That’s right folks! Costco, for whatever reason changed the tortilla strip chip bag from a perfectly recyclable bag to this piece of shit bag that you can’t recycle.
Similarly, the packaging change they made to the rotisserie chicken means me never eating that heated plastic bag garbage ever again.
It was plastic before but it was at least a tray and a covering. So the plastic at least seemed more durable and not all of it was touching the bird. Now it’s just a shitty plastic bag being warmed under a light. Disgusting.
You can’t recycle paper tainted with food oils. Or if it’s lined with plastic/wax. It gets sorted and dumped into the landfill. You can’t compost it either. Neither options are good unless it’s pure paper bag with no mixes plastic.
This is not a shitpost.
While I don’t agree, your post is shittier than OPs
Or, they’re finally being realistic about the bag’s recyclability…
Yeah weren’t the old ones lined with plastic anyway? I would think it would need to be to keep them from going stale
I buy the big thing of cashews from there; recently, they went from the infinitely-reusable and recyclable hard plastic cube with screw-on top to a plastic bag like this. The label says “uses 40% less plastic” or some shit. Costco is a good company, but holy shit so much single-use plastic.
The cubes, for 9/10 people, is single use plastic. That was actually a good change.
This is also consistent with Reduce reuse recycle
About the time they got rid of the hard plastic cashew jars and switched to the bags, they also started selling a (more expensive) glass jar of cashews.
So for me, it does cut down on the plastic, since now I just refill the glass jar with the bagged cashews, rather than needing to buy (and dispose of) the plastic jar every time.
I might feel differently if I was actually reusing the plastic jars for something but I really wasn’t (not after the first few, anyway).
Now if they would introduce a deposit on those jars and refill them…
Better yet, just get nut silos and have customers refill themselves. They seem to usually be near checkout anyway, so they could have someone monitor the area for abuse while telling people what lines aren’t super full…
It would cut down on the back and forth transportation of the containers, and clean refill labor, etc.
I totally re-use glass jars! It’s a nice cleanable container.
How many of those cubes is it reasonable for someone to have?
If that threshold is less than 10, I’m unreasonable
If you are building something out of it like a raft, any number is fine.
most of the recent changes to costco lately is the current ceo, hes been trying to make it behave like other large chains as of recently.
Their paper towels from Kirkland feel cheaper. I think they may be enshittifying themselves.
Was the bag actually paper before, or paper lined with plastic?
It was lined with plastic.
It was paper lined with plastic…turtle choking bags of plastic coated paper. Probably using less plastic. Well not sure if it was plastic or some sort of PVA but it was mostly just paper.
Cost, probably.
Might be my imagination but I think Kirkland stuff has been declining in quality lately. The paper towels seem worse now, but I’m not sure how.
You still can recycle plastic, therefore point made by the OP is false.
Please take not of the symbol on the bag in that image. It indicates that the plastic bag is not recyclable. Not all plastics are recyclable, and also I banged your dad, you can call me Dad2 if you like.
You’re right: plastic is just as recyclable now as it was before.
Which is to say, it continues to largely fail to be recyclable.
I think this was a joke
technically true. but some plastic products cost too much to recycle so they go into landfill.
also some recycled plastics can’t be recycled again because it’s “impossible” to know what percentages of what other plastics were used in the final product. again, too costly to recycle.
these are all primary examples of why using plastic as a packaging product are based entirely on marketing and manufacturing cost over environmental impacts.
truth of the matter is, natural fibers like cotton and wood pulp(paper) plus biodegradable sealants like wax, vegetable oil, shellacs, etc are far better for the environment than any amount of “recyclable” plastic.
You can recycle plastic.
No. This is a myth perpetuated by huge companies who create a lot of single use plastic.
There isn’t a type of plastic in existence that can be recycled without degrading in quality. A plastic bottle cannot be used to create a new bottle. This is why less than 5% of plastic waste is actually recycled.
