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Comment by Semaphor | Hacker News Reader

Germany and several other EU countries have deposits on plastic bottles. I’m not sure how much that helps with the microplastics issue, though.

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It doesn't help with ocean pollution at all, because plastic rubbish from Germany and other EU countries wouldn't end up in the ocean either.

That is unless they sell it to Philippines who promptly dump it into rivers, which is exactly what happens. https://www.dw.com/en/german-plastic-floods-southeast-asia/a...

Today I learned, thank you.

Don't you think the payment incentivises people to return their bottles for reuse versus leaving them lying at parks etc.?

Yes, it might. I think the point the grandparent comment was making was that plastic rubbish in parks most likely will not end up in the oceans.

I think the most common sources are:

* Plastic netting * Plastics from countries without any/lacking waste infrastructure

Well, plastics that end up in the environment will degrade by the elements into microplastics, and rainwater will carry them to the oceans (or salt lakes, but I know none in Germany).

There are differences in statistics between EU countries, they might tell something interesting.

EDIT: "considered to be at risk of missing one or more material-specific targets, with plastic being the most critical material:

Plastics: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain" https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=COM%3A20...

They have for the PET bottles, yes, but there are still thousands of other packaging types which just get dumped in garbage with unknown destinations. I cannot really imagine a deposit on those (do you want stinky meat packages returned to the shop?) but still we need to find a solution.

Bottle in glass, aluminum or paper. Beers, various soda and juice already use that

The salad head comes in a plastic bag. The pork chop is sealed in plastic. Sausages are coming with plastic labels, single use bags are still everywhere, and let's not forget the hard wrappings of tools or toys. Can we put all all those in waxed paper? And what exactly will that "wax" be?

Don't cans have a plastic lining on the inside so that the liquid doesn't touch the metal? Same goes for paper from what another commenter said about paper straws.

Heck I wouldn't trust paper food packaging because I'm not sure they would use a wax liner instead of some fancy PFAS forever chemical.

Most of it ends up in landfills which are relatively safe IIRC from other microplastic articles?

Leachate analysis says otherwise: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00431...

Well, there goes that :/ Thanks.

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