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Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

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Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#61

Post by TaylorAlexander »

jgibson wrote: post #12
paultopia wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since lids and labels and such seem to actually matter, the only sensible solution is for the governments of the world to legislate to mandate specific shapes and material compositions for things like drink containers. Standardize it all.

I've been thinking about this more and more, and it just makes so much sense. No one cares what shape a beer bottle is, the label is enough to tell them apart. Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging, but less of them isn't something to worry about either

I’m in total agreement. We give corporations a lot of freedom even when that freedom is unnecessary and leads to significant environmental and societal harm. We’ve got to get some power back for the people so we can say “no, you don’t get any shape. You have to agree to a limited number of shapes and they have to be totally recyclable.”

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#62

Post by Scoundreller »

esotericn wrote: post #47
Scoundreller wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And larger containers have less surface area:volume —> less packaging. Which is why I really hate it when manufacturers reduce pack sizes.

Small pack sizes are such a load of shite. Some small number of people are travelling. For the rest, 500g of rice is a pointlessly small amount. It lasts forever, is dense enough to stash, etc.

I’ve seen OJ go from 2L to 1.89, and now 1.75L.

Pasta: 1kg to 908g.

It’s bullshit.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#63

Post by supernova87a »

The plastics and chemicals industries -- as a chemistry professor used to put it -- are but a pimple on the butt of the petroleum fuels industry.

They are a tiny portion of what's getting produced every day. And as long as petroleum keeps getting pumped out of the ground for dirt cheap and getting burned, plastics will be an inevitable byproduct.

It just costs pretty much $0 to make new plastic from that stream of petroleum, versus recycling which takes human effort, more equipment, logistics, etc.

Until we tax petroleum coming out of the ground for all the later problems it causes us, I too am disappointed but resigned to having recycling being a further waste of resources.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#64

Post by baroffoos »

spodek wrote: post #23
paultopia wrote: post #3

This is LUDICROUS. Recycling is harder than doing your taxes. We desperately need uniformity on this. " BEVERAGE BOTTLES Recyclable. Be sure to remove the plastic film label, which isn’t recyclable. " FFS. Have you ever tried to remove one of those labels? It's impossible. " A bottle with a cap or an opening the same size or smaller than the base of the bottle is probably going to be recyclable. " -- WTF does the siz…

I found a simple 80% solution for home plastic: I avoid packaged food in favor of fresh, unwrapped fruits, vegetables, and foods from bulk bins. Now I have a load of garbage to empty a little less than once a year and a load of metal and plastic recycling once or twice a year. Plus my food tastes better and costs less. Everyone is free to do what they want, and experience shows someone will have to tell me the soluti…

I just found I have one of those bulk bin stores near my office. Its slightly more expensive and I have to bring my own containers but I will never again buy a single use packaged item that I could get packaging free from this store.

The insane amounts of damage we are doing with all this plastic needs to be controlled. Recycling is not the answer, reduce and reuse is.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#65

Post by baroffoos »

esotericn wrote: post #47
Scoundreller wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And larger containers have less surface area:volume —> less packaging. Which is why I really hate it when manufacturers reduce pack sizes.

Small pack sizes are such a load of shite. Some small number of people are travelling. For the rest, 500g of rice is a pointlessly small amount. It lasts forever, is dense enough to stash, etc.

I once got a 10KG sack of rice from an Asian store once. After a year it got full of tiny bugs less than 1mm in size. Now I buy 1kg bags that I can more easily seal airtight with pegs.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#66

Post by jeromegv »

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #21
TylerE wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really pretty simple if you actually care about results. Is it aluminum? Recycle it. Is is not aluminum? Don't recycle it.

Plastic bottles are pretty much all included according to this site. There's no reason not to include them too.

What's even better than putting your plastic bottle in recycle is not using plastic bottle at all. Is there any use case where plastic bottle is better or required?

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#67

Post by TaylorAlexander »

skybrian wrote: post #42
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then keep checking, as local rules keep evolving so that products they used to consider acceptable stop being so. Sometimes new items become acceptable, but our experience is mostly of things being removed from recycling over the years. It's insane.

Yes, someone needs to write a really good web app, like those that exist for transit.

But also some regulations to keep the permutations down would be super helpful. Mandating that all the things are recyclable would be super helpful.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#68

Post by baroffoos »

eloff wrote: post #6
paultopia wrote: post #3

This is LUDICROUS. Recycling is harder than doing your taxes. We desperately need uniformity on this. " BEVERAGE BOTTLES Recyclable. Be sure to remove the plastic film label, which isn’t recyclable. " FFS. Have you ever tried to remove one of those labels? It's impossible. " A bottle with a cap or an opening the same size or smaller than the base of the bottle is probably going to be recyclable. " -- WTF does the siz…

I've noticed that people aren't actually fully capable of just sorting the recycling correctly. There's always stuff in the wrong bins in my building despite an ongoing education effort to fix that and helpful illustrated rules above the bins. Rules about lids and labels is a joke.

The rules are just insanely complicated and depend entirely on what suburb you are in. There are countless different kinds of plastics which all have the recycling triangle on them but you have to actually check the number inside and remember all the kinds of plastics there are and which ones your local council can recycle as well as keeping up to date if this changes. And then you have to deal with the fact that loads of products use 2-3 different kinds of plastics on one product so you have to sit there breaking it up in to its basic materials.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#69

Post by Areading314 »

supernova87a wrote: post #63

The plastics and chemicals industries -- as a chemistry professor used to put it -- are but a pimple on the butt of the petroleum fuels industry. They are a tiny portion of what's getting produced every day. And as long as petroleum keeps getting pumped out of the ground for dirt cheap and getting burned, plastics will be an inevitable byproduct. It just costs pretty much $0 to make new plastic from that stream of pe…

There are 2 separate externalities with different costs:

* CO2 emissions through burning fossil fuel

* plastic garbage with 1000 year lifetimes being littered around the planet

While we should absolutely be addressing both, you have to target these 2 problems separately

Edit: To clarify what I'd propose would be a tax on fossil fuel production, and then an additional, much higher tax on production of things like plastic bags

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#70

Post by wlesieutre »

yawz wrote: post #53
esotericn wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't a pizza box be compostable anyway? It's mostly cardboard?

AFAIK composting or compost collection is not available everywhere.

Correct, no city compost here and I'm in an apartment building so I can't put a pile of it in the backyard
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