Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve • Hacker News Board

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#431

Post by cobbzilla » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 1:48 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #381

darkerside wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's orchestrated by people who wanted it to work that way This is exactly what I'm talking about. Capitalism is basically a force of nature, like evolution. Claiming anyone can orchestrate it is analogous to intelligent design. I do agree that we all, and leaders more than most, bear responsibility to improve the system. But don't overestimate the capacity of any one person. If it were that easy to control complex…

Was one prison really so important to TPTB? I think not really. If Obama had actually done what he had claimed to have wanted to do, they wouldn't have implemented their "JFK solution" for that infraction alone. After all he dutifully expanded the murderdeathterrordrone program, just like the presidents before and after him. He persecuted more whistleblowers than any president before him, just like his successor is d…

It takes 3/4 of the states to pass an amendment to the constitution, that means 38 (yeah they round up from 37.5), not 34.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#432

Post by nyxtom » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 1:50 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #413

nyxtom wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is amazing how often humans continue to essentially create new problems that are easily solvable on their own. A culture of convenience and throw-away (not my problem) or "I don't have the time for x" is why we keep having mountains of waste. Anyone who is concerned with waste can make the conscious choices to eliminate or reduce that waste in a lot of areas of their life. 1. Buy real food and cook it 2. Grow food…

> Buy real food and cook it > Bring your own containers/bags I eat out once a fortnight for dinner and once a week for lunch, and cook the rest of the time. The vast majority of what I buy is fresh food (fruit, vegetables, some small amounts of dairy, meat and pulses). Everything I buy is packaged in single use plastics. My lunch today, the tomatoes came in a cardboard box that was wrapped in plastic, the cucumber wa…

* Toothpaste can be made and or bought from places like Lush where the alternatives can be zero waste. It's a bit out of the ordinary but there are options that even I'm surprised by it.

* Just about all produce/fruit is available without plastic wrapping (except for berries I've found, which is quite annoying). I think the only non-plastic option here is to just try and grow the fruit yourself. Or otherwise take the plastic and grind it into pellets to use for something else. There's some neat stuff related to this. I've also seen this as an option for most local farmers:

https://myplasticfreelife.com/2011/05/irritated-with-plastic...

* Meat is next to impossible for this, but I've found meat available raw in paper wrapping when you get it in some places. This is usually in a place like Whole Foods, but even then the meat comes in a plastic covering like you mention.

I totally see what you're saying, I think I'm just looking at areas where large quantities of everyday plastic waste is avoidable. For instance, when eating out it's not unheard to bring your own container for leftovers instead of having them give you a styrofoam container for the food. And of course I say all this also realizing that a lot of people might not have access to all this ^ :(

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#433

Post by Firadeoclus » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 1:59 PM UTC

monort wrote: post #400

wutbrodo wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you feel the same way about putting your trash in bins (or even bags), as opposed to leaving individual items strewn about your lawn for them to pick up? Do you feel the same way about getting your car to the mechanic instead of having him pick it up from wherever you left it? The line you're drawing to define "labor done on behalf of a paid service provider" is laughably ridiculous. The service they provide is "p…

I can get the car picked-up for repair if I want to. Where can I subscribe for a service "picking up unsorted garbage"? The problem is that garbage collectors are granted monopoly and use it to extract free labor from customers.

No one stops anyone from providing that service.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#434

Post by sfink » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 2:06 PM UTC

sirmarksalot wrote: post #264

scythe wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving towards a standard where all food waste is compostable (except, probably, metal cans) seems like a big step forward. Food waste is generally the most unpleasant to handle, so its presence makes sorting the remainder of the stream more difficult. In Japan, some municipalities have a special system for food waste: https://www.japanfs.org/en/news/archives/news_id027774.html

This sounds like a difficult problem, because compostability and shelf stability are contradictory goals. Pretty much by definition, anything that doesn't break down on a store shelf after a day, is going to pile up in the compost pile. It's not a problem for fresh foods intended to be consumed that day, but if your produce bags were compostable, they would not be very useful.

My produce bags are compostable, and they work fine. For one, they don't need to last very long - you can't keep produce for weeks anyway. For another, they mostly only break down in the environment of a municipal composting system, which gets hot and is quite different from your backyard compost heap.

Grocery stores around where i live in the sf bay area seem to be switching to them. I think they tried earlier, but I'm guessing they were too much more expensive?

Quite a marvel of engineering, from what i can tell.

Your point still stands though - shelf packaging needs to be pretty robust.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#435

Post by monort » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 2:13 PM UTC

Firadeoclus wrote: post #433

monort wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can get the car picked-up for repair if I want to. Where can I subscribe for a service "picking up unsorted garbage"? The problem is that garbage collectors are granted monopoly and use it to extract free labor from customers.

No one stops anyone from providing that service.

Maybe it depends on the city, but often it's a municipal government granted monopoly. E.g. in San Francisco it's Recology.

https://www.aoausa.com/magazine/?p=4982

I bet, each city, that enforces waste sorting, has a monopoly.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#436

Post by bunderbunder » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 2:21 PM UTC

Moru wrote: post #392

kalleboo wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it works where I lived in Europe. All the big grocery store chains have their own food subscription boxes, and instead of having it delivered home you can also just pick it up at your local supermarket on you way home from work.

