Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide | Hacker News Reader

Five Companies Produce Nearly 25 Percent of All Plastic Waste Worldwide

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Thinking that recycling would address the problem of plastic pollution is wishful thinking. Plastic recycles very poorly.

Companies like plastic because it means thicker margins for them, environment be damned; the proper solution is not to buy into the “consumers should be recycling” narrative but to thin out their margins so that using more sustainable and recyclable materials is financially attractive again.

Steel or aluminum cans might be better? At least they rust away and don't float.

I mean you could have a screw cap on a can too if that is important. Dunno why 33cl/50cl and whatever the oz. sizes are, are metal and plastic respectivly.

Using one time cannisters for water feels fundamentally unsubstainable.

I think “one time” is the key word here. Multiple use glass and metal containers were just fine before plastic; they can be the norm again.

> Plastic recycles very poorly.

While I'm sure this is true in general, my impression is that the PET used in drink-bottles recycle well. For drink bottles I don't think we have a good option either? Glass is too heavy, aluminum is more energy intensive (I assume) even when it's recycled. Reusable bottles is unlikely to be realistic.

Collection rates in countries having an reverse-vending system is also high to very-high. 80-95% IIRC

Deposits on cans and PET bottles is well-established in Sweden, and rates seem to be around 90% now according to the responsible company [1], so yes.

[1]: https://pantamera.nu/en/private-citizen/facts--statistics/de...

Inconvenience is also very high, compared to "throw it in a recycling bin".

The inconvenience of throwing it in a recycling bin vs. just throwing it out of the window is also higher, so the next logical step is, I assume, to simply throw it out of the window?

Several countries add a deposit to each bottle, so you would actually throw money away. It's not a big inconvenience to throw the bottles in a small bag and bring it with you to the machine at the grocery store, when you are going there anyway. 9 of 10 bottles are returned in Norway, so the system works.

Or huge sack and then use the newer models of machines that will automatically process whole sack of mixed pet and cans in a couple minutes.

> It's not a big inconvenience to throw the bottles in a small bag and bring it with you to the machine at the grocery store, when you are going there anyway.

1) "when you are going there anyway", which many people don't anymore.

2) Yes, it's absolutely a big inconvenience; I remember those days, and it took 15-30 minutes each time, leaving aside the inconvenience of bagging and lugging them, and the extreme unreliability of the machines. Not going to happen.

A recycling bin that gets picked up alongside the trash bin is far, far more convenient. I live in a state that has a can/bottle deposit, and despite that I just toss them in the recycling bin. If there wasn't a recycling bin or the recycling bin didn't allow them, they'd go in the trash bin, because life is too short to spend any of it feeding plastic bottles into a machine.

My state also incentivizes recycling in other ways: trash bins are small with high fees, recycling bins are huge and free.

> Reusable bottles is unlikely to be realistic.

It used to be the norm in the UK for milk.

Agreed. Glass bottles were the absolute norm in Europe up to the late 1980s. A widespread re-use network for glas bottles existed (and still exists, esp. for beer bottles). Add on top a glass recycling system dor single-use and spent glass bottles and recovery rates were very good, albeit expensive in terms of transportation and energy use.

Independent of glass, according to Wikipedia over 75 % of all PET-bottles in the DACH region are also re-used before they are recycled (which can mean burning them). So, yes, it is absolutely realistic to have a system where the majority of bottles are reused.

I’ve seen varying (lack of certainty is a sign in itself) estimates for how many times it can be recycled, from up to 2–3 to up to 7 times, where plastic closer to the end of that is only viable for uses like car tires, and read that PET leeches more plastic into drinks after being recycled[0]. In my mind, it does not pass the “recycles well” threshold if you compare it to materials like glass.

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438942...

Thanks for the paper. I've been wondering about how well we're actually able to filter/clean out contaminates in plastic recycling. Seems more research is needed, but it does look worrisome.

As the paper also mention - stricter rules for packaging designed for clean and easy recycling is a tool in the toolbox. They mentioned a study found that a majority of contaminant detected stemmed from labels, adhesive, etc.

There's also chemical recycling which I get the impression [1] can solve some of these challenges, but don't seem to be used much yet.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221334372...

Why is glass too heavy? For decades, when average income was lower, it was the standard container in which soft drinks came in. Its just that plastic is cheaper, and replaced glass. But surely richer people can afford glass now.

Interestingly, both have different environmental externalities, and not sure how those have changed over the decades and will in the future.

"too heavy" is of course relative, but the addition cost/energy-use of the heavier transportation surely is non-trivial? If the bottles are to be reused, volume become an challenge.

I admit I don't have any references at hand, but I'm quite sure I've seen articles claiming plastic bottles "win" by a comfortable margin from an energy perspective.

Of course - energy is not everything.

I’ve seen analyses showing that aluminium actually is less energy-expensive than even plastic when it comes to transportation[0]. Initial aluminium is pricey, but recycled is cheap and unlike plastic it’s infinitely recyclable. But then yes, there is the inner layer of plastic in today’s aluminium cans, and proper glass beats both in terms of cleanness when it comes to the food it contains.

Additionally, the energy needed to produce even the initial, energy-intensive glass or aluminium could perhaps come from renewables and perhaps some emissions can be captured given enough motivation. (And when it comes to transportation perhaps today’s approach of lugging finished bottles around the globe can evolve towards moving source material and packaging it locally.)

