Coke and Pepsi are getting sued for lying about recycling
vice.com
vice.com
I listened to a podcast with one of the former heads of the EPA and one of the challenges is that the petroleum industry actively favors non-reuse so they can keep selling more plastic.
Edit: Here's the podcast: https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/to-the-point/the-high-cost-o...
But of course, lobbying and profits are more important.
Now what about the difference in weight your solution creates? The added weight means more fuel consumed in transport, both from bottling to store and during recycling...
I'm not saying your solution isn't better btw, I didn't do the math; just reminding you that it might not be as straightforward as "just do x".
The bottles are thoroughly cleaned and sterilized between uses.
It is that simple. Make it a law, get on with it.
FWIW India already has a robust bottle return and reuse system.
Empty containers can be loaded onto container ships, where they can be recycled elsewhere, and new containers delivered the same way. While that may still not be environmentally optimal on a world scale, at least it would consume no extra water in regions that are arid or facing groundwater depletion.
> FWIW India already has a robust bottle return and reuse system.
The soft-drink industry in India has already been castigated for depletion of groundwater, so again, washing and sterilizing all these bottles only compounds the damage.
In order for drinks to stay fizzy, the container has to be filled under pressure. Even if you offer customers some fancy machine that can fill their bottles under pressure, you still risk issues with customers bringing in old, flimsy containers that cannot withstand those pressures.
It's shocking you'd propose single use plastic bottles to be recycled over glass bottles that can be re-used hundreds (thousands?) of times.
I'm sure they can capture and clean the water and re-use that too, it doesn't just have to go down the drain.
I just can't help feeling that with everything there are nine million reasons not to do something, so we end up doing nothing. Analysis Paralysis.
I can't find figures comparing the water used in production vs reuse.
It is not that simple. Unfortunately.
That sounds like nonsense. For a filled ~300ml container of soda, a glass bottle would be ~20% (ballpark) heavier than an aluminum can. Even if shipping costs increased by a similar proportion (actually less, but whatever) and we include the cost of cleaning bottles, it seems we would still end up ahead compared to the song-and-dance of recycling, which is incredibly resource intensive.
With plastic, throw some shrinkwrap on them and you're good to go.
They should be banned overnight. But we can't be having that!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/restaurants-coffee-pl...
The system in Germany isn't perfect, but it's pretty damn good.
Edit: Plastic recycling.
That's basically a long winded way of saying most metals are cheaper to recycle than to mine new.
Maybe as more people become aware of recycling inefficiencies, we'll start diverting dollars go businesses that focus on longevity and reusability of their products?
Perhaps they'd actually be happier. There's at least the beginnings of a body of research that suggests that owning a mountain of toys in childhood is associated with a lifelong increased risk of mood disorders.
It's all correlational, of course, so it's not like this is a scientific certainty. But still, interesting to see.
And yeah, agree. I'm looking at you, enormous steam games list.
Shit, as far as games go I'm still trying to catch up on top-tier or just-under-top-tier games from the 90s I missed the first time around, and I played quite a few games back then. Now that I have less time, a bunch of excellent-looking games I'd probably love slip by and land on the "to do... someday, maybe" list. Even for a medium that new, I'm overwhelmed with great options.
Doesn't seem to have done them any harm, from what I recall.
Not really. Plastic was the more hygenic alternative and that was the main reason why it replaced the older packaging techniques.
Sounds good to me in theory, but the confusion for me has always been: how do you overhaul the packaging of all these small consumable items (like Pepsi and Coke) so they're either more easily recyclable or reusable and also benefit the manufacturer at the same time? I'm sure the government can create incentives but will that be enough? Will people be willing to pay more money for a more environmentally friendly option if a less environmentally friendly but more affordable option exists?
If the government passed laws/regulation that mandated certain packaging requirements for companies like Coca Cola, that would be a top-down solution and Coca Cola would have to comply, lest they wish to face steep fines and litigation.
