alt.hn

5/20/2026 at 6:50:59 PM

Tracking Starbucks' 'widely recyclable' cups: none ended up at recycling

 https://www.beyondplastics.org/press-releases/starbucks-cups-recyclable-report

by theanonymousone

5/20/2026 at 7:37:57 PM

There's a lot to unpack here. None of this is serious methodology. It's more of a PR statement.

From their raw data, the 36 tests came from a much smaller handful of stores in urban locations - in reality it's a much smaller sample size. 8 alone came from urban New York. 6 came from a single Starbucks location in Olympia, WA.

They jump to the conclusion that a transfer center means it's bound for landfill or incinerator. But I have literally been to one of the transfer centers they have listed here and they absolutely process recycling there.

They admit 3 were sent to specific recycling baling facilities... and they just didn't count them because they didn't feel like it?

Then there's this weird statement:

> "PureCycle's Ironton, Ohio, plant claims to recycle polypropylene through so-called "chemical recycling,” but Beyond Plastics does not consider chemical recycling to be recycling given that most of the plastic these facilities accept is not actually recycled but turned into fossil fuels or feedstocks using high heat or chemicals. It's a distraction that has failed for decades and is allowing companies to exponentially increase plastic production while polluting low-income communities and communities of color with hazardous waste and toxic air pollution."

Ignoring the white-knighting, it's weird to make the claim that recycling a petroleum-based product into it's obvious petroleum use case doesn't count.

The biggest problem though is that the outcomes for a paper cup are probably worse. All paper cups will be incinerated or sent to a landfill.

by legitster

5/20/2026 at 8:36:35 PM

> All paper cups will be incinerated or sent to a landfill.

Is that surprising? Or "bad" somehow? Paper cups cannot realistically be recycled in any meaningful way. Paper is famously not waterproof, so cups are lined with either plastic or wax. This saturates the fibers in a way that cannot realistically be reversed. Such contaminated fibers can't be used as feedstock, the polymers mess up downstream processes.

The best possible outcome is biodegrading in compost or landfill. Which realistically releases almost as much CO2 as burning.

Wax lined paper cups will fully biodegrade on short timescales. That's literally the best possible outcome for any single-use item. It's not a flaw or a drawback, it's the goal.

by vitally3643

5/20/2026 at 10:28:47 PM

The surprising and bad part is that Starbucks is making people think they are recycled so that they can get credit for helping the planet. They should be shamed into not claiming this if it isn't true.

by reverius42

5/20/2026 at 8:33:54 PM

The study looks more like an advocacy stunt than a rigorous audit, but it still points at a real problem: recyclability labels often describe theoretical acceptance, not likely end fate

by KurSix

5/20/2026 at 8:00:40 PM

Burning paper is not the same as burning plastic.

by InsideOutSanta

5/20/2026 at 8:34:54 PM

and paper in a landfill is just fine.

by dec0dedab0de

5/20/2026 at 8:49:13 PM

Carbon negative, in fact!

by jauntywundrkind

5/21/2026 at 2:37:27 PM

do you want petroleum? because thats how you get petroleum

by red-iron-pine

5/20/2026 at 9:50:06 PM

I swear for a moment I thought you mean like putting paper in a soil/landfill, a tree will come up :)

by joering2

5/20/2026 at 7:42:33 PM

> not actually recycled but turned into fossil fuels or feedstocks

This is such a great claim.

by jstanley

5/20/2026 at 7:48:51 PM

Turning plastics back into their feedstocks is literally the most straightforward form of recycling.

by legitster

5/20/2026 at 10:11:22 PM

Yes, using some material once is worse than getting two uses out of it.

by HDBaseT

5/20/2026 at 11:28:25 PM

We all know most of these wax paper and plastic Starbucks cups aren’t really recycled…it’s always been wish-cycled anyway :)

by corranh

5/20/2026 at 7:37:36 PM

> Beyond Plastics placed 53 Bluetooth-enabled trackers inside single-use polypropylene cold cups and dropped them into in-store recycling bins at 35 Starbucks locations across nine states and Washington, D.C. Of the 36 trackers that returned usable data, none pinged from a recycling facility.

This is an obvious methodology problem, no? Bluetooth-enabled trackers are not recyclable, so they ended up in the correct place.

These trackers probably had CR2032 batteries that could damage a shredder, would pollute the resulting pulp, and could easily be pulled out of the mixed recyclables stream by a magnet.

Whether or not the cup itself made it to a recycling facility is not something this experiment actually tested for. All they know is the tracker didn't make it. The system appears to be working as expected.

by hamdingers

5/20/2026 at 7:39:35 PM

If you look at the raw data they provided, more than half of them just stop transmitting while on the highway.

Some they can arguably prove were probably on the way to a landfill. But "none pinged from a recycling facility" is doing a LOT of heavy lifting.

by legitster

5/20/2026 at 8:35:16 PM

Yet it still seems like decent evidence that the consumer-facing story is much simpler than the actual recycling path

by KurSix

5/20/2026 at 7:48:13 PM

My local Starbucks offers a 10 cents discount and extra loyalty points for bringing your own cup. I've started bringing an insulated one that keeps coffee hot for longer & doesn't sweat with an iced beverage. I seldom see others bringing their own cups, even regulars I see there every week, even when Starbucks themselves sell reusable cups. It is almost like there is a weird stigma about handing the barista something that doesn't come from behind the counter. I encourage trying it, especially if you visit the same coffee shop habitually like I do.

by andreimackenzie

5/20/2026 at 9:58:36 PM

To be more effective, all drink prices should be reduced by 10 cents, then a 10 cent surcharge added for every disposable cup. The price remains the same for all customers, but the extra line item reveals the external costs.

by lapetitejort

5/20/2026 at 9:12:42 PM

If I'm going to use my own cup I just bring coffee from home in it.

