Here is this weeks business opportunity so someone here can become fabulously well-to-do

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I am working in a coastal town who passed a law 6 months ago or so that all stores could only use thicker reusable bags. WalMart, Lowes, everyone. Concerns about protecting fish and wildlife.

They are nice bags. Probably 5 or 6 times as thick.  They don’t tear.

But they don’t get reused. I’ve asked store checkout clerks how many of the bags have been reused, the answer is always the same. Almost none. 

Unintended consequence... The stores now generate 5 or 6 times the consumption and waste with the thicker bags. berkeley the fish. 

That didn’t work so well. 

Hmm, also, is styrofoam = plastic?

Seems like if the overall goal is to use the least material, styrofoam is good because it weighs so little, there can't be much raw material.

I think styrofoam and plastic and wax are all petroleum products, and none go "back to the earth" very easily. I wonder which is least bad.

I know this whole thread was started as a passive aggressive political rant (how very Canadian!) but it's a legitimate problem. Come up with a way to cut down on waste while controlling costs and making it easy for lazy first worlders - reusable containers, deposits, truly biodegradable containers that don't biodegrade too early - and you will earn a good living.

SVreX said:

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

I am working on a coastal town who passed a law 6 months ago or so that all stores could only use thicker reusable bags. WalMart, Lowes, everyone. Concerns about protecting fish and wildlife.

They are nice bags. Probably 5 or 6 times as thick.  They don’t tear.

But they don’t get reused. I’ve asked store checkout clerks how many of the bags have been reused, the answer is always the same. Almost none. 

Unintended consequence... The stores now generate 5 or 6 times the consumption and waste with the thicker bags. berkeley the fish. 

That didn’t work so well. 

Everyone is concerned about protecting the environment as long as someone else does it. I've heard a similar argument about paper vs plastic. The plastic bags use so much less material and everything is thrown away anyway.

1988RedT2 said:

On the takeout food front, I'm seeing more paper-based containers, so that's positive. 

Paper (and other biodegradables) doesn’t decompose in a modern landfill. They are basically anaerobic.

25 year old hot dogs??

I had a great business idea at one point...

Waste could be ground up and used as filler in composite building materials. Picture plastic studs that are 90% recycled trash encapsulated in a stable polymer. 

Engineered product, so straight as an arrow. Design the polymer to be exceedingly good at holding screws and nails, and able to be cut with a skillsaw. Invent a method to orient the ground up filler pieces, and the stuff could have legit engineered characteristics for spans, loads, etc. Like OSB. 

Toyman01 said:

Why not go back to bottle and container deposits like they used to. Make it once, clean it and reuse it 100s of times.

For the same reasons they went away in the first place:

• Cost
• Reduced labor and handling
• Cost
• Increased convenience and speed
• Cost

SVreX said:

I had a great business idea at one point...

Waste could be ground up and used as filler in composite building materials. Picture plastic studs that are 90% recycled trash encapsulated in a stable polymer. 

Engineered product, so straight as an arrow. Design the polymer to be exceedingly good at holding screws and nails. Invent a method to orient the ground up filler, and the stuff could have legit engineered characteristics for spans, loads, etc. Like OSB. 

Um, where do I sign up?

People are greatly motivated by cost and convenience. If something is cheap and convenient, it will be increasingly difficult to keep the average person from utilizing it. 

The problem with Single Use Plastics and long-term biodegradable stuff is that our economy is pretty against paying for externalities. We don't pay people to walk around and collect trash, and nobody can make money cleaning all the plastics that litter our oceans and water sources. I don't think a ban helps with this either. The better option is make those less considerate consumers more considerate by charging the externality every time they aren't. 

If every retailer had to charge a customer money for a plastic straw, cheap plastic bag, or other single-use items or non-biodegradable item, we'd adopt different strategies pretty quickly. It only took going to Aldi a few times to start remembering my reusable bags. 

In reply to pheller :

Nailed it. 

Today’s society likes to blame big bad business. Make it have a cost to the end line consumer, and watch change happen. 

So, my above example about the town that outlawed single use bags...

The fallacy is in thinking businesses should pay for this. Business don’t use bags- customers do. Bags are an expense to a business, that they provide free to the customer. The only thing the local council did was force businesses to pay more for bags they have to give away.  The businesses raised prices, the customers got the shaft.

The council should have instead passed a law requiring customers to pay a per bag tax. Consumers would have hated it, screamed about it in the local newspapers, and started bringing their own reusable bags. 

Government wasn’t trying to fix the problem. They were trying to win points with the voting constituents (save the fish, make big business pay for it, free to consumers). 

Keith Tanner said:

I know this whole thread was started as a passive aggressive political rant (how very Canadian!) but it's a legitimate problem. Come up with a way to cut down on waste while controlling costs and making it easy for lazy first worlders - reusable containers, deposits, truly biodegradable containers that don't biodegrade too early - and you will earn a good living.

Not really.  It was a legitimate discussion starter.  The passive aggressive political nonsense was just bonus material.

SVreX said:

Paper (and other biodegradables) doesn’t decompose in a modern landfill. They are basically anaerobic.

