A Plastic Bag’s 2,000-Mile Journey Shows the Messy Truth About Recycling
April 13, 2022 5:42 PM Subscribe
Tesco's plastic pledge falls short. In August, Tesco announced it was expanding the pilot to all its biggest outlets. Shoppers from Cornwall to Cumbria were invited to return snack packets, shopping bags, and vegetable packaging. Soon after, the company rolled out a national advertising campaign, featuring an image of a young father with a baby in his arms and the words: “Recycling soft plastics shouldn’t be hard.”
The problem was, as Ragueneau knew from her activism, recycling plastic is hard—especially the material Tesco is collecting.
...Headline writers are catching on to Betteridge's law of headlines. The original title for the article, "Can plastic be recycled?" gives the game away.
...Headline writers are catching on to Betteridge's law of headlines. The original title for the article, "Can plastic be recycled?" gives the game away.
I don't know, it seems like even if you paid the recycling cost up front, there would still be a business of exporting waste to poorer counties, losing track of it, and some of it ultimately being (illegally) burned.
Like in the article there **is** a voucher system in place, as mandated by the EU, but some of the types of plastic are not good for anything but being burned for fuel... They are recyling the plastic bottles and some plastic film but it's the candy wrappers that are slipping through the cracks.
In this case getting people to return the plastic is not the issue. But what happens to it after it's returned....
There's a story in the article about entrepreneurs in Poland who take the govt money/vouchers to recycle the plastic, rent a warehouse, put the plastic there and then dip.
Paying more wouldn't necessarily solve that issue because you'd still have people trying to cheat the system... except for the fact that you might be able to sort the plastic closer to where it's being collected, which would increase the accountability compared to what happens after it's shipped out of sight.
posted by subdee at 7:26 PM on April 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
Like in the article there **is** a voucher system in place, as mandated by the EU, but some of the types of plastic are not good for anything but being burned for fuel... They are recyling the plastic bottles and some plastic film but it's the candy wrappers that are slipping through the cracks.
In this case getting people to return the plastic is not the issue. But what happens to it after it's returned....
There's a story in the article about entrepreneurs in Poland who take the govt money/vouchers to recycle the plastic, rent a warehouse, put the plastic there and then dip.
Paying more wouldn't necessarily solve that issue because you'd still have people trying to cheat the system... except for the fact that you might be able to sort the plastic closer to where it's being collected, which would increase the accountability compared to what happens after it's shipped out of sight.
posted by subdee at 7:26 PM on April 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
It feels like a lot of the growth of the use in grocery store plastic is driven by profitability, rather than actual demand. Who wants to buy their oranges in a stupid mesh bag that is made up of 2-3 different plastics? I don't think that's consumer demand, that's just grocery stores being able to convince people to buy more oranges than they would otherwise, reduced labour costs in stocking, and reduced losses due to oranges going rotten because many people probably don't notice their bag has a rotten orange in it. The article mentions this about shrink-wrap driving more sales, but I think it's become pervasive with all fruit and vegetables.
I don't think we need to charge some kind of recycling cost fee. The reality is that for a lot of our current plastic waste, burning it as cleanly as possible is probably the best thing we can do. What we need to do is tax plastic enough that it's only used when it really needs to be. We already have plenty of sin taxes, why not one that hits big corporations for their sins instead of individuals?
posted by ssg at 7:37 PM on April 13, 2022 [9 favorites]
I don't think we need to charge some kind of recycling cost fee. The reality is that for a lot of our current plastic waste, burning it as cleanly as possible is probably the best thing we can do. What we need to do is tax plastic enough that it's only used when it really needs to be. We already have plenty of sin taxes, why not one that hits big corporations for their sins instead of individuals?
posted by ssg at 7:37 PM on April 13, 2022 [9 favorites]
You shouldn't be able to produce or sell stuff without a plan for disposal at the end of its life (nuclear power, amirite). Taxpayers usually end up paying to clean stuff up once profit is extracted. Paying the actual cost upfront should create some efficiency and discourage waste.
