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This is LUDICROUS. Recycling is harder than doing your taxes. We desperately need uniformity on this. "BEVERAGE BOTTLES Recyclable. Be sure to remove the pla

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 size of the opening have to do with it? "The How2Recycle label is showing up on more products at the grocery store ... GreenBlue says that there are more than 2,500 variations of the label in circulation" 2500 different recycling rules?! This is not a consumer-level problem. It's completely ridiculous to expect millions of ordinary people to succeed at this kind of task on a daily or weekly basis. It needs to be solved further up the supply chain, or processors need to be centralized and standardized. Period.

SapporoChris 7y ago
Instead of raging against. Perhaps consider solutions. Example: In Japan, the plastic film label is perforated no glue is utilized. It is fairly easily removed. More difficult simply tossing a bottle, sure. Think for a moment instead of raging. 2500 variations does not mean 2500 different recycling rules. There are more than 2500 variations of your potential mate, that doesn't mean there's 2500 different ways to mate. It is a consumer problem, consumers will have to deal with the results.
- benrbray 7y ago
  You just suggested a way that manufacturers can make it easier for consumers to recycle, did you not? You seem to be confirming the OP's point, which is that the current state of recycling is rage-inducing.
spodek 7y ago
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 solution doesn't work for someone, but I hope people do similar so the manufacturers' warehouses fill with plastic instead of the oceans and they stop producing it.
- esotericn 7y ago
  Yep. Not only do you avoid plastic but you eat better too because you have hard lines that are not to be crossed. No more chocolate bars, ready meals, pot noodles, bags of crisps or whatever else. Even if you end up buying a bag of rice in plastic you're cutting down the waste by a huge amount because even a small one gives you ten or more servings.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    And larger containers have less surface area:volume —> less packaging. Which is why I really hate it when manufacturers reduce pack sizes.
    - esotericn 7y ago
      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.
      - Scoundreller 7y ago
        I’ve seen OJ go from 2L to 1.89, and now 1.75L. Pasta: 1kg to 908g. It’s bullshit.
        gdwatson 7y ago
        They're going from metric to US measures?
        jfk13 7y ago
        They're increasing the price without changing the price tag.
        hanche 7y ago
eloff 7y ago
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.
- paultopia 7y ago
  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.
  - jgibson 7y ago
    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
    - flukus 7y ago
      > Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging Cigarette companies have already fought and lost legal battles forcing them to use standard plain packaging, so complaining is about all they can do.
    - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
      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.”
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - 7y ago
TylerE 7y ago
It's really pretty simple if you actually care about results. Is it aluminum? Recycle it. Is is not aluminum? Don't recycle it.
- knowaveragejoe 7y ago
  Plastic bottles are pretty much all included according to this site. There's no reason not to include them too.
  - TylerE 7y ago
    It takes more energy to ship and reprocess them than you save. That's why you don't. If you do, it's explicitly because it makes you feel good - it's worse for the planet.
    - xugy 7y ago
      Source?
      - csears 7y ago
        Thomas Kinnaman was interviewed on Planet Money recently and mentioned roughly this conclusion based on his 2014 study. More details here: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/07/15/why_its_probably_better_for_the_planet_to_throw_plastic_in_the_trash.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/07/15/why_its_pro...
      - shkkmo 7y ago
        Plastic and Glass recycling can be borderline and it depends on the specific local implementation. Either way, the savings are never going to be massive and it is an open question if it is worth the effort. (Glass re-use is different) Aluminum is completely different. Prices for aluminum recycling per ton is an order of magnitude higher than other recyclables.
      - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
        This is what the big kerfuffle is all about. All we’ve been doing is paying the Chinese and Malaysians to feed our plastics to the dolphins for us. Now they won’t take it, and people here get upset if you feed the animals, we’re realise the whole deception for what it is. Edit to add sources: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/whale-dies-88-pounds-plastic-philippines/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/whale... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/malaysia-to-send-up-to-100-tonnes-of-plastic-waste-back-to-australia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/malaysia-to-se... Self evident that if it were economically & environmentally sound to recycle we wouldn’t be shipping it around the planet to do so.
darksaints 7y ago
The sorting absolutely should be done downstream, ideally with robots doing the vast majority of the work.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  It is done that way. Thats how you can put a aluminum can and cardboard in the same bin. But what does a robot do when a tictac container comes in with a Polyethylene body and a Polypropylene lid. Does it sit there with high precision fingers trying to pick the glued in lid off?
  - abraae 7y ago
    It uses its fricking lasers, obviously!
aznpwnzor 7y ago
reduce and reuse are much easier than doing taxes, but they're not in speculative shareholder corporate interest
skybrian 7y ago
Yes it's pretty bad. What it comes down to is: follow the local rules. If you don't know the local rules or are unsure, err on the side of keeping the recycling clean and throw it out. (Landfills are quite good at keeping plastic out of the environment. It's the stuff that doesn't make it into the landfill that you have to worry about.)
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  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.
  - skybrian 7y ago
    Yes, someone needs to write a really good web app, like those that exist for transit.
    - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
