6 ms·

The survey found that 10 companies were responsible for more than half of the identifiably branded rubbish found on the UK’s beaches." But are they? Isn't this

The survey found that 10 companies were responsible for more than half of the identifiably branded rubbish found on the UK’s beaches." But are they? Isn't this shifting the blame from the end user that improperly disposes of their trash to the company? Sure, they could do more to reduce packaging issues, but in the end, it is the consumer that is tossing these things out rather than recycling them.

AYBABTME 7y ago
If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data... ...in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable. Maybe the users of coca-cola bottles are the problem, but maybe coca-cola should be made to not make products that have a propensity to be misused.
- chapium 7y ago
  On the otherhand I have tons of first hand experience with bottles, and its a very simple task to take care of your own trash. Its just a matter of doing it.
  - forgotmypw3 7y ago
    What do you mean by "take care of"? Carrying it to the trash can? What happens to it after that? Oh, I guess it's not your problem anymore...
  - josefx 7y ago
    Went with cowerkers hiking once, we had more than enough to drink with us. What we didn't plan on was a convenient way to carry the bottles, so around half way to our target we had to rest and decide what to do with them. Either leave them there and collect them on the way back or accept that they will be a pain to carry around for the rest of the day. We later found a place where we could drop them off, but getting there was far from just "doing it". Lesson learned: plan ahead and get something convenient to carry.
- liamkinne 7y ago
  Your design example doesn't apply because the end user in this case isn't directly effected by their negligence. There is clear evidence that littering is societal. See how clean Japanese cities are despite almost everything being wrapped in plastic.
  - jdietrich 7y ago
    You won't even see many cigarette butts in Japan, because smokers carry a pocket ashtray.
    - new299 7y ago
      Smoking culture in Japan appears to discourage smoking outside. In many places smoking outside is illegal. However some trains, many shopping centers and most restaurants have designated smoking areas. As such you’re somewhat less likely to see cigarette butts on the street in Japan in any case.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Yup. Also, when smoking outside, people do have a strong incentive to dump the butt ASAP, whether there's a trash can in sight or not - cigarette butts are dirty, smell really bad (even for smokers' standards), and can foil clothing.
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        You know those little smoking enclosures that some airports have? Yeah, those are all over Japan outside (albeit not air-tight ones). You only see people smoking in them or in buildings where smoking is allowed, commonly bars. It's a pretty great way of controlling cigarette butt litter, actually.
  - cfarm 7y ago
    Agree. I think you need to assume that people will litter. I think changing the material to something that can decompose would be a better approach. Maybe if the government gave some sort of subsidy to make the private companies do this?
- m463 7y ago
  I think the bottle deposit is an interesting optimization. That said, I remember being in mexico and when you buy a coke "to go", they don't want to bottle to walk away. So they helpfully pour it in a plastic bag, stick a straw in it and seal the plastic bag to the straw with a rubber band.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
    So now instead of a single bottle, you have a plastic bag, a straw, and a rubber band as litter all the while destroying any guarantees of not getting food borne illnesses.
    - neverartful 7y ago
      I'm old enough to clearly remember when Coca Cola was distributed in glass bottles. There was no plastic of any kind, except for maybe a gasket inside the metal cap. Individual serving size bottles had bottle caps and larger size had metal screw caps with metal safety-seal thingies that broke off when you opened it for the first time. All of them had deposits that were refunded when you turn them in. I don't know about the economics or logistical feasibility of returning to the same setup, but to suggest it's not possible (while still ensuring product safety) is inaccurate.
