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We need to focus on the second R, reuse. I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which n
by Ensorceled 6y ago
We need to focus on the second R, reuse.
I have mason jars that my grandmother and then my mother used for pickling. The only waste is the rubber ring which needs to be replaced occasionally and THAT could be recycled. Many of these bottles have been used for 80+ years now. I have a few Ball jars which my GREAT grandmother used 100+ years ago.
Beer bottles in Canada are reused dozens of times and are recyclable (brown glass) when broken or worn out.
The only containers which are infinitely recyclable are aluminum and coloured glass (nearly), but that takes energy.
Plastics are not currently infinitely recyclable as the polymer chains break down. A lot of plastic is simply not recyclable at all in most of North America [1]
We need to just force manufacturers to bear the costs of recycling their products 100%: everybody would switch to reusable and this current clam shell packaging disaster would come to a close.
[1] https://apps.npr.org/plastics-recycling/ https://apps.npr.org/plastics-recycling/
- adrianN 6y agoReduce, Reuse, Recycle, in that order. A lot of things don't need so much packaging in the first place.
- ed_elliott_asc 6y agoWe need a www.packagingdisasters.com which name and shame the worst packaging disasters.
- FroshKiller 6y agoWe need legislation with teeth.
- rikroots 6y agoReduce, Reuse, Refurbish, Recycle, Composting, Energy from waste, Incineration, Landfill - that was the basics of the Waste Hierarchy when I worked on the Waste Strategy for England back in the late 1990s. I don't know if the order has shifted much over the past couple of decades. The EU Packaging Directive seems to be getting more robust - I remember the first Directive was a bit weak and too open to national interpretation so it's good to see they seem to have introduced hard recycling targets and put a lot more emphasis on the need for producer responsibility schemes for packaging - https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=1595838206165&uri=LEGISSUM:l21207 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?qid=15958382...
- Ensorceled 6y agoReduce is a consumer focused, it's a failing strategy. Reducing to 1% of what we currently throw away would still destroy the planet. Making reuse the centre point forces reduce to also happen, if your product has to ship in reusable containers, they are going to be smaller anyway. Products that don't need containers will stop using them again.
- adrianN 6y agoReducing to 1% would destroy the planet a hundred times slower, which is not bad. I agree that the correct strategy is not encouraging consumers to choose products with less packaging, but instead we need to strongly incentivize producers to reduce packaging. Appropriate laws need to be written and the costs of packaging completely internalized via taxes.
- masklinn 6y ago> We need to focus on the second R, reuse. That means you need to end both single-use containers and selling stuff in containers entirely. There’s only do much of one type of reusable container you even can have a use for, and that’s assuming you do even have a use for them in the first place: I don’t make jam at home, I buy it, I don’t have a use for a new jam jar a month, and every jam-making friend has more jars than they could ever use (seriously, I used to stock jars for my parents until they stopped canning, then tried giving my stock away, about a third of which found I interest, the rest went to recycling).
- Ensorceled 6y agoWhy couldn't jam manufacturers just use returnable bottles? The beer companies in Ontario do, soda bottles are returnable and reusable in many places.
- srtjstjsj 6y agoThey could, but no one wants to pay extra effort and energy cost when it's easier to make new glass from dirt.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoNo one wants to breath polluted air or drink polluted after, yet here we are. Rich producers just keep moving further away from the problems they create. Or they maintain their ignorance through a delicately balanced series of mental gymnastics.
- shawnz 6y agoCorporations don't have feelings... negative externalities need to be priced or there's no reason to expect a corporation to pay attention to them.
- justinph 6y agoThen this is a perfect case for regulation, to make it cost more to make new glass than re-use existing containers. It worked in the past just fine. But the first world incentivized energy production so much that we drove down the need to be efficient.
- dmos62 6y agoThose are really good points. A good approach to incentivize everyone to do the right thing is to make it the least expensive option. That either requires some lucky tech breakthrough (super unlikely) or a strong government. A recyclability tax, where the producer pays a tax that corresponds to how much it will cost to recycle their product. Maybe collect data of how much of their product is actually recycled. That would force producers to consider reuse, recycling, etc. Banning disposable packaging. Want potato chips? Bring a special reusable (and relatively expensive) bag to the dispenser, have it unload some chips and do whatever trick is necessary to keep the chips dehydrated and crisp. You can also only ban disposable packaging that could have negative environmental effect. Maybe something made out of some fungi or hay or something could just be treated like compost waste.