Personally, when I get a coffee to-go, I want a disposable cup so that I don't have to carry it around for the rest of the day.

by kube-system

5/21/2026 at 1:56:50 AM

Fair enough. I use plenty of disposable stuff in other contexts.

The habitual part is what makes a difference for me with my local coffee shop. I usually walk over around midday when I WFH, mostly to move around and re-energize for the second half of the day. Since I know I will be coming right home after, it is easy for me to adjust my ritual to include the cup.

by andreimackenzie

5/20/2026 at 9:26:29 PM

Bringing your own cup is also healthier, because paper cup linings are made of plastic that when exposed to hot liquids are likely to turn into microplastics.

My rule is: 1) keep hot stuff away from plastic, and 2) assume everything is/has plastic unless you know for certain.

by npunt

5/20/2026 at 10:18:16 PM

Reusable cups might be healthier assuming regular cleaning in the bottle, mouthpiece and lid.

by HDBaseT

5/20/2026 at 8:17:34 PM

I wonder how much of it comes down to inconvenience. I've been bringing my own thermos for a year or so now and it took me some time to get used to the ritual of scrubbing it with soap and a bottle brush after use every day - at first I found it inconvenient enough that it made me want to just get paper cups.

Now it's a nice little ritual and I am used to the advantages of bringing my own insulated container with a lid - I can carry it back with groceries or do other errands without worrying about my drink spilling or getting cold.

FWIW I do occasionally see other people at my local coffee shop show up with their own mugs, but I agree that it's quite rare.

by kg

5/20/2026 at 8:33:48 PM

[dead]

by expedition32

5/20/2026 at 8:36:09 PM

I think the habit/friction part is underrated

by KurSix

5/21/2026 at 7:12:37 AM

I would hope it's a health code violation for a food processing employees to handle something given to them by a customer while processing food without either changing gloves or washing hands.

by Freedumbs

5/20/2026 at 6:59:13 PM

This doesn't surprise me, almost no municipality in the US will recycle number 5 plastics. Why Starbucks says they're "widely recyclable" is a mystery but it certainly seems an effort at deceptive greenwashing.

by malfist

5/20/2026 at 7:28:48 PM

Starbucks HQ city Seattle, WA accepts all plastic numbers in the curbside bin.

by mulmen

5/20/2026 at 9:01:52 PM

Most municipal recycling programs accept a lot of materials they do not currently recycle because retraining people is harder than sorting materials on their end, and not necessary since they sort it anyway.

After sorting they look for buyers of the raw materials. This varies depending on the market and quality of the material. Everything left over is sent to the landfill.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 9:54:49 PM

Do you have a source for this? I'd like to learn more and educate myself on this topic rather than stay ignorant

by samkxu

5/20/2026 at 8:08:23 PM

But does Seattle actually recycle all the plastic numbers? There are a number of places where all plastic numbers are accepted in the bin, but some (and sometimes all, depending on market conditions) of them are thrown into the trash later. The logic is that, overall, plastic recycling can be increased by not requiring people to decipher the codes.

by JohnFen

5/20/2026 at 7:35:52 PM

My local Starbucks has 2 bins for recyclables and trash with little images about what to put in each bin. Many customers look at them, think, and put them in the right bin. Most just throw them in the middle trash bin.

At the end of the night, all three bins go into the same dumpster, they recycle nothing there.

by rileymat2

5/20/2026 at 11:24:00 PM

Depends where you are. It says compostable or recyclable as the only options near me, but a google image search for "starbucks trash can" will show a lot of variation.

by nitwit005

5/20/2026 at 7:38:09 PM

My gut feeling is this should be illegal. It's something like false advertising.

by themafia

5/20/2026 at 8:00:22 PM

It should also be illegal when municipalities do it.

Just because the city offers a recycling pickup, doesn't mean most of it actually gets recycled.

by legitster

5/20/2026 at 8:54:36 PM

I'm a recycling critic, but no, it shouldn't -- because while the market for recycling feed fluctuates, consumer habits take decades to change. If we come up for an excellent recycling solution for plastics in the next 20 years, but we have to re-build municipal recycling programs from scratch, it'll be 80 years before it's going at full steam.

Also some material like aluminum are very valuable to recycle even if we're throwing plastic in the trash.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 7:40:43 PM

It is questionable, I assume they are using standard corporate products and our local rural-ish area does not have very good options.

by rileymat2

5/20/2026 at 7:44:48 PM

Most recycling in retail contexts is pure theater either way, so why expend the effort to actually separate streams that will inevitable be combined later.

by semiquaver

5/20/2026 at 7:31:45 PM

Landfills really aren't that bad. modern landfills have multiple layers of lining to prevent leaking into water supplies and soil. After they are full, they are covered with earth and can become usable land. Their gases have to be managed (can be burned for electricity or processed in other ways) but overall putting trash in the ground and covering it seems alright to me. The amount of land that you actually need isn't that much too.

by steviedotboston

5/20/2026 at 7:45:08 PM

Hear me out:

Single use plastics are a carbon sequestration technology.

We take oil out of the ground, and instead of burning it we turn it into a solid and bury it again.

