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Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

theguardian.com

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Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#81

Post by anonymous5133 »

briandear wrote: post #57
flyGuyOnTheSly wrote: post #50

Thank goodness. Finally, somebody with some clout is pointing fingers at the largest contributor to garbage... the corporations who produce it. I live in Canada and Tim Horton's cups literally litter every street corner in every big city in our country. I have always thought that they should be responsible for the cleanup of those cups. It is absolutely their fault that their customers are throwing their products ont…

Shouldn’t the consumer be responsible for throwing their trash away properly? The local government is a government of the local people: if the people would stop throwing stuff on the ground, there wouldn’t be so much trash to pick up. That burden is created by the local people. Should paint companies be held responsible for graffiti?

Yes, absolutely. We as a culture need to emphasize people to pick up their trash and be responsible for their own litter. Lots of other culture emphasize this and you rarely see trash on the ground. Trash on the ground is a direct result of the culture saying "who cares if I toss trash on the ground."

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#82

Post by cco »

osrec wrote: post #73
briandear wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn’t the consumer be responsible for throwing their trash away properly? The local government is a government of the local people: if the people would stop throwing stuff on the ground, there wouldn’t be so much trash to pick up. That burden is created by the local people. Should paint companies be held responsible for graffiti?

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the corporation if they are instilling a polluting culture that benefits them. There are edge cases in this argument of course, but in my opinion, a large number of companies produce mountains of wasteful unrecyclable packaging in the name of brand-building or low cost. They use this to bolster their business, and therefore they should be ultimately responsible for cleaning it…

Your thesis is that the main driver for plastic water bottles or to go coffee cups is branding? I don't think that passes the smell test.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#84

Post by anonymous5133 »

m3nu wrote: post #16

Just spent 2 weeks on Sabah, Borneo. Even the very remote beaches hours away from large human settlements are littered with plastic bottles and grocery bags. While diving you often see bags floating around. Both, on the surface and below. Ironically even the island hopping boat carried a tray of bottled water for anyone to take. Not sure what % of bottles gets left behind at the end of the day. Maybe a small deposit…

The locals will clean it up when they start to realize that their tourism industry is going to collapse if their country gets the reputation of being a trashy place to visit.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#85

Post by kayamon »

siedes wrote: post #23
m3nu wrote: post #16

Just spent 2 weeks on Sabah, Borneo. Even the very remote beaches hours away from large human settlements are littered with plastic bottles and grocery bags. While diving you often see bags floating around. Both, on the surface and below. Ironically even the island hopping boat carried a tray of bottled water for anyone to take. Not sure what % of bottles gets left behind at the end of the day. Maybe a small deposit…

A small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.

In California they have CRV, which is a kinda significant recycling amount.

However it doesn’t stop people throwing away plastic stuff. What it _does_ do, is create a job for the army of homeless people to go around collecting bottles so they can claim that sweet cashback.

It’s effectively a very strange way of employing people at far below minimum wage to keep the streets clean. Very odd.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#86

Post by siedes »

ethbro wrote: post #77
PetahNZ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also fine you up to $5,000 and give you community service if you litter.

From an individual's point of view: they also fine you up to $5,000 and give you community service if you get caught littering .

Good thing in Japan, even if one or two people litter, there's at least 100 other fine people who will be there to pick up after you happily without even thinking about it.

Man I'd love that here in the US

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#87

Post by pfranz »

jerrysievert wrote: post #38
siedes wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A small deposit is no incentive. Now if it were a significant amount like $.50-$1.00 per bottle you recycle, then you'd have people literally racing to get those bottles. Then just increase the price on the drinks itself by a bit to make up for that, which is also a disincentive to discourage a number of people from buying them in the first place.

oregon has 90% redemption rate[1] at 10 cents per bottle, so there is obviously some incentive. 1. https://www.opb.org/news/article/oregon-bottle-deposit-redem...

I highly doubt the 10 cents per bottle is the exclusive reason--I wish that article talked more about it. The $0.10 could pay for the other reasons, but I think it's equally about infrastructure and culture as it is about cost.

Culturally, people are only willing to put up with so much. There's a Penn and Teller BS clip where he has like 10 unique recycling bins and is explaining sorting to them. I've been to towns where you have to haul all of your trash out, but at Disney they found that people aren't willing to carry trash more than 30ft.

I feel like I do more than most. I set aside batteries, and hoard the few single use bags I use. I drove to a Best Buy because I saw they had battery recycling, but when I arrived they excluded alkalines. I'm honestly not sure which plastics my curb-side accepts. I know that's what the number in the logo is for, but I have trouble finding it and I'm not sure what's accepted. I wish there was a simpler system, like the plastics were dyed blue, had a blue stripe, or something distinguishing.

Is their program successful because of the $0.10 redemption? Or is it because they have a lot of redemption centers? No city I've lived in honor redemptions for curb-side, which is often a large percentage.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#88

Post by osrec »

cco wrote: post #82
osrec wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the corporation if they are instilling a polluting culture that benefits them. There are edge cases in this argument of course, but in my opinion, a large number of companies produce mountains of wasteful unrecyclable packaging in the name of brand-building or low cost. They use this to bolster their business, and therefore they should be ultimately responsible for cleaning it…

Your thesis is that the main driver for plastic water bottles or to go coffee cups is branding? I don't think that passes the smell test.

Not quite, but it's a low cost convenience that makes people spend on coffee more readily. If they were made to bring their own cup to take coffee out (or some other less polluting method), I bet it would hurt sales significantly.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#89

Post by AmericanChopper »

osrec wrote: post #73
briandear wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn’t the consumer be responsible for throwing their trash away properly? The local government is a government of the local people: if the people would stop throwing stuff on the ground, there wouldn’t be so much trash to pick up. That burden is created by the local people. Should paint companies be held responsible for graffiti?

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with the corporation if they are instilling a polluting culture that benefits them. There are edge cases in this argument of course, but in my opinion, a large number of companies produce mountains of wasteful unrecyclable packaging in the name of brand-building or low cost. They use this to bolster their business, and therefore they should be ultimately responsible for cleaning it…

If you wanted to talk about the costs of disposing of packaging, then there’s some valid points you could make. But to say producers are responsible for littering is insane. There’s nothing about Coca Cola as a company, or the way their products are packaged, or the way they sell them that would lead me to throw the packaging on the ground rather than in the trash can. Anybody that litters is wholly responsible for that act. If you wanna discuss what happens to the packaging after it’s thrown in the trash or the recycling bin, and who bears the costs, then there’s arguments you can make for the producer to have additional responsibilities, but it’s not their job to make sure the consumer doesn’t litter.

Re: Coca-Cola most common source of packaging pollution on UK beaches: study

#90

Post by MivLives »

reaperducer wrote: post #65
DrOctagon wrote: post #54

Why can't we just go to 100% aluminium for beverage packaging? The technology and supply chains etc. are already in place.

I'm OK with this. Or even glass. According to the interwebs, it wasn't until the 1960's that plastic bottles became popular in the United States, but I don't remember them until the early 80's. Before then, soda always came in cans with pull-tabs that would slice your toes open at the beach.

As someone who has worked in the beverage industry. Please don't bring back glass. It's so heavy, it's fragile, and it don't stack efficiently. Beer is finally moving to cans a change which has only happened in the last few years. It's easier to move and store, a twelve oz can takes up about 3/5s the space of a 12oz bottle.
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