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Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#171

Post by brianwawok »

stx wrote: post #157
Ensorceled wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The “first world” really needs to get it’s act together on this.

The thing is we (the US) did do this at one point in time. When I was a kid you could buy a coke in a glass bottle and return it when done to be re-used by the manufacturer. For some reason we stopped. We should bring that back. When I was in Mexico around the early 2000 they still did this. When you buy a drink you could return it for a few cents back from the vender.

The reason is money. Labor is a lot higher in the US over Mexico. Cheaper to trash and remake vs reuse. You would need a stick or carrot in the economic cost to shift behavior. Corporations are smart, they will choose the cheaper path.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#172

Post by _jal »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #165
Ensorceled wrote: post #16

We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago. Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brow…

The problem is, if the jars last over a century you don't sell many jars.

Demanding infinite growth is not compatible with not incinerating the planet. You can't have both.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#173

Post by MertsA »

dmos62 wrote: post #28
Ensorceled wrote: post #16

We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago. Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brow…

Those are really good points. A good approach to incentivize everyone to do the right thing is to make it the least expensive option. That either requires some lucky tech breakthrough (super unlikely) or a strong government. A recyclability tax, where the producer pays a tax that corresponds to how much it will cost to recycle their product. Maybe collect data of how much of their product is actually recycled. That w…

One thing to consider is that plenty of packaged foods seal their bags with pure nitrogen to keep the humidity under control and eliminate oxygen ageing the food in storage. It's the same reason why a bag of chips can have some quite lengthy expiration date and still taste fresh when you open them but leave them sitting in your cupboards for a while and now they're noticeably less fresh. Having some sort of chip dispenser (or cereal, goldfish, whatever) would make that quite a bit harder to deal with.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#174

Post by mattmanser »

stx wrote: post #157
Ensorceled wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The “first world” really needs to get it’s act together on this.

The thing is we (the US) did do this at one point in time. When I was a kid you could buy a coke in a glass bottle and return it when done to be re-used by the manufacturer. For some reason we stopped. We should bring that back. When I was in Mexico around the early 2000 they still did this. When you buy a drink you could return it for a few cents back from the vender.

"We" didn't stop, it was cheaper for Coca-Cola to use plastic. Coca-Cola did it.

Stop blaming consumers for corporate choices to slightly increase profits.

Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault?

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#175

Post by mschuster91 »

amatecha wrote: post #164
mschuster91 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... and depending on the type of food. IIRC acidic foods should not be mixed with some plastics (and also not with aluminium foil).

Huh I'd be interested to know more about the aluminum foil, since at a place I regularly get takeout from they wrap some of the items in aluminum foil (to keep it warm)...

For short times it's not that problematic IMO, but for long term storage? Rather avoid it: https://www.rd.com/article/cooking-with-aluminum-foil/

Additionally, salty foods seem to be problematic too: https://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/22133/why-did-...

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#176

Post by James_Henry »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #88

My immediate thought is it sounds like Kellogg's/Pringles could get a lot of free positive marketing by just switching to a "100% biodegradable" bag? Nobody likes Pringles because they're in a tube.

A lot of those biodegradable containers you see are coated in short chain PFAS/PFOA which build up over time in the ground and end up in the water (and maybe plants) and then give you cancer.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#177

Post by lotsofpulp »

Zippogriff wrote: post #159
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they still have a plastic bin? Where does it go I wonder, now that China isn't taking it.

Oh it's much worse. It's all mixed up together, no sorting. I doubt any of it actual gets recycled, except maybe the metal. It's such an obviously terrible program that surely it only exists to funnel money to someone's cousin, or something. Ineffective, and directly causes several trash-devils swirling down the street every year. Been that way for at least a decade, and there's little or no agitation to eliminate or…

> It's such an obviously terrible program that surely it only exists to funnel money to someone's cousin, or something.

Primarily, it makes people feel good about their excessive consumption and it helps people win elections by letting them claim they did something.

But really, the only solution to prevent or reverse environmental damage is drastically reducing consumption. Reusing isn’t going to work, recycling definitely doesn’t work, but no one will win political points for that viewpoint and who really wants to reduce their consumption.

But if people around the world became united against this issue, the solution would be dead simple. Hit fossil fuels with a huge tax. A tax big enough to make prices for everything rise and we will immediately see a reduction in consumption.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#178

Post by kalleboo »

alexanderthe- wrote: post #35

Maybe I'm naive, but I don't see a good reason why government can't introduce legislation to enforce standardized packaging across product "classes" to streamline reuse and recycling - for example, all soda bottles of size x, must come in shape y, made out of polymer z. The obvious financial impact would be companies having to potentially retool their factories to facilitate that, but there can also be sensible tax r…

I don't know how things are now, but in Sweden there used to be standard 33cl glass and 1.5l PET bottle sizes, and when they were returned for their deposit, instead of crushing or melting them down, they'd just have their label stripped and they'd be washed and reused. You could tell old a glass or plastic bottle was by how scratched the sides were.

I don't think these were government mandates but just industry agreements. I remember Coca Cola being the first company to break the mold with custom 1.5l bottle designs

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#179

Post by treis »

kbos87 wrote: post #4

If you want to have your eyes opened about just how little of the material you probably think you are recycling actually gets recycled, watch the recent Frontline episode called “Plastic Wars”. The sad truth is that while recycling is worthwhile, it’s also a woefully insufficient solution that has been held up by the petroleum industry as a cure all to prevent a backlash against plastic. Even products that are labele…

>while recycling is worthwhile,

I'm not sure it's that worthwhile for most things. Glass is made of sand, which we have plenty of. Cardboard is trees which are renewable. Plastic is petroleum and it's probably better that we use it and bury it then burn it. Metal is rarer and some of that is worthwhile to recycle but again not like we're running out of iron ore. We also have plenty of land to bury stuff in.

The thing we should focus on is carbon footprint. Reducing that is an immediate need and has long term benefits. We should not be burning more carbon to conserve the things we have plenty of.

Re: Pringles tube tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare'

#180

Post by sschueller »

ed_elliott_asc wrote: post #23

The thing is they don’t need that plastic lid. They say without it the food would be spoiled but if you have a big bag of crisps, you open them and eat them or they go off - this is no different. Kellogg’s seem to believe they have invented a type of crisp that can only be eaten over a period of time.

Especially as they used to say once to start you can't stop. So you eat the whole tube anyway...
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