[HN Gopher] Coke and Pepsi are getting sued for lying about recy...
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Coke and Pepsi are getting sued for lying about recycling
Author : ajaviaad
Score : 181 points
Date : 2020-03-02 18:09 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| omegaworks wrote:
| This may be exactly the way to make change happen here in
| America. Corporations only understand the language of financial
| incentive. Coke and Pepsi and all single-use manufacturers need
| to be responsible for the costs of recycling the containers they
| create. In Germany, rulings and regulations in this vein have
| increased the proportion of recycled products to over 66%[1]. If
| corporations have no economic incentive to create recyclable
| products, they will act to externalize those costs as much as
| possible. With the worldwide economies of scale that Coke and
| Pepsi can leverage, we enter into a self-reinforcing plastic-
| industry sustaining death spiral.
|
| 1.
| https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/dsd/...
| [pdf warning]
| travisporter wrote:
| May have been posted before, but I found it relevant that the
| "Georgia Recycling Coalition" put a hard stop on the suggestion
| of a bottle tax to help with recycling efforts.
|
| "With the investment that Coke is getting ready to make in
| Atlanta and in other major cities across the U.S. with this World
| Without Waste (campaign), it is not going to be a part of that
| conversation."
|
| https://www.wypr.org/post/investigation-digs-eco-corruption-...
| titanomachy wrote:
| It seems like this problem has only been allowed to get so bad
| because it's a silent failure. We throw things in the recycling,
| and without any feedback we assume they are recycled.
|
| The failure should be pushed up the chain, at least to the
| consumer. The rules on what can be recycled should be realistic
| and consistently enforced, then people can make more informed
| choices (up to and including pushing for regulation on
| manufacturers).
| lm28469 wrote:
| That's the whole point of recycling, feeling good about
| ourselves. In reality the vast majority of the shit we throw
| away end up in open sky dump in Africa or China, but hey, I
| paid 80ct of "eco tax" on my $1k fridge so it's not my problem
| anymore. Just like using a paper straw at starbucks is doing
| absolutely nothing at all if you don't change the rest of your
| lifestyle.
|
| https://www.africanexponent.com/post/8588-the-west-is-dumpin...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/oct/06/s...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/apr/24/r...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the first city-wide recycling projects in the USA were faced
| with this kind of brick-wall reasoning in the 1970s, and yet
| have built successfully over and over.. the sideways
| reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an ideological driver
| here
| lm28469 wrote:
| > the sideways reference to "eco-tax" shows there is an
| ideological driver here
|
| Yes clearly, thinking a few cents of eco tax will outweigh
| your ecological impact is like thinking using paper straws
| makes up for taking the plane once a week. It's nice "feel
| good" idea but it doesn't have any real world impact. Just
| look at every pollution related threads on HN, there are
| always a lot of people blaming China and Asia for having
| the most polluting rivers, while the majority of the shit
| ending in their rivers was consumed in the EU/US. Recycling
| really isn't much more than "I'll put it far away and from
| now on act like it doesn't exist anymore".
|
| Everything I read about recycling in the US, or anywhere
| else for that matter, is that it doesn't work very well and
| most of it is exported, so I'm not quite sure about which
| recycling projects you're talking about.
|
| https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2019/3/6/157
| 0...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/17/recycled-
| pla...
|
| https://www.boell.de/en/2019/11/04/waste-exports-rubbish-
| dum...
|
| https://www.statista.com/chart/18229/biggest-exporters-of-
| pl...
| jbobron wrote:
| shocked they aren't also getting sued for lying about having no
| sugar in diet/zero products
| bosswipe wrote:
| Can you explain what you mean?
| jbobron wrote:
| artificial sweeteners just like real sugar are refined,
| processed, products that spike your insulin levels and cause
| all types of medical problems. To say that their product is
| zero sugar and zero calories is misleading and makes it seem
| as harmless as water.
| bosswipe wrote:
| I see. I wouldn't call it lying then. "Not sugar" does not
| imply "does not behave like sugar".
| SeanFerree wrote:
| I'm glad they are getting sued, but this makes me sad
| srj wrote:
| There needs to be regulation that standardizes on container
| materials and shapes, optimizing for recyclability and ability to
| sort. Then there needs to be a financial incentive to use
| packaging that offers the highest reclaimation rates. I'm
| imagining something like the CAFE standards, encouraging ever
| increasing rates.
|
| I listened to a podcast with one of the former heads of the EPA
| and one of the challenges is that the petroleum industry actively
| favors non-reuse so they can keep selling more plastic.
|
| Edit: Here's the podcast: https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/to-the-
| point/the-high-cost-o...
| grecy wrote:
| If we were actually serious about saving the planet, we'd just
| pass laws that mandate companies _have_ to use certain
| specified bottles, and give them no choice.
|
| But of course, lobbying and profits are more important.
| pmlnr wrote:
| It's not _that_ simple. Recycling doesn't care about shape,
| just material, and reusing has the problem of people putting
| random things in the bottle before sending it off - including
| toxic and/or corrosive materials, thus making reusing
| impossible.
