But are they? Isn't this shifting the blame from the end user that improperly disposes of their trash to the company? Sure, they could do more to reduce packaging issues, but in the end, it is the consumer that is tossing these things out rather than recycling them.
...in the end, the users are wrong in the moment, but the real problem is that your app allows a behavior that has negative outcomes, and the proper fix isn't to educate people, but to make it impossible for people to click that delete button so easily, or maybe make the deletion recoverable.
Maybe the users of coca-cola bottles are the problem, but maybe coca-cola should be made to not make products that have a propensity to be misused.
There is clear evidence that littering is societal. See how clean Japanese cities are despite almost everything being wrapped in plastic.
As such you’re somewhat less likely to see cigarette butts on the street in Japan in any case.
Yeah, those are all over Japan outside (albeit not air-tight ones). You only see people smoking in them or in buildings where smoking is allowed, commonly bars.
It's a pretty great way of controlling cigarette butt litter, actually.
Anyway, the example still works. Even if littering was purely societal, on the timescale of years society is fixed. It doesn't change. You can't suddenly convince people to pretty please change social norms. Your options are either a) get a law in place that directly addresses undesired behavior, which is not free and works only to the degree you'll enforce it, or b) stop playing off the obvious failure mode of your society for your personal gains.
The best was an old man pulling a map out of the mouth of a Nara deer that was eating it, then scolding the deer like it was a dog. So yeah, even the deer are taking care of litter, even if they shouldn't be. I also saw a bunch of them eating the paper ribbons that the deer crackers come packaged in.
Lesson learned: plan ahead and get something convenient to carry.
That said, I remember being in mexico and when you buy a coke "to go", they don't want to bottle to walk away. So they helpfully pour it in a plastic bag, stick a straw in it and seal the plastic bag to the straw with a rubber band.
I don't know about the economics or logistical feasibility of returning to the same setup, but to suggest it's not possible (while still ensuring product safety) is inaccurate.
But glass bottles are heavy, and I'm sure that makes shipping more expensive and increases CO2 emissions.
this is the kind of thinking that kills apps for power-users, and leads to dark patterns.
You're not wrong, but I don't really like to think about how those kind of practices could be applied to social problems and government.
"We don't want X people doing Y, so let's subtly make it harder for X people to continue doing Y, without wholeheartedly admitting our intent." seems like a really slippery slope.
Not necessarily. Well-applied, this thinking is what gave you --no-preserve-root in rm command. You still can delete your entire drive, you just won't do it by accident anymore.
I agree with your anxiety here though, some people do take this idea and turn it into "this feature is too dangerous; let's remove it for your own good", and nerf an otherwise useful tool.
> "We don't want X people doing Y, so let's subtly make it harder for X people to continue doing Y, without wholeheartedly admitting our intent." seems like a really slippery slope.
That this work is at this point a Nobel-winning insight (the "nudge"), so it's a matter of who's doing it and for what. It turns out that "free will" is a concept with little meaning at scale - large populations behave predictably.
Throwing trash on the ground is not comparable to clicking the wrong button.
There is no confusion going on here, only laziness.
And let's call out recycling for the sham that it is. Recycling is a lie for plastics, plastics can not be economically recycled. They must be banned and the polluters made to internalize the externality.
Glass bottles are not perfect. They are lots heavier, which leads to transportation pollution. They also break and hurt people.
As to plastics - You are correct, they do not recycle and when you try to do it, even with a very low ratio of recycled to new plastics you end up with crappy weak plastic - think laundry baskets that have handles that break easily.
i think we should just learn to burn plastics - efficiently and cleanly.
Having said that glass bottles were a nightmare when I was a kid because of littering assholes who would toss them anywhere. Littering is less of an issue these days but I think going back to glass would need to both reward recycling and shame litter bugs. Walking home from the local swimming hole after slicing the bottom of your foot open is no fun.
The other downside (as others have already pointed out) is the weight of heavy glass containers built for reuse. It raises the cost of distribution.
What about something akin to soda stream, either at home or in store?
The USA will probably get something like that when it catches up in 100 years.
This was also about the time we started getting 2 liter plastic bottles.
It seems to me that if CO2 emissions for distributing heavier, reusable glass containers is a significant problem for our society, I can't imagine what we'll do with all the other (unrelated) things we have (and do) that have much bigger problems with emissions.
That is simply not true, just go to most of Europe. In Switzerland 83% of PET bottles get recycled. 0% ends up directly in landfills.
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/fact-check_is-switzerland-the-w...
For the rest, plastic contains a good amount of energy. You can burn it and recover some energy from it. It also reduces the volume of the waste by 80%.
Its insanely wasteful when you view it like that.
It's infuriating to me how so many Hacker Newsites refuse to hold corporations accountable for their design flaws.
I have a silent hope that each thread like this means some commenters who haven't thought about this much before will achieve the crucial insights, like: (per GP) assigning blame isn't productive, effective solutions are; (per you) there's no easy way to just make people "be better", at scale people are predictable and follow incentives, so the main points of intervention should be these incentives and systems that create them.
I found this sentiment echoed in an RSA video, just this morning: https://youtu.be/o5CTxckRywg
So, in the future, you can attribute it to Dan Lyons, author of "Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us".
Considering recycling can mean shipping trash to a poor country, it's not the ultimate environment rescuer. (Doesn't mean we should stop doing it, obviously)
Most plastic packaging is not recycled.
Most "segregated" bins look about the same inside. (Personal experience, I'm a freegan.)
Most "recyclable" shit is just shipped to another country.
Yeah, I have to agree with you there.
I bet that accidental litter, for which no one person is "to blame", is more than 1%.
This is stuff like a bag tearing open, a trash can falling over, stuff falling off the truck.
Why shouldn't we shift blame back to the idiots what created it - for a bit more profit - once again?