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

#141

Post by lfowles » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

detritus wrote: post #124

TeMPOraL wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 prob…

I've heard that Pringles tubes (foil lined cardboard with plastic lids) are a bit of a recycling nightmare for that reason.

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

#142

Post by panzagl » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #123

OneEyedRobot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

More likely retail- in my town the bookstore, stationary store, newsstand, hardware stores, etc. were all family owned until the big box stores opened up two towns over.

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

#143

Post by TeMPOraL » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

gruez wrote: post #116

horsawlarway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. Is that seriously the impediment to plastic container reusability, that they're not standardized? People don't reuse plastic containers because there aren't that many uses for them around the house.

Good point.

My wife and I went through a period of trying to maximally reuse otherwise disposable packaging we had around the house, and we quickly discovered two facts:

1. There's surprisingly many things you can use disposable containers for around the house.

2. Even if you go out of your way to find more uses for the waste, in a month or two you'll just run out of applications.

The problem of consumer waste is that it's a continuous flow of trash. At-home reuse is not a sink, it's a buffer - it fills up quickly, so it doesn't alter the overall dynamic of the system.

Any waste reuse scheme needs to recirculate it on the market - new products need to be put in old packaging.

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

#144

Post by mc32 » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

cloverich wrote: post #121

arsome wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

A lot of beer bottles conform to an industry standard (the ones with paper labels where anyone can slap their own label) and get reused. However, the reuse frequency is from 15 to 20 times before they begin to fail inspection tests and have to be taken out of circulation (and recycled or dumped). Recycling that glass is expensive. The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents.

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

#145

Post by Closi » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:29 PM UTC

detritus wrote: post #70

subandi wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

The problem is that it isn't true - the 100% British & Irish beef is actually beef from Britain & Ireland. It's a myth that it's the company name.

English & Irish law on the country of origin of products is pretty strong and certinally does not allow processed beef from other countries to be labelled/marketed as British. Also a 5 minute google search shows this is just simply an urban legend.

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

#146

Post by Closi » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

This isn't true, it's an urban myth. The original myth was actually that a company called "100% beef" was a company owned by McDonalds, and this is simply a variant. See: https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/help/faq/18916-is-beef-a-...

McDonalds Sourcing Statement - "We work with over 23,000 British and Irish farmers to source our ingredients. Our beef, eggs and milk all come from UK farms."

> 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.

Can you give a source for a company using this? I can't find anything about it online and suspect it's just an urban myth like the first one.

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

#147

Post by throwaway2214 » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

Jesus_piece wrote: post #128

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...

i think it will regulate as the new generation is growing to be more and more aware, and they (hopefully) they will hurt the plastic producer's bottom line, but it is super slow, and this is assuming that plastic producer's propaganda wont grow in sophistication

look how long it took for tabacco, and it still lost despite all the lobbying, but it is incredibly slow

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

#148

Post by frumper » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #135

chrisseaton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> EUR160e6 Deliberately obtuse way to write €160 million. Why write that like?

Because people near Ireland use an obtuse definition of million/billion. Engineering notation is precise and unambiguous.

I'm just curious what 160 million Euro would mean in Ireland. Can you explain, please?

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

#149

Post by dec0dedab0de » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

entropyie wrote: post #94

s_dev wrote: 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…

> 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…

The "main problem" is manufacturers / supermarkets using any kind of packaging that is not recyclable by default

Packaging should be biodegradable by default. Assume that it's going to end up in the ocean, or the woods next to the highway, and we don't want it to be there in 1000 years.

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

#150

Post by stronglikedan » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #60

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…

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

They should use a different, non-similar symbol for this, since the current batch of recycle symbols have all become synonymous (to the layman) with "put it in the recycle bin".