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Comment by dwaltrip | Hacker News Reader

Relative to other things like travel, commuting, home energy usage, electronics, etc, I'm guessing the environmental cost of a pair of glasses is very, very low.

It is important to focus on effective actions. For example, a lot of people think that somehow recycling affects climate change, which (AFAIK) is not true in any meaningful sense. That isn't to say one shouldn't recycle -- there are plenty of reasons to do so in many cases.

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I think the broader point was that buying something only because it's cheap is generating unnecessary waste.

I'm not saying this is the case here because the original pair of glasses can still be used, but isn't avoiding this kind of behaviour a good thing?

I believe that recycling aluminum takes significantly less energy than smelting it in the first place.

I don't have any idea about plastics/papers.

Aluminum is the only part of recycle that is really profitable. That's way people picking through trash take the cans and nothing else.

Everyone I've seen do this takes bottles too, and it's because they can redeem the bottles and cans to collect a state-mandated deposit.

Post-consumer paper can be recycled in to some forms of low-density card that doesn't require high quality pulp. Egg cartons come to mind, and as a percentage in some packaging, newsprint and sanitary papers. Post-consumer paper cannot easily be recycled in to anything resembling printer paper due to the contaminants. Pre-consumer paper is recycled heavily as it's of known quality.

I'm not aware of any plastics that are recycled in to the same form. I know that PET (1) and HDPE (2) are recycled in to fibres.

It's a similar story to glass, certainly where I live a large amount of glass is recycled in to crushed aggregate rather than new bottles. The energy costs of cleaning don't make it worthwhile.

Glass bottles used to be reused, which is the responsible thing to do.

Consumers didn’t like it because scratches accumulate on the outside of the bottles.

I always thought it was a shame that we stopped doing that, but plastic has taken over pretty much for all the glass bottles that used to be recycled.

Plus you can probably donate the glasses. There is probably some poor person out there with a prescription close to yours.

It helps the amount of garbage put into the environment, which is good regardless.

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