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Plastic manufacturers could be made to buy back plastic goods at a rate that would bankrupt them if they're unable/unwilling to reuse or recycle that plastic.

Plastic manufacturers could be made to buy back plastic goods at a rate that would bankrupt them if they're unable/unwilling to reuse or recycle that plastic. This would incentivize the use of less plastic overall, recycleable plastics in general, and the creation of products that remain useful to consumers for longer (to drive down the return of plastic products.)

Alupis 6y ago
In California at least, there's already the "C.R.V" - California Redemption Value. This is effectively a tax, added to every bottle sold, available to be redeemed upon being turned into a recycling center. Even with this, not enough people bother. The real solution is to make our garbage collection far more efficient. Why do we still separate recyclables and garbage into separate bins? As-if regular people can be trusted to do this without fail? Make it automatic, and a lot of this concern will go away.
- cwkoss 6y ago
  Seems like CRV could be increased to get the target recycling rate desired by legislators pretty easily. If each bottle was $0.50, many more people would separate and sort their recycling to take advantage of this. Would probably have some free beneficial side effects, like less soda consumption and more use of re-usable water bottles.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    Or, we can focus on automated garbage sorting. It shouldn't matter which bin you toss something into, it should all be automatically handled the best way for whatever material it's made from. Increasing CRV disproportionately impacts people with less economic stability than others. Many of us here on HN probably wouldn't miss $0.50, at least enough to be compelled to take the time to properly sort our garbage 100% of the time. Plastic floats, glass and metal sinks. Shred everything and separate it. Machines already exist like this - but everyone wants to focus on compelling human behavior to be a certain way instead of just removing that hurdle completely, which would be better for everyone involved.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      The advantage of garbage sorting is it can change. If I don't get the memo that X can be recycled I won't put it into the right bin, but if it is sorted automatically the garbage company just installed the equipment and we are done. Not to mention all the lazy people who don't bother to sort anything still get the right thing done. There isn't much cost to the above: I'm not perfect so they need to re-sort my recyclables anyway (this is why I only have two bins, one for non-recyclables, one for recyclables instead of a dozen for each type). The real trick is to make the machines cheap and reliable enough to handle any input. I think the main reason they don't do this already is the machines jam if you feed them plastic bags.
      - Alupis 6y ago
        I haven't heard of the plastic bag issue. I'd think industrial equipment would be able to rip them up, which is what would need to be done to recycle them anyway. Only having a single bin to worry about - all garbage goes into it - would be a huge win for the environment. It's one of the few areas I'd actually be OK with significant government subsidies to help companies/municipalities acquire the equipment.
        bluGill 6y ago
        Plastic bags tend to not shred into pieces, but into strings that wrap around the shredding blades until they are jammed full and don't shred. (this isn't a stop the moters jam, just the machine stops shredding)
- amanaplanacanal 6y ago
  But what happens to the bottle when it is returned? Does it actually get recycled or does it end up in the ocean anyway?
  - Alupis 6y ago
    To be clear, nobody in the US is dumping plastic into the ocean. The article states clearly it's other nations dumping or losing US garbage, that they purchased with intent to do something with, that is the main culprit. That and fishing and shipping equipment that is thrown or lost overboard. I'm actually unsure what these recycling centers do with the collected bottles. Maybe they sell the material to companies that will recycle it into new objects, or at least dispose of it in designated areas where it will not impact the environment. Either way, it's the "designated, government sanctioned" way to recycle these bottles. Tossing them into your recycle bin doesn't redeem the CRV for the individual.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      PET bottles get recycled into more bottles, or other things like textiles. PET is a very recyclable plastic.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        There is also hdpe, ldpe, PP - those are the ones I see the most of in my house, PET is rare (you just learned something about my personal distaste for soda)
        bigbubba 6y ago
        Yeah soda is foul, though there's quite a bit of it around. PET is also used for plain seltzer water (which accounts for the majority of bottles I go through.) I guess PET is favored for pressurized drinks?
- nerfhammer 6y ago