The math is not straightforward.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/world/plastic-bottles-vs-alu...

Even Legos will not use recycled plastic, although maybe that is changing?

Lego drops plans to make bricks from recycled plastic bottles https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/25/business/lego-abandons-re...

Lego plans to make half the plastic in bricks from renewable materials by 2026 https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/28...

Without plastic modern consumerist society as we now experience it wouldn't be possible, as such, that party-goer from the movie The Graduate was very correct in the assumptions he made towards the end of the 1960s.

Which is to say, are you sure that the current powers that be are ready to withstand the backlash of their political constituencies once that consumerist policy is actively reversed?

The consumerist part of society may not be capable of generating as massive of a backlash as you might think. The key is in the name. :)

People will do the next convenient thing, whatever it is. Re-use containers made of sustainable materials, not buy something on a whim that they do not need, pay more for plastic as an indulgence (obviously it should not be banned, just taxed), etc.

Also, not a psychologist, but I reckon if you dig into what drives people to exhibit consumerism I suspect you’d find things like 1) wealth/status signaling, 2) virtue signaling, 3) just socially having a good time out with friends (shopping is common), 4) stress relief. None of that would be substantially hindered even if disposable plastic is banned outright (which is perhaps a questionable strategy), it would just find other avenues for expression.

Cases where plastic does enable some things that are otherwise infeasible I believe are numerous, but drink containers is not one of them.

That's the thing, plastic is not an "indulgence", is part of everyday life now, more than any other material.

I described the state of affairs that would follow a hypothetical taxation of plastic, not that plastic today is an indulgence. Today plastic is a necessity to buy a drink or even clean water in many places. That’s the problem.

Can't you buy canned drinks?

The drink in every can is actually held in an inner plastic container, aluminium is only the outside. You can look up videos of people dissolving just the metal with drain cleaner and revealing the plastic “can”, or do it yourself (carefully). It’s thin and the amount of plastic is less, that’s true; but then I have never seen water sold in cans, for example.

Yes. As someone who is used to putting far too much thought into grocery shopping, it is virtually impossible to advance this change on an individual level. The company making the sustainable toothbrushes is owned by turtle hating petroleum companies or worse. I probably just seem cynical or shitty, but I would be hesitant to potentially induce guilt in individuals who feel they aren't doing enough when there are no better options (within reach, anyway).

Nobody is individually dictating plastic use, and no truly high-level system exists to prescribe it: this is all largely emergent. I think we should try, and I think we need to hold ourselves and each other accountable, but ... what if this is just how it goes?

A major reason why petrochemicals are such an economical solution in so many places in the supply chain is that petrol companies are drastically subsidized by governments. Merely ceasing those subsidies might go a long way to help

It is easy to forget that plastic is made from oil. Most people just do not have that association in their mind.

The oil industry may be looking down the barrel of renewables eating at a good chunk of their profit and subsidy money. I expect them to do all they can to keep plastic attractive in the eyes of the public.

On the other hand, plastic industry consumes only around 6% of oil and gas production globally. Not really something they can count on to continue business-as-usual.

>>Companies like plastic because it means thicker margins for them

Consumers like plastic because it is better than the alternatives.

Nonsense. There are no alternatives consumers can buy. Try it and you'll find it's virtually impossible. A globalized economy has effectively destroyed the idea of voting with your wallet to reduce waste and production of trash.

For some products, sure. For many products, there's a brilliant alternative - buying second hand. Regardless of the material, this is by far the best way to reduce waste and production of waste, period.

They were all tried in the past - glass, metal etc - and were largely replaced.

If you think there is a new material out there that we are prevented from using, I'd be interested to hear what it is.

Some might say they were only replaced because it was more profitable for the manufacturers to use plastic (due to surplus of cheap oil), not for any actual qualities of the material as container for food and drinks and its environmental impact.

Glass, metal, etc. You forgot paper, actually. All are better than the plastic crap forced down our throats.

Yes, paper straws are great.

You can get biodegradable straws that don't suck.

I’m afraid “don’t suck” may be a technical term describing a fatal flaw when it comes to straw manufacturing… ;)

They were replaced because the immediate cost for the selling company was way lower, because they just externalized the environmental cost on the the rest of the world.

But plastic was never "better". Remember that we had PVC all the places until we found out it was made with a carcinogen.

I have met people who like to drink from glass, and people who buy things in plastic bottles because that’s literally the only option if you want to enjoy a drink or even just clean water. These are the two (non mutually exclusive) categories of people that I normally meet. Do you often meet people who specifically like plastic, as opposed to tolerating it?

I like plastic in that I prefer the lower cost and lower pollution and lower weight and lower breakability compared to glass.

I think usually a question about what you like does not call for an answer “I like X because it costs less”—that’s more of an economical preference. Either way, keep in mind that this lower cost for you in the moment, monetarily is in large part due to most governments presumably subsidising oil and due to negative environmental externalities both from plastic pollution and other uses of oil.

(I’m sure, like with any question, there will be many vocal commenters chiming in saying how they like plastic. All I can say, lucky you, and I am yet to meet any of you IRL!)

Consumers like plastic because it is better than the alternatives.

They like it because it's cheap, both in manufacturing raw materials, production, and weight advantages in shipping.