- Ensorceled 6y agoThe beer bottle consortium in Ontario is a good model, the beer bottles have been shared among all the brewers for decades and returned for deposit to common locations. This monopoly has a few issues of course but it's a good template.
- dvdkhlng 6y agoWe have something like what you propose in germany [1]. Basically it causes the producers of packaging to end up paying for the disposal of the corresponding trash. This creates an incentitive for producers to make the packaging less wasteful. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)#German_dual_system_of_waste_collection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Dot_(symbol)#German_dual...
- wink 6y agoKinda bullshit though, it's been around for ages and in many regions there's no proper waste management. Where I live you have to collect it separately and bring it somewhere on your own. The smaller towns next to my town oftn have this as a third/fourth bin next to general waste/paper/biological.
- xioxox 6y ago
- ja27 6y agoThere's a Classico pasta sauce line that uses jars molded with Atlas Mason on them and fit Mason jar lids but are not designed to be reused for canning. Just for marketing.
- morganvachon 6y agoI've found a way to upcycle those, they make excellent drinking glasses. My home is an old farmhouse in a semi-rural area, so it fits the aesthetic perfectly. I grew up poor, with my family reusing Mason and Bell jars as drinking glasses between canning seasons, so I'm comfortable with it. With the opening narrower than the body, they also prevent ice cubes from invading our mouths when we consume iced drinks. As an added bonus they seem to be far more durable than our regular glasses and tumblers; we end up breaking one of those every couple of months. They have been almost completely replaced by "free" pasta jars at this point and we have yet to break any of those.
- dwighttk 6y agoBut a canning funnel can turn those into a good food saving option. Soup, pasta sauce, anything really that isn’t a firm shape.
- rlpb 6y ago> The only containers which are infinitely recyclable are aluminum and coloured glass (nearly), but that takes energy. I've heard people say that the environmental cost of producing the clean water necessary to wash bottles for reuse is also harmful. I'd really like to see a side-by-side comparison of the environmental cost of the different available "obvious" options. > We need to just force manufacturers to bear the costs of recycling their products 100%: everybody would switch to reusable and this current clam shell packaging disaster would come to a close. I entirely agree. I think manufacturers who produce in bulk products intended for consumers should be required to pay for regular environmental assessments, and then pay the total cost for responsible disposal or recycling of their entire product - including the packaging as well as the item itself when it reaches the end of its useful life. Then environmental harm would be priced into every consumer product.
- tylerhou 6y ago> I've heard people say that the environmental cost of producing the clean water necessary to wash bottles for reuse is also harmful. If this is true, wouldn't it be more environmentally friendly to use disposable plates, bowls, and utensils? That doesn't seem right.
- Someone 6y agoIt sometimes is, at least for packaging. Glass containers may be reusable, but they’re heavier, often a lot heavier (even after decades of technological progress), than plastic containers, and transporting them to consumers and back costs energy and produces waste, too. Also, some plastic packaging decreases food waste. That plastic cucumber packaging, for example, may seem wasteful, but makes them last three times as long and, because of that, decreases the fraction that gets thrown away (https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/a-lesson-in-packaging-myths-is-shrink-wrap-on-a-cucumber-really-mindless-waste-8340812.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/feat...) Now, individual stickers on bananas and kiwis, those should, IMO, be banned, but what do I know? Maybe they’re an essential part of tracking where fruit comes from (doesn’t look like it from my view, though)
- 6y ago
- sasaf5 6y agoIn the case of processed foods like Pringles, I would suggest focusing on the first R, reduce. Not only good for the environment, but good for your health too.
- kilroy123 6y agoMost countries around the world do this by default. For example, those big jugs of water that get delivered. In most places they are clean and reused. Where I'm living right now, in Turkey, those big bottles are made out of glass and it just gets replaced with a previously used glass jug. Same with the beer, all the bottles are collected, cleaned, and reused.
- Ensorceled 6y agoAgreed. The “first world” really needs to get it’s act together on this.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- stx 6y agoThe thing is we (the US) did do this at one point in time. When I was a kid you could buy a coke in a glass bottle and return it when done to be re-used by the manufacturer. For some reason we stopped. We should bring that back. When I was in Mexico around the early 2000 they still did this. When you buy a drink you could return it for a few cents back from the vender.
- brianwawok 6y agoThe reason is money. Labor is a lot higher in the US over Mexico. Cheaper to trash and remake vs reuse. You would need a stick or carrot in the economic cost to shift behavior. Corporations are smart, they will choose the cheaper path.