In regards to soda, you're right - consumption taxes have proven effective. I believe cigarette taxes have proven effective in the same way. But an environmentally effective top-down solution would of course apply to many more consumables that just soda, sugar cakes and other generally unhealthy items. It's possible that top down regulation could push costs higher for smaller companies that offer healthy options in environmentally unfriendly packages. If costs are too high for smaller companies like these, then there may be fewer healthy alternative options (because we know Little Debbie and Coca Cola aren't going anywhere, regulations or not). This is obviously a very generalized example - in reality, many of the healthy/organic foods items already come in environmentally-friendly packaging.
If people start having to pay for garbage processing by weight or volume, people would change their tune pretty quickly, in the same fashion that instituting small charges on bottles and cans boost recycling of those products.
The downside is that those that are charged directly often dump wherever they won't be caught. Example: mattresses, they're a dumping problem, often, bulk items are even included in curbside pickup with the minium effort of scheduling a pickup.
Other than that, I do think some level of optimizations should happen in the space of recycling... either similar to what I understand German regulations are on recycling what you produce... and/or going back to glass bottles.
Then again, I'm not sure how bad plastics are in general, other than what gets dumped into the oceans, for the most part, my understanding is plastics in modern waste facilities aren't so bad and mfg is mostly a petroleum byproduct of what would otherwise be waste anyway.
When you visit less wealthy countries, you see people reducing and re-using. They either don't have as easy of access to all these goods, or the cost of them makes the people re-use the stuff around the house.
For example, I could use empty beer cans to start seedlings for my garden, but I've instead bought those nice black gardening pots. I have the money to and it's easier than keeping beer cans around then modifying them to drain right.
- Reduce and reuse are individual efforts that collectively mean a lot at scale.
- Recycling is something that we pay the city to do and then we don't have to think about it. Out of sight, out of mind, we've barely had to change our behavior.
But it turns out that when we abdicate individual responsibility to government and elected officials, we learn that most aren't recycling and never were. Oops.
So really if you want to effectively cut e.g. plastic use or increase its re-use you have to make it expensive, but that's kinda contrary to the whole point of using plastic in the first place.
Similarly, as industry's really gotten good at minimizing use of materials as a cost-saving measure (I assume CAD or something has enabled this? It's very noticeable since especially the late 90s) it's made re-use harder. I've seen those good, thick old department store plastic bags live for decades as a container for occasionally-accessed stuff in storage, and plastic bottles used to be so tough you could use them for all kinds of things that modern ones would be very bad at. Old plastic storage bins may have used a lot more plastic and been more expensive but they didn't crack if you looked at them funny like the modern ones. Stuff like that. So we got "reduce" in a way, but it just made stuff even cheaper so we use more of it, and made "re-use" much less practical.
TL;DR: buy industrial boxes. Proper German KLT https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_container are really nice. I recommend R-KLT in blue (they don't look as bland as the grey ones).
You know what? I wish Amazon had really durable boxes, like these but maybe even a bit sturdier, that you could add to an order, used as the shipping container for the rest of the stuff you ordered but also intended for re-use after arrival.
I do still plan to get a lifting arm/manually-operated crane. It would be nice to not have to lift them with my spine, and these are made for reliably grabbing by a robot. Both from the sides and even from the top (when tightly packed).
(There are 4 access holes on the top that go down next to the grips on the short sides. A grabber uses one hook each to lock the box when unloading e.g. a pallet.)
You should be able to order from a company like Auer Packaging or a local alternative. Thankfully these are specified precisely, so manufacturers can't cheat on stability to save materials.
They actually recycle well, btw. When broken/used-up, they'll get shredded and turned back into new boxes. It works because they're pure PP and only one of a few fixed colors.
The argument always goes that people want to feel good while doing very little. But what I hear mostly are people who want to do nothing but still complain.
It’s the 30 mile commutes, single person occupied SUVs, flying for vacations, and living driving distance to everything in suburbs and exurbs causing exponentially greater than necessary usage of fuel to move mass that is the vast majority of our problem.
The only solution to the issue is to increase the cost of fuel. If we don’t accomplish that, all the other efforts are a waste of time and energy. If we do accomplish raising the cost of fuel, then everything else will fall in line, including costs of disposable plastic goods which will go up and cause people to consume less.
