17 ms·

Coke and Pepsi are getting sued for lying about recycling

255 points by ajaviaad 7y ago

larrik 7y ago
Overall, I think this is a good idea. a Lawsuit creates a financial incentive to behave better. However, > It’s likely that less than 5% of plastic produced today is getting recycled I've seen this repeated elsewhere, but what I really want to know is the % of plastics sent for recycling actually being recycled. Anything that wasn't turned in for recycling just doesn't count here, in my opinion.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  This is a good question given rampant fraud in the recycling industry. Things that should be recycled often end up in landfill or shipped abroad to South East Asia and dumped.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  Recycling is such a farce. Anything where you have mixed streams going into the recycling bin is quite likely to end up buried somewhere in a developing country. Even when they are recycled they end up being turned into insulation or some other secondary product. Growing up in Scotland we had a recycling system which was great. Irn Bru bottles were glass bottles with metal lids. The lid proudly announced that you could get 20p back for returning it (in the form of credit towards other purchases). The same trucks delivering stock took the empty bottles back to the distribution centre when they were cleaned, inspected and reused.
  - monk_e_boy 7y ago
    Glass and metal are a nightmare on the beach and in parks. Plastic sucks bad, but going back to glass isn't much better.
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      The system has been in place for at least 50 years. In my mum's day it was a common past time for her and her brothers to go hunting for what they called "glass cheques". The idea is to avoid it ending up where it shouldn't by incentivising good behaviour. If people can return the glass for money then few of them end up on the beach.
    - welly 7y ago
      I feel like that is a pretty insignificant issue compared with 8-20 million tons of plastics ending up in the sea.
    - lm28469 7y ago
      It's much better in almost every way besides weight. Much more reusable, not leaking any chemicals in soil/water/our bodies, &c.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      Not really. Both break down and are mostly inert.
    - magduf 7y ago
      Glass is inert and doesn't break down; anyone can pick up glass bottles that have been on the beach for decades, wash them out, and recycle them along with new glass. Metal degrades slowly if it's ferrous (iron/steel), but that isn't environmentally harmful. And it can all be readily recycled.
      - paulmd 7y ago
        I think the implication was what if some jackass smashes the bottles and you find them with your foot.
  - bluenose69 7y ago
    I grew up in Canada, several decades ago. At that time, everyone returned glass soft-drink bottles and beer bottles to the stores where the items were purchased. Milk was delivered in bottles, and the delivery person picked up the empty bottles we left on the porch the night before. Nobody would have thought of throwing the glass into the trash, even if there were no refunds. I think part of this was that so many people had a memory of the great depression, and waste was viewed as sinful. When plastic came in, the older folks washed plastic bags out so they could reuse them. You'd see them on the clothes lines, drying out. (Sure, people had indoor dryers, but clothes dried on the line not only saved on the electric bill but smelled so damned wonderful that it's hard to erase the memory of the delight in bringing things in off the line.)
    - VBprogrammer 7y ago
      Yes, we seem to have lost something in the last few generations. The mantra used to be reduce, reuse, recycle. The order is significant, recycling should be a last resort.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      The problem is that environmental people bikeshed and argue about everything. They don’t like glass or reuse because water is used for washing and you need to haul the empty bottle. Especially with the rise of e-commerce, there’s no reason why most consumer products couldn’t be delivered in reusable glass containers.
      - technotony 7y ago
        The problem is the return of the reusable containers. I've collaborating with several startups working on this problem. Shipping costs are 20-40% of COGS for many ecommerce catagories and you are basically doubling them when you require return for reuse and consumers don't want to pay the price premium that requires.
      - ntsplnkv2 7y ago
        What number of items actually need rewashing? Sure, foodstuffs. But why can we not refill our soaps, chemicals, etc. Laundry detergent? There is no need to wash those with water.
- my_username_is_ 7y ago
