Coke and Pepsi Sued For Creating a Plastic Pollution 'Nuisance' (theguardian.com) 164
Coke, Pepsi, Nestle and other large companies are being sued by a California environmental group for creating a plastic pollution "nuisance" and misleading consumers about the recyclability of plastic. From a report: The suit, filed in San Mateo county superior court last week, argues that companies that sell plastic bottles and bags that end up polluting the ocean should be held accountable for damaging the environment. Earth Island Institute, which filed the lawsuit, says a significant amount of the eight to 20m tons of plastic entering the Earth's oceans annually can be traced back to a handful of companies, which rely heavily on single-use plastic packaging. The suit seeks to require these companies to pay to remediate the harm that plastic pollution has caused to the Earth and oceans. It also demands these companies stop advertising products as "recyclable," when they are, in fact, largely not recycled. "These companies should bear the responsibility for choking our ecosystem with plastic," said David Phillips, executive director of Earth Island Institute. "They know very well that this stuff is not being recycled, even though they are telling people on the labels that it is recyclable and making people feel like it's being taken care of." Further reading: Coca-Cola, Nestle, and PepsiCo Are the Top 3 Plastic Polluters on the Planet .
Blame the people that don't recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this the fault of the company that implements recyclable products???? Can we also sue BP for my neighbor pouring oil into his yard???
Re:Blame the people that don't recycle (Score:4, Insightful)
We should also sue automobile manufacturers because it is possible for people to have vehicular accidents and spew world ending exhaust into the air.
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We should also sue automobile manufacturers because it is possible for people to have vehicular accidents and spew world ending exhaust into the air.
With the exception that the Automobile manufacturers are in a never ending cycle of constantly improving vehicle safety and constantly reducing emissions for a given engine size you may actually have a point.
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Hey, they're wanting to allow you to sue gun manufacturers for people misusing firearms....so, hey, if that's allowed, then just about anything that is manufactured and sold is open game.
Maybe we need less lawyers?
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How is this the fault of the company that implements recyclable products?
Are they really recyclable, or is it false advertising?
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Re: Blame the people that don't recycle (Score:3)
The new carpet we just put in our house is a blend containing PET fibers. Surprisingly soft.
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That is not recycling. Recycling is, or should be, a closed loop. If you make a glass bottle, it can be melted down to make more glass bottles - or even just washed and re-used.
Your carpet, like all plastic "recycling", will just eventually end up in a landfill, or as particulate plastics widely dispersed across the globe.
One day in the future, we might engineer enzymes, or bacteria, that can digest plastics and convert them back into truly re-usable materials. Until that day, we should send every single Co
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Until that day, we should send every single Coke bottle in the world, back to the Pepsi-Cola corporation, for them to deal with.
That would be mean. They'd end up with more bottles than they produced. :-(
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If they (that is, Coke and Pepsi and whoever else) want to kick this problem up the chain and throw their suppliers under the bus because Coke and Pepsi feel misled themselves, they're welcome to do that. But the reality is that SOMEONE is claiming that this plastic is recyclable when it's largely not. So this lawsuit is more of a publicity stunt, but it really does bring the question into stark relief: who is responsible for this plastic pollution problem?
I don't necessarily think that we can hold them ent
Re:Blame the people that don't recycle (Score:5, Insightful)
"the reality is that SOMEONE is claiming that this plastic is recyclable when it's largely not"
Please stop with the word games. The plastics are recyclable and there is nothing misleading about that. It is a fact. At the same time, plastics are mostly not recycled. There is no contradiction and the companies are not being misleading at all. Plenty of things out there are doable in principle and not done in practice. Going to the beach is enjoyable, but many (perhaps most) people live away from the beach and cannot enjoy it. Me saying that going to the beach is usually enjoyable is not misleading at all.
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Yeah, usually enjoyable seems reasonable. Saying it IS enjoyable is pretty stupid. I generally agree with Larry David. Unless there is some reason, scuba, kitesurfing, drinking, bonfires - just sitting on a beach is mind numbingly boring, to at least me and Larry David.
