Comment by crtified | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crtified | Hacker News Reader

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The reduction in such litter is a boon in itself. However we can't allow it to distract from the bigger picture, for example with New Zealand :

https://www.consumer.org.nz/articles/how-does-new-zealand-pa...

"We were the second-worst country for packaging recyclability. Here in clean, green Aotearoa, 57% of the packaging we assessed wasn’t recyclable in practice. That’s not too bad when compared to Brazil (92%), but we have a lot of room for improvement. Especially when our Aussie cousins beat us by a mile with just 14% of packaging not being recyclable."

A big part of the problem is the commercial conflict of interest, which among other things means that robust data isn't available. For example, if we had year-on-year graphs showing domestic plastic production, consumption, sales, in different regions and industries, for different purposes, we could start to build a true big picture. Instead, the populace is reduced to arbitrarily celebrating visible wins, without really knowing whether we're winning or not.

> However we can't allow it to distract from the bigger pictur

I sometimes wonder if that’s the real agenda

Like recycling. Keeping us busy sorting things in to different bins. Without thinking about the absolute torrent of crap people order on a daily or weekly basis. But it’s ok because the cardboard and plastic packaging is going in a magical bin (which often isn’t that magical…)

There is too much of a focus on recycling, when reducing the amount of stuff we consume would be far more beneficial.

When I was at school they used to talk about the 4 Rs, reduce, renew, reuse, recycle (I'm sure different variations exist). With recycling being essentially a last resort as it's so difficult and inefficient. But now it seems there is barely any mention of the first 3.

A cynic would say that it’s harder for companies to make money selling products that reduce/renew/reuse.

it's not an agenda, it's 2 things.

you tell someone, "hey don't order so much, it's bad for the environment", and they reply "you can't stop me doing something i want", like all the plastic-straw fans in this post

given a person who will make the same order regardless, recycling is better than not.

we need both things

For sure, having seen the way Germans recycle, NZ has a long way to go still.

The plastic bag ban is a good start, but seeing how Germans reuse glass bottles is an eye opener, and I really don't understand why we have individual cucumbers wrapped in plastic?!

The plastic wrap on the cucumbers makes them last longer. You can argue whether it's worth it, but there is a reason.

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