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California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

nytimes.com

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Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#51

Post by JKCalhoun »

mc32 wrote: post #23
Steltek wrote: post #21

I would much rather incentivize non-plastic alternative packaging. Consumers should have better options for metal cans, glass bottles, etc for mainstream goods, as those materials are far more effective targets for recycling. But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle.

Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might last 20 uses. Glass is also much heavier requiring more energy to transport.

Places with cheap energy (e.g,. the Columbia River with hydroelectric power) could inexpensively recycle glass, aluminum.

Of course it does take energy to get the recyclables to these places. Curious — are trains no longer efficient?

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#52

Post by taf2 »

alistairSH wrote: post #42

About damn time. I've always been confused by the sign - it's on pretty much all plastics, but only a fraction are actually recyclable. And like many people, I chuck it all in the recycle bin and hope some of it gets recycled and that the non-recyclables don't screw up the whole works. It really shouldn't be this hard.

I stopped putting a lot of plastic in the recycle bin. The main reason because it's not recyclable - you're just increasing the cost to recycle. It needs to be sorted out and as a result cost more... It feels bad but I think it is better... For example a cereal box - has the plastic inside and the paper outside... I take the plastic out into the trash and put the paper into the recycle...

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#53

Post by kibwen »

HPsquared wrote: post #11
danschumann wrote: post #4

Are those dumpsters recyclable? I am picturing a big robot throwing those dumpsters into a giant shredder or something. I'll let myself out.

They appear to be made of sheet steel, so almost certainly yes and that's how they would be recycled. Probably wouldn't involve a robot though...

In case anyone isn't aware, while plastic recycling may be a scam, metal recycling is extremely effective. To use cars as an example, 95% of cars end up being recycled, 80% of a car's materials (by weight) can be successfully recycled, and the average car is composed of 20% recycled material.

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#54

Post by s_dev »

detritus wrote: post #40
s_dev wrote: post #25

In Ireland there's a recycling symbol for plastic products that can be recycled. But if you put that recycling symbol in a green circle it means something else -- "that the companies that produces the product is committed to recycling" -- whatever that means. This to me is beyond infuriating. Absolutely in favor of these sorts of measures.

You mean 'The Green Dot'? This piece of shit thing? https://www.pro-e.org/the-green-dot-trademark How this has been allowed to exist for so long is beyond my ken. The logo should look ENTIRELY different as it's basically false-advertising for the vast majority of people who have no idea what it actually represents. - ed spelling

>You mean 'The Green Dot'?

Yup -- another business trick is in McDonalds -- the company that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100% Irish Beef" and thus they put that on the packaging even if the beef doesn't come from Ireland.

I've seen this don't with the equivalent of "100% recyclable" as the name of the company to pass the product off as environmental.

However the main problem is still consumer knowledge of whats recyclable. If people think there is a small chance that something is recyclable they will throw it in the recycling bin -- this is the complete wrong approach. Put everything in the trash unless you're 100% sure it's recyclable. Otherwise you'll "contaminate" the whole batch like throwing a bad apple in on top of a barrel of good apples.

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#55

Post by Aromasin »

GordonS wrote: post #22
globular-toast wrote: post #7

Some JS stops me reading the article after the first paragraph or so. But it seems to about using that specific "three arrows" symbol. One annoying thing I've noticed in the UK is some products having a symbol that looks a lot like the recycling symbol but upon closer inspection is not the same symbol. It turns it can be processed in a specific plant of which only one exists in the entire country. I doubt many get se…

> It can be reprocessed, but never recycled Huh, I didn't know that. TBH, I was pretty sure most of it was just going to landfill somewhere in Asia, with only a small portion really being recycled. What does "reprocessed" mean though? Taking the example of a prepackaged meal tray, what might happen to it?

It gets processed into pellets which can be melted down and extruded. Generally these are lower grade materials, meaning they are used for different purposes [1]. This might be water bottles getting made into polymer fibers for cushion filling and the like, or disposable cups into plant pots. Eventually they get processed to the point where the grade is too low to be recycled any further, at which point they end up in landfill. Modern recycling practices have extended the recyclable life of plastics, but often by creating a lot of unusable byproduct which again, is chemically treated to then be put into landfill.

[1] https://plasgranltd.co.uk/plasgran-guide-plastic-recycling-g...

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#56

Post by alistairSH »

Steltek wrote: post #21

I would much rather incentivize non-plastic alternative packaging. Consumers should have better options for metal cans, glass bottles, etc for mainstream goods, as those materials are far more effective targets for recycling. But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle.

I agree that we must incentivize packaging that's better for the environment. The problem is who gets to define "better". Cloth bags were once thought to be better than plastic for grocery use, but that might not be the case - the cloth has a larger environmental cost to produce (cotton is water-intensive) and has to be used a lot more than one might expect before it surpasses the basic plastic bag. And if the plastic bag is reused a few times, then used as a garbage liner, it's cost is reduced quite a bit.

It's really not easy for a consumer to figure out what's better.

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#58

Post by bequanna »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #51
mc32 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might last 20 uses. Glass is also much heavier requiring more energy to transport.

Places with cheap energy (e.g,. the Columbia River with hydroelectric power) could inexpensively recycle glass, aluminum. Of course it does take energy to get the recyclables to these places. Curious — are trains no longer efficient?

> Places with cheap energy…

I’ve always wondered about colocating manufacturing near cheap power sources. Is this actually possible? Isn’t the power generated already being used? If it is possible, why doesn’t every manufacturing plant just do this to reduce a huge input cost?

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#59

Post by echopurity »

overcast wrote: post #47
___luigi wrote: post #44

Before reading this article, I thought it was trivial "recycling symbol is used for recyclable items", and "no recycling symbol means that the item is not recyclable", why do they allow them to mis-use it (or mis-use any symbol) in first place?.

Because companies probably found through research, that adding a recycle symbol, increases revenue by some percentage.

The whole movement to recycle plastic was an industry scam to knowingly profit from destroying the planet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dk3NOEgX7o

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#60

Post by Robotbeat »

I hope they don’t get rid of the symbol entirely! It’s useful to know what resin a product is made of.

Things like PLA (which is kinda sorta compostable) are not often recycled, but they can be. If you don’t know what resin the plastic is, then it’s even harder.

Keep the resin symbol. Remove the arrows on it. We get better with recycling stuff over time, so eventually more resins could be recycled.

But. Part of me wonders if it is actually BETTER to not recycle.

Imagine if we made plastic by pulling CO2 from the atmosphere (which we do for PLA!). If the cost were the same and the processing energy the same, wouldn’t it be better for the climate to bury that plastic (sequestering the carbon) instead of recycling it? That is, after all, how we got fossil fuels and reduced the CO2 to preindustrial levels! Burying a bunch of waste carbon from dead algae or trees before fungi evolved that could efficiently break down lignin. Recycling that carbon would’ve meant higher CO2 levels today.

And the waste in river thing is primarily about what happens to plastic BEFORE it ends up in a bin (trash OR recycling). Things like water satchets, which really are a compensation for having crap tap water.

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