| dantheman wrote:
| How do you improve the bottles? Do we create a national
| bottle innovation center that creates bottles?
| Mirioron wrote:
| Shouldn't we want this to actually end up in a landfill? That
| would be at least some kind of a carbon sink.
| lastres0rt wrote:
| That's less of a carbon sink and more of a kick-the-can
| approach (no pun intended).
| larrik wrote:
| Overall, I think this is a good idea. a Lawsuit creates a
| financial incentive to behave better. However,
|
| > It's likely that less than 5% of plastic produced today is
| getting recycled
|
| I've seen this repeated elsewhere, but what I really want to know
| is the % of plastics sent for recycling actually being recycled.
| Anything that wasn't turned in for recycling just doesn't count
| here, in my opinion.
| my_username_is_ wrote:
| There is still a societal cost to producing plastic, even if it
| isn't turned in for recycling. The article draws a comparison
| to smoking, and to (loosely) extend the analogy this cost would
| be similar to second-hand smoke.
|
| Some companies are starting to take responsibility for the full
| lifecycle of their products (Terracycle comes to mind, which
| helps companies reclaim and reuse their products at end-of-
| life). More businesses need to have this mindset if we are
| going to move towards a sustainable economy.
| paulmd wrote:
| > More businesses need to have this mindset if we are going
| to move towards a sustainable economy.
|
| Capitalism says they won't. Consumers as a whole favor
| cheaper products over sustainable ones.
|
| Regulation is how you solve that problem. Tax companies that
| use disposable packaging or don't manage their waste streams
| properly (however you define that) and they'll stop doing it.
|
| Recycling has always been the feel-good system to shift the
| blame for disposable packaging from companies to consumers.
| The term "littering" was literally invented to do just that,
| just like "jaywalking" was a way to shift the blame for
| traffic problems to pedestrians.
|
| https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2006/05/origins-anti-
| li...
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Recycling is such a farce. Anything where you have mixed
| streams going into the recycling bin is quite likely to end up
| buried somewhere in a developing country. Even when they are
| recycled they end up being turned into insulation or some other
| secondary product.
|
| Growing up in Scotland we had a recycling system which was
| great. Irn Bru bottles were glass bottles with metal lids. The
| lid proudly announced that you could get 20p back for returning
| it (in the form of credit towards other purchases). The same
| trucks delivering stock took the empty bottles back to the
| distribution centre when they were cleaned, inspected and
| reused.
| monk_e_boy wrote:
| Glass and metal are a nightmare on the beach and in parks.
| Plastic sucks bad, but going back to glass isn't much better.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Not really. Both break down and are mostly inert.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| The system has been in place for at least 50 years. In my
| mum's day it was a common past time for her and her
| brothers to go hunting for what they called "glass
| cheques". The idea is to avoid it ending up where it
| shouldn't by incentivising good behaviour. If people can
| return the glass for money then few of them end up on the
| beach.
| welly wrote:
| I feel like that is a pretty insignificant issue compared
| with 8-20 million tons of plastics ending up in the sea.
| magduf wrote:
| Glass is inert and doesn't break down; anyone can pick up
| glass bottles that have been on the beach for decades, wash
| them out, and recycle them along with new glass.
|
| Metal degrades slowly if it's ferrous (iron/steel), but
| that isn't environmentally harmful. And it can all be
| readily recycled.
| paulmd wrote:
| I think the implication was what if some jackass smashes
| the bottles and you find them with your foot.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It's much better in almost every way besides weight. Much
| more reusable, not leaking any chemicals in soil/water/our
| bodies, &c.
| bluenose69 wrote:
| I grew up in Canada, several decades ago. At that time,
| everyone returned glass soft-drink bottles and beer bottles
| to the stores where the items were purchased. Milk was
| delivered in bottles, and the delivery person picked up the
| empty bottles we left on the porch the night before.
|
| Nobody would have thought of throwing the glass into the
| trash, even if there were no refunds. I think part of this
| was that so many people had a memory of the great depression,
| and waste was viewed as sinful.
|
| When plastic came in, the older folks washed plastic bags out
| so they could reuse them. You'd see them on the clothes
| lines, drying out. (Sure, people had indoor dryers, but
| clothes dried on the line not only saved on the electric bill
| but smelled so damned wonderful that it's hard to erase the
| memory of the delight in bringing things in off the line.)