      But also some regulations to keep the permutations down would be super helpful. Mandating that all the things are recyclable would be super helpful.
oska 7y ago
It's only ludicrous because the plastics industry wants to pretend that plastics are recyclable when, mostly, they're not (because it's impractical or uneconomic). The rules for recycling when you exclude all plastics are pretty simple.
SECProto 7y ago
> FFS. Have you ever tried to remove [beverage bottle] labels? It's impossible. As a consumer in North America, it's not easy. Japan has stronger national regulations, however, and beverage bottles universally have labels with either perforated strips or peel-up corners, to facilitate removal. Plastic caps are also easily removed from glass bottles - peel the cover back and it splits in half and releases from the bottle. So, agreed on your final point. It can be done easily, and not necessarily at additional cost. Manufacturers just haven't been motivated to do so.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > As a consumer in North America, it's not easy. Japan has stronger national regulations, however, and beverage bottles universally have labels with either perforated strips or peel-up corners, to facilitate removal. Plastic caps are also easily removed from glass bottles - peel the cover back and it splits in half and releases from the bottle. OTOH Japan wraps pretty much everything in plastic, usually multiple times over.
  - SECProto 7y ago
    And they burn their garbage, turning thin-film plastics into fuel pretty much as cleanly as the stock used to make the plastic. I much prefer that to making a huge hill with poorly-compacted trash, covering with soil and claiming "problem solved". Their usage of plastic is higher in some specific instances (omiyage, cookie or snack packages, and convenience stores come to mind), but equivalent to North America in others (standard meat comes in a shrink-wrapped styrofoam tray, vegetables/fruit come loose or a single layer of packaging, grocery stores charge for plastic bags). Despite the meme, I don't think their plastic usage is all that significantly higher outside a few specific instances.
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Hey, you should see how they do it in Japan (there are about 20 containers for recycling, everything must be disassembled). And...people actually do it.
- kalleboo 7y ago
  In Japan like anywhere else, recycling depends on the municipality. Where I live, we have like 6 different containers (PET bottles, other plastic, glass+cans, cardboard/paper, burnable garbage, unburnable garbage). Coming from Sweden, it's actually a bit easier here (e.g. in Sweden cans, clear glass, colored glass were all separate, and aluminum drink cans had a deposit so you took them to the supermarket)
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
Absolutely 100% what you said. But now the question is: why pretty much NO government has ever succeeded in this? My view is that the only hope is an EU-wide requirement to change packaging, etc to be able to still sell to the EU. That would be a big enough market for every single company to comply.
- Tharkun 7y ago
  Belgium allegedly had an 85+% recycling rate, though I have no idea what all this stuff gets recycled to, and I suspect it gets downcycled to useless garbage.
tzs 7y ago
> "The How2Recycle label is showing up on more products at the grocery store ... GreenBlue says that there are more than 2,500 variations of the label in circulation" 2500 different recycling rules?! I don't think 2500 variations is actually excessive, when you look at how the labels actually work. The label has four parts [1]: • One part tells what preparation is needed, such as whether you need to rinse the item before recycling, whether you need to remove the label, and things like that. There are 13 possible options for this part. • The next part tells you if the item is widely recycled, not yet recycled, requires store drop off, or varies from place to place. There are 4 possible options for this part. • The next part lists the type of material the item is made from, such as paper or glass. There are 6 options. • Finally, the last part tells what part of the item the label applies to. Values include bottle, tray, insert, and 6 others, for a total of 9 options. 13 x 4 x 6 x 9 = 2808. Also, a given product can have more than one label. E.g., a frozen entree might have a label for the plastic tray it is in, another label for the plastic film that covers the tray, and a third label for the box that the tray is sold in. [1] https://www.how2recycle.info/labels https://www.how2recycle.info/labels
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's still ridiculous to make this a problem of every individual, though. > last part tells what part of the item the label applies to (...) given product can have more than one label. E.g., a frozen entree might have a label for the plastic tray it is in, another label for the plastic film that covers the tray, and a third label for the box that the tray is sold in. This alone cuts down on amount of useful/correct sorting done. The worst is packaging you actually have to disassemble yourself - e.g. something that looks like cardboard (but probably has a thin layer of plastic on top of it; you can't easily tell), but has inserts of thin transparent plastic. > whether you need to rinse the item before recycling And this, I believe, essentially kills of recycling as an idea. Not only most people won't bother (and it's a coin toss whether they'll throw the dirty container into general/non-recyclable or recyclable bin), individuals cleaning plastic packaging is a ridiculously inefficient use of water, energy for heating that water, and likely detergent too. I don't have numbers on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the resource use delta between individuals cleaning and doing the cleaning at recycling plant is actually greater than recycling process itself saves.
itronitron 7y ago
regarding the size of the bottle opening, my understanding is that the automatic sorting machines at the recyclery 'work better' on bottles with a narrow opening because they are easier to push around with jets of air, but they could also be concerned that other items will get trapped inside a wide mouth plastic container and confound the sorting machine...
benj111 7y ago
"Recycling is harder than doing your taxes" Living in a country where the majority, including me doesnt have to deal with their taxes, I cant help thinking maybe that's the solution. Whether the onus is put on manufacturers to make things trivially recyclable, or on recyclers to sort of a big bag of mixed waste, or some combination I don't know. Does seem silly for everyone to have to become domain experts in recycling though.

