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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

#191

Post by colejohnson66 »

pr0zac wrote: post #171
bzbarsky wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we need to be recycling only aluminum and cardboard And glass?

Only about 30% of "recycled" glass is actually recycled in the USA and its going down with a lot of municipalities removing it from their programs completely. In short because glass breaks and contaminates paper and aluminum plus needs to be sorted by color it costs too much to handle and economics are more important than environmental externalities.

Which sucks because isn’t glass one of the few things that is fully recyclable (if done right)?

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

#192

Post by himinlomax »

obblekk wrote: post #188

Wouldn't this violate free speech laws? I'm all for regulation to disclose information, but regulation to prevent people from saying something is a bit more dicey. Even trademarks to an extent feel unfair (should you really be unable to say the word Google in a TV Ad?).

False advertising is not protected speech, not any more than defamation.

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

#193

Post by colejohnson66 »

throwaway2214 wrote: post #147
Jesus_piece wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Even tobacco is still going strong after all these years of exposure to the reality (and ads on rehab programs).

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

#194

Post by mig39 »

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…

> another business trick is in McDonalds -- the company that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100% Irish Beef"

This is definitely not true. And it's a common myth in Canada as well.

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

#195

Post by maxerickson »

peapicker wrote: post #102
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…

I bought five cloth bags (strong canvas) at my food co-op in 1992. Still using them now, 28 years and many washes and many many shopping trips later. I agree that some of the lighter weight ‘cloth-like’ bags made today would not be able to stand that duty cycle.

Washing them increases their impact.

Might be better overall still, but that's the direction it goes in.

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

#196

Post by asiachick »

u801e wrote: post #172
asiachick wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Pharmaceutical companies still introduce new medications. They just need to submit documents/applications to the relevant government authorities. The same could be done with packaging when trying to introduce a new type.

great, super easy for regulatory capture. Just bribe the inspector to not approve your competitors.

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

#197

Post by mook »

robotnixon wrote: post #65
taf2 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm surprised that they would accept symbol 7 ("other") in recycling for you. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_codes

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

#198

Post by thaumasiotes »

mc32 wrote: post #144
cloverich wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

> The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents.

This is a pretty significant advantage, but the disadvantage is that sometimes you drop it.

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

#199

Post by gruez »

Robotbeat wrote: post #89
DFHippie wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 p…

I don’t think it’s a small effect. There are something like 300 million tons of plastic waste per year, which is about 1 Gigatonne of CO2, or about 3% of global emissions… more than global aviation! If we cut down all sources of emissions to zero, that would mean humanity using non-fossil plastic (like PLA or electrolytic syngas derived regular plastics) would be carbon negative. The cost of PLA is about $2/kg, or eq…

>The cost of PLA is about $2/kg, or equivalent to about $600/tonneCO2. About how much Climeworks currently costs for direct air CO2 capture.

It's probably even better than that, if the PLA cost is for ready-to-use PLA, because presumably dirty/unprocessed PLA costs even less.

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

#200

Post by civilized »

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…

This seems... not hard. For non-recyclables, just use the same recycling symbol, but put a diagonal bar through it, like on a no-smoking sign. And then provide whatever info you want underneath, same as when it's recyclable.
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