Does anyone else have a soft plastics recycling program run by their local council? We've had a trial for about a year, now in its second phase. Hopefully it can be successfully expanded to other households.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 5 points 3 hours ago

Why are we acting like this is an insurmountable problem?

Hit the companies using it.

[–] tombruzzo@aussie.zone 4 points 3 hours ago

This really pissed me off. I feel like some of the people behind redcycle should go to jail because they couldn't make recycling work and just hoped it would sort itself out. When else do people get away with that excuse?

[–] BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 14 hours ago (2 children)

Lack of recyclability shits me. Especially when something that used to be packaged in cardboard is suddenly being sold in plastic.

Also, most plastic bottles are recyclable. Plastic bottles used for juice, flavoured milks, and water from the fridge section, recycle that shit! But not if it’s Ice Break. Those big chunky Ice Break bottles that seem no-brainer recyclable are clearly marked as non-recyclable.

[–] Salvo@aussie.zone 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Soft plastics can be recycled, but the (trained) labour to sort is prohibitively expensive.

Tyres can also be recycled, but the labour liability makes them prohibitively expensive in first-world-countries.

They can also both also be processed as Biochar, but the environmental cost is also prohibitively expensive: tyres result in Sulfur-contaminated charcoal and soft plastics are not the most efficient material to convert into charcoal.

[–] appetizer@lemmy.today 3 points 4 hours ago

My sister worked at a sorting facility. It is shutting down permanently at the end of the year.

Not a good sign :(

[–] TimePencil@infosec.exchange 1 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

@BlueSquid0741

Are Ice Break (2 litre) bottles not recyclable?

There's no deposit on them, but they're marked with "please recycle".

@Davriellelouna

The back of a 2 litre Ice Break (ice coffee) bottle.

[–] thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago

Holy crap, @BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org is right about their lack of recyclability. Just think of the plastics garbage volume all our tradies will be generating! 😱

[–] BlueSquid0741@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

I’ve never seen a 2l bottle of it. I think 750ml is the usual one?

But the ‘please recycle’ thing I believe is outdated. Packaging now tells you what to do with components of the packaging, as an example something might say “Bottle” and have a recycle symbol, “Cap” and have a recycle symbol, “Foil seal” and have a bin symbol.

Tetrapaks will have the recycle symbol but say under it “Check locally”. Well when I looked into that there’s almost nowhere in the country that accepts recycling of tetrapaks.

Anyway. I got an ice break a few months ago for the first time in years and I think it was either “Rubbish” or “check locally”. But I used ice break as an example because they annoyed me not using easily recyclable packaging like other flavoured milk bottles.

Contradicts what I said earlier I know. You got me thinking about it a bit more what I remember being on their bottle.