16 ms·

California aims to ban recycling symbols on things that aren’t recyclable

574 points by elliekelly 5y ago

Steltek 5y ago
I would much rather incentivize non-plastic alternative packaging. Consumers should have better options for metal cans, glass bottles, etc for mainstream goods, as those materials are far more effective targets for recycling. But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle.
- mc32 5y ago
  Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might last 20 uses. Glass is also much heavier requiring more energy to transport.
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    In every part of Canada I've lived in there has been a well developed reuse system. In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. Reuse should be way better integrated into our systems. If I could bring a resuable bag back to any supermarket to get the $1 fee back, it would be so much easier to justify buying reusable bags that really last a long time. The trouble is I never remember to bring it with me in the morning before work and I grocery shop on my way back home.
    - loonster 5y ago
      My family stores the bags in the trunk of our car. They are always available for random shopping trips. Public transportation would make reusable bags much more inconvenient for our family.
    - fnimick 5y ago
      I keep a couple in every bag I use regularly (gym bag, work bag, briefcase, etc) so I'm never without if I decide to stop by the store on the way home. That way you don't have to proactively remember to bring it!
    - arsome 5y ago
      Beer bottles are typically only reused if you say, bring them to The Beer Store or something similar. If you toss them in your municipal bin like me, my understanding is they basically just smash them and use the glass bits in other products like asphalt as it's just not worth the energy cost to actually recycle it. Aluminum cans are probably a better bet for recycling if you're just using the municipal bins. They're profitable enough that people routinely come steal the cans from my bins.
      - cloverich 5y ago
        But if the bottles, or even a subset of them, were standardized, it would be possible to have some bottle specific re-use (not recycle) programs. OP was I think giving an example of one that works. Perhaps it would be possible to extend it. I can understand there are some product specific's that limit this in some cases, but if I drink beer and topo chico and a few other similar drinks, it seems unlikely they couldn't all use the same bottle.
        mc32 5y ago
        A lot of beer bottles conform to an industry standard (the ones with paper labels where anyone can slap their own label) and get reused. However, the reuse frequency is from 15 to 20 times before they begin to fail inspection tests and have to be taken out of circulation (and recycled or dumped). Recycling that glass is expensive. The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents. This is a pretty significant advantage, but the disadvantage is that sometimes you drop it.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. fact check: no, only 15 https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_average_beer_bottle_is_refilled_15_times_in_its_environmentallyfriendly_life_cycle.html https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_averag...
      - 3pt14159 5y ago
        Oh, ok thanks for updating my view. I clearly remember hearing it was 99% but must be either misremembering or the original source was wrong. I'd still rather have re-use via glass or recycling via aluminum than plastic.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - hatchnyc 5y ago
    You are not wrong, but in some countries they collect, wash, and and reuse glass (and even special kinds of plastic) bottles. According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. Someone should do the math first obviously but it seems like a great idea to me. If bottling is done locally you aren’t transporting the bottles long distance, and quite significantly in my mind glass is inert so if it does get into the environment, it isn’t leaching microplastics into the environment for the next thousand years.
    - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
      >According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. You're making me feel old. I used to sort bottles as a kid. Soft drinks are just another example of gigantism in corporate life, economy of scale uber alles. There was a time when practically every small town had one or more bottling plants, the owners were pillars of the community sponsoring softball teams and the like. Delivery trucks typically had shelving rather than bays. Following that there was a huge spate of consolidation. Small distributors/bottlers had their franchises taken away, canning became owned by the mothership and absolutely huge. The more centralized the more of a pain it becomes to sort/return/clean bottles. I suppose it's like the history of car dealerships as they become fewer and larger. For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves.
      - gruez 5y ago
        > For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves. Are you sure that's not just due to people moving away from agriculture? A family farm is a thing, but not really a family factory.
        panzagl 5y ago
        More likely retail- in my town the bookstore, stationary store, newsstand, hardware stores, etc. were all family owned until the big box stores opened up two towns over.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Places with cheap energy (e.g,. the Columbia River with hydroelectric power) could inexpensively recycle glass, aluminum. Of course it does take energy to get the recyclables to these places. Curious — are trains no longer efficient?
    - bequanna 5y ago
      > Places with cheap energy… I’ve always wondered about colocating manufacturing near cheap power sources. Is this actually possible? Isn’t the power generated already being used? If it is possible, why doesn’t every manufacturing plant just do this to reduce a huge input cost?
      - Ekaros 5y ago
        Energy transfer losses are pretty marginal around 2%. Compared to labour availability, shipping resources and products; and land, it is not so big deal. Unless it's very energy intensive industry.
      - JKCalhoun 5y ago
        Pretty sure aluminum extraction plants do this. As well as Bitcoin miners. ;-) Recently ... where was I, Eugene, Oregon? There was a shuttered Coca Cola bottling plant. I remember a huge one in Kansas City as well. Maybe someone with expertise can weigh in — but it seems like we used to, as an example, bottle things a lot more locally. It meant factory jobs in the area, transportation (of Coke) was shorter since there was probably a bottling plant in your state (or a neighboring one). I don't know. I feel a lot was lost.
        blacksmith_tb 5y ago
        Most major metro areas in the US continue to have soft drink bottling plants (though they're using plastic bottles and aluminum cans these days), since transporting huge volumes of water is more expensive than smaller amounts of flavoring and coloring. Eugene OR (pop ~175K) may be slightly too small for that to be practical, but here in Portland I bike to work past two active bottling plants.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  I think this is the goal of Maine’s new recycling law (briefly mentioned in the article) where manufacturers are responsible for the cost of recycling. Although I’m not sure Maine’s law really allocates the full social cost of plastics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/maine-becomes-first-state-to-shift-costs-of-recycling-from-taxpayers-to-companies/2021/07/13/aa6fbe44-e416-11eb-8aa5-5662858b696e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/maine-bec...
- m0llusk 5y ago
  Correctly labeling materials could be a firm foundation from which to base incentive programs.
- burkaman 5y ago
  One way to incentivize recyclable packaging would be to make it illegal for companies to put a symbol on their non-recyclable plastic packaging that 98% of consumers associate with recycling.
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    Further - I don't understand why we don't just have mandated bottle/jar form factors. We broke the fucking loop by claiming that people could just throw plastic containers away and "somewhere, somehow (over the rainbow!!!) people will recycle them into new goods". That story is bullshit - even for most plastics that can actually be recycled. I want legislation that lays out a set of standardized form factors that are as re-usable as possible (NOT RECYCLABLE - Literally washable and reusable), and if companies use those - great! No extra taxes for you. Want to use your own custom packaging? Fine, but you pay for the whole fucking product lifecycle up front, before the customer ever touches it: Collection, Cleaning, Recycling/Disposal, Reprocessing, Redistribution. The EU estimates those costs for plastic at about 800 EUR ($950) a ton.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >I want legislation that lays out a set of standardized form factors that are as re-usable as possible (NOT RECYCLABLE - Literally washable and reusable), and if companies use those - great! No extra taxes for you. Is that seriously the impediment to plastic container reusability, that they're not standardized? People don't reuse plastic containers because there aren't that many uses for them around the house.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        Good point. My wife and I went through a period of trying to maximally reuse otherwise disposable packaging we had around the house, and we quickly discovered two facts: 1. There's surprisingly many things you can use disposable containers for around the house. 2. Even if you go out of your way to find more uses for the waste, in a month or two you'll just run out of applications. The problem of consumer waste is that it's a continuous flow of trash. At-home reuse is not a sink, it's a buffer - it fills up quickly, so it doesn't alter the overall dynamic of the system. Any waste reuse scheme needs to recirculate it on the market - new products need to be put in old packaging.
- bko 5y ago
  > But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle. What's not included in the "total lifecycle" that's not accounted for in cost? Presumably these alternative packages won't save any landfill space.
- jedimastert 5y ago
  While we're at it, can we get rid of cloth packaging that isn't explicitly made to be reused? Like how Tom's come in a box and a cloth bag inside of that box! It's so resource intensive; it's like the definition of virtue signalling.
  - tantalor 5y ago
    What do you think virtue signaling is?
    - jedimastert 5y ago
