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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'

#201

Post by Klinky »

luckylion wrote: post #163
Klinky wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in an era of companies worth trillions and their owners worth billions. It's silly to say we have too few resources to provide enough economic stability for people to care about the environment, meanwhile mega yachts are being made and islands are being purchased by an uber wealthy elite class, and there are people who will defend that behavior, all because they have a lot of money, so it must be okay. Market d…

Those that buy yachts and islands are a lot less frequent though. It's obscene, I agree, but it's not like everybody was well-off if you just nationalized Jeff Bezoz' wealth. You don't have to wait for the market, you just need to make sure that proposed policies aren't massively affecting the lower classes. Food insecurity isn't a good foundation for a stable and peaceful society. When you're artificially generating…

The problem is that we're wringing our hands over prices rising due to taking the environment into account, we do not wring our hands much when prices rise to fatten up the paydays for elite classes. Food scarcity is already an issue, and excess at the top, is already an issue. A lot of the economy is based on things being disposable, even in some cases to the point of humans being disposable objects(factory towns, sweatshops, "essential workers"). We'll eventually need to come to terms with ways to handle environmental damage better, and not in a passive way that just socializes that debt and damage onto the poor and the future generations, like we're doing now. The endless consumption/growth economy needs to evolve into a sustainable economy. Obviously there are entrenched interests that want to maintain the status quo until the world is on fire.

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

#202

Post by grawprog »

luckylion wrote: post #163
Klinky wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're in an era of companies worth trillions and their owners worth billions. It's silly to say we have too few resources to provide enough economic stability for people to care about the environment, meanwhile mega yachts are being made and islands are being purchased by an uber wealthy elite class, and there are people who will defend that behavior, all because they have a lot of money, so it must be okay. Market d…

Those that buy yachts and islands are a lot less frequent though. It's obscene, I agree, but it's not like everybody was well-off if you just nationalized Jeff Bezoz' wealth. You don't have to wait for the market, you just need to make sure that proposed policies aren't massively affecting the lower classes. Food insecurity isn't a good foundation for a stable and peaceful society. When you're artificially generating…

>Those that buy yachts and islands are a lot less frequent though.

I dunno, there's a whole site devoted to renting and buying islands around the world

https://www.privateislandsonline.com/

Some of the prices aren't too over the top.

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

#203

Post by jjoonathan »

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…

Flexible glass isn't a lost ancient mystery. We call it "silicone."

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

#204

Post by adrr »

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…

The biggest environmental issue about plastics is that it gets into the ocean and kills wildlife and gets into our food supply, but recycling doesn't fix that. So whats wrong with just burying it in ground where it will eventually turn into its original form after a million years? Last thing we should be doing is shipping our trash to other countries where there is a chance it is just disposed of in improper way and ends up in the ocean.

Recycling paper doesn't even make sense. Bury it in the ground, we should be increasing paper usage to encourage more tree farms which are great for wildlife. It also is literally capturing carbon and burying it.

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

#205

Post by JoeAltmaier »

chongli wrote: post #199
learnstats2 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you use Pringles cans for that makes them so useful: say you were buying one per week?

I don’t buy one per week. Maybe a few cans per year. I use them for storing sleeves of soda crackers (they fit perfectly even though the crackers are squares). They’re also good for storing snacks of various kinds, dry spaghetti noodles (or any pasta, really). Pretty much any dry goods that you don’t want crushed are a great fit!

Cool! I'll have to go out and buy some Pringles, I need those things done.

Normally I don't buy Pringles at all, not in decades. Because, honestly, they're the consistency of pasteboard and taste of mostly salt. The bottom rung on the snack ladder. I snack on nothing instead of Pringles if that's the only option.

But the can! That seems worthwhile now that you call out its many uses.

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

#206

Post by amelius »

sschueller wrote: post #186
amelius wrote: post #74

Nespresso has the same problem with those little pods, but decided not to change anything about their design and instead focus on recycling.

What are their alternatives? Plastic is worse and paper does not seal properly. They would need to line paper with something that makes it bad again for recycling. Letting people collect the used pods and return them for free makes sense if you want to have a pod system. Of course you could make coffee the old way.

Yes, but making coffee the old way would ruin Nespresso's business model.

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

#208

Post by eloff »

dojitza1 wrote: post #148
remote_phone wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree. But an average human won't. A perceived cost increase or to put it more generally a perceived life standard decrease incurs a strong emotion in humans. Let earth and our future be be damned, I want more dopamine in my brain as soon as possible. This is the reason why most people live in debt, instead of an obviously optimal alternative of saving up for your purchases. We evolved in an unstable world, where f…

It doesn't matter if people like it or not, you just make it so companies or people have to pay for the negative externalities through taxes or regulation and the problem is solved. The market will naturally rebalance and innovate under the new constraints.

If only we had responsible, effective government with the balls to do what has to be done to protect the future. This business of short term thinking and to hell with the future is not only ruining things it is very literally current generations stealing from future generations.

I think we should make a law to compensate for that. Those social security obligations where the current working generations pay for past generations retirement? Let's reduce that considerably. Let's also raise estate taxes. It's fair, they created and benefited from this mess and then left it to us to bear.

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

#209

Post by ad_hominem »

stx wrote: post #157
Ensorceled wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The thing is we (the US) did do this at one point in time. When I was a kid you could buy a coke in a glass bottle and return it when done to be re-used by the manufacturer. For some reason we stopped. We should bring that back. When I was in Mexico around the early 2000 they still did this. When you buy a drink you could return it for a few cents back from the vender.

Maybe the reason is because of stronger food safety laws and tort law.

If some guy used his bottle as a hammer for several months before turning it in for recycling, then someone cuts their hand on a jagged edge or drinks a glass sliver, that's a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Unlikely maybe but at Coca-Cola scale I imagine things like that will happen eventually.

These companies would have to have sophisticated QA processes, or melt down and re-cast the bottles to ensure the food safety of their supply chain against millions of chaos monkeys.

Edit: Here I just did a Google search for the butthurt downvoters that proves there is extra QA that needs to be done. From an Oregon glass bottling reuse program:[1]

> Among other attributes, the machinery features an electronic sensor that uses X-ray equipment to image each bottle, detecting flaws in the glass, as well as mold and other contaminants, Bailey said. That step will reject any bottles that are chipped or contaminated.

[1]: https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/03/13/oregon-e...

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

#210

Post by angel_j »

someonehere wrote: post #207

> Kellogg's says these lids will still produce the distinctive "pop" associated with the product. We’re concerned with a pop sound so we’re spending time and resources finding an alternative way to make the pop. Sounds ridiculous.

And all for 10 cents worth of potato dust cast into the shape of a chip and covered in sodium.
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