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| Yes, we seem to have lost something in the last few
| generations. The mantra used to be reduce, reuse, recycle.
| The order is significant, recycling should be a last
| resort.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The problem is that environmental people bikeshed and argue
| about everything. They don't like glass or reuse because
| water is used for washing and you need to haul the empty
| bottle.
|
| Especially with the rise of e-commerce, there's no reason
| why most consumer products couldn't be delivered in
| reusable glass containers.
| technotony wrote:
| The problem is the return of the reusable containers.
| I've collaborating with several startups working on this
| problem. Shipping costs are 20-40% of COGS for many
| ecommerce catagories and you are basically doubling them
| when you require return for reuse and consumers don't
| want to pay the price premium that requires.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if shipping plastic containers
| and then incinerating them consumes less petroleum and
| releases less carbon than shipping glass containers
| twice.
|
| Perhaps with standardized containers and regional
| distribution centers? Sort of like the old-school
| beverage bottling plants, but for all variety of consumer
| products, and not tied to just one brand or class of
| product. I've no idea how you'd get such a thing
| bootstrapped, though.
| ntsplnkv2 wrote:
| What number of items actually need rewashing?
|
| Sure, foodstuffs. But why can we not refill our soaps,
| chemicals, etc. Laundry detergent? There is no need to
| wash those with water.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I used to buy things like that in bulk, back when I lived
| near a co-op that offered them. I haven't seen something
| like that in a long time, though, and I wonder if it's
| even still a thing.
|
| I suspect that the real problem with packaging reduction
| is that it favors a consolidated product stream. One of
| those bulk "fill your own containers" of shampoo probably
| took up the same amount of space as 6 or 8 different
| products in individual packaging. Which in turn means
| that you can't offer your customers a dizzying variety of
| scents and textures and customizations for your hair type
| and brands and varying levels of organic or biodynamic or
| being insert_ingredient_here-free or whatever.
|
| And everyone buying the same shampoo - making it
| effectively a commodity - probably does a number on your
| ability to boost profits through price discrimination,
| too.
| int_19h wrote:
| Even on Amazon, there are bulk-size containers for stuff
| like soaps and bleach. 5 gallon is usually readily
| available, and sometimes more.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| This is a good question given rampant fraud in the recycling
| industry. Things that should be recycled often end up in
| landfill or shipped abroad to South East Asia and dumped.
| overcast wrote:
| I feel like the entire concept of recycling from the very
| beginning has been a lie. Now we're all paying for what we
| thought was being handled properly.
|
| Edit: Plastic recycling.
| TheSoftwareGuy wrote:
| My understanding is that it used to be true, but recently-ish
| China stopped taking in our recycling and now we have nowhere
| to put it
| dekhn wrote:
| China did stop doing that, but they also bought shut-down
| paper mills in the US, and use them to process local
| cardboard to higher standards and then send the QA-passing
| resulting pulp back to china for new cardboard production.
| (at least, this is what was told to me from an expert in the
| field who researchers these things for a living).
| kelnage wrote:
| Yes, they took it. But my understanding is that only a small
| proportion that made it to China even got recycled and much
| of it ended up in Chinese landfill or being incinerated [1].
| Hence they banned accepting it.
|
| 1. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782?ijkey
| =8...
| [deleted]
| ppf wrote:
| At least now we can actually see the problem, instead of
| passing our "recycling" to developing countries and calling
| it good.
| Keverw wrote:
| Yeah. Seen the news station talking about that a few months
| ago. Some cities are just taking the recyclables to the
| regular city dump's landfill like regular trash, and some are
| just burning it since that's cheaper than sending it to
| China... and I thought they said not to burn plastic? Well
| using an incinerator, not like a campfire... but still, feels
| a bit misleading. Then cities got grants to fund recycling
| and some cities even have mandatory recycling laws too for
| residents. Seems like we've all been scammed in a way, but I
| think the intentions of recycling is good.
| redbeard0x0a wrote:
| Recycling Aluminum cans is actually much easier and better
| for the environment. If I recall correctly, it takes about
| 5% of the energy to make aluminum from recycled sources vs.
| from ore.
|
| The fact that you can take cans into a recycler and get
| paid for them is a _really_ good indicator that recycling
| aluminum works.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Aluminum recycling still makes economic sense, right?
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| Pretty much anything that needs to come out of the ground in
| a form far less concentrated (aka "ore") than the form in
| which it is useful is economically recyclable because the
| product provides a more concentrated source of raw material
| for making into new things than the natural deposits in the
| earth do.
|
| That's basically a long winded way of saying most metals are
| cheaper to recycle than to mine new.
| redbeard0x0a wrote:
| If I recall correctly, its like 5% of the energy to use
| aluminum scrap vs. ore.
| overcast wrote:
| Metals I'm sure make sense, at least the valuable ones. I was
| referring to only plastic recycling.
| [deleted]
| anticensor wrote:
| Aluminium, copper and 1st grade wood-free paper.
| samatman wrote:
| Steel as well, but in most places in the US you don't have
| to bin it separately, since it's magnetic and valuable,
| hence easy to remove from the waste stream.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| yes. it is evident by the fact that recycling centers still
| pay for aluminum.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Depends on how you do it. Burning electronics in African open
| dumps to melt their metal parts is recycling and make
| economical sense. It doesn't mean it's a particularly good
| idea though.
| Lev1a wrote:
| Also glass bottles.
| samatman wrote:
| Agreed, plastic should be treated as a substance which delays
| the burning of petrochemicals to provide power.
|
| Also, minimized whenever possible. Cheap single-use plastics
| are often more trouble than they're worth.
|
| Many people don't realize exactly how much plastic is used up
| in logistics, just wrapping things before they reach the
| consumer. It's a bit appalling.