      Virtue signaling is when an entity does something expressly to show they support a cause or extol a virtue, without actually helping. Disposable cloth packaging is a great example of this. Plastic production needs to be reduced for a large number of reasons, but cloth production takes an exceptional amount of energy and resources to produce while not generally being reusable or recyclable, and the extra durability and/or protection of cloth is almost never needed. (There was a NYT article about this, but I'll link directly to the study <https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...>)
- alistairSH 5y ago
  I agree that we must incentivize packaging that's better for the environment. The problem is who gets to define "better". Cloth bags were once thought to be better than plastic for grocery use, but that might not be the case - the cloth has a larger environmental cost to produce (cotton is water-intensive) and has to be used a lot more than one might expect before it surpasses the basic plastic bag. And if the plastic bag is reused a few times, then used as a garbage liner, it's cost is reduced quite a bit. It's really not easy for a consumer to figure out what's better.
  - twoodfin 5y ago
    Letting the price mechanism work (externalities accounted for) is a great way to do this.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - ceh123 5y ago
      > externalities accounted for Well yeah, that's kinda where the problem is. How do we price in all the different kinds of externalities for cotton bags and plastic bags in a way that is consistent and everyone agrees with? Debating these externalities and how they should be accounted for is exactly the hard problem the parent comment was talking about.
      - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
        A carbon tax would go a long way, even if it wouldn’t capture everything.
    - alistairSH 5y ago
      I agree - but that isn't a consumer decision (not a decision made at the time of consumption). A government agency has to determine the cost of the externalities (where the science and economics isn't easy) and then set taxes accordingly (not always politically viable).
- formerly_proven 5y ago
  > But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle. I don't know what you mean by this. If you bottle stuff into PET bottles (the usual stuff, being shredded after one use), then you have to buy one new PET bottle for each bottle you produce. If you bottle stuff into reusable glass bottles (98+ % returned intact, cleaned and reused), then you mostly don't buy new bottles, just replacements for bottles falling out of the cycle (reuse limit reached, not returned, broken). Why and by what mechanism would the price of a single new glass bottle account for the lifecycle of the bottle? It just doesn't make sense to me.
  - RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
    I think what the parent comment meant was that for the environmental impact of producing and transporting a glass bottle (glassware are heavy), one can produce and transport many PET bottles. The ratio can be high enough to the point where producing a glass bottle is more environmental impactful if they are not reused enough. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0
- p_j_w 5y ago
  >I would much rather Why not both? Is one mutually exclusive of the other?
- tmountain 5y ago
  "the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle" Until that issue is addressed, plastic will reign supreme.
- while1fork 5y ago
  Alternatives are worthless because that's how to reach 0% adoption. Plastic packaging for food and single-use plastics should be banned outright. All sold containers should be standardized and reused just like they were decades ago.
swiley 5y ago
I hope they’re not confusing the resin symbols with the recycling symbol.
- gruez 5y ago
  That's exactly what's happening. They're banning the use of the resin symbol unless it's also recyclable (by California standards), to reduce consumer confusion.
- tantalor 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
  - hiidrew 5y ago
    smh this is some evil shit. damn plastic industry.
- Denvercoder9 5y ago
  The resin symbols were purposely made misleading to let consumers think that plastic was recyclable even when it wasn't. I don't think banning them would be that bad.
  - q1w2 5y ago
    No. They were made to help communities separate plastics into those that can vs cannot be recycled. That's why they are on the plastic, and why they have the recycle shape.
- asoneth 5y ago
  Clearly the resin identification code and the recycling symbol are causing consumer confusion due to the fact that almost everyone confuses them. The US Society of the Plastics Industry designed their resin identification code in 1988 and made it similar to the recycling symbol which had been in use since 1970, even though many of the plastics thus labeled were not generally recyclable. According to wikipedia[1] they eventually changed the RIC "chasing arrows" to a solid triangle in 2013 to address consumer confusion, but I still see a lot of plastics sporting the chasing arrow symbol. I hope efforts like California's succeed so that the recycling symbol can be reserved for products that can be recycled in practice. (i.e. there are more than a token number of municipal facilities that process that type of plastic into a reusable form) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
nashashmi 5y ago
I doubt you can create legislation to ban a symbol from a product if you don’t hold the trademark rights. However they can create a new symbol and legislate what products are eligible for that symbol. Edit: I stand corrected. There are other paths for this legislation
- dubcanada 5y ago
  You can create legislation to do what ever you want, it's up to the courts to decide if it is valid or not.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I think this is a bad law for other reasons, but do believe that CA has (read: should have) standing to say “packages bearing these marks, which the Legislature believes mislead CA consumers, cannot be sold at retail in CA”.
- torstenvl 5y ago
  > I doubt you can create legislation to ban a symbol from a product if you don’t hold the trademark rights. Uhhh... where do you think trademark rights come from, if not legislation?
danschumann 5y ago
Are those dumpsters recyclable? I am picturing a big robot throwing those dumpsters into a giant shredder or something. I'll let myself out.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  They appear to be made of sheet steel, so almost certainly yes and that's how they would be recycled. Probably wouldn't involve a robot though...
  - kibwen 5y ago
    In case anyone isn't aware, while plastic recycling may be a scam, metal recycling is extremely effective. To use cars as an example, 95% of cars end up being recycled, 80% of a car's materials (by weight) can be successfully recycled, and the average car is composed of 20% recycled material.
sokoloff 5y ago
This is a case where the proposal is actually worse than the headline, I think. From a non-paywall source: https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/08/california-recycling-single-use-plastic/ https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/08/california-recycling... > Despite the best intentions of Californians who diligently try to recycle yogurt cups, berry containers and other packaging, it turns out that at least 85% of single-use plastics in the state do not actually get recycled. Instead, they wind up in the landfill. The plastic resin is recyclable, but is not commonly recycled and this act seeks to remove the marks that serve to indicate the former because of the latter. I can’t see how that will increase recycling in CA, nor be likely to leave CA citizens nor environment better off.
- jffry 5y ago
  If you've only read the headline, here's a mirror: https://archive.is/ma1Ob https://archive.is/ma1Ob The California legislature has appeared to take the non-recycling of most plastics into account: A majority of the state’s assembly members voted to ban companies from using the arrows symbol unless they can prove the material is in fact recycled in most California communities, and is used to make new products.
- elif 5y ago
  It will decrease the number of plastic goods people buy under ecological pretexts. For instance, when I learned about plastic bottle recycling, I switched to canned water.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    It will also lead to the landfilling of recyclable resins in communities where their waste management is capable to recycle them, which in turn will result in fewer communities adopting/adapting waste management practices to process these items properly because consumers won’t put them into that stream.
  - lttlrck 5y ago
    I hadn't realized the numbers were that bad... https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-bottle-you-thought-you-recycled-may-have-been-downcycled-instead https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-bottle-...
globular-toast 5y ago
Some JS stops me reading the article after the first paragraph or so. But it seems to about using that specific "three arrows" symbol. One annoying thing I've noticed in the UK is some products having a symbol that looks a lot like the recycling symbol but upon closer inspection is not the same symbol. It turns it can be processed in a specific plant of which only one exists in the entire country. I doubt many get sent. As many HNers are aware, plastic can't really be recycled at all. It can be reprocessed, but never recycled. That plastic tray your food comes in will never become another plastic tray that food comes in. So the recycling symbol doesn't seem to mean much apart from being a way to help people sort their waste.
- gambiting 5y ago
  Also here in the UK - I noticed that annoyingly more and more items openly advertise, on the front of the packaging " NOW RECYCLABLE!" with an asterix next to it, and upon reading the small print it says it's recyclable, but only if brought into this special collection point, which they only have in like 5 sainsburys across the country. So if you just throw it in your recycling bin it goes to the landfill. I don't understand how that's even allowed.
  - interestica 5y ago
    A similar thing is ongoing with the term "compostable" for some plastics -- often it only means through special municipal composting facilities. If you threw it in your backyard compost heap, it would not deteriorate quickly.
- OneTimePetes 5y ago
  Germany. My mum never accepted this, she did wash the plastic waste partially in the dishwasher - because it would be "reused". She always pointed at those recycling videos, were people sorted through the trash by hand.
- GordonS 5y ago
  > It can be reprocessed, but never recycled Huh, I didn't know that. TBH, I was pretty sure most of it was just going to landfill somewhere in Asia, with only a small portion really being recycled. What does "reprocessed" mean though? Taking the example of a prepackaged meal tray, what might happen to it?
s_dev 5y ago
In Ireland there's a recycling symbol for plastic products that can be recycled. But if you put that recycling symbol in a green circle it means something else -- "that the companies that produces the product is committed to recycling" -- whatever that means. This to me is beyond infuriating. Absolutely in favor of these sorts of measures.
