Hacker News Reader

Comment by Synaesthesia | Hacker News Reader

China is now mandating reusable bottles and phasing out single-use plastic items.

Who cleans it? Does the cost structure rely on slave labor?

A century ago when glass bottle reuse was still common in the west, glass bottles were cleaned automatically by machines. A bottle cleaning plant should be able to achieve very high throughput with relatively few workers, paying them properly shouldn't be a problem.

Reusable glass bottles still make up 75+% of beer sold in Germany. No slave labor is involved.

And the homeless population of Berlin is able to afford basics by helping sort the recycling - it's a very nice regenerative system compared to most places.

This is true with other european countries too but in Berlin it’s works especially well. You leave the bottles around trashbins and somebody picks them up in no time. This works though because there are Spätis (corner stores) on every corner and everybody walks around and you can drink alcohol in public. It would make no sense in cultures where you have to drive a car and cant drink outside.

A century ago we did a lot of things, the most important aspect is the ROI and tradeoff. If you're creating more emissions from cleaning than producing a new bottle, you've got a net impact but you'll get to do a lot of virtue signaling to make sure it is justified.

Even if it's true that cleaning is creating more emissions today it can still be worthwhile to get people used to it, because it can be easier to replace a coal-fired plant with solar or wind than it is to change the daily habits of millions of people.

The question then becomes: how much water do you need for that? How are you going to dispose of chemicals used in cleaning?

AFAIK the cleaning is done with steam. As for water needed, the water isn't consumed when you use it, it just gets a bit dirtier. Just put it back in the river you got it from when you're done rinsing out bottles.

> Just put it back in the river you got it from when you're done rinsing out bottles.

Ah yes. Just put potentially contaminated water back into water supply.

Coca Cola (and many other soft drinks) is sold in reusable plastic bottles in Germany. They are slightly thicker than the disposable bottles used elsewhere, especially the rim, presumably so a machine can handle it more easily.

In The Netherlands at least people return them to the point of sale because you get money back for them, so the incentive is not to throw money away.

Finland used to sell drinks in reusable bottles, but then we swapped for "recyclable" ones. Which were thinner, flimsier and generally worse.

And who produces the endless single-use bottles? does that rely on slave labour too?

Oregon is a good model for bottle bills and container recycling in the US:

https://obrc.com/results/how-bottle-bills-compare/

The recycling program operates with no ongoing expense to the taxpayer, through a cooperative

That’s easier to do in a country with as much government control as China. would that work federally in America?

In WW2 the government simply ordered corporations to do things, and ran a command economy, well I guess they suddenly realised they had that power.

I'm not saying they should do that, but it would be good if they did something, and I'm pointing out that there are steps we can take.

It would if people wanted it to work.

And if they don't, I'm happy the government doesn't foist that on the people, unlike in other places.

Sure... forcing the people to do things they don't want to is bad. But one of the reasons I think people don't want to do this kinds of collectivist tasks is because we've been trained into being hyper-individualistic. It's "nobody has my back, why should I have somebody else's back?". If we fostered a more collaborative "we're all in this together" culture, by y'know... actually being in this together, I think there would be a lot of problems we think of as impossibly hard to solve that would be incredibly easy to solve. "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" was once an inspiring thing to hear.

If six marijuana plants grown and consumed in someone's backyard are "interstate commerce", I'm quite sure the bottled beverages industry also is.

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/545/1/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com