Where I live, waste goes to an incinerator, so it's oil-> plastic bag-> fuel with a big side order of pollution and inefficiency. In Maine now, you have to pay for plastic grocery bags. It'll be a few years before I run out of the ones I've saved, which I use for trash and stuff.
posted by theora55 at 7:51 PM on April 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
Where I live, waste goes to an incinerator, so it's oil-> plastic bag-> fuel with a big side order of pollution and inefficiency. In Maine now, you have to pay for plastic grocery bags. It'll be a few years before I run out of the ones I've saved, which I use for trash and stuff.
posted by theora55 at 7:51 PM on April 13, 2022 [4 favorites]
I recently bought some reusable mesh bags for produce, so I wouldn't have to use the plastic bags in the grocery store. They're plastic, but should last a long time.
Anyway, when my mom saw them, she was interested but she couldn't get over the fact that she would have to pay for the weight of the bag when checking out. They're very lightweight, like maybe I'm paying a few cents more for expensive produce.
She also absolutely detests Wal-Mart, but can't get over the idea that she might spend $5-10 less there than at other stores, so she goes to Wal-Mart. This isn't even every week, and to be clear, she's not in a financial situation where that amount of money is significant.
I see a lot of this among people of her generation. Basically, "thrift" - really petty thrift - is just this big barrier. A lot of people want things as cheaply as they can get them and will compromise their values for that, even if they have those values in the first place. I have a really hard time imagining a deposit law passing here any time soon, even if more people were on board with reuse and recycling being important. But on the other hand, as long as disposable plastics are cheaper and more convenient, people will use them.
I don't know, I feel discouraged by the whole thing. I don't think we're anywhere near being able to regulate use of plastics in consumer products either.
(Reuse is better than recycling, anyway. In some countries soda bottling plants still re-use glass bottles. It's a bit less convenient and a bit more expensive, though, and so this is quickly getting replaced with plastics. Sigh.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:06 PM on April 13, 2022 [20 favorites]
Anyway, when my mom saw them, she was interested but she couldn't get over the fact that she would have to pay for the weight of the bag when checking out. They're very lightweight, like maybe I'm paying a few cents more for expensive produce.
She also absolutely detests Wal-Mart, but can't get over the idea that she might spend $5-10 less there than at other stores, so she goes to Wal-Mart. This isn't even every week, and to be clear, she's not in a financial situation where that amount of money is significant.
I see a lot of this among people of her generation. Basically, "thrift" - really petty thrift - is just this big barrier. A lot of people want things as cheaply as they can get them and will compromise their values for that, even if they have those values in the first place. I have a really hard time imagining a deposit law passing here any time soon, even if more people were on board with reuse and recycling being important. But on the other hand, as long as disposable plastics are cheaper and more convenient, people will use them.
I don't know, I feel discouraged by the whole thing. I don't think we're anywhere near being able to regulate use of plastics in consumer products either.
(Reuse is better than recycling, anyway. In some countries soda bottling plants still re-use glass bottles. It's a bit less convenient and a bit more expensive, though, and so this is quickly getting replaced with plastics. Sigh.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 8:06 PM on April 13, 2022 [20 favorites]
Plastic bags are the worst things ever invented.
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:04 PM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:04 PM on April 13, 2022 [1 favorite]
Process heat recovery from high temperature incineration strikes me as completely sound end use for otherwise unusable plastics. I'd certainly much rather see those incinerators burning stuff we currently waste instead of woodchipped stands of forest.
Yes, it's a method that does currently release fossil carbon into the fast carbon cycle. But to the extent that it displaces other fossil carbon, carbon that would otherwise have been liberated from the slow cycle in order to be used directly as fuel, it makes a valuable contribution toward reducing the total amount of slow cycle carbon that humanity transfers to the fast cycle.
The amount of fossil carbon currently extracted for no other purpose than to fuel cement kilns is enormous. Shutting down as much of that as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can, is a good thing, especially given the amount of plastic release into the oceans it prevents.
Food-preserving soft plastics are increasingly being manufactured from fast-cycle feedstocks. Using end-of-service-life plastic packaging as fuel, as well as to provide the carbon required for steelmaking, will therefore only ever displace more fossil carbon extraction over time.