I try to get stuff in glass/aluminium bottles that I clean and reuse myself. It's not easy. Supermarkets is an immediate no-go (when I was young, our village supermarket sold Coke and Milk and other stuff from taps , so you just brought your own); now it's something impossible. But for local farmers, local springs etc it works well. Same for veg, fruit, meat, eggs etc; no plastic needed. Allows us to throw almost all our garbage in the compost heap, give to the chickens etc.

Back in the day, my father worked as a researcher for a large, old dairy company. He was tasked with finding out what was environmentally friendly for packaging milk; whether they should start offering milk in washable glass bottles instead of their current cartons, for environmental reasons.

He found that the environmental impact created by the washing of the glass bottles was worse than the impact of the entire production and disposal cycle for the cartons. If you added in the production of the glass, the recycling of glass when it broke, and the extra impact from transport (less space due to not being able to pack as well, heavier) there was no competition at all - glass was way, way worse.

Plastic was a bit better than glass, and carton was the best available option. So they stayed with carton.

This was ~30 years ago, mind, so the equation may have changed. But I still find it important to check before deciding "Let's go glass" is the right option.

The only problem with plastic is when it does end up in the environment.

Burn it and the problem ia solved, at the end of the day it's still oil.

There's the problem of plastic being literally poison, too.

My counterpoint is: Everything is poison.

Maybe we should just eat gold

I think that may be an exaggeration. Xenoestrogens like BPA are shown to be hormonal disruptors, there were some studies allegedly showing that people with IBD have more microplastic in their poop, etc., but it is difficult to exactly assess the impact from it accumulating in bodies.

Some plastics do meet the definition of literal poison, but those used in bottles do not seem to, and BPA is at worst supposedly to be classified as “substance of very high concern”. Can’t believe that I would write the above as good news, but there we go.

Flame retardants from TVs ending up in recycled plastic being used for food storage, etc, etc.

It's a jungle out there and if not unregulated, then very much un-policed. PFAS was seen as completely benign for decades, turns it isn't and that is bio-accumulates.

Specific chemicals like BPA being banned in certain applications, only to be replaced by some other, very similar chemical, which then legislators play whack-a-mole with (or whack-a-sloth) very slowly, over decades.

Plus imports from China. (And some other countries, but hey, China has the volume. Shouldn't they care even just a little themselves too?)

Heck, toys from there still sometimes contain lead, which should really not be a thing in this day and age, but the fact that it sometimes still happen should indicate how little the producers and importers know or care.

Yes, but we aren't going back to this anyway. Also ; it's not only about drinks; everything comes packaged in plastic in supermarket. Now more reusable bags and paper bags are used over here, but you fill them with plastic nonetheless. It seems hard to believe that me being able to throw everything in the yard and it being gone vs throwing away bags of plastic is worse. And need to take into account that plastic recycling isn't great to begin with.

But agreed: all factors have to be taken into account. Maybe there are better plastics that are reusable easier and faster.

> Thinking that recycling would address the problem of plastic pollution is wishful thinking

People putting their rubbish in the bin rather than throwing it in the nearest gutter / river / garden would get us 90% of the way there.

People who downvoted this should consider what happens in other countries. See eg:

https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=41165fec71bc817d&sxsrf...

Yes, but much of the ocean plastic is fishing nets and such.

That’s also true. The article states that those food and bev companies produce more plastic than household goods industry, but it does not rule out the amount of industrial plastic being bigger than both of those, which it realistically could be. That in turn does not mean food and bev companies should get a free pass, but it’s good to keep in mind.

I agree with your sentiment, but I also feel like this is hyperbolic.

I spend a lot of time on trails and in parks in the US. Perhaps it is different elsewhere, but we typically do not see much trash in those areas, in most cases the trash we do see being a shopping bag or candy wrapper that has blown in from elsewhere or accidentally dropped. Yes, we see some intentional, careless stuff which is upsetting (and we clean it up if we can) but I will never act liike everyone is just throwing their trash wherever. Most people throw their trash away in appropriate spots, leaving a tiny percentage that is being malicious about it. I'd say that's pretty good.

One thing we do have a problem with is overflowing trash bins. This is two-fold. The bins in parks and trails do get changed on a regular schedule, but it seems that these days it is not often enough. The second problem is packaging. So many foods and products come in ridiculous amounts of packaging that the bins get full quickly because said packaging is bulky and difficult to break down.

For the most part, I think people here are doing a good job of trying to keep the trash where it belongs, giving what I consider a reasonable effort. But we're up against companies like the ones listed in the article and their practices that are producing tons of unnecessary plastics. Knowing that, I will never put the onus entirely on the consumer. Until these companies take some responsibility (and stop pushing the idea that this is somehow our fault) in an effective way, not just lip service and hand waving as they have done, the problem will continue regardless of how hard the consumer upholds their end of the bargain.

Part of the issue is that rubbish in our bin (in the West) sometime ends up shipped across the world, in theory for 'recycling', but instead ends up dumped in another river...

Of course sometime I see littering in streets and parks, sometime literal feet away from bins and yeah, that's infuriating.

This isn't as big of an issue in developed countries, especially not if / when in addition to proper waste infrastructure there's people doing actual cleanup. There's systems to capture anything that does end up in the water stream anyway.

Most trash isn't "thrown" anywhere with a direct path to the ocean anyway.

All of that gets solved by adding a deposit fee to packaging, that you get back when you return the packaging. This works in Europe.