  fwiw finding a recycling center in California is a pain. It's not like in the northeast where many supermarkets have can/bottle recycling machines. Homeless can collectors often sell the cans for 50% of the value or less to some guy with a pickup truck who can actually get to wherever the far-off recycling center is.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    That is still a much better deal for the homeless than the deal they get where this is no redemption value. Homeless often do walk into recycling centers in cities where there is no redemption value, but they are lucky to get $.01/can when selling by weight. Recycling centers are common if you know where to look - the ugly side of town is an ideal place for them (both because they are by nature messy, and because competition means they can't afford are more expensive area). Many small towns have a place to recycle (most small town industry has enough metal waste to make it worth recycling, so there is demand) Though in Iowa the way the redemption works is any store that sells it must take it back. I don't know how redemption centers work, because we don't have them, instead every supermarket takes their cans back. This ends up being a war on generic soda: coke/pepsi you can take anywhere, but stores will reject the other-store brand cans making them a hassle to sort.
- vondur 6y ago
  All of my plastic bottles go in my recycling bin that the city collects every week. I'm guessing they must make some money off of it. Also, the homeless seem to do a really good job of getting plastic and aluminum cans off the street. I rarely see any of those items littering the area. It's tough and hard work for them...
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  The real solution is prevent the production of single use plastics and packaging at the source.
  - Alupis 6y ago
    Why? If we can automatically recycle most/all of them, single-use becomes a non-issue. You get to have your plastic straws and bags without producing waste material.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Taxing plastic will take care of most single use cases, as they'll become uneconomic.
      - Alupis 6y ago
        In this thread, we've already discussed how California, basically, taxes all bottles - plastic bottles too - and how it's had nearly zero impact on people's behavior. Which is why it's better to not rely on people's behavior for recycling programs. It should be automatic. Place whatever in a bin, and the garbage company sorts and recycles.
        WalterBright 6y ago
        1. this was a tax in an attempt to get recycling, not a tax to discourage use of something 2. a tax on all bottles doesn't incentivize using a different material for bottles 3. if the tax is ineffective, it isn't large enough 4. recycling plastic is expensive - better to just not use plastic in the first place A tax on plastic (not glass or tin) would incentivize making bottles out of glass or tin instead.
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      Plastic waste won't be an issue if plastic products intended to be waste aren't produced.
ch4s3 6y ago
That isn't really feasible due to the way plastic degrades as it is recycled. When you chop up and melt a plastic bottle the resulting material is no longer suitable for making bottles for example. We could figure out some plastic waste scheme that works like carbon credits, and that might lead to better outcomes. You could get credits for turning waste PET into insulation or fabric, and have to buy said credits to produce bottles. Though this is sort of off the top of my head and half baked. This is kind of a side show though in my opinion the overwhelming majority of plastic in the ocean is fishing relater (e.g. abandoned nets) and shipping material that blows off of cargo vessels. Better monitoring and policing of fishing in international waters could kill a lot of birds with 1 stone.
- bigbubba 6y ago
  What you say is generally true of plastics, but not in the example you give. PET is in fact properly recyclable; bottle-to-bottle recycling is done with PET. (And the intent of my proposal is to render the use of plastics unlike PET uneconomical. That's the point of the proposal, not the problem with it.)
  - ch4s3 6y ago
    Yeah PET was a bad specific example. I think the issue is that plastic is useful for reasons other that just the material cost. Shipping glass is both dangerous and VERY energy intensive. Treated paper doesn't hold pressure, and is easily damaged. There are a lot of other reasons why plastic is suitable for packaging that I won't enumerate at length here, but I think it's reasonable to say that there are legitimate uses. I will wholeheartedly agree that plastic packaging is over used. That said, fishing and marine waste are still the single largest source of ocean plastic.
lopmotr 6y ago
I think you're getting emotionally caught up on the idea of having less plastic. If it was safely and permanently buried, it would be no worse for the environment but cheaper than recycling or using less.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Single-use/disposable plastics are just one prong of a larger culture of waste and consumption that has many limiting downsides like how we've been trained to buy tech gadgets that we can't even upgrade nor repair. Or how we are more likely to trash our pants than learn a simple life skill like how to mend a small hole. Or how less and less self-reliant we become. That it's cheap to bury our trash in the perfect, well-maintained landfill is a tiny consolation.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    I constantly get items in the mail that come in very excessive plastic packaging. Taxing plastic would take care of most of that.
WalterBright 6y ago
It's far simpler and more effective to just tax the plastic. It also provides a revenue stream for the government that can be used to fund green initiatives.