- detritus 5y ago
  You mean 'The Green Dot'? This piece of shit thing? https://www.pro-e.org/the-green-dot-trademark https://www.pro-e.org/the-green-dot-trademark How this has been allowed to exist for so long is beyond my ken. The logo should look ENTIRELY different as it's basically false-advertising for the vast majority of people who have no idea what it actually represents. - ed spelling
  - s_dev 5y ago
    >You mean 'The Green Dot'? Yup -- another business trick is in McDonalds -- the company that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100% Irish Beef" and thus they put that on the packaging even if the beef doesn't come from Ireland. I've seen this don't with the equivalent of "100% recyclable" as the name of the company to pass the product off as environmental. However the main problem is still consumer knowledge of whats recyclable. If people think there is a small chance that something is recyclable they will throw it in the recycling bin -- this is the complete wrong approach. Put everything in the trash unless you're 100% sure it's recyclable. Otherwise you'll "contaminate" the whole batch like throwing a bad apple in on top of a barrel of good apples.
    - detritus 5y ago
      Yeah, exactly. The recycling trucks here in LDN have a campaign on the side of them that has words to the effect of "if you're unsure - leave it out!" because as you say, even partial contamination screws entire bales of reclaimed material. My eternal bugbear is Pizza boxes. Used greasy pizza boxes can often be recycled in many municipalities, BUT only in the organic or food waste. Greasy card in the paper recycling stream screws everything up. . I used to live in a fairly large warehouse community and 'made myself responsible for the recycling', so I have greyer hair than I should and a slighly less shallow awareness than many people of the problems in all this... :\
alistairSH 5y ago
About damn time. I've always been confused by the sign - it's on pretty much all plastics, but only a fraction are actually recyclable. And like many people, I chuck it all in the recycle bin and hope some of it gets recycled and that the non-recyclables don't screw up the whole works. It really shouldn't be this hard.
- nipponese 5y ago
  More strangely, it’s on many styrofoam packaging products.
  - malexw 5y ago
    Styrofoam actually is recyclable, though you'd have to check with your local municipality to see if it's accepted. For example, it's listed as a "blue bin" item in Toronto: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-organics-garbage/houses/what-goes-in-my-blue-bin/ https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-organics-...
    - avh02 5y ago
      there are some biodegradable packing peanuts that someone like me thought was styrofoam - a way to tell is to take one and see if it "melts" in warm water... I THINK those can go in compost, but I'd check your local regulations
    - stevesearer 5y ago
      It is recyclable here in Santa Barbara, but you have to take it to the recycling center yourself.
- taf2 5y ago
  I stopped putting a lot of plastic in the recycle bin. The main reason because it's not recyclable - you're just increasing the cost to recycle. It needs to be sorted out and as a result cost more... It feels bad but I think it is better... For example a cereal box - has the plastic inside and the paper outside... I take the plastic out into the trash and put the paper into the recycle...
___luigi 5y ago
Before reading this article, I thought it was trivial "recycling symbol is used for recyclable items", and "no recycling symbol means that the item is not recyclable", why do they allow them to mis-use it (or mis-use any symbol) in first place?.
- overcast 5y ago
  Because companies probably found through research, that adding a recycle symbol, increases revenue by some percentage.
  - echopurity 5y ago
    The whole movement to recycle plastic was an industry scam to knowingly profit from destroying the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dk3NOEgX7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dk3NOEgX7o
    - overcast 5y ago
      While true, that has nothing to do with what I stated. I was referring to consumers being more apt to purchase something that shows recyclable. Subconsciously or not.
- q1w2 5y ago
  Because different cities have the ability to recycle different types of resin. So the number in the middle of the symbol is used by the recycling plant to separate what can and cannot be recycled. The ridiculous part is that recycling plastic generates more carbon that making new plastic, and burying it is actually a great way to sequester CO2. So the entire plastic recycling effort has been discovered to be counter-productive.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.md/ma1Ob https://archive.md/ma1Ob
Robotbeat 5y ago
I hope they don’t get rid of the symbol entirely! It’s useful to know what resin a product is made of. Things like PLA (which is kinda sorta compostable) are not often recycled, but they can be. If you don’t know what resin the plastic is, then it’s even harder. Keep the resin symbol. Remove the arrows on it. We get better with recycling stuff over time, so eventually more resins could be recycled. But. Part of me wonders if it is actually BETTER to not recycle. Imagine if we made plastic by pulling CO2 from the atmosphere (which we do for PLA!). If the cost were the same and the processing energy the same, wouldn’t it be better for the climate to bury that plastic (sequestering the carbon) instead of recycling it? That is, after all, how we got fossil fuels and reduced the CO2 to preindustrial levels! Burying a bunch of waste carbon from dead algae or trees before fungi evolved that could efficiently break down lignin. Recycling that carbon would’ve meant higher CO2 levels today. And the waste in river thing is primarily about what happens to plastic BEFORE it ends up in a bin (trash OR recycling). Things like water satchets, which really are a compensation for having crap tap water.
- DFHippie 5y ago
  > If the cost were the same and the processing energy the same, wouldn’t it be better for the climate to bury that plastic (sequestering the carbon) instead of recycling it? Even if it pollutes more to make virgin material than to recycle it -- and I think that's your problem -- if the non-recycled material goes into a landfill instead of the ocean or biosphere, there's a small consolation in that the carbon in the plastic is sequestered.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    I don’t think it’s a small effect. There are something like 300 million tons of plastic waste per year, which is about 1 Gigatonne of CO2, or about 3% of global emissions… more than global aviation! If we cut down all sources of emissions to zero, that would mean humanity using non-fossil plastic (like PLA or electrolytic syngas derived regular plastics) would be carbon negative. The cost of PLA is about $2/kg, or equivalent to about $600/tonneCO2. About how much Climeworks currently costs for direct air CO2 capture.
ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
John Oliver did a rant on plastics recycling, a few weeks ago[0]. TL;DR: Anything with a "Number in triangle" over 2, is probably not going to be recycled, and you might as well toss it in the trash, as that's where it will end up, anyway[1]. Different from this symbol, and probably won't be affected, but recycling has a great deal of "PR spin" to it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E [1] https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-08-16 https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-08-16
- q1w2 5y ago
  Burying plastic is likely the best solution anyway as it's a CO2 sink. It's a great way to sequester carbon.
  - omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
    That's a great point. Shred it and use it as infill.
  - titzer 5y ago
    Except it is made from fossil fuels in the first place, so it is at best carbon neutral--but isn't, because making plastic takes energy. There's nothing green about burying plastics.
syncbehind 5y ago
You'd think this was obvious to do. Sometimes I absolutely loathe the performative nature of most recycling initiatives.
jacknews 5y ago
It's astonishing that this symbol is allowed to used on non-recyclable products in the first place.
- q1w2 5y ago
  Most recyclable plastic that's collected isn't even recycled anymore. We might be better off burying it as a carbon sink.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  Yeah, I got the same angry feeling that I get when a company write: "Made with real chocolate". Well... no you don't have to write that, it's the product made with fake chocolate that should have a label. Why would you even put a recycling label on a non-recyclable product, unless you're an asshole.
- caturopath 5y ago
  The generous interpretation is that in these cases it's generally possible to recycle the material, and the company is noting that and may well think it would be a really good idea of someone did recycle the things, even though realistically it ain't happening. The bar set by the bill is much higher than 'could be recycled'. It "ban[s] companies from using the arrows symbol unless they can prove the material is in fact recycled in most California communities, and is used to make new products."
throwaway2214 5y ago
Such a waste of time. Now we will spend a decade arguing which plastic is really recyclable, and if you can recycle it once is it enough, or should be 2 times? or does it degrade on its own? bio plastic (which turns out sometimes is worse than current common plastic) and etc. Coca Cola's 'Please Recycle' on the caps makes me boil with rage, how about 'Please Don't Make it'? There must be supply chain changes, probably 95% of my plastic is from the supermarket, it is increasingly more difficult to buy without plastic. This must be banned, it will take decades until the free market regulates itself.
- Jesus_piece 5y ago
  The free market does not regulate itself. The big plastic producers have lobbied and muddled the waters endlessly to confuse the public and blame consumers on their awful environment damaging products. Less than 10% of all plastics across the world have ever been recycled https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-p...
  - throwaway2214 5y ago
    i think it will regulate as the new generation is growing to be more and more aware, and they (hopefully) they will hurt the plastic producer's bottom line, but it is super slow, and this is assuming that plastic producer's propaganda wont grow in sophistication look how long it took for tabacco, and it still lost despite all the lobbying, but it is incredibly slow
    - colejohnson66 5y ago
      Even tobacco is still going strong after all these years of exposure to the reality (and ads on rehab programs).
- skybrian 5y ago
  You should follow the local rules on recycling. Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they can really handle. Unfortunately this information isn’t always as easy as it should be to look up. It should be a simple web search away.