| zepearl wrote:
| Maybe something might change => official news from Nestle
| (7.Feb.2020):
|
| > _Swiss mineral water brand Henniez announced that its entire
| plastic bottle range is now made of 75% recycled PET plastic
| (rPET). Henniez has already been using 30% Swiss recycled PET
| since 2013 and has the clear ambition to move to 100% locally
| recycled PET. This will close the PET circular loop, as
| discarded PET bottles will be made into new Henniez recycled
| plastic bottles multiple times, without tapping into new oil
| resources._
|
| https://www.nestle.com/media/news/henniez-mineral-water-bott...
|
| I don't know/understand why they would use this process only
| for their Henniez brand. Maybe it involves $-margin or maybe
| they want to do this experiment without endangering all their
| brands, etc... .
| karatestomp wrote:
| Reduce and re-use, as the slogan goes, were always preferred,
| but never seemed to be taken as seriously as the (apparently)
| largely-BS recycling efforts that got most of the attention. I
| guess because that was much easier and more visible than
| efforts at reduction and re-use.
| magduf wrote:
| Re-use may be "preferred", but it just isn't practical most
| of the time. How do you reuse a plastic bottle? They're not
| fit to be sent back to the bottler and reused; they degrade
| much too quickly. Basically, to get away from plastic
| bottles, we'd have to go back to glass, and there's a lot of
| problems associated with those (high weight (more fuel
| consumption to transport), easy breakage, etc.).
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Re-use implies non-plastic containers. We only prioritize
| plastic because we accept the myth of recycling. If we do
| not accept that myth and we prioritized re-use, we'd choose
| glass for drink ware as some other countries have mandated.
| Yes there are different costs associated with glass, but
| the environmental cost of plastic is not insignificant
| either.
| ericmay wrote:
| Well, for items like water you just don't use anything but
| a reusable container. Ever.
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| Reduce and Re-use are not a great slogan for an economy that
| incentivizes increased consumption of new things
| unfortunately.
|
| Maybe as more people become aware of recycling
| inefficiencies, we'll start diverting dollars go businesses
| that focus on longevity and reusability of their products?
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| > Maybe as more people become aware of recycling
| inefficiencies, we'll start diverting dollars go businesses
| that focus on longevity and reusability of their products?
|
| Sounds good to me in theory, but the confusion for me has
| always been: how do you overhaul the packaging of all these
| small consumable items (like Pepsi and Coke) so they're
| either more easily recyclable or reusable and also benefit
| the manufacturer at the same time? I'm sure the government
| can create incentives but will that be enough? Will people
| be willing to pay more money for a more environmentally
| friendly option if a less environmentally friendly but more
| affordable option exists?
| im3w1l wrote:
| A "loyalty bottle" that you refill at the store.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| I think you're over constraining the solution. Why does
| the solution need to benefit the manufacturer? Coca Cola
| is a corporation with no feelings. The environment is a
| real living entity. If the costs of the corporation go up
| but the environment benefits this seems like a win. The
| corporation will balance out operations whatever costs
| are unless the restrictions are so onerous it can no
| longer operate, and I don't think that's the case. If
| anything the cost of soda would rise, which some places
| are already doing for public benefit through consumption
| taxes. If people drink less soda because the cost is
| slightly higher, that wouldn't really be a negative
| outcome.
| FillardMillmore wrote:
| You're certainly correct, a solution does not require a
| benefit to the manufacturer. I suppose I was thinking
| about it from more of a laissez-faire point of view -
| that is essentially, how can we have our cake and eat it
| too (or in this case, our cheap soda)?
|
| If the government passed laws/regulation that mandated
| certain packaging requirements for companies like Coca
| Cola, that would be a top-down solution and Coca Cola
| would have to comply, lest they wish to face steep fines
| and litigation.
|
| In regards to soda, you're right - consumption taxes have
| proven effective. I believe cigarette taxes have proven
| effective in the same way. But an environmentally
| effective top-down solution would of course apply to many
| more consumables that just soda, sugar cakes and other
| generally unhealthy items. It's possible that top down
| regulation could push costs higher for smaller companies
| that offer healthy options in environmentally unfriendly
| packages. If costs are too high for smaller companies
| like these, then there may be fewer healthy alternative
| options (because we know Little Debbie and Coca Cola
| aren't going anywhere, regulations or not). This is
| obviously a very generalized example - in reality, many
| of the healthy/organic foods items already come in
| environmentally-friendly packaging.
| karatestomp wrote:
| It doesn't help that plastics, in particular, derive a huge
| part of their utility from _directly_ countering those two
| parts. They replaced other things _because_ they were so
| cheap they were disposable (as in food packaging) and
| created new categories of ultra-cheap crap that couldn 't
| have existed, or certainly not to that degree, without
| plastic, and often to dubious benefit to society--dirt-
| cheap toys, for example (dubious benefit to society because
| if not for marketing I very much doubt kids would be much
| less happy with a couple metal and wooden toys plus some
| rocks and sticks, versus a mountain of cheap plastic
| figures and playsets and such, source: have kids, have been
| a kid)
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > I very much doubt kids would be much less happy. . .