“Larry: i don’t really get this fascination that people have with the ocean
Cheryl: no?
Larry: i dunno. i mean i stare at it for ten minutes and i go okay i get it
Cheryl: don’t you feel calmer?
Larry: i feel aggravated that
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The Federal Trade Commission disagrees [ftc.gov]. Though poorly enforced, those plastic recycling symbols and the words "recyclable" have to be expressly qualified "[i]f recyclin
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By that measure, styrofoam is recyclable:
https://recyclingpartnership.o... [recyclingpartnership.org]
I know in my state there are at least two centers which accept styrofoam, meaning styrofoam is available to all consumers where I live.
Now... I live in a sparsely populated state. Is an average rural consumer going to drive a few hours out of the way to recycle? Probably not. Is it available? Absolutely.
I am sure the story is the same with most other plastics. Recycling is doable/available but not necessarily easy. Which is exactly my
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Upon more research, virtually everyone in the US can recycle plastics (at least most types) via mail-in programs. So you do not need to drive far and it is fairly easy if you are willing to pay the postage.
The more I research this, the more this lawsuit seems frivolous. The only way plastics are not "recyclable" is if the term implied consumers could benefit economically from recycling (in fact you can get paid a small amount for recycling some plastic bottles but that seems an exception). Barring a strict
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The plastics are recyclable and there is nothing misleading about that.
Yes there is. Plastics aren't recyclable. The material in them gets re-used a few times, in products of gradually decreasing quality, before they eventually end up as micro plastics spread around the world. That is not recycling.
The difference matters, because recycling suggests in the mind of the average consumer, that the problem has gone away. It really, really hasn't gone away. Those plastics that are made, haven't gone anywhere, and will persist in the environment for many centuries.
So, send all the Co
Re: Blame the people that don't recycle (Score:4, Insightful)
"But often when people do try ti recycle, the bottles and bags are not rinsed causing infestation issues or stickiness that gums up the machines. Plus, in many areas recycling is not offered at all, but the bottles are still recyclable."
The first failure of the plastic recycling ecosystem is that it must be clean. Are sports fans expected to go rinse their coke bottle out before recycling? That's preposterous.
The recycling facilities should be cutting the plastic open and soaking it in a bath. Solves the cleanliness problem. Cost effective? Who knows.
What about the bottle cap and plastic label wrapped over the bottle? Are those going to spoil the batch if not separated? Nobody's going to bother doing that.
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A system I like is you are charged a significant amount per bottle say $5 extra, if recycle it you get it back, if not, you loose the $5. Also this should not stop at you giving the bottle to the recycling center, they won't get the $5 back until the actually recycle it not ship it somewhere or dump it. This could be adjusted to have a processing fee included so you pay $5.05 and get back $5.00 so the recycle gets gets $5.05 when they recycle it.
The fee has to be significant, very few people are going to go
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> The fee has to be significant, very few people are going to go out of their way for 5 cents.
You've clearly never met my father...
Seriously though, that 5- or 10-cent deposit does a hell of a lot more than you think. Home consumers will save empty containers and bring them back to the store to get the deposit back the next time they go shopping, and people will literally pick discarded deposit bottles off the side of the road. (Back in when I used to do this as a kid, you could make an extra buck or two
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The problem is that those fees are simply taxes raised by the government. In most places, the recycling places simply bring their bottles to the landfill as recycling is too expensive.
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The problem is that those fees are simply taxes raised by the government. In most places, the recycling places simply bring their bottles to the landfill as recycling is too expensive.
1. I'd much rather all that recyclable plastic be located in one out of the way place than strewn throughout the streets and roads. There's lots of related reasons to not have your neighbourhood look like a garbage dump.
2. Having all that material in one spot makes it easier to manage should recycling become cheap enough to do in that location.
3. We have a 10c refund per recycled container where I live. Recycling becomes much more attractive with a small monetary incentive. Kids do it for pocket money for
Re:Blame the people that don't recycle (Score:5, Interesting)
Back in the day, the deposit on the glass deposit bottles was about 20% of its purchase price. Lots of people still didn't bother, but my brother and I would go around after baseball games and fill trash bags with them. With a 5c deposit on a 25c drink, a hundred in a bag was $5! I could easily get 2 bags full after one game. $10 was a big deal.
