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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

In California at least, there's already the "C.R.V" - California Redemption Value. This is effectively a tax, added to every bottle sold, available to be redeemed upon being turned into a recycling center.

Even with this, not enough people bother.

The real solution is to make our garbage collection far more efficient. Why do we still separate recyclables and garbage into separate bins? As-if regular people can be trusted to do this without fail? Make it automatic, and a lot of this concern will go away.

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Seems like CRV could be increased to get the target recycling rate desired by legislators pretty easily.

If each bottle was $0.50, many more people would separate and sort their recycling to take advantage of this.

Would probably have some free beneficial side effects, like less soda consumption and more use of re-usable water bottles.

Or, we can focus on automated garbage sorting. It shouldn't matter which bin you toss something into, it should all be automatically handled the best way for whatever material it's made from.

Increasing CRV disproportionately impacts people with less economic stability than others. Many of us here on HN probably wouldn't miss $0.50, at least enough to be compelled to take the time to properly sort our garbage 100% of the time.

Plastic floats, glass and metal sinks. Shred everything and separate it. Machines already exist like this - but everyone wants to focus on compelling human behavior to be a certain way instead of just removing that hurdle completely, which would be better for everyone involved.

The advantage of garbage sorting is it can change. If I don't get the memo that X can be recycled I won't put it into the right bin, but if it is sorted automatically the garbage company just installed the equipment and we are done.

Not to mention all the lazy people who don't bother to sort anything still get the right thing done.

There isn't much cost to the above: I'm not perfect so they need to re-sort my recyclables anyway (this is why I only have two bins, one for non-recyclables, one for recyclables instead of a dozen for each type). The real trick is to make the machines cheap and reliable enough to handle any input. I think the main reason they don't do this already is the machines jam if you feed them plastic bags.

I haven't heard of the plastic bag issue. I'd think industrial equipment would be able to rip them up, which is what would need to be done to recycle them anyway.

Only having a single bin to worry about - all garbage goes into it - would be a huge win for the environment. It's one of the few areas I'd actually be OK with significant government subsidies to help companies/municipalities acquire the equipment.

Plastic bags tend to not shred into pieces, but into strings that wrap around the shredding blades until they are jammed full and don't shred. (this isn't a stop the moters jam, just the machine stops shredding)

fwiw finding a recycling center in California is a pain. It's not like in the northeast where many supermarkets have can/bottle recycling machines. Homeless can collectors often sell the cans for 50% of the value or less to some guy with a pickup truck who can actually get to wherever the far-off recycling center is.

That is still a much better deal for the homeless than the deal they get where this is no redemption value. Homeless often do walk into recycling centers in cities where there is no redemption value, but they are lucky to get $.01/can when selling by weight.

Recycling centers are common if you know where to look - the ugly side of town is an ideal place for them (both because they are by nature messy, and because competition means they can't afford are more expensive area). Many small towns have a place to recycle (most small town industry has enough metal waste to make it worth recycling, so there is demand)

Though in Iowa the way the redemption works is any store that sells it must take it back. I don't know how redemption centers work, because we don't have them, instead every supermarket takes their cans back. This ends up being a war on generic soda: coke/pepsi you can take anywhere, but stores will reject the other-store brand cans making them a hassle to sort.

All of my plastic bottles go in my recycling bin that the city collects every week. I'm guessing they must make some money off of it. Also, the homeless seem to do a really good job of getting plastic and aluminum cans off the street. I rarely see any of those items littering the area. It's tough and hard work for them...

But what happens to the bottle when it is returned? Does it actually get recycled or does it end up in the ocean anyway?

To be clear, nobody in the US is dumping plastic into the ocean.

The article states clearly it's other nations dumping or losing US garbage, that they purchased with intent to do something with, that is the main culprit. That and fishing and shipping equipment that is thrown or lost overboard.

I'm actually unsure what these recycling centers do with the collected bottles. Maybe they sell the material to companies that will recycle it into new objects, or at least dispose of it in designated areas where it will not impact the environment. Either way, it's the "designated, government sanctioned" way to recycle these bottles. Tossing them into your recycle bin doesn't redeem the CRV for the individual.

PET bottles get recycled into more bottles, or other things like textiles. PET is a very recyclable plastic.

There is also hdpe, ldpe, PP - those are the ones I see the most of in my house, PET is rare (you just learned something about my personal distaste for soda)

Yeah soda is foul, though there's quite a bit of it around. PET is also used for plain seltzer water (which accounts for the majority of bottles I go through.) I guess PET is favored for pressurized drinks?

The real solution is prevent the production of single use plastics and packaging at the source.

Why?

If we can automatically recycle most/all of them, single-use becomes a non-issue. You get to have your plastic straws and bags without producing waste material.

Taxing plastic will take care of most single use cases, as they'll become uneconomic.

In this thread, we've already discussed how California, basically, taxes all bottles - plastic bottles too - and how it's had nearly zero impact on people's behavior.

Which is why it's better to not rely on people's behavior for recycling programs. It should be automatic. Place whatever in a bin, and the garbage company sorts and recycles.

1. this was a tax in an attempt to get recycling, not a tax to discourage use of something

2. a tax on all bottles doesn't incentivize using a different material for bottles

3. if the tax is ineffective, it isn't large enough

4. recycling plastic is expensive - better to just not use plastic in the first place

A tax on plastic (not glass or tin) would incentivize making bottles out of glass or tin instead.

Plastic waste won't be an issue if plastic products intended to be waste aren't produced.

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