Discussions

I visited keystone center today and some of its garbage can are full of recyclable cardboard, seriously as a community center you guys are not contributing for climate change.  
Even small step will help.

I thought they were all recycling.  
If garbage is being dumped there maybe the city needs to put up cameras!

Little known facts:  
 
There is no practical worth, environmentally or in terms of reducing energy expenditure in the recycling of cardboard here. The nearest mill that can process it is in Ontario, so the transport to a recycling depot, sorting, and trucking actually cost more energy than going out and logging new trees near the pulp mill.  
 
Glass is even a worse case, made from sand, and no good for anything but being flail milled into the equivalent of sand, then it can be used in asphalt.  
 
In a better world glass containers should be mandated reusable with deposit, and cardboard and other combustibles would best be used in generating electricity or heat. Cardboard makes a great weed mulch for trees or gardens, btw...

"As far as burning cardboard to generate electricity and heat, it's a good idea and probably better than coal, but it would still generate emissions. I suspect people recycle far more material that can currently be processed, so the mountains of plastics, glass and carboard will continue to grow."  
 
Of course, anything done with a product eventually leads to emissions. Paper and cardboard products are just wood at the end of the day, if left in the bush they would rot too. Burning and decomposition amount to the same emissions.  
 
In the case of recycling we are aiming for a conservation of resources or energy and thus CO2 emissions. Recycling paper, cardboard and single use glass containers costs more energy than simple disposal in the landfill.  
 
And as has recently been reported, many plastics put in the recycling stream are disposed of in landfills anyways, either too dirty, mixed plastics, or unidentifiable, or just not viable types for recycling.  
 
Again, probably the best recycling option is incineration for power.  
 
Funny how reduce isn't the first and biggest part of the discussion...

Maybe the answer is to enforce the shops that sell the packaging to have to take it back when the customer has used/consumed the purchase.  
The shops could then return this to manufacturers in the trucks that brought the goods inwards, save them travelling back empty.  
Would this increase the price of goods, short term yes, but perhaps long term the producers would have an incentive to reduce or eliminate the packaging or at very least ensure it is reusable.  
The very least that should be required is recycling bins at the places of sale, saving many journeys to the dump and it's associated environmental costs.  
My particular RM has a no burn by-law so my round trip to the dump with garbage/recycling involves a round trip of 32 miles. Where they actually burn the garbage anyway. The recycling is collected by contractors who then, so I am given to understand, truck it all the way to Gilbert Plains (a two hour journey). Really environmentally friendly.

Sorry, but for one I do not buy single use drinks at all, and secondly, perhaps you can tell us of stores that sell drinks in anything other than plastic.  
The shops are dictating what we can purchase, maybe give the consumer the choice and see where that leads. You cannot put all the blame on the consumer if he has no choice, other than not to buy, when everything is plastic.  
How about a refund of 50% of the environmental levy for returning the single use container.  
I agree that Governments etc are not babysitters but they have allowed and indeed pushed plastic drinks bottles onto the public, mainly in the course of pursuing greater profits. I wonder what was the total income from the levy, no small sum I'll wager.  
Yes we can all do our bit but it has to be without a great energy/environmental cost, even washing containers uses valuable water and possibly heat resource.

Is a reason for a lot of packaging. Smaller items that are easy to conceal and steal are often packaged in lots of plastic to make it more difficult to conceal and steal. You can't blame stores for trying to reduce theft loss.  
Therefore, you can blame a lot of it on criminals.

I still blame the retail model.  
 
The packaging issue is unsustainable and unacceptable from a resource conservation point of view. It's more than a little absurd that we are banning plastic shopping bags, yet 10 times more plastic goes in the bag, so what is the point exactly? Is that classic greenwashing? A feel good gesture while doing nothing meaningful?  
 
No matter how diligent a person is in segregating waste, composting and recycling , the bin fills up with plastic packaging. I don't like it at all, but am captive to the marketplace like we all are.  
 
It's sad we don't have competent, meaningful government to make a better way.  
 
One big issue is our supply chains are far too long for efficient return of containers etc. We often have supply chains spanning half the globe, or half a continent. And business has been allowed to develop any proprietary jar or container they please.  
 
Standardized, reusable containers with deposit would change that end of things, as happened in the 70s, when the deposit was equal to more than a dollar in today's money. There were no bottles left laying around. It was a nice favour of our governments to industry to not raise the deposits since 1970...  
 
As for product packaging, maybe the retail model is too inefficient to continue. Can we afford that long term? What was wrong with the Consumer's distributing model? Maybe that's where we should be going.  
 
One effective way to reduce personal plastic use is to wash and re-use zip lock type bags. Kind of like having an oil well in your sink, worthwhile when considering that 5 lbs of oil are needed to make one pound of plastic...