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Comment by kostko | Hacker News Reader

Your lifestyle does not generate garbage. Companies that sell non recyclables and non compostsbles generate garbage. Why hasnt cocacola replaced their plastics with something compostable? There are new inventions for replacing plastics out each day, I wonder where those inventions end up.

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If coca cola's your example, then I'm going to affirm that yes, it is the lifestyle that generates garbage. People don't _need_ soda. But they want it at a low price that's cheaper than Pepsi. You know what that means? Coke's going to be shipping in the cheapest container possible to keep the price edge - which is plastic.

If soda drinkers cared about plastic consumption, they would switch to anything that has glass containers and spend more - or just cut the habit due to the waste generated. But that's not happening.

Sure, there can be political will to force Coke to switch to something else - bypassing the need for the customer to do anything - but that would result in higher prices which makes people mad. Good luck asking a politician to do something that will upset their constituents

It's not Coke vs Pepsi and pricing competition (Coke costs more than it's competitors), it's using a useless manufacturered product and shipping water in a can instead of drinking from the tap and adding a scoop of sugar and spice of your want.

It is still a pricing competition. Sure Coke costs more, but they're also riding on their brand recognition to bump up their perceived value. No amount of brand loyalty would save them if they had to undergo the price jump that comes with a massive logistics change of switching off of plastic without a proven alternative.

It might cost a buck more per 6pack for Coke right now - but people aren't going to get it if it costs 2-3x more than Pepsi.

Not sure if that's true. Soda has tripled in the last few years mostly just due to corp greed and realizing people are very stuck (addicted?) to their preferred flavors. Pepsi and Coke are competitors but not substitutes.

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/coca-cola-s...

https://www.vox.com/money/23979340/diet-coke-price-coca-cola...

Tea drinker here, but doesn't a lot of soda globally come in aluminum cans, which are actually recyclable?

Yep. Though I'm hoping my point can be extrapolated outside of the soda example as well. Coke/Soda's just something I'm picking on

check to see what aluminum cans and even the cans of canned food are lined with... It doesnt look so good to me. Without that sealant, metal leeches into the product.

Coke used to come in glass bottles that were returned to the store and reused. Consumers didn't change that, the Coca-Cola company changed that.

Recyclable is a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry. You should be using reusable glass which is expensive to replace but cheap to refill.

Where I live only restaurants can buy glass bottle soda. It is quite sad, since I like those. They are way nicer to drink from.

Where I live, everyone can buy bottled water in glass bottles. I think there are now glass bottles with Coca Cola, too, though I'm not certain (I don't drink soda).

The catch is they're obscenely expensive.

There's free water in the tap

> a scam perpetuated by the plastic industry

What does this actually mean and what are you basing it on? Without any sources or references it reads a bit like FUD.

There have been a few articles about that recently. However, you can notice it for yourself if you notice how many products claim to be "recyclable" but how few are recycled.

If recycling were widespread, you'd expect the vast majority of products to be made with recycled plastic.

The ineffectives of recycling is one thing, but the person above posited that the paid industry were up to no good as well.

I guess it might refer to the fact that 80% of the plastic produced ends up in landfills and it's not recycled, for different reasons, one of them is that recycling plastic is very expensive.

Also there are several different types of plastic that do not melt together, or do not melt at all, and can't be easily recycled or reused. It also degrades and becomes more toxic on every cycle and, unlike glass, health safety of recycled plastic cannot be guaranteed so to package food the only safe option is to make new plastic.

Is the 80% a number for the US? In northern Europe I assume that a small percentage is recycled and the rest is incinerated for electricity and heat -- landfill usage has restrictions in the EU.

Some countries like Sweden and Finland use incineration to such extent that they have a lack of domestic waste and have to import it [0].

[0] https://yle.fi/a/74-20076606

according to Our World in data

While we might think that much of the world's plastic waste is recycled, only 9% is. Half of the world's plastic still goes straight to landfill. Another fifth is mismanaged – meaning it is not recycled, incinerated, or kept in sealed landfills – putting it at risk of being leaked into rivers, lakes, and the ocean.

I misworded my first sentence, I meant that 80% either goes to the landfill or it's not recycled, but apparently it's more like 70%.

That's fine but calling it a scam by the plastic industry suggests intention, bad inventing, from the plastic industry. I'm asking if that's the case.

Here's an article: https://newrepublic.com/article/179267/recycling-doesnt-work...

The gist: similar to Big Tobacco, etc., internally with the plastics industry, there seems to have been a much greater degree of pessimism about the long-term economic viability of plastics recycling, but it was sold to the public anyway via ad campaigns and lobbying to forestall regulation or legislation limiting plastics as public sentiment was shifting towards a greater sense of environmental awareness.

It takes mere moments to google "how much plastic is actually recycled"

You would have to be naive to believe that executives in the petroleum and plastic industries are unaware of how little plastic is actually recycled rather than complicit.

I'm aware of how much plastic is recycled. I'm not convinced that the plastic industry conspired to pull the wool over the publics eyes about it.

Where I grew up the reason stated when they replaced glass with plastic was that the weight of the glass alone caused more pollution from transport than the plastic bottles that replaced them

It's not just about emissions, though. Single-use plastics literally just accumulate in landfills until the end of time, while glass is highly recyclable (and one of the few economically viable ones).

Arguably putting plastic back in landfills is just returning oil back to earth, but it’s not a pretty site.

I've never lived anywhere that landfills garbage so I don't know about that.

Ah, you throw yours right into the river then.

Incineration which generates power and/or district heating

Homes that don't have electric or district heating are often heated with oil anyway, might as well have some utility to that oil before it's burned?

Glass is infinitely recyclable, but is seldom actually-recycled since making new glass is often the least expensive route.

I view recycling schemes for plastics as a way to make burning the stuff more convenient. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

After fossil fuels are done, the reduced carbon in the waste stream (including plastics, but also cellulosic materials) will become more valuable as feedstock for various chemical processes. Garbage refining will be a thing. It will be an aggressive chemical endeavor, more akin to petroleum refining than to recycling.

There's a book I read as a kid that takes place in the sort of near future after we've run out of oil.

The only people that have plastic in this future society are extremely wealthy and poor people "mine" old landfills looking for plastic to sell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ear,_the_Eye_and_the_Arm

That's not plausible, IMO. Plastic may become somewhat more expensive, but it doesn't require fossil fuels. Overall secular increase in societal wealth should overcome any transient increase in price.

In Germany we have reusable thick plastic bottles, and a deposit system that's attractive enough for people to bother bringing them back (or for homeless people to collect them). Not perfect but much better than single use plastic

I don't think "army of homeless people" deserves a place in our comprehensive solution to social ills.

That ship has sailed (or sunk) a long long time ago

Glass bottles require local cleaning and filling infrastructure to make refilling economical. We don't have that infrastructure anymore.

Funnily/depressingly enough, not even supposedly compostable stuff is actually compostable [0]

[0] https://www.research-in-germany.org/idw-news/en_US/2023/10/2...

Indeed, I think/hope most people have now moved to paper bags for their bio waste recycling.

I particularly "admire" compostable cardboard hot food containers, which are coated with PFA forever chemicals to keep the food oils off the cardboard.

Coca-Cola wouldn't be putting anything in plastic bottles if people stopped drinking Coca-Cola.

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