[stx]

The thing is we (the US) did do this at one point in time. When I was a kid you could buy a coke in a glass bottle and return it when done to be re-used by the manufacturer. For some reason we stopped. We should bring that back.

When I was in Mexico around the early 2000 they still did this. When you buy a drink you could return it for a few cents back from the vender.

[mattmanser]

"We" didn't stop, it was cheaper for Coca-Cola to use plastic. Coca-Cola did it.

Stop blaming consumers for corporate choices to slightly increase profits.

Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault?

[gambiting]

The corporations only make those choices because they are allowed to(or rather, because they are not forced by the regulations to actually pay for the environmental cost of what they make). Yes, I recently noticed that with Tesco eggs, I have complained to them about it. And it's not our fault but we can definitely try to avoid these products as consumers. Telling companies why you avoid them is also a good thing to do.

[munificent]

I hate this attitude that treats corporations as having zero responsibility beyond what they are legally mandated to do. Yes, it is an observable fact that corporatism and market economics incentivize corporations to behave that way. But it is an unjustified leap to turn that into a moral claim that it is ethically acceptable for that to be true.

People are incentivized to commit package theft in the US today. The odds of being caught and prosecuted are very slim, and the upside is you get free stuff. As an economic action, it is very market efficient: low barrier of entry, large number of "sellers", few cabals or controls over prices. There definitely isn't perfect information on products, but given that the cost is near-zero, that doesn't matter much. As a business, "package theft" is a great one to get into, and the market highly rewards you for doing so.

However, we correctly consider people who do so as despicable shitwads who rightfully earn our scorn and condemnation. We publicly shame them, and certainly don't want to hang out with them and count them as friends.

We should do the same with businesses that do morally harmful acts, regardless of whether the act is technically illegal or incentivized by market forces. It is certainly the business's fault when they do a shitty thing. They have fully agency in the choice of whether or not do so.

[dragonwriter]

Corporations aren't natural persons and have no ethics. They are abstract creations of law and the only legitimate expectations of corporations as corporations are their responses to structural incentives including enforced legal obligations.

We can talk about the ethics of the actions of corporate decision-makers, but only while keeping in mind that structural incentives mean that decision-makers who sacrifice the narrow interests of corporate investors for ethical reasons beyond the constraints forcibly externally imposed on corporations are likely to, over time, be replaced by those who do not.

If you want corporations to act consistently with some view of ethics, you aren't going to do it sustainably by moral persuasion directed at decision-makers, but only by shifting the structural incentives.

[mattmanser]

You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations.

Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right. It's just a legal accident, a mummers farce, and you defending it is morally reprehensible too.

Worse still, it didn't used to be this way till some prat of an economist (probably American) starting saying so, and a bunch of people smelling easy money piled on. Companies used to care about their image, now their "care" about their shareholders (but actually their contractual bonuses and severance packages).

[dragonwriter]

> You're confusing their LEGAL status with their MORAL obligations.

No, I'm saying that considering corporations to be subjects of morality at all is pointless, and that one ought to consider what they want corporations to do to acheive moral ends, and then work to establish structures to at least incentivize that, if not actually constrain them to it.

> Just because there's an easy way for a collective of people to absolve their moral responsibilities by getting a little certificate that says "We're a corporation" doesn't make it right.

I think you start from a false premise here; that it is of no value to analyze corporations as if they were moral actors does not in any way absolve any natural persons for the immorality of any actions they undertake in or around a corporate structure.

It just removes the ability to pass blame for immorality off on to an abstraction, and focuses it on the people responsible for the abstraction (which, for creatures of law, in addition to any others includes those responsible for the law, either as lawmakers or as electors thereof.)

[Ntrails]

We are responsible for our parliamentary representatives, and thereby our laws. It is absolutely our fault, as a society, as consumers.

[res0nat0r]

Good doc here on how the plastic industry pushed for "recycling" laws so they could look like the good guys, but much of the stuff you see the recycling logo on can't in fact be recycled.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/

[bostik]

> Like in the UK, Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones. Is that my fault?

If you keep buying them, yes. Tesco's beancounters (who are legion) are certainly going to keep track of the overall cost and revenue structure. Assuming the plastic containers cost less and are sold in equal amounts, they will push forward to roll out plastic over cardboard where they can.

If they want price signals, give them price signals. Vote with your wallet.

We buy our eggs from a nearby farm. Tray of 30 is good for a week, and sometimes two. Better quality than what Tesco or Sainsbury's offers, too.

EDIT: we also return our cardboard trays to the farm shop when we buy a new batch. Reuse >> recycle.

[mattmanser]

Slightly OT: I may be a bit unfair picking on Tesco as it turns out the pulp used to make egg cartons has run out because of the demand for eggs from the covid home-baking upswing, they do plan to switch back.

But only because the last time they pulled this stunt back in 2011 or so claiming it was eco-friendly to use "recyclable" plastic it blew up in their face (most of which isn't recycled) .

[bostik]

Fair enough. Now that you mention it, I remember how during the height of the lockdown cardboard pretty much ran out. People bought more stuff online (lots of cardboard in packaging), while there was no waste paper collection to fill the demand from the supply side.

There still isn't enough waste paper collection happening, really. The communal large containers are emptied at most once a week - and they have capacity for less than two days. People have a lot more cardboard packaging to get rid of, but with collection points hitting their capacity in 1/3 of the pre-covid time, there's a constant backlog to get through.

> last time they pulled this stunt back in 2011 or so

Wasn't aware of this historical detail. Thanks.

[matthewheath]

> Tesco have just inexplicably switched from using cardboard egg containers to plastic ones.

