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Comment by andrewstuart | Hacker News Reader

The solution is to stop making single use plastic and require reuse of standard bottle sizes, with tax paid on non standard bottle sizes.

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The solution is to legislate bottled water companies out of existence, and keep our public water systems in good shape.

But that's not what anyone working for a company founded on laying dubious legal claims to water that should be public, and selling it for a profit, wants to hear.

The tap water in my country is one of the best in the world and scientifically proven to be better than mineral water. I still buy Evian.

And proud of it? That's awkward. Why would you do that!

The tap water at closest source were scientifically tested to be decent , but the pipes that carries it, and the pipes that is inside my building were not. Mostly with added lead and heavy metal.

I wish I didn't knew any of these. I wish I could have simply continue to drink water like I once did. But now I get to spend money buying drinking water or filters.

Fear Sells. What a world we live in.

Why not legislate all plastics used with consumables should be self degrade-able and a life time of no more than 4 years from DOP?

The water in my country is fantastic. That being said we have to buy all bottled (in plastic) water for my Mother for the past ten years or so. Why? She had many cancers over the years and it was dcotor's advice to avoid tapwater due to the possibility of pipes introducing germs etc which her immune system could not handle.

Why not boil tapwater? In most places the regulations and safety standards for public tap water are stricter than the ones for bottled water.

I feel like this is the clearest truly viable future. Where you take all your containers and bags to the supermarket and refill them from bins and taps. If you can carry all that stuff home, you can carry it there.

Sounds strange. Just have a collector service, that cleans them and you get a certified fresh package at the super-market?

Yeah, good idea, swapping is faster than refilling. It'd work as long as all the containers are a standard.

Taxing bad behavior often comes off as regressive, as are laws that would "require reuse". But the measures do work. If there are ways to encourage the good behavior without imposing financially-punitive burdens (which adversely affect the ones who value each cent more), they should be pursued instead.

The city I grew up in offered all residents a free recycling bin when those were just coming into vogue. I don't see why there can't be financial assistance for supplying these free or at a discount.

I don't believe this has to be a regressive burden if approached correctly.

Especially if it is implemented as a bottle deposit program.

In brief, there is an extra amount paid per bottle in the package with a portion of that returned when the bottles are returned.

Bottle deposits can have negative effects, though; anecdotally, where I used to live, some people would rip up existing trash bags or recycling dumpsters and pore through the contents to get bottles to recycle. Which technically increases recycling but can result in the ruin of public and private property.

They do that all over the place, on trash day people scour neighborhoods looking for "the good stuff" before the city trash truck gets to the recycling bins. "Big trash day" is the best as people go around tearing up sofa-beds and whatnot going after any scraps of metal.

Not that I really mind, I just put my recyclables next to the apartment dumpster and they get picked up real quick.

I don't really mind either, as long as it isn't making life difficult for other people. Most of the people pulling cans and bottles out of the trash near me push the bins back into their holding case and close the door when they're done.

This happens in front of police officers and I think it's not terrible for anyone. I've only ever seen trouble when some officers intervened when someone dumped the bin out on the side walk to sort through then absent mindedly walked away.

It'd be really nice for us as a society to put together some more productive employment opportunities for people down on their luck, and I am always happy to see (and tip well as a result) a cafe near me that has someone in rough luck put out the chairs every morning and carry heavy things. It's expensive as an employer to do that, their reliability tends to be lower than someone with a stable housing situation, but it is worth the cost in the long run - so long as we don't foist the entire cost burden onto small business owners.

Sure. But that's different than "require reuse" (implying penalties if not) and "tax paid on X". Your city was wise to encourage recycling, but others telling people to just eat cake after they impose penalties/taxes are not the ones really negatively affected by the taxes anyways.

refund all the tax collected

Yep, its a classic problem of externalities.

The pollution caused by plastic bottles, and the cost to clean them up, are not paid for by the people buying them.

10c tariff for every individual plastic item should solve the problem. Use the money to fund public water fountains, and 5c to whomever hands in the bottles to be recycled.

the solution is to change consumer behavior by unlocking convenience using technology. and carrying one's own bottle...see my note on thread.

A more general solution would be to require that at least e.g. 30% of plastic in new products is recycled. Regardless of the details it should create economic incentive to sustain plastic recycling companies in 1st world countries.

I think recycling is the distraction that packaging companies use to stop the public being infinitely angry with them for spewing infinite garbage into the world.

Hey, it's OK that we're making never ending garbage, look, its being recycled!

But the reality is that most recycling was just garbage being sent to China and now China has stopped accepting it the lie of recycling has been exposed. Gigantic piles of "recycling" are accumulating around the world.

"Recycling" isn't any solution to the garbage manufacturing industry / packaging industry.

If we want a world that isn't "garbage world" then we have to stop paying companies to make garbage/packaging.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-21/melbourne-recycling-f...

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/mountain-of-toxi...

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/recycling-crisis...

Then each bottle is still .7 new bottles. Better than 1.0, but still pretty bad.

Absolutely. Then we can hope people would push for 100% recycling when they make this exact realization for themselves.

Starting with 100% recycling feels like a non-starter, but getting a foothold with something like 30%, or enough to sustain that industry I mentioned, could be a beginning.

Fun story I heard back in my first year of university. This was over a decade ago, so I can't recall sources.

A paper company was required to use x% recycled paper. This cost more money. To make up the loss, the company had to make more paper. A recycling initiative to save trees led to the cutting down of even more trees.

Interesting. I wonder how much paper and plastic industries have in common.

In the case of plastic, the goal is to capture waste before it gets into the environment. For paper that isn't a concern since it is cellulose. However, ramping up plastic production certainly is a threat, especially as the industry might react with hostility to green tech.

Ok, but it is not like people starting using more paper? They just sold more and another paper company sold less, who cut down less trees.

No solution that involves plastic is a solution.

Plastics can cause diseases by contaminating the food and drinks they contain. Let us keep this aside for a moment.

Recycling\reusing requires a lot of infrastructure and political will. This may work well in Western nations. What about the third world? I can assure you it will not. Third world polluting the waterways will have consequences for Western nations too. Pollution may begin as a local problem, but it always becomes global sooner than later.

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