When Is “Recyclable” Not Really Recyclable? When the Plastics Industry Gets to Define What the Word Means.
When Is “Recyclable” Not Really Recyclable? When the Plastics Industry Gets to Define What the Word Means.
Companies whose futures depend on plastic production are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on plastic shopping bags and other items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.
Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?
They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.
But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.
Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.
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Household plastic is essentially non-recyclable. No way is plastic waste ever sufficiently sorted by the type of plastic, or cleaned sufficiently from food rests etc. The focus should be on Reduce, Reuse, and properly dispose. That most likely means burning it. Great? No way. Better than in nature? Hell yeah. Better than shipping it to Asia for pretend recycle? Definitely.
The crazy thing is the reduce is so easy. Im just old enough to remember soda being in aluminum cans and glass bottles and nothing else. It worked fine. There are some things were plastic has a significant benefit like medical but man. We don't need to use plastic for pop. Getting meat from the butcher with butcher paper was pretty good to.
ah but you see, it's like 5¢ cheaper per bottle to put it in plastic now, so think of the corporate profits that would be lost if they switched back!
Sure they'll kill an ecosystem, but think of the shareholder value they'll generate while it happens!
It is annoying as the glass bottle deposit thing was actually the cheapest option. It had a higher up front cost but once you returned the bottles it was cheaper. On top of that the taste is just better from glass as most beer drinkers know. Speaking of which beers should all use a standard bottle that does the same deposit/return thing.
I’m fine with transition away from glass. There’s always some asshole who likes to break them and leave the shards for the rest of us to step on. Nature is so much more enjoyable without broken glass
I get you as I used to walk in a park and used the poopl grabber to grab refuse. Which I could not seperate given my setup so begrudgingly had to go all in garbage. All the same plastic is killing us as a species. Its pain in the but to destroying the world and I hate things that are a pain but I sorta like nature to be present to enjoy.
hey wanted to mention to you may not have realized how that system worked. Its much like oberwiess if you ever used them. Essentially you pay a depost that is like 50% of the cost of the item which means at the register 33% of what you pay will be the deposit. You then get it back when you return the intact, unbroken, empties. The glass is not recycled, instead the recepticals go back and are washed in machines that pretty much sterilize them with the heat they use (if you ever worked in a dishroom with a giant dishasher and seen what happens when the sides are detached when it was just running you would know how crazy hot it is). Anyway anyone who breaks containers running under that system is throwing away a considerable chunk of change.
Yeah, I guess I’m starting from the point that no one around here re-uses glass anymore. It’s all single use.
Given that glass bottles are disposable and there is always some jackass breaking them for giggles and leaving the shards, I’d rather get entirely away. From it. Aluminum is very recyclable and doesn’t cut your feet
The deposit system is way better environmentally though. Washing and reusing is a pittance compared to any type of recycling. I guarantee you would not see as much breaking of them. Oberweiss last I knew the deposit was two bucks but that was before the recent inflation.
I’m sure that’s part of it. Here, glass bottles have the same 5¢ deposit as any other beverage bottle. It should be much higher.
This is also an interesting situation, where many people believe we should stop the bottle deposits and returns, since we now have single stream recycling for everything. It’s a great theory, but I do remember how much the bottle deposit helped clean up the environment, and we need more of that. It’s not just the recycling but changing peoples behavior, or in the worst case scenario gicving people in less fortunate circumstances an incentive to clean up after the assholes. We should do more of this.
Of course there was also that Seinfeld episode attempting to game the system by driving bottle to Michigan and profit from the greater 10¢ deposit. It’s a good point that someone will always try to game the system, so it really needs to be a national thing in the US instead of the state-based patchwork it is now ….. or the benefit of those reusable bottles was that companies would only take back their own
Oberweis does not cover my area although I imagine there’s similar that does.
yeah. five or ten cents aint gonna cut it and it does need to be nationally. its pretty easy to make sure all us products have a unique identifier so you can't bring in from mexico or canada or such. I think of aldi and how you never have a loose cart and they never pay anyone to clean up the lot and they don't have to use up parking space for convenient cart returns. Then if some lady is to concerned about her safety (yeah this is a reference) someone will still return it. I keep on thinking they will somehow need to go above a quarter but so far a quarter works for that.
A quarter sounds good, or at least is a good place to start
I have to admit I no longer return cans and bottles, despite that they’re more likely to get recycled when you return thenm. However I’ve been trying to cut back on things like soda anyway, and I’m not going out of my way for a dime to a quarter per week. They go in with the rest of the recycling. We did have a guy coming through collecting cans and bottles from recycling bins so I tried saving mine off to the side so he wouldn’t have to dig for them, but he hasn’t been around in a long time
I have been using solid bodysoap and shampoo now for some years and it has likley saved a solid amount of plastic waste and is super easy.
Girl here, I've never tried a bar soap that didn't absolutely ruin my skin. open to suggestions but not feeling all that optimistic.
after reduce is reuse. Try to buy refills. Its still plastic but if you buy larger contaniers the surface area over volume is smaller so less plastic then hope the next step recycle for your community is actually doing it or better if you can find another use for the empty larger containers but that does get difficult over time.
Have you tried Cerave's bar soap?
I have to admit thag I just never had problems, so I just use what ever I can get. I use vegan soaps, if that helps, but I can't compare them to non vegan ones.
I don't know where you are located, but here we have dedicated body and shampoo soap bars. They are quite a bit nicer to akin than using normal soap. That's all the advice I have to offer unfortunately :)
Goat soap is wonderful 🐐 my skin is soft.
Vacuum sealing meat kind of requires plastic though. And that's by far the best way to keep the meat good / fresh especially for freezing.
They said reduce though, not eliminate. I don't know that we will eliminate petroleum-based plastic until we find a viable, economical alternative, but we can sure use less of it. There's really no reason for all the plastic soda bottles apart from companies saving money.
I mean it might be good if we went back to an idea of buying what you need for the day or week and not so much for the month or year. At least in general. I mean its not like folks did not eat meat before plastic and without slaughtering it in their apartment.
Do you remember when Quaker Oatmeal containers were all paper/cardboard? You could pull a paper tab, and it made a little paper lid for the cylinder.
About 10-15 years ago, they replaced that with a plastic pull tab that is glued on to the paper tube.
The paper has to be cheaper than the 2-part plastic, right?
Yeah im not sure if its cheaper. plastic is crazy cheap and paper by and large comes from trees which is its own problem. still I would prefer paper/cardboard. and yeah I remember how it used to be and it did work fine
Yep. What isn’t recycled should be burned for power plant fuel. It’s made from fossil fuels anyway. It doesn’t belong in a landfill.
We really need to tax single use plastic for the REDUCE part. It would make a huge dent.
But that would inconvenience corporations, so it is out of the question. Instead we can just keep using the recycling code that makes you think your plastic is recyclable even though it isnt.
Hmm. The waste-to-energy facility in my town makes a whole lot more sense. Neat