Not this one, every one. The only difference is that they bother to put this info on the label.
Nearly all containers (glass or plastic) need to have their label removed to recycle properly. And you must rinse them out, too.
Some can be recycled with the label on, but only if the plastic used is the type that can be recycled. Confusing and frustrating, yes.
The crappy thing is that some labels really don’t come off easily because they’ve been glued in place… those are awful to recycle because it requires quite a bit of extra effort, soaking, adhesive remover, etc… 😂
And you must rinse them out, too.
This step right here has to end. Recycling facilities should have cycling filtered graywater loops to do the rinsing. Using clean drinking water to rinse out containers is an absolute waste.
I work for a plastic recycling plant manufacturer, specifically for the sorting, shredding, cleaning and drying steps of plastic recycling (after that you usually have melting and extrusion before ending up with small plastic pellets that can be used to make other stuff).
I can confirm you, we have “cycling filtered grey water” cleaning. You don’t need to clean up your plastic containers, just empty them. Also various chemicals will be used in the process, when necessary.
We also make de-labelers to remove the labels from plastic bottles, although this kind of label in the picture is extremely hard to remove and, afaik, either requires human labor (aka poor countries with labor conditions you don’t want to think about) or just becomes waste. So yeah, this is some of the worst shit.
I agree, but rinsing at home addresses multiple concerns.
I think the issue is that some people throw out containers with their lids on and completely covered in food matter.
a) it makes it difficult/impossible to actually recycle when it finally gets there. b) it attracts wildlife to your recycling bins.
It’s just best practice, really.
it attracts wildlife to your recycling bins
I’d argue this point is nullified given recycling and trash live next to each other for pick-up (at least in the US). If your bins don’t seal to keep scent away, they’ll be targeting the trash cans anyways.
In parts of the world where clean drinking water is at a premium and increasingly more so, (like the western half and soon 2/3 of the US) it definitely matters to conserve the water we need to live whenever possible.
This brings up another good point though, packaging design should be changed to ensure the maximum amount of purchased product can be removed for use as easily as possible. So many containers today are designed to be sold as “this has 20oz in it!” and only 18oz is accessible. They then have tiny necks or convoluted lips or shapes to make reaching into the container with tools to remove the rest of the product difficult. The companies don’t care about the loss of product as the extra 2oz costs them essentially nothing. Even though that added weight is wasting energy being transported at every single stage of the supply chain to be thrown away at the end, they got the sale because it said 20 instead of 18 on the bottle and they could mark up the price accordingly!
tl;dr on the last paragraph: If the container is designed to start its recycling journey as devoid of product as possible, the whole process will have less cleanup and energy/water use, whatever the process is.
A bottle is hard to rinse lid or not.
Wouldn’t you just rough chop the material and then rinse it?
It would be so much easier if drink companies just used standardized containers instead of making their own homemade special designs to try and look fancy.
Orange juice was fine in a 2L cardboard box. We just recently got a jug of Tropicana or some shit and it’s some fancy moulded pitcher shape with a spout and flip up plastic lid. That just makes everything more difficult, especially recycling because it will be a pain to rinse out I bet.
I’d be 100% ok if all containers were mason jars. Most of the time, I can’t even reuse glass jars because of their stupid, non-standard lids!
Cereal should just come in a biodegradable plastic, no box.
But standardize everything. Never mind hassling consumers not to use plastic bags when companies are putting layer upon layer of plastic on their products. If a manufacturer can’t use a standardized package, they shouldn’t be allowed to sell the product without a massive environmental tax added onto their product.
Some can be recycled with the label on, but only if the plastic used is the type that can be recycled
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that only true if the plastic uses for the label is in the same category (same recycling symbol) as the bottle?
Oh I’m so fucking sorry this manufacturer gave you clear instructions on how to recycle properly
Your life must be truly horrible 😂
Nah, get the fuck outta here with that bullshit.
Ignoring the fact that hardly any plastic is actually recyclable in the first place, your argument is that conscious consumers should accept additional responsibilities on the off chance that it MIGHT actually get recycled?
