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

#231

Post by rvense » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:08 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #143

gruez wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 tha…

The obvious solution is to make it possible to bring the containers back to the store and refill them with stuff you need.

There's a farm close to me that sells eggs and encourages you to bring your own tray, but it can easily be extended to dry goods.

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

#232

Post by MarkLowenstein » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

thih9 wrote: post #212

billytetrud wrote: post #174

I was thinking about this yesterday when I saw a pizza box with the recyclable symbol on it. It's infuriating that intelligent people can't seem to understand that pizza boxes aren't recyclable after they've had pizza in them. What about oil soaked cardboard says "recyclable" to people?

Sample size one, but my pizza boxes don't end up being oil soaked. I might order pizzas with less oil, or it could be a different way of handling. I also recall a bit of parchment under the pizza that helps keep the box free of oil.

I like the system at MOD Pizza. They give you your pizza in a paperboard box, but they also put a thin sheet of waxy paper on the bottom of the box before they put the pizza in. So you throw out a minimal amount of paper, but the box is ready to recycle.

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

#233

Post by throwaway2214 » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #219

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…

You should follow the local rules on recycling. Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they can really handle. Unfortunately this information isn’t always as easy as it should be to look up. It should be a simple web search away.

Here they mainly incinerate it, and the goal is to make 25% recyclable by 2030 (which is for some definition of recyclable).

The reality is: reduce, reuse, recycle, where recycle is absolutely last resort and I actually consider it harmful as it releases some kind of valve from people, and they think everything is going to be alright.

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

#234

Post by asoneth » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:23 PM UTC

marcosdumay wrote: post #41

asoneth wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

By 88 there weren't many products using the recycling symbol on their labels. The resin identification symbols were the first ones to get widespread usage, and I imagine they used the arrows because they are about recycling, even if they don't mean "this product is recyclable". The ideas about government policy on product labeling became popular a bit later than that, and the resin identification codes, together with…

> by [19]88 there weren't many products using the recycling symbol on their labels.

My understanding[1] is that in the 1970s the paper industry was the first to adopt a three-arrow symbol for paper products that could be recycled and later a slightly different three-arrow symbol for products that were made from recycled paper products. These seem in alignment with consumer understanding of the symbol. I also recall seeing the three arrow recycling symbol on bins at school in the 1980s so it was certainly in use by that point.

> I imagine they used the arrows because they are about recycling

Had resin identification codes restricted their use of the three-arrow design to plastics that were widely recyclable or products made from recycled plastic then I would have no issue. But some of the resin symbols (e.g. 7) essentially mean "not recyclable" and that is obviously causing confusion to consumers because people keep putting them in the plastic recycling.

It's confusing enough that the recycling center near me provides the following guidance: "The numbers on plastics are not great indicators of whether something can be recycled in a typical recycling program. Our advice is to think about the shape of your plastics. If they are clean and empty plastic bottles, jars, jugs or tubs, they are what we are looking for!"

> even if they don't mean "this product is recyclable"

Using a symbol to mean the exact opposite of its conventional meaning seems liable to cause consumer confusion.

[1] https://medium.com/@shengmorni/1970-ad0c58b5a9dc

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

#235

Post by IshKebab » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #219

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…

You should follow the local rules on recycling. Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they can really handle. Unfortunately this information isn’t always as easy as it should be to look up. It should be a simple web search away.

> Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they can really handle.

Yes unfortunately they never tell you. Sure they'll tell you the easy stuff like cardboard, paper, cans etc. But there's a near infinite variety of stuff that you might be able to recycle. What about a metal coathanger? What about a plastic-coated metal coathanger? Etc.

We have to put paper and cardboard in different containers. What about card? No idea!

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

#236

Post by coryfklein » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:25 PM UTC

irrational wrote: post #201

jacknews wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've come to the conclusion that it's better to bury most plastic waste. Most plastic comes from oil, which means 'biodegradable' plastic is essentially the same as burning the oil. Actual recycling can work in some cases, but even after all the expense and energy of recycling, the recycled product is usually much lower grade plastic, so it's not sustainable. Better just to bury it (in leak-proof pits), where it…

Wait, does plastic really turn back into oil over time? How much time are we talking about here?

I'd really like to know the answer to this as well. From all the research I've done in the past 10 minutes, you'd think that plastic is simply immutable and indestructible, and that even after millenia has passed it will still be plastic (even if in smaller pieces). But the Google SEO on this is dominated by environmental groups trying to emphasize the short-term life cycle of plastics, and it's hard to find anything with a longer-term perspective.

I think if you wait long enough (billions of years) then the landfills will eventually be under miles of earth and subjected to high enough pressures that they fundamentally change; in the same way sedimentary rock can change into metamorphic.

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

#237

Post by stickfigure » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:30 PM UTC

nybble41 wrote: post #228

alistairSH wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - but that isn't a consumer decision (not a decision made at the time of consumption). A government agency has to determine the cost of the externalities (where the science and economics isn't easy) and then set taxes accordingly (not always politically viable).

Taxes are not the right answer. If you are impacted by a negative externality then you have legitimate standing to sue the source of the externality in civil court (individually or as a group) in accordance with how much the side effects of their actions cost you. If you can't demonstrate that you were actually affected, or the damage is too trivial to be worth taking to court, then for all practical purposes there i…

Civil courts are not equipped to deal with this issue. At best you will get a lot of very rich lawyers. At worst you will get inaction and a lot of very rich lawyers.

Taxes are a traditional way of pricing in a market externality. It seems appropriate here.

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

#238

Post by tmountain » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

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.

"the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle"

Until that issue is addressed, plastic will reign supreme.

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

#239

Post by miniatureape » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

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.

https://theconversation.com/heres-how-many-times-you-actuall...

Links to two studies which place the number of times you must reuse a cotton bag between 130-7100 times.

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

#240

Post by ZeroGravitas » Thu, Sep 09, 2021, 5:34 PM UTC

nybble41 wrote: post #224

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you make plastic by pulling CO2 out of the air, then it would still be more efficient to recycle that into new plastic. You'd still be storing the carbon, just in things that are in active use. There's some potential methods when you can just extract the carbon, which in turn you could also bury, but why not use it for something instead? I feel the "lets put it in a hole" thing has been artifically boosted by foss…

> You'd still be storing the carbon, just in things that are in active use. The idea is to extract carbon from the air, make something useful out of it, and then bury the plastic when the item reaches the end of its useful life, thus sequestering the carbon. Recycling the plastics would compete with pulling more carbon from the air and reduce the amount being sequestered. The energy-intensive recycling process might…

There's no logical reason why connecting the three steps of the process make sense, unless you start with the premise that you really want to bury post consumer plastic and work back from there.

It would only possibly make sense if recycling was fundamentally a dirty process but since we've got enough zero carbon energy available to suck carbon out of the air we've got enough to recycle. We can then use that energy saved by recycling to suck carbon out of the air.

Unless there's some weird process or catalyst that makes atmospheric CO2 to consumer grade plastic the absolutely cheapest way to extract CO2 it'll always make sense to save energy and redirect that energy to the most effective method of getting CO2 out of the air whatever that is. I have no reason to believe plastic production will be that and it seems unlikely.