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’ve been to a recycling sorting facility (glass, paper, metal and plastic all go in the same bin here). The people working the conveyor belts had to practically wear hazmat suits, as whatever came in was vile. I rinse my containers extra clean since I saw that.
At least in Germany that step is not necessary as far as I know.
It…it probably is.
Not really. We do have to make sure to empty the container as good as possible though.
Man, I was looking into Germany’s waste infrastructure in general, and damn, I’m jealous, lol. I couldn’t find any concrete answers to the degree on which you should rinse plastic, though. That said, I imagine it’s probably in your best interest to at least give a quick rinse to avoid your own bin getting nasty, even if not required.
What I found is the term löffelrein, a wonderful German word meaning something like “as clean as possible when using a spoon” for joghurt for example.
I usually bring my trash down before it get’s nasty. Our “bio trash” is more of a problem, as anything biodegradable gets into it which attracts fruit flys. Rinsing plastics is still just a waste of water (and time).
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.
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.
I’m Canadian, and in my municipality, we have recycling (cardboard, plastic, glass), compost (food matter), and garbage (pretty much anything that can’t be recycled.
The compost bins are sealed, so pests are never a concern. I don’t have issues with open recycling bins, but did before I learned how to actually recycle stuff. My garbage bags never have issues, since they don’t have food in them.
I can see issues in places that don’t offer such a robust garbage/recycling program.
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.
100% agree. It frustrates me to have to clean something that’s going to be thrown out, but if you’re strategic about it, you can find ways to do this with very minimal impact on water use.
Not to go off track, but I found that since I’ve been cooking my own beans, making my own non-dairy milk, and relying less on packaged good, my recycling bins are nearly empty every week. Reducing or reusing is often much better for everyone than recycling.
A bottle is hard to rinse lid or not.
Wouldn’t you just rough chop the material and then rinse it?
Wouldn’t you just rough chop the material and then rinse it?
I don’t even know if that’s feasible, but if there’s a municipality that already does this, I’d love to know how it’s been going for them.
It wouldn’t prevent the problem of wildlife/pests getting into dirty recycling items, though.
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?
In my experience, some labels are quite detailed and will say whether you need to separate the label or lid from the container, or not.
But generally speaking, yes, assuming the material class is the same, it should be fine to recycle them together.
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
My point was that it’s not necessary, and the practice increases the likelihood that the entire bin will be thrown out because some consumer didn’t peel them off. Then the company gets to say “we told them to do it, it’s not our fault!”
I do peel these off, but I also think that they are irritating and actively hinder the problem at hand.
Naw, you’re the dip
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.
Printing on bottles is a thing. Even in vomit-inducing vibrancy and 69 million shades. Problem is, it inhibits line speed. Higher line speed = more money.
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.
Didn’t forget, that just isn’t relevant to the assertion that “plastic can’t be recycled”. The second use of the plastic doesn’t have to be a form which requires the exact same properties as the initial use. The remains of a bottle don’t have to be remade into another bottle. There are still nearly infinite possible uses for the plastic.
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.
that is 1 of the 2 infuriating parts. always remember it is possible to hold two truths at once, that a) consumers can take some part in environmental responsibility and b) that we should also hold corporations accountable
Tell me you don’t understand what community you’re in without actually telling me lmao
Look at the sub name. Now reread your comment. You’re missing the point.
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.
Shhhh, if they don’t know they still feel good about it
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?
And that’s if they’re lucky. There’s also a decent chance it will end up piled up on some foreign beach/riverbank to slowly leach into the ocean.
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.
I guess me? don’t spill and it’s not a problem just like a glass
But it’s one of the few benefits of plastic bottles; if I don’t finish it, I can re-seal it. It’s not about spilling, it’s about preserving.
I guess personally if I’m leaving and I’m not done with it I just chug it quick and throw it away
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.
Sorry, I missed that. That’s actually really interesting and the only good answer I’ve seen so far; people doing harm thinking they are doing good. Still hate it though… The cap gets in the way of drinking.
When I squash a (gallon) jug it sometimes warps the opening so that the cap doesn’t fit anymore.
True enough. Didn’t think of it as I’m used to a recycling system where you don’t crush them. In fact, if you did, you wouldn’t get your deposit back.
Could simply be to keep the material together. Makes sorting easier.
I understand that’s the reason. My point it, I’m surprised and amazing this doesn’t happen automatically already. I’ve never not put the cork back on a bottle when it was empty.
Okay. So they do this in Japan. The plastic used in the wrapper is different than the plastic in the bottle. They require different processes to recycle. It’s also far more efficient for regular people to just rip it off and throw one in one bin and the other in another bin in their own homes than it is for a sorting facility to go through mountains of this stuff trying to get it right every single time. Frankly I wish more places did it this way.
I hope this explanation will make things even less infuriating.
Recycling in Japan is a very involved process. You end up with like, 4 different bags of recyclable types, depending. I appreciate it.
