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Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

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Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#161
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your lifestyle does not generate garbage. Companies that sell non recyclables and non compostsbles generate garbage. Why hasnt cocacola replaced their plastics with something compostable? There are new inventions for replacing plastics out each day, I wonder where those inventions end up.

Recyclable is a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry. You should be using reusable glass which is expensive to replace but cheap to refill.

In Germany we have reusable thick plastic bottles, and a deposit system that's attractive enough for people to bother bringing them back (or for homeless people to collect them). Not perfect but much better than single use plastic

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copenhagen recycles 70% of collected plastic, with the rest incinerated (used for heating homes, I think). Almost all plastic packaging is collected, including wrappers and trays. https://affald.kk.dk/affaldsfraktion/saadan-sorterer-du-plas... (in Danish)

It's just not possible in any way to recycle 70%! Politician number fudging like this completely destroys the reputation of these initiatives. I'm still not convinced after looking at the actual numbers, that "recycling", putting stuff into 6 different bins etc, makes any difference at all in the grand scheme og things. Instead it's a big show hiding the fact that the problem is with over-consumption and non degradab…

https://cphsolutionslab.dk/media/pages/cc/about/behandling-o...

The fourth page "PLAST" (plastic) has a pie chart showing the composition of collected plastic waste. The red 23% is "residue for incineration".

The other text includes "The Municipality of Copenhagen has demanded that at least 75% must set aside for recycling and a maximum of 25% as residual fraction for incineration."

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#163
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go through a 64 gallon trash bin a week. By my back of the envelope calculation thats about 1.3 chevy tahoes worth of trash a year, and that's just me one American out of 400 million so all told we are dealing with maybe half a billion chevy tahoes of trash a year we need to do something with or put someplace if most Americans consume like I do.

That would be 1.2 cubic miles a year uncompressed. Quite a lot but also not that much.

Cubic miles? Strange measurement unit...

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I grew up the reason stated when they replaced glass with plastic was that the weight of the glass alone caused more pollution from transport than the plastic bottles that replaced them

It's not just about emissions, though. Single-use plastics literally just accumulate in landfills until the end of time, while glass is highly recyclable (and one of the few economically viable ones).

I've never lived anywhere that landfills garbage so I don't know about that.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#165
post #4

Very nice. I live alone and often I'm baffled by the sheer amount of garbage that my urban lifestyle generates. I was not alive in the 80's but I was told that people used to use more environment-friendly packaging like glass bottles. Sometimes I wonder why this massive change to everything-should-be-packed-in-plastic happened.

Ale-8-One[0] sold their feature soda/pop/coke/soft drink in some areas in returnable bottles at least as late as 2010. Word was that if their bottle washing and sanitizing machine died, they'd have to stop that. It turns out nobody's making parts for those machines any more.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ale-8-One

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its cheaper and easier to ensure sanitary products. We love to be romantic about glass but I don't think as easy of a calculation for the total environmental use. Glass is heavier and more expensive to transport. Glass is harder to shape into sizes that make for efficient transportation, for example Costco square milk jugs. I love to use glass when I can but I don't know if using this glass jar which may not even be…

Glass is recycled infinitely more easily and more widely. Pasabahce sells upcycled and recycled products here, and mark them clearly. Also, we have glass collection bins which has different compartments for clear and colored glass. These are periodically emptied. Even if they are not recycled, a glass jar is used for more than five years in an household, only by replacing the caps in the process. If we don't need the…

It's well-known the total environmental impact is much less for plastic than glass. Just the weight alone should allow you to understand this [0] [1] [2].

Glass is not recyclable widely. It is a contaminant in single-stream recycling because broken glass is a hazard for sorting, and even if you are able to recycle it, the transport costs are extremely high [3].

[0] https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230427-glass-or-plastic... [1] https://ecochain.com/case-studies/case-study-packaging-plast... [2] https://earth.org/glass-bottles-environmental-impact/ [3] https://www.wastedive.com/news/when-its-cheaper-to-trash-gla...

