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Comment by darkstar999 | Hacker News Reader

The article addressed it. Even if they get recycled, they mostly end up in the dump.

The article "addressed" it with a misleading statement. It said that much of what Californian residents put in the recycle bin isn't recycled. That's because they throw nonrecyclables (like used pizza boxes) into the bin along with their recyclables, and most waste management companies won't separate these items, choosing instead to discard the batch. This is the wrong evidence to give for two reasons:

1. Commercial waste management is different from residential waste management.

2. By removing nonrecyclable plastic straws, Starbucks removed a source of contamination for their plastic recyclables. Thus, the percentage of their plastic that is recycled would have gone up even more under the assumption that their commercial waste management company wasn't already filtering out straws.

This is no small error. The author should have known to delve into this more because increasing recyclability was the whole reason Starbucks removed straws with a big hullabaloo.

This is par for the course for the poorly named "Reason," which pushes a wishful thinking philosophy that unregulated markets solve all problems. https://reason.com/blog/2016/11/18/is-climate-change-already...

Even if everything you say is true, the vast majority of starbucks customers either use the drive-through or leave the building with their cups. At that point, it's likely going in that residential recycling that you say is often thrown out wholesale.

Instead of ditching the straw, they should switch to a cardboard straw that is biodegradable.

They leave the drivethrough and go to work, which also uses a commercial waste management company.

In either case, the article's throwaway dismissal of the whole reason Starbucks removed disposable straws to begin with is lazy and misleading. A correct analysis would thoroughly analyze the recycling end.

Where I used to work, the garbage guy put it all in the same truck, going to the dump. I asked why. "They didn't raise my pay to go to the recycling center. They want me to do it 'after work' on my own time. Fuck that."

Did you raise it with your employer? Your employer has a contract woth the waste management company for a particular service. If it is not providing that service, your employer can take its business elsewhere. If your past employer was in California, it could have been out of compliance with the state's mandatory commercial recycling law. http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/recycle/commercial/

It was an employee of the company. No 'waste management service'.

Then your company itself was out of compliance with the law (if it was in California).

I’d rather not have a straw at all than attempt to drink out of another cardboard straw. Those things fall apart and collapse before I can finish my drink, and they make the drink taste like paper. If straws are a matter of convenience, paper straws are certainly not IMO.

Coincidentally I think the last time I used a cardboard straw was at the Mumbai airport Starbucks. Maybe that was a test site for doing what you suggest.

I can't recycle pizza boxes? Our recycling bins are mixed anyway (glass, paper, plastics, aluminium). Why "discard the batch"? Aren't they already sorting them?

It has to do with oils from the pizza being soaked into the cardboard.

In Boulder the recommendation is to add pizza boxes to the city-collected compost. This is even better than recycling since compost is more likely to be handled locally.

My dad has an idea to employ criminals to sort recycling from trash. It seems almost inhumane, but maybe if we gave them Starbucks gift cards, it would be better.

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