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Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

beyondplastics.org

11–20 of 162 posts

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#11

Wow, surprising that it was zero. Is there a chance that the cup was being separated from the tracker at a sorting facility with the cup going to a different destination than the tracker?

I've heard of this before. Activists put trackers on recyclables and the automatic sorter removes them because they have metal, and the activist gets outraged that the item went to the trash.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#12

Slightly related, but my town has sent out several flyers recently chastising everyone for recycling things that aren't recyclable. If this overambitious recycling continues, the privilege of recycling itself shall be taken away. Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle (my wife and I are guilty of recycling cleaned jars of spaghetti sauce); certain types of plastic; and pizza boxes that are "too g…

At least pizza boxes can go in the yard waste bin to be taken to the industrial composter. My yard waste bin came with a sticker that actively encourages putting food soiled paper in it.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#14
Visited a recycling facility recently. It’s a private company that covers an entire county in California. They filter the garbage wit people and a big machine and seem to get paid by companies abroad to ship them all recyclable materials - plastics, cardboard, metals, glass. That pays enough to keep them in business for decades. Someone really needs to look at where the materials from our garbage go.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#15

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact. If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently,…

I don't think calling it a scheme to make people feel better is fair. Grand scheme of things, you'd do more "harm" to the planet (however minuscule on the personal level) by choosing not to recycle than choosing to recycle; a portion of it does get recycled in the end. As for whether or not people use it to absolve themselves of environmental guilt in other aspects of their lives, I personally doubt a significant number ever consider whether or not they recycle when choosing to eat a burger, buy a big house or crank the heat.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#16

Slightly related, but my town has sent out several flyers recently chastising everyone for recycling things that aren't recyclable. If this overambitious recycling continues, the privilege of recycling itself shall be taken away. Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle (my wife and I are guilty of recycling cleaned jars of spaghetti sauce); certain types of plastic; and pizza boxes that are "too g…

> Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle

?? Isn't this one of the most recyclable materials there is? Even aluminum cans come with contaminants that can't be removed by the consumer.

Regardless, at least you can easily reuse glass jars for home use. I find they make excellent drinking glasses and the reusable lid is a nice perk.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#17
post #9

Slightly related, but my town has sent out several flyers recently chastising everyone for recycling things that aren't recyclable. If this overambitious recycling continues, the privilege of recycling itself shall be taken away. Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle (my wife and I are guilty of recycling cleaned jars of spaghetti sauce); certain types of plastic; and pizza boxes that are "too g…

IIRC any grease is considered a contaminate. So any cardboard with grease splotching should be discarded instead of recycled. Interesting my municipality recycles glass, but like, why? Silica is the most common mineral in the crust, easily accessible almost everywhere, and recycling it takes as much energy if not more than just making new. It's not like aluminum or steel where there are significant energy savings to…

> and recycling it takes as much energy if not more than just making new.

It's just melted, mixed and reused, AFAIK. We're recycling glass since forever (maybe mid 90s), and the recycling bins were put out by our national glassware company.

They even have a special line built with these, recycled glasses, which I don't remember the name. They also have a "upcycle" line where they repurpose their fine but not perfect items to other things. Both are excellent lines and are not more expensive than their usual wares.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#18

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact. If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently,…

[deleted]

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#19

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact. If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently,…

The best way for one to reduce their carbon footprint is to stop supporting large corporations. Unfortunately this involves not being lazy and we are lazy.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#20
Recycling has largely been a virtue signal act for decades.

Not saying people do it only to virtue signal, they just don't realize the net positive effect is very, very low.

Driving an electric vehicle (instead of ICE), on the other hand? Actually quite a large impact that 1 person can make.

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