Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

beyondplastics.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 162 posts

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

#41

Post by tmnvix »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #34
School-Cotton wrote: post #5

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,…

Surely there's no point in reducing your personal carbon footprint without holding capital accountable at the state level.

If I remember correctly, US per capita CO2 footprint is around 14 tonnes (this includes industrial activity). Average US driver of an ICE vehicle produces around 4 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Personal choices matter.

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

#42

Post by smileysteve »

malfist wrote: post #9
nozzlegear wrote: post #7

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…

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

It saves 30% of the energy inputs to reuse slightly contaminated glass, especially when done locally.

That's ignoring the energy inputs of mining and delivering the silica.

https://learn.sustainability-directory.com/learn/what-are-th...

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

#43

Post by lapetitejort »

steviedotboston wrote: post #36

Landfills really aren't that bad. modern landfills have multiple layers of lining to prevent leaking into water supplies and soil. After they are full, they are covered with earth and can become usable land. Their gases have to be managed (can be burned for electricity or processed in other ways) but overall putting trash in the ground and covering it seems alright to me. The amount of land that you actually need isn…

The point is that we may not have plastic forever. Oil is a finite resource. An easy, cheap replacement hasn't been found yet. Either we abide by reducing and reusing (where we should be focused), or we should actually recycle.

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

#44

Post by rileymat2 »

My local Starbucks has 2 bins for recyclables and trash with little images about what to put in each bin. Many customers look at them, think, and put them in the right bin. Most just throw them in the middle trash bin.

At the end of the night, all three bins go into the same dumpster, they recycle nothing there.

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

#45

Post by mulmen »

hypeatei wrote: post #8

> It's time for Starbucks to stop making misleading recycling claims and start prioritizing plastic-free, preferably reusable, alternatives for its customers. I agree on the misleading claims part, but they do allow you to bring in your own personal cup already as long as it's clean. I don't see how that's not an alternative.

If I am being extremely generous I think the key word there is prioritizing. It's a moving goalpost. Could mean "allow you to bring your own cup" or "advertise you can bring your own cup" or "offer a discount for bringing your own cup".

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

#46

Post by smileysteve »

wffurr wrote: post #28
throwaway27448 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

It takes more energy and work to reuse glass than to just make new glass. Sand is abundant. Recycled aluminum is much less energy intensive than new aluminum even with contaminants.

Glass is 30% cheaper to make from recycled glass.

But transport and sorting (glass is hard and sharp) eat into that margin, so presort

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

#47

Post by bluGill »

nozzlegear wrote: post #15
School-Cotton wrote: post #5

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 num…

> 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.

Are you sure? A garbage truck direct to the landfill is less energy than a garbage truck (for what isn't recycled), and a second truck to the sort facility, all the machines to sort, and then a truck to the landfill. Now if only Al goes on the recycling truck this is a clear win since recycled Al much less energy than mining new. However for many plastics the value is already questionable if it is recycled, and clearly worse if not. (I'm not sure about paper or glass)

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

#48

Post by hamdingers »

> Beyond Plastics placed 53 Bluetooth-enabled trackers inside single-use polypropylene cold cups and dropped them into in-store recycling bins at 35 Starbucks locations across nine states and Washington, D.C. Of the 36 trackers that returned usable data, none pinged from a recycling facility.

This is an obvious methodology problem, no? Bluetooth-enabled trackers are not recyclable, so they ended up in the correct place.

These trackers probably had CR2032 batteries that could damage a shredder, would pollute the resulting pulp, and could easily be pulled out of the mixed recyclables stream by a magnet.

Whether or not the cup itself made it to a recycling facility is not something this experiment actually tested for. All they know is the tracker didn't make it. The system appears to be working as expected.

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

#49

Post by legitster »

There's a lot to unpack here. None of this is serious methodology. It's more of a PR statement.

From their raw data, the 36 tests came from a much smaller handful of stores in urban locations - in reality it's a much smaller sample size. 8 alone came from urban New York. 6 came from a single Starbucks location in Olympia, WA.

They jump to the conclusion that a transfer center means it's bound for landfill or incinerator. But I have literally been to one of the transfer centers they have listed here and they absolutely process recycling there.

They admit 3 were sent to specific recycling baling facilities... and they just didn't count them because they didn't feel like it?

Then there's this weird statement:

> "PureCycle's Ironton, Ohio, plant claims to recycle polypropylene through so-called "chemical recycling,” but Beyond Plastics does not consider chemical recycling to be recycling given that most of the plastic these facilities accept is not actually recycled but turned into fossil fuels or feedstocks using high heat or chemicals. It's a distraction that has failed for decades and is allowing companies to exponentially increase plastic production while polluting low-income communities and communities of color with hazardous waste and toxic air pollution."

Ignoring the white-knighting, it's weird to make the claim that recycling a petroleum-based product into it's obvious petroleum use case doesn't count.

The biggest problem though is that the outcomes for a paper cup are probably worse. All paper cups will be incinerated or sent to a landfill.

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

#50

Post by themafia »

rileymat2 wrote: post #44

My local Starbucks has 2 bins for recyclables and trash with little images about what to put in each bin. Many customers look at them, think, and put them in the right bin. Most just throw them in the middle trash bin. At the end of the night, all three bins go into the same dumpster, they recycle nothing there.

My gut feeling is this should be illegal. It's something like false advertising.
Post reply on HN