We figured out how to print on basically any surface a long time ago. How about we hold companies to a standard of responsible packaging, instead of yet again passing the buck to the end user.
We need both. We need companies to do more to make things out of easier to recycle or compost materials, and we need consumers to do more to separate things to make them easier to recycle. It’s far too late to push responsibilities around, we all need to be responsible.
Yep, this package design is about awareness, as much as responsibility
The dipshit that replied to me is beyond that, but kids will grow up with it, and think about it
hardly any plastic is actually recyclable
Almost every thermoplastic is recyclable easily, though not necessarily profitably (because the new materials are so cheap).
Recycling that PET bottle into a different usable object would involve cleaning it, cutting it into a shape appropriate for your chosen remanufacturing process (filament or flakes), heating it to melted but not too hot, then forming (fdm, molding, etc.).
My guess would be that getting a durable graphic printed on PET is more difficult since we don’t see that, and adhesive or wrapped labels are almost certainly more expensive than printing would be if it were easy.
Edit to add: I agree that more responsibility needs to be on the manufacturer, but don’t buy into the misinformation that plastic can’t be recycled. Make it more expensive to use new plastic than recycled material.
Printing “this shit is milk” on a bottle is dirt cheap. It’s practically free. They probably already do it with the expiration date.
Problem is, some bright-eyed fuckfuck at PepsiCo realized they could sell more shit using labels with no visible dot matrix and a color palette with vomit-inducing vibrancy and 69 million shades. Approximately 90 seconds later, everyone else decided that they need to wrap their plastic in some plastic to “stay competitive”. The industry collectively stuffed some lunch money in Ronald H. W. Gore’s titty pocket, and here we are, decades later, with a mountain of unrecyclable garbage that no one even knew couldn’t be recycled. And it’s not even their fault, for the same exact reason we don’t expect people to know not to lick the lead paint off their mid-20th century coffee mugs.
You forgot about polymer shortening. During the first synthesis process from petroleum to the usual type of plastic, long polymer bonds are formed which give the plastic its malleable-yet-durable characteristics. During shredding to get the plastic into a more feedable shape (as in feedable through a hopper into an extruder to be melted) those polymers are shortened. This polymer shortening ends up leading to a more brittle plastic, and because of this new plastic beads are added to rejuvinate.
Because of this, recycling plastic inherently requires new plastic in its process, and old plastic is only recyclable for a few cycles until its essentially garbage being mixed into the process.
We are essentially just pushing out the inevitable, which will be that we’ll need to dispose of massive amounts of plastic waste that is unusable after a few cycles. I imagine we’ll eventually just have to compress this waste into blocks and bury those blocks deep underground like nuclear waste.
this user probably thinks it’s too hard to collapse a cereal box before sending it to recycling
I’m pretty sure the infuriating part is that the plastic label isn’t recyclable at all.
You mean you have to remove the plastic label before you throw the bottle into a recycling bin which gets dumped into a landfill never to be seen again.
But, but, but, they’re going to eventually mine all the plastic out of the landfills because at some point will be swimming in so much energy and time that turning it back into the little bit of oil that was used to make it Will be our sacred duty as humans. Tomorrow us will definitely mine all that back out and turn it back into oil right?
You need to separate most materials in order to recycle them. The plastic of a lid is different from that of a bottle which are both different from a wrapping. Separating materials is key to successful recycling. A lot of times stuff can’t get recyled because people don’t separate it before throwing it away.
Or you could just use, you know, reusable materials.
Separation requirements vary. In the UK, plastic bottle caps are generally tethered to the bottle now to prevent people from separating them.
Why?! I dont get it. What kind of psychopath doesn’t put the cap back on when empty. Who opens a bottle, throws the cap away, and chugs away?! How is this a problem? I’m just so baffled this was/is a problem.
When I squash a (gallon) jug it sometimes warps the opening so that the cap doesn’t fit anymore.
Uh, I was replying to someone who said it’s essential to separate lids from their bottles. It’s not psychopaths who are doing this — it’s people who think it’s the right thing to do.
