Recycling has become such a lazy way of dealing with a bit more convenience. Single use plastics and plastic packaging should be banned or at least be taxed accordingly for subsequent processing.
> Recycling has become such a lazy way of dealing with a bit more convenience.
It's not necessarily that simple. With glass bottle reuse vs. plastic recycling, for example, it's not necessarily clear which ends up being most efficient. The glass containers can be reused, but not that many times on average, and it takes sufficiently more energy to produce one vs. the energy required to recycle a plastic bottle.
> Single use plastics and plastic packaging should be banned or at least be taxed accordingly for subsequent processing.
I'd go further and say we ought to tax all packaging based on the cost of cleanup, be that reuse, recycling, or other measures.
As an example of a measure that works reasonably well (but where I think the rates still ought to rise further to reflect the environmental costs in full) is bottle return schemes like the one in Norway that starts by adding a tax to drinks containers, and then adds in an incentive to recycle by deducting from the tax based on the proportion of containers recycled via approved schemes.
It doesn't go far enough in encouraging less packaging, and that specific scheme only covers drinks containers, but the overall principle of taxing based on an assumption that the packaging will not be treated properly and that we need to penalize that, and then reducing the tax bill if you can prove otherwise, is good.
Same with re-usable bags. I read somewhere that you need to use it 37 times to make the switch from single-use plastic bags worth it. Either way, I prefer reusable bags.
I live in the Netherlands, the government here passed a law in 2016 that prohibits shops from giving out free plastic bags (the are required to charge a minimal of 25 cents for a bag).
In my opinion it works tremendously well. It took about a month for people to get used to the idea, but now you see most people bring their own reusable bags. As far as I can tell the amount of waste plastic bags on the street has reduced significantly since them.
An interesting observation was that the shopkeepers had more issues with this law than the consumers. For the first couple of months many had some lame sign saying something like 'we are very sorry that our stupid government forced us to charge you for this bag'. Some even offered 25 cents discount on their product if you took a bag with your purchase. Luckily it is now generally accepted by both the merchants and the consumers.
Co-op in the UK has an interesting approach: Their single-use bags are now bags of the type approved for the food recycling bins. They tear more easily, but they're still solid enough.
> The glass containers can be reused, but not that many times on average, and it takes sufficiently more energy to produce one vs. the energy required to recycle a plastic bottle.
Is there any source for this?
In Germany for example we have the option to buy bottled water in glass or plastic. Glass bottles are reusable, while plastic bottles are either one-way (majority) or reusable. The glass bottles are reused an average of 50x, while the one-way plastic bottles obviously are only used once. There are some reusable plastic bottles, but they are only reused max. 12x if not a lot less.
Looking at these numbers alone tells me that glass bottles are way better for our environment compared to plastic bottles. So I am a bit confused by your statement.
It's long since I've looked at this, so I don't have sources handy, but it's nowhere near as simple as you suggest. Specifically you can not tell from your numbers alone.
Glass bottles are far more energy-expensive to transport. Both filled, but also empty where plastic bottles can be packed far denser.
Reuse of bottles is also not energy-free: it takes transport, where transport of plastic bottles or cans is even cheaper, as depending they may be crushed before transport. After transport, bottles for reuse must be cleaned and sterilized. Combined with the much lower energy costs of recycling a plastic bottle vs. the already low costs of producing one, the difference between reusing a glass bottle and recycling a plastic bottle is low enough that it takes very high return rates and good quality returns to break even.
As far as I remember it certainly is possible and it might well have improved since I last saw numbers, but it's not an automatic given until/unless you have sufficiently high return rates (Germany possibly does - I don't remember the precise return rates, but I believe they're similar to Scandinavia well above 90%), and can ensure you're able to reuse enough times.
I just wanted to add to your last paragraph that we are paying 25ct per one-way plastic bottle on top of the regular price, we get it back when we return the bottle. That means the return rate is super high, because otherwise people will lose a lot of money. I think the system is quite good.
Same in Scandinavia. I do agree it works well, and it's critical in order to make reuse cost effective, because consider that if you were to have only 10% of bottles not being returned, then that means 10% of bottles are never even available to reuse even once, of the 90% reused, you'd expect 10% (so 9 percentage points) are never reused twice, and so on - drastically driving down the average number of reuses possible even if you assume every returned bottle is perfect.
As far as I can tell return rates in Germany, as in Scandinavia, are much higher than 90% - up to 99% for some categories, so it likely is high enough to be worth it.
It may be more simple than you think. Plastic bottles take a surprising amount of energy - higher than reusing glass - to recycle as the washing has steam cleaning and agitating stages because you need to remove the ink, glue and labels from the outside. Plastic recycling is comically easy to ruin a whole batch by small amounts of contaminants that didn't get cleaned away.
Glass is often recycled not to glass again, but ground to become low grade building sand. From an energy point of view it seems designed not to pay.
The old milkman, or Corona pop man in the UK got about 50 round trips from each bottle. Any breakages were thrown in with the new glass.