      - frosted-flakes 7y ago
        We do it for beer, so I don't see why not. At least in Ontario, I've seen people walking into the LCBO with cases of empty bottles (I don't drink alcohol myself, so can't confirm how prevalent this is). But glass bottles are heavy, and I'm sure that makes shipping more expensive and increases CO2 emissions.
        CydeWeys 7y ago
        For what it's worth, beer seems to be transitioning back to cans now on the high end. Cans are much lighter, still just as recyclable, and crucially, they keep the product fresher (which matters more for nice beer than for soda).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- serf 7y ago
  >in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable. this is the kind of thinking that kills apps for power-users, and leads to dark patterns. You're not wrong, but I don't really like to think about how those kind of practices could be applied to social problems and government. "We don't want X people doing Y, so let's subtly make it harder for X people to continue doing Y, without wholeheartedly admitting our intent." seems like a really slippery slope.
  - benj111 7y ago
    The GP isn't saying don't have the feature. They're saying don't have the delete button next to the save button, labelled ambiguously, and without a confirmation step.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > this is the kind of thinking that kills apps for power-users, and leads to dark patterns. Not necessarily. Well-applied, this thinking is what gave you --no-preserve-root in rm command. You still can delete your entire drive, you just won't do it by accident anymore. I agree with your anxiety here though, some people do take this idea and turn it into "this feature is too dangerous; let's remove it for your own good", and nerf an otherwise useful tool. > "We don't want X people doing Y, so let's subtly make it harder for X people to continue doing Y, without wholeheartedly admitting our intent." seems like a really slippery slope. That this work is at this point a Nobel-winning insight (the "nudge"), so it's a matter of who's doing it and for what. It turns out that "free will" is a concept with little meaning at scale - large populations behave predictably.
- loco5niner 7y ago
  >If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data... Throwing trash on the ground is not comparable to clicking the wrong button. There is no confusion going on here, only laziness.
Djvacto 7y ago
I think a big part of the issue is also about what packaging choices are made, materials-wise. Surely not to say that people chucking their aluminum cans in the trash aren't also part of the problem, but corporations have a much bigger amount of influence and fault for pollution (packaging and non-packaging-wise).
devoply 7y ago
Ban plastic bottles. Make them use glass bottles in a closed cycle where the bottles are constantly cycled and then turned into something else when they can't be cycled... or use aluminum which is recyclable. And let's call out recycling for the sham that it is. Recycling is a lie for plastics, plastics can not be economically recycled. They must be banned and the polluters made to internalize the externality.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Any Lidl near me in Prague in 2009 would take glass bottles and give you a cash deposit back. The USA will probably get something like that when it catches up in 100 years.
  - codingdave 7y ago
    We're at about 20% in the USA with such programs: http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/state-beverage-container-laws.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resourc...
  - SteveGerencser 7y ago
    We had it. I grew up returning glass bottles and worked at a bottling company in the late 80s doing nothing but sorting glass bottles by brand and type so that they could be washed, sanitized, filled and sent right back out. The job sucked. This was also about the time we started getting 2 liter plastic bottles.
- m463 7y ago