Alupis 6y ago

In California at least, there's already the "C.R.V" - California Redemption Value. This is effectively a tax, added to every bottle sold, available to be redeemed upon being turned into a recycling center. Even with this, not enough people bother. The real solution is to make our garbage collection far more efficient. Why do we still separate recyclables and garbage into separate bins? As-if regular people can be trusted to do this without fail? Make it automatic, and a lot of this concern will go away.

cwkoss 6y ago
Seems like CRV could be increased to get the target recycling rate desired by legislators pretty easily. If each bottle was $0.50, many more people would separate and sort their recycling to take advantage of this. Would probably have some free beneficial side effects, like less soda consumption and more use of re-usable water bottles.
- Alupis 6y ago
  Or, we can focus on automated garbage sorting. It shouldn't matter which bin you toss something into, it should all be automatically handled the best way for whatever material it's made from. Increasing CRV disproportionately impacts people with less economic stability than others. Many of us here on HN probably wouldn't miss $0.50, at least enough to be compelled to take the time to properly sort our garbage 100% of the time. Plastic floats, glass and metal sinks. Shred everything and separate it. Machines already exist like this - but everyone wants to focus on compelling human behavior to be a certain way instead of just removing that hurdle completely, which would be better for everyone involved.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    The advantage of garbage sorting is it can change. If I don't get the memo that X can be recycled I won't put it into the right bin, but if it is sorted automatically the garbage company just installed the equipment and we are done. Not to mention all the lazy people who don't bother to sort anything still get the right thing done. There isn't much cost to the above: I'm not perfect so they need to re-sort my recyclables anyway (this is why I only have two bins, one for non-recyclables, one for recyclables instead of a dozen for each type). The real trick is to make the machines cheap and reliable enough to handle any input. I think the main reason they don't do this already is the machines jam if you feed them plastic bags.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      I haven't heard of the plastic bag issue. I'd think industrial equipment would be able to rip them up, which is what would need to be done to recycle them anyway. Only having a single bin to worry about - all garbage goes into it - would be a huge win for the environment. It's one of the few areas I'd actually be OK with significant government subsidies to help companies/municipalities acquire the equipment.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        Plastic bags tend to not shred into pieces, but into strings that wrap around the shredding blades until they are jammed full and don't shred. (this isn't a stop the moters jam, just the machine stops shredding)
amanaplanacanal 6y ago
But what happens to the bottle when it is returned? Does it actually get recycled or does it end up in the ocean anyway?
- Alupis 6y ago
  To be clear, nobody in the US is dumping plastic into the ocean. The article states clearly it's other nations dumping or losing US garbage, that they purchased with intent to do something with, that is the main culprit. That and fishing and shipping equipment that is thrown or lost overboard. I'm actually unsure what these recycling centers do with the collected bottles. Maybe they sell the material to companies that will recycle it into new objects, or at least dispose of it in designated areas where it will not impact the environment. Either way, it's the "designated, government sanctioned" way to recycle these bottles. Tossing them into your recycle bin doesn't redeem the CRV for the individual.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    PET bottles get recycled into more bottles, or other things like textiles. PET is a very recyclable plastic.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      There is also hdpe, ldpe, PP - those are the ones I see the most of in my house, PET is rare (you just learned something about my personal distaste for soda)
      - bigbubba 6y ago
        Yeah soda is foul, though there's quite a bit of it around. PET is also used for plain seltzer water (which accounts for the majority of bottles I go through.) I guess PET is favored for pressurized drinks?
nerfhammer 6y ago
fwiw finding a recycling center in California is a pain. It's not like in the northeast where many supermarkets have can/bottle recycling machines. Homeless can collectors often sell the cans for 50% of the value or less to some guy with a pickup truck who can actually get to wherever the far-off recycling center is.
- bluGill 6y ago
  That is still a much better deal for the homeless than the deal they get where this is no redemption value. Homeless often do walk into recycling centers in cities where there is no redemption value, but they are lucky to get $.01/can when selling by weight. Recycling centers are common if you know where to look - the ugly side of town is an ideal place for them (both because they are by nature messy, and because competition means they can't afford are more expensive area). Many small towns have a place to recycle (most small town industry has enough metal waste to make it worth recycling, so there is demand) Though in Iowa the way the redemption works is any store that sells it must take it back. I don't know how redemption centers work, because we don't have them, instead every supermarket takes their cans back. This ends up being a war on generic soda: coke/pepsi you can take anywhere, but stores will reject the other-store brand cans making them a hassle to sort.
vondur 6y ago
All of my plastic bottles go in my recycling bin that the city collects every week. I'm guessing they must make some money off of it. Also, the homeless seem to do a really good job of getting plastic and aluminum cans off the street. I rarely see any of those items littering the area. It's tough and hard work for them...
heavyset_go 6y ago
The real solution is prevent the production of single use plastics and packaging at the source.
- Alupis 6y ago
  Why? If we can automatically recycle most/all of them, single-use becomes a non-issue. You get to have your plastic straws and bags without producing waste material.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Taxing plastic will take care of most single use cases, as they'll become uneconomic.
    - Alupis 6y ago
      In this thread, we've already discussed how California, basically, taxes all bottles - plastic bottles too - and how it's had nearly zero impact on people's behavior. Which is why it's better to not rely on people's behavior for recycling programs. It should be automatic. Place whatever in a bin, and the garbage company sorts and recycles.
      - WalterBright 6y ago
        1. this was a tax in an attempt to get recycling, not a tax to discourage use of something 2. a tax on all bottles doesn't incentivize using a different material for bottles 3. if the tax is ineffective, it isn't large enough 4. recycling plastic is expensive - better to just not use plastic in the first place A tax on plastic (not glass or tin) would incentivize making bottles out of glass or tin instead.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Plastic waste won't be an issue if plastic products intended to be waste aren't produced.

