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by hsbaut76
2511 days ago
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All single use plastics should be banned, period. If you want to buy a drink, bring a reusable bottle to the shop and fill it up from a dispensery or use glass bottles. The culture simply needs to change - its a habitual problem, not a technical one. We have the technology. I think Germany has their Pfand (plastic/glass deposit) system working really really well, although admittingly the plastic gets incinerated.
I don't know why more countries don't adopt these methods or similar.
Homeless people pick them up, and get 25c for it, then the bottles are washed and reused. Fantastic.
We should invest in optimising these ideas so they become more ubiquitous and cheaper than plastic. |
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There are three types of bottle deposits: glass bottles 8c 29.2% market share (ms) (probably almost entirely beer), reusable plastic bottles 25c 13.6% ms, single use plastic bottles 52.2% ms and aluminum cans 25c 3.2% ms (2016, numbers are up now). [0]
The single use plastic bottle deposit was introduced as a measure to REDUCE market share and support use of glass, but instead people got used to paying more for their water bottles and returning them or "donating" them to poor retired or just plain poor people and might even feel good about themselfes which is not a great incentive. Reusable plastic bottles got more and more replaced by single use and glass bottles water vanished almost entirely. Every grocery store in Germany had to install huge sorting-and-compressing machines for all the different bottle deposits. For some years (long before plastics deposit I believe) a deposit for aluminum soda cans worked quite well but I get the impression products are increasing (I guess bcs people got used to pay the extra 25c.).
This all boils down to one solution in my opinion: Regulation. The 'free' market is not willing and/or able to factor in environmental variables but is forced to ramp down prices no matter what to nuture their shareholders and growth.
There is literally no need to buy bottled water. There is probably not a single town in Germany where you are not able to drink tap water. So yes, a change in mentality would be necessary. But banning single use plastic bottles (as a start) instead of "taxing them properly" wouldn't change our lifestyle one bit.
This troubles me because I am pretty certain we all have to change our lifestyles drastically if we want to somehow limit the environmental impact.
[0] https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/neuer-tiefststand-imme...