Rulecycling

Ban plastic for consumables, glass and cardboard forever!!!
- Glass soda bottles just hit different™ I would pay extra if it's an option
  
  They do, but you're not supposed to hit people with them.
  
  Here you can get them at most grocery stores. It's also usually the standard for German Brands, it's mostly Coca Cola Brands that are sold in Single-Use-Plastic
  
  I've stopped drinking from plastic bottles completely. And glass bottled soda is so rare here that I buy it whenever I come across it.
  Sadly my preferred brand of cider recently changed from glass bottles to plastic ones, so I'm looking around.
- In case you didn't know, I think you might like to know: In Germany they also do reusable PET and reusable glass.
  
  "reusable" in really big quotation marks
- I believe that glass is more of a solution than a problem. Compared to plastic, it is more durable, its production process has less impact on the environment and not to mention that in the case of beverages, returnable glass packaging is better in several aspects
  
  Multi-use glass is were it's at. Producing glass is an energy intense process, the more you use it the bettet it gets. Single use glass packaging is a crime. (Same goes for plastics multi-use>single-use)
  
  There have been extensive studies on that topic, that showed that PET-bottles are more sustainable and environment friendly than glass bottles and have less impact on the environmdnt. Glass bottles use a lot more energy to produce and transport than PET bottles, and the oil you save by using PET instead of glass is more than enough to produce the PET you need. You also save sand, potash, limestone, soda and a ton of CO2.
  If renewables would become the prime source of energy for glass production and transportation, this conclusion might change, and if the effects of microplastics and ocean pollution are considered it might change as well.
  Regarding sources, there is an abundance of them in German and quite a few in English. I'll leave this one as an example.
  
  glass is theoretically more sustainable, while its production does not involve the same kind of problems as plastic it is a lot more energy intensive so without proper energy infrastructure it is trading plastic pollution for carbon emissions, also heavier contributing to transport costs. With proper infrastructure for reusing the bottles the energy impact of production can be mitigated significantly. and even without proper reusage infrastructure the options for the glass is 1. resmelted into new glass 2. landfill->glass shards quickly become essentially just sand 3. environment where it also becomes sand
  so while even without proper infrastructure the pollutans are essentially just emissions if properly treated just co2 (though modern kilns can be electric arc reducing emissions just to that of the country's electricity infrastructure) and gravel. In contrast plastic has lower production emissions but the waste in environment is to put it lightly quite a bit more harmful than gravel and the effects are still not fully understood especially ones of microplastics
  
  Glas is not used anymore because it's much heavier (= more expensive when freight is charged by weight) and breaks when you drop the palett.
- Cellophane, jute, wood and metal are good as well
- Glass bottles aren’t a free win. Glass is very heavy to transport and extremely energy-intensive to manufacture. It made sense back when people hardly drank any soda. It still makes sense for things like condiments (soy sauce, vinegar, etc) and alcoholic drinks but it doesn’t make any sense for everyday drinks like water or soda.
  We should be investing in better municipal water treatment facilities so that tap water doesn’t taste awful. Where I live the tap water is horrible but I’ve visited places where the tap water tastes perfectly clean and pleasant. If we had universally tasty tap water then people would stop buying plastic water bottles.
  As for soda, I could see glass bottles being excellent if we could bring consumption down to a reasonable level. Many people guzzle soda as if it were water which is both terrible for their health and the environment.
  
  Where glass wins big is in reusability. We need to get people to refill/reuse their glass bottles rather than recycling them.
- That's great, now how?
  Do you think if this message alone spread (it already has) that anyone is going to take it seriously? The top polluters and the ones deciding what our packaging is like are the most wealthy corporations on Earth and they are the ones doing the most climate damage, and the ones who control the narrative and our politics.
  Do you think "ban plastics" will ever be a populist political talking point in these conditions? Do you think it would gain momentum?
  Or are we looking at it wrong? What if more of us targeted the system that is sustaining climate destruction with an actual populist idea? What if we started wresting control and money away from the companies filling our sea with plastic?
  Do you want to spread a message of lasting change? Start spreading "pro family, pro children" messages like the need for social help as millions become jobless as capital starts digesting itself in its current late-stage. You want to see plastics away? (No we're never seeing an end to cardboard, that's unrealistic to push for.) Then start advocating for Universal Basic Income and other measures that put control back in the hands of the people.
  