deleted 5y ago
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crazygringo 5y ago
> For years, the United States also shipped much of its plastic waste overseas, choking local rivers and streams. A global convention now bans most trade in plastic waste Most of this article is fine, but I can't believe this specific misinformation continues to be printed. Exported plastic waste virtually entirely goes into landfills overseas, or is incinerated. Whereas the waste choking local rivers and streams e.g. in Asia is virtually entirely local waste -- people littering, etc. I'm 100% on the side of the environment -- which is why I want us to make policy based on actual fact, so efforts go towards what actually matters.
- dieortin 5y ago
  Could I have a source on the waste on local rivers being local?
  - ortusdux 5y ago
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803
    - ejstronge 5y ago
      > https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803 I don't see a comment in that article about the original provenance of the waste in rivers - can you paste it?
- Cd00d 5y ago
  You're making an interesting point, but I do wish you'd support it. You're making a a counter-claim to TFA, but you don't have more credibility than the Times. I would love some validation that our exported plastic waste goes into landfills, as you're stating, but I'm also skeptical that all the places we ship waste to have well designed landfills with proper water runoff management.
  - honksillet 5y ago
kiliantics 5y ago
What about adding "not recyclable" messages to things? Maybe along with images of the plastic bag islands or something, like those cigarette pack warnings. Give everyone that painful reminder whenever they buy these things. Or what about just actual economic incentives to get people to live sustainably? High taxes on carbon and plastic and highly subsidised public alternatives
- wiz21c 5y ago
  This one million times. Down here, packs of cigarettes have horror pictures on them and, sure no smoker ever stopped because of them, but once you show that to your kids, they just don't feel like trying anymore...
deleted 5y ago
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jokethrowaway 5y ago
From my European point of view, the problem is not necessarily the almost invisible symbol but the government endorsement of recycling. Being forced to collect rubbish in some centralised way with tons of stupid rules made me think that recycling was working and that plastic was a relatively green choice (for something coming from oil). This propagated down in the economy with brands using more and more plastic in the last 30 years. Everything is plastic nowadays, even what used to be glass (like milk containers). Both government and mainstream media were all about people following all the dumb rules (I wonder how many hours of lost productivity we collectively lost as a species) or you hated the planet. In the last few of years it turned out recycling is mostly useless, even if we had the evidence for it since the beginning. Most of it is unrecyclable, some of it get shipped to China to burn, a minor part of plastic gets recycled (and it can even be recycled a limited amount of times). The government trying to intervene now is doing too little too late. The only thing I can understand is that big oil bought our governments officials and media. What they bought is 30 years to make money selling oil and enough time to shift their investment to something greener for the next cycle of corruption and profiteering. Incidentally I know a family in the oil business and the new generation is investing the family empire in renewables, pocketing all the government's incentives for solar energies, while they're at it.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  > I know a family in the oil business and the new generation is investing the family empire in renewables, pocketing all the government's incentives for solar energies, while they're at it. This is actually reassuring to hear. It's an indication that maybe, just maybe, the oil industry won't hold on to their current source of profits all the way until it's too late.
- clairity 5y ago
  > “Both government and mainstream media were all about people following all the dumb rules (I wonder how many hours of lost productivity we collectively lost as a species) or you hated the planet.” that applies word-for-word to covid measures. almost none of them do much in practice, but there has to be a bevy of rules to keep us mollified and distracted from the raw machinations of power and money.
honksillet 5y ago
Reduce, reuse, recycle... In that order! If we are serious about preserving landfills we will start using reusable bottles.
qq4 5y ago
I'm a fan of this but I still think we're so far away from a solution. I gave up on recycling at my apartment because the bins get filled with things like toilet paper, soiled pizza boxes and dog poop. Mislabeled plastics are the least of my issues.
blondie9x 5y ago
These sort of policies are why California leads the world.
billytetrud 5y ago
I was thinking about this yesterday when I saw a pizza box with the recyclable symbol on it. It's infuriating that intelligent people can't seem to understand that pizza boxes aren't recyclable after they've had pizza in them. What about oil soaked cardboard says "recyclable" to people?
- nineplay 5y ago
  I think the relationship between food and recycling is justifiably unclear to most people. Can you recycle cans of refried beans? Prior to today I would have thought yes, but now I see I'm supposed to rinse them. For refried beans I'm already wondering about the water wasted washing the can vs. the benefit of recycling it. I live in a drought region so I'm probably going to chuck it. Cardboard sandwich containers? Is there a go/no-go depending on how much mayonnaise had dripped out? It's no surprise people are confused.
  - jonahhorowitz 5y ago
    Your recyclables don't need to be particularly clean when they go in the bin. Just clean enough that they won't make everything else in the bin dirty (particularly paper). During the last drought in California, San Jose asked people to stop washing their recycling since it already gets washed in one way or another as part of the recycling process. In your can example, it's going to get smelted down and anything organic is going to burn off. - https://ecology.wa.gov/Blog/Posts/June-2019/Recycle-Right-How-empty-is-empty-enough-How-clean https://ecology.wa.gov/Blog/Posts/June-2019/Recycle-Right-Ho...
  - billytetrud 5y ago
    The giant recylcing symbol on a lot of pizza boxes sure doesn't help.
  - asdff 5y ago
    If you live in a drought region even if everyone in the entire region rinsed their refried bean cans that probably wouldn't push the needle on water use on a statistically significant level. Industry is who is causing the drought, not your lawns and swimming pools and long showers, despite what the narrative in the industry funded press might say. When you look at the actual water use data from state agencies devoid of editorial bias, this conclusion is obvious.
alex_young 5y ago
Why don’t we ban the production or import of products which can’t be reused or recycled, and for which alternatives exist? For instance, soda bottles. We used to have a closed loop system for these. All of the bottles were glass, the same dimension and color, and one exchanged them at the store you purchased them at. Similar systems exist in other countries for beer and wine bottles.
obblekk 5y ago
Wouldn't this violate free speech laws? I'm all for regulation to disclose information, but regulation to prevent people from saying something is a bit more dicey. Even trademarks to an extent feel unfair (should you really be unable to say the word Google in a TV Ad?).
- himinlomax 5y ago
  False advertising is not protected speech, not any more than defamation.
- caturopath 5y ago
  There are lots of exceptions to free speech: false advertising, all manner of fraud, libel, falsely shouting fire in a theatre, incitement of violence, etc. You can say "Google" in a TV ad without violating their trademark. You can't use the word "Google" in every way (you can't pretend to be Google so people trust you, for instance). The legal thing that causes folks to be scared of doing this in practical situations is being sued for libel, not trademark infringement. Do you think that false nutrition facts should be printable on the same crinkly plastic packaging as a misleading recycling symbol?
  - nybble41 5y ago
    The issue is prior restraint. If you sell someone a product marked in such as way as to create an expectation that it will be recyclable, taking no steps to dispel that belief, and it turns out not to be recyclable, then you've committed fraud. The buyer would have a legitimate claim against you for any costs which resulted from the product not being recyclable, for example if they had to pay extra to dispose of it as garbage rather than recycling. This is not the same as saying that it ought to be illegal to apply the recycling symbol to the product in the first place, since merely applying the symbol is not a sufficient condition to qualify as fraud. For example, there could be an accompanying disclaimer (or expectation that a "reasonable person" would know) that while the product is recyclable, it may not be permitted in the regular recycling bins in the buyer's region.
newbamboo 5y ago
California will make any and all signage meaningless. Buy an air purifier in California; “this item has substances known to cause cancer and birth defects.” What a mess is the golden state.
arwineap 5y ago
It seems like a much simpler solution to have the state impose a tax on products that use plastics which CA recycling programs cannot process
- nybble41 5y ago
  No need for an actual tax, just make the recycled plastics available on the market at cost. If recycling is actually useful, and the state isn't doing something stupid like subsidizing the production of non-recyclable plastics or penalizing the recyclable ones, then the "tax" will be the difference between the (presumed lower) price of recycled plastic and the price of new plastic.
  - arwineap 5y ago
    That only works if we can make the recycled plastic cheaper than the regular plastic I don't think the recycling bits remove costs, I think they add costs
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      > That only works if we can make the recycled plastic cheaper than the regular plastic Then perhaps we shouldn't be recycling that plastic?
llsf 5y ago
What does it mean for my friend who has a large recycling symbol tattooed ?
bacan 5y ago
I don't get why are things allowed to be sold, without ensuring the packaging is 100% recyclable
mperham 5y ago
Why can't the AG sue based on false advertising?
while1fork 5y ago
Recycling was promoted by the plastics lobby to sell more product. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-takeaways-from-the-fight-over-the-future-of-plastics https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-...

