3 ms·

Or you know glass bottles which can be returned and re-used. Like they used to do. This is just them again pretending to care about the environment

tokai 4y ago
As can plastic bottles.
- DoingIsLearning 4y ago
  Sure many things can, allow me to ask what percentage of coca-cola bottles are actually using recycled plastic?
  - tokai 4y ago
    All of them in my country.
    - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
      First off that will only happen in countries where the marketing negatives of not using recycled bottles impact sales (note that is not a lot of countries). Second, recycled bottles are not made 100% from recycled plastic. You can tell that claim is misleading because if they were made 100% from recycled plastic they would be near opaque and dark grey rather than the pristine transparency that customers expect. Plastic recycling has a colour/type separation problem. Third unlike glass or aluminium, plastic becomes brittle after a few recycling cycles, so even in a perfect circular economy you would still have to introduce 'new' plastic into these batches. Yes Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Unilever, Nestle, etc. may claim to use recycled plastic but they are not using recycled plastic exclusively and they never will be able, plastic recycling is and always has been a marketing exercise to externalize the cost of plastic from Industry to consumers.
- akmarinov 4y ago
  Birds don’t eat glass
  - tokai 4y ago
    Sure they do. https://www.popsci.com/seagull-garbage-eating-plastic-litter/ https://www.popsci.com/seagull-garbage-eating-plastic-litter...
- yodon 4y ago
  The market for post-consumer recycled plastic materials is arbitrarily close to zero. Plastic recyclables just go into a different landfill than regular waste. The recyclable symbols on the things you buy are there to make you feel better about buying plastic products, not because there's an actual functioning recycle usage chain. Edit added: According to the EPA data less than 9% of plastic put into recycling bins is actually re-used (and most of that re-use is of much cleaner and more uniform manufacturing waste, not actually post-consumer waste)[0] [0]https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
  - tokai 4y ago
    This is because people don't want to make it work. It works in plenty of European countries.
    - yodon 4y ago
      The issue isn't whether people put plastic waste into recycling bins, it's about whether any of that plastic gets taken out of the bins and re-used in commercial processes. Today, across the entire world, that answer is essentially no. Yes, there are products made with recycled plastic (Coca Cola is the current poster child). They are rare because its considerably more expensive and more difficult to work with recycled plastic, and most are made primarily with waste from manufacturing processes not post-consumer waste (I suspect Coke's volume is high enough that they need to tap the post-consumer stream but I haven't found any data on that).
      - tokai 4y ago
        >The issue isn't whether people put plastic waste into recycling bins Thats not what I'm saying. The bottle are being reused here. What makes it rare other places can and have been solved many other places. That your system is bad is not an argument against a working system.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
323 4y ago
There are tradeoffs, you need to think about the whole lifecycle. Glass is heavier, which means more fuel burned to carry it. You need to wash it too, more detergent in the ecosystem.
NullPrefix 4y ago
Glass bottles don't leach estrogen. Won't happen
woeh 4y ago
They seem to be working on that too[0]. In the article they mention both glass and plastic bottles. As far as I understand, reusable plastic bottles are more environment friendly than glass ones, because they require less resources to make and transport. Note that the article title claims Coca Cola to be 'industry leading', but I do not think reusing plastic bottles is new? I remember returning plastic bottles to the supermarket back when I was a kid ~20 years ago, and I believe the higher quality plastic bottles were collected to be re-used not re-cycled. [0] https://www.coca-colacompany.com/news/coca-cola-announces-industry-leading-target-for-reusable-packaging https://www.coca-colacompany.com/news/coca-cola-announces-in...

tokai 4y ago

As can plastic bottles.

DoingIsLearning 4y ago
Sure many things can, allow me to ask what percentage of coca-cola bottles are actually using recycled plastic?
- tokai 4y ago
  All of them in my country.
  - DoingIsLearning 4y ago
    First off that will only happen in countries where the marketing negatives of not using recycled bottles impact sales (note that is not a lot of countries). Second, recycled bottles are not made 100% from recycled plastic. You can tell that claim is misleading because if they were made 100% from recycled plastic they would be near opaque and dark grey rather than the pristine transparency that customers expect. Plastic recycling has a colour/type separation problem. Third unlike glass or aluminium, plastic becomes brittle after a few recycling cycles, so even in a perfect circular economy you would still have to introduce 'new' plastic into these batches. Yes Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Unilever, Nestle, etc. may claim to use recycled plastic but they are not using recycled plastic exclusively and they never will be able, plastic recycling is and always has been a marketing exercise to externalize the cost of plastic from Industry to consumers.
akmarinov 4y ago
Birds don’t eat glass
- tokai 4y ago
  Sure they do. https://www.popsci.com/seagull-garbage-eating-plastic-litter/ https://www.popsci.com/seagull-garbage-eating-plastic-litter...
yodon 4y ago
The market for post-consumer recycled plastic materials is arbitrarily close to zero. Plastic recyclables just go into a different landfill than regular waste. The recyclable symbols on the things you buy are there to make you feel better about buying plastic products, not because there's an actual functioning recycle usage chain. Edit added: According to the EPA data less than 9% of plastic put into recycling bins is actually re-used (and most of that re-use is of much cleaner and more uniform manufacturing waste, not actually post-consumer waste)[0] [0]https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/plastics-material-specific-data https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
- tokai 4y ago
  This is because people don't want to make it work. It works in plenty of European countries.
  - yodon 4y ago
    The issue isn't whether people put plastic waste into recycling bins, it's about whether any of that plastic gets taken out of the bins and re-used in commercial processes. Today, across the entire world, that answer is essentially no. Yes, there are products made with recycled plastic (Coca Cola is the current poster child). They are rare because its considerably more expensive and more difficult to work with recycled plastic, and most are made primarily with waste from manufacturing processes not post-consumer waste (I suspect Coke's volume is high enough that they need to tap the post-consumer stream but I haven't found any data on that).
    - tokai 4y ago
      >The issue isn't whether people put plastic waste into recycling bins Thats not what I'm saying. The bottle are being reused here. What makes it rare other places can and have been solved many other places. That your system is bad is not an argument against a working system.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago

323 4y ago

There are tradeoffs, you need to think about the whole lifecycle. Glass is heavier, which means more fuel burned to carry it. You need to wash it too, more detergent in the ecosystem.

NullPrefix 4y ago

Glass bottles don't leach estrogen. Won't happen

woeh 4y ago

They seem to be working on that too[0]. In the article they mention both glass and plastic bottles. As far as I understand, reusable plastic bottles are more environment friendly than glass ones, because they require less resources to make and transport. Note that the article title claims Coca Cola to be 'industry leading', but I do not think reusing plastic bottles is new? I remember returning plastic bottles to the supermarket back when I was a kid ~20 years ago, and I believe the higher quality plastic bottles were collected to be re-used not re-cycled. [0] https://www.coca-colacompany.com/news/coca-cola-announces-industry-leading-target-for-reusable-packaging https://www.coca-colacompany.com/news/coca-cola-announces-in...