Cardboard and paper products recycle pretty well. So does aluminum and some glass bottles.
We need to use more glass bottles and other reusable containers when we go shopping.
The Canadian government is planning to ban single use plastics like bags and containers in 2021 and I’m on board. Even if it costs more it’s just the right thing to do.
Are you sure this is true? Searching now, I seem to find claims that the majority of recycled glass is often made into new containers as one would expect. Here, for example, is a source that says "Up to 90% of glass collected via multi-stream recycling programs becomes new glass products": https://ourhappyplanet.org/glass-recycling/.
Obviously, "up to" is weasel-speak, but I found some other sites making similar although slightly lower claims. Also, there is a distinction between "single stream" and "multi stream" recycling, with this source claiming that the percentage for "single stream" is only 45%. Do you know of better numbers? Or economic arguments for why clean glass would not be recycled?
[1] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...
[2] https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recy...
The only solution to this is to enact taxes on the sale of fossil fuels so high that it forces people to consume less, and/or makes reuse economical.
I'd propose that we tax the hell out of manufacturers' that won't accept delivery of things they manufactured (be it packaging or the products themselves--in whatever state). To avoid this tax they must also meet transparency guidelines for how inbound waste of this sort is disposed of.
This way the "how do we deal with the waste?" problem is handled by the same people who decide what materials to use in the first place.
We use the tax money to set up municipal recycling facilities that use the bar codes on the waste to sort it based on who made it, and instead of shipping it to third world countries they ship it there instead.
I'd like to see the cost of waste and re-use placed entirely on producers. If you sell something you have to accept it's waste back. I think we would see a big shift to reusable durable containers.
Yes, this is correct, although, it is also important to note that the reason why plastic is so "cheap" is because the externalities of it are not captured in the price. To put this in a different perspective, it is best to think of plastic as having a price that is below its costs. Plastic today has a low price. At the same time, the world is becoming filled with it. This accumulation is developing severe and systemic long term consequences. Reverting the damage is extremely difficult, expensive, and some damage may be irreversible, such as the loss of life and ecosystems. The externalities produced by plastics can be seen as a form of long term debt. In this way, it makes it clear that plastic is not all that cheap. In fact, it's quite expensive.
So how can we alter this behavior? I'll venture on my own here by suggesting a similar proposal by Professor Nordhaus and his book The Climate Casino, which is to capture the cost of the externalities into the price through the use of taxation. Carbon taxes is the most supported form of reducing carbon emissions by economists. I wouldn't be surprised if the same support exists for reducing our plastic production. If the production of plastic is taxed at the bottom of the supply chain, thus making it more costly compared to alternative materials, then we should expect an automatic market restructure that will naturally phase it out.
Maybe we do trial runs of these taxes or something? Has that been done before? A/B testing on public tax money?
If you account for all the externalities recycling (except for metal) is terrible for the environment.
People only do it because it "feels good".
If you actually cared about the environment, metal should be recycled, and everything else burned for energy.
The problem is that this system at scale would require a widely accepted standard of "container", otherwise people would just accumulate an endless number of different containers for different restaurants so nothing ends up being reused.
At some point last year, one of the places started selling glass bowls and inciting people to reuse them. They were pretty nice too, I actually went and bought one for my own use.
Most of those places' customers are people working in the local offices. So it's doable for them to wash the bowls and bring them back for another salad another day. I know at least one of the other salad bars would put your salad in your own bowl, so you wouldn't even be stuck going to the same place over and over.
It didn't really catch on with most people.
Having your own bowl won't give you any kind of discount at all. So I expect that aside from some people who actually want to do something for the environment, pretty much no one bothers to wash the bowl and drag it back to the salad place "for no reason". I think this also contributes to people's impression that plastic really is cheap (they're giving it away for free !) and that it's not really a problem for them to solve.
I specifically like the idea of zero waste stores where you bring your own containers to fill. Not only do you eliminate waste, reusable and sealable containers are so much nicer than what most products come in.
Plastic wrapped items make it very easy for customers to shop themselves with minimal interaction from staff and for the store to still guarantee cleanliness standards. I can only imagine that people coming in with their own containers will require more staff to follow proper protocols in dispensing items and whatnot, resulting in higher costs.
How would the food arrive at the store?
I used to buy food from a store with bulk bins. The store has a program where you can order the bags that they fill the bins from and pick those up directly--strong paper bags, usually around 25lbs. Lately I've found a mill and some other businesses nearby sell these bags of locally grown staple foods. By switching to the "upstream" bags, I've been able to choose local farms I want to support, nearly eliminate going to the supermarket (for produce I have a small, nearly-wild garden and do some foraging), and pay less for fresher food. Would it be possible to eliminate the 25lb bags from the loop? Probably, but they definitely reduce the friction of buying their contents, and they're made from a small amount (square-cube law) of material that makes a good sheet mulch.
Large, also reusable containers.
If they went as far as to sanitize the containers with super hot water or something like that so as to not use chemicals, I would be so happy.
Paper and glass also make economic sense to recycle. However, paper recycling is limited to making egg cartons, paper shopping bags, pizza boxes, and other low quality items. A lot of glass that gets recycled is actually crushed and used for fill, though most is actually recycled.
Plastic recycling largely meant putting it in container ships with other garbage and sending it off to Asia where it gets buried or burned. Once Asian countries said STOP DOING THIS a year or two ago, plastic "recycling" no longer made any sense.
It is still plastic, non-biodegradable, single-use, garbage.
Sad.
Watch out how Canada does.
Most people don't know how to properly separate their garbage.
We would be better off if everyone just produced less trash full stop.
Why is everything in the super market wrapped in plastic 2-3 times?
If used plastic can be safely stored for just a cent but glass takes someone 5 minutes to reuse, your probably making things worse however you measure it.
Why not use plastic once and then put it into a landfill?