Something like 30% of the oil we consume never ends up getting burned. While that's probably not a 30% reduction in CO2 gasses, the price pressure plastics put on fossil fuels is not negligible.

by legitster

5/20/2026 at 8:44:34 PM

I guess so, but it seems to me it would be far more efficient to use already-above-ground materials (there are loads of them floating in the ocean!) and leave the oil in the ground.

by remyp

5/20/2026 at 9:17:23 PM

Yes, if those material are, in fact, usable. For most types of plastics, recyclability is technically problematic.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 10:40:30 PM

here's an even crazier idea

when oil prices were negative, why didn't environmental enthusiasts figure out how to buy (that is, be paid to receive) a ton of oil, take delivery, and simply not use it? they could bury it right back into the ground, no?

look, there are unlimited stupid fucking ideas.

by doctorpangloss

5/20/2026 at 11:23:10 PM

Oil prices were negative because there was nowhere to store it. It’s doubtful the delivery terminal of the pipeline would allow you to discharge your oil in their facility.

by quickthrowman

5/20/2026 at 7:34:55 PM

The point is that we may not have plastic forever. Oil is a finite resource. An easy, cheap replacement hasn't been found yet. Either we abide by reducing and reusing (where we should be focused), or we should actually recycle.

by lapetitejort

5/20/2026 at 7:39:29 PM

PLA plastic as commonly used in 3d printers comes from plant materials not oil. We know how to make any plastic from pure CO2 (and whatever else needed for the atoms) - however the massive amount of energy needed to do so makes it uneconomical.

by bluGill

5/20/2026 at 8:06:39 PM

Also celluloid (made from cellulose), which I was pretty surprised to learn is about 170 years old. Plastics from oil were mostly invented after WWI and took off during WWII, but they had some kinds before that.

by alnwlsn

5/20/2026 at 9:08:02 PM

The catalysts used in industrial PLA manufacturing processes use chemicals derived from propane.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 10:22:27 PM

Oil is a finite resource, although we keep finding new deposits so the numbers on "we only have 10 years left!" tend to be hyperbolic.

With our current exposure, it is estimated that 40-50 years worth of oil remains, although there is likely to be new locations found and an overall reduction of oil usage in the coming years.

by HDBaseT

5/20/2026 at 11:39:19 PM

We will have plastics forever.

It will become more expensive when we have to pay for the energy embedded in it, but the difference is not significative on almost any end-product.

by marcosdumay

5/21/2026 at 7:14:44 AM

Depends where you are. Some places in the US have decided to use landfills to store radioactive waste openly.

by Freedumbs

5/20/2026 at 7:12:42 PM

Slightly related, but my town has sent out several flyers recently chastising everyone for recycling things that aren't recyclable. If this overambitious recycling continues, the privilege of recycling itself shall be taken away. Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle (my wife and I are guilty of recycling cleaned jars of spaghetti sauce); certain types of plastic; and pizza boxes that are "too greasy" (unclear how greasy "too greasy" is).

by nozzlegear

5/20/2026 at 7:16:58 PM

IIRC any grease is considered a contaminate. So any cardboard with grease splotching should be discarded instead of recycled.

Interesting my municipality recycles glass, but like, why? Silica is the most common mineral in the crust, easily accessible almost everywhere, and recycling it takes as much energy if not more than just making new. It's not like aluminum or steel where there are significant energy savings to recycling vs mining and refining.

by malfist

5/20/2026 at 7:34:54 PM

> it takes as much energy if not more than just making new.

It saves 30% of the energy inputs to reuse slightly contaminated glass, especially when done locally.

That's ignoring the energy inputs of mining and delivering the silica.

https://learn.sustainability-directory.com/learn/what-are-th...

by smileysteve

5/20/2026 at 7:23:10 PM

> and recycling it takes as much energy if not more than just making new.

It's just melted, mixed and reused, AFAIK. We're recycling glass since forever (maybe mid 90s), and the recycling bins were put out by our national glassware company.

They even have a special line built with these, recycled glasses, which I don't remember the name. They also have a "upcycle" line where they repurpose their fine but not perfect items to other things. Both are excellent lines and are not more expensive than their usual wares.

by bayindirh

5/20/2026 at 8:29:33 PM

> We're recycling glass since forever (maybe mid 90s)

Far, far earlier than the '90s. Glass has been regularly recycled from the early days of glassmaking itself. It's crushed up into "cullet" and mixed back in.

Glass is great for this because it doesn't degrade from being remelted and reformed, and using cullet reduces the cost of energy and new raw materials when making new glass.

by JohnFen

5/20/2026 at 9:01:11 PM

> Far, far earlier than the '90s. Glass has been regularly recycled from the early days of glassmaking itself.

You’re absolutely right. I meant recycling as ordinary citizens in my country with that date.

by bayindirh

5/20/2026 at 7:25:25 PM

I've seen articles lately about the sand becoming harder (more expensive) to get. Even though it is abundant, it is not necessarily clean. It still needs to be refined similar to other raw ores. If the glass has already been made, I would expect the contaminants are easier to eliminate from crushing and melting it back down.

by dylan604

5/20/2026 at 7:28:11 PM

Talking out of my ass, but I think that's only for concrete right? Same reason saudi arabia imports sand for their construction projects.

by malfist

5/20/2026 at 8:47:36 PM

Not sure. I've never really read the articles. The headlines tend to be from sites that lean a little further that I'm willing to read normally. Search assist AI suggested it was even for glass bottles, but I don't trust anything an AI suggests as it could be sourcing from the same places.

by dylan604

5/20/2026 at 9:36:49 PM

If you're just reading headlines (from any news source), then you're likely misinforming yourself. Headlines are advertisements, not summaries of the articles, and are frequently misleading. At the very least, keep in mind that the headlines are not written by the article's author(s), they're written by editors whose only goal is to get you to read the article.

by JohnFen

5/21/2026 at 12:05:37 AM

Yes, and looking at the source of the headline tells me a lot about the type of editors they do or do not have which does not change my original statement that I don't bother reading certain sites. Sure, I said their leaning, but that's not the only thing that is used. But that wasn't really germane to the conversation, but now you've changed the topic.

by dylan604

5/20/2026 at 7:22:30 PM

> Unwanted elements include any kind of glass or glass bottle

?? Isn't this one of the most recyclable materials there is? Even aluminum cans come with contaminants that can't be removed by the consumer.

