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

nytimes.com

61–70 of 297 posts

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

#61
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.

One way to incentivize recyclable packaging would be to make it illegal for companies to put a symbol on their non-recyclable plastic packaging that 98% of consumers associate with recycling.

Further - I don't understand why we don't just have mandated bottle/jar form factors.

We broke the fucking loop by claiming that people could just throw plastic containers away and "somewhere, somehow (over the rainbow!!!) people will recycle them into new goods". That story is bullshit - even for most plastics that can actually be recycled.

I want legislation that lays out a set of standardized form factors that are as re-usable as possible (NOT RECYCLABLE - Literally washable and reusable), and if companies use those - great! No extra taxes for you.

Want to use your own custom packaging? Fine, but you pay for the whole fucking product lifecycle up front, before the customer ever touches it: Collection, Cleaning, Recycling/Disposal, Reprocessing, Redistribution. The EU estimates those costs for plastic at about 800 EUR ($950) a ton.

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

#62
post #49

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.

More strangely, it’s on many styrofoam packaging products.

Styrofoam actually is recyclable, though you'd have to check with your local municipality to see if it's accepted. For example, it's listed as a "blue bin" item in Toronto: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-organics-...

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

#63
John Oliver did a rant on plastics recycling, a few weeks ago[0].

TL;DR: Anything with a "Number in triangle" over 2, is probably not going to be recycled, and you might as well toss it in the trash, as that's where it will end up, anyway[1].

Different from this symbol, and probably won't be affected, but recycling has a great deal of "PR spin" to it.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E

[1] https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-08-16

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

#65
post #52

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...

Whoever is picking up your recycling will have info on what can and cannot be recycled. If you're concerned I'd reach out to them and they should be able to give you a list of recyclable items. For me they only accept plastics with a number in the symbol except numbers 3 and 6, no plastic bags, and items must be thoroughly cleaned.

It's also regional, so friends of mine a few cities away have a totally different list of what they can recycle because its based on the capabilities of the facility it ends up at.

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

#66

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 wo…

> 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?

Even if it pollutes more to make virgin material than to recycle it -- and I think that's your problem -- if the non-recycled material goes into a landfill instead of the ocean or biosphere, there's a small consolation in that the carbon in the plastic is sequestered.

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

#67
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 plasti…

Letting the price mechanism work (externalities accounted for) is a great way to do this.

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

#68
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, exactly. The recycling trucks here in LDN have a campaign on the side of them that has words to the effect of "if you're unsure - leave it out!" because as you say, even partial contamination screws entire bales of reclaimed material.

My eternal bugbear is Pizza boxes. Used greasy pizza boxes can often be recycled in many municipalities, BUT only in the organic or food waste. Greasy card in the paper recycling stream screws everything up.

.

I used to live in a fairly large warehouse community and 'made myself responsible for the recycling', so I have greyer hair than I should and a slighly less shallow awareness than many people of the problems in all this... :\

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

#69
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

that's not true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-100-beef/

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

#70
post #69
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

that's not true: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-100-beef/

I'm not sure that's the same problem. I think Parent means that beef from elsewhere arrives in Ireland, is processed there and becomes 'Irish beef', which is clearly a bit of a stretch of the truth.

It's the same in Europe with many types of olive oil - much of it is grown and extracted in Iberia, but then sent to Italy, etc, for processing, becoming 'Italian' olive oil..

Doesn't bother me though - my favourite olive oil comes from Spain...

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