Reduce, Reuse, Don't Recycle

There used to be a law in canada that all the beer brands had to use the same bottle, and you paid deposit when you bought the beer, which you got back when you returned them to a bottle place. The bottles were cleaned and re-used multiple times. When the deposit was first introduced it was a reasonably amount and so people would always bring them back, and if they didn't kids would find them and do it for you. Some staggering figure like 90% of beer bottles were re-used. This has changed as the beer bottle requirements got softened, more imports with no re-usable bottles, and the inflation making the deposit worth much much less to the point its not worth it for many to bother with it.

Perfect example of a system that worked really well, but was weakened and was corrupted over time because neglect.

When I was growing up Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was the manta that was all over mainstream media. Today, I never hear it anymore, it’s only about recycling.

I always thought Reduce, Reuse, Recycle was the correct order.

Reducing consumption is the best thing you can do, because things don’t need to be made in the first place.

Reuse means something else you may have otherwise bought doesn’t need to get made, which is another big win. I remember my grandpa’s shop growing up was full of old glass baby food jars to organize all his screws and things. Today someone would probably buy a plastic organizer and throw out the plastic baby food containers.

Recycle… something is still getting made. Some of the raw materials might be reused in the process, but it’s questionable how much, and how efficient the whole process is.

From what I’ve read, recycling program and push was paid for by the plastics industry. The hidden agenda was to get the public comfortable with single-use plastics, with the idea that they could be recycled, so it was no big deal. It seems they were amazingly successful in this effort to deceive the public.

Plastic is not a material.

Styrofoam doesn't get recycled in practice. But polypropylene and PETE are extremely recyclable.

The type of plastic matters. Anyone who says "10% of plastic" is already worse than wrong. They aren't even talking about the details that matter.

Here in Zurich we separate PET from other plastic and recycle the PET and incinerate everything else along with household waste to generate electricity and heating. The CO2 is captured (using some amine system) and piped to greenhouses and/or sold to bottlers. I'm not sure how they dispose of the ash.

It's probably not economically profitable but does make things better overall.

Should be a "Plastic" in the headline. Lots of other products recycle very efficiently. Lead acid batteries have a >99% recycling rate, for instance.

Belgium had a new plastics recycling factory, which made a big splash this week in the news. Has anybody an idea if this really changes the percentages of theoretically recyclable material if it gets scaled up?

https://www.belganewsagency.eu/new-plastic-recycling-facilit...

(Of course, recycling will still be the worst option.)

A couple of UK focused nerd YouTubers pushing back on this narrative:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOtrvBdRx8I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuwaOiTHl7U

Tl;Dr charge the producers of packaging for what happens to it after use.

They respond almost immediately to that financial incentive by both reducing unnecessary usage but also improving recycling of what is still necessary because it's the second best option after funding cheap propaganda to pass the buck onto others.

Contrast the latest form of that cheap propaganda, which is to point fingers at oil companies for promoting recycling that "can't economically work" with the reality that when their own money is on the line they adopt it rapidly.

Meanwhile America is doing that "Only developed country that is failing to do this claims it's not possible" thing again.

Reduce, Reuse, Rinse & Recycle would have helped too.