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

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

#261

Post by conradev » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:40 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…

I found this article incredibly illuminating:

https://theintercept.com/2019/10/18/coca-cola-recycling-plas...

The United States is seemingly uniquely bad at this, thanks to - you guessed it - corporate greed. Container deposit laws work:

> The United States' overall beverage container recycling rate is approximately 33%, while states with container deposit laws have a 70% average rate of beverage container recycling.

but, of course, only ten states in the US have them:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislatio...

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

#262

Post by layoutIfNeeded » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:41 PM UTC

ad_hominem wrote: post #242

blacksmith_tb wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's quite a hypothetical - if there were a rash of lawsuits the lead up to Coke being sold in 2 liter plastic bottles, that would be indicative, but I am not aware of anything like that - and you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case.

> you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case That's completely different - you're confusing recycling with reuse. The bottles you're referring to are made anew from glass that has been smashed into cullet and re-cast into new glass. What the commenters above are advocating are thicker glass bottles that are washed and reused as-is, i.e. reuse. Different QA c…

Bullshit. The Club Mate I'm drinking right now came in a reused glass bottle. Some of these bottles have more wear on the outside, some of them look pristine.

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

#263

Post by kbenson » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:43 PM UTC

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 weight alone increases the cost of the supply chain by several times.

I suspect that matters a lot more when all the local recycling plants have shut down because a vendor in a different country offered such good pricing for a while that nobody could/wanted to compete, but has since greatly raised they prices.

Weight does matter quite a bit when shipping something literally halfway around the world, but we don't have to ship it around the world. We need to get our own capacity to recycle locally built up again.

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

#264

Post by strogonoff » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:46 PM UTC

emerongi wrote: post #213

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…

Thanks for the advice. I use the same plastic bottle for months when going to the gym. Should I stop doing this?

Here's the case that makes me cringe: I know some families that don't think their tap water is clean enough to drink, and they reuse disposable plastic bottles for months to store spring water that the whole household drinks. That can't be good long term.

In your situation it's probably not worth stressing too much if your plastic bottle is built to be reusable or if it's not your primary source of water.

It's difficult to find reliable data on this, partially because how bad is the least durable kind of plastic legally allowed for drink containers depends on local (and changing) regulations. In presence of such uncertainty, personally for myself and loved ones I apply the following reasoning:

– If bottle’s plastic is thin and easily crumples, routine handling and refilling will cause plastic surface to degrade and microscopic cracks will make chemicals from the container more likely to seep into water.

– There is a well-publicized experiment from last year that found varying amounts of microplastics in newly purchased water bottled in plastic; I find it likely that after reusing a plastic container not designed to be reusable the amount of microplastics would only grow.

– Glass bottles are great!

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

#265

Post by KarlKode » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

eloff wrote: post #208

dojitza1 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But isn't the whole thing "now oil and oil-based-products are bad" kind of unfair to all the developing nations? We, the rich western countries, we're able to profit of the non-sustainable benefits we got from fossil fuels and their products, while a large part of the earth's population didn't profit nearly as much as we have. This is a line of thinking I've seen underrepresented in a lot of the discussions about the environment and the future of our planet and species in general.

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

#266

Post by KarlKode » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 4:53 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…

The crux of your line of thinking lies in the definition of "costs of recycling". If something like the idea of a cost of recycling was represented in the cost to the consumer, how would you translate the same idea to a developing country? They have to pay an artificially increased price (compared what the population of "developed" countries paid for) for something we didn't have to pay for until now? That sounds kind of unfair.

edit: Just to make clear, I'm not arguing against a concept as "cost of recycling"; my point is that the whole argument is more complicated than just comparing realistic solutions for the US or europe.

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

#267

Post by ryantgtg » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 5:00 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…

I’m picturing a bulk Pringles tube at the grocery store, soaring up to the ceiling. Then you place your reusable glass Pringles tube under it, pull a lever, and a fresh stack of Pringles drops into your container. I like it!

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

#268

Post by treis » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 5:03 PM UTC

mac-chaffee wrote: post #241

treis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> Glass is made of sand, which we have plenty of. On this point specifically, glass is made of a specific type of sand that is high in silica, which we are running out of: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191108-why-the-world-is...

Sure, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't recycle things when it makes economic sense. I just don't think it should be a goal in of itself. Or at least we should not be spending truly scare resources (mostly carbon capacity of the atmosphere) to conserve resources that aren't.

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

#269

Post by waterhouse » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 5:14 PM UTC

grawprog wrote: post #202

luckylion wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Seriously, something like 50 of them cost in the $2-3M range, which is less than a lot of houses in the Bay Area. (Google says that Zillow says that the median price of a house sold in Palo Alto is $2.6M.) There are also three currently listed from $59k-$68k.

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

#270

Post by dvdkhlng » Fri, Sep 11, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

xioxox wrote: post #189

dvdkhlng wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have something like what you propose in germany [1]. Basically it causes the producers of packaging to end up paying for the disposal of the corresponding trash. This creates an incentitive for producers to make the packaging less wasteful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)#German_dual...

Despite this, Germans seem to use a lot of bottles. Most German people seem to prefer to drink bottled water rather than tap water, even though tap water is of very high quality. They also don't have the concentrated drinks available in other countries (cordial/squash) and insist on shipping around diluted drinks in heavy glass bottles.

Yes, due to the insane amount of single-use plastic bottles being being wasted without recycling, we nowadays have to pay deposit for most bottles, which we then get back by returning the spent bottles to special collecting stations that use some computer-vision to check each bottle one by one for eligibility of deposit return.

So whatever you drink at home, you usually quickly start amassing lots of empty bottles at home that rot and wait for being returned to the supermarket.