I am completely in favour of building the physical, logistics and business relationships infrastructure to do all of that starting now, so that it's just business as usual by the time we do manage to eliminate fossil carbon as a plastics feedstock.
posted by flabdablet at 2:22 AM on April 14, 2022 [16 favorites]
Yes, it's a method that does currently release fossil carbon into the fast carbon cycle. But to the extent that it displaces other fossil carbon, carbon that would otherwise have been liberated from the slow cycle in order to be used directly as fuel, it makes a valuable contribution toward reducing the total amount of slow cycle carbon that humanity transfers to the fast cycle.
The amount of fossil carbon currently extracted for no other purpose than to fuel cement kilns is enormous. Shutting down as much of that as we possibly can, as fast as we possibly can, is a good thing, especially given the amount of plastic release into the oceans it prevents.
Food-preserving soft plastics are increasingly being manufactured from fast-cycle feedstocks. Using end-of-service-life plastic packaging as fuel, as well as to provide the carbon required for steelmaking, will therefore only ever displace more fossil carbon extraction over time.
I am completely in favour of building the physical, logistics and business relationships infrastructure to do all of that starting now, so that it's just business as usual by the time we do manage to eliminate fossil carbon as a plastics feedstock.
posted by flabdablet at 2:22 AM on April 14, 2022 [16 favorites]
I feel conflicted. I totally agree that plastic recycling for most plastics is a myth, and plastic is shipped to a plastic recycling plant that just landfills most of it.
But also, I think that plastics is one of the things that has contributed to a bevy of wealthy and prosperity and cheap food everywhere. I'm ok with more plastic in landfills - it's mostly inert and doesn't break down, and modern landfills don't allow pollutants to leak out. I don't like it in the oceans or in nature, but I feel like that's more a containment issue than a use issue.
And besides, maybe if we didn't ship our plastic so far and wide and use cup games and shady companies to store plastic, if we just landfilled it instead, maybe less would end up as litter.
posted by bbqturtle at 3:33 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
But also, I think that plastics is one of the things that has contributed to a bevy of wealthy and prosperity and cheap food everywhere. I'm ok with more plastic in landfills - it's mostly inert and doesn't break down, and modern landfills don't allow pollutants to leak out. I don't like it in the oceans or in nature, but I feel like that's more a containment issue than a use issue.
And besides, maybe if we didn't ship our plastic so far and wide and use cup games and shady companies to store plastic, if we just landfilled it instead, maybe less would end up as litter.
posted by bbqturtle at 3:33 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
In the article they say there have been studies that people will pay more for the same product if it's wrapped in plastic so this is consumer demand, unfortunately.
During the pandemic there was even more of an emphasis on single use disposeable plastic than normal, for hygienic reasons. Everything was packaged in plastic.
Would the consumer demand be as high if more people knew that plastic breaks down into microplastics and those polymers get absolutely everywhere, with poorly understood health effects? I don't know...
posted by subdee at 3:36 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
During the pandemic there was even more of an emphasis on single use disposeable plastic than normal, for hygienic reasons. Everything was packaged in plastic.
Would the consumer demand be as high if more people knew that plastic breaks down into microplastics and those polymers get absolutely everywhere, with poorly understood health effects? I don't know...
posted by subdee at 3:36 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
The vast majority of people have other things to worry about besides what their food is wrapped in, it's safe to say. Making any of this shit about consumer choice is dumb, because individual consumers just don't have the headspace to deal with all the micro-considerations there are around ethical consumption such as, "is this bag recyclable or not."
This is the same argument about 'should cyclists and pedestrians be responsible for their safety on dangerous roads, or should roads be designed to be safe for cyclists and pedestrians' and the answer is no, the answer is always: change the systems themselves to promote automatic safe and good behaviour.
We have governments that can (in theory) decide "plastic bags are bad" and make laws about them so no one has to think about it. Like many places did about incandescent light bulbs. And seat belts. And many other things that are regulated.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:01 AM on April 14, 2022 [15 favorites]
This is the same argument about 'should cyclists and pedestrians be responsible for their safety on dangerous roads, or should roads be designed to be safe for cyclists and pedestrians' and the answer is no, the answer is always: change the systems themselves to promote automatic safe and good behaviour.
We have governments that can (in theory) decide "plastic bags are bad" and make laws about them so no one has to think about it. Like many places did about incandescent light bulbs. And seat belts. And many other things that are regulated.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:01 AM on April 14, 2022 [15 favorites]
It feels like a lot of the growth of the use in grocery store plastic is driven by profitability, rather than actual demand.