That’s just categorically false. Trash Panda Disc Golf does a video on just that myth. The problem with recycling has nothing to do with degradation. It has to do with economics. New plastic is cheap. Reusing plastic isn’t.
Uh huh. I have also watched videos and read articles supporting what I just said. Scotch tape is a great example because it’s so brittle… almost useless for any application other than temporarily taping paper to something. It shows how weak plastic gets when it’s recycled.
Trash Panda isn’t an article, they’re a disc golf manufacturer that solely uses recycled plastic. They’ve tested with recycling the exact same plastic more than ten times. And I have no clue what you are talking about with scotch tape, it’s literally designed to be tearable, just like the Costco bag in the picture….
Okay, so this one frisbee company disputes the countless articles published with sources about how plastic degrades when it’s recycled and… you expect me to just go with that instead of NPR articles.
I doubt the demand for frisbees is high enough to be an encompassing solution for our plastic problem, but I like the idea.
without degrading in quality.
I didn’t say it can. You can still recycle it, just not into the same product.
Into what? Scotch tape? 2 by 4’s for decking material? One can only make so much of those things before the low demand is met.
Like I said, almost none of it gets recycled because the resulting products are too weak. Not only that, but plastic “recycling” is one of the primary ways that micro plastics get into our bodies.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/05/yet-another-problem-with-recycling-it-spews-microplastics/
They should use it as filler for potholes. Fibers would composite into stronger flexible quieter roads…or sobI dare to guess.
I would think that could work from a structural point of view, but they would have to seal it somehow to prevent more microplastics from being created. Plastics aren’t often used as a building material because of toxic off-gassing, but of course this would be outside which would mitigate the issue.
Asphalt is one of the most recyclable materials in existence, when they tear up an asphalt road they just melt it down and pour it back on. If there was plastic involved it would probably interrupt this process.
But I’m not expert. Maybe it would work.
Literally asphalt is junk plastic/petroleum. It dissolves or mixes with plastic at melting temp. Or even if there was no thermal action, the plastic in fiber form would just get incorporated into the melt.
although there are ongoing experiments for this, results aren’t promising.
standard road asphalt contains recycled tires for their elasticity and longevity. there have been cases where plastics have been used in the formation of walking/bike paths, but recent investigations have discovered an inordinate amount of microplastics have found their way into watersheds in the vicinity of these paths.
sometimes a bad product is a bad product. due to the hubris of oil companies they continue to market and sell these products as “recyclable” when in reality the process of recycling them is a costly and complicated solution that has been proven within the confines of a lab test.
it took the US 70 years to identify and stop using lead based paints in home construction. it was replaced with…you guessed it, oil based paints that contain plastics. we’re currently running up to 60 years on that. I wonder what the next big thing will be?
Highly dependent on where you live and what the capabilities of the recycling facility are.
True.
Umm, I personally would be more worried about the bioengineered stuff myself.
Look into it. Bioengineering is not scary, it’s just a word the some media outlets fear monger
Exactly. If your body can eat it, its done. Its just carbon.
Why? Tweaking the genes of something doesnt magically make it dangerous
It depends what they’re tweaking and why. For example, a lot of stuff is tweaked to become “Roundup ready,” and facilitating the mass use of glyphosate is dangerous.
Sure, but a crop merely being bioengineered does not imply that that specific tweak has been made
We’ve been manipulating the genes of plants since 1716 when Thomas Fairchild first grafted two different things together to make the first hybrid plant. If you like modern corn, you can thank bioengineering/GMOs.
I dunno, I see stuff about there is not even original corn and other items left anywhere except for seed banks. Also don’t like bioengineered means they own it. Corps don’t share.
I can agree that Monsanto can fuck all the way off.
Monsanto is dead, Bayer is the devil incarnate.
edit: just to educate a bit further. the same German company that manufactured the pills used in the infamous concentration camp showers.