  There is still a societal cost to producing plastic, even if it isn't turned in for recycling. The article draws a comparison to smoking, and to (loosely) extend the analogy this cost would be similar to second-hand smoke. Some companies are starting to take responsibility for the full lifecycle of their products (Terracycle comes to mind, which helps companies reclaim and reuse their products at end-of-life). More businesses need to have this mindset if we are going to move towards a sustainable economy.
  - paulmd 7y ago
    > More businesses need to have this mindset if we are going to move towards a sustainable economy. Capitalism says they won't. Consumers as a whole favor cheaper products over sustainable ones. Regulation is how you solve that problem. Tax companies that use disposable packaging or don't manage their waste streams properly (however you define that) and they'll stop doing it. Recycling has always been the feel-good system to shift the blame for disposable packaging from companies to consumers. The term "littering" was literally invented to do just that, just like "jaywalking" was a way to shift the blame for traffic problems to pedestrians. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-campaigns/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-li...
    - my_username_is_ 7y ago
      >Capitalism says they won't. Consumers as a whole favor cheaper products over sustainable ones. I think we're seeing an increase of companies that are prioritizing sustainable practices, because both consumers and investors are demanding this. Not every company by any stretch of the imagination, but it's happening. See Blackrock's annual letter [1] for the investment side. One Percent for the Planet reports that Millennials are more willing to purchase products that have environmental or social benefits than the general public, which would suggest that this is a trend that's increasing[2]. >Regulation is how you solve that problem. Tax companies that use disposable packaging or don't manage their waste streams properly (however you define that) and they'll stop doing it. Definitely agreed that this would solve things a lot quicker and more completely. But in the absence of fitting regulation, people need to decide to do the right thing within their companies and get progress started. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/blackrocks-larry-fink-says-sustainability-is-the-top-investor-issue.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/blackrocks-larry-fink-says-s... [2] https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/business-members https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/business-members
overcast 7y ago
I feel like the entire concept of recycling from the very beginning has been a lie. Now we're all paying for what we thought was being handled properly. Edit: Plastic recycling.
- titanomachy 7y ago
  Aluminum recycling still makes economic sense, right?
  - overcast 7y ago
    Metals I'm sure make sense, at least the valuable ones. I was referring to only plastic recycling.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - anticensor 7y ago
    Aluminium, copper and 1st grade wood-free paper.
    - samatman 7y ago
      Steel as well, but in most places in the US you don't have to bin it separately, since it's magnetic and valuable, hence easy to remove from the waste stream.
  - jiveturkey 7y ago
    yes. it is evident by the fact that recycling centers still pay for aluminum.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    Depends on how you do it. Burning electronics in African open dumps to melt their metal parts is recycling and make economical sense. It doesn't mean it's a particularly good idea though.
lacker 7y ago
It seems very strange to attack Coke and Pepsi for this. Shouldn't the target be recycling programs that claim to be recycling plastic bottles, but actually don't?
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  If you knowingly produce single-use items that are neither biodegradable nor recyclable, you share culpability.
  - LanceH 7y ago
    What law or contract? How were the labels wrong? There is nothing in this article and I'm sure your view of all single use products must be biodegradable or recyclable isn't law.
    - wffurr 7y ago
      Moral culpability. It should be legal culpability as well, but we haven't written the law yet.
      - LanceH 7y ago
        This thread and the article are both about a lawsuit. Saying they should be culpable would imply legal culpability in this context, of which they have none.
        ectospheno 7y ago
        If you make a product where the packaging kills you then it is illegal. But if you make one where it kills lots of people much later then you are fine? Your theory makes the EPA rather pointless.
    - lm28469 7y ago
      Something being legal at a given point in time doesn't make it an absolute truth. Look at slavery, torture, age of consent, I'm sure it all sounded very good to the guys in charge back in the days. In a few centuries people will look back at us and wonder why the fuck we were so stupid. I mean, just think about it for a single second, who profit from these things beside big corporations, certainly not me, you or our future descendants.