Except, of course, this is politically untenable because of all the investment assumptions requiring 10% ROI to meet debt obligations.
The noise of the streets, neighbors, an even other residents in the same apartment (if sharing, because there's not enough single / studio places at good value) invade. The smells from neighbors and others invade. The shared garbage chute, elevator or stairwell where you interface with the lingering smoking, pet, or messes invades personal space as well.
The building code (at least in the US) in the cities isn't high enough to provide actual solitude and escape from being so close to everyone else.
Inside cities the rent seeking keeps rents there too high.
Outside of cities, rent seeking helps to prevent new home ownership (rather than temporary rental), while the lack of regulations and taxation for infrastructure (like transport of goods and people) undervalues and under-taxes the opportunity cost.
Much like many of the other social ills in the US the problems require a national framework and local solutions; but the balance and distribution of planning is out of scale and stuck decades if not a hundred years or more in the past when the speed of transportation provided pressures that made local management good enough.
Source: Sustainable energy, without the hot air. This book dives into the bigs that need to be tackled before the smalls.
Plus, penalizing fuel hurts the poor more than the rich. The poor are the ones driving long distances from cheap housing to city centres for work. They are the personal support workers, caregivers and Uber drivers. The rich can afford to live within 10 mins walking distance of work, and can also afford to move when changing jobs to maintain walkability.
I don’t think sustainable fuel (non fossil fuel) is realistic on the timescale that humans need it to be. Fossil fuel is just so convenient with its portability and ease of use, that it will remain preferred for many uses.
There is no plastic without fossil fuels. All goods are dependent on plastic in some form or another; many goods are made entirely of plastic. Eliminating plastic requires anywhere from minor to major redesign of a given good and a correspondingly increased bill of materials, both for the cost of redesign and cost of sourcing the alternative, and these costs will be passed directly onto the customer, thereby raising the prices of everything. Put those two together, it will become apparent that living in a modern western society with the abundance we are used to becomes quickly unsustainable for everyone except the very wealthy. You may think you can bear the cost on an SV salary but most people in America cannot. You are asking people in America to accept a non-trivial downgrade in their standard of living and they will fight you tooth and nail to preserve it, at the ballot box and elsewhere. That’s just how human beings are wired. In terms of other countries, they are all looking to attain the same standard of life available in the west and will happily consume more fossil fuels to get there. Any lack of demand on the west’s side results in cheaper prices, spurring increased consumption in emerging markets.
Furthermore, lets say you do succeed in increased fuel costs, thus reducing our collective standard of living. It will probably backfire when that happens, as your SV salary depends on their high standard of living. If the avg person’s purchasing power plummets, their demand for tech goods also plummets. After all, the overwhelming majority of tech goods satisfy wants, not needs, and discretionary purchases of new phones, Alexas and Sonos speakers are the first things to go out the window when survival is at stake. There goes that large salary and vested stocks. Now you’re stuck fighting for survival too. It’s a race to the bottom.
There are only two real solutions: A source of energy more dense or portable than gasoline, or some form of population control. The first is difficult, the second is currently unthinkable for most people.
Reducing consumption by increased taxes (worldwide), and/or by reduced population, and finding an alternate source of fuel are the only solutions. But I doubt an alternative to fossil fuels with equivalent properties can be discovered in sufficient time.
Hell, I think that in an ideal world something similar would happen to traffic and parking tickets. More people parking illegally or speeding? More money goes to buses and trains.
In all I bet someone has done or could do a detailed study on this. My internet comment isn’t going to make this a law so you needn’t worry about my lack of research, but a real proposal should examine these factors.
Ok, so how much extra fuel is used by trucking all this glass back to a handful of bottling plants that are hundreds of miles away? I guess the deposit fee thing might work.
Personally, I really wonder if using aluminum isn't more environmentally friendly than this. Aluminum cans/bottles are extremely thin and lightweight, and can be easily recycled, and are one of the few things we actually do recycle effectively today, even paying people for used cans. Of course, some people complain that aluminum cans add a flavor to the drink, and there's also the issue of the plastic coating used inside modern cans.