> The old milkman, or Corona pop man in the UK got about 50 round trips from each bottle. Any breakages were thrown in with the new glass.
A commercial relationship like that is at the very best case for bottle returns, though. I think bottle reuse in Norway when glass was phased out was in the high teens.
Yes, and booming Amazon doesn't help to curve residuals use. It's a good example of what has to change going forward. I don't need 3 layers of wrapping for my 10 centimeters shampoo
Tbh every time I get a parcel from Amazon I start thinking of investing in packaging industry,as the amounts used are absolutely obsene...I think 10-15 more years and we'll all be thinking how stupid this all was..
Outsourcing recycling to developing nations seems like such an ethical minefield. It's a promising sign that Malaysia and the Philippines are putting their foot down and rejecting anything which isn't suitable or has been contaminated.
If the companies responsible feel the pushback it may help to close the feedback loop somewhat between western consumers and the consequences of their consumption.
Remember watching a documentary about UK's landfills.The older ones,that are no longer in use, are often not even mapped property,so even the government struggles to pin point where all the stuff was dumped half a century ago.What was even more interesting is how much slower things degrade as opposed to the official guidelines. Decommissioned landfills are often covered with a layer of soil,which essentially deprives it from oxygen and slows down the process.They dug up some newspapers that were 30 or more years old and still fully legible.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 49.6 ms ] threadIt's not necessarily that simple. With glass bottle reuse vs. plastic recycling, for example, it's not necessarily clear which ends up being most efficient. The glass containers can be reused, but not that many times on average, and it takes sufficiently more energy to produce one vs. the energy required to recycle a plastic bottle.
> Single use plastics and plastic packaging should be banned or at least be taxed accordingly for subsequent processing.
I'd go further and say we ought to tax all packaging based on the cost of cleanup, be that reuse, recycling, or other measures.
As an example of a measure that works reasonably well (but where I think the rates still ought to rise further to reflect the environmental costs in full) is bottle return schemes like the one in Norway that starts by adding a tax to drinks containers, and then adds in an incentive to recycle by deducting from the tax based on the proportion of containers recycled via approved schemes.
It doesn't go far enough in encouraging less packaging, and that specific scheme only covers drinks containers, but the overall principle of taxing based on an assumption that the packaging will not be treated properly and that we need to penalize that, and then reducing the tax bill if you can prove otherwise, is good.
In my opinion it works tremendously well. It took about a month for people to get used to the idea, but now you see most people bring their own reusable bags. As far as I can tell the amount of waste plastic bags on the street has reduced significantly since them.
An interesting observation was that the shopkeepers had more issues with this law than the consumers. For the first couple of months many had some lame sign saying something like 'we are very sorry that our stupid government forced us to charge you for this bag'. Some even offered 25 cents discount on their product if you took a bag with your purchase. Luckily it is now generally accepted by both the merchants and the consumers.
Is there any source for this?
In Germany for example we have the option to buy bottled water in glass or plastic. Glass bottles are reusable, while plastic bottles are either one-way (majority) or reusable. The glass bottles are reused an average of 50x, while the one-way plastic bottles obviously are only used once. There are some reusable plastic bottles, but they are only reused max. 12x if not a lot less.
Looking at these numbers alone tells me that glass bottles are way better for our environment compared to plastic bottles. So I am a bit confused by your statement.
Glass bottles are far more energy-expensive to transport. Both filled, but also empty where plastic bottles can be packed far denser.
Reuse of bottles is also not energy-free: it takes transport, where transport of plastic bottles or cans is even cheaper, as depending they may be crushed before transport. After transport, bottles for reuse must be cleaned and sterilized. Combined with the much lower energy costs of recycling a plastic bottle vs. the already low costs of producing one, the difference between reusing a glass bottle and recycling a plastic bottle is low enough that it takes very high return rates and good quality returns to break even.
As far as I remember it certainly is possible and it might well have improved since I last saw numbers, but it's not an automatic given until/unless you have sufficiently high return rates (Germany possibly does - I don't remember the precise return rates, but I believe they're similar to Scandinavia well above 90%), and can ensure you're able to reuse enough times.
I just wanted to add to your last paragraph that we are paying 25ct per one-way plastic bottle on top of the regular price, we get it back when we return the bottle. That means the return rate is super high, because otherwise people will lose a lot of money. I think the system is quite good.
As far as I can tell return rates in Germany, as in Scandinavia, are much higher than 90% - up to 99% for some categories, so it likely is high enough to be worth it.
Glass is often recycled not to glass again, but ground to become low grade building sand. From an energy point of view it seems designed not to pay.
The old milkman, or Corona pop man in the UK got about 50 round trips from each bottle. Any breakages were thrown in with the new glass.
A commercial relationship like that is at the very best case for bottle returns, though. I think bottle reuse in Norway when glass was phased out was in the high teens.
If the companies responsible feel the pushback it may help to close the feedback loop somewhat between western consumers and the consequences of their consumption.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20030065