srj 7y ago
There needs to be regulation that standardizes on container materials and shapes, optimizing for recyclability and ability to sort. Then there needs to be a financial incentive to use packaging that offers the highest reclaimation rates. I'm imagining something like the CAFE standards, encouraging ever increasing rates. I listened to a podcast with one of the former heads of the EPA and one of the challenges is that the petroleum industry actively favors non-reuse so they can keep selling more plastic. Edit: Here's the podcast: https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/to-the-point/the-high-cost-of-cheap-plastics https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/to-the-point/the-high-cost-o...
- grecy 7y ago
  If we were actually serious about saving the planet, we'd just pass laws that mandate companies have to use certain specified bottles, and give them no choice. But of course, lobbying and profits are more important.
  - pmlnr 7y ago
    It's not _that_ simple. Recycling doesn't care about shape, just material, and reusing has the problem of people putting random things in the bottle before sending it off - including toxic and/or corrosive materials, thus making reusing impossible.
    - smegger001 7y ago
      Use glass bottles. We used reuse glass soda and beer bottles all the time, part of your charge when purchasing these products was a bottle deposit that would be refunded upon return.
      - scrollaway 7y ago
        Okay, great, you solved the reuse of material problem. Now what about the difference in weight your solution creates? The added weight means more fuel consumed in transport, both from bottling to store and during recycling... I'm not saying your solution isn't better btw, I didn't do the math; just reminding you that it might not be as straightforward as "just do x".
titanomachy 7y ago
It seems like this problem has only been allowed to get so bad because it's a silent failure. We throw things in the recycling, and without any feedback we assume they are recycled. The failure should be pushed up the chain, at least to the consumer. The rules on what can be recycled should be realistic and consistently enforced, then people can make more informed choices (up to and including pushing for regulation on manufacturers).
- lm28469 7y ago
  That's the whole point of recycling, feeling good about ourselves. In reality the vast majority of the shit we throw away end up in open sky dump in Africa or China, but hey, I paid 80ct of "eco tax" on my $1k fridge so it's not my problem anymore. Just like using a paper straw at starbucks is doing absolutely nothing at all if you don't change the rest of your lifestyle. https://www.africanexponent.com/post/8588-the-west-is-dumping-electronic-waste-in-africa https://www.africanexponent.com/post/8588-the-west-is-dumpin... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/06/smelly-contaminated-disease-worlds-open-dumps https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/06/s... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/24/rotten-chicken-eggs-e-waste-from-europe-poisons-ghana-food-chain-agbogbloshie-accra https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/24/r...
  - mistrial9 7y ago
    the first city-wide recycling projects in the USA were faced with this kind of brick-wall reasoning in the 1970s, and yet have built successfully over and over.. the sideways reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an ideological driver here
    - lm28469 7y ago
      > the sideways reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an ideological driver here Yes clearly, thinking a few cents of eco tax will outweigh your ecological impact is like thinking using paper straws makes up for taking the plane once a week. It's nice "feel good" idea but it doesn't have any real world impact. Just look at every pollution related threads on HN, there are always a lot of people blaming China and Asia for having the most polluting rivers, while the majority of the shit ending in their rivers was consumed in the EU/US. Recycling really isn't much more than "I'll put it far away and from now on act like it doesn't exist anymore". Everything I read about recycling in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, is that it doesn't work very well and most of it is exported, so I'm not quite sure about which recycling projects you're talking about. https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018 https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/1570... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-plastic-america-global-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-pla... https://www.boell.de/en/2019/11/04/waste-exports-rubbish-dump-closed https://www.boell.de/en/2019/11/04/waste-exports-rubbish-dum... https://www.statista.com/chart/18229/biggest-exporters-of-plastic-waste-and-scrap/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18229/biggest-exporters-of-pl...