SapporoChris 7y ago

Instead of raging against. Perhaps consider solutions. Example: In Japan, the plastic film label is perforated no glue is utilized. It is fairly easily removed. More difficult simply tossing a bottle, sure. Think for a moment instead of raging. 2500 variations does not mean 2500 different recycling rules. There are more than 2500 variations of your potential mate, that doesn't mean there's 2500 different ways to mate. It is a consumer problem, consumers will have to deal with the results.

benrbray 7y ago
You just suggested a way that manufacturers can make it easier for consumers to recycle, did you not? You seem to be confirming the OP's point, which is that the current state of recycling is rage-inducing.

spodek 7y ago

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 solution doesn't work for someone, but I hope people do similar so the manufacturers' warehouses fill with plastic instead of the oceans and they stop producing it.

esotericn 7y ago
Yep. Not only do you avoid plastic but you eat better too because you have hard lines that are not to be crossed. No more chocolate bars, ready meals, pot noodles, bags of crisps or whatever else. Even if you end up buying a bag of rice in plastic you're cutting down the waste by a huge amount because even a small one gives you ten or more servings.
- Scoundreller 7y ago
  And larger containers have less surface area:volume —> less packaging. Which is why I really hate it when manufacturers reduce pack sizes.
  - esotericn 7y ago
    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.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      I’ve seen OJ go from 2L to 1.89, and now 1.75L. Pasta: 1kg to 908g. It’s bullshit.
      - gdwatson 7y ago
        They're going from metric to US measures?
        jfk13 7y ago
        They're increasing the price without changing the price tag.
        hanche 7y ago

eloff 7y ago

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.

