Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic could change that

Re:Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of pla... by yvdriess on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @11:27AM (#19729547)

Glass bottles can avoid the 'trash' stream with 'bottle bill' legislation. Most of europe does this, some even for PET and aluminium cans. Collection is essentially the same route as delivery to the cusomers, but in reverse: the customer brings it back to the shop. The bottling plants eventually bring in their output. It's more economically all around than re-flowing the glass bottles. I know that Belgian brewers lean heavily on reused green and brown bottles. In this case, it helps that there are a few near-universal beer bottle types, but perhaps that's more a result of the reuse.

Some music festivals use '10 empty plastic cups = 1 free drink' to reduce the amount of single-use plastic trash laying around. It's simple economics.

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Re:Just 10% of U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of pla... by distances on Tuesday April 23, 2019 @05:34PM (#19733127)

> some even for PET and aluminium cans.

Aluminium cans are some of the best items to be recycled, as recycling one takes only 5% of the energy needed for creating one anew. This should be reflected as a higher deposit of course, to get high return rates. I think Finland achieves nowadays over 95% return rate for aluminium cans.

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