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#167
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a very small compost bin in the kitchen that is frequently (about once a day) emptied into a garbage can with lid in the garage, which is then infrequently dumped into a compost pile. The particular combination of materials going into the garage compost can (like coffee grounds, citrus peels) gives it a spicy rather than putrid odor when the lid is opened.

I tired to do a compost last year but I live near a stream and tons of small flying insects infested the compost bin. It would never get hot enough to compost, ants moved in after the flies left in the spring. My climate is hot during the summer but even compost started wouldn’t help. I have lots of kitchen waste, grass waste, and plenty of brown organic matter I can add that’s around my yard. The bugs love it.

I also live near a stream. I don't notice lots of insects in the pile, but I'd only really worry about flies on meat, and I don't put meat scraps in the pile.

How large is your property? I can put the actual pile some distance away on a > 1 acre lot.

In the past, I composted cat litter (paper variety, not clay) in a compost pile, and that did cause serious odor problems. Don't do that.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#168
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a very small compost bin in the kitchen that is frequently (about once a day) emptied into a garbage can with lid in the garage, which is then infrequently dumped into a compost pile. The particular combination of materials going into the garage compost can (like coffee grounds, citrus peels) gives it a spicy rather than putrid odor when the lid is opened.

I tired to do a compost last year but I live near a stream and tons of small flying insects infested the compost bin. It would never get hot enough to compost, ants moved in after the flies left in the spring. My climate is hot during the summer but even compost started wouldn’t help. I have lots of kitchen waste, grass waste, and plenty of brown organic matter I can add that’s around my yard. The bugs love it.

> t would never get hot enough to compost

Sounds like too much water content and/or not enough air for aerobic bacteria to get to work. Tossing the pile with a pitchfork somewhat frequently should help it.

Unfortunately, compositing when you live with wildlife is a challenge. I don't bother because if the raccoons didn't get into it, the bears would, and both are annoyingly messy when they do. I even had a bear do structure damage to my garage when she broke in to get at the garbage one year.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#169
post #95
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 80s in the UK we had milk delivered every morning in glass bottles by a huge fleet of electric vehicles. The empty bottles were left out, collected by the milkman, sterilised and reused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_float

Dom't forget Ireland (according to Father Ted) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSstu2tzrng

I can attest. We had a milkman (daily), and a vegetable man, an egg man and a bread man who came around every week. Only the milkman had an electric vehicle.

Re: Heinz’s sustainable ketchup cap

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its cheaper and easier to ensure sanitary products. We love to be romantic about glass but I don't think as easy of a calculation for the total environmental use. Glass is heavier and more expensive to transport. Glass is harder to shape into sizes that make for efficient transportation, for example Costco square milk jugs. I love to use glass when I can but I don't know if using this glass jar which may not even be…

Glass is recycled infinitely more easily and more widely. Pasabahce sells upcycled and recycled products here, and mark them clearly. Also, we have glass collection bins which has different compartments for clear and colored glass. These are periodically emptied. Even if they are not recycled, a glass jar is used for more than five years in an household, only by replacing the caps in the process. If we don't need the…

That works in some parts of the world but I still don't believe the total environmental cost is as easy to calculate even in your scenario. The total cradle-to-grave environmental cost of a product has many variables and its not always as clear. Those variables can also have different weightings depending on the user (maybe microplastics is a greater concern that total environmental cost).

In the past, even when accounting for recycling of the glass, plastic bottles for example had a lower environmental impact that glass.

edit: And I enjoy using glass myself, especially for items I am storing longer term but I also try to think about the total environmental cost of the item. I know in the US people often do things that feel good, like buying reusable shopping bags instead of plastic bags given my the store. The problem is the number of times that reusable bags needs to be used to be better for the environment is often many more times than they often get used.

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