SeanFerree 7y ago
I'm glad they are getting sued, but this makes me sad
rhizome 7y ago
A few years ago I came up with the idea that instead of funding facial recognition, image-recognition technology could be used at dumps to recognize the brands associated with unrecycled trash passing through the chutes, then using that data to tax companies whose consumers create the most litter and throw away the most recyclables.
zoonosis 7y ago
What is the lie that Coke et al are being accused of making?
omegaworks 7y ago
This may be exactly the way to make change happen here in America. Corporations only understand the language of financial incentive. Coke and Pepsi and all single-use manufacturers need to be responsible for the costs of recycling the containers they create. In Germany, rulings and regulations in this vein have increased the proportion of recycled products to over 66%[1]. If corporations have no economic incentive to create recyclable products, they will act to externalize those costs as much as possible. With the worldwide economies of scale that Coke and Pepsi can leverage, we enter into a self-reinforcing plastic-industry sustaining death spiral. 1. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/dsd/dsd_aofw_ni/ni_pdfs/NationalReports/germany/waste.pdf https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/dsd/... [pdf warning]
jbobron 7y ago
shocked they aren't also getting sued for lying about having no sugar in diet/zero products
- bosswipe 7y ago
  Can you explain what you mean?
  - jbobron 7y ago
    artificial sweeteners just like real sugar are refined, processed, products that spike your insulin levels and cause all types of medical problems. To say that their product is zero sugar and zero calories is misleading and makes it seem as harmless as water.
    - bosswipe 7y ago
      I see, I wouldn't call it lying then. "Not sugar" does not imply "does not behave like sugar".
      - jbobron 7y ago
        Wat
        bosswipe 7y ago
        You claim that they're lying because their sweeteners behave like sugar inside the body. But they didn't claim that their products don't behave like sugar, they only claimed that they don't contain sugar, which is true.
Mirioron 7y ago
Shouldn't we want this to actually end up in a landfill? That would be at least some kind of a carbon sink.
- lastres0rt 7y ago
  That's less of a carbon sink and more of a kick-the-can approach (no pun intended).
bunchOfCucks 7y ago
California. Crazy. Sums it up.
travisporter 7y ago
May have been posted before, but I found it relevant that the "Georgia Recycling Coalition" put a hard stop on the suggestion of a bottle tax to help with recycling efforts. “With the investment that Coke is getting ready to make in Atlanta and in other major cities across the U.S. with this World Without Waste (campaign), it is not going to be a part of that conversation.” https://www.wypr.org/post/investigation-digs-eco-corruption-local-recycling-programs-re-air https://www.wypr.org/post/investigation-digs-eco-corruption-...
rconti 7y ago
I wish this went into what the factors are that make these products not recyclable. Contaminants attached to the product, I assume? Siggi's yogurt containers (the large ones, at least) have a paper label and a tab you can tear to completely remove the paper from the plastic so they can be recycled properly. Which, of course, made me realize that probably nothing ELSE with a label on it is recyclable in the way we think they are.
- carterehsmith 7y ago
  So, I wonder about these cardboard/paper containers that e.g. juice, milk, etc are being sold in. Are they biodegradable?
  - nikanj 7y ago
    Nope, they have a plastic lining on the inside to make them waterproof.
    - nitemice 7y ago
      Same is true of coffee cups, although there are a number of organizations (in Aus, at least) now that have processes for separating the plastic from the paper so it can be recycled. E.g. https://www.simplycups.com.au/how-it-works https://www.simplycups.com.au/how-it-works
sarah180 7y ago
Is "somebody filed a lawsuit" really "news"? No. It's really only news if it survives motions to dismiss.
tmikaeld 7y ago
Meanwhile, Oil companies like Shell, are investing in production facilities to supersize plastic production, now that oil prices have fallen. [0] And they are also trying to control the negative fallout [1] [0] https://qz.com/1689529/nurdles-are-the-biggest-pollution-disaster-youve-never-heard-of/ https://qz.com/1689529/nurdles-are-the-biggest-pollution-dis... [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90295292/the-worlds-big-plastic-makers-want-more-recycling-so-they-can-keep-pumping-out-plastic https://www.fastcompany.com/90295292/the-worlds-big-plastic-...

