California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable • Hacker News Board

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#291

Post by jedimastert » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

tantalor wrote: post #45

jedimastert wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, can we get rid of cloth packaging that isn't explicitly made to be reused? Like how Tom's come in a box and a cloth bag inside of that box ! It's so resource intensive; it's like the definition of virtue signalling.

What do you think virtue signaling is?

Virtue signaling is when an entity does something expressly to show they support a cause or extol a virtue, without actually helping.

Disposable cloth packaging is a great example of this. Plastic production needs to be reduced for a large number of reasons, but cloth production takes an exceptional amount of energy and resources to produce while not generally being reusable or recyclable, and the extra durability and/or protection of cloth is almost never needed.

(There was a NYT article about this, but I'll link directly to the study https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...>)

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#292

Post by alistairSH » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

miniatureape wrote: post #239

peapicker wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought five cloth bags (strong canvas) at my food co-op in 1992. Still using them now, 28 years and many washes and many many shopping trips later. I agree that some of the lighter weight ‘cloth-like’ bags made today would not be able to stand that duty cycle.

https://theconversation.com/heres-how-many-times-you-actuall... Links to two studies which place the number of times you must reuse a cotton bag between 130-7100 times.

The Danish study assumes that plastic bags are incinerated. How likely is that in reality? I have no idea if my trash is incinerated in bulk, sorted with part incinerated, or 100% dumped in a landfill.

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#293

Post by genewitch » Fri, Sep 10, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #195

peapicker wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought five cloth bags (strong canvas) at my food co-op in 1992. Still using them now, 28 years and many washes and many many shopping trips later. I agree that some of the lighter weight ‘cloth-like’ bags made today would not be able to stand that duty cycle.

Washing them increases their impact. Might be better overall still, but that's the direction it goes in.

Wait, what?

I use soapberries, have a well, and have a sewage treatment plant here. My electricity is hydroelectric.

How is me washing anything affecting the planet negatively in the slightest bit?

After the sewage gets treated it goes into a field with wild vegetation which is home to all kinds of living, breathing, and pollen[ating] things.

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#294

Post by Robotbeat » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 12:18 AM UTC

jacknews wrote: post #86

Robotbeat wrote: post #60

I hope they don’t get rid of the symbol entirely! It’s useful to know what resin a product is made of. Things like PLA (which is kinda sorta compostable) are not often recycled, but they can be. If you don’t know what resin the plastic is, then it’s even harder. Keep the resin symbol. Remove the arrows on it. We get better with recycling stuff over time, so eventually more resins could be recycled. But. Part of me wo…

Yes, I've come to the conclusion that it's better to bury most plastic waste. Most plastic comes from oil, which means 'biodegradable' plastic is essentially the same as burning the oil. Actual recycling can work in some cases, but even after all the expense and energy of recycling, the recycled product is usually much lower grade plastic, so it's not sustainable. Better just to bury it (in leak-proof pits), where it…

Your second sentence is false. Almost all of the biodegradable/compostable plastics (those that are marketed as such) are biomass based. PLA comes ultimately from corn

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#295

Post by Talanes » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 4:11 AM UTC

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #240

nybble41 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You'd still be storing the carbon, just in things that are in active use. The idea is to extract carbon from the air, make something useful out of it, and then bury the plastic when the item reaches the end of its useful life, thus sequestering the carbon. Recycling the plastics would compete with pulling more carbon from the air and reduce the amount being sequestered. The energy-intensive recycling process might…

There's no logical reason why connecting the three steps of the process make sense, unless you start with the premise that you really want to bury post consumer plastic and work back from there. It would only possibly make sense if recycling was fundamentally a dirty process but since we've got enough zero carbon energy available to suck carbon out of the air we've got enough to recycle. We can then use that energy s…

>Unless there's some weird process or catalyst that makes atmospheric CO2 to consumer grade plastic the absolutely cheapest way to extract CO2

Well, given that the way we do that is by growing plants, and most CO2 sequestering strategies involve... growing plants, it doesn't sound as far-fetches as you're trying to make it.

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#296

Post by kwhitefoot » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 10:17 AM UTC

Jolter wrote: post #185

pwg wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read @horsawlarway's comment as "reusable for the original use" as in how the US used to have glass soda (soft drink) bottles that were collected at stores, returned to the bottler, who would wash them out, refill them with new soda, and put them back out on store shelves or in vending machines. The return of the empty bottles to the stores was incentivized via a ten cent per bottle "deposit" one made upon purchase…

Bottle deposits are still in force around the world. For instance in parts of the EU. They provide the most benefit where they support re-use (glass bottles) but are also used for recyclable PET bottles.

Glass bottles cost a lot to transport, occupy a lot of space, must be washed and sterilised. PET bottles are crushed in the machine that you return them to so they occupy less space and are much lighter. Here in Norway where most drinks containers have a deposit we have almost completely switched to PET bottles and aluminium cans for beer and soft drinks on the grounds that recycling PET bottles and aluminium cans is cheaper than reusing glass ones.

Re: California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

#297

Post by asoneth » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

q1w2 wrote: post #270

asoneth wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The charitable interpretation is that their original intent of using the well-known recycling symbol around the resin code was to provide consumers with information to help them recycle more effectively. However the fact that recycling programs (at least in my state) advise consumers to ignore the number and focus on the shape of the plastic means that (at least in my state) these symbols are not serving their intend…

> The charitable interpretation is that their original intent of using the well-known recycling symbol around the resin code was to provide consumers with information to help them recycle more effectively. This isn't the "charitable interpretation" - this was the stated and official purpose of the symbols with the numbers.

The "charitable interpretation" is that the people involved in the decision truly believed their stated rationale. In that case the fact that the symbol has actually confused consumers in practice and has caused unrecycleable plastics to contaminate plastic recycling streams is simply an honest mistake.

The "uncharitable interpretation" is that it was a dishonest way for plastic manufacturers to label unrecycleable plastics with recycling symbols to confuse consumers into thinking a greater number of single-use plastics were recyclable than actually were recyclable with no consideration given to the difficulties this would cause for the organizations actually responsible for recycling the plastic.

Because I was not there I do not know whether the people involved were misguided or unethical or somewhere in between.