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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

#161

Post by detritus »

lfowles wrote: post #141
detritus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep, which brings us full circle here, as Pringles tubes prominently display that bloody Green Dot logo. My partner likes the occasional Pringle, and she keeps putting the used packaging in the recycling.

Drives me nuts!

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

#162

Post by OneEyedRobot »

panzagl wrote: post #142
gruez wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Both (farming and retail) of course.

When I was a kid the only businesses I can remember being non-locally owned were a Safeway and branches of two state-wide banks. This is in a town of 20k or so (at the time). There were small local manufacturing firms, 100% of restaurants were local (no chains), nearly all grocery stores were family owned, you could still make a living as a rancher.

Obviously there were franchises (gas stations, a small Sears store mostly for catalog ordering) but not very many.

The difference from modern times is remarkable.

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

#164

Post by TeMPOraL »

jdavis703 wrote: post #158
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…

> Nobody in their right mind has the time and space to properly sort and clean the trash. How do folks have time to clean their glasses but don’t have time to wash a milk bottle or whatever? It takes like 15 seconds…

> How do folks have time to clean their glasses

They don't. They put it in a dishwasher.

> It takes like 15 seconds…

Not counting setup and cleanup times afterwards. Given the two are large enough and most packaging isn't dishwasher safe, it makes sense to clean a bunch of trash in one run, which requires having space for extra trash containers at home...

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

#165

Post by detritus »

littleweep wrote: post #155
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…

Interesting to come across the word “bugbear” — would you mind sharing which part of the world you are posting from? I’m not sure if I’ve heard that word before. Edit: is LDN London?

My apologies! Yes - from the UK, and LDN is short for London.

I've somehow gotten myself into the habit of using that shortcode over the past few years. I should really stop - the energy saved from not using three characters isn't really worthwhile :)

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

#166

Post by mc32 »

panzagl wrote: post #142
gruez wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

And local druggists whose pharmacies also provided other services. It's not a particularly American thing, this transformation is everywhere --that does not imply it's good for everyone.

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

#167

Post by soupajoe »

littleweep wrote: post #155
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…

Interesting to come across the word “bugbear” — would you mind sharing which part of the world you are posting from? I’m not sure if I’ve heard that word before. Edit: is LDN London?

They could be posting from the Forgotten Realms part of their imagination. It’s a Dungeons & Dragons setting where Bugbears are abundant.

https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/bugbear

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

#168

Post by asiachick »

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…

That would make it so no one can introduce a better plastic

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

#169

Post by clairity »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #125

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 th…

> “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.”

that applies word-for-word to covid measures. almost none of them do much in practice, but there has to be a bevy of rules to keep us mollified and distracted from the raw machinations of power and money.

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

#170

Post by Robotbeat »

stronglikedan wrote: post #150
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".

Sure, use a square instead of a triangle. That’s a good idea. Actually, we should use marks that are easily recognized by machine vision so they can be efficiently sorted.
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