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Personally, I'm happy that personal recycling hit a bump when China rejected dirty channels. It was marketed in the 80s-00s as more of a panacea than it is, an
by ethbro 7y ago
Personally, I'm happy that personal recycling hit a bump when China rejected dirty channels.
It was marketed in the 80s-00s as more of a panacea than it is, and specifically seems to have inculcated a dangerously willful ignorance of further action. I.e. "I already do the recycling thing, so I do my part."
From why I can tell, the toxicity, micro-plastic, and energy concerns are the primary mass-scale benefits? In that order?
The majority of which could be reaped at scale by funding toxic material collection programs, mandating less toxic material choices, and re-instituting a bottle tax+.
In return, we've let major, industrial-scale environmental catastrophes go unmitigated, because out of sight, out of mind.
From my reading, the 1970s push for recycling was always predicated as a vanguard movement, intended to educate the populace at large about environmental issues.
The expectation was that we would then pivot to tackle more difficult problems.
Instead, we have 50 years of patting ourselves on the back for hauling cardboard out to our suburban recycling containers.
+ Looking at you, Coke and Pepsi, for fighting bottle taxes around the world.
- grecy 7y agoIt always staggers me that people in many developed countries are so proud they recycle. Recycling is the worst good thing we should be doing. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In that order. I've been to many, many developing countries around the world that have extremely good reuse programs for their bottles, and it works extremely well.
- javajosh 7y ago> developing countries around the world that have extremely good reuse programs for their bottles, and it works extremely well. In fairness, Germany is a developed country with extremely good reuse programs. Glass beer bottles are often totally reused. You can, if you want, avoid plastics entirely and just buy drinks glass containers. The local supermarkets all have return bins; all restaurants will take them, although they won't give you your deposit - which seems like a very fair deal to me. The one odd exception is milk. A classic example of American container reuse, but I don't see any milk sold in glass in Germany.
- _Microft 7y agoMilk in returnable bottles exists here. The bottles usually look like this: https://contentpool.wirtschaftsverlag.at/files/uploads/images/2019/03/12/spar_natur_pur_bergbauern_bio-milch_jetzt_in_der_mehrweg-glasflasche.jpg https://contentpool.wirtschaftsverlag.at/files/uploads/image... From the look it is a half-liter bottle (we usually buy cream like this), there are 1 liter bottles for milk that look almost the same.
- javajosh 7y agoHmm. They don't sell that at Lidl - and are you sure the containers are reused? I don't see the tell-tale scuff ring.
- _Microft 7y agoYou can find them at Rewe or Edeka for example. It is a Mehrwegflasche which means they are cleaned and reused instead of being recycled. What is a scuff ring by the way? Is it this ring that tears off from plastic caps at e.g. Coca Cola bottles when opening them?
- javajosh 7y agoHere is a photo that shows what I mean: https://images.app.goo.gl/hnbaFiZtWAN7Aj5x5 https://images.app.goo.gl/hnbaFiZtWAN7Aj5x5 It looks like the bottles rub against each other at that point, and it indicates the bottle is old/has been used a bunch of times. Is there a German word for it?
- _Microft 7y agoThanks! They are called "Umlaufspuren" (literally ~traces of circulation) according to the german Wikipedia-page for "Mehrwegflaschen." I will look out for them.
- stinos 7y agoThis used to exist, and was even fairly common, in many countries. Moreover it was brought to your door by the milkman. And that milkman sometimes also had eggs and even vegetables from local farmers. This disappeared, driven by economics/capitalism/'supermarket=freedom'/..., not because it's bad per se. In fact there's quite some benefits to that whole system from an ecological point of view. Which leads to sort of funny situations: locally it's been about 20 years since the milkman made his last round. Now there's again a company starting to do a similar thing (bring bottled milk/juice, local farmer's products to your door weekly) and some people who don't know better consider it revolutionary, and the poor company can't keep up with demand :)