255 points by ajaviaad 7y ago

Overall, I think this is a good idea. a Lawsuit creates a financial incentive to behave better. However, > It’s likely that less than 5% of plastic produced today is getting recycled I've seen this repeated elsewhere, but what I really want to know is the % of plastics sent for recycling actually being recycled. Anything that wasn't turned in for recycling just doesn't count here, in my opinion.

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
This is a good question given rampant fraud in the recycling industry. Things that should be recycled often end up in landfill or shipped abroad to South East Asia and dumped.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
Recycling is such a farce. Anything where you have mixed streams going into the recycling bin is quite likely to end up buried somewhere in a developing country. Even when they are recycled they end up being turned into insulation or some other secondary product. Growing up in Scotland we had a recycling system which was great. Irn Bru bottles were glass bottles with metal lids. The lid proudly announced that you could get 20p back for returning it (in the form of credit towards other purchases). The same trucks delivering stock took the empty bottles back to the distribution centre when they were cleaned, inspected and reused.
- monk_e_boy 7y ago
  Glass and metal are a nightmare on the beach and in parks. Plastic sucks bad, but going back to glass isn't much better.
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    The system has been in place for at least 50 years. In my mum's day it was a common past time for her and her brothers to go hunting for what they called "glass cheques". The idea is to avoid it ending up where it shouldn't by incentivising good behaviour. If people can return the glass for money then few of them end up on the beach.
  - welly 7y ago
    I feel like that is a pretty insignificant issue compared with 8-20 million tons of plastics ending up in the sea.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    It's much better in almost every way besides weight. Much more reusable, not leaking any chemicals in soil/water/our bodies, &c.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Not really. Both break down and are mostly inert.
  - magduf 7y ago
    Glass is inert and doesn't break down; anyone can pick up glass bottles that have been on the beach for decades, wash them out, and recycle them along with new glass. Metal degrades slowly if it's ferrous (iron/steel), but that isn't environmentally harmful. And it can all be readily recycled.
    - paulmd 7y ago
      I think the implication was what if some jackass smashes the bottles and you find them with your foot.
- bluenose69 7y ago
  I grew up in Canada, several decades ago. At that time, everyone returned glass soft-drink bottles and beer bottles to the stores where the items were purchased. Milk was delivered in bottles, and the delivery person picked up the empty bottles we left on the porch the night before. Nobody would have thought of throwing the glass into the trash, even if there were no refunds. I think part of this was that so many people had a memory of the great depression, and waste was viewed as sinful. When plastic came in, the older folks washed plastic bags out so they could reuse them. You'd see them on the clothes lines, drying out. (Sure, people had indoor dryers, but clothes dried on the line not only saved on the electric bill but smelled so damned wonderful that it's hard to erase the memory of the delight in bringing things in off the line.)
  - VBprogrammer 7y ago
    Yes, we seem to have lost something in the last few generations. The mantra used to be reduce, reuse, recycle. The order is significant, recycling should be a last resort.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    The problem is that environmental people bikeshed and argue about everything. They don’t like glass or reuse because water is used for washing and you need to haul the empty bottle. Especially with the rise of e-commerce, there’s no reason why most consumer products couldn’t be delivered in reusable glass containers.
    - technotony 7y ago
      The problem is the return of the reusable containers. I've collaborating with several startups working on this problem. Shipping costs are 20-40% of COGS for many ecommerce catagories and you are basically doubling them when you require return for reuse and consumers don't want to pay the price premium that requires.
    - ntsplnkv2 7y ago
      What number of items actually need rewashing? Sure, foodstuffs. But why can we not refill our soaps, chemicals, etc. Laundry detergent? There is no need to wash those with water.
my_username_is_ 7y ago
There is still a societal cost to producing plastic, even if it isn't turned in for recycling. The article draws a comparison to smoking, and to (loosely) extend the analogy this cost would be similar to second-hand smoke. Some companies are starting to take responsibility for the full lifecycle of their products (Terracycle comes to mind, which helps companies reclaim and reuse their products at end-of-life). More businesses need to have this mindset if we are going to move towards a sustainable economy.
- paulmd 7y ago
  > More businesses need to have this mindset if we are going to move towards a sustainable economy. Capitalism says they won't. Consumers as a whole favor cheaper products over sustainable ones. Regulation is how you solve that problem. Tax companies that use disposable packaging or don't manage their waste streams properly (however you define that) and they'll stop doing it. Recycling has always been the feel-good system to shift the blame for disposable packaging from companies to consumers. The term "littering" was literally invented to do just that, just like "jaywalking" was a way to shift the blame for traffic problems to pedestrians. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-litter-campaigns/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-li...
  - my_username_is_ 7y ago
    >Capitalism says they won't. Consumers as a whole favor cheaper products over sustainable ones. I think we're seeing an increase of companies that are prioritizing sustainable practices, because both consumers and investors are demanding this. Not every company by any stretch of the imagination, but it's happening. See Blackrock's annual letter [1] for the investment side. One Percent for the Planet reports that Millennials are more willing to purchase products that have environmental or social benefits than the general public, which would suggest that this is a trend that's increasing[2]. >Regulation is how you solve that problem. Tax companies that use disposable packaging or don't manage their waste streams properly (however you define that) and they'll stop doing it. Definitely agreed that this would solve things a lot quicker and more completely. But in the absence of fitting regulation, people need to decide to do the right thing within their companies and get progress started. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/blackrocks-larry-fink-says-sustainability-is-the-top-investor-issue.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/blackrocks-larry-fink-says-s... [2] https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/business-members https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/business-members

