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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

#91

Post by ceh123 »

twoodfin wrote: post #67
alistairSH wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> externalities accounted for

Well yeah, that's kinda where the problem is. How do we price in all the different kinds of externalities for cotton bags and plastic bags in a way that is consistent and everyone agrees with?

Debating these externalities and how they should be accounted for is exactly the hard problem the parent comment was talking about.

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

#92

Post by q1w2 »

asoneth wrote: post #20
swiley wrote: post #2

I hope they’re not confusing the resin symbols with the recycling symbol.

Clearly the resin identification code and the recycling symbol are causing consumer confusion due to the fact that almost everyone confuses them. The US Society of the Plastics Industry designed their resin identification code in 1988 and made it similar to the recycling symbol which had been in use since 1970, even though many of the plastics thus labeled were not generally recyclable. According to wikipedia[1] they…

The Resin code was designed to help with recycling to determine what can be recycled.

It says so in the article you linked. It's the last column on the first chart.

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

#93

Post by formerly_proven »

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.

> But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle.

I don't know what you mean by this.

If you bottle stuff into PET bottles (the usual stuff, being shredded after one use), then you have to buy one new PET bottle for each bottle you produce.

If you bottle stuff into reusable glass bottles (98+ % returned intact, cleaned and reused), then you mostly don't buy new bottles, just replacements for bottles falling out of the cycle (reuse limit reached, not returned, broken).

Why and by what mechanism would the price of a single new glass bottle account for the lifecycle of the bottle? It just doesn't make sense to me.

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

#94

Post by entropyie »

s_dev wrote: post #54
detritus wrote: post #40

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…

> However the main problem is still consumer knowledge of whats recyclable.

Strongly disagree here. Expecting average consumers to know the difference between polypropylene, polyurethane and polystyrene etc..., just by looking at something, is beyond the pale. That doesn't even take into account bonded materials, like paper coffee cups lined with plastic.

The "main problem" is manufacturers / supermarkets using any kind of packaging that is not recyclable by default, and vague / ever shifting standards from one private waste company to the next on what can be recycled.

There should be a massive tax on using non-recyclable materials for ordinary packaging, and it should have a mandatory skull & crossbones style symbol to show that it is hazardous to the environment.

On a positive note, Ireland just pushed through legislation to accept all kinds of plastic in recycling bins this week: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/environment/household-recycl...

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

#95

Post by q1w2 »

Denvercoder9 wrote: post #9
swiley wrote: post #2

I hope they’re not confusing the resin symbols with the recycling symbol.

The resin symbols were purposely made misleading to let consumers think that plastic was recyclable even when it wasn't. I don't think banning them would be that bad.

No. They were made to help communities separate plastics into those that can vs cannot be recycled.

That's why they are on the plastic, and why they have the recycle shape.

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

#96

Post by Ekaros »

hatchnyc wrote: post #33
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.

You are not wrong, but in some countries they collect, wash, and and reuse glass (and even special kinds of plastic) bottles. According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. Someone should do the math first obviously but it seems like a great idea to me. If bottling is done locally you aren’t transporting the bottles long distance, and quite significantly in my mind glass is inert so i…

Finland has that system for glass bottles. Plastic bottles also are in system but those are shredded and aluminium is crushed. Used to be that they were washed and re-used, but I think there were some calculations that it was worse than single use... Or might have been some EU thing...

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

#97

Post by TeMPOraL »

q1w2 wrote: post #78
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Presumably you're referring to the Green Dot / Der Grüne Punkt [1]. Its often confused with the symbol that indicates recyclabililty. I'm never sure whether that's intentional or not. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)

> Its often confused with the symbol that indicates recyclabililty. Are people actually getting confused by this? It looks very very different from the recycling symbol. It's a different shape both inside and out, a different color, has a different number of arrows, and the arrows abut. It doesn't look anything the same to me.

> Are people actually getting confused by this?

Yes. Until about 3 minutes ago, I believed this symbol meant "recycleable", and just assumed that it's another case where producers can't (or don't want to) agree on a single symbol scheme.

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

#98

Post by q1w2 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #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://dilber…

Burying plastic is likely the best solution anyway as it's a CO2 sink. It's a great way to sequester carbon.

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

#99

Post by Ekaros »

bequanna wrote: post #58
JKCalhoun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Energy transfer losses are pretty marginal around 2%. Compared to labour availability, shipping resources and products; and land, it is not so big deal. Unless it's very energy intensive industry.

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

#100

Post by q1w2 »

___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 different cities have the ability to recycle different types of resin. So the number in the middle of the symbol is used by the recycling plant to separate what can and cannot be recycled.

The ridiculous part is that recycling plastic generates more carbon that making new plastic, and burying it is actually a great way to sequester CO2.

So the entire plastic recycling effort has been discovered to be counter-productive.

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