574 points by elliekelly 5y ago

I would much rather incentivize non-plastic alternative packaging. Consumers should have better options for metal cans, glass bottles, etc for mainstream goods, as those materials are far more effective targets for recycling. But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle.

mc32 5y ago
Why glass? Glass is quite recyclable but requires lots of energy to recycle. As soda bottles and milk bottles they might last 20 uses. Glass is also much heavier requiring more energy to transport.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  In every part of Canada I've lived in there has been a well developed reuse system. In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. Reuse should be way better integrated into our systems. If I could bring a resuable bag back to any supermarket to get the $1 fee back, it would be so much easier to justify buying reusable bags that really last a long time. The trouble is I never remember to bring it with me in the morning before work and I grocery shop on my way back home.
  - loonster 5y ago
    My family stores the bags in the trunk of our car. They are always available for random shopping trips. Public transportation would make reusable bags much more inconvenient for our family.
  - fnimick 5y ago
    I keep a couple in every bag I use regularly (gym bag, work bag, briefcase, etc) so I'm never without if I decide to stop by the store on the way home. That way you don't have to proactively remember to bring it!
  - arsome 5y ago
    Beer bottles are typically only reused if you say, bring them to The Beer Store or something similar. If you toss them in your municipal bin like me, my understanding is they basically just smash them and use the glass bits in other products like asphalt as it's just not worth the energy cost to actually recycle it. Aluminum cans are probably a better bet for recycling if you're just using the municipal bins. They're profitable enough that people routinely come steal the cans from my bins.
    - cloverich 5y ago
      But if the bottles, or even a subset of them, were standardized, it would be possible to have some bottle specific re-use (not recycle) programs. OP was I think giving an example of one that works. Perhaps it would be possible to extend it. I can understand there are some product specific's that limit this in some cases, but if I drink beer and topo chico and a few other similar drinks, it seems unlikely they couldn't all use the same bottle.
      - mc32 5y ago
        A lot of beer bottles conform to an industry standard (the ones with paper labels where anyone can slap their own label) and get reused. However, the reuse frequency is from 15 to 20 times before they begin to fail inspection tests and have to be taken out of circulation (and recycled or dumped). Recycling that glass is expensive. The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents.
        thaumasiotes 5y ago
        > The big advantage of glass from a consumer pov is that its inert and does not react with contents. This is a pretty significant advantage, but the disadvantage is that sometimes you drop it.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >In Ontario, for example, a beer bottle is used around 100 times on average. fact check: no, only 15 https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_average_beer_bottle_is_refilled_15_times_in_its_environmentallyfriendly_life_cycle.html https://www.thestar.com/life/food_wine/2013/06/28/the_averag...
    - 3pt14159 5y ago
      Oh, ok thanks for updating my view. I clearly remember hearing it was 99% but must be either misremembering or the original source was wrong. I'd still rather have re-use via glass or recycling via aluminum than plastic.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
- hatchnyc 5y ago
  You are not wrong, but in some countries they collect, wash, and and reuse glass (and even special kinds of plastic) bottles. According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. Someone should do the math first obviously but it seems like a great idea to me. If bottling is done locally you aren’t transporting the bottles long distance, and quite significantly in my mind glass is inert so if it does get into the environment, it isn’t leaching microplastics into the environment for the next thousand years.
  - OneEyedRobot 5y ago
    >According to my parents that used to be standard practice in the United States. You're making me feel old. I used to sort bottles as a kid. Soft drinks are just another example of gigantism in corporate life, economy of scale uber alles. There was a time when practically every small town had one or more bottling plants, the owners were pillars of the community sponsoring softball teams and the like. Delivery trucks typically had shelving rather than bays. Following that there was a huge spate of consolidation. Small distributors/bottlers had their franchises taken away, canning became owned by the mothership and absolutely huge. The more centralized the more of a pain it becomes to sort/return/clean bottles. I suppose it's like the history of car dealerships as they become fewer and larger. For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves.
    - gruez 5y ago
      > For that matter, a significant (most?) percentage of the US used to be self-employed instead of wage slaves. Are you sure that's not just due to people moving away from agriculture? A family farm is a thing, but not really a family factory.
      - panzagl 5y ago
        More likely retail- in my town the bookstore, stationary store, newsstand, hardware stores, etc. were all family owned until the big box stores opened up two towns over.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Places with cheap energy (e.g,. the Columbia River with hydroelectric power) could inexpensively recycle glass, aluminum. Of course it does take energy to get the recyclables to these places. Curious — are trains no longer efficient?
  - bequanna 5y ago
    > Places with cheap energy… I’ve always wondered about colocating manufacturing near cheap power sources. Is this actually possible? Isn’t the power generated already being used? If it is possible, why doesn’t every manufacturing plant just do this to reduce a huge input cost?
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Energy transfer losses are pretty marginal around 2%. Compared to labour availability, shipping resources and products; and land, it is not so big deal. Unless it's very energy intensive industry.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      Pretty sure aluminum extraction plants do this. As well as Bitcoin miners. ;-) Recently ... where was I, Eugene, Oregon? There was a shuttered Coca Cola bottling plant. I remember a huge one in Kansas City as well. Maybe someone with expertise can weigh in — but it seems like we used to, as an example, bottle things a lot more locally. It meant factory jobs in the area, transportation (of Coke) was shorter since there was probably a bottling plant in your state (or a neighboring one). I don't know. I feel a lot was lost.
      - blacksmith_tb 5y ago
        Most major metro areas in the US continue to have soft drink bottling plants (though they're using plastic bottles and aluminum cans these days), since transporting huge volumes of water is more expensive than smaller amounts of flavoring and coloring. Eugene OR (pop ~175K) may be slightly too small for that to be practical, but here in Portland I bike to work past two active bottling plants.
elliekelly 5y ago
I think this is the goal of Maine’s new recycling law (briefly mentioned in the article) where manufacturers are responsible for the cost of recycling. Although I’m not sure Maine’s law really allocates the full social cost of plastics: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/maine-becomes-first-state-to-shift-costs-of-recycling-from-taxpayers-to-companies/2021/07/13/aa6fbe44-e416-11eb-8aa5-5662858b696e_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/maine-bec...
m0llusk 5y ago
Correctly labeling materials could be a firm foundation from which to base incentive programs.
burkaman 5y ago
One way to incentivize recyclable packaging would be to make it illegal for companies to put a symbol on their non-recyclable plastic packaging that 98% of consumers associate with recycling.
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  Further - I don't understand why we don't just have mandated bottle/jar form factors. We broke the fucking loop by claiming that people could just throw plastic containers away and "somewhere, somehow (over the rainbow!!!) people will recycle them into new goods". That story is bullshit - even for most plastics that can actually be recycled. I want legislation that lays out a set of standardized form factors that are as re-usable as possible (NOT RECYCLABLE - Literally washable and reusable), and if companies use those - great! No extra taxes for you. Want to use your own custom packaging? Fine, but you pay for the whole fucking product lifecycle up front, before the customer ever touches it: Collection, Cleaning, Recycling/Disposal, Reprocessing, Redistribution. The EU estimates those costs for plastic at about 800 EUR ($950) a ton.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >I want legislation that lays out a set of standardized form factors that are as re-usable as possible (NOT RECYCLABLE - Literally washable and reusable), and if companies use those - great! No extra taxes for you. Is that seriously the impediment to plastic container reusability, that they're not standardized? People don't reuse plastic containers because there aren't that many uses for them around the house.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      Good point. My wife and I went through a period of trying to maximally reuse otherwise disposable packaging we had around the house, and we quickly discovered two facts: 1. There's surprisingly many things you can use disposable containers for around the house. 2. Even if you go out of your way to find more uses for the waste, in a month or two you'll just run out of applications. The problem of consumer waste is that it's a continuous flow of trash. At-home reuse is not a sink, it's a buffer - it fills up quickly, so it doesn't alter the overall dynamic of the system. Any waste reuse scheme needs to recirculate it on the market - new products need to be put in old packaging.
bko 5y ago
> But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle. What's not included in the "total lifecycle" that's not accounted for in cost? Presumably these alternative packages won't save any landfill space.
jedimastert 5y ago
While we're at it, can we get rid of cloth packaging that isn't explicitly made to be reused? Like how Tom's come in a box and a cloth bag inside of that box! It's so resource intensive; it's like the definition of virtue signalling.
- tantalor 5y ago
  What do you think virtue signaling is?
  - jedimastert 5y ago
    Virtue signaling is when an entity does something expressly to show they support a cause or extol a virtue, without actually helping. Disposable cloth packaging is a great example of this. Plastic production needs to be reduced for a large number of reasons, but cloth production takes an exceptional amount of energy and resources to produce while not generally being reusable or recyclable, and the extra durability and/or protection of cloth is almost never needed. (There was a NYT article about this, but I'll link directly to the study <https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-73-4.pdf https://www2.mst.dk/udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...>)
alistairSH 5y ago
I agree that we must incentivize packaging that's better for the environment. The problem is who gets to define "better". Cloth bags were once thought to be better than plastic for grocery use, but that might not be the case - the cloth has a larger environmental cost to produce (cotton is water-intensive) and has to be used a lot more than one might expect before it surpasses the basic plastic bag. And if the plastic bag is reused a few times, then used as a garbage liner, it's cost is reduced quite a bit. It's really not easy for a consumer to figure out what's better.
- twoodfin 5y ago
  Letting the price mechanism work (externalities accounted for) is a great way to do this.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - ceh123 5y ago
    > externalities accounted for Well yeah, that's kinda where the problem is. How do we price in all the different kinds of externalities for cotton bags and plastic bags in a way that is consistent and everyone agrees with? Debating these externalities and how they should be accounted for is exactly the hard problem the parent comment was talking about.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      A carbon tax would go a long way, even if it wouldn’t capture everything.
  - alistairSH 5y ago
    I agree - but that isn't a consumer decision (not a decision made at the time of consumption). A government agency has to determine the cost of the externalities (where the science and economics isn't easy) and then set taxes accordingly (not always politically viable).
formerly_proven 5y ago
> But they're no where near competitive with plastic because the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle. I don't know what you mean by this. If you bottle stuff into PET bottles (the usual stuff, being shredded after one use), then you have to buy one new PET bottle for each bottle you produce. If you bottle stuff into reusable glass bottles (98+ % returned intact, cleaned and reused), then you mostly don't buy new bottles, just replacements for bottles falling out of the cycle (reuse limit reached, not returned, broken). Why and by what mechanism would the price of a single new glass bottle account for the lifecycle of the bottle? It just doesn't make sense to me.
- RyEgswuCsn 5y ago
  I think what the parent comment meant was that for the environmental impact of producing and transporting a glass bottle (glassware are heavy), one can produce and transport many PET bottles. The ratio can be high enough to the point where producing a glass bottle is more environmental impactful if they are not reused enough. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvzvM9tf5s0
p_j_w 5y ago
>I would much rather Why not both? Is one mutually exclusive of the other?
tmountain 5y ago
"the production cost doesn't account for the total lifecycle" Until that issue is addressed, plastic will reign supreme.
while1fork 5y ago
Alternatives are worthless because that's how to reach 0% adoption. Plastic packaging for food and single-use plastics should be banned outright. All sold containers should be standardized and reused just like they were decades ago.