Now make that 20% of the vending machine purchase price of a 20oz coke (up to about $2 here). That's 40c/bottle. It makes collecting them definitely worth your time when a medium bin full is worth over $50.
Around 20% of the typical price is probably what it should be. These static numbers (5c/10c/15c) per bottle always end up outdated and people just stop caring.
The deposit on car batteries has kept up with inflation. $17 is enough to get pretty much everyone to lug a 50lb battery back to the store instead of just leaving it where it lies. That's less than 20%, but the individual item "value" to the person purchasing is high enough that lead acid batteries are the most recycled item in America (99% reclamation).
I honestly miss the deposit bottle days for the extreme reduction in waste. Except they coincided with the introduction of styrofoam clamshells and styrofoam cups at fast food restaurants, so that was depressing to watch. Every roadside had shredded chunks everywhere.
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A system I like is you are charged a significant amount per bottle say $5 extra, if recycle it you get it back, if not, you loose the $5. Also this should not stop at you giving the bottle to the recycling center, they won't get the $5 back until the actually recycle it not ship it somewhere or dump it. This could be adjusted to have a processing fee included so you pay $5.05 and get back $5.00 so the recycle gets gets $5.05 when they recycle it.
The fee has to be significant, very few people are going to go out of their way for 5 cents.
Meh, we have a system like that right now. In many states there's a redemption for recyclable cans and bottles that is built into the cost of the product. You pay an additional $.60 for the six-pack and get $.10 back when you return each bottle. That may not be worth it to most, but some (i.e., poor) people are happy to pick up returnables and redeem them for the cash. The whole point of this system (which started in the 1960s or 1970s) was to encourage people to return their bottles rather than throwing th
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But the reality is that SOMEONE is claiming that this plastic is recyclable when it's largely not.
But it largely *is* recyclable. There's multi-million dollar industries turning PET pellets from recycled bottles into synthetic fibers for clothing, 3D printer filament, and packaging for the crap you buy on Amazon.
The problem doesn't appear to be that the plastic isn't recyclable. There could be a whole host of other issues, like the rate of virgin PET usage vs capacity to recycle, but "the plastic isn't recyclable" doesn't appear to be one of them. Even the lawsuit itself doesn't try to make that c
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But it largely *is* recyclable. There's multi-million dollar industries turning PET pellets from recycled bottles into synthetic fibers for clothing, 3D printer filament, and packaging for the crap you buy on Amazon.
None of those things are recycling in a meaningful, environmentally beneficial way. They're just a pit-stop on the way to the landfill. Plastic cannot be recycled (yet).
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No, you've misunderstood the problem. The problem isn't that the bottles can't be recycled, it's that they can be recycled, but they aren't. Getting recyclable bottles into the recycling process takes effort and often money, and people just can't be bothered.
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But the reality is that SOMEONE is claiming that this plastic is recyclable when it's largely not.
The plastic is recyclable, but the article is pointing out that the plastic isn't being recycled - meaning that it's tossed in a garbage rather than a recycle container. This isn't the fault of the manufacturer, it's the fault of the idiots that aren't recycling the plastic that they're using.
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Plastic recycling ended in my town over a year ago. No market for the plastic, or the cost to haul it exceeded the value. And apparently hauling it to Spokane to feed to their incinerator was also not cost effective. Or they couldn't handle the extra. Or the permit doesn't allow them to burn waste from outside the city limits.
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...burn waste from outside the city limits.
Now, burning plastic falls under slashdot's definition of 'recycling'?
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There are a number of states that have the 5-15c per bottle recycling fee. It's simply another tax, it definitely doesn't get used for recycling or trash pickup programs. Leaving it to government so they can collect taxes is generally the worst idea.
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>> How is this the fault of the company
>> that implements recyclable products?
Another "nuisance" - Opioids.
Using your logic it is the fault of the people prescribed painkiller, not Big J&J.