paultopia 7y ago
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.
- jgibson 7y ago
  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
  - flukus 7y ago
    > Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging Cigarette companies have already fought and lost legal battles forcing them to use standard plain packaging, so complaining is about all they can do.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    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.”
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- 7y ago

TylerE 7y ago

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

knowaveragejoe 7y ago
Plastic bottles are pretty much all included according to this site. There's no reason not to include them too.
- TylerE 7y ago
  It takes more energy to ship and reprocess them than you save. That's why you don't. If you do, it's explicitly because it makes you feel good - it's worse for the planet.
  - xugy 7y ago
    Source?
    - csears 7y ago
      Thomas Kinnaman was interviewed on Planet Money recently and mentioned roughly this conclusion based on his 2014 study. More details here: https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/07/15/why_its_probably_better_for_the_planet_to_throw_plastic_in_the_trash.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2019/07/15/why_its_pro...
    - shkkmo 7y ago
      Plastic and Glass recycling can be borderline and it depends on the specific local implementation. Either way, the savings are never going to be massive and it is an open question if it is worth the effort. (Glass re-use is different) Aluminum is completely different. Prices for aluminum recycling per ton is an order of magnitude higher than other recyclables.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      This is what the big kerfuffle is all about. All we’ve been doing is paying the Chinese and Malaysians to feed our plastics to the dolphins for us. Now they won’t take it, and people here get upset if you feed the animals, we’re realise the whole deception for what it is. Edit to add sources: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/whale-dies-88-pounds-plastic-philippines/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/03/whale... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/malaysia-to-send-up-to-100-tonnes-of-plastic-waste-back-to-australia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/29/malaysia-to-se... Self evident that if it were economically & environmentally sound to recycle we wouldn’t be shipping it around the planet to do so.

darksaints 7y ago

The sorting absolutely should be done downstream, ideally with robots doing the vast majority of the work.

baroffoos 7y ago
It is done that way. Thats how you can put a aluminum can and cardboard in the same bin. But what does a robot do when a tictac container comes in with a Polyethylene body and a Polypropylene lid. Does it sit there with high precision fingers trying to pick the glued in lid off?
- abraae 7y ago
  It uses its fricking lasers, obviously!

aznpwnzor 7y ago

reduce and reuse are much easier than doing taxes, but they're not in speculative shareholder corporate interest

skybrian 7y ago

Yes it's pretty bad. What it comes down to is: follow the local rules. If you don't know the local rules or are unsure, err on the side of keeping the recycling clean and throw it out. (Landfills are quite good at keeping plastic out of the environment. It's the stuff that doesn't make it into the landfill that you have to worry about.)

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
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.
- skybrian 7y ago
  Yes, someone needs to write a really good web app, like those that exist for transit.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    But also some regulations to keep the permutations down would be super helpful. Mandating that all the things are recyclable would be super helpful.

oska 7y ago

It's only ludicrous because the plastics industry wants to pretend that plastics are recyclable when, mostly, they're not (because it's impractical or uneconomic). The rules for recycling when you exclude all plastics are pretty simple.

SECProto 7y ago

> FFS. Have you ever tried to remove [beverage bottle] labels? It's impossible. As a consumer in North America, it's not easy. Japan has stronger national regulations, however, and beverage bottles universally have labels with either perforated strips or peel-up corners, to facilitate removal. Plastic caps are also easily removed from glass bottles - peel the cover back and it splits in half and releases from the bottle. So, agreed on your final point. It can be done easily, and not necessarily at additional cost. Manufacturers just haven't been motivated to do so.

masklinn 7y ago
> As a consumer in North America, it's not easy. Japan has stronger national regulations, however, and beverage bottles universally have labels with either perforated strips or peel-up corners, to facilitate removal. Plastic caps are also easily removed from glass bottles - peel the cover back and it splits in half and releases from the bottle. OTOH Japan wraps pretty much everything in plastic, usually multiple times over.
- SECProto 7y ago
  And they burn their garbage, turning thin-film plastics into fuel pretty much as cleanly as the stock used to make the plastic. I much prefer that to making a huge hill with poorly-compacted trash, covering with soil and claiming "problem solved". Their usage of plastic is higher in some specific instances (omiyage, cookie or snack packages, and convenience stores come to mind), but equivalent to North America in others (standard meat comes in a shrink-wrapped styrofoam tray, vegetables/fruit come loose or a single layer of packaging, grocery stores charge for plastic bags). Despite the meme, I don't think their plastic usage is all that significantly higher outside a few specific instances.