Regardless, at least you can easily reuse glass jars for home use. I find they make excellent drinking glasses and the reusable lid is a nice perk.

by throwaway27448

5/20/2026 at 9:25:06 PM

> Isn't this one of the most recyclable materials there is

It is! ... if it's unbroken, sorted by type, and in a place where there's demand for it.

Unfortunately, those advantages are often compromised by the recycling pipeline itself. Bottles of different types are thrown into trucks, and become unsafe shards of glass that are unsafe to handle and difficult to sort by type. It quickly becomes more trouble than it is worth given that the alternative is sand.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 7:24:44 PM

Only if there is a local glass processing facility + consumer (e.g. large brewery, etc) is it worthwhile.

by chris_va

5/20/2026 at 8:49:54 PM

That's what I thought as well! I was surprised, and a little bit annoyed, to learn that they would prefer we throw away anything glass rather than recycle it.

by nozzlegear

5/20/2026 at 7:28:11 PM

It takes more energy and work to reuse glass than to just make new glass. Sand is abundant.

Recycled aluminum is much less energy intensive than new aluminum even with contaminants.

by wffurr

5/20/2026 at 7:36:35 PM

Glass is 30% cheaper to make from recycled glass.

But transport and sorting (glass is hard and sharp) eat into that margin, so presort

by smileysteve

5/20/2026 at 7:55:33 PM

Is that true if the bottle is reused several times?

I know that in some places they standardize the glass beer bottles to one or two types and strongly encourage people to bring the bottles back to the same location that they get beer from.

This results in a circular supply chain that sees bottles sterilized and reused many times. The number I heard was an average of 8 uses on average before a bottle gets a chip in it that renders it unsuitable for reuse, and then it is recycled.

It seems to me that this tight distribution loop is a key part of successful reuse and recycling endeavours.

by Teever

5/20/2026 at 9:30:19 PM

Yeah it is very cheap and viable to wash/reuse bottles, but this requires special handling and isn't compatible with the single-stream systems widely used in the US.

In the US we throw everything into a truck and we expect recyclers to sort and re-melt a bunch of broken shards of assorted glass.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 7:18:45 PM

At least pizza boxes can go in the yard waste bin to be taken to the industrial composter. My yard waste bin came with a sticker that actively encourages putting food soiled paper in it.

by galleywest200

5/20/2026 at 7:28:53 PM

You say that like that's a thing available every where. it's not. I compost my lawn clippings and food scraps, but I don't go so far as to put in cardboard type stuff in there. As for the greasy parts, it's usually just the bottom, so I've ripped off the top for adding to recycle and trashed the greasy part. But even that's more than most people would be willing to do

by dylan604

5/20/2026 at 7:29:21 PM

if only I had one in my area... where they exist use them, but they don't exit in a lot of places.

by bluGill

5/20/2026 at 7:39:59 PM

Strange, ours explicitly called out pizza boxes as being recyclable. I wonder what the difference is.

by bombcar

5/20/2026 at 9:55:17 PM

But do they get recycled? Or do they get burnt or mixed in with useful material and shipped off to be thrown in a river in SEA?

Also, some of pizzas I get have a separate circle piece they sit on and the box doesn't get any grease on it.

by coryrc

5/20/2026 at 7:24:53 PM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wishcycling

Some accounts I've seen emphasized the "don't check it, don't think about it, don't look bad, don't feel bad" performative and self-delusion aspects.

by bell-cot

5/20/2026 at 8:57:57 PM

I only recently learned that term, but I used to do "wishcycling" myself years ago. I figured if I wasn't sure it could be recycled, they'd know for sure at the recycling plant and sort it out there.

I partly blame an old Discovery Channel episode I watched as a teenager (probably Dirty Jobs?), which highlighted a line of men standing in front of a conveyer belt at some kind of recycling or garbage plant, manually sorting things out of the waste by hand before the bulk of it got dumped into a huge vat of treatment water. The impression it left on me was that there's always a bunch of dudes at the conveyer belt who were going to check and make sure nothing unrecyclable went into the recycling process.

by nozzlegear

5/20/2026 at 7:20:50 PM

Visited a recycling facility recently. It’s a private company that covers an entire county in California. They filter the garbage wit people and a big machine and seem to get paid by companies abroad to ship them all recyclable materials - plastics, cardboard, metals, glass. That pays enough to keep them in business for decades. Someone really needs to look at where the materials from our garbage go.

by dzink

5/20/2026 at 7:30:40 PM

I toured a sorting facility in Seattle recently. They said the only really profitable output is aluminum, everything else costs more than virgin material.

by synack

5/20/2026 at 8:04:14 PM

I worked at a plastic furniture manufacturer in Indiana for a few projects.

They got paid to accept bales of recycled "HDPE" that they could mix at between 10 and 30% into their virgin materials. They get paid to accept it! Negative profit for the waste management company, pure profit for the "user".

This worked best on black, coffee, slate grey, mahogany - you get the idea - the whites and tans and bright colors were basically pure virgin material (and their own internally-recycled offcuts of dyed virgin materials of matching colors) even though their FAQ states:

> What percentage of recycled materials are used?

> The percentage of recycled materials in our lumber can vary depending on the availability of post-consumer and post-industrial plastics. We continuously strive to maximize the use of recycled content in every piece of lumber.

Personally, I don't think that the fact that you started with pure virgin material, extruded some plastic, cut it up and used most of it, but put some of what was virgin material a few hours ago back into the grinder and extruder makes the resulting plastic "recycled".

by LeifCarrotson

5/20/2026 at 9:36:53 PM

That says a lot, doesn't it? HDPE is one of the most recyclable plastics and recycling feedstock still has a negative market value.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 8:36:52 PM

It's 100% recycling, if the alternative was just "throw away the excess". For all practical purposes, recycling just means "repurposing material that you would have otherwise sent to a landfill".

by ethanrutherford

5/20/2026 at 7:57:36 PM

My understanding is that glass gets downcycled into a lot of products like concrete or asphalt or aggregates. It's not profitable, but it's really easy to provide at a low loss.

by legitster

5/20/2026 at 8:57:20 PM

Yeah when you see `-able` suffix the implied presumption is that it isn't happening. And if you are familiar with the green-washing of the plastics industry in the US, and the economics of the recycling infrastructure of the US, you already knew this was the case, as is the case for most plastic.