Big Pop pushed the recyclability and created the nuisance. They play down the nisance of overweight caused by HFC also. Very similar to Big Pharma and dope.
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>> How is this the fault of the company >> that implements recyclable products?
Another "nuisance" - Opioids. Using your logic it is the fault of the people prescribed painkiller, not Big J&J.
There is a major difference between the situations that makes them not at all similar.
"Big Soda" did not bribe trusted individuals to prescribe drinking soda and then not properly discard the waste.
Opioid manufacturers, however, bribed and lied to doctors to get them to give out a highly addictive drug to patients for even minor injuries. The patients trusted their doctors knew best and took the drugs and many then got addicted. There is culpability all through the chain with opioids too, but in that case t
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"Big Soda" did not bribe trusted individuals to prescribe drinking soda and then not properly discard the waste.
They kind of did. They bribed people by making their product much cheaper, and the failed to properly discard the waste that this economic decision created.
I mean, it's a stretch, and arguing about whether or not a particular analogy is meaningful is a waste of time. But still, it's kind of a little bit close.
There's no doubt that these companies are actually responsible in part for creating the plastic recycling disaster that we currently have on our hands. Along with every other corporation that chose to
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It is, in part, their fault. They can, and I suspect will, be held accountable for that part.
The automobile manufacturers brought up by Cylix are a perfect example. Even if driver attention is a major factor in collisions, if safer cars could be manufactured, but they choose not to, they can and have been held liable. Drink manufacturers have alternatives to plastic. If they don't implement them, they will begin to lose in litigation.
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This is extremely dangerous thinking. Responsibility and benefit must remain linked. When you decouple them, you end up with situations like Monsanto (could force farmers to pay for Roundup-Ready crops which they didn't plant but showed up in their fields, but weren't liable for cleaning such plants off of organic farms which didn't want the stuff). Or U.S.credit cards where the banks take the profit from people
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The problem here seems to be that people are tossing plastic water bottles rather than recycling or properly disposing of them
No, the problem is that plastic packaging cannot be recycled. Its journey to the landfill can be lengthened, but that is not recycling. Companies that use plastic in their product will know this, unlike most consumers it seems, and are therefore responsible. Particularly as the decision to use plastics was taken because they are cheaper.
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It is the fault of both, If you promote and sell a product knowing the most likely use of that product will cause pollution then you are least partially responsible.
The law seems to have no problem assigning blame to things like torrent sites that simply provide a place to share files, its not their fault that people share copyright material.
The difference is the main party "suffering" in copyright infringement is big business so they have the influence to change the law. Where the soda situation big busine
Re: Blame the people that don't recycle (Score:2)
Put a 25 cent deposit on water bottles and see how fast people quit throwing them away. And how fast retirees run around picking them up.
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How is this the fault of the company that implements recyclable products????
The issue is that these products are being labeled as "recyclable" when they aren't for practical purposes, or may be technically recyclable, but it is not economically viable to do so.
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How is this the fault of the company that implements recyclable products????
The issue is that these products are being labeled as "recyclable" when they aren't for practical purposes, or may be technically recyclable, but it is not economically viable to do so.
Let's assume that it is not the boogeyman product plastic.
Glass is recyclable. Is it the company also criminally liable if 100 percent of the glass is not recycled?
Further, if I re-use some glass or plastic products, am I also breaking the law?
This has some real world implications, as I was at the Naples Zoo last year, and they had made some cute statues out of trash plastic. If Coke or Pepsi is responsible for that plastic not being recycled, they should not allow those artists to use that plastic,
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...and they had made some cute statues out of trash plastic. If Coke or Pepsi is responsible for that plastic not being recycled, they should not allow those artists to use that plastic, but make certain it was recycled.
That part of your comment is especially ironic. All any plastic recycling amounts to is what those artists were up to. And when you actually see it, you recognise that it's not recycling in any meaningful sense. Yet you still talk about recycling plastic actually being a thing.
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They could have chosen a better packaging type, one that doesn't pollute our waters and end up in our food supply, but they chose not to due to cost. They gambled with our environment and our health in order to try to save themselves money, and when you gamble, sometimes you lose. So it's time for them to pay up. It's only fair.
