Comment by agent86 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by agent86 | Hacker News Reader

I'm looking for HN to provide me some perspective outside of my little bubble here.

I've only ever lived in states that have had bottle deposits. I've been feeding these cans/bottles back into the redemption machines since I was a kid. I can genuinely stay that I've recycled nearly every eligible container I've ever used.

However for most of my adult live I've also had recycling available at curbside - including cans/bottles. It was originally paper, glass and metal separated, but has since gone single stream.

We recycle everything we can that is eligible, but I don't put cans/bottles in there because I'd lose the deposit. I wish the deposit was gone so that I could put these items in there and gain this little efficiency in life.

At the same time I see these studies where the data clearly shows the deposit has a significantly higher effective recycling rate. I'm struggling to understand this. Do the places without deposits also not have curbside single stream recycling that processes these containers?

Can someone with experience in a location with no deposit but with curbside single stream recycling available for these items explain why people aren't recycling them there?

Is really as simple as "people won't put things into a different trash receptacle in their home"?

Here’s my wild guess: a lot of bottled soda gets consumed and disposed of away from the home. Very few non-home waste streams have effective recycling paths. By adding a bottle deposit, you are effectively hiring an army of gig workers to paw through those other streams and filter out all of the containers. Watch carefully the next time you are out in a city, you’ll see people on bicycles or with wagons bulging with bottles inspecting every city waste bin.

As an example, at work, I could put a drink bottle in my waste bin at my desk (which normally holds just clean paper) knowing that the cleaners will grab it and recycle it.

Additionally - yes, there are many people who fundamentally refuse to separate their trash, but will do so for a nickel per bottle.

Relying on those people to sort out recyclables is probably a net-negative for the environment since they very often leave non-recyclables (or those without deposits) scattered on the ground where they get washed down storm drains, blown away, etc.

It would be better to directly employ those people at sorting facilities, but that can be difficult for a number of reasons.

> that can be difficult for a number of reasons.

Not least of which is that they'd almost certainly need to be paid far, far more than they're making when they do it on their own.

Not that I disagree, though: overall the idea/point you made is a good one.

On the other hand their productivity in a well organized sorting facility might go up, such that you're paying them a fair and legal hourly wage but the price per sorted item remains similar. Maybe.

There are other complications though. The willingness of the public to employ such people, and the willingness of such people to be employed.

I am guessing that if there was universal basic income, people would not be very interested in digging soda cans out of people's garbage for 5 cents a pop.

Meanwhile, there's not, so while the street looks like a war zone on recycling day (because people rip open bags to get cans while the bottles and everything else blows away), it's a symptom of a much deeper problem that nobody really wants to address. The income from collecting cans is all some people have to live on.

My understanding is that the city's latest plan is to arrest people for stealing their valuable cans; curbside recycling is a revenue generator! You know you don't have enough crime when this is what we're paying our detectives to investigate.

With universal basic wage, I wonder if people would be interested in sorting soda cans at a recycling facility. I guess they'll have to pay people more, or automate it. Of course having to pay people more makes it easier to financially justify further automation. As I understand it, increasing automation reducing opportunities for laborers is one of the major arguments for universal basic income. It seems to me that universal basic income justifies itself by increasing automation. Is this loop the path to fully automated space communism?

In Copenhagen, many of the bins have a little shelf where you can leave the bottles.

https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/recycling/blogs/deposit-shelf-...

Bottle/can deposits predated curbside recycling, and vestigial regulations don't just disappear. Some large liquor stores specialize in making returning cans as easy as possible, to attract business from alcoholics.

FWIW have you done the math on the actual money you get back, divided by the time spent managing an extra waste stream? Unless you're a heavy bottle user, I personally don't see how it makes sense to not just ignore the deposit and recycle via modern means.

> Bottle/can deposits predated curbside recycling, and vestigial regulations don't just disappear.

They're not necessarily vestigial. NY's been considering expanding bottle deposits to juice, energy drinks, coffee and tea sold in plastic or glass bottles (currently, it's mainly soda and water).

If the amount will still be a nickel, so that it only applies to the poor and the mathematically challenged, then I'd still call that vestigial.

> I personally don't see how it makes sense to not just ignore the deposit and recycle via modern means.

There's a psychological effect. For example, the grocery store charges 5 cents per bag. If I forget to bring bags with me to the store, it irks me that I have to pay 5 cents, even though the amount is trivial and completely non-substantive.

But do you travel back home to retrieve your own bags?

I've been tempted to, but managed to convince myself that was irrational.

When I leave my backpack at home and realize I need to visit the grocery store I do make a detour home first, and then move on to the store just to avoid getting plastic bags. It adds maybe extra 15 minutes but I feel it's worth it. I do shopping on foot though, so no need to burn extra gas to do that.

I haven't done real calculations, but on the whole this is pretty low impact and doesn't require much extra effort or any special trips.

We rinse the bottles/cans whenever we are doing other dishes. We throw them into a bin that holds all deposit eligible containers. When the bin fills we take it with us on our next trip to the grocery store and recycle them.

It probably takes me about 5 minutes to feed them all in and it recovers about 3 dollars.

These days I get it in change and then give it to my daughter for her piggy bank. She's very young, but we're trying to introduce the concepts of saving early.

I found out that in Denmark, drink containers can only be made from fresh plastic, or recycled plastic from drinks containers, or appropriate food grade plastic waste (eg from the food packaging factory).

The general plastic recycling is considered too contaminated to be used for food.

Knowing this, I give my bottles to the people who collect the deposits. (I don't wish to do it myself.)

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