Highly recommend this podcast for those who still spend time sorting plastic into their recycling bin:

https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 9:42:21 PM

The argument can be made, and I’m basically right there, is that we shouldn’t be recycling any plastics period. The energy, waste water, micro plastic production, toxic chemicals, etc involved in any plastic recycling that it is so much worse than simply throwing all Plastic into landfills and use virgin plastic for when you need to use it. The micro plastic pollution that is produced through plastic recycling is astonishing

And that’s only the plastic that isn’t shipped to third world countries to be piled up in their countryside

by Aboutplants

5/20/2026 at 9:45:40 PM

We are already burning coal for power generation, whether we like it or not. I have wondered why we don't "recycle" plastic by shoveling it into the same furnace and a) get some energy out of it, and b) solve the landfill problem. That should be carbon neutral, since burning X tons of plastic is X tons of coal we didn't burn.

by notact

5/20/2026 at 9:55:46 PM

You mean https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incineration?

At family gatherings here it's a typical argument for why there's allegedly no point separating out plastics: the recycling bin allegedly also ends up there. Nobody ever has a source for me though so take that for what it's worth, but it seems to generally be a thing

by lucb1e

5/20/2026 at 10:24:55 PM

TIL incineration can involve power generation. I am familiar with the term, but had assumed incineration was basically endothermic and wasteful.

by notact

5/21/2026 at 7:18:39 AM

So close. If we shouldn't be recycling them, why not walk back up the chain to the start? Plastics are useful, but should be regulated and used in moderation. Ideally, we would use aluminum instead as that seems to be recyclable, but i assume most cans are coated with some sort of plastic on the inside anyway.

by Freedumbs

5/20/2026 at 10:04:23 PM

We need to change the law to reduce regulations and introduce a principle of unlimited liability instead.

These things have to be fixed at the incentive layer. Self-regulation is the best form of regulation, by far.

Any discarded plastic found outside of a landfill should be tallied and result in a fine for the company which produced the plastic.

If a person is caught discarding a plastic bottle (littering), they should receive a fine as normal but the company should also be fined a portion of the liability.

The company knows very well that some percentage of the plastic they sell will end up in nature. They know this for a fact... And yet they choose to keep producing plastic packaging when cleaner alternatives exist; I.e. tin cans and glass bottles.

We've been completely brainwashed by the cult of 'limited liability'. It's a horrible idea. The words themselves tell you everything. Right there in front of your face. The liability is limited... It means the liability is externalized. This construct should never have been allowed.

Now with AI and the externalized harms which will result from it, this construct is more important than ever. Lives are at stake.

Once we start assigning partial liability to every harm. Eventually, we'll be able to collectively identify all of them; they will become so rare that they will stand out like a sore thumb.

Imagine; all the people who are currently messing up the political system with useless bureaucracy and toxic ideologies could actually be useful to society. Instead of identifying each other's genders, orientations and emotional triggers, they could be identifying social and environmental harms and holding companies accountable.

by jongjong

5/20/2026 at 10:06:11 PM

Tried this once as well with plastic filler material that said you should visit some website to find a place that takes it back for reuse, and the website referred me to ask the merchant instead

The merchant (who produces the product and fills the boxes from the same country as where I live) ended up finding an answer: the manufacturer does not yet do this in europe

How is this legal to print on your product if you don't offer the service anywhere on the continent...

by lucb1e

5/20/2026 at 8:22:00 PM

Corporations aren't recycling the stuff they say they are recycling.

World except America: I'm going to legally mandate what they do.

Americans: I'm going to get mad at the abstract concept of recycling.

by ZeroGravitas

5/20/2026 at 9:53:30 PM

Plastics recycling is fundamentally a technological issue. Europe doesn't have any magical technology that the US doesn't have. PET is the only plastic for which there is any industrial process that exists anywhere on the planet for closed-loop recycling.

Europe has great rates of recycling collection, but processing remains just as much of a problem there as it does anywhere in the global market for recycled plastic. Quite a bit of recycling that is collected does not actually end up being recycled.

Furthermore, Europe's recycling rate has declined over the past decade? Why? Probably the same difficulties that the entire globe faces -- China stopped allowing "recycling" imports because much of it ended up in the Yangtze. Now, a lot of the "recycling exports" are sent to countries in Africa with the same issues. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2018/06/90-of-plastic-pollut...

The reality is that the promises made by recycling companies in developing nations that accept the western world's recycling are not very rigorous to say the least. Much of your recycling sent to Africa is picked through for the most valuable stuff and the rest is burned or dumped.

by kube-system

5/21/2026 at 7:14:57 AM

> The EU recycled an average of 246 kg per person in 2023. This means that 48.0% of the total amount of municipal waste generated was recycled, compared with 37.2% in 2013 (199 kg per person).

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/d...

Also, Starbucks apparently introduced a different compostible cup in the EU just as new rules took effect after promising for 20 years to introduce them

https://packagingeurope.com/news/starbucks-to-roll-out-home-...

They also have stronger regulations about making claims like "widely recyclable" without evidence.

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/circular-economy-top...

Maybe the magical technology is the regulations we made along the way.

by ZeroGravitas

5/21/2026 at 2:16:55 PM

That 48% includes materials sent to overseas "recyclers" who are notorious for burning it or dumping it in the ocean.

https://www.ban.org/plastic-waste-project-hub/trade-data/eu-...

