The takeaway I'm getting from this article is that individual action alone is not only insufficient to fix the environment, but making matters worse because we're trying to prop up an...
The takeaway I'm getting from this article is that individual action alone is not only insufficient to fix the environment, but making matters worse because we're trying to prop up an unsustainable economic system with green rituals. We need to force change at higher levels, and make hard and unpopular decisions on what can be trusted to market forces, and what must not be trusted to the market.
If I could vote on your post more than once I could....this is the root of the problem. Recycling at the consumer level is little more than a guilt-trip from massive corps and the government to...
If I could vote on your post more than once I could....this is the root of the problem.
Recycling at the consumer level is little more than a guilt-trip from massive corps and the government to reduce waste at the individual level when the focus should be on reducing waste at the corporate level.
One observer blamed the aggressive marketing and promotion of one-way containers for instilling in consumers a habit of discarding beverage containers and, in turn, for declining return rates for refillable bottles [CW, pp. 325]. Declining return rates result in fewer trips per bottle and thus diminish the cost-effectiveness of the refillable bottle. During the period in which the consolidation of the soft-drink industry and the rise of the one-way container occurred, from 1959 to 1969, the average number of trips per refillable bottle dropped from 21 to 14 [BCNC, p. 239]. The one-way container not only liberated consumers from returning bottles, but also liberated retailers from the burden of managing deposit-return systems and bottlers from having to wash and inspect returned bottles
'liberated retailers and bottlers' is shorthand for "we deregulated the corporations so they could make more money, and make the one-way bottle the consumer's problem."
Reminds me of the (little-known, I think) fact that anti-littering campaigns/legislation/etc. were actually led by corporations like packaging manufacturers, Coca-Cola and others, because they...
Reminds me of the (little-known, I think) fact that anti-littering campaigns/legislation/etc. were actually led by corporations like packaging manufacturers, Coca-Cola and others, because they were worried that the government was going to start regulating packaging to force them to generate less garbage. They managed to convert it to being thought of as a problem on the consumer end, where the issue was littering and not the packaging itself.
The article I linked makes the comparison to recycling as well, there definitely seem to be a lot of similarities.
When I was a young teenager living in New York I used to make a decent amount of money (for a kid in 1991) by collecting bottles and cans, bringing them to the local beverage distributor, and...
When I was a young teenager living in New York I used to make a decent amount of money (for a kid in 1991) by collecting bottles and cans, bringing them to the local beverage distributor, and redeeming them. I'd make at least $12 a week doing this, sometimes $25 or so. It was a dirty job, but the money let me buy used albums and books.
The problem I have with this article (which is far from scientific, no idea why this is in ~science) is that the metric the author uses to measure whether recycling works is monetary. I personally...
The problem I have with this article (which is far from scientific, no idea why this is in ~science) is that the metric the author uses to measure whether recycling works is monetary.
Ontario is the only province from which detailed financials are available. In 2016, blue-box collection cost municipalities a total of $347 million, and only about $95 million was recovered from subsequent sales
I personally don't think the goal of recycling is to recover investment, but to invest money to reduce trash and pollute less
Residential recycling itself also comes with a significant environmental footprint of its own, especially tied to transportation and carbon emissions. In some circumstances, recycling could actually end up as an environmental liability. “In rural areas you have trucks going half a kilometre between houses picking up recyclables,” Hoornweg says. “It makes no sense.” Once you tally up the emissions associated with picking up products, sorting them at a mrf, and sending a batch to far-flung end markets, it’s not difficult to imagine that it’s sometimes better to send recycling to the dump.
Yeah, "it's not difficult to imagine", but where's the actual concrete data here? If you're making such a broad argument and make sure to cherry-pick garbage collection in rural areas in support of it, the least you could do is provide the numbers
I'm open to it being moved, but in the absence of an ~ecology or ~environment, it seemed like the best place. This is more of a piece on the public policy of recycling than science to be sure.
I'm open to it being moved, but in the absence of an ~ecology or ~environment, it seemed like the best place. This is more of a piece on the public policy of recycling than science to be sure.
The takeaway I'm getting from this article is that individual action alone is not only insufficient to fix the environment, but making matters worse because we're trying to prop up an unsustainable economic system with green rituals. We need to force change at higher levels, and make hard and unpopular decisions on what can be trusted to market forces, and what must not be trusted to the market.
If I could vote on your post more than once I could....this is the root of the problem.
Recycling at the consumer level is little more than a guilt-trip from massive corps and the government to reduce waste at the individual level when the focus should be on reducing waste at the corporate level.
Here's a decent article explaining the situation: http://refillables.grrn.org/content/americas-experience-refillable-beverage-containers
'liberated retailers and bottlers' is shorthand for "we deregulated the corporations so they could make more money, and make the one-way bottle the consumer's problem."
Reminds me of the (little-known, I think) fact that anti-littering campaigns/legislation/etc. were actually led by corporations like packaging manufacturers, Coca-Cola and others, because they were worried that the government was going to start regulating packaging to force them to generate less garbage. They managed to convert it to being thought of as a problem on the consumer end, where the issue was littering and not the packaging itself.
The article I linked makes the comparison to recycling as well, there definitely seem to be a lot of similarities.
OMG I was trying to find this exact article. Thank you for posting it!
That is a fantastic article and I have never even considered that. What can people do against such massive, orchestrated campaigns?
When I was a young teenager living in New York I used to make a decent amount of money (for a kid in 1991) by collecting bottles and cans, bringing them to the local beverage distributor, and redeeming them. I'd make at least $12 a week doing this, sometimes $25 or so. It was a dirty job, but the money let me buy used albums and books.
The problem I have with this article (which is far from scientific, no idea why this is in ~science) is that the metric the author uses to measure whether recycling works is monetary.
I personally don't think the goal of recycling is to recover investment, but to invest money to reduce trash and pollute less
Yeah, "it's not difficult to imagine", but where's the actual concrete data here? If you're making such a broad argument and make sure to cherry-pick garbage collection in rural areas in support of it, the least you could do is provide the numbers
I'm open to it being moved, but in the absence of an ~ecology or ~environment, it seemed like the best place. This is more of a piece on the public policy of recycling than science to be sure.
~enviro exists now! And it looks like deimos already moved it.
Welp, that's what I get for Ctrl+F'ing "environment".