Personally, it seems to me that most of these issues would go away if we as a society actually committed to developing serious recycling infrastructure and using it, even if it means extra taxes somewhere (whether it's directly on end-users, or on producers of plastic products).
I have seen 24 ounce aluminum cans for beer though so we could see large American sodas in big cans. Not resealable though.
I think if we are willing to commit to building infrastructure, there is a lot to like about washing glass bottles. In at least one of the Nordic countries they require the use of a standard glass bottle with paper labels that wash off. With this, bottles can be returned to the closest bottler even if it’s a different brand. This keeps travel low. If bottling plants are near population centers the carbon cost of bottle transportation can be kept low.
The thing about standard glass bottles sounds pretty good, but I can't imagine that ever being legislated here in the US. It would have to be Federal, and there's no way you'll get Congresspeople from across the country to agree to something like that. It can't be state-based because then it wouldn't work: you wouldn't be able to get the standard bottle adopted even within a single city, because part of the city is in one state and part is in another state or two.
1. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782?ijkey=8...
The fact that you can take cans into a recycler and get paid for them is a _really_ good indicator that recycling aluminum works.
Also, minimized whenever possible. Cheap single-use plastics are often more trouble than they're worth.
Many people don't realize exactly how much plastic is used up in logistics, just wrapping things before they reach the consumer. It's a bit appalling.
> Swiss mineral water brand Henniez announced that its entire plastic bottle range is now made of 75% recycled PET plastic (rPET). Henniez has already been using 30% Swiss recycled PET since 2013 and has the clear ambition to move to 100% locally recycled PET. This will close the PET circular loop, as discarded PET bottles will be made into new Henniez recycled plastic bottles multiple times, without tapping into new oil resources.
https://www.nestle.com/media/news/henniez-mineral-water-bott...
I don't know/understand why they would use this process only for their Henniez brand. Maybe it involves $-margin or maybe they want to do this experiment without endangering all their brands, etc... .
Consider: any drop of fossil fuel that is spent recovering plastic back into oil, could instead have been used to make new plastic in the first place, obviating that recovery. It's more efficient to turn oil into plastic directly, than to use oil to turn plastic into oil, and then turn that oil into plastic.
And, of course, any watt of renewable energy used on this process, is one that drives up grid demand and thus makes fossil fuels more competitive as grid base-load supply...
> It’s likely that less than 5% of plastic produced today is getting recycled
I've seen this repeated elsewhere, but what I really want to know is the % of plastics sent for recycling actually being recycled. Anything that wasn't turned in for recycling just doesn't count here, in my opinion.
Growing up in Scotland we had a recycling system which was great. Irn Bru bottles were glass bottles with metal lids. The lid proudly announced that you could get 20p back for returning it (in the form of credit towards other purchases). The same trucks delivering stock took the empty bottles back to the distribution centre when they were cleaned, inspected and reused.
Metal degrades slowly if it's ferrous (iron/steel), but that isn't environmentally harmful. And it can all be readily recycled.
Nobody would have thought of throwing the glass into the trash, even if there were no refunds. I think part of this was that so many people had a memory of the great depression, and waste was viewed as sinful.
When plastic came in, the older folks washed plastic bags out so they could reuse them. You'd see them on the clothes lines, drying out. (Sure, people had indoor dryers, but clothes dried on the line not only saved on the electric bill but smelled so damned wonderful that it's hard to erase the memory of the delight in bringing things in off the line.)
Especially with the rise of e-commerce, there’s no reason why most consumer products couldn’t be delivered in reusable glass containers.
Sure, foodstuffs. But why can we not refill our soaps, chemicals, etc. Laundry detergent? There is no need to wash those with water.
I suspect that the real problem with packaging reduction is that it favors a consolidated product stream. One of those bulk "fill your own containers" of shampoo probably took up the same amount of space as 6 or 8 different products in individual packaging. Which in turn means that you can't offer your customers a dizzying variety of scents and textures and customizations for your hair type and brands and varying levels of organic or biodynamic or being insert_ingredient_here-free or whatever.