overcast 7y ago

I feel like the entire concept of recycling from the very beginning has been a lie. Now we're all paying for what we thought was being handled properly. Edit: Plastic recycling.

titanomachy 7y ago
Aluminum recycling still makes economic sense, right?
- overcast 7y ago
  Metals I'm sure make sense, at least the valuable ones. I was referring to only plastic recycling.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- anticensor 7y ago
  Aluminium, copper and 1st grade wood-free paper.
  - samatman 7y ago
    Steel as well, but in most places in the US you don't have to bin it separately, since it's magnetic and valuable, hence easy to remove from the waste stream.
- jiveturkey 7y ago
  yes. it is evident by the fact that recycling centers still pay for aluminum.
- lm28469 7y ago
  Depends on how you do it. Burning electronics in African open dumps to melt their metal parts is recycling and make economical sense. It doesn't mean it's a particularly good idea though.

lacker 7y ago

It seems very strange to attack Coke and Pepsi for this. Shouldn't the target be recycling programs that claim to be recycling plastic bottles, but actually don't?

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
If you knowingly produce single-use items that are neither biodegradable nor recyclable, you share culpability.
- LanceH 7y ago
  What law or contract? How were the labels wrong? There is nothing in this article and I'm sure your view of all single use products must be biodegradable or recyclable isn't law.
  - wffurr 7y ago
    Moral culpability. It should be legal culpability as well, but we haven't written the law yet.
    - LanceH 7y ago
      This thread and the article are both about a lawsuit. Saying they should be culpable would imply legal culpability in this context, of which they have none.
      - ectospheno 7y ago
        If you make a product where the packaging kills you then it is illegal. But if you make one where it kills lots of people much later then you are fine? Your theory makes the EPA rather pointless.
  - lm28469 7y ago
    Something being legal at a given point in time doesn't make it an absolute truth. Look at slavery, torture, age of consent, I'm sure it all sounded very good to the guys in charge back in the days. In a few centuries people will look back at us and wonder why the fuck we were so stupid. I mean, just think about it for a single second, who profit from these things beside big corporations, certainly not me, you or our future descendants.