|
| Perhaps they'd actually be happier. There's at least the
| beginnings of a body of research that suggests that
| owning a mountain of toys in childhood is associated with
| a lifelong increased risk of mood disorders.
| samatman wrote:
| Pure anecdote, I attended a Waldorf school in which some
| of the students were the children of devout
| Anthroposophists, hence were strictly prohibited from
| owning cheap plastic toys.
|
| Doesn't seem to have done them any harm, from what I
| recall.
| gramakri wrote:
| very interested in reading more about this. do you have
| any pointers/links?
| AndrewDucker wrote:
| I'm afraid I don't have any handy links, but I've
| definitely read that kids with a few treasured toys play
| creatively with them, while children with a lot of toys
| move restlessly between them.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| If you'd like a fairly short book, _The High Price of
| Materialism_ by Tim Kasser isn 't focused specifically on
| early childhood, but, if I recall correctly, it does
| touch on the subject.
|
| It's all correlational, of course, so it's not like this
| is a scientific certainty. But still, interesting to see.
| karatestomp wrote:
| As an adult, I'd definitely say that at some point we
| passed from "plenty of options" to "so many options it's
| actually worse than having fewer", at least when it comes
| to entertainment and information consumption and such.
| Probably passed the tipping point some time between the
| 70s and very early 2000s at the latest. But I'm getting
| old enough that that might just be a preview of the "back
| in my day!" stories that are surely in my future.
| [deleted]
| FooHentai wrote:
| Sounds like the paradox of choice:
| https://medium.com/@FlorentGeerts/the-jam-experiment-how-
| cho...
|
| And yeah, agree. I'm looking at you, enormous steam games
| list.
| karatestomp wrote:
| Really, if _all new recorded & digital entertainment_
| stopped being created right now and I was stuck with only
| things already made, and even if I were born today, I'd
| easily have a lifetime's worth of material even if I were
| pretty picky, so the lack of new media, though a bit
| weird, wouldn't really harm my enjoyment of life that
| much. There are whole, giant genres of music I've barely
| listened to, hundreds of highly-regarded films from the
| last 140ish years I've not seen, more reputedly-excellent
| written works from the last ~3500 years than I've got
| time for even if that were my only entertainment.
|
| Shit, as far as games go I'm still trying to catch up on
| top-tier or just-under-top-tier games from the 90s I
| missed the first time around, and I played quite a few
| games back then. Now that I have less time, a bunch of
| excellent-looking games I'd probably love slip by and
| land on the "to do... someday, maybe" list. Even for a
| medium that new, I'm overwhelmed with great options.
| standardUser wrote:
| Any time there is an attempt to specifically reduce plastic
| waste, such as banning or charging fees for plastic bags or
| plastic straws, people retort that this, too, is all a farce.
|
| The argument always goes that people want to feel good while
| doing very little. But what I hear mostly are people who want
| to do nothing but still complain.
| [deleted]
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| My issue with all the small scale stuff such as bags and
| straws is that we have limited time to try to correct the
| issue, and bags and straws and recycling aren't going to
| make a lick of difference.
|
| It's the 30 mile commutes, single person occupied SUVs,
| flying for vacations, and living driving distance to
| everything in suburbs and exurbs causing exponentially
| greater than necessary usage of fuel to move mass that is
| the vast majority of our problem.
|
| The only solution to the issue is to increase the cost of
| fuel. If we don't accomplish that, all the other efforts
| are a waste of time and energy. If we do accomplish raising
| the cost of fuel, then everything else will fall in line,
| including costs of disposable plastic goods which will go
| up and cause people to consume less.
|
| Except, of course, this is politically untenable because of
| all the investment assumptions requiring 10% ROI to meet
| debt obligations.
| magduf wrote:
| No, it's politically untenable because people don't want
| to change their lifestyles significantly. At least in the
| US (since you're talking about SUVs and exurbs and long
| commutes), it's a democratic society: campaigning on a
| platform that you're going to drastically raise fuel
| prices to force everyone to move into the city (which is
| already extremely expensive, due to many other long-
| standing factors like bad zoning, NIMBYism, lack of
| multi-use (combined commercial/residential) spaces, etc.)
| will mean you simply won't be elected.
| mjevans wrote:
| Even in cities you have "the apartment problem".
|
| The noise of the streets, neighbors, an even other
| residents in the same apartment (if sharing, because
| there's not enough single / studio places at good value)
| invade. The smells from neighbors and others invade. The
| shared garbage chute, elevator or stairwell where you
| interface with the lingering smoking, pet, or messes
| invades personal space as well.
|
| The building code (at least in the US) in the cities
| isn't high enough to provide actual solitude and escape
| from being so close to everyone else.
|
| Inside cities the rent seeking keeps rents there too
| high.
|
| Outside of cities, rent seeking helps to prevent new home
| ownership (rather than temporary rental), while the lack
| of regulations and taxation for infrastructure (like
| transport of goods and people) undervalues and under-
| taxes the opportunity cost.
