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> What we need to develop is something that doesn't degrade at all under most human living conditions, but does degrade rapidly if we expose it to some sort of not-common trigger, whether that is another chemical or temperature or pressure or whatever.

That requires that people care enough to collect that material in order to have it transported to the facility that can degrade it. The amount of plastic in the environment indicates that this is clearly not the case.

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Over here in Latvia they established a deposit system where drinks cost more to buy at the store but you get that money back (store credit, or you can just donate it) when you bring the bottles/cans to a drop off point.

I haven’t really tossed away a bottle/can in years. I mean, I didn’t really use to do that previously anyways, but now I don’t even throw them into the regular trash, instead collect them in a separate bag.

I’d say it’s all about some sort of an incentive.

Also, in bigger cities(Oslo in my case), even if you throw empties in public trash cans, they get fished out by various types of poor people who walk around all day collecting them. Though I tend to leave them next to the trashcan as long as it's not too windy, just as a nice gesture to the less fortunate. Or, often you'll see one of them as you finish your drink and you just hand them the bottle. Of course, I'd prefer a society where people didn't need to do this to get their next fix or meal or whatever it is, but it is sort of neat that utrash sorting can just naturally emerge in a society once the trash is imbued with monetary value.

One wonders why we don't do this with larger categories of garbage that needs to be sorted. I suppose bottles and cans are fairly easy to semi-automate given their fairly standardised shapes. But that just feels like an implementation detail.

In the poorer districts of Ho Chi Minh City, like Q4, Go Vap, etc, it is similar yet different. Each evening, folks set their garbage bags directly on the curb. At night, other people rip open the bags and scatter the trash in the street looking for anything salvageable. Finally, around midnight, city employees walk the streets pushing wheeled bins and sweep up the trash. When it rains, the trash is carried to clog drains, causing large-scale flooding.

Not a great system for many reasons, not least of which is relying on truly poor people. But they are remarkably efficient at extracting value from the waste stream.

Automated recyclable separation is hard and fascinating. Magnets for ferrous metals. Something about non-ferrous metal and eddy currents for aluminum. Infrared cameras and mechanical arms to detect and separate types of plastics. Blower systems to extract paper. Tumblers with various sized holes (like those coin counting machines) for other separation. (Source: Not that great. I just watched a few Youtubes.)

Here in Vancouver we have little shelves around garbage cans for the empties to go, and someone will come by in a few minutes to collect it for the deposit.

> Over here in Latvia they established a deposit system where drinks cost more to buy at the store but you get that money back (store credit, or you can just donate it) when you bring the bottles/cans to a drop off point.

AKA "Container-deposit legislation" (or "Pant" as we call it in Sweden and maybe also Germany?). Seems to work very well, and you also have a ton of people collecting cans that others throw in the environment, as they'll get money for it.

Kind of wish we had it here in Spain too, as the environment and the sea ends up with a lot of cans and glass bottles. Seems like such an obvious idea to have nationwide.

Yeah, in Germany pretty much all cans and bottles require a deposit (single-use plastic bottles: 0.25 €) and every shop selling cans/bottles with deposit is required to take them and similar bottles back.

Most supermarkets have a reverse vending machine that take cans and bottles, crushes single-use ones, and returns a voucher for the deposit.

Some videos of these machines in action (not sure whether there are people on HN who have never seen one):

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWqwu63eTPQ - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlfDavzHq7I - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozVpMDDawnw

"Statiegeld" in the netherlands. It already exists for at least as long as I live.

Pfand in Germany, yes.

Yep same scheme started in Ireland recently, just a transplant of the German system it seems. Some people complain but it has massively reduced waste and litter.

Ireland's had a tax on plastic shopping bags for years, which basically eliminated them as a form of litter. The bottle deposit scheme is doubly clever by making collected litter have an actual cash value, don't think it would have worked without that.

> That requires that people care enough to collect that material in order to have it transported to the facility that can degrade it. The amount of plastic in the environment indicates that this is clearly not the case.

Or that governments care enough to create laws and incentives for people to collect it.

Besides, there are many places that don't have as much plastic as others in their environment, so clearly it's possible to avoid in some way. Have to figure out how and why, but I'm guessing the researchers kind of feel like that's outside the scope of their research.

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