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> frustrated customers on forums discussing how many air-filled cushions they were getting

> while deflated air cushions can be recycled, many cities won’t collect them curbside

Pop them, put them in recycling. It's plastic, it's not my job to deal with the fallout. Either it's recyclable and I've done all I can, or it's the retailers' or cities' problem. The idea that there are "frustrated customers" is beyond me. Is this really what ordinary citizens sit around obsessing over? I just don't get it; this would be concern #10,056 on my list of priorities.

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This is very irresponsible. The reason soft plastics are unrecyclable curbside in San Francisco is that they pose a very real danger to the machines that do recycling sorting. This is possible to overcome with greater manual filtering of recyclable materials, but Recology currently does not have the funds for it. Putting soft plastics in curbside recycling at the moment does nothing but make recycling worse for everyone.

There are plenty of cities that do soft plastic recycling. I'm surprised San Fransisco doesn't.

SF has a very high diversion percentage (waste that doesn't go to landfull). I'm not sure what tradeoffs go into getting that number, but I do absolutely recommend going on one of the free Recology tours. We went on a tour a few months ago as part of the SF YIMBY infrastructure tour series (shameless plug) and I had a great time.

YIMBY? Your infrastructure my back yard?

"Yes in my back yard." It's a group that advocates for building more housing in San Francisco.

Doesn't this just mean that the machines were chosen unwisely?

There's more to it than machine choice, there's also process surrounding the machines. The current process probably assumes a certain compliance rate of people "not putting soft plastic in the bin". In so much as we are citizens who don't want to endanger the recycling process, I believe we have at least a mild ethical duty to at least not knowingly do just that.

Doesn't this just mean that the process surrounding the machines was chosen unwisely???

Yes.

The city just has to say "put all your soft plastics in a larger soft plastic bag for easier sorting at the other end" or "take your soft plastics to the supermarket and put them in the soft-plastics bin there".

Do everything to make it easy at both ends.

Don't recyclers have to sort submissions anyway? It's expected that citizens will fail to completely adhere to recycling instructions and submissions must be sorted anyway.

Throwing your plastic bags into recycling because "it'll get sorted anyway" is as bad as throwing your litter on the ground because "we pay people to clean the streets anyway"

You're just playing NIMBY by passing the responsibility on.

On the other hand where do you put the limit on what is a acceptable burden ?

Here are the rules for recycling where I lived: plastic to be cleaned before recycling (a minimal trace of food, allegedly, would require the whole batch of plastic to be thrown away). You are also supposed to separate the plastic part from the cardboard part on the packaging. You are also supposed to check if there is a specific type of coating on the inside of a cardboard box like foil for milk or wax for cups. Metal, Glass need to be cleaned too, although without threat of discarding a ton of waste. Paper is recycled separately from cardboard, however I believe that was for operational rather than technical reasons. Recycled paper could not be recycled again and glassy paper (magazine covers) needed removal.

When you get to that stage you realise that the average product in the supermarket would require quite a lot of processing. That's not realistic to expect people to follow all those rules and if you rely on thousands or ten of thousands of people to comply with them in order for your recycling to work, you are deep in the designed to fail territory.

These are currently the rules in San Francisco and we do pretty well on the whole!

You know, it's interesting that you say that we can't expect people to follow all those rules, but I just got back from Japan and WOW. That country has basically gotten everyone on board with following every rule. There are like four different receptacles for trash and you have to walk all your own trash out to the proper drop point. It seems like a crazy complex system, but the people understand why it has to be that way (no landfill space) and why their civic duty matters.

>These are currently the rules in San Francisco and we do pretty well on the whole!

You say that, yet people are evidently kept awake at night by the thought of little plastic cushions.

The country I was talking about did not have that amount of civic duty. Japan is in a category of its own.