Most European countries I’ve visited have at least 3 bins/bags : paper, plastic, everything else. Most cities also separate glass and aluminium. Some townhalls offer bags/containers for bio trash, that’s turned into compost.
Where I live (EU) most single family homes have two bins, one for burnable normal trash and one for food and biological waste.
Recycling especially cardboard and paper, but also plastics is very common but those will have to be brought to either a very local drop off point or a local recycling/waste disposal site.
The drop off points usually have small containers for paper, plastics, metal, glass and small boxes for non rechargable batteries.
The recycling facility accepted pretty much everything that one could ever want to throw away.
Minnesota is like that, too. At least near St. Paul/Minneapolis
Many cities just burn a lot of it. Technically “recycled” according to the definition and generates some energy, but plastic is just not great no matter how you look at it.
Source for some cities burning non-pet plastics in Japan: https://youtu.be/sAu3LVktMwE?si=30PgjrPFFiFFF7Tt&t=55s
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It’s like this in Europe too, it’s just one, ahem, country that’s a decade behind everyone, every time
I don’t have different plastic recycling bins, but only one.
Where in Europe do you have different ones?
Never have encountered those, at least I didn’t realize it (in Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Italy, Switzerland - although with some countries I’m maybe not completely up to date)Edit: I was replaying to the wrong message, clicking is hard.
Sorting is way easier if you have to just pick stuff (semi automatically) from a conveyor belt vs having to pick individual object and separate the plastics (first figuring it how to do that, and also objects are all damaged).Like plastic bottles and plastic bottles caps - it would be (or it partially is) immensely costlier to separate them by employees at the sorting site vs each of us taking the the … or not taking the time end effort to screw the cap back on.Did you answer the wrong guy?
Yeah, I absolutely do get that and didn’t say anything against it
I just never saw them anywhere in Europe and would be interested where and how that recycling works.
Oh, lul, totally did that.
But to you point, in the last decade+ I only encountered non-sorted trash collection in like coastal/smol island communities (that are still developing & slowly getting recycling services).
Truth is, it doesn’t matter anyway, because over 90% of plastic isn’t being recycled.
This whole thing (the removable label to supposedly make the bottle more recyclable) is an exercise in futility and virtue signalling to the “green” demographic for profit, aka greenwashing.Edit to be clear: the answer is to abolish capitalism, which is why all of this is happening in the first place.
It all gets dumped in the ocean
nah, we put ours in the hillside. trash hill’s getting chonky
Future archeologists will be confuss
I don’t mind, as long as there are some
No one said anything about human archaeologists 😁
Trash hill got back
This brand is all cartons where I am, more efficient and environmentallly friendly.
Cartons have plastic too, yeah? Cause plain cardboard isn’t staying mess free for long if you fill it with milk. That said, it’s probably less plastic, though this is also less plastic than just making the whole jug non-recyclable. Why they don’t just make the label recyclable too is beyond me.
The problem is plastic is great for food safety. The way it makes air and water-tight seals, that can easily be broken, is hard to replicate. If cans could open, on their own, the way sealed plastic bottles do, then we could have easier recycling via metal containers. But the self-open cans make sharp edges and nobody’s invented a way around that yet.
Incredible idea, LISTEN TO THIS:
Reusable glass bottles with metal caps.
They also make Aluminum “Bottles”. There’s going to be a plastic gasket on the metal cap, but that’s magnitude less plastic then a whole bottle and I already know what salad dressing looks like. Lighter to transport then glass as well. If the supply chain is short, glass can work, but the longer it is, the more sense aluminum is.
Sounds perfect. Unless it’s true what they say about aluminum toxicity after all.
Aluminum cans have a thin plastic liner. The aluminum toxicity is about aluminum oxide anyway. The main exposure source for that is hygiene products that use it as a whitener.
There are so many other plastic use cases in food storage and transport. Like sure, we can bring back milk men but what about everything else?
Like what?
Wrapping a candy bar in a sealed wrapper.
Good one! Industry and consumption problem. Also I assume by candy bars you are referring to chocolate bars.
Industry: could offer chocolate bars in bulk packed sealed boxes or bags with waxy cardboard or paper packaging. This already exists for many independent products. However vendors and producers want to maximize profit on individual wrapped item, preying on weak wills around the cashiers.
Consumption: chocolate bars are bad for you. I’d tax sweets and sugary beverages a similar way we tax tobacco, cannabis and alcohol, so that it can give back to society’s increased healthcare costs and dissuade excess consumption via increased prices. Currently producers like Mars, Mondelez and Hershey’s get away scott free for poisoning the populace.
Did you miss the part about the airtight and watertight seals?
You mean the ones made out of natural rubber?
So we have all this plastic waste because people can’t be bothered to operate a can opener?
Basically. Convenience pushes most, if not all, of the packaging changes we see. Plastic has been very good at accomplishing the things people want to be done with packaging at a low, immediate cost to the user. Turns out the long term cost is much more drastic.
Because people like you can’t be bothered to respect their fellow humans in terms of use case design.