- mattmanser 6y ago"We" didn't stop, it was cheaper for Coca-Cola to use plastic. Coca-Cola did it. Stop blaming consumers for corporate choices to slightly increase profits. Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault?
- pkphilip 6y agoOne of the key issues with using bottles is the cost, weight and the fact that there is a lot of breakage. The weight alone increases the cost of the supply chain by several times. One key invention which could really help here is flexible glass packaging. Interestingly, one of the lost technologies from the Roman era is flexible glass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexible_glass Corning does have flexible glass, but used primarily for interiors and not for packaging: https://www.corning.com/in/en/innovation/corning-emerging-innovations/corning-willow-glass.html https://www.corning.com/in/en/innovation/corning-emerging-in...
- remote_phone 6y agoLet the costs increase then. All food containers must be recyclable or compostable. This should be a rule across the globe. We should also ban single-use plastic. If costs need to go up, then let them go up. Consumers need to understand the costs of their consumption and we can’t destroy our planet so that corporations can be more profitable.
- II2II 6y ago> We should also ban single-use plastic. If costs need to go up, then let them go up. Consumers need to understand the costs of their consumption and we can’t destroy our planet so that corporations can be more profitable. The hitch is affordability for people with lower incomes. While it is easy to be critical about single serving beverages and over packages potato chips, the vast majority of goods found in most grocery stores are packaged.
- leetcrew 6y ago> While it is easy to be critical about single serving beverages and over packages potato chips, the vast majority of goods found in most grocery stores are packaged. I don't think anyone is suggesting that we need to do away with packaged foods entirely. the fundamental relationship between surface area and volume means we can improve things substantially just by using bigger containers. a plastic quart-sized container of apple sauce still uses a lot less plastic than two four packs of single-serving cups. once you're buying and selling food in larger containers, the material cost of the container contributes less to the total cost of the product, leaving some headroom to use more expensive materials.
- bena 6y agoWhat makes colored glass more able to be recycled than clear glass? I'm curious, my intuition says it would be the opposite as I assume colored glass has other stuff in the glass to make it colored.
- frosted-flakes 6y agoAs I understand it, it's hard to keep coloured glass and other impurities out of the clear glass recycling stream, so the clear glass isn't clear any more. Coloured glass is just mixed together, which is why it's brown. I would love to hear from someone who knows more.
- bena 6y agoI can see that. It's a good enough reason for me. In my head, I imagined it like boiling impurities out of liquid. Get the glass hot and melty, the impurities and glass separate due to different melting points, blah blah, blah. But if that doesn't happen and it doesn't affect the integrity of the glass too much, I can see the "Screw it" attitude of just letting it be.
- thanatos519 6y agoThey are reusable! A Pringles can makes a great directional antenna ... but I only need so many of those.
- crazygringo 6y agoSure, but all the glass that gets used for reuse is for liquids, which are also all heavy to begin with. Do you have examples of successful packaging reuse for solid dry food such as Pringles? Or cereal? Or sugar? Or chocolate? (And that's before even getting into packaging of meat, fish, etc.)
- d0gbread 6y agoSure, here in Vermont we have lots of dry good options (cereal, dry tea, spices, etc) that are bulk into reusable containers. Pringles aren't conducive to that but I'd certainly scoop tortilla chips, goldfish, etc if I could.
- SirLuxuryYacht 6y agoGoldfish yes, but the store would have to accept a loss due to crumbification of the chips from people jabbing the scoop into the pile of chips all the time
- crazygringo 6y agoHeck I think that with a barrel of tortilla chips, most of them would simply crush under its own weight. Fun fact, this is why berries are sold in clamshells too. You can't buy "bulk" strawberries because they'd just compress into goo. They're actually placed in the clamshells as they're being picked in the fields.
- gmueckl 6y agoThere are more and more stores that sell dry food without packaging. The customers have to bring their packaging (jars, etc..) required to take the goods home.
- crazygringo 6y agoWow really? I live in NYC and I've never seen any of that in any regular grocery store. I suppose you might be able to do that in Chinatown or at some specialty spice or coffee stores... and maybe this is a dumb question, but: how do they weigh it? Because with paper/plastic the weight is negligible so it doesn't really make a difference. But if you bring your own heavy mason jars then you need to tare it... and if you're doing it yourself then what, you need to affix the labels it prints to your jars? (Which would be annoying to have to scrape off every time.) Or if the cashier does it when you check out then you don't have an empty one to tare with... how does it work in practice? I'm genuinely curious how this gets solved.
