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Comment by culebron21 | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if plastic bottles are charged/taxed anywhere? Because I bet they're #2 if not #1 in pollution.

And straws, oh yes. I noticed after covid they're in individual packaging!

Many places have mandatory deposits on them, ranging from ineffective (California - you pay 5 or 10 cents but there is no practical way to redeem it so it's just an extra tax and there's no extra incentive to dispose of it properly) to very effective (Germany, 25 Eurocents, IIRC any shop that sells drinks in PET bottles has to accept returns of PET bottles).

The German system has interesting side effects: If you litter, a homeless person will soon pick it up, making this double as an additional social system with a built-in needs test. However, a downside is that if you know you won't be returning it, it's actually cheaper to buy and trash a reusable bottle because the deposit on a reusable beer bottle is 8 cents, vs. 25 cents on a can. The production cost for the bottle is around 35 cents I think.

The deposit was introduced as a punitive measure for the industry for failing to keep the percentage of drinks sold in reusable bottles high enough. As soon as the barrier was broken and the threat/incentive gone, glass bottles almost disappeared for anything except beer (and maybe some mineral water).

Even with one of the main benefits (easy disposal) removed - since you can't crush the bottles before returning them and have to drag them back to a store - they are much more popular than glass because unless you go shopping with a car (uncommon in cities in Germany), having to carry twice as much weight (and then drag the heavy packaging back) matters.

> California - you pay 5 or 10 cents but there is no practical way to redeem it

I once brought my cans to a recycling center and got paid. This was in the Bay Area. For the cost of driving it is uneconomical unless you bring hundreds of cans. Someone with a bike and trailer could make it work.

Yeah, the problem is that they aren't required to take them and pay you. Most recycling centers don't have that system. You have to go a long ways out of your way (for most residents), leading to the problem you described.

> Yeah, the problem is that they aren't required to take them and pay you

Yes, they are.

https://calrecycle.ca.gov/bevcontainer/consumers/

Oh, fun, thanks. And it has a link to the form I'm about to fill out from a recycling center who denied that. Excellent.

This page https://www2.calrecycle.ca.gov/BevContainer/InStoreRedemptio... says regular stores take them too.

And the recycling center I went to was right smack in the middle of South Bay. Not inconvenient.

Same. They’ve recently brought CRV charges into Ireland and almost every supermarket has a machine you can get your refund, so much more convenient. I’ve only noticed one of these near me in the Bay Area, and it’s almost always out of order or has queues of people waiting.

With over $800m in unclaimed CRVs[1], I’d wonder what kind of motivation there is to actually improve the service over “pocketing” the money. [1] https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2024/06/20/californias...

> California - you pay 5 or 10 cents but there is no practical way to redeem it

There are CRV redemption centers all over the state (concentrated in the same places people are concentrated, basically), many of them in-store ones in retail stores.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container-deposit_legislation

> Because I bet they're #2 if not #1 in pollution.

Why?

That's my guess. Wherever I go outside of cities, I see plastic bottles, bags and other wrapping of sweets, candies, cigarettes, etc.

I never get why people will drop plastic garbage somewhere in nature or just at the roadside. I always associate it with the Alaska Highway in Snow Crash, don't know why :-D

Because you’ve not visited Sicily.

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