[eloff]

I've noticed that people aren't actually fully capable of just sorting the recycling correctly. There's always stuff in the wrong bins in my building despite an ongoing education effort to fix that and helpful illustrated rules above the bins. Rules about lids and labels is a joke.

[paultopia]

Since lids and labels and such seem to actually matter, the only sensible solution is for the governments of the world to legislate to mandate specific shapes and material compositions for things like drink containers. Standardize it all.

[jgibson]

I've been thinking about this more and more, and it just makes so much sense. No one cares what shape a beer bottle is, the label is enough to tell them apart. Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging, but less of them isn't something to worry about either

[flukus]

> Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging

Cigarette companies have already fought and lost legal battles forcing them to use standard plain packaging, so complaining is about all they can do.

[TaylorAlexander]

I’m in total agreement. We give corporations a lot of freedom even when that freedom is unnecessary and leads to significant environmental and societal harm. We’ve got to get some power back for the people so we can say “no, you don’t get any shape. You have to agree to a limited number of shapes and they have to be totally recyclable.”

[eloff]

I think in general the government should mandate that companies take care of their goods from start to end including negative externalities. If you produce something in plastic packaging then you have to make sure it's recyclable in the markets where is sold or pay an environmental impact fee. Ditto if you sell oil that produces CO2. Buy equivalent carbon credits. If it means no body can afford your product anymore, you shouldn't be selling it anyway.

[TurningCanadian]

Have the mfr pay a small fee when their wrappers end up in the garbage. A little like the deposit on cans but the consumer doesn't have to do anything.

[baroffoos]

The rules are just insanely complicated and depend entirely on what suburb you are in. There are countless different kinds of plastics which all have the recycling triangle on them but you have to actually check the number inside and remember all the kinds of plastics there are and which ones your local council can recycle as well as keeping up to date if this changes. And then you have to deal with the fact that loads of products use 2-3 different kinds of plastics on one product so you have to sit there breaking it up in to its basic materials.

[TeMPOraL]

And then you're supposed to wash the plastic if it's a food container, which completely defeats the point of recycling. There's no way individuals hand-washing plastic bottles with hot water and detergent aren't wasting significantly more water and energy in total than a centralized solution would, and you can't rely on people doing it anyway, because it makes dealing with trash two orders of magnitude more complicated.

I actually suspect that even with actually recyclable materials, if individuals have to wash them before giving for recycling, it would be a net benefit for the planet for them to just throw that trash into a landfill.

[pixl97]

I love the bottles that have the recycling symbol, but the number is so small an ill defined you can't actually read it.

[fivre]

Recycling bins at my office are always particularly effective at demonstrating this. Single stream recycling makes things easy!.. Or so I thought, before witnessing an endless stream of banana peels in the recycling bins and plastic bags in the compost bins.