|
| Much like many of the other social ills in the US the
| problems require a national framework and local
| solutions; but the balance and distribution of planning
| is out of scale and stuck decades if not a hundred years
| or more in the past when the speed of transportation
| provided pressures that made local management good
| enough.
| glitchc wrote:
| While you have the right idea, that "every little bit
| counts" is bunkum, you stopped a little short: Car
| emissions only account for ~42-44% of total emissions
| from transportation in North America. Large trucks
| account for 56-58%.
|
| Source: Sustainable energy, without the hot air. This
| book dives into the bigs that need to be tackled before
| the smalls.
|
| Plus, penalizing fuel hurts the poor more than the rich.
| The poor are the ones driving long distances from cheap
| housing to city centres for work. They are the personal
| support workers, caregivers and Uber drivers. The rich
| can afford to live within 10 mins walking distance of
| work, and can also afford to move when changing jobs to
| maintain walkability.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Fuel (fossil) is causing the problem. It doesn't matter
| if it affects rich or poor more or less, the only
| solution is to reduce the use of fossil fuel. Raising the
| cost will also reduce truck's usage of fuel.
|
| I don't think sustainable fuel (non fossil fuel) is
| realistic on the timescale that humans need it to be.
| Fossil fuel is just so convenient with its portability
| and ease of use, that it will remain preferred for many
| uses.
| fshaun wrote:
| I have never understood the argument that taxes on e.g.
| gasoline are regressive and this should not be raised.
| When we find an externality that is not accounted for in
| costs, are we to throw up our hands and say we cannot do
| anything because some of the increased costs will be
| passed on to consumers? The right amswer is not to avoid
| the tax but to compensate the mpst affected via
| redistributive policies like a negative income tax.
| altec3 wrote:
| I think it's also due to recycling being easier to integrate
| into our lifestyles than reducing or reusing. We have enough
| wealth to just buy another, and throw the excess in the
| recycling bin where someone else deals with the problem.
|
| When you visit less wealthy countries, you see people
| reducing and re-using. They either don't have as easy of
| access to all these goods, or the cost of them makes the
| people re-use the stuff around the house.
|
| For example, I could use empty beer cans to start seedlings
| for my garden, but I've instead bought those nice black
| gardening pots. I have the money to and it's easier than
| keeping beer cans around then modifying them to drain right.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I think the explanation is easier than that:
|
| - Reduce and reuse are individual efforts that collectively
| mean a lot at scale.
|
| - Recycling is something that we pay the city to do and
| then we don't have to think about it. Out of sight, out of
| mind, we've barely had to change our behavior.
|
| But it turns out that when we abdicate individual
| responsibility to government and elected officials, we
| learn that most aren't recycling and never were. Oops.
| karatestomp wrote:
| It's a bit like the "is trying to reduce food waste a
| useful endeavor?" discussion on here a few days ago--we
| waste a bunch of shit because it's so cheap it's not worth
| saving. If you put in extra effort to save it, probably
| that costs more than just _buying what you wanted on the
| market_ , by the time you're done. If enough people do that
| and demand rises prices will go up a little and waste will
| drop a little, too.
|
| So really if you want to effectively cut e.g. plastic use
| or increase its re-use you have to make it expensive, but
| that's kinda contrary to the whole point of using plastic
| in the first place.
|
| Similarly, as industry's really gotten good at minimizing
| use of materials as a cost-saving measure (I assume CAD or
| something has enabled this? It's _very_ noticeable since
| especially the late 90s) it 's made re-use harder. I've
| seen those good, thick old department store plastic bags
| live for _decades_ as a container for occasionally-accessed
| stuff in storage, and plastic bottles used to be so tough
| you could use them for all kinds of things that modern ones
| would be very bad at. Old plastic storage bins may have
| used a lot more plastic and been more expensive but they
| didn 't crack if you looked at them funny like the modern
| ones. Stuff like that. So we got "reduce" in a way, but it
| just made stuff even cheaper so we use more of it, and made
| "re-use" much less practical.
| namibj wrote:
| For storage bins/boxes, I can recommended getting a
| couple KLT (Kleinladungstrager). It's an industry norm
| from the German automobile parts manufacturers, who use
| it for highly automated parts handling. They're ~8$ each
| for the large 60x40x28cm kind, have a reinforced (grid-
| structure) floor and they are strong. They easily stack
| to >100kg (not per-box though, which is rated at iirc
| ~35kg (edit: 20kg)), and have a slot for a DIN-A5 sheet
| on one long and one short side. They're ~2.8kg injection-
| moulded polypropylene, and thus survive quite aggressive
| chemical cleaning and boiling water. You're not supposed
| to fill them, but I'd guess you could do it anyways
| (e.g., filling with warm/hot water for soaking) if
| otherwise unloaded and resting on flat surface. It would
| contain ~60l, and thus almost twice the design load, but
| these are robust. I climb on them in storage, and the
| major risk is bending a wall outwards and then breaking
| it by inducing that bending load with the weight on my
| foot.
