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I worked in packaging for 20 years. A bottle CAN be recycled indefinitely… if it’s made from GLASS.
Source: I worked 8 years for a glass bottle manufacturer.
The real key is local bottling where local production isn't possible.
Ship vats of Coca-Cola syrup to the 200 largest cities (more or less) in North America and create local bottle circulation.
Spice it up with local bottle designs or recycling marks. Now you've got novelty sales, collector sales, eco-conscious sales, 'support local' sales...
I am so confused. Isn't that the coca cola model? Each area has some coca cola bottling franchise that services them, and they already have regional differences.
Too bad most of those bottles got replaced with plastic completely disregarding the impact of the environment they are causing. Not to mention that glass also comes from abundant resources like sand and we don't risk running out of it anytime soon, the same can't be said for oil.
Not to mention that glass also comes from abundant resources like sand and we don't risk running out of it anytime soon
Is now a bad time to point out that not only is sand not as an abundant resource as you think, but we're actually running short of it?
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/environment/a39880899/earth-is-running-out-of-sand/
https://theweek.com/news/science-health/960931/why-is-the-world-running-out-of-sand
Those glass bottles used to cause an awful lot of horrific deaths and injuries during handling, so from a safety perspective, there is no desire at all to return to glass. Glass bottles are also much heavier than plastic, so have a commensurate environmental impact due to the increased consumption of fossil fuels for shipping as well. Fixing the problems with plastic was a big PR win and saved companies millions in law suits and shipping costs. They won't go back to glass. The answer is probably re-usable plastic containers purchased by the customer and refilled at stores for the same price (or more) than when sold in disposable plastic packaging. Another PR win in the offing, no doubt.
The sad thing is that we don't even need 99.9% of this plastic in the first place. People were making disposable packaging, clothing, building materials etc out of non-toxic and biodegradable materials for most of history and it was fine. I seriously detest plastic and wish it was banned/not made unless for exceptional uses e.g replacement heart valves.
It feels inevitable that our descendents will eventually say "holy shit, you stored your FOOD in it?!", after we discover we've been literally killing ourselves the whole time
This is our version of ancient Romans using lead based makeup
Or them using asbestos for napkins and tablecloths, or lead pipes, or mercury in household paint. The Romans loved to use toxic stuff.
Descendants? On this planet?
In this economy?
Really. For the vast majority of packaging, what the fuck was wrong with just using cardboard? Even if 99.99999999% of the stuff winds up in a landfill, at least cardboard is theoretically renewable and will biodegrade in less than a thousand lifetimes.
Cardboard and paper bags went out of style because of the "save the rainforest" narrative. Even though most paper products are made from trees specifically grown to be harvested for their wood.
That's why we started using plastic bags at grocery stores, remember?
That was what they told us. The reason they actually did it was because they were giving us the bags and they cost a nickel. where plastic bags cost them 5 for a penny.
I think about this sort of thing from time to time, and every time I come to the same conclusion that manufacturers of bulk goods need to take more responsibility for the entire life cycle of their products. They're getting a free ride with municipalities stuck footing the bill for recycling plastics, and have zero incentive to solve the problem.
Let's say the city sent all the recyclables to some regional warehousing facility where they would get sorted by barcode according to manufacturer. Then the companies would be charged for storage and would have strong incentive to come collect their property before it really starts to pile up.
Initially, they will no doubt gripe about it, but in the long term, it may be a win-win in that if say Coca-Cola realizes it can get all its bottles back, it could switch to a more reusable design that could reduce bottling costs?
Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit on this in 2004. They also concluded that paper and glass recycling were similarly worse that throwing it away. Glass because the energy required to grind, melt, and separate the raw material, and paper because the process uses toxic solvents and produces just as much waste as throwing it away.
Also don't be fooled by people claiming plastics can be burnt cleanly. That's another myth that plastic producers push to prevent people reducing their plastic use.
I worked for a glass bottle manufacturer and using cullet (broken glass) lowers the melting point and saves a significant percentage of costs to heat the furnace. Before the lightweight single use bottles became the standard in the 80-90’s, bottles were thicker and heavier, made to be returned, washed and reused.
Yep. I've told people about that Bullshit episode so many times. I've even shown it to people. They don't believe anyone would lie about it and since the episode is so old new tech has to have fixed the issue!
If we use more nuclear to create electricity recycling becomes cleaner and cleaner
Maybe it's energy intensive, but energy can be clean, especially now that renewable energy is starting to become the cheapest form of energy. You could even make up for the variance by only processing when there is an energy surplus.
it's not really difficult to recycle plastics (depolymerisation) - but it's not cheap to do it at scale and there really isnt any way to profit from it, so it's just not done.
Why couldn't we switch back to glass as our primary container material? Wasn't that always fully recyclable?
Apparently we're running out of sand. That's going to make the transition to glass harder. I'm not saying I don't agree because I would definitely prefer glass than plastic.
