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

beyondplastics.org

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

#91

Post by ethanrutherford »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #72
synack wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I toured a sorting facility in Seattle recently. They said the only really profitable output is aluminum, everything else costs more than virgin material.

I worked at a plastic furniture manufacturer in Indiana for a few projects. They got paid to accept bales of recycled "HDPE" that they could mix at between 10 and 30% into their virgin materials. They get paid to accept it! Negative profit for the waste management company, pure profit for the "user". This worked best on black, coffee, slate grey, mahogany - you get the idea - the whites and tans and bright colors wer…

It's 100% recycling, if the alternative was just "throw away the excess". For all practical purposes, recycling just means "repurposing material that you would have otherwise sent to a landfill".

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

#92

Post by gritspants »

antran22 wrote: post #81
gritspants wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bringing your own is a health hazard. It spreads germs all over the equipment.

When I bring my thermos to a coffee shop, brew the beverage in their own mixer before pouring it in my thermos. There is exactly no contact between their equipment and my container, beside the barista hands (which they should periodically wash anyway) and between the butt of the thermos and the table. Also most of them give the thermos a few rinses & wash with the soapy water jet thingy before pouring. I'm assuming y…

I think you and your environment are very different from the average consumer. At least in the office there's a shared community. I think you'd shudder to see what comes to the Starbucks/Dunkin drivethru.

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

#93

Post by remyp »

legitster wrote: post #59
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…

Hear me out: Single use plastics are a carbon sequestration technology . We take oil out of the ground, and instead of burning it we turn it into a solid and bury it again. Something like 30% of the oil we consume never ends up getting burned. While that's probably not a 30% reduction in CO2 gasses, the price pressure plastics put on fossil fuels is not negligible.

I guess so, but it seems to me it would be far more efficient to use already-above-ground materials (there are loads of them floating in the ocean!) and leave the oil in the ground.

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

#94

Post by tofuziggy »

torgoguys wrote: post #6

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?

they said they had 53 trackers and only 36 "returned usable data" so theoretically some of those unaccounted for 17 could have been recycled... I mean they don't know what happened to them. I think they could have at least highlighted that in the article.

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

#96

Post by dylan604 »

malfist wrote: post #29
dylan604 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen articles lately about the sand becoming harder (more expensive) to get. Even though it is abundant, it is not necessarily clean. It still needs to be refined similar to other raw ores. If the glass has already been made, I would expect the contaminants are easier to eliminate from crushing and melting it back down.

Talking out of my ass, but I think that's only for concrete right? Same reason saudi arabia imports sand for their construction projects.

Not sure. I've never really read the articles. The headlines tend to be from sites that lean a little further that I'm willing to read normally. Search assist AI suggested it was even for glass bottles, but I don't trust anything an AI suggests as it could be sourcing from the same places.

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

#98

Post by nozzlegear »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #16
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…

> 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.

That's what I thought as well! I was surprised, and a little bit annoyed, to learn that they would prefer we throw away anything glass rather than recycle it.

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

#99

Post by kube-system »

legitster wrote: post #69
themafia wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It should also be illegal when municipalities do it. Just because the city offers a recycling pickup, doesn't mean most of it actually gets recycled.

I'm a recycling critic, but no, it shouldn't -- because while the market for recycling feed fluctuates, consumer habits take decades to change. If we come up for an excellent recycling solution for plastics in the next 20 years, but we have to re-build municipal recycling programs from scratch, it'll be 80 years before it's going at full steam.

Also some material like aluminum are very valuable to recycle even if we're throwing plastic in the trash.

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

#100

Post by kube-system »

Yeah when you see `-able` suffix the implied presumption is that it isn't happening. And if you are familiar with the green-washing of the plastics industry in the US, and the economics of the recycling infrastructure of the US, you already knew this was the case, as is the case for most plastic.

Highly recommend this podcast for those who still spend time sorting plastic into their recycling bin:

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...

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