Yep. If you're familiar with Aldi or Lidl, one of their competitive advantages is trimming away stocktaking costs and staff costs by standardising products and speeding up payment at the till. If, instead of weighing n oranges you have a standardised plastic bag of oranges with a barcode on it, you can track it easier and scan it faster.
posted by kersplunk at 5:44 AM on April 14, 2022
Yep. If you're familiar with Aldi or Lidl, one of their competitive advantages is trimming away stocktaking costs and staff costs by standardising products and speeding up payment at the till. If, instead of weighing n oranges you have a standardised plastic bag of oranges with a barcode on it, you can track it easier and scan it faster.
posted by kersplunk at 5:44 AM on April 14, 2022
At my lidl, most of the produce isn't bagged, and you can buy reusable bags made out of fabric for it. I mostly forget that I have that bag, though. This post is a good reminder to give it a permanent place in my shopping bag. I think there's a cultural aspect in there too. Here it is very normal for supermarket customers to weigh their produce themselves, and print out a little label with the barcode on it, so the cashier can just run it through the scanner. Also, we've had to buy our bags for ages now, maybe 25-30 years? Bottles have been returned since 1922! Though it wasn't turned into law until 1942.
In countries where the cashier and maybe bag-boys do a lot more service, like weighing produce and packing bags, and bags are normally free, that culture could be harder to change.
The same with recycling household waste. I heard a radio program where the host complained about having to wash the plastic and metal before recycling, and both the other people in the studio, one leftwing and one rightwing, just fell over him: how hard could that be? I guess we never entirely came out of war-time habits...
But I have been curious about the sorting thing for a while, because I have homes in two different places, and they have different policies for recycling, in one municipality, you only have to sort organic from non-organic + paper and cardboard in a third bin and glass in it's own system. In the other, we have six different containers before glass even gets into the equation. So I googled, and it turns out it depends on the technology at your local waste-plant. This article has an embedded video that (once again) reminds me that in my next life, I want to be a mechanical engineer. It must be such fun to figure out machines like these. (This is not from any of my home municipalities).
So you don't have to have underpaid workers in faraway countries to do the sorting. You could also invest in the machinery. But I guess that if the regulators aren't doing their jobs and the cost of cheating is low, there will be cheating.
posted by mumimor at 6:34 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
In countries where the cashier and maybe bag-boys do a lot more service, like weighing produce and packing bags, and bags are normally free, that culture could be harder to change.
The same with recycling household waste. I heard a radio program where the host complained about having to wash the plastic and metal before recycling, and both the other people in the studio, one leftwing and one rightwing, just fell over him: how hard could that be? I guess we never entirely came out of war-time habits...
But I have been curious about the sorting thing for a while, because I have homes in two different places, and they have different policies for recycling, in one municipality, you only have to sort organic from non-organic + paper and cardboard in a third bin and glass in it's own system. In the other, we have six different containers before glass even gets into the equation. So I googled, and it turns out it depends on the technology at your local waste-plant. This article has an embedded video that (once again) reminds me that in my next life, I want to be a mechanical engineer. It must be such fun to figure out machines like these. (This is not from any of my home municipalities).
So you don't have to have underpaid workers in faraway countries to do the sorting. You could also invest in the machinery. But I guess that if the regulators aren't doing their jobs and the cost of cheating is low, there will be cheating.
posted by mumimor at 6:34 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Plastic bags are the worst things ever invented.
Non-biodegradable plastic bags, sure. But things really are changing.
Just the other day I was wondering where the bad smell in the fridge was coming from, and investigation revealed that stuffed way back on the bottom shelf was what appeared to be a supermarket carry bag with something that probably used to be cucumbers liquefying inside.
I went to pull it out of the fridge and the arse just fell out of it. Examining the scraped-up remains, I found sticky remnants of what must once have been plastic stuck to and dissolving into the rotting vegetable matter it used to contain.
This is the first biodegradable plastic carry bag I've actually seen biodegrading in the wild, but I'm sure it won't be the last, and the point is that this was a completely random encounter. I'd needed to make no environmentally conscious personal choices in order to see it happen.
posted by flabdablet at 6:39 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
Non-biodegradable plastic bags, sure. But things really are changing.