  China did it, they limit the use of plastics in consumer products and have a standard for rigorous recycling and reuse
- and use what instead?
  
  I literally answered it lmao
  
  What did people use before plastic? Glass and cardboard!

All that work collecting garbage to buy garbage.

At max that's 5.95 an hour or at minimum 3.96 an hour. Kinda shitty pay, and 60% of what was recycled was just burned anyway. That numbers for Germany BTW where it's the highest in the world. On average less than 9 percent gets to be new plastic worldwide.
The weight loss is good to see though. Excersize is good for your body and spirit
Anyway next I'm off to tell some kids Santa isn't real and that the tooth fairy is just their already poor parents giving them money to have them believe there's magic in this world preserving their sense of wonder a little while longer.
- Oh boy, here I go ranting against misinformation about recycling again.
  Your claim that 60% of these bottles will be burned is false. The recycling quota for single-use plastic bottles in Germany is 97.6% (2023; source).
  60% was the quota of all non-recycled plastic packaging material combined, back in 2018. This quota has further decreased since, and is now at about 30% (2023, source), so almost 70% of all plastic packaging in Germany is recycled. It's still not perfect, but far, far better than just burning everything.
  Recycling isn't an easy and cheap process, but it can definitely work and be steadily improved, if it's properly implemented. I'm so tired of this dumb suggestion, that recycling is bad because it's not perfect (or, in the case of the US, full of corruption). Every bit of plastic that isn't polluting the environment is a win. And recycling is definitely helping with that. As opposed to propagating false information on the internet.
  
  So separating my plastics when I bring them to the Wertstoffhof actually makes sense? I never bothered because I've always been told it gets all thrown together anyway.
  
  People's main gripe with it is that a huge percentage of plastic has traditionally just been separated and then would either still end up in a landfill or sent to China or wherever to recycle. I don't know however how much of a case that is still.
  
  Do they still count energetic recycling (aka burning in a power plant) as recycling?
- You’re forgetting the person is also making the streets a cleaner place, having fun ( I enjoy picking litter), great for mental health, and choose your own hours.
- That's complete Bullshit. PET which is what these bottles are made of has a recycling quote of 98% and over half of the PET used in the production of new bottles is coming from recycled bottles
- As the other commenter said, the bottles actually get recycled; if they weren't they wouldn't have a system where they pay for the return. And it doesn't make sense to count it as "pay", as in compare to a normal job pay, cause it's not. Dude is walking around and cleaning the environment, gets free PS5 out of it.
- If they're already working a full time job and just need the little extra money to get buy something nice for themselves, the pay is kinda irrelevant. Far simpler than on-boarding for a part time job you'll only need for 3 weeks.
- Doing God's work
  
  That lazy fucker should come down more often and to their own work.

I'm fond of the Phand.
- Nah. Fuck the Pfand system. I don't like being fined for a crime I haven't committed (not recycling the bottle) with the excuse of "you'll get your fine back when you return the bottle"

Here we get 3 cents for every bottle. I don't think I'll be buying a PS5 anytime soon.
- Seriously, if you got a bunch for every four bottles around here it'd take a couple of years and a shoe change to find enough of them to fund a PS5

You get 25c?? We only get 15c, not worth the PS level effort.
- In ireland its 15c for small bottles, and 25c for large ones.
- Here in Arkansas, I don't know any "trash" that you can pick up for a deposit. I think when I was a small child in the 80s you could do glass bottles, but when plastic came in that ended. As a teen, and up to maybe a decade ago, you could get paid for aluminum scrap (by weight), but both of the metal recycling places in my county (Polk) do not pay for aluminum anymore (they will accept it, but not pay for it).
- We get 5-10. And were one of the most expensive countries to live in.
  
  You also pay the amount, it's a deposit.
  
  We don't get them ;)
  
  Which country is that?
- You don't get anything: you pay 25 cents (for some glass bottles it's 15, for some 8) when you buy the drink and you might get your own money back if you bring it to the supermarket, they accept it, and the machine is working at the time. It's a scam.

