Asklemmy

I wouldn't call it a silly issue myself. I'd ban all plastic packaging unless proven to have no alternative. I'm also infiuriated with countries for making easily recyclable materials actively hard to recycle: speaking of glass. They make it so you have to take it to a recycling point, which can be sparse depending on your idea. Glass and metals are amazing for recycling. But no, make everything plastic and actively push people away from purchasing glass by making them have to go out of their way to recycle it. Plastic bottles frequently aren't even better. I had multiple plastic sauce bottles break akin to glass and leak out.

Here in Finland we have a really extensive and efficient plastic bottle and aluminum can recycling system. Every bottle and can has a deposit (0.40 € for large bottles, 0.20 € for small bottles, 0.15 € for cans) and you can cash them by returning them at any store. Just toss them in a machine.

There's even some hypermarkets where you can just pour in a giant bag full of bottles or cans and the machine sorts and prices the things automatically.

It's super annoying we still can't really do the same for rest of the single use plastic, but at least trash sorting and recycling what can be recycled is a thing everywhere. We have a lot of projects that aim to reduce those. Probably the coolest recent thing was that someone came up with all-carton coffee cups. (I hope they catch on so we can get rid of the cups that have the Sad Turtle Warning. I don't want turtles to be sad, they're awesome.)

Single use plastic in general. I skipped bagging my veggies at the grocer today because it felt wasteful.

I heard a great talk with Sian Sutherland on plastic reduction recently, specifically around brand agnostic standardized metal bottles: https://youtu.be/jTs6KejhSg4?feature=shared

Everything should be glass or aluminum. Preferably aluminum since you don't really have to worry about mixtures and cleaning it, you just melt it down and reshape it. With glass, you have to separate out the different types, and it still breaks down each recycle, I believe, since they mix silica with other compounds to make different kinds of glass.

I honestly don't understand stand why plastic beverage bottles are still a thing. Cans work perfectly. And if you insist on bottles, they can make aluminum cans too.

The worst part about plastic bottles is the energy required to make them.

They go through a 2 stage process where the plastic is melted and injection molded into a "pre-form"

Then they get fed into a blowmolding machine where they are heated in different areas by many 2k watt halogen bulbs. Once they've been heated properly they go into the blow mold where they are pressurized with ~500psi air.

The molds are liquid cooled through an industrial pipe system with an extremely large refrigeration system. The energy required to run all of the equipment is insane. A factory can consume as much energy in one hour as a standard home will in an entire year.

This doesn't include all of the energy required for moving materials around since performs can be made at one factory and shipped to another and empty bottles are often shipped to warehouses and then off to the plant where they will be filled, then warehoused then distributed etc.

While we're on the subject of plastic packaging:

I want the recent Dutch law on single use plastics to be significantly rewritten.

So they passed a law, requiring sellers to charge people for single use plastic containers. Sounds cool, right? Well, the law has some problems:

• the seller is allowed to set the surcharge to be as high as they want it to be.
• the seller may keep the money from the surcharge
• the seller is not required to offer an alternative
• the seller can refuse to honour people's request for them using their own packaging

So effectively, they'll set the surcharges to be as low as they can, and don't bother allowing anyone to use alternatives. If you go to a snack bar, ask for a serving of fries, and offer your own bowl to put them in, the seller can just tell you "NOPE"

So I think the law should be retooled to cover these issues. The prices should be set from above, the money should go to the state, and the seller must honour customers' requests for using their own packaging alternatives.

Some countries (at least Australia, USA, and many European countries) have deposits on bottles and cans where you pay a deposit of somewhere between 5 and 40 cents (depending on country) when you buy the drink, and get the deposit back when you return it to a store or recycling center for recycling. Reusing instead of recycling would be the next logical step there.

There are actually some companies in the USA that reuse bottles, Straus Family Creamery being one of the more well-known ones at least in my area. They charge a $3 deposit per milk bottle. When you return the bottle to the store, you get your $3 back and the store returns it to Straus. They put the returned bottles in crates and the delivery drivers pick up the old bottles when they drop off the new ones.

I’m on board with this except instead of reusable glass bottles that need to be transported around, you’re responsible for your own reusable bottle/mug/thermos and you can only get beverages from a soda fountain.