srj 7y ago

There needs to be regulation that standardizes on container materials and shapes, optimizing for recyclability and ability to sort. Then there needs to be a financial incentive to use packaging that offers the highest reclaimation rates. I'm imagining something like the CAFE standards, encouraging ever increasing rates. I listened to a podcast with one of the former heads of the EPA and one of the challenges is that the petroleum industry actively favors non-reuse so they can keep selling more plastic. Edit: Here's the podcast: https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/to-the-point/the-high-cost-of-cheap-plastics https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/to-the-point/the-high-cost-o...

grecy 7y ago
If we were actually serious about saving the planet, we'd just pass laws that mandate companies have to use certain specified bottles, and give them no choice. But of course, lobbying and profits are more important.
- pmlnr 7y ago
  It's not _that_ simple. Recycling doesn't care about shape, just material, and reusing has the problem of people putting random things in the bottle before sending it off - including toxic and/or corrosive materials, thus making reusing impossible.
  - smegger001 7y ago
    Use glass bottles. We used reuse glass soda and beer bottles all the time, part of your charge when purchasing these products was a bottle deposit that would be refunded upon return.
    - scrollaway 7y ago
      Okay, great, you solved the reuse of material problem. Now what about the difference in weight your solution creates? The added weight means more fuel consumed in transport, both from bottling to store and during recycling... I'm not saying your solution isn't better btw, I didn't do the math; just reminding you that it might not be as straightforward as "just do x".

titanomachy 7y ago

It seems like this problem has only been allowed to get so bad because it's a silent failure. We throw things in the recycling, and without any feedback we assume they are recycled. The failure should be pushed up the chain, at least to the consumer. The rules on what can be recycled should be realistic and consistently enforced, then people can make more informed choices (up to and including pushing for regulation on manufacturers).

lm28469 7y ago
That's the whole point of recycling, feeling good about ourselves. In reality the vast majority of the shit we throw away end up in open sky dump in Africa or China, but hey, I paid 80ct of "eco tax" on my $1k fridge so it's not my problem anymore. Just like using a paper straw at starbucks is doing absolutely nothing at all if you don't change the rest of your lifestyle. https://www.africanexponent.com/post/8588-the-west-is-dumping-electronic-waste-in-africa https://www.africanexponent.com/post/8588-the-west-is-dumpin... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/06/smelly-contaminated-disease-worlds-open-dumps https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/06/s... https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/24/rotten-chicken-eggs-e-waste-from-europe-poisons-ghana-food-chain-agbogbloshie-accra https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/24/r...
- mistrial9 7y ago
  the first city-wide recycling projects in the USA were faced with this kind of brick-wall reasoning in the 1970s, and yet have built successfully over and over.. the sideways reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an ideological driver here
  - lm28469 7y ago
    > the sideways reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an ideological driver here Yes clearly, thinking a few cents of eco tax will outweigh your ecological impact is like thinking using paper straws makes up for taking the plane once a week. It's nice "feel good" idea but it doesn't have any real world impact. Just look at every pollution related threads on HN, there are always a lot of people blaming China and Asia for having the most polluting rivers, while the majority of the shit ending in their rivers was consumed in the EU/US. Recycling really isn't much more than "I'll put it far away and from now on act like it doesn't exist anymore". Everything I read about recycling in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, is that it doesn't work very well and most of it is exported, so I'm not quite sure about which recycling projects you're talking about. https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157000-shipping-containers-of-us-plastic-waste-exported-to-countries-with-poor-waste-management-in-2018 https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/1570... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-plastic-america-global-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-pla... https://www.boell.de/en/2019/11/04/waste-exports-rubbish-dump-closed https://www.boell.de/en/2019/11/04/waste-exports-rubbish-dum... https://www.statista.com/chart/18229/biggest-exporters-of-plastic-waste-and-scrap/ https://www.statista.com/chart/18229/biggest-exporters-of-pl...