And everyone buying the same shampoo - making it effectively a commodity - probably does a number on your ability to boost profits through price discrimination, too.
Perhaps with standardized containers and regional distribution centers? Sort of like the old-school beverage bottling plants, but for all variety of consumer products, and not tied to just one brand or class of product. I've no idea how you'd get such a thing bootstrapped, though.
https://wastelandrebel.com/en/the-first-zero-waste-bulk-stor...
But I just don't see how waste reduction can be neatly reconciled with e-commerce. The typical situation seems to be that things are packed in retail-style packaging, then plastic wrapped, then placed in a plastic padded mailing envelope or placed in a cardboard box along with some plastic air pillows, and then shipped 2day, which, if it's not coming from Amazon, likely means jet fuel is being burned.
I'll say that for Amazon, they at least did an impressive job reducing the fuel waste inherent in ecommerce. It's too bad they're so happy to let the counterfeiters ruin it for us.
Some companies are starting to take responsibility for the full lifecycle of their products (Terracycle comes to mind, which helps companies reclaim and reuse their products at end-of-life). More businesses need to have this mindset if we are going to move towards a sustainable economy.
Capitalism says they won't. Consumers as a whole favor cheaper products over sustainable ones.
Regulation is how you solve that problem. Tax companies that use disposable packaging or don't manage their waste streams properly (however you define that) and they'll stop doing it.
Recycling has always been the feel-good system to shift the blame for disposable packaging from companies to consumers. The term "littering" was literally invented to do just that, just like "jaywalking" was a way to shift the blame for traffic problems to pedestrians.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-li...
I think we're seeing an increase of companies that are prioritizing sustainable practices, because both consumers and investors are demanding this. Not every company by any stretch of the imagination, but it's happening. See Blackrock's annual letter [1] for the investment side. One Percent for the Planet reports that Millennials are more willing to purchase products that have environmental or social benefits than the general public, which would suggest that this is a trend that's increasing[2].
>Regulation is how you solve that problem. Tax companies that use disposable packaging or don't manage their waste streams properly (however you define that) and they'll stop doing it.
Definitely agreed that this would solve things a lot quicker and more completely. But in the absence of fitting regulation, people need to decide to do the right thing within their companies and get progress started.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/14/blackrocks-larry-fink-says-s... [2] https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/business-members
Siggi's yogurt containers (the large ones, at least) have a paper label and a tab you can tear to completely remove the paper from the plastic so they can be recycled properly. Which, of course, made me realize that probably nothing ELSE with a label on it is recyclable in the way we think they are.
1. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/dsd/... [pdf warning]
“With the investment that Coke is getting ready to make in Atlanta and in other major cities across the U.S. with this World Without Waste (campaign), it is not going to be a part of that conversation.”
https://www.wypr.org/post/investigation-digs-eco-corruption-...
How were the labels wrong?
There is nothing in this article and I'm sure your view of all single use products must be biodegradable or recyclable isn't law.
Your theory makes the EPA rather pointless.
I mean, just think about it for a single second, who profit from these things beside big corporations, certainly not me, you or our future descendants.
This is surely the case since nearly every municipality has some program in place. The obvious problem is that these cities aren't actually recycling things while claiming they are -- possibly even requiring people to recycle. It looks to me like cities need to be sued to remove these plastics from the programs. Then 60% wouldn't have access to recycling programs, and then it would be deceptive to label it as recyclable.
Another avenue would be a change by legislation.
For all the outrage, this lawsuit is going nowhere.
And before I'm called a shill: Don't drink Coke. Don't drink Pepsi. Don't drink bottled water.
I'm just a fan of the law being knowable -- oh, and articles having substance.
I agree the lawsuit is unlikely to go anywhere. But many people said the same about the lawsuits against big tobacco. And even if the lawsuit is tossed at the very first opportunity the organization has called attention to some of the worst actors when it comes to plastic production. I'd call that a win.
Either way it's the way our system slowly but sure gets the wheels of progress spinning.
