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Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

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Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#131

Post by keybored »

OsrsNeedsf2P wrote: post #16

To everyone blaming consumers: I encourage you to take a solution driven mindset here. Consumers won't change. There's far too many people, some of which don't care about the environment. Tight regulations and additional tax on single use plastics can reduce plastic waste.

Not only a solution-driven/pragmatic mindset. Also a clear-minded perspective (in this case one and the same).

Yeah consumers “won’t change”. Because that’s an asinine focus if you want the whole (first) world to change. Would you rely on “personal motiviation” if you needed a whole brigade to storm a beach? Clearly not. Likewise these individualistic efforts are completely wrong-headed.

Because they’re not supposed to change anything. Only to assign blame. (Clear-minded: what motivation is behind the consumer nagging)

The proper way to change all of society is organized effort. Which means leveraging existing institutions. Like entire freaking supply lines. You maybe stop importing toothpicks from across the world instead of the false narrative of “educating” the “consumers” (keyword) to not “buy stuff from China”.

Be cynical, clear-minded and pragmatic—all of these lead to the same conclusions on this topic.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#132

Post by thsyehdy3635 »

dagw wrote: post #80
fmajid wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not wishful thinking, a deliberate greenwashing scam. Aluminum is actually recycled, and should replace PET for all drinks packaging.

Aluminum is actually recycled, and should replace PET for all drinks packaging To the best of my knowledge, no one has made a resealable aluminium can. Until that is solved aluminium is inferior to PET for many use cases. In fact this is the primary reason I hardly ever buy soda in cans.

Aluminum bottles exist.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#133

Post by JoshTriplett »

throwaway03312 wrote: post #95
JoshTriplett wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inconvenience is also very high, compared to "throw it in a recycling bin".

Several countries add a deposit to each bottle, so you would actually throw money away. It's not a big inconvenience to throw the bottles in a small bag and bring it with you to the machine at the grocery store, when you are going there anyway. 9 of 10 bottles are returned in Norway, so the system works.

> It's not a big inconvenience to throw the bottles in a small bag and bring it with you to the machine at the grocery store, when you are going there anyway.

1) "when you are going there anyway", which many people don't anymore.

2) Yes, it's absolutely a big inconvenience; I remember those days, and it took 15-30 minutes each time, leaving aside the inconvenience of bagging and lugging them, and the extreme unreliability of the machines. Not going to happen.

A recycling bin that gets picked up alongside the trash bin is far, far more convenient. I live in a state that has a can/bottle deposit, and despite that I just toss them in the recycling bin. If there wasn't a recycling bin or the recycling bin didn't allow them, they'd go in the trash bin, because life is too short to spend any of it feeding plastic bottles into a machine.

My state also incentivizes recycling in other ways: trash bins are small with high fees, recycling bins are huge and free.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#134

Post by olejorgenb »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #33
olejorgenb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plastic recycles very poorly. While I'm sure this is true in general, my impression is that the PET used in drink-bottles recycle well. For drink bottles I don't think we have a good option either? Glass is too heavy, aluminum is more energy intensive (I assume) even when it's recycled. Reusable bottles is unlikely to be realistic.

Why is glass too heavy? For decades, when average income was lower, it was the standard container in which soft drinks came in. Its just that plastic is cheaper, and replaced glass. But surely richer people can afford glass now. Interestingly, both have different environmental externalities, and not sure how those have changed over the decades and will in the future.

"too heavy" is of course relative, but the addition cost/energy-use of the heavier transportation surely is non-trivial? If the bottles are to be reused, volume become an challenge.

I admit I don't have any references at hand, but I'm quite sure I've seen articles claiming plastic bottles "win" by a comfortable margin from an energy perspective.

Of course - energy is not everything.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#135

Post by olejorgenb »

strogonoff wrote: post #27
olejorgenb wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Plastic recycles very poorly. While I'm sure this is true in general, my impression is that the PET used in drink-bottles recycle well. For drink bottles I don't think we have a good option either? Glass is too heavy, aluminum is more energy intensive (I assume) even when it's recycled. Reusable bottles is unlikely to be realistic.

I’ve seen varying (lack of certainty is a sign in itself) estimates for how many times it can be recycled, from up to 2–3 to up to 7 times, where plastic closer to the end of that is only viable for uses like car tires, and read that PET leeches more plastic into drinks after being recycled[0]. In my mind, it does not pass the “recycles well” threshold if you compare it to materials like glass. [0] https://www.scienc…

Thanks for the paper. I've been wondering about how well we're actually able to filter/clean out contaminates in plastic recycling. Seems more research is needed, but it does look worrisome.