25 year old hot dogs??

A former coworker was digging test pits in an old landfill and dig up a 40+ year old newspaper that, other than smelling like death, looked almost new.  

Toyman01 said:

Why not go back to bottle and container deposits like they used to. Make it once, clean it and reuse it 100s of times.

This is what I grew up with. I never understood why they went away. Bonus was they tasted better.

bobzilla said:

Toyman01 said:

Why not go back to bottle and container deposits like they used to. Make it once, clean it and reuse it 100s of times.

This is what I grew up with. I never understood why they went away. Bonus was they tasted better.

Transportation costs, I think.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Actually I think it there's the factor that it is also cheaper to have one giant plant filling bottles instead of a bunch of regional small ones.  

SVreX said:

1988RedT2 said:

On the takeout food front, I'm seeing more paper-based containers, so that's positive. 

Paper (and other biodegradables) doesn’t decompose in a modern landfill. They are basically anaerobic.

25 year old hot dogs??

IF places can switch to 100% compostable packaging, then composting is pretty damn easy.

kazoospec said:

Wally said:

In reply to Robbie :

There are people that don’t have monogrammed Tupperware?

I read this as "mammogrammed Tupperware" and thought to myself, there's a euphemism for "artificial enhancements" I had not yet heard.  

I tried to get a patent for Tuppertitties as a means to sneak snacks into a movie theater. 

In reply to bobzilla :

There were a few things that killed glass bottles.  To start they are heavy. I grew up in a soda business and my father and uncle were thrilled to get lighter bottles and they didn’t need wooden cases for the smaller bottles.  They could also be a bit dangerous.  Everyone had a story of having to dig out bits of glass after a dropped bottle exploded.  For the most part the soda is still bottled relatively close to where it’s sold the bottles start out test tube size and are expanded before filling, and the water doesn’t have to be shipped to to bottler. The biggest draw back to plastic bottles is that they can’t withstand as much carbonation and goes flatter sooner. 

In reply to Wally :

On a similar tangent, someone came up with The wine rack for sneaking booze into places. They also make a beer belly for guys.

Wally said:

In reply to bobzilla :

There were a few things that killed glass bottles.  To start they are heavy. I grew up in a soda business and my father and uncle were thrilled to get lighter bottles and they didn’t need wooden cases for the smaller bottles.  They could also be a bit dangerous.  Everyone had a story of having to dig out bits of glass after a dropped bottle exploded.  For the most part the soda is still bottled relatively close to where it’s sold the bottles start out test tube size and are expanded before filling, and the water doesn’t have to be shipped to to bottler. The biggest draw back to plastic bottles is that they can’t withstand as much carbonation and goes flatter sooner. 

 

Huh, the carbonation thing is interesting. I thought it was just the difference in formulations between US Coke and Mexican, but it might be the carbonation level in those classic glass bottles. How does aluminum compare?

Mildly related anecdote from 25 years ago:  A taxi driver customer of mine told me of a ride he had given to a dude setting up the canning line here for somebody. (We didn't allow anything other than glass bottles in Saskatchewan until the 1980's or so.) Anyway, they were talking about aluminum cans vs glass, Brent said he liked the taste of beer out of a bottle more, and the guy said, "I don't like beer from a bottle.  It gives it a glassy taste."

Edit for obviousness:  The guy had a lot of people complain about the metallic taste from a can.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

Interesting that there's a trend to cans for micro breweries.  I think for better UV protection, but I have no real idea other than they are doing it.

On a more applicable note- we just had someone at work giving away water in paper cartons.  Great idea, actually- similar to old milk cartons, there's one material to the whole thing- unlike bottles that have two different plastics.  And while paper can degrade, I don't have an clue about the sealing material, whatever it is.

Robbie said:

I think styrofoam and plastic and wax are all petroleum products, and none go "back to the earth" very easily. I wonder which is least bad.

I did a bit of googling on this (watch out) because I was curious. Apparently few others are, because some of the articles on the first page of results were from 2009 - ten years ago.

Regardless, yes, foam (polystyrene not styrofoam), paper (coated with polyethelene "wax"), and "red Solo" plastic cups are all made from petroluem products.

It sounds like polystyrene is the best to make (least amount of raw materials, energy, and co2 produced), but they are a bit toxic, hard to recycle, and literally will never break down in a landfill.

Paper takes the most energy, materials, and produces the most co2. There's more petroleum in a paper cup than a foam cup, before you even get to the paper! Most raw materials means they also cost the most. And the wax coating means they probably aren't biodegradable or recyclable and will take 20 years or so to break down in a landfill.

Plastic, like the red Solo cups, is apparently the winner. (If, of course, you rule out not using single use cups to begin with).

Wouldn't you know.

In reply to Robbie :

To clarify, if I understand you and/or my quick Google correctly, Styrofoam is extruded polystyrene, but it's a name brand insulating board. The stuff we call styrofoam in disposable dishes is not technically Styrofoam, but it is expanded polystyrene.

In reply to Ransom :

Yes, you are picking up what I was putting down.