  I like aluminum better. Glass bottles are not perfect. They are lots heavier, which leads to transportation pollution. They also break and hurt people. As to plastics - You are correct, they do not recycle and when you try to do it, even with a very low ratio of recycled to new plastics you end up with crappy weak plastic - think laundry baskets that have handles that break easily. i think we should just learn to burn plastics - efficiently and cleanly.
  - 7y ago
netsharc 7y ago
I remember reading (yeah, not much of a citation, I know...) that recycling was invented so people wouldn't feel so bad about disposable packaging. Considering recycling can mean shipping trash to a poor country, it's not the ultimate environment rescuer. (Doesn't mean we should stop doing it, obviously)
- Proven 7y ago
  He just reminded that it doesn’t make sense to blame person A for what person B does with the stuff they bought from person A, and you’re already at it again. Should Coca Cola be responsible for the poor country that imports that trash? Why do they import it if they don’t plan to recycle it and make profit from it that way? Somebody imports it and dumps it without recycling because they live in a corrupt hellhole of a country, that’s why. Don’t attempt to blame Coca Cola for the shitty outcomes of democracy in some tier 3 country.
- forgotmypw3 7y ago
  Most plastic packaging is not recyclable. Most plastic packaging is not recycled. Most "segregated" bins look about the same inside. (Personal experience, I'm a freegan.) Most "recyclable" shit is just shipped to another country. Yeah, I have to agree with you there.
musgrove 7y ago
Personal accountability is a concept that's nonexistent with activist groups. They're comprised of people who live to pass blame for consequences that are individual's faults onto faceless entities who can be demonized and hopefully sued, or have money extorted from in the name of a cause du jour.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  Or, perhaps, solve the problem at the source once rather than 7 billion times?
- rexpop 7y ago
  This is a nonsensical statement. Corporations are not "faceless entities," they have "free speech" rights and they act on the world. They are emergent agents. If, on the other hand, you insist on finding people to blame, I would start with the executives who ordered the design of the packaging that lends itself to litter.
bandushrew 7y ago
As someone else has said above: companies are using a material that lasts 10,000 years for items that are single-use. That should be outright illegal unless there are literally no alternatives. Its insanely wasteful when you view it like that.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Industry shifted blame, and created "keep America Beautiful" as part of lobbying against common sense regulation. Why shouldn't we shift blame back to the idiots what created it - for a bit more profit - once again?
rienbdj 7y ago
It doesn't matter whos fault it is. The only point in the system where we can reasonably fix it is at these companies.
- rexpop 7y ago
  Right. There isn't an ethical way to "upgrade" human operating system. It's infuriating to me how so many Hacker Newsites refuse to hold corporations accountable for their design flaws.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > It's infuriating to me how so many Hacker Newsites refuse to hold corporations accountable for their design flaws. I have a silent hope that each thread like this means some commenters who haven't thought about this much before will achieve the crucial insights, like: (per GP) assigning blame isn't productive, effective solutions are; (per you) there's no easy way to just make people "be better", at scale people are predictable and follow incentives, so the main points of intervention should be these incentives and systems that create them.
    - rexpop 7y ago
      > there's no easy way to just make people "be better" I found this sentiment echoed in an RSA video, just this morning: https://youtu.be/o5CTxckRywg https://youtu.be/o5CTxckRywg So, in the future, you can attribute it to Dan Lyons, author of "Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us".
forgotmypw3 7y ago
If 1% of billions of plastic bottles end up in the environment, that's still a lot of bottles. I bet that accidental litter, for which no one person is "to blame", is more than 1%. This is stuff like a bag tearing open, a trash can falling over, stuff falling off the truck.