Don't get me wrong, the EU does a great job at reducing waste. But plastics recycling is primarily false propoganda created by petroleum and plastics industries in the 1970s. Most plastics are not meaningfully recyclable.

Those recycling symbols you see on the bottom of your bottle was invented by a US plastics industry lobbying group as propaganda to make you think all of the plastic you put in your recycling bin is being recycled.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/

by kube-system

5/21/2026 at 5:04:03 PM

I refer you to my first comment:

Are you regulating the companies that did all this propaganda to make them either do it or shut up?

Or are you getting angry at the abstract concept of recycling?

You keep talking about plastic recycling, but the EU rules made Starbucks stop using plastic for these cups! In America they use a hard to recycle plastic and lie about it to their customers.

Make the corporations pay for it with Extended Producer Responsibility laws and they'll use less plastic. They'll make what they do use easier to recycle. Because it will cost them money if they don't.

If the companies ship stuff abroad and that's bad then ban it. Like the EU has done.

https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...

> The new Regulation on waste shipments entered into force on 20 May 2024. It aims to:

> Ensure that the EU does not export its waste challenges to third countries and contributes to environmentally sound management of waste.

> Strengthen enforcement to prevent illegal shipments of waste occurring within the EU, as well as from the EU to third countries.

> Increase traceability of waste shipments within the EU and facilitate recycling and reuse.

by ZeroGravitas

5/21/2026 at 6:09:07 PM

My beef is specifically with plastics recycling. Aluminum/steel recycling is, for example, a very real thing.

The issue with "plastics recycling" is that it mostly doesn't exist. The plastics industry wants people to think it exists so that they don't realize the only real solution to plastic waste is to ban single-use plastics.

> If the companies ship stuff abroad and that's bad then ban it. Like the EU has done.

> Regulation on waste shipments entered into force on 20 May 2024.

First of all, as that page says, they didn't ban it, they implemented new regulations on it. And the impetus for those new regulations was, as I said above, the realization that foreign "recyclers" are not recycling, they are dumping/burning/etc.

Unfortunately, those new regulations will probably make no difference, because guess what? The EU is allowing the exporters themselves to commission their own audits.

Now, they could have banned exports entirely, but they didn't. And the reason they didn't is because they can't do it domestically. And they can't do it domestically because the technology to recycle them at industrial scale doesn't exist.. The entire concept is built on fraud.

There is only one type of plastic that can be recycled closed-loop at industrial scale: PET. Literally every other plastic mathematically is guaranteed to create waste. Even other plastics deemed "highly recyclable" at best require 80-90% virgin feedstock, and so the total possible amount you can recycle is only 10-20% of what is produced.

There are multiple solutions to "plastics recycling" and all of the answer are "do something else", e.g.: switch to a different material, incinerate, sequester in a landfill, ban their use, etc.

by kube-system

5/20/2026 at 7:12:16 PM

Wow, surprising that it was zero. Is there a chance that the cup was being separated from the tracker at a sorting facility with the cup going to a different destination than the tracker?

by torgoguys

5/20/2026 at 8:44:57 PM

they said they had 53 trackers and only 36 "returned usable data" so theoretically some of those unaccounted for 17 could have been recycled... I mean they don't know what happened to them. I think they could have at least highlighted that in the article.

by tofuziggy

5/20/2026 at 7:18:07 PM

I've heard of this before. Activists put trackers on recyclables and the automatic sorter removes them because they have metal, and the activist gets outraged that the item went to the trash.

by gosub100

5/20/2026 at 7:11:22 PM

I started throwing everything in the garbage except aluminum over the past couple of years. Better off in a US landfill than shipped of to asia and dumped in the ocean.

by t1234s

5/20/2026 at 7:41:29 PM

Asia stopped taking our semi-recyclable waste a few years back, which is how all this greenwashing was exposed

by tadfisher

5/20/2026 at 8:18:25 PM

Though specifically they would have welcomed sorted recyclables, but for whatever reason the US seemed entirely unable to correctly label the goods being shipped and were just shipping mixed trash and claiming it was something else.

by ZeroGravitas

5/21/2026 at 1:29:28 AM

I never knew how much energy was involved in creating aluminum from bauxite until I watched How It's Made S01E01 years ago. It looks like they were bulldozing just as much coal into the adjacent power plant as bauxite into the factory. Recycling this stuff makes sense.

by t1234s

5/20/2026 at 7:33:34 PM

Does your municipality offer composting? That's where a lot of my waste paper ends up.

by mulmen

5/20/2026 at 7:17:32 PM

I hate to agree but you're basically right. If we switched everything disposable (glass, plastic, paper) into an aluminum version of itself, the world would be a much better place. Aluminum pizza boxes and Amazon shipments would be weird, and would probably need rounded corners (hello iPhone designers going into box design at retirement) but they would be 100.000% recyclable.

by 1970-01-01

5/20/2026 at 7:32:12 PM

Would they? Aluminum needs a lot of energy to melt and then reform into something new. Since the alloy is not known they need to refine the different metals out just to ensure that they get the correct alloy for the user. Mining Al uses a lot more energy.

That is I suspect the total damage from new plastic is less than recycled Al. Someone needs to find numbers to verify this of course.

by bluGill

5/20/2026 at 7:51:45 PM

I've wondered about this because I've heard the same thing from my partner - in Engineering school in Spain, she was told that waste aluminium as a building material should be avoided because it was so expensive to recycle. But we recycle aluminium here in New Zealand - perhaps it's something to do with being able to use green energy at night (New Zealand has abundant hydro power)?

by PlunderBunny

5/20/2026 at 8:29:49 PM

Al uses a lot of energy. Recycling is much less than uses to get it from mining.

I've never heard of anyone using aluminum for a building (though I'm sure it has been done) - the properties in general make it a poor choice (see a real meteorologist for details - alloy matters and there are many choices). Al is commonly used for the skin of a building, but not the structural parts.