Government should increase the buy-back price even if it means increasing the initial costs. At least they'll return it. I think glass and aluminium are still better than plastic, unless ofcourse, profit and comfort. Population is still the ultimate cause of all, humans don't understand that Earth can't handle it.
- Reusable glass bottles have their own issues, especially emissions from logistics if they are transported for longer distances.
  Cleaning reusable bottles is energy intensive and uses a lot of water and chemicals. Melting and recycling glass is certainly more resource intensive than doing the same with plastics.
  The best solutions to reduce resource intensity is local production and consumers bringing their own containers, going for dried instead of canned when it comes to fruits, beans and the like...
  
  The chances of first-worlders putting up with packaging and preserved food habits that are essentially post-collapse "The Last of Us" levels of mild inconvenience: about -100% if such a ratio is possible.
  "Ya'll telling me I gotta feed mah kids dried beans? How da fuck they gonna eat dried beans? they too crunchy!" will be the viral soundbite from a Kansas parking lot.
  Capital won't allow change until it can no longer bleed a dime in it's present state. We're living under a locust plague and we've called it the modern world.
- Glass Bottles are way too heavy and fragile.
  But refill stations where you can refill your metal bottle and pay per litre would be a nice idea.
  
  I like the ones that have a counter showing how many plastic bottles have been saved by refilling at the station

Pfand sollte in mehr Ländern eingeführt werden
- Meine rumänische Arbeitskollegin hat mir gestern erzählt es sei in Rumänien eingeführt worden. Es gab wohl Schlangen bei der Abgabe weil alle es ausprobieren wollten :-)
  
  mir war nicht bekannt dass Deutschland das Pfand-Modell exportiert hat. Sehr cool zu wissen dass andere Länder es übernehmen

Edit: I obviously don't know enough about this situation. My first comment war. Lol It's about time.
- Nah, in Germany you're not paid for cleaning anything. You aren't getting any money: you are fined 25 cents (for some glass bottles it's 15, for some 8) when you buy the drink in case you don't recycle. You might get that money back if you bring the bottle back to the supermarket, they accept it, and the return machine is working at the time. It's a scam.
  
  That"s not a scam. It's a solution. Take care of your Earth.
  Unless the store is pocketing the money. I'm assuming the credit is going to a government program or non profit organization.
  
  It's a deposit system that works as a deposit system. And it's purpose is to decrease the amount of bottles that get thrown into the streets and that does totally work. Just compare how many bottles are lying around in Germany to other countries.

recycling plastic releases even more microplastics. ban plastic
- Okay, just fucking leave the litter in the street then. 🙄
  
  yea this is a logical fallacy, because nowhere did I say this guy does something that is worse than littering. reducing plastic usage is the most effective way of combating plastic pollution and I would like to see anyone claim we dont use plastic redundantly because it is cheap and convenient.
- I think I read that no matter who you are and what you've done, only about 10% - 15% of all plastic you've recycled actually gets recycled. The vast majority ends up on barges being shipped overseas or to landfills.
  This isn't to say stop recycling, if it compiles plastic into places instead of just distributing across the globe, then maybe later when people get off their ass and realize we're in trouble, they might make some kind of bacterial-world-ending-zombie-plague type solution for breaking down plastic waste, at least the plasti-zombie-plague will be isolated to particular regions and countries.
- I really would like to know how you came to that conclusion. The OP is from Germany and is collecting abandoned bottles in the street and there are closed loop recycling programs in place. You return the bottle to the store, you get your 25 cents back, the bottle gets crushed and recycled into a new one. That kind of does work. Multiuse bottles are better, but I really struggle to understand how "Picking up discarded plastic bottles" releases more microplastics than letting those bottles out in the environment where they will become 100% microplastic
  
  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/23/recycling-can-release-huge-quantities-of-microplastics-study-finds
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772416623000803
  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0269749124005694
  This really seems like the kind of situation where you fix one crack and another one pops elsewhere.
  Not to mention, car tyres are possibly also one of the highest contributers to microplastics so we might as well be fucked.
  edit: maybe my initial post was worded in a confusing way read my update above if you are interested
- Not to mention, the production takes petroleum. It's also not recyclable multiple times.

Or you could have worked for a couple of days but yea, that's nice I guess
- Maybe they do work and barely get by and so they did this part time each day for extra spending money.
  
  Yeah I work and I don't have money for a PS5 all willy nilly
- Maybe they are working? Maybe they are disabled? Who knows but don't gotta be a dick about it.
  
  I’m just saying that doesn’t really sound efficient, I’m not trying to be a dick