SeanFerree 7y ago

I'm glad they are getting sued, but this makes me sad

rhizome 7y ago

A few years ago I came up with the idea that instead of funding facial recognition, image-recognition technology could be used at dumps to recognize the brands associated with unrecycled trash passing through the chutes, then using that data to tax companies whose consumers create the most litter and throw away the most recyclables.

zoonosis 7y ago

What is the lie that Coke et al are being accused of making?

omegaworks 7y ago

This may be exactly the way to make change happen here in America. Corporations only understand the language of financial incentive. Coke and Pepsi and all single-use manufacturers need to be responsible for the costs of recycling the containers they create. In Germany, rulings and regulations in this vein have increased the proportion of recycled products to over 66%[1]. If corporations have no economic incentive to create recyclable products, they will act to externalize those costs as much as possible. With the worldwide economies of scale that Coke and Pepsi can leverage, we enter into a self-reinforcing plastic-industry sustaining death spiral. 1. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/dsd/dsd_aofw_ni/ni_pdfs/NationalReports/germany/waste.pdf https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/dsd/... [pdf warning]

jbobron 7y ago

shocked they aren't also getting sued for lying about having no sugar in diet/zero products

bosswipe 7y ago
Can you explain what you mean?
- jbobron 7y ago
  artificial sweeteners just like real sugar are refined, processed, products that spike your insulin levels and cause all types of medical problems. To say that their product is zero sugar and zero calories is misleading and makes it seem as harmless as water.
  - bosswipe 7y ago
    I see, I wouldn't call it lying then. "Not sugar" does not imply "does not behave like sugar".
    - jbobron 7y ago
      Wat
      - bosswipe 7y ago
        You claim that they're lying because their sweeteners behave like sugar inside the body. But they didn't claim that their products don't behave like sugar, they only claimed that they don't contain sugar, which is true.

Mirioron 7y ago

Shouldn't we want this to actually end up in a landfill? That would be at least some kind of a carbon sink.

lastres0rt 7y ago
That's less of a carbon sink and more of a kick-the-can approach (no pun intended).

bunchOfCucks 7y ago

California. Crazy. Sums it up.

travisporter 7y ago

May have been posted before, but I found it relevant that the "Georgia Recycling Coalition" put a hard stop on the suggestion of a bottle tax to help with recycling efforts. “With the investment that Coke is getting ready to make in Atlanta and in other major cities across the U.S. with this World Without Waste (campaign), it is not going to be a part of that conversation.” https://www.wypr.org/post/investigation-digs-eco-corruption-local-recycling-programs-re-air https://www.wypr.org/post/investigation-digs-eco-corruption-...

rconti 7y ago

I wish this went into what the factors are that make these products not recyclable. Contaminants attached to the product, I assume? Siggi's yogurt containers (the large ones, at least) have a paper label and a tab you can tear to completely remove the paper from the plastic so they can be recycled properly. Which, of course, made me realize that probably nothing ELSE with a label on it is recyclable in the way we think they are.

carterehsmith 7y ago
So, I wonder about these cardboard/paper containers that e.g. juice, milk, etc are being sold in. Are they biodegradable?
- nikanj 7y ago
  Nope, they have a plastic lining on the inside to make them waterproof.
  - nitemice 7y ago
    Same is true of coffee cups, although there are a number of organizations (in Aus, at least) now that have processes for separating the plastic from the paper so it can be recycled. E.g. https://www.simplycups.com.au/how-it-works https://www.simplycups.com.au/how-it-works

sarah180 7y ago

Is "somebody filed a lawsuit" really "news"? No. It's really only news if it survives motions to dismiss.

tmikaeld 7y ago

Meanwhile, Oil companies like Shell, are investing in production facilities to supersize plastic production, now that oil prices have fallen. [0] And they are also trying to control the negative fallout [1] [0] https://qz.com/1689529/nurdles-are-the-biggest-pollution-disaster-youve-never-heard-of/ https://qz.com/1689529/nurdles-are-the-biggest-pollution-dis... [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90295292/the-worlds-big-plastic-makers-want-more-recycling-so-they-can-keep-pumping-out-plastic https://www.fastcompany.com/90295292/the-worlds-big-plastic-...