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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'

#181

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

omegabravo wrote: post #156
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. A factory ships a product to the seller in a durable container. Puts $1 into a smart contract to resolve on that container's return. 2. I buy $5 worth of product in durable container from seller and pay $7. 3. Seller gets $5, remaining $2 goes into smart contract from step 1. So now there's three incentives to get the container back to the factory (each is $1 in this example, but would be a parameter in reality).…

are you familiar with deposits in parts of the world? The aluminum cans have 10c stamped on the lid, and the bottles have it printed on their labels. I couldn't be bothered going to a recycling depot so I would leave my recyclables outside next to the bins. People would walk around afternoon/night collecting all the recyclables with deposits from people's bins (recycling and trash). It seems far simpler than your pro…

I am, they seem like a great idea and I wish they were common in my part of the world.

But they only motivate manufacturers' packaging choices in the rare case where it's more cost effective to recycle the material than to purchase it new. If it's cheaper to use something that ends up in a landfill, most companies just will.

I think we need something that motivates them to want it back no matter what it's made out of.

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I make beer and I've been reusing the same bottles for years. The trick is to rinse them right away, otherwise it's a pain to get the dried beer gunk off the bottom. Bottle return programs don't motivate users to clean the bottles, so they need to be recycled rather than merely sanitized and reused (I think).

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

#183

Post by gambiting »

mattmanser wrote: post #174
stx wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The corporations only make those choices because they are allowed to(or rather, because they are not forced by the regulations to actually pay for the environmental cost of what they make). Yes, I recently noticed that with Tesco eggs, I have complained to them about it. And it's not our fault but we can definitely try to avoid these products as consumers. Telling companies why you avoid them is also a good thing to do.

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

#184

Post by bserge »

mellavora wrote: post #109
rlpb wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only containers which are infinitely recyclable are aluminum and coloured glass (nearly), but that takes energy. I've heard people say that the environmental cost of producing the clean water necessary to wash bottles for reuse is also harmful. I'd really like to see a side-by-side comparison of the environmental cost of the different available "obvious" options. > We need to just force manufacturers to bear th…

Part of me finds this really appealing. it only requires getting everyone on the planet to accept that things cost 10x what they do now. which is a hard pill to swallow when you are living paycheck to paycheck, which is most of the world's population.

A lot of countries seem to have had a system for reusing old glassware. And stuff they were used for like milk, beer, carbonated water weren't 10x more expensive. Nowadays it's recycled if you're lucky, or it ends up in a landfill.

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

#185

Post by [deleted] »

Ensorceled wrote: post #73
kilroy123 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries around the world do this by default. For example, those big jugs of water that get delivered. In most places they are clean and reused. Where I'm living right now, in Turkey, those big bottles are made out of glass and it just gets replaced with a previously used glass jug. Same with the beer, all the bottles are collected, cleaned, and reused.

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

[deleted]

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

#186

Post by sschueller »

amelius wrote: post #74

Nespresso has the same problem with those little pods, but decided not to change anything about their design and instead focus on recycling.

What are their alternatives? Plastic is worse and paper does not seal properly. They would need to line paper with something that makes it bad again for recycling. Letting people collect the used pods and return them for free makes sense if you want to have a pod system.

Of course you could make coffee the old way.

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

#188

Post by bserge »

kalleboo wrote: post #178
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 agre…

Yeah, seems to be a common theme across the world, there used to be some standard and system for reusing/recycling containers... and now it's gone. We've gone backwards on this for some reason.

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

#189

Post by xioxox »

dvdkhlng wrote: post #36
dmos62 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

We have something like what you propose in germany [1]. Basically it causes the producers of packaging to end up paying for the disposal of the corresponding trash. This creates an incentitive for producers to make the packaging less wasteful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)#German_dual...

Despite this, Germans seem to use a lot of bottles. Most German people seem to prefer to drink bottled water rather than tap water, even though tap water is of very high quality. They also don't have the concentrated drinks available in other countries (cordial/squash) and insist on shipping around diluted drinks in heavy glass bottles.

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

#190

Post by ZeroGravitas »

google234123 wrote: post #154
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burning is better for the environment than landfill. It's getting less good comparitavely as grids become carbon free via renewables, but especially for district heating its probably going to be a good thing for a while. Half recycled and half used to avoid burning coal seems a pretty good deal, especially if its paid for by the producers. So why the big overreaction?

There's no chance that buring is better than a landfill. There's so much empty (useless) surface area on earth. Burning puts poison into the air and requires a ton of energy.

Burning generates energy.
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