The EU wants to introduce new legislation for the reuse of packaging. It might take Norway backwards in time if it gets approved and we don't get an exemption.
They want a system where bottles are cleaned and reused. We *abandoned* that system in favour of recycling the plastic itself. Thin PET bottles that are crushed. It has a better carbon footprint and is more efficient in many ways.
The comments section: Yet another reason to steer clear of the EU.
To many countries, the proposed legislation would be an improvement, but for us, it would be worse. This is often the case with EU directives. They make things better for the less developed countries but worse for the more developed ones.
@thor I think PET bottles aren’t better than reusable ones. It’s greenwash.
"If there is now a demand to go back to a system that uses enormous amounts of space, transport, energy and water, then it is simply not good for the environment, CEO Christian Aass told E24 at the weekend."
It would also be expensive to switch back. Considerable investments were made just a few years ago.
@thor Of course, they say that. It’s cheaper for them. I don’t want to say anything wrong and I don’t remember the details, but a German supermarket advertised their single use bottles as greener as reusable ones and they got debunked over it. It was a ‘yeah kind of sometimes under special circumstances but not really’ debunk, though. Not a plain nope.
@proedie Yeah but it appears that it's not only the breweries who feel this way. It's a common myth that reuse is greener than recycling.
@thor Nope. It’s the other way around: it’s an uncommon myth that recycling is greener than reusing.
I just read it up. The main problem is that you always have a certain loss when you recycle plastic (2 to 5 %). So you need to add new material. For one company/country that is fine. You just add old bottles from another company/country and still have a 100 % recycled new bottle. But if ALL bottles are to be recycled, you have to use NEW plastic.
@thor Another problem is the base on which you compare. If you use the general energy demand for washing the bottles and compare it to a new ‘closed’ system, the new ‘closed’ system will be more efficient.
If you compare a new washing system to a new ‘closed’ system, the difference will be marginal. In other words: instead of building a new recycle system, you also could just invest in a more modern bottle-washing machine and have the same result.
@thor The third problem is transportation. You can transport more crashed bottles in a lorry than whole ones. That much is clear.
But if you electrify the transportation, the reduction of CO2 will be much smaller.
Also, ideally a company delivers a lorry full of bottles to the supermarkets and then take back the empties. The amount of the empties would be about the same as the full bottles. If the empties were crashed, they would take less space, but still weigh the same.
@proedie
> (2 to 5 %). So you need to add new material
Does this lots justify the costs of reusing? 🤔
> But if you electrify the transportation
Batteries for EVs have to be recycled too, also making them produces enormous amount of waste. The infrastructure has to be built for them.
If you compare the technology of yesterday that one of the approaches uses to the technology the other one could use in the future, everything is clear, but if we compare what we have today — not so much 🤷
@thor
@m0xee @thor I don’t know if it justifies the costs. But if you need more material, reusing certainly is greener.
The problem with recycling batteries is not that it’s not possible, but that it is dimply not done. It isn’t done, because there aren’t enough old batteries to justify the costs of large facilities. From a technological perspective this problem is solved, all we need is more batteries. In other words: we are now using the first ‘generation’ of batteries.
@proedie
Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of things that can genuinely be made greener today, but a lot of things in this area look more like make-believe to me. These windmills sure look cool — but in China, where most parts for them get made, the air is barely breathable, so what's the overall effect? Isn't it just shifting the pollution to other, less developed nations?
@thor