Hustlers that stand on city corners pushing junk flyers onto passers-by, creating a pile of discards 20 feet down the street, are in the same boat.
Paper degrades naturally, and most paper in the West is now produced from sustainable sources. So, paper littering is not as deleterious as plastic that doesn’t get properly recycled.
From the Table of Contents:
A. Defendants created the condition of plastic pollution, which is extraordinarily harmful to humans, animals, and the environment. 22
B. As Defendants have known for decades, recycling by itself cannot prevent plastic pollution from damaging oceans, waterways, and coasts 29
C. Defendants refuse to adopt more sustainable alternatives in order reap higher profits resulting from using virgin plastic. 37
D. Defendants’ decades-long campaign of misinformation about their Products’ recyclability puts the cost of plastic pollution on consumers and public entities. 39
This suit is an awful idea.
There's a difference between (1) trying to speak to someone in a language they understand, and (2) imagining what you think that would be like, doing that without reference to whether it makes any sense, and then congratulating yourself for your penetrating insight. You can't speak to someone in a language that they understand but you don't!
Even if the court decides that you haven't stated a justiciable claim?
* Violating §1770(a)(5,7,9) of California's Consumer Legal Remedies Act, which is effectively a false advertising law.
* Public nuisance
* Express warranty violation (again, basically "this product doesn't do what you told me it would do")
* Strict liability claims for environment damage (as far as I can make it out)
* Negligence claims for the above as well.
The first and third claims are really, really hard to substantiate because the plaintiffs are arguing on the basis that the claim of "recyclable" should be interpreted as "actually recycled in practice" as opposed to the definition of "recyclable" that appears in regulation... I can't see a judge buying that. I imagine the last two claims will fail due to lack of direct harm--I'm not intimately familiar with California law here, but they're not citing any particular law or precedent to establish why they have standing to sue on the basis of only general public harm. Public nuisance is the only claim I could see standing, but even then, the rather indirect nature is going to make this difficult to sustain.
In short, this appears to me to be more of a "we're suing them to make a statement" kind of case than a "we're suing them because we actually have a legal claim" kind.
2) There are five other companies named in TFA (of the ten named in the suit described in TFA)
The failure should be pushed up the chain, at least to the consumer. The rules on what can be recycled should be realistic and consistently enforced, then people can make more informed choices (up to and including pushing for regulation on manufacturers).
https://www.africanexponent.com/post/8588-the-west-is-dumpin...
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/06/s...
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/24/r...
Yes clearly, thinking a few cents of eco tax will outweigh your ecological impact is like thinking using paper straws makes up for taking the plane once a week. It's nice "feel good" idea but it doesn't have any real world impact. Just look at every pollution related threads on HN, there are always a lot of people blaming China and Asia for having the most polluting rivers, while the majority of the shit ending in their rivers was consumed in the EU/US. Recycling really isn't much more than "I'll put it far away and from now on act like it doesn't exist anymore".
Everything I read about recycling in the US, or anywhere else for that matter, is that it doesn't work very well and most of it is exported, so I'm not quite sure about which recycling projects you're talking about.
https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/1570...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-pla...
https://www.boell.de/en/2019/11/04/waste-exports-rubbish-dum...
https://www.statista.com/chart/18229/biggest-exporters-of-pl...
" so I'm not quite sure about which recycling projects you're talking about" .. there are ample business case studies of materials recycling that work, in certain markets, but they do not tend to be at the top of the web-based news
It is unduly onerous to claim "recycling doesn't work" IMO
It is a bit of a stretch in legal terms, but with the negligence in place for disposal processes/costs of a resource as mature as plastic, it is exactly like the fight against CFC's and the hole in the ozone layer.
Quantifiable damage from plastics and a strategy for reduction could/should mirror other successful campaigns to limit ecological damage.
Most of these brands are now invisible for the 1st world, cord-cutting, ad-blocker-loving generations, so my hope is that the next round of behemoths will learn from their environmental mistakes.
And they are also trying to control the negative fallout [1]
[0] https://qz.com/1689529/nurdles-are-the-biggest-pollution-dis... [1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90295292/the-worlds-big-plastic-...