California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by cloverich » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

arsome wrote: post #74

3pt14159 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In every part of Canada I've lived in there has been a well developed reuse system. In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. Reuse should be way better integrated into our systems. If I could bring a resuable bag back to any supermarket to get the $1 fee back, it would be so much easier to justify buying reusable bags that really last a long time. The trouble is I never remember to…

Beer bottles are typically only reused if you say, bring them to The Beer Store or something similar. If you toss them in your municipal bin like me, my understanding is they basically just smash them and use the glass bits in other products like asphalt as it's just not worth the energy cost to actually recycle it. Aluminum cans are probably a better bet for recycling if you're just using the municipal bins. They're…

But if the bottles, or even a subset of them, were standardized, it would be possible to have some bottle specific re-use (not recycle) programs. OP was I think giving an example of one that works. Perhaps it would be possible to extend it. I can understand there are some product specific's that limit this in some cases, but if I drink beer and topo chico and a few other similar drinks, it seems unlikely they couldn't all use the same bottle.

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

#122

Post by Cd00d » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:10 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #87

> For years, the United States also shipped much of its plastic waste overseas, choking local rivers and streams. A global convention now bans most trade in plastic waste Most of this article is fine, but I can't believe this specific misinformation continues to be printed. Exported plastic waste virtually entirely goes into landfills overseas, or is incinerated. Whereas the waste choking local rivers and streams e.g…

You're making an interesting point, but I do wish you'd support it. You're making a a counter-claim to TFA, but you don't have more credibility than the Times.

I would love some validation that our exported plastic waste goes into landfills, as you're stating, but I'm also skeptical that all the places we ship waste to have well designed landfills with proper water runoff management.

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

#123

Post by gruez » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

OneEyedRobot wrote: post #48

hatchnyc wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. You're making me feel old. I used to sort bottles as a kid. Soft drinks are just another example of gigantism in corporate life, economy of scale uber alles. There was a time when practically every small town had one or more bottling plants, the owners were pillars of the community sponsoring softball teams and the like. Delivery trucks…

> For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves.

Are you sure that's not just due to people moving away from agriculture? A family farm is a thing, but not really a family factory.

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

#124

Post by detritus » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #108

detritus wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What you say, plus occasional reminder to wash your recycleables before throwing them into the bin, is why I consider the whole recycling scheme to be worthless distraction. Nobody in their right mind has the time and space to properly sort and clean the trash. For the rest, inefficient use of water and detergent has an environmental cost too. This stuff should be all handled by a combination of centralized work at s…

If you wash up manually in a bowl, you can use the remnant liquid to do your recyclable washing before pouring it down the sink, but .. well, as you suggest "I ain't got no time for that".

As for your pizza box idea, I'm not sure that's not simply complicating things - now you'd have two independently-recyclable materials tha most consumers will simply leave together and dump in the box, leaving you with sorting problems, and oil going from foil to card anyway.

Also, I think the quality of the pizza might be impacted - my gut thinks that a pizza that's allowed to release some of its heat/grease into card makes it less squidgy and sweaty than one left to sit on foil. I haven't researched this though! :)

I mean, for crissakes - a neighbour in my block thinks that actual pizza crusts and leftovers are recyclable.

People!

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

#125

Post by jokethrowaway » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

From my European point of view, the problem is not necessarily the almost invisible symbol but the government endorsement of recycling. Being forced to collect rubbish in some centralised way with tons of stupid rules made me think that recycling was working and that plastic was a relatively green choice (for something coming from oil).

This propagated down in the economy with brands using more and more plastic in the last 30 years. Everything is plastic nowadays, even what used to be glass (like milk containers).

Both government and mainstream media were all about people following all the dumb rules (I wonder how many hours of lost productivity we collectively lost as a species) or you hated the planet.

In the last few of years it turned out recycling is mostly useless, even if we had the evidence for it since the beginning. Most of it is unrecyclable, some of it get shipped to China to burn, a minor part of plastic gets recycled (and it can even be recycled a limited amount of times).

The government trying to intervene now is doing too little too late. The only thing I can understand is that big oil bought our governments officials and media. What they bought is 30 years to make money selling oil and enough time to shift their investment to something greener for the next cycle of corruption and profiteering.

Incidentally I know a family in the oil business and the new generation is investing the family empire in renewables, pocketing all the government's incentives for solar energies, while they're at it.

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

#126

Post by andyjohnson0 » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

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.

Yes. This is pointed-out in the wikipedia article.

Also, anecdotally, I know multiple people who believed (and in some cases still insist) that it indicates recyclability.

Metalized plastic film (as used as packaging for potato chips / crisps) is particularly aggravating because it will often be printed with a green dot but is very rarely recycled, and it effectively poisons the genuinely recyclable material that it is often mixed with.

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

#127

Post by Cd00d » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

burkaman wrote: post #32

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.

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.

Isn't part of the problem though that recycling facilities vary greatly in capability or breadth in the things they can manage, and are necessarily regional? Couple that with the fact that some facilities turn functionality on or off depending on market prices at any given time (esp. with say single use plastic grocery bags).

I mean, a #n plastic may be easily recycled with your curbside pickup, but be a processing issue with mine. I don't know how that can be handled better.

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

#128

Post by Jesus_piece » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

throwaway2214 wrote: post #79

Such a waste of time. Now we will spend a decade arguing which plastic is really recyclable, and if you can recycle it once is it enough, or should be 2 times? or does it degrade on its own? bio plastic (which turns out sometimes is worse than current common plastic) and etc. Coca Cola's 'Please Recycle' on the caps makes me boil with rage, how about 'Please Don't Make it'? There must be supply chain changes, probabl…

The free market does not regulate itself. The big plastic producers have lobbied and muddled the waters endlessly to confuse the public and blame consumers on their awful environment damaging products. Less than 10% of all plastics across the world have ever been recycled

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-p...

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

#129

Post by uuddlrlr » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

detritus wrote: post #107

entropyie wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 k…

I strongly feel that governments should intervene and mandate a limited subset of plastics - including colouration - that can be used for food and beverage packaging, etc. My bottle of sparkling water doesn't really need a green top. The bottle itself doesn't really need to be a light colour tint. Put branding on paper labels, or better yet - go monochrome and laser-etch/mark everything. Have QR codes on bottles that…

I'd rather not be a scan+network request away from knowing which flavour of drink I'm holding.

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

#130

Post by honksillet » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

Cd00d wrote: post #122

crazygringo wrote: post #87

> For years, the United States also shipped much of its plastic waste overseas, choking local rivers and streams. A global convention now bans most trade in plastic waste Most of this article is fine, but I can't believe this specific misinformation continues to be printed. Exported plastic waste virtually entirely goes into landfills overseas, or is incinerated. Whereas the waste choking local rivers and streams e.g…

You're making an interesting point, but I do wish you'd support it. You're making a a counter-claim to TFA, but you don't have more credibility than the Times. I would love some validation that our exported plastic waste goes into landfills, as you're stating, but I'm also skeptical that all the places we ship waste to have well designed landfills with proper water runoff management.

Well when waste is shipped, it is compacted and bailed. If it ends up not in a landfill, recycled or incincerated it is a deliberate act of illegal dumping.