- hinkley 6y agoTo this day, the majority of wide mouth glass jars you see at the grocery store have the same diameter and thread pitch of one of the mason jar lid sizes. Which means you can find a clean replacement lid for most of them, and use it to store other food or non food items. Classico pasta sauces literally come in a tall Mason jar, with volume marks on the side.
- rbecker 6y agoSuch efforts have popular support, but a lot of lobbying opposition: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/20/plastic-bags-have-lobbyists-winning-100587 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/20/plastic-bags-have-l... https://theintercept.com/2019/10/18/coca-cola-recycling-plastics-pollution/ https://theintercept.com/2019/10/18/coca-cola-recycling-plas... https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/09/20/how-to-recycle-plastic https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/09/20/how-to-recycle-pl... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/10/plastics-lobby-group-pushed-treasury-to-ease-back-on-tax-reform https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/10/plastics... https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/government-recycling-targets-cut-pressure-plastics-lobbying-industry-a7585501.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/government-...
- Shivetya 6y agotl;dr you can recycle vintage goods as well into your daily life, start at home. my entire kitchen is vintage glass, some of it lower in cost than buying new, that I snagged off ebay. In my case Anchor Hocking bubble glass. Combine with Corning Ware storage pieces for the kitchen you can "reuse" at home by buying what was made decades ago. Heck, my toaster is a 50s era Toastmaster. Getting soft drinks out of plastic containers and the ever famous k-cups would go a long was as well. I do my best to only use cans and glass for for my food purchases. produce aisle is still stuck with plastic bags but I would love to see biodegradable paper bags or open top containers to stack goods in. The soap/detergent aisles really need to go down the route of selling concentrated goods but this will require some incentive on manufacturer's part to sell them cheaper by end result.
- strogonoff 6y agoOn board with mandating recycling and encouraging use of infinitely recyclable materials in container manufacturing. A couple nits to pick, though. – You have to be specific when advocating for reuse. Some like to keep using—for long periods of time—bottles made from cheap thin disposable plastic. That plastic, when repeatedly emptied, may quickly accumulate tiny cracks and leech chemicals, which in case of P(V)C may well be BPA. How harmful this could be depends on country’s regulations. – Pure aluminum containers are rare, if exist. Aluminum cans & bottles contain plastic inside. I personally advocate for glass, and if glass is not an option—recycle, don’t reuse disposable plastic or aluminum containers more than a couple of times for the sake of your and your descendants’ health.
- steve_adams_86 6y agoIt gives me the creeps every time I see someone heating up their lunch in an old plastic container. Old dairy containers with snap lids are very common. It must be leaching so much garbage into the food. I can’t tell if that’s phobia due to bad science or these people are actually gradually poisoning themselves.
- rurp 6y agoSame, though it seems hard to determine just how risky it is. I have drank water from thin plastic bottles that had been sitting out in the sun and elements for a quite a while. I don't know exactly how long, probably a year or two. The water was gross! I attribute it to the plastic breaking down and contaminating the water, but that's just a guess.
- wruza 6y agoI have the same concern about the new plastic everyday (food delivery sends these). It feels that old plastics only diffuse components into a food once, and then gradually less, but new ones do that again and again. Idk if that is true or a phobia too.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI believe that. Contact time is a thing. Kinda like how cars recommend a very short interval for the first oil change: because that’s when all the metal is flaking off. Once your engine is old, everything is smoothed out and there’s a lot less surface area.
- Causality1 6y ago100% recycling would be a disaster since recycling almost everything other than aluminum has a larger carbon footprint than making new. Additionally it would do almost nothing for plastic pollution since microplastics come from textile manufacturing, paint, tires, and other airborne particles from dense human population zones. Macroplastics largely come from dumping that's already banned under laws we don't bother enforcing. "Recycle everything" is a mantra for people who care more about feeling good about themselves than the actual mathematics of our environment.
- R0b0t1 6y agoThe problem is, if the jars last over a century you don't sell many jars.
- alltakendamned 6y agoThat’s only a problem for very very few people aka the shareholders. Everyone else wins. It’s the standard modus operandi for most companies by now. Internalized profits, externalized costs. And there are very few products for which full lifecycle costs are included in the price.
- R0b0t1 6y agoIt's something that needs to be addressed. If the ROI for an action is very low nobody is going to investigate doing that action.
- _jal 6y agoDemanding infinite growth is not compatible with not incinerating the planet. You can't have both.
- centimeter 6y ago> We need to just force manufacturers to bear the costs of recycling their products 100%: everybody would switch to reusable Proclamations like this are strong evidence of economic illiteracy. Forcing everything to be recyclable isn’t optimal for society or for the environment.