In the case of my story, it appears to be working well too. People have 3 bins, different collection days and quota (and tax). On the surface there is no real way for the system not to work, unless you consider the increase in fly-tipping. (allegedly)

I'm not quite sure it is working as advertised though. I can't believe that the people can determine the coating type that was used on whatever cardboard piece they see and get it wrong in small enough percentages that the process depending on it is still efficient. And it is a compounded effect, the more rules, the more edge cases. I haven't seen any change in the packaging of product, if anything it has gotten even more difficult to process than before. If people were choosing brand with easier packaging, all the brands would have followed by now ( those rules have been in place for over 15 years now ), I just can't believe that people moaning when a TV channel number change would just happily start washing their ready meal plastic boxes.

Another example that makes me doubtful. There are recycling centers for chemical, electronic stuff, gardening waste, ... The rules are quite simpler (eg: cooking oil vs car oil), yet people get it wrong all the time and the people managing the center are busy directing and correcting people all the time. That's at the recycling center, a place where people have already committed time to specifically go recycling their stuff.

Or as bad as throwing your used CFLs and propane tanks in your recycling bin. "Let them figure it out!"

It's more like

Don't recyclers have to sort submissions anyway? It's expected that citizens will "completely fail" to adhere to recycling instructions and submissions must be sorted anyway.

There is an obvious irony to having to go to your supermarket to recycle the plastic bags you received by shopping online, i.e. by not having to go to your supermarket to do shopping...

Yes, and I did suggest an alternative.

To put in tech terms: This is horrible UX and it's no surprise to me that recycling isn't very effective. Asking your end users to deal with your internal complexity doesn't work in software or in recycling.

I want to help out, really I do, but I have more important things to worry about than which type of plastic goes in which bin. Hell, I'm happy to put the right kind of thing in the right bin if they made it clear which is which and why. But they don't do a very good job of communicating to me why this is important. They just say "recycle properly" then try to make you feel irresponsible and like a bad citizen for not knowing the proper way to do it based on some opaque and arcane process.

If you want people to help out, make it easy for them to feel like they're a part of it. The rules around recycling do the opposite - make you feel like you're harming things if you don't do things exactly right. Not a very empowering feeling at all.

Much innovation in the last 20 years has been finding ways to get your customers to do work for free that you previously paid employees to do instead.

For example, self-service checkouts in supermarkets, fast food, building a holiday package, etc.

Recycling is the same. They have 'outsourced' much of the job to local government and consumers.

To add: other than cost transfer, it enables better scaling for the companies.

That's not really the case. It's simply a really hard problem and that's easiest to address early on (recycle somewhat right) than to try and filter useful things out of shredded sludge.

It's a really hard problem that big companies show no signs of helping to solve because they have no economic interest in doing so. They use whatever packaging helps their short-term profits without consideration of long-term environmental damage.

It's a typical externalities problem - the full cost of using some types of packaging is not paid by the one doing the packaging.

If it's a UX problem, I think the issue is not that garbage disposal chores lack special tingly feeling of empowerement and engagement, but that the negative feedback loop isn't closed. Wiping your ass is pretty low on the happy feelings scale, but neglecting to do so has nearly immediate negative repurcussions. How do we get people to care about things beyond their own rear end? Most people would agree that having children in third world countries sort through toxic electronics waste is a bad thing, but... that's far away, and this new phone has slightly smaller pixels.

What if we couldn't export our waste for someone else to deal with? Maybe then the feeling of personal responsibility would come rushing back.

How much does municipal recycling cost in San Francisco?

Is it a net profitable endeavor (energy in vs out)?

What are the recycled materials being used for, and what are the costs to get the material into that state?

> but Recology currently does not have the funds for it

And you know this how?

If plastic bags are not curbside recyclable then throwing them in the bin doesn't help. Consumers absolutely do bear responsibility for the environmental impact of their consumption choices.

In parent's defense, every city has different rules sometimes different recycling vendors within a city. They rarely communicate these rules in an effective and routine manner.

I don't think I've ever understood the "what goes in recycling, what goes in organics" rules in any place I've ever lived. It's a total unknown. I put stuff in whatever bin makes intuitive sense and the man in the truck takes it away. Until either 1. the rules are explained in a sensible way or 2. the city starts fining me for putting something in the wrong bin, my behavior is not going to change.

