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Comment by Baeocystin | Hacker News Reader

Just throw them out as needed. There is no shortage of appropriate dump sites, and consumer recycling across the board is only marginally worth it at best.

https://www.bustle.com/articles/125641-is-recycling-worth-it...

(Ignore the buzzfeed-worthy title. The links within are good.)

The only consumer-side materials worth recycling as things stand are aluminum, paper, & cardboard. Everything else takes more energy to recycle than it saves.

(not counting specific, specialty recycling needs like lead-acid batteries or electronics. These cost significant money to recycle, but are done so for environmental reasons.)

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This is beside the parent commenter's point. They are specifically trying to avoid throwing anything away, because they feel uncomfortable with the amount of additional waste these services generate.

My point is that doing so is counterproductive.

Energy/carbon costs should be the driver when choosing appropriate consumer behavior, and recycling does a surprisingly poor job of keeping overall energy costs low.

It's true. Most of our climate issues don't come from teeny tiny packets of soy sauce. Consumer recycling might make people feel warm and fuzzy, but remember that a few years ago BP spilled 780,000 cubic meters (780 cubic kilometers) into the Gulf of Mexico.

That's not how units go however. 780,000 cubic meters is 0.00078 cubic km.

Well-played! I was testing you! Not really; I made a mistake. Still, though, I'm not doubting that packaging in aggregate isn't a problem, but as far as anyone individually is concerned, a few bits of plastic are the least of the planet's concerns.

I think the idea was to avoid generating the single-serve packaging waste in the first place (i.e., buying longer-term ingredients in bulk, going to the grocery store).

Of course there's still bag and packaging waste at the grocery store and the energy costs of individual transportation to the store, keeping the lights on, etc.

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