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They could have chosen a better packaging type, one that doesn't pollute our waters and end up in our food supply, but they chose not to due to cost. They gambled with our environment and our health in order to try to save themselves money, and when you gamble, sometimes you lose. So it's time for them to pay up. It's only fair.
They haven't lost, and they will ultimately win this lawsuit, with attorneys fees assessed. The lawsuit is just a stunt.
As for the rest of your point, what packaging would you prefer, glass? Well, glass is very recyclable, but there's no guaranty it will be recycled either. And it is much heavier than plastic, so that will require more energy to transport it.
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Exactly. Plastic can't be recycled. Glass can, but it's expensive and heavy.
The real answer is to entirely change our society, so that nobody considers buying plastic bottles of coca-cola, because such a thing doesn't even exist anymore. That change will probably happen all by itself anyway.
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How is this the fault of the company that implements recyclable products???? Can we also sue BP for my neighbor pouring oil into his yard???
The bottles are recyclable. The article only points out that they aren't universally recycled.
That is hardly the fault of the company selling the bottled product.
This lawsuit is going nowhere.
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What about those of us who have no choice to recycle? Not every small town, city or county has a recycling program. If I still drank soda, I'd prefer to buy in glass bottles, but that's not a choice anymore. Hell, even beer breweries no longer accept returns on bottles. It's cheaper for them to buy new bottles and have us to throw them away than to collect, clean and reuse them.
I agree that the corporations should bear some of the cost of cleanup, but unfortunately that cost will be passed on to the cos
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Everything has costs. Trying to deny that fact, and trying to blame some people for what is unavoidable, is reprehensible.
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They aren't recyclable. They never were.
We need to hold corporations accountable for the messes they make, and that includes Coke and Pepsi. At the very, very least, they should be required to deal with the waste they create.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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There are no such laws on the books that exclude gun manufacturers from tort law, the only thing that IS on the books is that gun manufacturers do not automatically fall under tort law simply by the fact that they sell guns. Gun manufacturers are responsible for creating a working product and gun owners are responsible for knowing and handling a dangerous tool properly. There are other 'guns' (including bullet-propelled nail guns) across the world, they fire when dropped, their safeties are easy to flick ba
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However, the gun manufacturers/lobby have made it so you cannot sue them even for willful negligence or product safety related issues: Safeties that don't stay engaged/easily disengaged, accidental firing when dropped, etc.
No, they didn't. The sorts of lawsuits you are describing are specifically exempted from the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act as spelled out by 15 U.S. Code 7903(5)(A)(v):
(5)Qualified civil liability action
(A)In general The term “qualified civil liability action” means a civil action or proceeding or an administrative proceeding brought by any person against a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product, or a trade association, for damages, punitive damages, injunctive or declaratory relief, abatement, restitution, fines, or penalties, or other relief, resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a qualified product by the person or a third party, but shall not include—
(v)an action for death, physical injuries or property damage resulting directly from a defect in design or manufacture of the product, when used as intended or in a reasonably foreseeable manner, except that where the discharge of the product was caused by a volitional act that constituted a criminal offense, then such act shall be considered the sole proximate cause of any resulting death, personal injuries or property damage; or...
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and find a way to make recycling the plastic easier and more economically profitable.
Plastic is not currently recyclable at all. Not by any definition that I recognise. A company that sells a product that cannot be recycled, should be required to deal with that waste themselves. Then the problem would be fixed. Maybe Coke might become really expensive, but that would just reflect its true environmental cost. This would not be a bad thing.
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"It's your fault people don't recycle" (Score:4, Funny)
"It’s a bold move Cotton, let’s see if it pays off."
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Seems like they're going for the "attractive nuisance" theory. Pushing disposables is cheaper for them, but drew people away from reuse programs.
People are children.
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Be healthy: No Coke, Pepsi, or other sugary drinks (Score:2, Flamebait)
Also, those drinks are mostly water.
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Also, those drinks are mostly water.
So are you.
Re:Be healthy: No Coke, Pepsi, or other sugary dri (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, those drinks are mostly water.
