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

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

#251

Post by Steltek » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #233

stx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A bunch of states have bottle deposit laws. Stuff goes to recycling rather than direct reuse, but still, the concept is to use the deposit as an incentive to reduce litter and increase recycling rates. At the end of the day, if we want companies to do more sustainable things than using single use packages that cost nearly nothing to dump in a landfill (or litter), then we need to start charging them enough to incenti…

Personal anecdote time, I guess. My state has a bottle deposit law. I don't return anything but it still goes into recycling. We buy very few individually packaged things, I honestly can't be bothered to collect large bulky containers and bring it back to a redemption center for a lousy $5 or less.

Generally speaking, our recycling outweighs our trash and (commercial) compost put together. Mostly the bottle deposit doesn't change my recycling or purchasing behavior and it only annoys me that I'm "throwing money away". I think the biggest reason to keep it is because it's a perverted form of social welfare for homeless trash pickers who have a different tradeoff of time for money than myself.

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

#252

Post by redisman » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:17 PM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #178

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…

I don't know how things are now, but in Sweden there used to be standard 33cl glass and 1.5l PET bottle sizes, and when they were returned for their deposit, instead of crushing or melting them down, they'd just have their label stripped and they'd be washed and reused. You could tell old a glass or plastic bottle was by how scratched the sides were. I don't think these were government mandates but just industry agre…

The bottle recycling system in Finland and Sweden is brilliant. Each bottle has a small (5-20c) deposit tied to it's price which you get back at the ubiquitous bottle returning machines in grocery stores. This creates a pseudo-job for the homeless and youths and unemployed etc. to aggressively collect all the bottles and cans they can find in the city. It creates it's own little economy.

I'm always surprised this hasn't been expanded to other uses and more countries.

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

#253

Post by ip26 » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #179

kbos87 wrote: post #4

If you want to have your eyes opened about just how little of the material you probably think you are recycling actually gets recycled, watch the recent Frontline episode called “Plastic Wars”. The sad truth is that while recycling is worthwhile, it’s also a woefully insufficient solution that has been held up by the petroleum industry as a cure all to prevent a backlash against plastic. Even products that are labele…

>while recycling is worthwhile, I'm not sure it's that worthwhile for most things. Glass is made of sand, which we have plenty of. Cardboard is trees which are renewable. Plastic is petroleum and it's probably better that we use it and bury it then burn it. Metal is rarer and some of that is worthwhile to recycle but again not like we're running out of iron ore. We also have plenty of land to bury stuff in. The thing…

The process of smelting ore has a significant carbon footprint that can be skipped entirely if you start with nearly-pure iron scrap.

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

#254

Post by keepingscore » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

parliament32 wrote: post #247

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 just force manufacturers to bear the costs of recycling their products 100% There's literally no way to do this. Any costs you try to pass on will just be passed to the customer, and there's no legal way to prevent that from happening. And no, the customer won't care about a 5c recycling tariff, which is about the most you could charge for this without getting sued to oblivion.

I don't understand the sued comment. Why can we heavily tax gas to pay for roads but taxing plastics to pay for recycling costs is a non starter?

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

#255

Post by rolph » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:27 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…

as far as reuse is concerned, removing the foil lining it takes away the value of the can for anything such as a 2.4 GHz waveguide. when you get an old school pringles can together with some sma co-ax and a custom flashed router the signal gain is tremendous but unidirectional

e.g. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-make-a-wifi-antenna-out...

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

#256

Post by theonemind » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

brainzap wrote: post #187

How about we just don't buy them.

I don't see why anyone buys them. We have real potato chips made from cut potato, then the compressed potato dust abomination we call the Pringle. They have an unsatisfying gritty texture when crunching and chewing them. Eating pringles makes me want actual potato chips.

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

#257

Post by wruza » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:34 PM UTC

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #161

strogonoff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On board with mandating recycling and encouraging use of infinitely recyclable materials in container manufacturing. A couple nits to pick, though. – You have to be specific when advocating for reuse. Some like to keep using—for long periods of time—bottles made from cheap thin disposable plastic. That plastic, when repeatedly emptied, may quickly accumulate tiny cracks and leech chemicals, which in case of P(V)C may…

It gives me the creeps every time I see someone heating up their lunch in an old plastic container. Old dairy containers with snap lids are very common. It must be leaching so much garbage into the food. I can’t tell if that’s phobia due to bad science or these people are actually gradually poisoning themselves.

I have the same concern about the new plastic everyday (food delivery sends these). It feels that old plastics only diffuse components into a food once, and then gradually less, but new ones do that again and again. Idk if that is true or a phobia too.

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

#258

Post by jasonwatkinspdx » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #248

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bunch of states have bottle deposit laws. Stuff goes to recycling rather than direct reuse, but still, the concept is to use the deposit as an incentive to reduce litter and increase recycling rates. At the end of the day, if we want companies to do more sustainable things than using single use packages that cost nearly nothing to dump in a landfill (or litter), then we need to start charging them enough to incenti…

There's at least one company in the west (US) that still does this. Have you tried Strauss farms milk? The creamtop is absolutely delicious. There's a $2 bottle deposit which encourages the bottles to be returned. Only problem is you can only get this milk at higher end grocery stores or fancy co-ops.

Yeah, Strauss is great. Sadly it's getting harder to find their cream. Everyone seems to carry the ice cream tho.

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

#259

Post by ip26 » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:36 PM UTC

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…

If it was a concrete problem with a concrete end goal it could be solved with that good 'ol problem-solving ethos.

But the desirable end goal isn't at all clear. For example it's possible recycling many classes of materials should simply be abandoned all together, so we can instead focus on the source.

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

#260

Post by kbenson » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:39 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #222

strogonoff wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On board with mandating recycling and encouraging use of infinitely recyclable materials in container manufacturing. A couple nits to pick, though. – You have to be specific when advocating for reuse. Some like to keep using—for long periods of time—bottles made from cheap thin disposable plastic. That plastic, when repeatedly emptied, may quickly accumulate tiny cracks and leech chemicals, which in case of P(V)C may…

Since I’m literally talking about institutional reuse of glassware and institutional recycling of aluminum, and advocating not using plastic at all; I’m not sure what nit you are picking with me.

To me it seemed you were talking about them as examples of the main point, reuse. I think the nit is not addressing plastics at all, and their caveats. I think it was meant less as a "you got this wrong" nit and more as a "we need to cover this too if talking about reuse" one.