Al is commonly made where energy is cheap (generally renewable energy!) and then transported around the world. I have no idea what is in Spain or New Zealand, but I'd expect someone in Spain is making things with Al, and they in turn will be glad to recycle anything you can get to them.

by bluGill

5/20/2026 at 8:11:39 PM

Aluminium is a really bad container for aciduous food stuff. You need a good plastic liner in the cans to handle it. So it is absolutely not a perfect container.

The problem is the packaging not the recycling.

by emj

5/20/2026 at 11:13:53 PM

If we had arbitrary energy to spend it would be great, but it takes a massive amount of money to purify from ore, and a still significant amount to scrap into new material, especially with high surface area aluminum like cans and boxes. Iron is the easiest energy win, but you also have to deal with corrosion and rust.

by AngryData

5/20/2026 at 8:29:35 PM

The distinction between "accepted for recycling" and "actually recycled" is doing a lot of work here

by KurSix

5/20/2026 at 7:23:33 PM

Recycling has largely been a virtue signal act for decades.

Not saying people do it only to virtue signal, they just don't realize the net positive effect is very, very low.

Driving an electric vehicle (instead of ICE), on the other hand? Actually quite a large impact that 1 person can make.

by Rover222

5/20/2026 at 8:46:28 PM

Glass is easily recyclable if you want to- my country has been doing so since the 1970s. Metals also. Paper no problemo.

Plastics? You're fucked. There's no money in it. Takes too much efffort. Contamination with food.

by TitaRusell

5/21/2026 at 7:10:15 AM

People are nit picking methodology when it's not even possible to recycle #5. Just throw it in the trash, there's no point wish-cycling. It only messes up the machines that shred and recycle the plastics that are recyclable (#s 1 and 2).

by Freedumbs

5/20/2026 at 7:24:54 PM

All this greenwashing effort by big brands are laughable. The cost of actually recycle any used cups would far exceed the cost to manufacture them. When just the act of using those cups has already give them all the "environmentally aware" credit, why would they bother follow through with the rest of the process.

The biggest scam is the paper straw. You still need a certain plastic liner, otherwise the straw will melt down in 3 minutes from direct contact with liquid. The amount of plastic you reduce is penny-on-the-100-bucks-note comparing to the amount of plastic waste produced by industrial activities.

The only way to fix the single-use container problem is for governments to ban it. Either the customers bring their own/rent the shops' containers for take away, or drink their beverages in the shop.

Is this doable? I guess. AFAIR the EU are experimenting with laws around this. Plastic bags ban is already visible in many country, even in non-first-world countries.

by antran22

5/20/2026 at 7:26:55 PM

Bringing your own is a health hazard. It spreads germs all over the equipment.

by gritspants

5/20/2026 at 8:23:03 PM

When I bring my thermos to a coffee shop, brew the beverage in their own mixer before pouring it in my thermos. There is exactly no contact between their equipment and my container, beside the barista hands (which they should periodically wash anyway) and between the butt of the thermos and the table. Also most of them give the thermos a few rinses & wash with the soapy water jet thingy before pouring.

I'm assuming you are much more conscious about this issue than I am (that's fine btw, people have various levels of germophobia) , but practically my whole office block do this without any noticeable health epidemic.

Also standard coffee shops (the Starbucks kinds) always have industrial scale utensil washers that rinse boiling water/UV radiate the utensils. Assuming a government issue the appropriate law, the coffee shops will be able to ensure your container hygiene just fine.

by antran22

5/20/2026 at 8:42:09 PM

I think you and your environment are very different from the average consumer. At least in the office there's a shared community. I think you'd shudder to see what comes to the Starbucks/Dunkin drivethru.

by gritspants

5/20/2026 at 9:50:48 PM

true, but the starbucks etc. scenario was already answered above. personal cups shouldn't contact cafe equipment. although i trust peet's/starbucks and not dunkin to actually follow it.

by JMiao

5/20/2026 at 8:13:38 PM

I don't mind the downvotes but, what? No responsible company is going to want a bunch of unused cups interacting with their gear.

by gritspants

5/20/2026 at 7:13:59 PM

> It's time for Starbucks to stop making misleading recycling claims and start prioritizing plastic-free, preferably reusable, alternatives for its customers.

I agree on the misleading claims part, but they do allow you to bring in your own personal cup already as long as it's clean. I don't see how that's not an alternative.

by hypeatei

5/20/2026 at 7:36:11 PM

If I am being extremely generous I think the key word there is prioritizing. It's a moving goalpost. Could mean "allow you to bring your own cup" or "advertise you can bring your own cup" or "offer a discount for bringing your own cup".

by mulmen

5/20/2026 at 7:58:50 PM

Fair. It's definitely too broad of a statement and I feel like calling out the reusable cup policy that Starbucks already has would be more helpful. The current statement reads like there is no alternative whatsoever and you're forced to dump plastic into the ocean if you get a drink from there.

by hypeatei

5/21/2026 at 2:19:09 AM

The role of an activist is to improve the status quo. They will, by definition, never be satisfied with what Starbucks is doing. On the other hand Starbucks now offers discounts if you bring your own cup, which I don’t believe was always the case, so it appears activism works.

by mulmen

5/20/2026 at 9:27:54 PM

I'd be ashamed to post this "experiment" but I guess when you have an obvious agenda...

by stronglikedan

5/20/2026 at 7:20:27 PM

There are some recycling bins in Jackson Wyoming that make clear what a scam the standard recycling bin is. Different bins for different color glass, no labels, purified, etc.

by readthenotes1

5/20/2026 at 7:12:13 PM

Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves without actually meaningfully addressing their environmental impact.

If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint. Everything else is really a rounding error compared to that. But that requires a materially poorer existence: living in a smaller home, eating meat less frequently, foregoing air travel, bundling up in the winter instead of cranking up the heat, etc.