So are you.
Soft drinks are mostly water with sugar added. Slashdot posters are mostly water with vinegar added.
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Also, those drinks are mostly water.
What beverages other than really hard liquor are not?
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Very good idea (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, they should load up dump trucks with the plastic waste and drop it on the houses the oil execs live in.
Should they be suing municipalities instead? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps they should be suing the municipalities that have been promoting "put your plastics in this blue bin or this plastic crate" for decades with the impression that plastic was mostly recycled. That is where the biggest impression of "this crap is recyclable and is being recycled" came from.
Most of this plastic they are complaining about is recyclable but it's just not economical to do so.
Or, perhaps they should be suing their sibling "environmental" groups that have been promoting ineffective recycling programs for decades and should have known that they were not really effective.
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How much evidence is there that an actual recycling program exists? I think China refusing to accept out trash anymore and nobody else stepping up to the plate is rather the final nail in the coffin of that assertion, but was it EVER true?
My suspicion is that it was never true, but that it was quite difficult to prove when the stuff went out of sight and stopped being tracked. And that the corporations that sold the stuff either knew or had reason to know that it wasn't possible for any small entity to re
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but was it EVER true?
No. It was not.
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Perhaps they should be suing the municipalities that have been promoting "put your plastics in this blue bin or this plastic crate" for decades with the impression that plastic was mostly recycled. That is where the biggest impression of "this crap is recyclable and is being recycled" came from.
Most of this plastic they are complaining about is recyclable but it's just not economical to do so.
Or, perhaps they should be suing their sibling "environmental" groups that have been promoting ineffective recycling programs for decades and should have known that they were not really effective.
Absolutely true. There are some great articles though on the complexity involved in processing recycled goods. Here's one:
https://blog.nationalgeographi... [nationalgeographic.org]
A major problem is people do not actually know the "rules" around what is recyclable. They throw all kinds of things in the bin, a practice some have referred to as "aspirational recycling". Recyclers have started rejected any bin with visible contaminated materials, and they instead end up in the landfill.
Ironically soda and water bottles are probabl
Shouldn't they sue car makers? (Score:2)
I mean, if you look at all the steel, plastic, glass and other materials that are sitting in massive junkyards all over the world. I suspect that the total weight of these piles of rusting junk far outweigh the amount of plastic being produced.
I mean, it's the same, right? Sigh, useless idiots looking for a way to get paid.
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Actually, you may have a point. Not because of the iron and glass, but because of the plastic. The iron and the glass *are* recyclable, and eventually probably will be when the cheaper ores run out. The plastic not so much so. (OTOH, they were never advertised as recyclable.)
Sue the fishing inudustry next? (Score:2)
If you're talking about ocean plastic, the fishing industry is a huge contributor: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/06/dumped-fishing-gear-is-biggest-plastic-polluter-in-ocean-finds-report [theguardian.com].
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I'd be really surprised if that report turned out to be correct. The fishing industry is relatively small.
What I suspect is that they're talking about plastic pieces of a certain size, and not counting, e.g., the micro-plastic fragments that are killing (some varieties) of the plankton.
Sigh, really? (Score:2)
Technically, I'm fuckable.
It doesn't mean that it ever actually happens.
You can't sue someone for telling the truth just because it doesn't mean what you think it means. And especially not when they don't even *claim* to actually recycle them themselves.
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Sidebar: what was so bad about glass? (Score:2)
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Good question.
One thing is that glass is less sustainable than light plastic.
however, plastic is less sustainable than vegetable or sea algae containers.
Maybe dispense it in algae-based containers like those used for the London Marathon?
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Sorry, based my response on a scientific paper on bottling in Sweden and sustainability.
Look, I'm just reporting the facts. Sustainability and long term impact are not necessarily the same thing.
Most of the plastic you're worried about is thrown in rivers in China.
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You are right, though: I seem to recall much so-called 'recyclable' plastic is shipped to China, and it's just been recently that they stopped accepting it, since it just piled up because there wasn't anything
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I have no idea if it's online for free. I got it through Science Direct. If you're an alumni of a state college or university, you can probably access it for free via their services. Found the result quite surprising myself.