AYBABTME 7y ago

If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data... ...in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable. Maybe the users of coca-cola bottles are the problem, but maybe coca-cola should be made to not make products that have a propensity to be misused.

chapium 7y ago
On the otherhand I have tons of first hand experience with bottles, and its a very simple task to take care of your own trash. Its just a matter of doing it.
- forgotmypw3 7y ago
  What do you mean by "take care of"? Carrying it to the trash can? What happens to it after that? Oh, I guess it's not your problem anymore...
- josefx 7y ago
  Went with cowerkers hiking once, we had more than enough to drink with us. What we didn't plan on was a convenient way to carry the bottles, so around half way to our target we had to rest and decide what to do with them. Either leave them there and collect them on the way back or accept that they will be a pain to carry around for the rest of the day. We later found a place where we could drop them off, but getting there was far from just "doing it". Lesson learned: plan ahead and get something convenient to carry.
liamkinne 7y ago
Your design example doesn't apply because the end user in this case isn't directly effected by their negligence. There is clear evidence that littering is societal. See how clean Japanese cities are despite almost everything being wrapped in plastic.
- jdietrich 7y ago
  You won't even see many cigarette butts in Japan, because smokers carry a pocket ashtray.
  - new299 7y ago
    Smoking culture in Japan appears to discourage smoking outside. In many places smoking outside is illegal. However some trains, many shopping centers and most restaurants have designated smoking areas. As such you’re somewhat less likely to see cigarette butts on the street in Japan in any case.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Yup. Also, when smoking outside, people do have a strong incentive to dump the butt ASAP, whether there's a trash can in sight or not - cigarette butts are dirty, smell really bad (even for smokers' standards), and can foil clothing.
    - CydeWeys 7y ago
      You know those little smoking enclosures that some airports have? Yeah, those are all over Japan outside (albeit not air-tight ones). You only see people smoking in them or in buildings where smoking is allowed, commonly bars. It's a pretty great way of controlling cigarette butt litter, actually.
- cfarm 7y ago
  Agree. I think you need to assume that people will litter. I think changing the material to something that can decompose would be a better approach. Maybe if the government gave some sort of subsidy to make the private companies do this?
m463 7y ago
I think the bottle deposit is an interesting optimization. That said, I remember being in mexico and when you buy a coke "to go", they don't want to bottle to walk away. So they helpfully pour it in a plastic bag, stick a straw in it and seal the plastic bag to the straw with a rubber band.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 7y ago
  So now instead of a single bottle, you have a plastic bag, a straw, and a rubber band as litter all the while destroying any guarantees of not getting food borne illnesses.
  - neverartful 7y ago
    I'm old enough to clearly remember when Coca Cola was distributed in glass bottles. There was no plastic of any kind, except for maybe a gasket inside the metal cap. Individual serving size bottles had bottle caps and larger size had metal screw caps with metal safety-seal thingies that broke off when you opened it for the first time. All of them had deposits that were refunded when you turn them in. I don't know about the economics or logistical feasibility of returning to the same setup, but to suggest it's not possible (while still ensuring product safety) is inaccurate.
    - frosted-flakes 7y ago
      We do it for beer, so I don't see why not. At least in Ontario, I've seen people walking into the LCBO with cases of empty bottles (I don't drink alcohol myself, so can't confirm how prevalent this is). But glass bottles are heavy, and I'm sure that makes shipping more expensive and increases CO2 emissions.
      - CydeWeys 7y ago
        For what it's worth, beer seems to be transitioning back to cans now on the high end. Cans are much lighter, still just as recyclable, and crucially, they keep the product fresher (which matters more for nice beer than for soda).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
serf 7y ago
>in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable. this is the kind of thinking that kills apps for power-users, and leads to dark patterns. You're not wrong, but I don't really like to think about how those kind of practices could be applied to social problems and government. "We don't want X people doing Y, so let's subtly make it harder for X people to continue doing Y, without wholeheartedly admitting our intent." seems like a really slippery slope.
- benj111 7y ago
  The GP isn't saying don't have the feature. They're saying don't have the delete button next to the save button, labelled ambiguously, and without a confirmation step.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > this is the kind of thinking that kills apps for power-users, and leads to dark patterns. Not necessarily. Well-applied, this thinking is what gave you --no-preserve-root in rm command. You still can delete your entire drive, you just won't do it by accident anymore. I agree with your anxiety here though, some people do take this idea and turn it into "this feature is too dangerous; let's remove it for your own good", and nerf an otherwise useful tool. > "We don't want X people doing Y, so let's subtly make it harder for X people to continue doing Y, without wholeheartedly admitting our intent." seems like a really slippery slope. That this work is at this point a Nobel-winning insight (the "nudge"), so it's a matter of who's doing it and for what. It turns out that "free will" is a concept with little meaning at scale - large populations behave predictably.
loco5niner 7y ago
>If you develop an app, and everybody using your app always ends up deleting their data by clicking on the wrong button, and then people complain that your app loses data... Throwing trash on the ground is not comparable to clicking the wrong button. There is no confusion going on here, only laziness.

Djvacto 7y ago

I think a big part of the issue is also about what packaging choices are made, materials-wise. Surely not to say that people chucking their aluminum cans in the trash aren't also part of the problem, but corporations have a much bigger amount of influence and fault for pollution (packaging and non-packaging-wise).

devoply 7y ago

Ban plastic bottles. Make them use glass bottles in a closed cycle where the bottles are constantly cycled and then turned into something else when they can't be cycled... or use aluminum which is recyclable. And let's call out recycling for the sham that it is. Recycling is a lie for plastics, plastics can not be economically recycled. They must be banned and the polluters made to internalize the externality.