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Hey, you should see how they do it in Japan (there are about 20 containers for recycling, everything must be disassembled). And...people actually do it.

kalleboo 7y ago
In Japan like anywhere else, recycling depends on the municipality. Where I live, we have like 6 different containers (PET bottles, other plastic, glass+cans, cardboard/paper, burnable garbage, unburnable garbage). Coming from Sweden, it's actually a bit easier here (e.g. in Sweden cans, clear glass, colored glass were all separate, and aluminum drink cans had a deposit so you took them to the supermarket)

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

Absolutely 100% what you said. But now the question is: why pretty much NO government has ever succeeded in this? My view is that the only hope is an EU-wide requirement to change packaging, etc to be able to still sell to the EU. That would be a big enough market for every single company to comply.

Tharkun 7y ago
Belgium allegedly had an 85+% recycling rate, though I have no idea what all this stuff gets recycled to, and I suspect it gets downcycled to useless garbage.

tzs 7y ago

> "The How2Recycle label is showing up on more products at the grocery store ... GreenBlue says that there are more than 2,500 variations of the label in circulation" 2500 different recycling rules?! I don't think 2500 variations is actually excessive, when you look at how the labels actually work. The label has four parts [1]: • One part tells what preparation is needed, such as whether you need to rinse the item before recycling, whether you need to remove the label, and things like that. There are 13 possible options for this part. • The next part tells you if the item is widely recycled, not yet recycled, requires store drop off, or varies from place to place. There are 4 possible options for this part. • The next part lists the type of material the item is made from, such as paper or glass. There are 6 options. • Finally, the last part tells what part of the item the label applies to. Values include bottle, tray, insert, and 6 others, for a total of 9 options. 13 x 4 x 6 x 9 = 2808. Also, a given product can have more than one label. E.g., a frozen entree might have a label for the plastic tray it is in, another label for the plastic film that covers the tray, and a third label for the box that the tray is sold in. [1] https://www.how2recycle.info/labels https://www.how2recycle.info/labels

TeMPOraL 7y ago
It's still ridiculous to make this a problem of every individual, though. > last part tells what part of the item the label applies to (...) given product can have more than one label. E.g., a frozen entree might have a label for the plastic tray it is in, another label for the plastic film that covers the tray, and a third label for the box that the tray is sold in. This alone cuts down on amount of useful/correct sorting done. The worst is packaging you actually have to disassemble yourself - e.g. something that looks like cardboard (but probably has a thin layer of plastic on top of it; you can't easily tell), but has inserts of thin transparent plastic. > whether you need to rinse the item before recycling And this, I believe, essentially kills of recycling as an idea. Not only most people won't bother (and it's a coin toss whether they'll throw the dirty container into general/non-recyclable or recyclable bin), individuals cleaning plastic packaging is a ridiculously inefficient use of water, energy for heating that water, and likely detergent too. I don't have numbers on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the resource use delta between individuals cleaning and doing the cleaning at recycling plant is actually greater than recycling process itself saves.

itronitron 7y ago

regarding the size of the bottle opening, my understanding is that the automatic sorting machines at the recyclery 'work better' on bottles with a narrow opening because they are easier to push around with jets of air, but they could also be concerned that other items will get trapped inside a wide mouth plastic container and confound the sorting machine...

benj111 7y ago

"Recycling is harder than doing your taxes" Living in a country where the majority, including me doesnt have to deal with their taxes, I cant help thinking maybe that's the solution. Whether the onus is put on manufacturers to make things trivially recyclable, or on recyclers to sort of a big bag of mixed waste, or some combination I don't know. Does seem silly for everyone to have to become domain experts in recycling though.