very relevant article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/15/recycling-plastics-producers-report
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