But yes. Until we find a way to use can openers to keep small amounts of ketchup sterile, it’s because people can’t be bothered to use a can opener.
Sure there’s a use case for aluminum cans and and a use case re-usable containers too.
But there’s a lot of people like that think that finding a use case that requires plastic for one thing proves that plastic is needed for everything. This is a fallacy.
I think they used to wax the cardboard. Maybe they still do?
Depending on the type of wax used, it could be better, or it could be the same as plastic.
Wax or plastic coated paper is still going to use less plastic then a whole plastic judge. Don’t make perfect the enemy of better.
That said, it’s probably less plastic
Did you miss me saying that?
That’s how my milk used to come when I was a little kid.
Which once removed and put into the recycling, the plastic bottle will then go live a long life in the landfill.
They should teach AI how to sort garbage and do it for us instead of making it create videos of pirate ships in a cup of coffee
But the pirates can sort the garbage… Right??? Please tell me I am right…
Milk should come in bags, there I said it
CANADIAN
We used to get it in glass bottles, and the bottles would be reused (not melted down).
Just a shame getting it that way costs about 3-4 times as much as a big four pint plastic jug from Tesco.
Oh, hello there fellow Canadian
I’ve heard this a couple times now. Where in Canada are they doing this?
Ontario and Quebec are the two I know have the 4L in bags. I don’t know for the others.
Ontario? I think you mean NewFordland
Are the bags plastic?
Leather
It’s just a live cow.
In the fridge?? Seems like I need a bigger fridge
So, do you just throw the bag in the fridge? How is it stored?
Throw the 4L bag in the fridge. Remove one of the three inner 1.3 L bags, and place it in the dedicated milk bag holder that every household has:
Snip the corner, pour yourself a glass, and enjoy!
How do you close the milk bag? Surely you can’t leave it open wouldn’t that shorten the milks lifespan, right?
Milk and other raw foods generally won’t spoil any faster unwrapped Vs wrapped in a fridge. Wrapping is mostly to stop odour transfer and other physical contaminants. The lid of a milk jug would be functionally similar to wrapping a glass of milk with plastic wrap.
storage method - Uncovered Raw Meat or Milk in Fridge - Seasoned Advice - https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/35900/uncovered-raw-meat-or-milk-in-fridge
From all these comments I have had some serious misconceptions on the fridge life of milk.
I was wondering the same thing. I’m guessing it just gets used fast enough. They are smaller than what most Americans buy.
We don’t close it. It’s never been a problem.
The bag-jug-holder-thingy that my partner’s dad gave us has a little hook thing where you can pull the snipped end of the bag through. Works fairly well to mostly close the bag, and only lets out a drizzle of milk when you tip it (my kid’s favorite part lol).
water too
Or don’t drink milk.
we got a lactose hater here
This is almond juice, not milk.
2 different kinds of plastic.
Not all plastic is recyclable. John Oliver (nsfw) has a good bit on it here:
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Do people not enjoy ripping the paper off of plastic water bottles? This looks like the same kind of fun to me.
Imagine the massive inconvenience of separating your plastics so that your recycling facility can actually recycle more plastic waste instead of if ending up in a landfill 🤦
Imagine the massive inconvenience of having to separate plastics to recycle when you literally work at a plastic recycling plan.
i’m pretty sure most plastic isn’t even recyclable
edit: relevant link
It’s not that the plastic isn’t recyclable it’s that you cant mix plastics and recycle them. So if there is a doubt at all what a plastic is then it’s thrown away or if it can’t be separated from other materials or contaminated with oil or something.
Plastic is better off just going in the trash. The ability to recycle it is largely a lie. Especially plastic that touched food as it needs to be clean to recycle.
It could be recycled, it’s just that the world is too cheap to bother with it.
Recycling only works when the price of the material is high enough to justify the reclamation process. It doesn’t work for plastic because of the insane subsidies given to the petroleum industry. If we had a significant enough carbon tax, you’d start seeing more actual plastic recycling.
Recycling has always been a lie to make you feel good about consumption. If it’s not a valuable commodity, it just goes to the dump anyways.
It can be IF its
- clean
- dry
- its the same type of plastic
- its not a bag/foil/film
- all the other materials are clean and dry in the same lot.
Even after all that, it’s really only useful in downcycling.
This is absolute nonsense.
In Germany, between 38-48% of plastic is recycled (source). Sure, that‘s far from all of it, but still far, far better than nothing.
The recycling rate might be lower in other countries, but just giving up and putting everything in the regular trash is probably the worst thing you could do.
Still there is the issue, that recycling plants seem to pollute their surroundings with microplastics by just washing the plastic
Obviously recycling is good, but with plastic it seems we’re not in a place to handle it reasonable in any way…
What kills me is that just a couple morons can contaminate a large batch of recyclables, that could’ve otherwise been perfect. But I guess humanity will always have this sort of problem, until it kills us.
Stop spouting this nonsense please. It might be true for the USA, but other countries have their shot together and in fact do recycle plastic.