Just the other day I was wondering where the bad smell in the fridge was coming from, and investigation revealed that stuffed way back on the bottom shelf was what appeared to be a supermarket carry bag with something that probably used to be cucumbers liquefying inside.
I went to pull it out of the fridge and the arse just fell out of it. Examining the scraped-up remains, I found sticky remnants of what must once have been plastic stuck to and dissolving into the rotting vegetable matter it used to contain.
This is the first biodegradable plastic carry bag I've actually seen biodegrading in the wild, but I'm sure it won't be the last, and the point is that this was a completely random encounter. I'd needed to make no environmentally conscious personal choices in order to see it happen.
posted by flabdablet at 6:39 AM on April 14, 2022 [4 favorites]
Weirdly, where I am now, all recycling goes in one big wheelie bin: card, paper, glass, metal and plastic. This doesn't fit well with my understanding that paper and card must be uncontaminated by food (so, yes to recycling the paper bag you bought your apples in, but no to recycling the greasy paper your fish & chips were wrapped in). I mean, yes, you give your bottles and tins a rinse before putting them in the recycling, but are they really sparkling clean? Are everyone's?
It's also very clear that not everyone has read the leaflets the council puts through our letterboxes every so often listing what can and can't be recycled, which leaves me with the nasty feeling that every load of recycling must have enough non-recyclable stuff in it that it ends up having to be landfilled. I wonder if that would be less of an issue if we had to separate our recycling more: if you've got a section for tin cans, a section for glass jars and bottles, a section for paper and card and a section for plastic tubs, maybe it would be more obvious that your crisp packets, Venetian blinds and torn bags-for-life don't go in there.
(Apologies if any of that was in the article - apparently I've hit my free article limit on Bloomberg.com, which is a surprise, because I wouldn't have said I'd ever visited it before.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:08 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
It's also very clear that not everyone has read the leaflets the council puts through our letterboxes every so often listing what can and can't be recycled, which leaves me with the nasty feeling that every load of recycling must have enough non-recyclable stuff in it that it ends up having to be landfilled. I wonder if that would be less of an issue if we had to separate our recycling more: if you've got a section for tin cans, a section for glass jars and bottles, a section for paper and card and a section for plastic tubs, maybe it would be more obvious that your crisp packets, Venetian blinds and torn bags-for-life don't go in there.
(Apologies if any of that was in the article - apparently I've hit my free article limit on Bloomberg.com, which is a surprise, because I wouldn't have said I'd ever visited it before.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:08 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
A friend of mine works for a large plastics company, and they're working really hard on recycling plastics. One of the biggest problems is that the recycled plastic product they have now absolutely reeks. Like, clearing out a room, noxious odour, burning plastic reeks.
posted by The River Ivel at 7:24 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by The River Ivel at 7:24 AM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
Oh, interesting. I hope they manage to solve that one.
There's a certain kind of recycled paper product - coarse, beige/brown, sometimes gets used as packing material in place of bubble-wrap - that smells to me like vomit. No idea what's going on there. I'm pretty sure most people don't notice though, because at least one company uses it as an outer layer for food packaging, and wow why would you do that. (I still buy from them, but I know I'm going to have to stick it in a ziplock bag or transfer the food into some other container before I put it in the fridge.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:50 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
There's a certain kind of recycled paper product - coarse, beige/brown, sometimes gets used as packing material in place of bubble-wrap - that smells to me like vomit. No idea what's going on there. I'm pretty sure most people don't notice though, because at least one company uses it as an outer layer for food packaging, and wow why would you do that. (I still buy from them, but I know I'm going to have to stick it in a ziplock bag or transfer the food into some other container before I put it in the fridge.)
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 7:50 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
MLC If you're paywalled but want to know more about the realities of plastic (non-)recycling you might get some mileage out of this consumer reports article. Less than 9% actually gets recycled including what's wishfully thrown into the mixed recycling bins, especially post-Sword.
posted by churl at 10:48 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by churl at 10:48 AM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
Interesting article. Thanks!