It most certainly would not; what a ridiculous concept. Plastic that is "properly" disposed of ends up in landfills or incinerated, only a minority is recycled. And the vast majority of plastic that is "improperly" disposed of is done so by companies, not individual people with their rubbish.

Using glass containers would get us 100% there regardless.

The more I think about it, a lot of modern materials science seems to be just... bad.

Leaded gasoline, asbestos, plastics (micro plastics, the Great Garbage Patch, etc), teflon, etc.

We have some real winners in there but the constant push for growth leads to these wonder materials being used 1000 - 100 000 000x more than they should be used. Usually because of convenience and profit margins.

It's just that it's close to impossible to get rid of them. Plastic is in: paint, wall covering such as wallpaper, food packaging, waste disposable bags, cars, bikes, clothes, shoes, ...

It's basically impossible to find all natural products and they're also super expensive because, well, they are, but also because we're underinvesting in them.

Not wishful thinking, a deliberate greenwashing scam. Aluminum is actually recycled, and should replace PET for all drinks packaging.

I still like glass, I don't care if it costs more to ship. Given the choice of spaghetti sauce in glass, plastic or metal cans, what do you pick? It's got to be glass. Beer? Cans are okay but I greatly prefer glass. Olives, why are the ones in cans always terrible? I don't know why but the ones in glass jars are the obvious choice.

Aluminum is actually recycled, and should replace PET for all drinks packaging

To the best of my knowledge, no one has made a resealable aluminium can. Until that is solved aluminium is inferior to PET for many use cases. In fact this is the primary reason I hardly ever buy soda in cans.

Screw-on-cap aluminium bottles and glass bottles both exist.

Never seen drinks sold in screw-on-cap aluminium bottles. In what country or what type of drinks use them?

In Japan they are very common for canned coffee, I dunno if it's because plastic bottles are unsuitable for warm drinks or something? (the drinks are kept hot ready to drink in the vending machine/store aisle)

https://dol.ismcdn.jp/mwimgs/d/e/-/img_def751445b616015211f3...

https://img.kurashinista.jp/get/2023/01/06/c4cc391408c0f5663...

https://cafe-no-chishiki.club/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/アルミ...

Seen them in probably every convenience store in South Korea and some other East/South East Asian countries. Coffee, juice.

Not sure if they have the inner plastic container aluminium cans have.

Aluminum bottles exist.

Recycling does help with certain types of plastic

I read numbers from Norway where it says that 1/3 of the plastic that is processed is recycled.

There are also incentives from the government that helps. They add a deposit to every soda bottle sold, that is given back immediately when the bottle is returned for recycling. This incentivises many to return it, because they would otherwise basically throw money in the trash. 92% of all bottles are returned for recycling. Everyone brings their empty bottles and cans to a grocery store, and use the money as partial payment for groceries or participate in a lottery where the profit is given to charity. All stores that sell soda products are required to also process the return, so they are using reverse vending machines to handle this automatically to save time (since the 70s)

Maybe some of the plastic will not be recycled but it will at least be destroyed and not just thrown in the ocean

Recycling is busy work for activists who allow themselves to be behavioural hacked, so they do not actually change things.

If I made branded disposable products which ended up thrown around all over town, the police would become interested in me very quickly.

Enrages me how huge corporations churning out consumer slop aren't held to any standards.

Would love to see ringfenced taxes on domestic revenue for such companies, which go into cleaning up the streets of their shite, research into more sustainable materials, recycling and bottle collection schemes, etc.

Quite incredible the amount of guilt and societal pressure the little man has in 'saving the planet', when companies with nation state resources seem to be devoid of any responsibility.

I have mixed feelings tbh. On the one hand, sure, Coca Cola and co manufacture the plastic in the first place. On the other, consumers buy them and discard the packaging inappropriately OR the place they live in does not have adequate trash infrastructure in place.

Plastic waste is not a problem if it's handled correctly is what I'm saying. In big chunks of europe you pay a deposit for even small plastic bottles nowadays, to be returned if you (or someone else) returns it to a collection point from where it's (theoretically) disposed of properly. If it ends up in general waste or the environment, that deposit is theoretically used for its cleanup.

>If I made branded disposable products which ended up thrown around all over town, the police would become interested in me very quickly

And what would they do?

To everyone blaming consumers: I encourage you to take a solution driven mindset here. Consumers won't change. There's far too many people, some of which don't care about the environment.

Tight regulations and additional tax on single use plastics can reduce plastic waste.

> pieces of plastic that they collected during clean-up events

The article is about trash from littering. Surely the consumers fault.

I agree with you, I think this is primarily an issue with selfish people littering the environment. I didn't like how the article framed it as a "companies are littering" thing, as if it's factory waste.

Though... I also agree with the GP. It seems to be too hard to educate or enforce littering laws on consumers (edit: in some countries. Some other countries like Japan have better non-littering cultures). It might be easier to mandate things like biodecomposable plastic or... glass? That would be less harmful even if disposed of improperly. (How else are we going to get sweet drinks? Drink dispensers and enforced personal bottles?)

When I was young and playing in wasteland we often came across broken glass bottles etc. Very dangerous.

They were also regularly blamed as the source of wild fires.

Some people may disagree that the chance of your child taking a cut from glass while playing in an area with sharp glass debris is a milder option than your child having microplastic with all its xenoestrogens and other disruptors accumulating in body since before being born[0], especially considering that 1) not all glass pieces are sharp and 2) plastic can be sharp enough to cut your skin as well (I personally have received cuts, deep enough to spill blood, from plastic—as an adult), but to me the choice would be clear. Too bad I don’t get to make that choice—the ship has sailed and all we can do is try to clean up the existing mess and stop generating more of it.