|
| TL;DR: buy industrial boxes. Proper German KLT
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_container are really
| nice. I recommend R-KLT in blue (they don't look as bland
| as the grey ones).
| karatestomp wrote:
| Googled them, and _those_ look like the old-school
| consumer ones (or a little tougher, even).
|
| You know what? I wish Amazon had really durable boxes,
| like these but maybe even a bit sturdier, that you could
| add to an order, used as the shipping container for the
| rest of the stuff you ordered but also intended for re-
| use after arrival.
| jjkaczor wrote:
| Lookup "greenwashing" and who (hint, corporations as people)
| actually founded "Keep America Beautiful"...
| smhenderson wrote:
| I agree that it's not as effective as it should be but things
| like this do exist: https://breezesta.com/
| 101404 wrote:
| Absolutely not. Plastic recycling does exactly what it is
| supposed to. It helps the consumer to continue feeling good
| with themselves while tossing more and more plastic into their
| shopping carts. It gives us the feeling that we are doing
| nothing wrong producing each a ton of garbage every year.
| Plastic recycling does what it was invented to do.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Injection moulding can utilise about 30% recycled pellets to
| 70% of new plastic or it doesn't flow properly. Since that is
| how most of the mass-produced plastic used gets utilised it is
| a bit of an issue when the recycling volume is just 30% of the
| total. More problematically plastic containing prior recycled
| material can not be recycled again, you get just one extra use
| of 1/3 of it. That is basically throw away, it doesn't really
| recycle in any usable way.
| umvi wrote:
| There isn't any sort of chemistry that could be used to
| refine it to a higher quality state?
| bunchOfCucks wrote:
| California. Crazy. Sums it up.
| rhizome wrote:
| A few years ago I came up with the idea that instead of funding
| facial recognition, image-recognition technology could be used at
| dumps to recognize the brands associated with unrecycled trash
| passing through the chutes, then using that data to tax companies
| whose consumers create the most litter and throw away the most
| recyclables.
| rconti wrote:
| I wish this went into what the factors are that make these
| products not recyclable. Contaminants attached to the product, I
| assume?
|
| Siggi's yogurt containers (the large ones, at least) have a paper
| label and a tab you can tear to completely remove the paper from
| the plastic so they can be recycled properly. Which, of course,
| made me realize that probably nothing ELSE with a label on it is
| recyclable in the way we think they are.
| carterehsmith wrote:
| So, I wonder about these cardboard/paper containers that e.g.
| juice, milk, etc are being sold in. Are they biodegradable?
| nikanj wrote:
| Nope, they have a plastic lining on the inside to make them
| waterproof.
| nitemice wrote:
| Same is true of coffee cups, although there are a number of
| organizations (in Aus, at least) now that have processes
| for separating the plastic from the paper so it can be
| recycled.
|
| E.g. https://www.simplycups.com.au/how-it-works
| lacker wrote:
| It seems very strange to attack Coke and Pepsi for this.
| Shouldn't the target be recycling programs that claim to be
| recycling plastic bottles, but actually don't?
| sp332 wrote:
| https://www.earthisland.org/images/uploads/suits/2020-02-26_...
|
| From the Table of Contents:
|
| A. Defendants created the condition of plastic pollution, which
| is extraordinarily harmful to humans, animals, and the
| environment. 22
|
| B. As Defendants have known for decades, recycling by itself
| cannot prevent plastic pollution from damaging oceans,
| waterways, and coasts 29
|
| C. Defendants refuse to adopt more sustainable alternatives in
| order reap higher profits resulting from using virgin plastic.
| 37
|
| D. Defendants' decades-long campaign of misinformation about
| their Products' recyclability puts the cost of plastic
| pollution on consumers and public entities. 39
| jcranmer wrote:
| The actual claims being cited are:
|
| * Violating SS1770(a)(5,7,9) of California's Consumer Legal
| Remedies Act, which is effectively a false advertising law.
|
| * Public nuisance
|
| * Express warranty violation (again, basically "this product
| doesn't do what you told me it would do")
|
| * Strict liability claims for environment damage (as far as I
| can make it out)
|
| * Negligence claims for the above as well.
|
| The first and third claims are really, really hard to
| substantiate because the plaintiffs are arguing on the basis
| that the claim of "recyclable" should be interpreted as
| "actually recycled in practice" as opposed to the definition
| of "recyclable" that appears in regulation... I can't see a
| judge buying that. I imagine the last two claims will fail
| due to lack of direct harm--I'm not intimately familiar with
| California law here, but they're not citing any particular
| law or precedent to establish why they have standing to sue
| on the basis of only general public harm. Public nuisance is
| the only claim I could see standing, but even then, the
| rather indirect nature is going to make this difficult to
| sustain.
|
| In short, this appears to me to be more of a "we're suing
| them to make a statement" kind of case than a "we're suing
| them because we actually have a legal claim" kind.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Geez, only claim D even makes conceptual sense to try in
| court.
