic. If costs need to go up, then let them go up. Consumers need to understand the costs of their consumption and we can’t destroy our planet so that corporations can be more profitable.

That's real easy to say when you work in an air conditioned office and shop at whole foods. Sure the demographics most represented here could absorb the cost but these demographics are a minority in the first word and a tiny minority globally.

Economic stability is what permits people to have the free time to care about abstract things like "the environment". Raise the cost of food, raise the cost of fuel, "internalize the externalities" or whatever the doublespeak of the day is, and you're gonna have a hell of a lot more people living on the edge and those people are gonna care a hell of a lot more about their immediate needs than about the environment (and they'll vote accordingly). These changes might look small at a micro level but at a macro level anything that decreases standard of living makes people prioritize their short term needs over the long term.

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

#137

Post by redis_mlc » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

yread wrote: post #47

redis_mlc wrote: post #10

The Stax chips packaging is almost a 100% reusable plastic bottle, and I think they taste better than Pringle's, so I buy Stax occasionally. If the plastic lid was screw-on, it would be ideal for a relief tube when flying, but it's just press-fit.

I hope you fly solo...

Doesn't really matter. If you're a required crew member in a small plane, gotta keep it comfy, though most planes with 2 pilots would be big enough for a lav.

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

#138

Post by dwighttk » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

ja27 wrote: post #29

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.

But a canning funnel can turn those into a good food saving option. Soup, pasta sauce, anything really that isn’t a firm shape.

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

#139

Post by floren » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

morsch wrote: post #107

crazygringo wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

Paper can be used for some of these. E.g. sugar and flour are usually sold in plain paper (not even cardboard) packaging[1] in Germany and, from a cursory check, in some other European countries. It doesn't work for everything because it's not airtight. [1] https://www.amazon.de/S%C3%BCdzucker-Feinzucker-10er-Pack-10...

They're also sold in paper sacks in the US. You do have to be quite careful with the sack to avoid puffing flour out of pinholes when you set it down.

I'm rather fond of the packaging on Wasa crackers, which appears to be waxed paper... but of course with Wasa crackers, how would you even know if they had gone stale? ;)

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

#140

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 2:17 PM UTC

fuzzer37 wrote: post #115

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Put a deposit on the bottle that it comes in, similar to how states like Michigan have a bottle deposit. Make it large enough that the consumer would be incentivized to return the bottle, even if they themselves don't actually re-use it. This way they could simply return the empty bottle, even if they don't plan on refilling it.

What you are describing is simply a bottle recycling program as it already exists in a number of European countries. But the OP was talking about the need for alternatives to bottle-recycling programs.