Yes, this is how we do it here in sweden, perfect way of getting rid of the food that is getting close to the best before date without lowering the price. Also easier to sell vegetables that don't look so good. I stull preffer to select mu goods by myself, it's well spent time away from the keyboard stress and I get to decide how much waste I want to produce by using my 10 year old cotton bags and let the fruit and v…

That's where I was wondering about Imperfect Produce. It's a company that buys up fruits and veggies that the local distributor couldn't sell to the grocery stores for whatever reason, and delivers a weekly box of whatever they have to subscribers.

Our experience thus far has been that the produce sometimes has some cosmetic issues, but as often as not the only thing wrong with it is that it's just not the size that consumers typically expect, or the distributor just had excess stock. The food is almost always fresher, because it's coming straight from the distributor rather than sitting around on supermarket shelves for a while before you buy it.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#437

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 2:40 PM UTC

Annie Leonard has a great piece on the history of the "individual accountability" trash movement. TL;DR: it's an accountability avoidance maneuver by the drinks, beverages, and fast-food industries, principally.

http://www.worldwatch.org/system/files/AlterNet-SOW13-AL-102...

(Mostly the same material here: https://www.salon.com/2014/06/18/big_plastics_pr_disaster_wh...)

Her book and project, The Story of Stuff, are highly recommended.

https://storyofstuff.org/about/annie-leonard/

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#438

Post by maccard » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 2:45 PM UTC

nyxtom wrote: post #432

maccard wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Buy real food and cook it > Bring your own containers/bags I eat out once a fortnight for dinner and once a week for lunch, and cook the rest of the time. The vast majority of what I buy is fresh food (fruit, vegetables, some small amounts of dairy, meat and pulses). Everything I buy is packaged in single use plastics. My lunch today, the tomatoes came in a cardboard box that was wrapped in plastic, the cucumber wa…

* Toothpaste can be made and or bought from places like Lush where the alternatives can be zero waste. It's a bit out of the ordinary but there are options that even I'm surprised by it. * Just about all produce/fruit is available without plastic wrapping (except for berries I've found, which is quite annoying). I think the only non-plastic option here is to just try and grow the fruit yourself. Or otherwise take the…

For toothpaste, I had a look on the lush website [0]. For me to switch to that, I would be spending 6 times what I currently am on toothpaste, and would also need to travel an extra 3 miles to get to my nearest lush store.

> Just about all produce/fruit is available without plastic wrapping

Maybe if you're shopping in farmers markets. I shop in high street supermarkets, and it _isn't_ available. I have a choice of buying a 1kg bag of onions, or not buying onions. I can buy a 3 pack of bell peppers, or not buy bell peppers. I can buy a 6 pack of Golden Delicious apples, or I can not buy apples. I do try and buy less packaging, but unfortunately the odds are stacked against me.

[0] - https://uk.lush.com/products/tooth-fairy

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#439

Post by newswriter99 » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

fraudsyndrome wrote: post #368

newswriter99 wrote: post #240

Let's look at some actual numbers without the hype. "91% of potentially recyclable plastic ends up in landfills, or worse, in oceans." So right there, no ratio. How much goes into the landfill and how much into the ocean? Because lets face it: Landfill>Ocean For comparison, 8m tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean annually according to the cited 2015 UCSB study: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014985/ocean-plastic Tha…

How much of that 2.4m tonnes comes from other countries though? And the other countries know that it's not getting recycled properly yet still send it over to offload their guilt. Also you can't just use raw numbers as the population numbers are completely different. Waste generated per capita (excluding and import/export) would be a more accurate metric.

None, at the moment, considering China just instituted a plastic waste import ban.

But you're still implying that people are sending it to China in order to alleviate themselves of guilt, without China's consent. That's crap. They were conducting waste/recycling operations for business. If you agree to send plastic waste to China, then it's on China NOT to chuck the plastic in a river. Just because they're negligent doesn't make you liable.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#440

Post by dpkonofa » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

arbitrary_name wrote: post #391

dpkonofa wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nonsense. I have formal culinary training and Blue Apron was never about needing to learn how to read a recipe and cook with "a paint by numbers erector set". It was almost exclusively about the convenience and ease of recycling what was sent. You're projecting.

No,i agree with parent. What is so damn hard about picking a recipe and then ordering produce/goods from your local grocery accordingly? It seems wasteful to use a service like that purely for convenience.

Great. That's your prerogative. With Blue Apron, I didn't have to leave the house so it was incredibly convenient, the food was good, the variety of recipes was good, and I got to cook with ingredients that I never would have picked out on my own or that just aren't available at my local grocery store.

Convenience is the major factor but there are all kinds of pros to the Blue Apron service that I would continue to benefit from if it wasn't just for the incredibly wasteful packaging and processing. If they just shipped all that stuff without all the wrapping, I'd be fine with that. I've done farm boxes before that didn't need all the plastic.