[0] https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/199/1/81/7609801?log...

> Surely the consumers fault.

Finding fault is not the same thing as finding a solution. Does it get us in any way closer to a solution if we blame the company, the consumers, or both, or neither? I don't think so.

Littering is a solvable problem though; it's a cultural practice and can therefore be addressed. For instance, in Japan there are very few public trash cans (ever since a terrorist attack which used them) and yet almost nobody there litters. If Japanese people can hold onto their trash until they find a trash can, everybody else can to. We need to greenlight the kind of social pressures which create this sort of conscientious culture, namely intense bullying of anybody who is caught littering.

> If Japanese people can hold onto their trash until they find a trash can, everybody else can to.

Perhaps you're right, but, living in a south east Asian country where trash is a major problem that goes far beyond simple littering, I think that will take several decades to change and we should look for something quicker.

There was a storm here yesterday and literally several tons of trash washed up onto the beach, as it does most days during the stormy season. This can't be classed as littering, it's a problem far far bigger than asking people to put things into bins.

Much of the trash on the beach probably was thrown into a bin at some point. The problem is what happens after that. Western countries ship their "recycling" off to developing countries, and when it ends up in the sea they get to say it wasn't their fault, while developing countries just don't bother with the plausible deniability step.

Costumers are responsive to many things. Littering happens far more often when there aren't convenient options. And people also litter more, if things are already a mess. So you can do a lot to reduce littering.

The US figured that out themselves with highways.

Foreign companies with armies of staff, nation state resources, and global scale have a responsibility to leave the world in a better place. If not, what's the point of them operating?

If their goods are being used irresponsibly, they have a responsibility to educate those they manipulate into consuming their slop, and to develop systems to ensure that those who opt out of their nonsense aren't affected by the negative externalities of their operations.

Not only a solution-driven/pragmatic mindset. Also a clear-minded perspective (in this case one and the same).

Yeah consumers “won’t change”. Because that’s an asinine focus if you want the whole (first) world to change. Would you rely on “personal motiviation” if you needed a whole brigade to storm a beach? Clearly not. Likewise these individualistic efforts are completely wrong-headed.

Because they’re not supposed to change anything. Only to assign blame. (Clear-minded: what motivation is behind the consumer nagging)

The proper way to change all of society is organized effort. Which means leveraging existing institutions. Like entire freaking supply lines. You maybe stop importing toothpicks from across the world instead of the false narrative of “educating” the “consumers” (keyword) to not “buy stuff from China”.

Be cynical, clear-minded and pragmatic—all of these lead to the same conclusions on this topic.

> To everyone blaming consumers: I encourage you to take a solution driven mindset here. Consumers won't change. There's far too many people, some of which don't care about the environment.

Sorry, but this is absolutely not true. I routinely travel between Liverpool and Zürich, you can take a guess which one looks like a pristine modern city and which one looks like a junkyard/dump. Let me tell you, it's not just because there are more bins in one of those cities.

Why would a tariff on plastic bottling and packaging not help to reduce this? I understand that prices will be passed on to consumers, but money from the tariff can be used to fund state municipal recycling programs. Similar to the national highway trust fund.

I do not see congress ever agreeing to limit plastic due to the outsized influence of the industries and companies involved. Regulatory action has been almost non-existent, regardless of which administration was in power. No federal agency has the legal authority to limit the flow of plastic into America, and as stated, it is unlikely congress will ever give them that authority; not to mention a decade of litigation ahead.

The only thing that can be done to have some impact is a high tariff on plastics, including packaging and as a percentage of the product. At the same time, there should be no tariff on replacements for plastics such as aluminum and glass bottling.

Short of a strong tariff, I do not see the government ever having meaningful impact on plastic waste.

I've always thought the bottled water industry was insane. Why pay a dollar for a bottle of water, when you can get it out of the tap for a fraction of a cent? If you don't like the tap water taste, get a filter (they're cheap) and you're still way way ahead on cost.

And if you buy water in plastic bottles, doesn't the plastic leach into the water? Why drink that?

I grew up in Arizona, where you drink a couple of gallons of water a day. Nobody drank water from bottles. There were water fountains everywhere, every store had one. When hiking, you just bought a canteen and filled it from the tap.

Yes, as someone living in a country with clean and tasty water from the tap, it's quite shocking see the massive bottle consumption in countries where most (?) drinking water is distributed in disposable bottles/containers.

Drinking water bottled in plastic also means the plastic leaches into the water.

so I could imagine going, grabbing, one of the actual people responsible for the mess on the beach at my place, drag them there, and make them clean up there mess It sure feels personal from here, is what I am saying, and lo, it is I have 1400' of ocean front,where there is always plastic garbage washing up. And have seen spots where the plastic snarls would fill a train car. Bolt cutterrs,hand saws, buckets, and shovles, work them in shifts round the clock. Funny thing is that there is so much plastic,or every kind, that the ocean is doing its thing, and there are surprises, toys and other personal items, broken, but then worn smooth and fine, with a hermit crab living in it.And I stick the larger weierder stuff into crooks in the trees at the high tide line, and keep the still useable things, 5 gallon buckets, hats a real lot of nice hats,gas jugs(with gas), If I go for a day walk somewhere ,and my hands and pockets fill up with more organic treasures, it us now inevitable that I find some sturdy plastic receptical or kit bag,something,on the beach to put it all in. This was not the case 20 years ago. There are 5000 miles of coast in nova scotia, and at the high tide line, where the berm of debrits, sea weed, drift wood and sand is, you dont have to look close to see the bits and pieces of plastic ,mixed in,from little coulorfull grains up to big stuff, that would take several people to move.