hombre_fatal 7y ago
Any Lidl near me in Prague in 2009 would take glass bottles and give you a cash deposit back. The USA will probably get something like that when it catches up in 100 years.
- codingdave 7y ago
  We're at about 20% in the USA with such programs: http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resources/state-beverage-container-laws.aspx http://www.ncsl.org/research/environment-and-natural-resourc...
- SteveGerencser 7y ago
  We had it. I grew up returning glass bottles and worked at a bottling company in the late 80s doing nothing but sorting glass bottles by brand and type so that they could be washed, sanitized, filled and sent right back out. The job sucked. This was also about the time we started getting 2 liter plastic bottles.
m463 7y ago
I like aluminum better. Glass bottles are not perfect. They are lots heavier, which leads to transportation pollution. They also break and hurt people. As to plastics - You are correct, they do not recycle and when you try to do it, even with a very low ratio of recycled to new plastics you end up with crappy weak plastic - think laundry baskets that have handles that break easily. i think we should just learn to burn plastics - efficiently and cleanly.
- 7y ago

netsharc 7y ago

I remember reading (yeah, not much of a citation, I know...) that recycling was invented so people wouldn't feel so bad about disposable packaging. Considering recycling can mean shipping trash to a poor country, it's not the ultimate environment rescuer. (Doesn't mean we should stop doing it, obviously)

Proven 7y ago
He just reminded that it doesn’t make sense to blame person A for what person B does with the stuff they bought from person A, and you’re already at it again. Should Coca Cola be responsible for the poor country that imports that trash? Why do they import it if they don’t plan to recycle it and make profit from it that way? Somebody imports it and dumps it without recycling because they live in a corrupt hellhole of a country, that’s why. Don’t attempt to blame Coca Cola for the shitty outcomes of democracy in some tier 3 country.
forgotmypw3 7y ago
Most plastic packaging is not recyclable. Most plastic packaging is not recycled. Most "segregated" bins look about the same inside. (Personal experience, I'm a freegan.) Most "recyclable" shit is just shipped to another country. Yeah, I have to agree with you there.

musgrove 7y ago

Personal accountability is a concept that's nonexistent with activist groups. They're comprised of people who live to pass blame for consequences that are individual's faults onto faceless entities who can be demonized and hopefully sued, or have money extorted from in the name of a cause du jour.

Pfhreak 7y ago
Or, perhaps, solve the problem at the source once rather than 7 billion times?
rexpop 7y ago
This is a nonsensical statement. Corporations are not "faceless entities," they have "free speech" rights and they act on the world. They are emergent agents. If, on the other hand, you insist on finding people to blame, I would start with the executives who ordered the design of the packaging that lends itself to litter.

bandushrew 7y ago

As someone else has said above: companies are using a material that lasts 10,000 years for items that are single-use. That should be outright illegal unless there are literally no alternatives. Its insanely wasteful when you view it like that.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Industry shifted blame, and created "keep America Beautiful" as part of lobbying against common sense regulation. Why shouldn't we shift blame back to the idiots what created it - for a bit more profit - once again?

rienbdj 7y ago

It doesn't matter whos fault it is. The only point in the system where we can reasonably fix it is at these companies.

rexpop 7y ago
Right. There isn't an ethical way to "upgrade" human operating system. It's infuriating to me how so many Hacker Newsites refuse to hold corporations accountable for their design flaws.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > It's infuriating to me how so many Hacker Newsites refuse to hold corporations accountable for their design flaws. I have a silent hope that each thread like this means some commenters who haven't thought about this much before will achieve the crucial insights, like: (per GP) assigning blame isn't productive, effective solutions are; (per you) there's no easy way to just make people "be better", at scale people are predictable and follow incentives, so the main points of intervention should be these incentives and systems that create them.
  - rexpop 7y ago
    > there's no easy way to just make people "be better" I found this sentiment echoed in an RSA video, just this morning: https://youtu.be/o5CTxckRywg https://youtu.be/o5CTxckRywg So, in the future, you can attribute it to Dan Lyons, author of "Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us".

forgotmypw3 7y ago

If 1% of billions of plastic bottles end up in the environment, that's still a lot of bottles. I bet that accidental litter, for which no one person is "to blame", is more than 1%. This is stuff like a bag tearing open, a trash can falling over, stuff falling off the truck.