I'm doing my part
2026-06-20 14:03 UTC
Replies (8)
-
@OS2Warp@lemmy.zip 2026-06-20 14:29
-
@weirdcarrotmonster@sh.itjust.works 2026-06-20 20:56
There is actually a bit of sense in there. Paper cups weren’t simply paper - its tetrapak-like material with plastic coating inside. They are notoriously hard to recycle. Plain plastic cups on the other hand are made from single material, most likely PET. Moreover, they are transparent, without colouring additives. There are two reasons why colour in plastic makes it harder to recycle. First, pigment is a completely different substance, which behaves differently from plastic itself. It makes it harder to “re-melt” into stable material. If you ever 3d printed anything with matte/gloss filament, you’ll know that it is more finicky than plain one. Second, uncoloured plastic can be coloured into anything, while other needs to be either sorted by colour or mixed with strong dye (black, gray, dark brown, etc) to have consistent colour. PET itself is pretty easy to turn into something new, actually. A workshop near me had a live demo of the whole process - chipping it into small pieces, feeding to the heated tube, and then injection molded into trinkets. Industrial grade processing usually have “turned into pellets” step in between, but it’s basically the same. Plastic-covered paper, on the other hand, should be somehow separated first, and then handled with two different approaches - one for paper, another one for plastic film. Doable, but much harder. Paper straw can probably decompose by itself, without any special conditions. UPD: Be wary that recycling is not a panacea. There’s multiple videos about how recycling plastic isn’t actually a thing. www.youtube.com/watch?v=68zjxTTl5Ik for example.
-
@qevlarr@lemmy.world 2026-06-20 15:54
There’s so much plastic lining that paper otherwise everything would get too soggy anyway. Yay for glass and metal. Reusable beats disposable, no matter what it’s made of
-
@manuallybreathing@lemmy.ml 2026-06-21 01:52
Paper cups still have a plastic lining, and it’s related to PFAS chemicals iirc
-
@SaintNyx@lemmy.world 2026-06-21 05:49
Ppl have been mentioning the plastic in the paper cups but I haven’t seen anyone mention that large cups used to all be Styrofoam. Some places all the cups were Styrofoam. And that was god awful for the environment. They were amazing though. Getting a giant sweet tea in a cup that never sweated was phenomenal. Shame they suck so bad.
-
@gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org 2026-06-21 01:55
paper straws are quite literally a strawman project against environmental pollution. they do not actually solve environmental pollution while pretending they do …
-
@huey_m@reddthat.com 2026-06-21 06:08
There needs to just be a blanket, punitive, 100+% tax on any and all single use plastics that are not medical devices. Obviously there’s lots of other bigger environmental issues that need to be tackled but this really seems like a pretty obvious one imo.
-
@Fedizen@lemmy.world 2026-06-21 07:44
I’ll take a PLA cup over a paper cup lined with PFAS, BPA, etc. There should really be a law that people should be able to bring their own reusable drink cup for any drink.