swiley 5y ago

I hope they’re not confusing the resin symbols with the recycling symbol.

gruez 5y ago
That's exactly what's happening. They're banning the use of the resin symbol unless it's also recyclable (by California standards), to reduce consumer confusion.
tantalor 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code
- hiidrew 5y ago
  smh this is some evil shit. damn plastic industry.
Denvercoder9 5y ago
The resin symbols were purposely made misleading to let consumers think that plastic was recyclable even when it wasn't. I don't think banning them would be that bad.
- q1w2 5y ago
  No. They were made to help communities separate plastics into those that can vs cannot be recycled. That's why they are on the plastic, and why they have the recycle shape.
asoneth 5y ago
Clearly the resin identification code and the recycling symbol are causing consumer confusion due to the fact that almost everyone confuses them. The US Society of the Plastics Industry designed their resin identification code in 1988 and made it similar to the recycling symbol which had been in use since 1970, even though many of the plastics thus labeled were not generally recyclable. According to wikipedia[1] they eventually changed the RIC "chasing arrows" to a solid triangle in 2013 to address consumer confusion, but I still see a lot of plastics sporting the chasing arrow symbol. I hope efforts like California's succeed so that the recycling symbol can be reserved for products that can be recycled in practice. (i.e. there are more than a token number of municipal facilities that process that type of plastic into a reusable form) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resin_identification_code

nashashmi 5y ago

I doubt you can create legislation to ban a symbol from a product if you don’t hold the trademark rights. However they can create a new symbol and legislate what products are eligible for that symbol. Edit: I stand corrected. There are other paths for this legislation

dubcanada 5y ago
You can create legislation to do what ever you want, it's up to the courts to decide if it is valid or not.
sokoloff 5y ago
I think this is a bad law for other reasons, but do believe that CA has (read: should have) standing to say “packages bearing these marks, which the Legislature believes mislead CA consumers, cannot be sold at retail in CA”.
torstenvl 5y ago
> I doubt you can create legislation to ban a symbol from a product if you don’t hold the trademark rights. Uhhh... where do you think trademark rights come from, if not legislation?

danschumann 5y ago

Are those dumpsters recyclable? I am picturing a big robot throwing those dumpsters into a giant shredder or something. I'll let myself out.

HPsquared 5y ago
They appear to be made of sheet steel, so almost certainly yes and that's how they would be recycled. Probably wouldn't involve a robot though...
- kibwen 5y ago
  In case anyone isn't aware, while plastic recycling may be a scam, metal recycling is extremely effective. To use cars as an example, 95% of cars end up being recycled, 80% of a car's materials (by weight) can be successfully recycled, and the average car is composed of 20% recycled material.

sokoloff 5y ago

This is a case where the proposal is actually worse than the headline, I think. From a non-paywall source: https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/08/california-recycling-single-use-plastic/ https://calmatters.org/politics/2021/08/california-recycling... > Despite the best intentions of Californians who diligently try to recycle yogurt cups, berry containers and other packaging, it turns out that at least 85% of single-use plastics in the state do not actually get recycled. Instead, they wind up in the landfill. The plastic resin is recyclable, but is not commonly recycled and this act seeks to remove the marks that serve to indicate the former because of the latter. I can’t see how that will increase recycling in CA, nor be likely to leave CA citizens nor environment better off.

jffry 5y ago
If you've only read the headline, here's a mirror: https://archive.is/ma1Ob https://archive.is/ma1Ob The California legislature has appeared to take the non-recycling of most plastics into account: A majority of the state’s assembly members voted to ban companies from using the arrows symbol unless they can prove the material is in fact recycled in most California communities, and is used to make new products.
elif 5y ago
It will decrease the number of plastic goods people buy under ecological pretexts. For instance, when I learned about plastic bottle recycling, I switched to canned water.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  It will also lead to the landfilling of recyclable resins in communities where their waste management is capable to recycle them, which in turn will result in fewer communities adopting/adapting waste management practices to process these items properly because consumers won’t put them into that stream.
- lttlrck 5y ago
  I hadn't realized the numbers were that bad... https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-bottle-you-thought-you-recycled-may-have-been-downcycled-instead https://oceana.org/blog/recycling-myth-month-plastic-bottle-...

globular-toast 5y ago

Some JS stops me reading the article after the first paragraph or so. But it seems to about using that specific "three arrows" symbol. One annoying thing I've noticed in the UK is some products having a symbol that looks a lot like the recycling symbol but upon closer inspection is not the same symbol. It turns it can be processed in a specific plant of which only one exists in the entire country. I doubt many get sent. As many HNers are aware, plastic can't really be recycled at all. It can be reprocessed, but never recycled. That plastic tray your food comes in will never become another plastic tray that food comes in. So the recycling symbol doesn't seem to mean much apart from being a way to help people sort their waste.

gambiting 5y ago
Also here in the UK - I noticed that annoyingly more and more items openly advertise, on the front of the packaging " NOW RECYCLABLE!" with an asterix next to it, and upon reading the small print it says it's recyclable, but only if brought into this special collection point, which they only have in like 5 sainsburys across the country. So if you just throw it in your recycling bin it goes to the landfill. I don't understand how that's even allowed.
- interestica 5y ago
  A similar thing is ongoing with the term "compostable" for some plastics -- often it only means through special municipal composting facilities. If you threw it in your backyard compost heap, it would not deteriorate quickly.
OneTimePetes 5y ago
Germany. My mum never accepted this, she did wash the plastic waste partially in the dishwasher - because it would be "reused". She always pointed at those recycling videos, were people sorted through the trash by hand.
GordonS 5y ago
> It can be reprocessed, but never recycled Huh, I didn't know that. TBH, I was pretty sure most of it was just going to landfill somewhere in Asia, with only a small portion really being recycled. What does "reprocessed" mean though? Taking the example of a prepackaged meal tray, what might happen to it?

s_dev 5y ago

In Ireland there's a recycling symbol for plastic products that can be recycled. But if you put that recycling symbol in a green circle it means something else -- "that the companies that produces the product is committed to recycling" -- whatever that means. This to me is beyond infuriating. Absolutely in favor of these sorts of measures.