Serious question: did you ever look it up? What's the problem exactly.. did the municipal recycler not have a website that stated what they accept? Could you not find the website in a google search? When you say "explained in a sensible way", do you mean you did find an explanation but it didn't make sense?

In Switzerland, recycling is done by the city administration. Put things in the wrong bin, get fined (and quite aggressively so). Instructions are sent to you when you move into the city and every year to every household. Works really well [1] (recycling rates: Glass 95%, aluminium 90%, paper 90%, plastic bottles 80%, batteries 70%). Also, no landfills at all, everything is burned, air is filtered and heat is used for heating.

[1] http://www.bafu.admin.ch/umwelt/indikatoren/08484/08653/inde...

> no landfills at all, everything is burned

Only combustible waste is burned. Landfills are still needed.

The recycling rates are great, but even with perfect filtering there's a serious issue with burning trash. Namely, CO2.

That's better than methane from letting it decompose in landfill, plus you get energy out.

That depends on how much biomass goes to landfill but a good composting/recycling program can sort a lot of that out. Furthermore, landfill methane can be captured and repurposed.[1]

Seriously, burning stuff is not good. We need to stop doing that.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landfill_gas_utilization

How do they know who put what in which trash can?

Highest fines are for putting plastics/glass/large metals in the roadside bags that are picked up. They usually try to find an address label or similar inside the bag to identify you.

For public trash cans: It happens that private security hides around the cans to control. I was once fined about 40 USD for putting paper in the paper bin on sunday at noon. They hid around the corner.

Could you explain that a bit? Fined for putting paper in the paper bin?

It's forbidden to put recyclable materials in the public recycling bins on sundays in Switzerland. Mostly because glass shatters loudly. So while cities massively encourage recycling, some laws prevent it on certain days.

Consumption choices is a strange term when every store surrounding someone does double plastic bags all day. If the city is concerned, address the problem at the source and not the leaves where I gaurantee you no amount of social pressure will have anywhere near the effect.

That's consistent with shared responsibility. We work together as citizens to make laws that express collective goals. Some cities have banned plastic bags quite effectively. Perhaps we should federally regulate shipping environmental impacts as well.

Yep, there's a bag ban here in Austin. Stores can't hand them out.

Same in the Bay Area plus we just passed more laws against plastic bags in the past election.

You could always ask them not to double bag, or take your own bags...

In Los Angeles, as they continued to receive recyclables in the blue cans that were deemed inappropriate, they continued to expand the list of appropriate materials to fit what consumers were tossing in the cans. So, it's not cut and dry if putting unlisted items in the blue cans helps or not.

In Brooklyn we now have four (FOUR!) different containers for trash in our little apartment. Since I was a kid and recycling began as "a thing" it's gotten more and more complex and expensive on the consumer's end. Shouldn't this process be trending the other way?

> Shouldn't this process be trending the other way?

I can think up two answers to that.

1. Someone has a nicely rigged racket running. Making the masses pay in a way that's legal and they can't escape would be my wettest dream if I were an organized criminal.

2. Our modes of production and transportation have lots of hidden externalized costs. Finding and addressing those is an ongoing process. Distributing them over the end users may be one of the fairest ways to deal with them.

In Manhattan I have three but add the fourth -- composting -- myself voluntarily, which isn't curbside. I have to walk it to the park where they collect it only at certain times.

Why?

Because it helps me reduce my landfill trash to where I empty it 3 to 4 times per year. Actually, I've reduced my recyclable trash to nearly the same levels.

They way I remember it in the early days of recycling we had to sort into plastics, glass, and paper, but sometime in the last ten years or so everything's moved to a single stream one-bucket process.

Seems like there are two kinds:

The opaque, crinkly ones -- they seem like the plastic that's in shopping bags. Maybe it's okay to deflate them and recycle them together? Even if your municipal recycling doesn't take them, I've seen lots of grocery stores that do (in the US).

The clear ones -- Like a sandwich bag, maybe a polyethylene? Can these be recycled with shopping bags too?

pop them, send them back to the folks who foisted them upon you. They might start using recyclable paper or corn starch instead.

Yes, really if you are worried about the environmental impact you shouldn't hit the buy button in the first place.

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