|
| This suit is an awful idea.
| redbeard0x0a wrote:
| You gotta speak in the language that corporations
| understand. Lawsuits and regulations...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Filing a nuisance lawsuit is certainly something people
| understand, but the only result you're going to get is
| that you get laughed out of court while everyone learns
| you're an idiot.
|
| There's a difference between (1) trying to speak to
| someone in a language they understand, and (2) imagining
| what you think that would be like, doing that without
| reference to whether it makes any sense, and then
| congratulating yourself for your penetrating insight. You
| can't speak to someone in a language that they understand
| but you don't!
| Supermancho wrote:
| While you may only be able to win on one count, you get
| discovery for all of them. The idea is good, if your goal
| is to legally investigate.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > While you may only be able to win on one count, you get
| discovery for all of them.
|
| Even if the court decides that you haven't stated a
| justiciable claim?
| phjesusthatguy3 wrote:
| 1) Coke & Pepsi aren't being attacked; they're the names in the
| headline of TFA
|
| 2) There are five other companies named in TFA (of the ten
| named in the suit described in TFA)
| nikanj wrote:
| This is similar to how Foxconn issues are always headlined
| "iPhone factory does XXXXXXX", despite iPhones making up just a
| minuscule faction of Foxconns total output
| qeqeqeqe wrote:
| They have money so they are being sued.
| oska wrote:
| Not strange at all. These are two highly toxic companies, in
| the same class as Philip Morris Tobacco. Everything they do is
| to maximise profit and to push all negative externalities
| (harmful effects on consumer health, environmental pollution &
| degradation) onto society. They should be prosecuted and
| regulated to the hilt until they are no longer generating such
| massive negative externalities (at which point they would
| either have reformed themselves or gone out of business).
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| If you knowingly produce single-use items that are neither
| biodegradable nor recyclable, you share culpability.
| LanceH wrote:
| What law or contract?
|
| How were the labels wrong?
|
| There is nothing in this article and I'm sure your view of
| all single use products must be biodegradable or recyclable
| isn't law.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Making false and misleading claims to consumers. The suit
| alleges Coke & Pepsi (and others) engaged in consumer-
| targeted campaigns to label their plastic packaging as
| "recyclable" even though they knew they were producing more
| plastic packaging than all of the recycling facilities in
| the US combined could have possibly processed.
| LanceH wrote:
| According to
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/16/260.12 , they
| would be in the clear as long as 60+% of users have
| access to recycling facilities/programs for these
| products.
|
| This is surely the case since nearly every municipality
| has some program in place. The obvious problem is that
| these cities aren't actually recycling things while
| claiming they are -- possibly even requiring people to
| recycle. It looks to me like cities need to be sued to
| remove these plastics from the programs. Then 60%
| wouldn't have access to recycling programs, and _then_ it
| would be deceptive to label it as recyclable.
|
| Another avenue would be a change by legislation.
|
| For all the outrage, this lawsuit is going nowhere.
|
| And before I'm called a shill: Don't drink Coke. Don't
| drink Pepsi. Don't drink bottled water.
|
| I'm just a fan of the law being knowable -- oh, and
| articles having substance.
| elliekelly wrote:
| They aren't alleging a violation of FTC marketing
| guidelines, they're alleging a violation of California
| marketing guidance, which sets a higher (though still, as
| far as I can tell, optional) standard. Regardless, a
| company can still be culpable and held liable for
| wrongdoing even if they've dutifully followed "industry
| standards".
|
| I agree the lawsuit is unlikely to go anywhere. But many
| people said the same about the lawsuits against big
| tobacco. And even if the lawsuit is tossed at the very
| first opportunity the organization has called attention
| to some of the worst actors when it comes to plastic
| production. I'd call that a win.
|
| Either way it's the way our system slowly but sure gets
| the wheels of progress spinning.
| wffurr wrote:
| Moral culpability. It should be legal culpability as well,
| but we haven't written the law yet.
| LanceH wrote:
| This thread and the article are both about a lawsuit.
| Saying they should be culpable would imply legal
| culpability in this context, of which they have none.
| ectospheno wrote:
| If you make a product where the packaging kills you then
| it is illegal. But if you make one where it kills lots of
| people much later then you are fine?
|
| Your theory makes the EPA rather pointless.
| mindslight wrote:
| No Dumping - the same laws that are broken if you toss a TV
| on the side of the road. That the stuff passes through
| intermediaries doesn't matter if you know its inevitable
| destination.
|
| Hustlers that stand on city corners pushing junk flyers
| onto passers-by, creating a pile of discards 20 feet down
| the street, are in the same boat.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Something being legal at a given point in time doesn't make
| it an absolute truth. Look at slavery, torture, age of
| consent, I'm sure it all sounded very good to the guys in
| charge back in the days. In a few centuries people will
| look back at us and wonder why the fuck we were so stupid.
|
| I mean, just think about it for a single second, who profit
| from these things beside big corporations, certainly not
| me, you or our future descendants.
| zoonosis wrote:
| What is the lie that Coke et al are being accused of making?
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