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Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

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Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#31

Post by dylan604 »

galleywest200 wrote: post #12
nozzlegear wrote: post #7

Slightly related, but my town has sent out several flyers recently chastising everyone for recycling things that aren't recyclable. If this overambitious recycling continues, the privilege of recycling itself shall be taken away. Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle (my wife and I are guilty of recycling cleaned jars of spaghetti sauce); certain types of plastic; and pizza boxes that are "too g…

At least pizza boxes can go in the yard waste bin to be taken to the industrial composter. My yard waste bin came with a sticker that actively encourages putting food soiled paper in it.

You say that like that's a thing available every where. it's not. I compost my lawn clippings and food scraps, but I don't go so far as to put in cardboard type stuff in there. As for the greasy parts, it's usually just the bottom, so I've ripped off the top for adding to recycle and trashed the greasy part. But even that's more than most people would be willing to do

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#32

Post by bluGill »

galleywest200 wrote: post #12
nozzlegear wrote: post #7

Slightly related, but my town has sent out several flyers recently chastising everyone for recycling things that aren't recyclable. If this overambitious recycling continues, the privilege of recycling itself shall be taken away. Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle (my wife and I are guilty of recycling cleaned jars of spaghetti sauce); certain types of plastic; and pizza boxes that are "too g…

At least pizza boxes can go in the yard waste bin to be taken to the industrial composter. My yard waste bin came with a sticker that actively encourages putting food soiled paper in it.

if only I had one in my area... where they exist use them, but they don't exit in a lot of places.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#33

Post by School-Cotton »

brewcejener wrote: post #19
School-Cotton wrote: post #5

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact. If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently,…

The best way for one to reduce their carbon footprint is to stop supporting large corporations. Unfortunately this involves not being lazy and we are lazy.

> The best way for one to reduce their carbon footprint is to stop supporting large corporations.

Not really, no. The carbon footprint associated with your consumption has little-to-nothing to do with the type of economic structure that provides it.

Lots of fossil fuels are produced by the state, some even in socialist countries. Burning oil extracted by Pemex or Petróleos de Venezuela releases just as much carbon as oil extracted by Chevron.

And high-quality grass-fed organic beef raised by your local rancher involves at least as much carbon emissions as the cheapest beef you can get from Wal-Mart. Why wouldn't it?

The issue is consumption of fossil fuels, not capitalism. Capitalism is indirectly at fault only inasmuch as it has grown the economy, enabling our consumption of fossil fuels to increase.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#34

Post by throwaway27448 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #5

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact. If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently,…

Surely there's no point in reducing your personal carbon footprint without holding capital accountable at the state level.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#35

Post by synack »

dzink wrote: post #14

Visited a recycling facility recently. It’s a private company that covers an entire county in California. They filter the garbage wit people and a big machine and seem to get paid by companies abroad to ship them all recyclable materials - plastics, cardboard, metals, glass. That pays enough to keep them in business for decades. Someone really needs to look at where the materials from our garbage go.

I toured a sorting facility in Seattle recently. They said the only really profitable output is aluminum, everything else costs more than virgin material.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#36

Post by steviedotboston »

Landfills really aren't that bad. modern landfills have multiple layers of lining to prevent leaking into water supplies and soil. After they are full, they are covered with earth and can become usable land. Their gases have to be managed (can be burned for electricity or processed in other ways) but overall putting trash in the ground and covering it seems alright to me. The amount of land that you actually need isn't that much too.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#38

Post by bluGill »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #10
t1234s wrote: post #4

I started throwing everything in the garbage except aluminum over the past couple of years. Better off in a US landfill than shipped of to asia and dumped in the ocean.

I hate to agree but you're basically right. If we switched everything disposable (glass, plastic, paper) into an aluminum version of itself, the world would be a much better place. Aluminum pizza boxes and Amazon shipments would be weird, and would probably need rounded corners (hello iPhone designers going into box design at retirement) but they would be 100.000% recyclable.

Would they? Aluminum needs a lot of energy to melt and then reform into something new. Since the alloy is not known they need to refine the different metals out just to ensure that they get the correct alloy for the user. Mining Al uses a lot more energy.

That is I suspect the total damage from new plastic is less than recycled Al. Someone needs to find numbers to verify this of course.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#39

Post by bluGill »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #34
School-Cotton wrote: post #5

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact. If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently,…

Surely there's no point in reducing your personal carbon footprint without holding capital accountable at the state level.

Your efforts cascade. You alone mean nothing, but states and companies are just reacting to the collective wants, so if everyone waits for everyone else first nothing will happen.

Re: Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

#40

Post by mulmen »

t1234s wrote: post #4

I started throwing everything in the garbage except aluminum over the past couple of years. Better off in a US landfill than shipped of to asia and dumped in the ocean.

Does your municipality offer composting? That's where a lot of my waste paper ends up.
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