- SirLuxuryYacht 6y agoCare to elaborate? I'd quite like making Coca Cola, Pepsi, Keurig, etc. pay to recycle or repurpose all the plastic they produce. Especially now that the US is no longer shipping plastics to Asia. I'm fairly certain both my recycling truck and trash trucks deposit their cargo in the same place: the landfill. I think the parent means that manufacturers need to either switch to sustainable materials or pay a premium to use plastics.
- billpg 6y agoI saw a report on the news that garden centers were offering to collect used plastic plant pots. I thought "Great idea, just rinse out the pots, peel off the labels and put them back into use for new plants." The report went on to show all of the returned pots being crushed and turned into pellets. I think I screamed into a cushion.
- parliament32 6y ago>We need to just force manufacturers to bear the costs of recycling their products 100% There's literally no way to do this. Any costs you try to pass on will just be passed to the customer, and there's no legal way to prevent that from happening. And no, the customer won't care about a 5c recycling tariff, which is about the most you could charge for this without getting sued to oblivion.
- keepingscore 6y agoI don't understand the sued comment. Why can we heavily tax gas to pay for roads but taxing plastics to pay for recycling costs is a non starter?
- parliament32 6y agoMaybe I misunderstood the parent but "force manufacturers to bear the costs" is very different from taxing the end consumer goods, no?
- rolph 6y agoas far as reuse is concerned, removing the foil lining it takes away the value of the can for anything such as a 2.4 GHz waveguide. when you get an old school pringles can together with some sma co-ax and a custom flashed router the signal gain is tremendous but unidirectional e.g. https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-make-a-wifi-antenna-out-of-a-pringles-can-nb/ https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-make-a-wifi-antenna-out...
- conradev 6y agoI found this article incredibly illuminating: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/18/coca-cola-recycling-plastics-pollution/ https://theintercept.com/2019/10/18/coca-cola-recycling-plas... The United States is seemingly uniquely bad at this, thanks to - you guessed it - corporate greed. Container deposit laws work: > The United States' overall beverage container recycling rate is approximately 33%, while states with container deposit laws have a 70% average rate of beverage container recycling. but, of course, only ten states in the US have them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislatio...
- akiselev 6y agoA significant fraction of that 70% is collected by homeless individuals and others living below the poverty line, for whom recycling is a zero cost, zero training income source that can pay out the same day. If our (California) social safety nets were effective, I suspect the collection rate would be more in line with the national average.
- munificent 6y agoI love this comment because it's a great example of how the exact same data can be used to support opposing narratives. The raw data here is that California sees a certain quantity of bottle recycling and has a certain level of social safety net. * One narrative is that the high bottle recycling rate shows a problem with the social safety net. * Another narrative is that recycling rate shows that it is itself functioning as part of the solution to the social safety net. Sort of like how a high rate of airbag use could make a statement about how safe or unsafe driving is. I don't know which of these narratives is closer to the truth, but I think it's good example to use to help train ourselves to realize that many narratives are possible and part of critical thinking is not jumping too quickly from raw data to any one particular interpretation.
- akiselev 6y ago> Another narrative is that recycling rate shows that it is itself functioning as part of the solution to the social safety net. In my experience, no one in good faith argues that bottle deposits are a part of the social safety net, let alone a functional part. Edit: to clarify, mine is a US centric experience. I think the argument for recycling collection as a tool of economic mobility is perfectly sound as long as it's not economically coercive (i.e. if the safety net is adequate without resorting to roaming the streets collecting recyclable material).
- KarlKode 6y agoThe crux of your line of thinking lies in the definition of "costs of recycling". If something like the idea of a cost of recycling was represented in the cost to the consumer, how would you translate the same idea to a developing country? They have to pay an artificially increased price (compared what the population of "developed" countries paid for) for something we didn't have to pay for until now? That sounds kind of unfair. edit: Just to make clear, I'm not arguing against a concept as "cost of recycling"; my point is that the whole argument is more complicated than just comparing realistic solutions for the US or europe.
- ryantgtg 6y agoI’m picturing a bulk Pringles tube at the grocery store, soaring up to the ceiling. Then you place your reusable glass Pringles tube under it, pull a lever, and a fresh stack of Pringles drops into your container. I like it!
- Chris2048 6y agoSilly question: what plastics cannot be recycled? Can they not just be broken down into simpler hydrocarbons and reformulated? Cannot most plastics be melted into simpler products ala preciousplastic.com ?