detritus 5y ago
You mean 'The Green Dot'? This piece of shit thing? https://www.pro-e.org/the-green-dot-trademark https://www.pro-e.org/the-green-dot-trademark How this has been allowed to exist for so long is beyond my ken. The logo should look ENTIRELY different as it's basically false-advertising for the vast majority of people who have no idea what it actually represents. - ed spelling
- s_dev 5y ago
  >You mean 'The Green Dot'? Yup -- another business trick is in McDonalds -- the company that supplies the beef in Ireland is called "100% Irish Beef" and thus they put that on the packaging even if the beef doesn't come from Ireland. I've seen this don't with the equivalent of "100% recyclable" as the name of the company to pass the product off as environmental. However the main problem is still consumer knowledge of whats recyclable. If people think there is a small chance that something is recyclable they will throw it in the recycling bin -- this is the complete wrong approach. Put everything in the trash unless you're 100% sure it's recyclable. Otherwise you'll "contaminate" the whole batch like throwing a bad apple in on top of a barrel of good apples.
  - detritus 5y ago
    Yeah, exactly. The recycling trucks here in LDN have a campaign on the side of them that has words to the effect of "if you're unsure - leave it out!" because as you say, even partial contamination screws entire bales of reclaimed material. My eternal bugbear is Pizza boxes. Used greasy pizza boxes can often be recycled in many municipalities, BUT only in the organic or food waste. Greasy card in the paper recycling stream screws everything up. . I used to live in a fairly large warehouse community and 'made myself responsible for the recycling', so I have greyer hair than I should and a slighly less shallow awareness than many people of the problems in all this... :\

alistairSH 5y ago

About damn time. I've always been confused by the sign - it's on pretty much all plastics, but only a fraction are actually recyclable. And like many people, I chuck it all in the recycle bin and hope some of it gets recycled and that the non-recyclables don't screw up the whole works. It really shouldn't be this hard.

nipponese 5y ago
More strangely, it’s on many styrofoam packaging products.
- malexw 5y ago
  Styrofoam actually is recyclable, though you'd have to check with your local municipality to see if it's accepted. For example, it's listed as a "blue bin" item in Toronto: https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-organics-garbage/houses/what-goes-in-my-blue-bin/ https://www.toronto.ca/services-payments/recycling-organics-...
  - avh02 5y ago
    there are some biodegradable packing peanuts that someone like me thought was styrofoam - a way to tell is to take one and see if it "melts" in warm water... I THINK those can go in compost, but I'd check your local regulations
  - stevesearer 5y ago
    It is recyclable here in Santa Barbara, but you have to take it to the recycling center yourself.
taf2 5y ago
I stopped putting a lot of plastic in the recycle bin. The main reason because it's not recyclable - you're just increasing the cost to recycle. It needs to be sorted out and as a result cost more... It feels bad but I think it is better... For example a cereal box - has the plastic inside and the paper outside... I take the plastic out into the trash and put the paper into the recycle...

___luigi 5y ago

Before reading this article, I thought it was trivial "recycling symbol is used for recyclable items", and "no recycling symbol means that the item is not recyclable", why do they allow them to mis-use it (or mis-use any symbol) in first place?.

overcast 5y ago
Because companies probably found through research, that adding a recycle symbol, increases revenue by some percentage.
- echopurity 5y ago
  The whole movement to recycle plastic was an industry scam to knowingly profit from destroying the planet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dk3NOEgX7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dk3NOEgX7o
  - overcast 5y ago
    While true, that has nothing to do with what I stated. I was referring to consumers being more apt to purchase something that shows recyclable. Subconsciously or not.
q1w2 5y ago
Because different cities have the ability to recycle different types of resin. So the number in the middle of the symbol is used by the recycling plant to separate what can and cannot be recycled. The ridiculous part is that recycling plastic generates more carbon that making new plastic, and burying it is actually a great way to sequester CO2. So the entire plastic recycling effort has been discovered to be counter-productive.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.md/ma1Ob https://archive.md/ma1Ob

Robotbeat 5y ago

I hope they don’t get rid of the symbol entirely! It’s useful to know what resin a product is made of. Things like PLA (which is kinda sorta compostable) are not often recycled, but they can be. If you don’t know what resin the plastic is, then it’s even harder. Keep the resin symbol. Remove the arrows on it. We get better with recycling stuff over time, so eventually more resins could be recycled. But. Part of me wonders if it is actually BETTER to not recycle. Imagine if we made plastic by pulling CO2 from the atmosphere (which we do for PLA!). If the cost were the same and the processing energy the same, wouldn’t it be better for the climate to bury that plastic (sequestering the carbon) instead of recycling it? That is, after all, how we got fossil fuels and reduced the CO2 to preindustrial levels! Burying a bunch of waste carbon from dead algae or trees before fungi evolved that could efficiently break down lignin. Recycling that carbon would’ve meant higher CO2 levels today. And the waste in river thing is primarily about what happens to plastic BEFORE it ends up in a bin (trash OR recycling). Things like water satchets, which really are a compensation for having crap tap water.

DFHippie 5y ago
> If the cost were the same and the processing energy the same, wouldn’t it be better for the climate to bury that plastic (sequestering the carbon) instead of recycling it? Even if it pollutes more to make virgin material than to recycle it -- and I think that's your problem -- if the non-recycled material goes into a landfill instead of the ocean or biosphere, there's a small consolation in that the carbon in the plastic is sequestered.
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  I don’t think it’s a small effect. There are something like 300 million tons of plastic waste per year, which is about 1 Gigatonne of CO2, or about 3% of global emissions… more than global aviation! If we cut down all sources of emissions to zero, that would mean humanity using non-fossil plastic (like PLA or electrolytic syngas derived regular plastics) would be carbon negative. The cost of PLA is about $2/kg, or equivalent to about $600/tonneCO2. About how much Climeworks currently costs for direct air CO2 capture.

ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago

John Oliver did a rant on plastics recycling, a few weeks ago[0]. TL;DR: Anything with a "Number in triangle" over 2, is probably not going to be recycled, and you might as well toss it in the trash, as that's where it will end up, anyway[1]. Different from this symbol, and probably won't be affected, but recycling has a great deal of "PR spin" to it. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fiu9GSOmt8E [1] https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-08-16 https://dilbert.com/strip/1997-08-16

q1w2 5y ago
Burying plastic is likely the best solution anyway as it's a CO2 sink. It's a great way to sequester carbon.
- omgwtfbyobbq 5y ago
  That's a great point. Shred it and use it as infill.
- titzer 5y ago
  Except it is made from fossil fuels in the first place, so it is at best carbon neutral--but isn't, because making plastic takes energy. There's nothing green about burying plastics.

syncbehind 5y ago

You'd think this was obvious to do. Sometimes I absolutely loathe the performative nature of most recycling initiatives.

jacknews 5y ago

It's astonishing that this symbol is allowed to used on non-recyclable products in the first place.

q1w2 5y ago
Most recyclable plastic that's collected isn't even recycled anymore. We might be better off burying it as a carbon sink.
mrweasel 5y ago
Yeah, I got the same angry feeling that I get when a company write: "Made with real chocolate". Well... no you don't have to write that, it's the product made with fake chocolate that should have a label. Why would you even put a recycling label on a non-recyclable product, unless you're an asshole.
caturopath 5y ago
The generous interpretation is that in these cases it's generally possible to recycle the material, and the company is noting that and may well think it would be a really good idea of someone did recycle the things, even though realistically it ain't happening. The bar set by the bill is much higher than 'could be recycled'. It "ban[s] companies from using the arrows symbol unless they can prove the material is in fact recycled in most California communities, and is used to make new products."

throwaway2214 5y ago

Such a waste of time. Now we will spend a decade arguing which plastic is really recyclable, and if you can recycle it once is it enough, or should be 2 times? or does it degrade on its own? bio plastic (which turns out sometimes is worse than current common plastic) and etc. Coca Cola's 'Please Recycle' on the caps makes me boil with rage, how about 'Please Don't Make it'? There must be supply chain changes, probably 95% of my plastic is from the supermarket, it is increasingly more difficult to buy without plastic. This must be banned, it will take decades until the free market regulates itself.