For people that don’t want to read/don’t already know
It’s the types of sand, desert sand is useless
Sounds like someone needs to make a new glass processing method so we can use desert sand
Good luck shipping stuff in glass packaging. Very heavy, extremely fragile, big, expensive. Glass is only worth it on reusable stuff. We need to find a good material for "throwaway" stuff. Eco plastic made from stuff like bamboo are great starting points. They feel like plastic even mcdonalds is using this material for their throwaway spoons. And it can't be that expensive or they wouldnt be using it for free spoons
Figure out which ones lied. Then figure out the estimated cost of actually recovering and recycling plastics that weren't recycled. Then take that number, add 20% for "processing fees" and charge it to the companies, split up by their market caps.
Those companies will then go bankrupt and with the money they tried to pay Uncle Sam, said Uncle can buyout the remainder of the companies that are actually doing something worthwhile and operate them as a public trust.
TerraCycle dumping "recycling" items in poor countries with inadequate regulations/enforcement (article in French). Moreover, a insightful documentary available on CBC The Recycling Myth regarding all the recycling fraud many multinational companies engages in.
It is not surprising to see environmental fraud happening so overtly under our nose or in plain sight in front of our eyes when there is little to no repercussions for doing so (legal or otherwise). I would even go as far as to suggest it is currently financially extremely profitable for corporation (and people) to lie about all the greewashing they carry out.
Youtube: The Recycling Myth
Haven't we always known this? I remember some CBC News station out trackers on recycling and they watched pretty well all of it wind up in land fills and China.
a lot of people still don't know this.
i live in a small country in Asia and they love garbage here. you get a plastic cup and a plastic bag that has another plastic bag with a plastic ring so you can put it on your bike, and then you throw it in the street when you're done. they have sex with garbage. they eat garbage and then they puke the garbage up and then they eat it again and then they fuck it. they put garbage directly into the sewer drains. it's not just something that dick head kids are doing, it's something that everyone is doing because it's normal. they have no idea.
I really want the packaging industry to fuck all the way off with the use of nonbiodegradable materials. We need a 100% tariff on virgin plastics for the health and safety of everyone
Yet another instance of companies pushing the responsibility and onus onto private citizens. We pay for all the recycling infrastructure via taxes and waste fees. Yet more money thrown down the memory hole of greenwashing.
Can't we just force heavy taxation for the amount of plastics in products? That would force producers to look at alternatives to plastic for packaging.
I am always in shock when I buy some product and it has layers and layers of thick plastic to give the impression of some premium product. And sometimes I don't even have an alternative product to buy to avoid it since I only have 2 supermarkets in my area.
While I'm happy this is always getting more attention so we can soon ban more unnecessary plastics such as bottles and jars, it also seems slightly convenient for corporations that worsening trade relations with China is correlating with the decline in plastics popularity.
Eh, I'm just overthinking it.
We are not responsible beings when money can be made. It repeats itself over and over again. We cheat the systems we make ourselves, but we're too dumb, greedy and selfish to think about consequences. We basically don't give s shit about the planet and life, someone else can take care of that down the line, right?
This is going straight to my MP (UK) today, with an angry letter! Please do the same, wherever you are, that's the only power we have but it's quite potent if enough of us raise the point.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Industry insiders over the past several decades have variously referred to plastic recycling as “uneconomical”, said it “cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution”, and said it “cannot go on indefinitely”, the revelations show.
The authors say the evidence demonstrates that oil and petrochemical companies, as well as their trade associations, may have broken laws designed to protect the public from misleading marketing and pollution.
An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.
Two years ago, California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, publicly launched an investigation into fossil fuel and petrochemical producers “for their role in causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis”.
A toxic train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, last February also catalyzed a movement demanding a ban on vinyl chloride, a carcinogen used to make plastic.
In 2023, New York state also filed a lawsuit against PepsiCo, saying its single-use plastics violate public nuisance laws, and that the company misled consumers about the effectiveness of recycling.
The original article contains 1,225 words, the summary contains 188 words. Saved 85%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
No fucking shit
The thing is, chemists knew it. Nobody wanted to hear it. There are only three things worth recycling: Aluminum, glass, and electronics.
Everytime I buy something from a local shop or a western brand, it comes packaged with minimal plastic, and a lot of well thought out materials. Even if they use plastic, its always a very thin plastic and very "soft". Can't describe. But when I buy ANYTHING from aliexpress you can tell it came from china just by looking at the packaging. It has SO MANY LAYERS of plastic, and very hard and thick plastic. If you buy for example a single keychain comes with 20x the weight of it in plastic. They smell so much to plastic chemicals too, something that "western plastic" doesn't smell like. Every time I have to drink from a paper straw I remind myself that a 10x10cm sticker I bought came with 5kg of plastic and still arrived damaged from shipping.
We don't need to reduce even more. We need to somehow force china to reduce it. I am againt taxes for everything, but maybe tax the amount/weight of plastic that comes on stuff you get from china. And find a way to tax the sender, not the buyer. Maybe that will make chinese companies to actually think about reducing they 50 tons of useless plastic waste they make each second.
people will start hypothesizing every type of plastic substitute imaginable at the cost of moving the entire Sahara desert to the Pacific Ocean and talking about "Western packaging" vs "Chinese packaging". my loves, we live in a system that leads us to consume continuously and more and more, what do you think about stopping buying and producing what is not needed?