I annoy everyone by constantly pointing out that solid waste is not actually a problem in wealthy countries. Recycling plastics often costs more in both money and emissions than making new plastics. We've been lying to ourselves for 50 years in order to feel good when buying needlessly packaged products. Not using plastics is a good choice. Recycling plastics is rarely worth the effort. Any government that isn't batshit would take the money they pay to burn oil in order to to recycle high-numbered plastics and instead spend it on solar and wind farms while throwing the plastic in a landfill where it won't hurt anybody. (Recycling aluminum and rare earth metals is undeniably good and would be a lot easier if they didn't have to be picked out of a sea of contaminated LDPE and polystyrene by hand.)
posted by eotvos at 1:51 PM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
I annoy everyone by constantly pointing out that solid waste is not actually a problem in wealthy countries. Recycling plastics often costs more in both money and emissions than making new plastics. We've been lying to ourselves for 50 years in order to feel good when buying needlessly packaged products. Not using plastics is a good choice. Recycling plastics is rarely worth the effort. Any government that isn't batshit would take the money they pay to burn oil in order to to recycle high-numbered plastics and instead spend it on solar and wind farms while throwing the plastic in a landfill where it won't hurt anybody. (Recycling aluminum and rare earth metals is undeniably good and would be a lot easier if they didn't have to be picked out of a sea of contaminated LDPE and polystyrene by hand.)
posted by eotvos at 1:51 PM on April 14, 2022 [1 favorite]
There is, of course, an easy solution to the problem(s) of plastic. Any plastic sold must accompany a price on it. If you sell me a plastic bottle of (whatever), I will also pay the cost of recycling that plastic, easily refunded when I return the empty. If you sell me plastic that cannot be recycled I am going to pay a tax of ten dollars on it.
This is just another way of shifting a structural problem onto individuals. It does very little to address the overall problem.
Weirdly, where I am now, all recycling goes in one big wheelie bin: card, paper, glass, metal and plastic. This doesn't fit well with my understanding that paper and card must be uncontaminated by food (so, yes to recycling the paper bag you bought your apples in, but no to recycling the greasy paper your fish & chips were wrapped in). I mean, yes, you give your bottles and tins a rinse before putting them in the recycling, but are they really sparkling clean? Are everyone's?
We've had "single-stream" recycling where I live for a long time, and (surprise, surprise) it doesn't work. Almost everything is too contaminated to be successfully recycled.
I'm old enough to remember helping my dad take the recyclables to the the recycling center, where they had separate bins for brown glass, green glass, clear glass, cardboard... My sense is that the recycling process worked better then (more of the material returned for recycling was clean and recyclable), but most people didn't do it.
posted by Lexica at 2:50 PM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
This is just another way of shifting a structural problem onto individuals. It does very little to address the overall problem.
Weirdly, where I am now, all recycling goes in one big wheelie bin: card, paper, glass, metal and plastic. This doesn't fit well with my understanding that paper and card must be uncontaminated by food (so, yes to recycling the paper bag you bought your apples in, but no to recycling the greasy paper your fish & chips were wrapped in). I mean, yes, you give your bottles and tins a rinse before putting them in the recycling, but are they really sparkling clean? Are everyone's?
We've had "single-stream" recycling where I live for a long time, and (surprise, surprise) it doesn't work. Almost everything is too contaminated to be successfully recycled.
I'm old enough to remember helping my dad take the recyclables to the the recycling center, where they had separate bins for brown glass, green glass, clear glass, cardboard... My sense is that the recycling process worked better then (more of the material returned for recycling was clean and recyclable), but most people didn't do it.
posted by Lexica at 2:50 PM on April 14, 2022 [2 favorites]
« Older The fuzzy network of life | Phoebe, Millie, et al. Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Directed, Written, and Edited by Ramin Bahrani
Voiced by Werner Herzog
~~~~~
There is, of course, an easy solution to the problem(s) of plastic. Any plastic sold must accompany a price on it. If you sell me a plastic bottle of (whatever), I will also pay the cost of recycling that plastic, easily refunded when I return the empty. If you sell me plastic that cannot be recycled I am going to pay a tax of ten dollars on it.
The problem is gone.
Big oil wants us to pay for how profitable they are. And, honestly, that is A Good Thing. When I pay three or four dollars for a deposit on a plastic bottle, I am no longer going to throw it out the window.
posted by dancestoblue at 7:00 PM on April 13, 2022 [9 favorites]