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Comment by diego | Hacker News Reader

This is misguided. Let's say this campaign succeeds. Maybe 10% of the cups will be recycled, leaving still a ton of waste. It would be much more effective to campaign against single-use cups. I grew up in a time in which you had to bring an empty bottle glass bottle to a shop, and they would take it and give you a full one, which you'd bring back empty next time. If you didn't have one, you'd leave a deposit (effectively buying your first bottle). There is nothing wrong with that system.

You forgot to bring your cup to Starbucks? Fine, buy one. Don't want to keep it? Bring it back when you're done and they credit you the deposit.

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I wouldn't call the campaign misguided, since recyclable paper cups would probably be more biodegradable than plastic-coated cups whether they're recycled or not.

Having a bottle deposit would surely be more environmentally friendly, but it would also generate more friction in the sales process and Starbucks would have to consider the business impact. Switching the coating of the cup is, according to the petition, "cost neutral" and there is no real downside to this change, assuming that the recyclable cups are of comparable quality. It seems like an easy and obvious change to make.

Also, switching to recyclable cups doesn't prevent Starbucks from implementing a bottle deposit, if they choose to do so later on.

Reusable cups are still banned at my Starbucks due to covid which is a bit frustrating for me. I've been using my reusable cup for 5 years until covid. They used to sell a cup every year which gave free coffees for the month of January.

yeah feel like Covid is a huge setback for the re-use movement, shopping bags also, as seemed like finally were over the hump as far as adoption and normalization. All out the window now. Plastic bags as far as the eye can see

Wondering what the economics of keeping single use cups but making them out of aluminum would look like? It’s one of the more valuable recyclables (to the point where homeless people will collect them to make some money).

Is aluminum recycling actually valuable to society, or is it only valuable due to the deposit?

Aluminum is basically the easiest recyclable material to recycle, and the most cost effective. In places without a deposit, you can still sell bags of aluminum cans to scrap recyclers by weight.

It's certainly a step up from plastic. (Here in NY, both aluminum and plastic have the $0.05 deposit, incidentally.)

https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/12/20862775/aluminum-recycli...

> The Aluminum Association, an industry group, says that almost 75 percent of all the aluminum ever produced to date is still in use today.

> Recycling aluminum saves about 90 percent of the energy it takes to make new aluminum, which is great since mining bauxite ore and turning it into aluminum is pretty environmentally destructive and energy-intensive. It takes about twice as much energy to produce new aluminum as it does to produce new plastic.

Smelting aluminum ore into aluminum is very energy-intensive, recycling is very cheap. I’d see the energy savings as a benefit.

We need to have Starbucks (and all coffee shops for that matter) offer the option to pay on a sliding scale so you can fill up your 30oz Yeti and pay accordingly. That would be too pro-consumer though.

Starbucks gives, restarted in June (per a reply to another comment of mine here), a 10 cent discount for using a reusable cup. It's not a sliding scale, and it's not a ton of money back. But it's something, and probably more of a discount than the paper cup would cost them.

Unfortunately when it comes to big corporations it's hard to tell if something like this is a real effort or just _greenwashing_ meant to improve company's image in the eyes of customers and help to silence their conscience.

When it comes to single plastic usage I think that putting all the pressure on customers, individuals is simply wrong and not enough, I'm convinced that serious pressure needs to be placed on manufacturers, amount and count of used packaging materials taxed or something like this. Recently I received box of pralines as a gift - amount of various materials used to deliver 15 pieces of chocolate is absolutely insane, ridiculous: hard translucent plastic case, tinfoil, tinfoil pressed/glued with plastic wrapping, lacquered glued paper, non-lacquered paper, plastic tray - there are tons of products like this one on stores shelves and I'm disillusioned and don't believe at all that it's getting "recycled"

In addition to above I don't believe that just putting garbage in the correct bin is enough effort from customer's side, it's just not.

It's notable that Starbucks already gives you a discount if you bring your own coffee container, and that they have a propensity of giving you more if your container is bigger.

I remember when the bakery chain popular here (Baker Square) had a 25 cent credit on every aluminum pie tray. The value was stamped into it so everyone knew it had cash value to return.

That’s how it still worked in the 90s in post-communist Central European countries. Then we got flooded with plastic just like the Westerners.

I was amazed in Berlin the recycling program that makes it very easy to recycle cans and bottles. People made it a job to pickup and search through trash so they could recycle. A can deposit would be welcomed, but maybe I’m old and just remember crushing cans to fill up trash bags to get $7. Sure was fun to get that money as a kid.

Some places you don't get the deposit if the can is crushed, because they need to be able to read the barcode. Which is insane, because crushed cans take up a fraction of the space of whole cans and only makes the recycling process more complex.

The self-service machines used in Germany to collect bottles and cans will do the crushing part for you (after reading the barcode)

Yeah, but collecting whole cans is inconvenient. My normal process is to crush it with my hands immediately after drinking it (top to bottom) so it doesn't take up so much room.

It’s not just that it’s easy… it’s also how much they give you per can or bottle (up to 25 cents)… it’s quite a significant amount, so you end up saving the bottles and taking them to the supermarket to get the refund.

There's a couple of grocery stores here that are recently trying out selling soap and shampoo this way. You bring your own bottle and fill it up. It makes sense and is not much extra hassle to the consumer, however I'm not sure how hard it is to scale logistics-wise.

Similar thing in Austin, TX. City banned single use plastic bags, so HEB (the largest grocer) introduced durable reusable plastic bags to purchase. Unsurprisingly, people ate the cost, treated them like single use bags, and now we have an even worse waste problem.

Liberal policymaking in a nutshell.

Wegmans reusable bags are $1 a pop, so no one's eating the cost. Seems to be quite a decent reuse rate; I've got some several years old at this point.

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