Classic Power Law or Pareto distribution.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution

What would be the environmentally AND commercially aware desiderata for food and beverage containers?

Reusable: strong, durable but also easy to clean, both for hydrophillic and hydrophobic goods. Can synthetic corundum or diamond ever become a viable alternative? A standardized symbol could indicate that the box is intended for hydrophobic or hydrophillic goods. Is UV-C transparency a desiderata for easy sterilization after cleaning?

Transparent: so people can see the food they are buying, transparent and reusable seems to imply scratch and minimal corrosion resistance as well.

Storable & transportable: a 3D equivalent to the paper sizes used in Europe: 2 A5-sheets side by side are the same dimension as an A4 sheet, 2 A4-sheets side by side are the same dimensions as an A3 poster size paper. Can a similar scheme be made for 3D boxes instead of 2D sheets? For 2D Ax system: the long side has a constant ratio to the short side, so perhaps side lengths L x W x H such that L / W = W / H = cube root 2 ?

There will always be a cost to cleaning containers, and while we can optimize the properties of the boxes for cleaning, there will always be some cost to cleaning, and a cleaning facility will feel financial pressure to clean less thoroughly but also a financial / legal / reputational pressure to clean more thoroughly. Having unique QR codes for individual boxes means any spoilt product brought back by consumers can be traced to its last cleaning, and the previous meal it contained, so a cleaning facility can then adjust the cleaning parameters for the type of previous meal, previous sale date, return date etc to understand if it would benefit from longer soaking, more percusive water jetting etc...

Plastic and glass bottle and can recycling is pretty common in most of Europe. You pay a deposit when you buy a can or bottle. And you get it back when you return it. If you leave your empty bottle on the street, some homeless person will return it for you. This is actually a pretty common form of charity in Berlin and it's not considered littering to leave your empty bottle for someone to collect it.

It's not a perfect system but most bottles and cans are collected this way and recycled. That would cover most of the bottles produced by the five companies mentioned in the article. You also don't get a plastic bag for free anymore but you can buy one. In most places it's going to be a paper bag. Simple solutions that work pretty well. And once people adjust, it isn't the end of the world.

The real issue is of course people dumping their trash all over the place instead of putting it in a trash can from where most of it would end up in a landfill, incinerator, or even being recycled. Some places have steep fines for littering, which works. IMHO not a bad thing. If you are too lazy to use a trashcan and get caught, there should be a penalty for being a jerk.

Glass and aluminium are recycled. This works quite well. Plastic (and clothing) on the other hand, is now mostly just collected and afterwards discarded (burned, shipped overseas to dumping grounds, etc.).

Plastic recycling factories are going bankrupt (five in the tiny Netherlands in the space of one year), because they can't compete with new plastic. Textile processors are stuck with warehouses full of unusable discarded fast fashion.

Littering is just a tiny part of this problem. Reducing plastic (by charging for bags) is good and works, but the bigger issue lies with the fact that we use so much plastic, and often have no real choice in the matter.

> Plastic (and clothing) on the other hand, is now mostly just collected and afterwards discarded (burned, shipped overseas to dumping grounds, etc.).

This is not true for drink bottles. (though they are not 100% recyclable due to material degradation, and there might be safety challenges for products made of recycled feedstock) I can't claim nothing is burned/etc, but it's most certainly not "mostly" for countries with a collection scheme.

They are collected — this is probably good, it means that at least it doesn't end up in the (local) environment — and a part of that is certainly reused, but have a look at the reporting digging into the actual numbers from the past few years. What do you think happens with those plastic recyclers who file for bankruptcy? In one case a local municipality is now stuck with thousands of bales of shredded PET left on the facility's grounds that no one other recycler wants to have, not even for free.

In part, it is the oil industry itself which kept the myth of plastic recycling going:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/climate/california-exxon-...

Unfortunately there is not enough funding for American municipal recycling programs. After China stopped buying American recyclables, most programs shut down nationwide. Then the pandemic, which I do not believe has led to a resurgence.

https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/18/18271470/us-cities-s...

I completely agree with you that a national beverage tax, refundable, would be a fantastic idea. The problem I see will be in how the program is administered. There will be tension between federal and state over who gets part of the money, who funds the program, maintains it, etc. How to get retailers to put the machines in their store which takes away inventory space? Pay them? Require it?

So many questions. Probably a federal tax that then redistributes the money equally to each state to fund local recycling programs would be easier.

Eh, the headline is kind of misleading

>they used data from brand information on plastic litter and found that 24 percent of the waste with an identifiable brand came from just five companies: Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Danone, and Altria.

>Over five years, volunteers in 84 countries analyzed over 1,800,000 pieces of plastic that they collected during clean-up events. Just over half the analyzed items had a visible brand.

1) It wasn't 24%, it was 24% of the half that could be identified.

2) It's only of the litter collected during clean-up events, so will be skewed towards waste from products used outside. This will ignore things like industrial plastic waste, fishing nets (which is a big issue in ocean plastics), etc.