As the paper also mention - stricter rules for packaging designed for clean and easy recycling is a tool in the toolbox. They mentioned a study found that a majority of contaminant detected stemmed from labels, adhesive, etc.

There's also chemical recycling which I get the impression [1] can solve some of these challenges, but don't seem to be used much yet.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372...

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#136

Post by olejorgenb »

Freak_NL wrote: post #90
jillesvangurp wrote: post #81

Plastic and glass bottle and can recycling is pretty common in most of Europe. You pay a deposit when you buy a can or bottle. And you get it back when you return it. If you leave your empty bottle on the street, some homeless person will return it for you. This is actually a pretty common form of charity in Berlin and it's not considered littering to leave your empty bottle for someone to collect it. It's not a perf…

Glass and aluminium are recycled. This works quite well. Plastic (and clothing) on the other hand, is now mostly just collected and afterwards discarded (burned, shipped overseas to dumping grounds, etc.). Plastic recycling factories are going bankrupt (five in the tiny Netherlands in the space of one year), because they can't compete with new plastic. Textile processors are stuck with warehouses full of unusable dis…

> Plastic (and clothing) on the other hand, is now mostly just collected and afterwards discarded (burned, shipped overseas to dumping grounds, etc.).

This is not true for drink bottles. (though they are not 100% recyclable due to material degradation, and there might be safety challenges for products made of recycled feedstock) I can't claim nothing is burned/etc, but it's most certainly not "mostly" for countries with a collection scheme.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#137

Post by olejorgenb »

WalterBright wrote: post #96

I've always thought the bottled water industry was insane. Why pay a dollar for a bottle of water, when you can get it out of the tap for a fraction of a cent? If you don't like the tap water taste, get a filter (they're cheap) and you're still way way ahead on cost. And if you buy water in plastic bottles, doesn't the plastic leach into the water? Why drink that? I grew up in Arizona, where you drink a couple of gal…

Yes, as someone living in a country with clean and tasty water from the tap, it's quite shocking see the massive bottle consumption in countries where most (?) drinking water is distributed in disposable bottles/containers.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#138

Post by silisili »

eru wrote: post #9
silisili wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with the ending statement largely, we have to blame the producers here. If I want water, I'm stuck with what's sold to me. Most on this site are fortunate enough to be able to drink disposables and have it whisked away magically. It's when that doesn't or can't occur that you start to realize how much we all waste. Single use plastics should have been outlawed years ago. Or at least taxed to high heaven…

I'm even more fortunate: I have fresh water that comes out of a tap. Very convenient. > Single use plastics should have been outlawed years ago. Or at least taxed to high heaven. Tax, don't ban. And make the tax proportional to the estimated damage.

Sure, maybe water was a poor example. Let's look at milk, assuming we don't all have cows at hand here.

In most places, you can only buy it in plastic and sometimes paper carton, though that seems to be dwindling. There are no other options, so people just grab the plastic one.

There's a local place by me that sells their milk in beautiful glass jugs. They charge $5 a jug, but you get that back if you return it unbroken to buy more. That place sells a ton, it's just that most people don't even have the option.

It seems though companies have zero incentive to do such a program. There's no reward for recycling as above, and no punishment for being wasteful. However we change that - either via tax or law, I'd be on board with.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#139

Post by gadders »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #123
gadders wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were all tried in the past - glass, metal etc - and were largely replaced. If you think there is a new material out there that we are prevented from using, I'd be interested to hear what it is.

Glass, metal, etc. You forgot paper, actually. All are better than the plastic crap forced down our throats.

Yes, paper straws are great.

Re: Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

#140

Post by WalterBright »

olejorgenb wrote: post #137
WalterBright wrote: post #96

I've always thought the bottled water industry was insane. Why pay a dollar for a bottle of water, when you can get it out of the tap for a fraction of a cent? If you don't like the tap water taste, get a filter (they're cheap) and you're still way way ahead on cost. And if you buy water in plastic bottles, doesn't the plastic leach into the water? Why drink that? I grew up in Arizona, where you drink a couple of gal…

Yes, as someone living in a country with clean and tasty water from the tap, it's quite shocking see the massive bottle consumption in countries where most (?) drinking water is distributed in disposable bottles/containers.

Drinking water bottled in plastic also means the plastic leaches into the water.
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