ch4s3 6y ago

That isn't really feasible due to the way plastic degrades as it is recycled. When you chop up and melt a plastic bottle the resulting material is no longer suitable for making bottles for example. We could figure out some plastic waste scheme that works like carbon credits, and that might lead to better outcomes. You could get credits for turning waste PET into insulation or fabric, and have to buy said credits to produce bottles. Though this is sort of off the top of my head and half baked. This is kind of a side show though in my opinion the overwhelming majority of plastic in the ocean is fishing relater (e.g. abandoned nets) and shipping material that blows off of cargo vessels. Better monitoring and policing of fishing in international waters could kill a lot of birds with 1 stone.

bigbubba 6y ago
What you say is generally true of plastics, but not in the example you give. PET is in fact properly recyclable; bottle-to-bottle recycling is done with PET. (And the intent of my proposal is to render the use of plastics unlike PET uneconomical. That's the point of the proposal, not the problem with it.)
- ch4s3 6y ago
  Yeah PET was a bad specific example. I think the issue is that plastic is useful for reasons other that just the material cost. Shipping glass is both dangerous and VERY energy intensive. Treated paper doesn't hold pressure, and is easily damaged. There are a lot of other reasons why plastic is suitable for packaging that I won't enumerate at length here, but I think it's reasonable to say that there are legitimate uses. I will wholeheartedly agree that plastic packaging is over used. That said, fishing and marine waste are still the single largest source of ocean plastic.

lopmotr 6y ago

I think you're getting emotionally caught up on the idea of having less plastic. If it was safely and permanently buried, it would be no worse for the environment but cheaper than recycling or using less.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
Single-use/disposable plastics are just one prong of a larger culture of waste and consumption that has many limiting downsides like how we've been trained to buy tech gadgets that we can't even upgrade nor repair. Or how we are more likely to trash our pants than learn a simple life skill like how to mend a small hole. Or how less and less self-reliant we become. That it's cheap to bury our trash in the perfect, well-maintained landfill is a tiny consolation.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  I constantly get items in the mail that come in very excessive plastic packaging. Taxing plastic would take care of most of that.

WalterBright 6y ago

It's far simpler and more effective to just tax the plastic. It also provides a revenue stream for the government that can be used to fund green initiatives.