That said it still seems like an important study.

There's also the question of what is actually problematic waste, that causes issues for humans or animals. Plastic in landfill isn't "good", but as long as it doesn't contaminate groundwater AFAIK it's harmless.

>It wasn't 24%, it was 24% of the half that could be identified.

with a large enough data set the chance that the half that cannot be identified is also 24% looks pretty good, unless there is something specifically about these brands that makes the identifying of them easier than other brands - which is also a pretty good chance I would say.

If there is a good likelihood of identifying these brands specifically then I guess it is actually pretty close to 12% (assuming there are still some small amount which cannot be identified)

The fact that Altria (ex Philip Morris), a tobacco brand, made it to this list is telling IMO. There is no way that the cigarette packaging produces that much identifiable plastic trash.

My guess would be that in some countries, the stores provide disposable plastic bags with any purchase and that these bags include ads for tobacco brands. This study would associate the brand with the generation of trash while the trash should rather be associated with the store.

I'll personally classify this study as unreliable.

> Altria, a tobacco company, disagrees with the findings. In an email, a spokesperson said that the study data includes 80 countries, but its cigarette company Philip Morris USA, which owns brands such as Marlboro and Parliament, only operates in the United States, making it impossible for it to be responsible for 2 percent of the world’s branded plastic pollution.

Not sure about the other companies, but Coca-Cola could also try to weasel out of their responsibility this way: it's not widely known, but they operate on a franchise system, the actual regional bottlers operating independently from the Coca-Cola Company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coca-Cola_Company#Bottlers).

This is a problem when the product is sealed in plastic that does not allow air to pass through. This is very harmful to the environment, dangerous bacteria multiply in such packaging. It would be better to wrap the product in paper or cardboard, as in previous years. In any case, it is necessary to make holes in the plastic packaging for ventilation. Chinese companies are very fond of sealing products in plastic film, but forget to make holes for ventilation. Such a product is very harmful and can cause mass epidemics. It is very harmful when people drink a drink from a bottle, screw it on and throw it away. Such an empty bottle is very dangerous if it is opened. Do not do this. Bottles should strip the threads when opened so that they cannot be resealed.

The way to deal with plastic waste is by incentives, not punishment. Charge a quarter extra to buy a bottle, get a quarter when you hand it to the recycler.

But the company can't do that. The tax people can. It would be useful thing the government can do instead of regulation and punishment.

I visited a remote island in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific.

A tiny island, I walked all around the island in the water in about two hours.

There were hundreds, probably thousands of plastic drink bottles in the water and on the sand.

Every step brought fresh plastic drink bottles into view.

Humans don't deserve this planet.

While I agree with the ending statement largely, we have to blame the producers here. If I want water, I'm stuck with what's sold to me.

Most on this site are fortunate enough to be able to drink disposables and have it whisked away magically. It's when that doesn't or can't occur that you start to realize how much we all waste.

Single use plastics should have been outlawed years ago. Or at least taxed to high heaven.

I'm even more fortunate: I have fresh water that comes out of a tap. Very convenient.

> Single use plastics should have been outlawed years ago. Or at least taxed to high heaven.

Tax, don't ban. And make the tax proportional to the estimated damage.

Sure, maybe water was a poor example. Let's look at milk, assuming we don't all have cows at hand here.

In most places, you can only buy it in plastic and sometimes paper carton, though that seems to be dwindling. There are no other options, so people just grab the plastic one.

There's a local place by me that sells their milk in beautiful glass jugs. They charge $5 a jug, but you get that back if you return it unbroken to buy more. That place sells a ton, it's just that most people don't even have the option.

It seems though companies have zero incentive to do such a program. There's no reward for recycling as above, and no punishment for being wasteful. However we change that - either via tax or law, I'd be on board with.

That's an interesting example.

Keep in mind that single use items like plastic or paper cartons also only have a finite cost in terms of resources and environmental impact. So you'd have to weigh that against the potentially more annoying logistics of having to go back to the store to return your glass jug; especially if you do that journey by car. (Recycling glass is about as resource intensive as making new glass. And both take a lot more than making a tetrapak.)

I grew up in Germany, where re-using glass bottles is widespread, most iconically for beer. So on the consumer side there's unlikely to be extra journeys for that: most stores take bake used bottles.

Aluminum and steel cans are widely recycled around the world as far as I can tell. So much so that you can actually get (small amounts of) money for collecting aluminum cans. No extra law or tax required there: if you don't recycle your can, in many places someone else will.

> If I want water, I'm stuck with what's sold to me.

This is a cop out. It’s cheap and trivial to buy a reusable water bottle and refill it.

Visible plastic pollution is horrible, and is only part of the problem. This then breaks down and was shown to enter and accumulate in not only animal bodies, including human bodies (soft tissue, lungs, even placenta[0][1]), but individual cells[2]. This includes BPA, a xenoestrogen used in most or all plastic bottles, which in EU is among the candidates for SVHC (substances of very high concern)[3].

[0] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016041202...

[1] https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/advance-article-abstract/doi...

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00489...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_of_very_high_concern (I expect the oil industry to do its utmost to delay this from having any legal effect, as per.)

good sentiment, but how did you reach that remote island? most likely, that 2 hour walk produced quiet a hefty amount of disproportionate pollution.

I was going to say the same. There is a chance that they sailed to the location.