Most people generally feel like we need to do more for the environment, and have a vague sense of guilt if they're not contributing. However, that guilt is not strong enough for them to be willing to meaningfully decrease their standard of living. It is strong enough to make them willing to sort their trash into separate bins. Hence recycling.

by umanwizard

5/20/2026 at 7:21:12 PM

I don't think calling it a scheme to make people feel better is fair. Grand scheme of things, you'd do more "harm" to the planet (however minuscule on the personal level) by choosing not to recycle than choosing to recycle; a portion of it does get recycled in the end. As for whether or not people use it to absolve themselves of environmental guilt in other aspects of their lives, I personally doubt a significant number ever consider whether or not they recycle when choosing to eat a burger, buy a big house or crank the heat.

by nozzlegear

5/20/2026 at 7:36:38 PM

> Grand scheme of things, you'd do more "harm" to the planet (however minuscule on the personal level) by choosing not to recycle than choosing to recycle; a portion of it does get recycled in the end.

Are you sure? A garbage truck direct to the landfill is less energy than a garbage truck (for what isn't recycled), and a second truck to the sort facility, all the machines to sort, and then a truck to the landfill. Now if only Al goes on the recycling truck this is a clear win since recycled Al much less energy than mining new. However for many plastics the value is already questionable if it is recycled, and clearly worse if not. (I'm not sure about paper or glass)

by bluGill

5/20/2026 at 7:24:15 PM

> Grand scheme of things, you'd do more "harm" to the planet (however minuscule on the personal level) by choosing not to recycle than choosing to recycle

Yes, if everything else were held equal, but it's not. People have a limited amount of energy to dedicate to caring about environmental issues; every minute spent talking about recycling (or other only marginally important environmental issues) is one we're not spending talking about things that matter.

by umanwizard

5/21/2026 at 6:36:53 AM

There are actions that make a much bigger impact than reducing your carbon footprint; several people are currently in jail for those actions.

by tardedmeme

5/20/2026 at 7:26:11 PM

> If you care about the environment, BY FAR the most important thing you can do is reducing your carbon footprint.

And by FAR the most effective way to do that for the average person is to drive less.

Most people have no idea how far they need to drive to produce 1kg of CO2 (even though it's widely advertised alongside fuel efficiency).

by tmnvix

5/20/2026 at 7:29:38 PM

Surely there's no point in reducing your personal carbon footprint without holding capital accountable at the state level.

by throwaway27448

5/20/2026 at 7:33:28 PM

Your efforts cascade. You alone mean nothing, but states and companies are just reacting to the collective wants, so if everyone waits for everyone else first nothing will happen.

by bluGill

5/20/2026 at 7:59:49 PM

> states and companies are just reacting to the collective wants

Insanely naive take. They react to capital.

by throwaway27448

5/21/2026 at 2:01:20 AM

For the purposes of this, there's no difference. Not that there's no difference, but it doesn't matter for this.

by bluGill

5/21/2026 at 4:55:36 AM

Again, insanely naive take. We do not live in the utopia you think we do

by throwaway27448

5/20/2026 at 7:34:05 PM

If I remember correctly, US per capita CO2 footprint is around 14 tonnes (this includes industrial activity). Average US driver of an ICE vehicle produces around 4 tonnes of CO2 per year.

Personal choices matter.

by tmnvix

5/20/2026 at 8:02:44 PM

I think the second half of your argument is missing. How much of that CO2 emission is even in my control? What is capital doing to reduce its end of output? What sort of mechanisms do I even have to control the economy? I can't stop american companies from selling out my grandkid's future. My parents couldn't either. Our economy is simply not structured to reflect collective interest. If you vote for a political party that does want to take this seriously, you get accused of supporting fascism.

I'm not going to sweat recycling while our entire political economy makes a farce of caring about the future.

by throwaway27448

5/21/2026 at 6:38:38 AM

If you drive an ICE vehicle in the US, about 4 tonnes. He just told you that.

by tardedmeme

5/21/2026 at 2:33:51 PM

I can't do anything about that because I can't go back in time and force our country to build public transit. It's not my fault that the country is so ass-backwards we can't move rationally.

by throwaway27448

5/20/2026 at 7:50:26 PM

> Recycling is largely a scheme to make people feel better about themselves

No, it's a scheme to stave off taxes on plastic packaging, or regulations to mandate glass. Which industry cares about how people feel about themselves, to fund and promote this scheme? On the other hand, it's very easy to point to the industry that benefits from continued use of plastic.

by like_any_other

5/20/2026 at 7:23:27 PM

The best way for one to reduce their carbon footprint is to stop supporting large corporations. Unfortunately this involves not being lazy and we are lazy.

by brewcejener

5/20/2026 at 7:29:32 PM

> The best way for one to reduce their carbon footprint is to stop supporting large corporations.

Not really, no. The carbon footprint associated with your consumption has little-to-nothing to do with the type of economic structure that provides it.

Lots of fossil fuels are produced by the state, some even in socialist countries. Burning oil extracted by Pemex or Petróleos de Venezuela releases just as much carbon as oil extracted by Chevron.

And high-quality grass-fed organic beef raised by your local rancher involves at least as much carbon emissions as the cheapest beef you can get from Wal-Mart. Why wouldn't it?

The issue is consumption of fossil fuels, not capitalism. Capitalism is indirectly at fault only inasmuch as it has grown the economy, enabling our consumption of fossil fuels to increase.

by umanwizard

5/20/2026 at 9:52:17 PM

I didn't say anything about capitalism. I said this is our fault. It is a direct result of human behavior.

by brewcejener

5/20/2026 at 10:17:08 PM

Huh? You said it has to do with "large corporations", specifically. Which is not true.

by umanwizard

5/20/2026 at 7:42:01 PM

[dead]

by warumdarum