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Hey, I didn't write the scientific paper, I'm just reporting what it said. Apparently has something to do with how people there reduce reuse recycle the bottles. Apparently they turn the plastic bottles into boat bumpers, apartment window planters, and even purses.
We on the other hand pretend we recycle stuff and then bury it in landfills, or in Japan burn it.
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Glass is easily recyclable. Why not switch back to it?
Is it necessary to state the very very obvious?
1) Heavy
2) Fragile, producing hazardous sharp shards when broken.
Consumers (Score:2)
Sue the Chinese (Score:2)
They stopped buying "dirty" American plastic to recycle.
Makes no sense (Score:2)
These companies makes recyclable products - they've done their part. Why sue them for what consumers due with the recyclable products afterwards? - Shouldn't you sue the consumers instead? - Of course the consumers don't have a huge pile of money so there's less to be gained...
Wha? (Score:2)
Plastic bottles were the GREENER choice at the time which is why they switched.
I'll bet you a Coke it was for money.
Plastic is far more recyclable than glass bottles and also creates LESS waste.
How so, exactly? When I moved carts of returned glass soda bottles at my first job in the 1980s; those scuffed bottles looked like they had been washed out and refilled dozens of times, if not more. And their cash deposits made them virtually absent from the ground outside.
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Around the time of the Tylenol scare, there were common poisons chemicals that could be put in the bottles that would stay there and toxic through the wash cycle. Then all bottles had to be crushed and remade requiring far more energy than plastic.
Modern equipment is very good at sorting glass bottles by color. Aluminum cans and glass bottles pay for the recycling of everything else. When deposit laws are introduced into communities with good recycling programs, other recycling decreases. My area uses s
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Don't bottle water. Use a fountain or take your own re-usable container from home filled with water and ice if needed. And yes, go back to aluminum containers for all soft drinks.
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If you want to be careful, prefer steel over aluminum. But canteens have a long history of being useful, and can also be made out of leather. (See "bota"...admittedly wine was more popular than water.)
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Go back to glass?
Glass bottles sink straight to the bottom of the ocean for coral to grow on, instead of floating about indefinitely. You may be on to something!
Re: (Score:2)
Plastic is far more recyclable than glass bottles
You actually believe this? There are only two reasons to use plastic over glass, weight and impact resistance.
Glass is inert.
The single serve bottles are the problem here, if you must buy water due to poor tap quality at least go gallon size or larger.
Re: (Score:2)
Plastic is far more recyclable than glass bottles
That statement is false.
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milk bags?
Don't need to bring titties into this!
Re:I kind of agree with this (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this their fault? The bottles are indeed recyclable as promised. How is it those companies fault that the consumer isn't recycling it? Further, how is it their fault that the economics of recycling STILL do not work which means we have more material to recycle than we have capacity?
Maybe we should really sue local governments for shutting down recycling services due to cost? Or maybe State and Federal governments for not better subsidizing recycling? Or maybe the tax payers for not wanting to pay more taxes to cover all the things we should actually be doing?
Where does it stop? For that matter, where does it actually start?
Suing the drink manufactures is just going after a target that has deep pockets and is easy to make people hate. It's not a solution to anything.
Re: (Score:2)
Recyclable
Marketers should qualify recyclable claims when recycling facilities are not available to at least 60 percent of the consumers or communities where a product is sold.
The lower the level of access to appropriate f
Re: (Score:2)
Except that's not like this at all. This is more like, you run a deli, your bread supplier drops off bread that YOU ordered every day. At the end of the day, you toss the bread over the fence and say it's okay because birds will eat it. It's the dead of winter and no birds come to eat the bread. So the government sues your bread supplier. It's stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
Coke and Pepsi say their bottles are recyclable. Why? To induce consumers to buy more of them.
How did you determine this motivates consumers? I think consumers buy products they like.
If the product packaging says "recyclable" they may attempt to do so, especially if local ordinances require it.
Re: (Score:2)
even if their statement about recyclability is 100% true.
...which it isn't...