However a 6 hour flight from the closest major city would have given off 1500 kg of CO2 (per passenger). And presumably another 1500kg to get back again.

I find the headline frustrating. It is a study that seems to have only looked at branded plastic.

It also seems to think that the finding showing a correlation to production numbers is proof that the producers are not taking effective efforts.

I can't and don't say the results are worthless. I do question any study that doesn't mention the fashion industry on plastics. My gut is I pollute more plastic from my drier vent than makes any sense. And yet most people I talk to are unaware that drier lint is plastic.

Waste isn't inherently bad, littering is. It's not Coca Cola's fault that people throw away plastic bottles into the rainforest, oceans or other fragile ecosystems.

No, but it definitely should be in Coca Cola's charter to explore and invest in biodegradable alternatives. And the only way to hold such immense companies to their environmental responsibilities is either regulation or consumer perception.

Is this more of a realpolitik environmentalism? I can see how it’s easier to legally pressure Coca Cola than to enforce littering fines & proper landfill practices globally. But it’s still not morally Coca Cola’s fault that lazy consumers litter.

@dang Not sure what’s going on here but the parent comment and my relies both seem to be getting duplicated.

Waste is inherently bad (in that it is a downstream cost.)

Are faeces inherently bad? Many years of evolution selected that as the most efficient option for a digestive system.

Faeces isn't plastic. Evolution isn't a decision.

Reducing sugar consumption has long term health benefit, reduce medical cost, and might reduce consumption of plastic bottle. Anyone explored regulating/taxing sugar before?

Yes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugary_drink_tax

In the US, President Wilson proposed a soft-drink tax in 1914, but the already-powerful Coca-Cola Company lobbied to defeat the initiative. In this country, the beverage industry is incredibly influential and has bought off a lot of legislators.

Yes, the city of Seattle instituted a sweetened beverage tax in 2017 and there was a study with results published in 2023.

https://www.seattle.gov/sweetened-beverage-tax-community-adv...

Mexico, the UK, and Portugal all have a tax on sugary drinks. Norway seems to be the only country with an overall sugar tax though.

This article is pointless. The issue is what occurs with the waste after it is produced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Philippines_was...

Good, but an unavoidably biased method. They could identify about half the waste plastic items, and 11% of those were identified as coming from Coca Cola, which has some of the most distinctive bottle shapes, so is probably more easily identified.

Also I don't think most of other types of disposable products other than medium duty bags are branded... So tracking them down those that have branding or large labels seem obvious.

There's a marketing lesson in here somewhere...

that should put an ever so slight pressure on Coca Cola Company to clean up their act.

Maybe we could tax companies based on how much of their litter can be identified on randomly selected areas for sampling.

Blaming companies for what their customers do seems like a miscarriage of justice.

While I understand the point, that and the classic "X company produce Y% of carbon emission worldwide!" feel very dishonest. They don't produce the waste for the heck of it. It is directly linked to our consumption. We want less plastic waste ? Then vote for more regulation, and sadly, this doesn't seem like the priority for a lot of people right now (which is understandable since rich country just send their plastic waste to poor country, they don't see the consequences of their action).

You don't need 'more' regulation, but probably different regulation.

So eg instead of having lots of piecemeal regulation that bans straws and plastic bags and Kinder Surprise eggs etc, you can have a single relatively simple tax on plastic garbage. The total amount of regulation would go down, but effectiveness would go up.

(You can give companies who collect and deal with their plastic trash a discount on the tax, if you want to.)

Similar for carbon dioxide emissions tax, instead of silly gameable things like CAFE car standards.

I agree with your abstraction of the problem, but I think you stopped half-way.

Regulators, producers and consumers are all following the same interconnected incentive structures, many of which have been designed with efficient production and an exponential increase of consumption in mind, not environmental concern.

It makes sense for these companies to operate, following their obligation to shareholders. They are, by definition, successful and so the idea that they should be diminished in any way by taxation/regulation creates a dissonance that can easily be loopholed or simply undone by the next gov't. Tax is a political lever, but the incentives are emergent economic atttributes. This means that, as soon as there is enough economic influence within politics, the lever doesn't do much anyway.

And yet, the cap-and-trade for sulfur-dioxide worked really, really well. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program

Our traffic congestion charging program here in Singapore also works really well (and was famously adopted by London later).

I don't actually care at all about plastic waste anymore. Landfill it and we're good: it started off as oil in the ground, it can end up as oil in the ground.

Plastic not going into stable landfill is the real issue : so actually consumer plastic is kind of bad like that, whereas industrial plastic basically fine (i.e. infrastructure plastics like pipes).

I'm not an engineer, so I may be wrong, but is it actually possible to build a stable landfill?

Wouldn't the micro plastics risk leaking into the ground when it is broken down eventually? When it rains, the water has to go somewhere and unless you invest in expensive filtration systems, this does not seem economically viable. The micro plastics may even leak into the ground water and spread far beyond the land fill.

Even if we do find an economic way to build a stable landfill that lasts a few decades, it will probably just postpone the pollution to a later generation when it is no longer maintained.

But at least it is better than just dumping it in the nature as many do today.

The Engineering of Landfills - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41436642

Would it be better if 500 companies produced 25% of all plastic waste?

Need to adjust relative to their revenue

The real problem is everyone using plastic bags to haul their purchases (which might be wrapped in five layers of plastic but who cares). That’s what the telly tells me.

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