They've only switched because they've run out of the pulp used to make the cardboard egg containers. It's a temporary switch, although not ideal.

[makomk]

I'm sure the disruption to UK recycling collections due to Covid can't have helped much with that.

[petre]

A plastic tax would solve this. Make plastic containers at least as expensive as cardboard or aluminium cans through added taxes.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

A bunch of states have bottle deposit laws. Stuff goes to recycling rather than direct reuse, but still, the concept is to use the deposit as an incentive to reduce litter and increase recycling rates.

At the end of the day, if we want companies to do more sustainable things than using single use packages that cost nearly nothing to dump in a landfill (or litter), then we need to start charging them enough to incentive sustainable behavior. And sadly few politicians want to be the person that raises prices on bottles of milk or racks of beer.

[Steltek]

Personal anecdote time, I guess. My state has a bottle deposit law. I don't return anything but it still goes into recycling. We buy very few individually packaged things, I honestly can't be bothered to collect large bulky containers and bring it back to a redemption center for a lousy $5 or less.

Generally speaking, our recycling outweighs our trash and (commercial) compost put together. Mostly the bottle deposit doesn't change my recycling or purchasing behavior and it only annoys me that I'm "throwing money away". I think the biggest reason to keep it is because it's a perverted form of social welfare for homeless trash pickers who have a different tradeoff of time for money than myself.

[bobthepanda]

Part of the problem is that nickel deposits were introduced in the '70s but have not been adjusted for inflation. The inflation-adjusted value of a nickel in the '70s is closer to a quarter, and if the deposit on the bottle was a quarter people would certainly feel more strongly about collecting said deposit back.

[rhacker]

There's at least one company in the west (US) that still does this. Have you tried Strauss farms milk? The creamtop is absolutely delicious. There's a $2 bottle deposit which encourages the bottles to be returned. Only problem is you can only get this milk at higher end grocery stores or fancy co-ops.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

Yeah, Strauss is great. Sadly it's getting harder to find their cream. Everyone seems to carry the ice cream tho.

[beenBoutIT]

Strauss is great but they need to use amber glass bottles to protect their delicious milk from light.

[refurb]

Moving to plastic significantly reduced the cost of transportation and the resulting CO2 emissions (but increased CO2 through production of plastic - net?).

Better to haul a trailer full of coke that 98% product and 2% plastic than one that’s 90% product and 10% glass.

[Scoundreller]

You can fit more plastic-packaged product too. Still waiting for them to sell it in cubes though.

[brianwawok]

The reason is money. Labor is a lot higher in the US over Mexico. Cheaper to trash and remake vs reuse. You would need a stick or carrot in the economic cost to shift behavior. Corporations are smart, they will choose the cheaper path.

[mythrwy]

I was in Guatemala in the early 90's on a bus and it stopped near a stand with people selling soda.

The procedure was open the soda bottle, pour the soda into a plastic bag, put a straw in the bag and tie it. The vendor kept the bottle (presumably you could keep the bottle yourself if you paid the deposit with your soda). I kept waiting to see a bag leak or some other disaster but it seemed to mostly work. You couldn't put your soda down though. Maybe it was a scheme to encourage rapid consumption or accidental loss and sell more sodas, not sure.

[ad_hominem]

Maybe the reason is because of stronger food safety laws and tort law.

If some guy used his bottle as a hammer for several months before turning it in for recycling, then someone cuts their hand on a jagged edge or drinks a glass sliver, that's a multi-million dollar lawsuit. Unlikely maybe but at Coca-Cola scale I imagine things like that will happen eventually.

These companies would have to have sophisticated QA processes, or melt down and re-cast the bottles to ensure the food safety of their supply chain against millions of chaos monkeys.

Edit: Here I just did a Google search for the butthurt downvoters that proves there is extra QA that needs to be done. From an Oregon glass bottling reuse program:[1]

> Among other attributes, the machinery features an electronic sensor that uses X-ray equipment to image each bottle, detecting flaws in the glass, as well as mold and other contaminants, Bailey said. That step will reject any bottles that are chipped or contaminated.

[1]: https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2018/03/13/oregon-e...

[kevin_b_er]

Why should laws to protect people be deleted and laws added to protect corporations?

You base laws that protect the well being of the citizenry into a tort reform call. Protecting corporations that abuse the public does not improve the lives of the public. It just improves the profit margin.

The basis of "tort reform" is a panic assessment that lawsuits run wild and the only solution is to indemnify the rich and powerful. This lets them abuse the public even more.

Your link implies this is for liability, but it could just as easily be a filtering step so that the bottles provided are up to a certain quality standard to be readily reused.

The root problem is the bottles are cheaper to make out of disposable material. The cost burden is shifted to The People over a longer term. This is the tragedy of the commons.

[blacksmith_tb]

That's quite a hypothetical - if there were a rash of lawsuits the lead up to Coke being sold in 2 liter plastic bottles, that would be indicative, but I am not aware of anything like that - and you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case.

[ad_hominem]

> you'd expect there'd be no glass bottles of anything (beer, mustard, maple syrup) if that was the case

That's completely different - you're confusing recycling with reuse. The bottles you're referring to are made anew from glass that has been smashed into cullet and re-cast into new glass.

What the commenters above are advocating are thicker glass bottles that are washed and reused as-is, i.e. reuse.

Different QA concerns when you're manufacturing fresh glass versus collecting it from randos

[layoutIfNeeded]

Bullshit. The Club Mate I'm drinking right now came in a reused glass bottle. Some of these bottles have more wear on the outside, some of them look pristine.