Jesus_piece 5y ago
The free market does not regulate itself. The big plastic producers have lobbied and muddled the waters endlessly to confuse the public and blame consumers on their awful environment damaging products. Less than 10% of all plastics across the world have ever been recycled https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-produced-recycling-waste-ocean-trash-debris-environment https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-p...
- throwaway2214 5y ago
  i think it will regulate as the new generation is growing to be more and more aware, and they (hopefully) they will hurt the plastic producer's bottom line, but it is super slow, and this is assuming that plastic producer's propaganda wont grow in sophistication look how long it took for tabacco, and it still lost despite all the lobbying, but it is incredibly slow
  - colejohnson66 5y ago
    Even tobacco is still going strong after all these years of exposure to the reality (and ads on rehab programs).
skybrian 5y ago
You should follow the local rules on recycling. Only the company picking up the recycling knows what they can really handle. Unfortunately this information isn’t always as easy as it should be to look up. It should be a simple web search away.

deleted 5y ago

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crazygringo 5y ago

> For years, the United States also shipped much of its plastic waste overseas, choking local rivers and streams. A global convention now bans most trade in plastic waste Most of this article is fine, but I can't believe this specific misinformation continues to be printed. Exported plastic waste virtually entirely goes into landfills overseas, or is incinerated. Whereas the waste choking local rivers and streams e.g. in Asia is virtually entirely local waste -- people littering, etc. I'm 100% on the side of the environment -- which is why I want us to make policy based on actual fact, so efforts go towards what actually matters.

dieortin 5y ago
Could I have a source on the waste on local rivers being local?
- ortusdux 5y ago
  https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803
  - ejstronge 5y ago
    > https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5803 I don't see a comment in that article about the original provenance of the waste in rivers - can you paste it?
Cd00d 5y ago
You're making an interesting point, but I do wish you'd support it. You're making a a counter-claim to TFA, but you don't have more credibility than the Times. I would love some validation that our exported plastic waste goes into landfills, as you're stating, but I'm also skeptical that all the places we ship waste to have well designed landfills with proper water runoff management.
- honksillet 5y ago

kiliantics 5y ago

What about adding "not recyclable" messages to things? Maybe along with images of the plastic bag islands or something, like those cigarette pack warnings. Give everyone that painful reminder whenever they buy these things. Or what about just actual economic incentives to get people to live sustainably? High taxes on carbon and plastic and highly subsidised public alternatives

wiz21c 5y ago
This one million times. Down here, packs of cigarettes have horror pictures on them and, sure no smoker ever stopped because of them, but once you show that to your kids, they just don't feel like trying anymore...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jokethrowaway 5y ago

From my European point of view, the problem is not necessarily the almost invisible symbol but the government endorsement of recycling. Being forced to collect rubbish in some centralised way with tons of stupid rules made me think that recycling was working and that plastic was a relatively green choice (for something coming from oil). This propagated down in the economy with brands using more and more plastic in the last 30 years. Everything is plastic nowadays, even what used to be glass (like milk containers). Both government and mainstream media were all about people following all the dumb rules (I wonder how many hours of lost productivity we collectively lost as a species) or you hated the planet. In the last few of years it turned out recycling is mostly useless, even if we had the evidence for it since the beginning. Most of it is unrecyclable, some of it get shipped to China to burn, a minor part of plastic gets recycled (and it can even be recycled a limited amount of times). The government trying to intervene now is doing too little too late. The only thing I can understand is that big oil bought our governments officials and media. What they bought is 30 years to make money selling oil and enough time to shift their investment to something greener for the next cycle of corruption and profiteering. Incidentally I know a family in the oil business and the new generation is investing the family empire in renewables, pocketing all the government's incentives for solar energies, while they're at it.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> I know a family in the oil business and the new generation is investing the family empire in renewables, pocketing all the government's incentives for solar energies, while they're at it. This is actually reassuring to hear. It's an indication that maybe, just maybe, the oil industry won't hold on to their current source of profits all the way until it's too late.
clairity 5y ago
> “Both government and mainstream media were all about people following all the dumb rules (I wonder how many hours of lost productivity we collectively lost as a species) or you hated the planet.” that applies word-for-word to covid measures. almost none of them do much in practice, but there has to be a bevy of rules to keep us mollified and distracted from the raw machinations of power and money.

honksillet 5y ago

Reduce, reuse, recycle... In that order! If we are serious about preserving landfills we will start using reusable bottles.

qq4 5y ago

I'm a fan of this but I still think we're so far away from a solution. I gave up on recycling at my apartment because the bins get filled with things like toilet paper, soiled pizza boxes and dog poop. Mislabeled plastics are the least of my issues.

blondie9x 5y ago

These sort of policies are why California leads the world.

billytetrud 5y ago

I was thinking about this yesterday when I saw a pizza box with the recyclable symbol on it. It's infuriating that intelligent people can't seem to understand that pizza boxes aren't recyclable after they've had pizza in them. What about oil soaked cardboard says "recyclable" to people?

nineplay 5y ago
I think the relationship between food and recycling is justifiably unclear to most people. Can you recycle cans of refried beans? Prior to today I would have thought yes, but now I see I'm supposed to rinse them. For refried beans I'm already wondering about the water wasted washing the can vs. the benefit of recycling it. I live in a drought region so I'm probably going to chuck it. Cardboard sandwich containers? Is there a go/no-go depending on how much mayonnaise had dripped out? It's no surprise people are confused.
- jonahhorowitz 5y ago
  Your recyclables don't need to be particularly clean when they go in the bin. Just clean enough that they won't make everything else in the bin dirty (particularly paper). During the last drought in California, San Jose asked people to stop washing their recycling since it already gets washed in one way or another as part of the recycling process. In your can example, it's going to get smelted down and anything organic is going to burn off. - https://ecology.wa.gov/Blog/Posts/June-2019/Recycle-Right-How-empty-is-empty-enough-How-clean https://ecology.wa.gov/Blog/Posts/June-2019/Recycle-Right-Ho...
- billytetrud 5y ago
  The giant recylcing symbol on a lot of pizza boxes sure doesn't help.
- asdff 5y ago
  If you live in a drought region even if everyone in the entire region rinsed their refried bean cans that probably wouldn't push the needle on water use on a statistically significant level. Industry is who is causing the drought, not your lawns and swimming pools and long showers, despite what the narrative in the industry funded press might say. When you look at the actual water use data from state agencies devoid of editorial bias, this conclusion is obvious.

alex_young 5y ago

Why don’t we ban the production or import of products which can’t be reused or recycled, and for which alternatives exist? For instance, soda bottles. We used to have a closed loop system for these. All of the bottles were glass, the same dimension and color, and one exchanged them at the store you purchased them at. Similar systems exist in other countries for beer and wine bottles.

obblekk 5y ago

Wouldn't this violate free speech laws? I'm all for regulation to disclose information, but regulation to prevent people from saying something is a bit more dicey. Even trademarks to an extent feel unfair (should you really be unable to say the word Google in a TV Ad?).

himinlomax 5y ago
False advertising is not protected speech, not any more than defamation.
caturopath 5y ago
There are lots of exceptions to free speech: false advertising, all manner of fraud, libel, falsely shouting fire in a theatre, incitement of violence, etc. You can say "Google" in a TV ad without violating their trademark. You can't use the word "Google" in every way (you can't pretend to be Google so people trust you, for instance). The legal thing that causes folks to be scared of doing this in practical situations is being sued for libel, not trademark infringement. Do you think that false nutrition facts should be printable on the same crinkly plastic packaging as a misleading recycling symbol?
- nybble41 5y ago
  The issue is prior restraint. If you sell someone a product marked in such as way as to create an expectation that it will be recyclable, taking no steps to dispel that belief, and it turns out not to be recyclable, then you've committed fraud. The buyer would have a legitimate claim against you for any costs which resulted from the product not being recyclable, for example if they had to pay extra to dispose of it as garbage rather than recycling. This is not the same as saying that it ought to be illegal to apply the recycling symbol to the product in the first place, since merely applying the symbol is not a sufficient condition to qualify as fraud. For example, there could be an accompanying disclaimer (or expectation that a "reasonable person" would know) that while the product is recyclable, it may not be permitted in the regular recycling bins in the buyer's region.

newbamboo 5y ago

California will make any and all signage meaningless. Buy an air purifier in California; “this item has substances known to cause cancer and birth defects.” What a mess is the golden state.

arwineap 5y ago

It seems like a much simpler solution to have the state impose a tax on products that use plastics which CA recycling programs cannot process

nybble41 5y ago
No need for an actual tax, just make the recycled plastics available on the market at cost. If recycling is actually useful, and the state isn't doing something stupid like subsidizing the production of non-recyclable plastics or penalizing the recyclable ones, then the "tax" will be the difference between the (presumed lower) price of recycled plastic and the price of new plastic.
- arwineap 5y ago
  That only works if we can make the recycled plastic cheaper than the regular plastic I don't think the recycling bits remove costs, I think they add costs
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    > That only works if we can make the recycled plastic cheaper than the regular plastic Then perhaps we shouldn't be recycling that plastic?

llsf 5y ago

What does it mean for my friend who has a large recycling symbol tattooed ?

bacan 5y ago

I don't get why are things allowed to be sold, without ensuring the packaging is 100% recyclable

mperham 5y ago

Why can't the AG sue based on false advertising?

while1fork 5y ago

Recycling was promoted by the plastics lobby to sell more product. https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-takeaways-from-the-fight-over-the-future-of-plastics https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/822597631/plastic-wars-three-...