i bought the new recycling bag (https://www.recybag.ch/) for plastic, as reported in the news (Jetzt können Haushalte in Zürich und Horgen ihren Plastikmüll im neuen Entsorgungssack sammeln
https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/recybag-in-zuerich-neuer-entsorgungssack-bei-migros-und-coop-883936152655).
i used to support the pilot project from migros (generationsack). it was cheaper than a normal rubbish bag, thus offering a great incentive to actually collect plastic separately. this new one now costs virtually the same as the normal züri gebührensack (16.- and 16.20). who is going to recycle plastic if you pay almost the same as for normal rubbish and you have to take it to the collection point yourself on top of that?!
shouldn’t companies focus more on avoiding plastic in the first place rather than making end consumers pay for recycling? there are so few ways to opt out of buying plastic because everything comes wrapped in it!
greenpeace was right to position itself against plastic recycling (https://www.greenpeace.ch/de/story/65774/sackgasse-plastik-recycling/) as it gives companies an excuse to continue using plastic, because it allegedly gets recycled (it’s a conplex system – a lot of plastic gets sold off and dumped, recycled under precarious conditions, sometimes resulting in poorer products, usually costs more than new plastic…)
i’m frustrated and confused how this bag is supposed to help…
by smoobdogg
22 comments
Yeah, it’s stupid. I will not use it.
Luckily there are locations where they accept lots of plastic for free. But for mixed plastics they give the advice to just put it in the trash because it makes environmentally the most sense in Switzerland: https://www.sammelhof.ch/sammelhof
Just put the rubbish in the bag bro
Can’t people do good things without a financial incentive? I agree it would be better but still
The point is to piss us off, i think
Plastic recycling is a lie, the bag is not supposed to help. It’s supposed to confuse us further, to distract us from the lie
I am frustrated as well, how could you tell 😉
I no longer trust Migros.
The solution is simple, but not business friendly.
Tax who uses the plastic (the business) and not the customer, and force the businesses to take back and recycle their plastics at their own expense.
If you move the whole hurdle to them, either they will be forced to raise up tremendously their plastic backed products, or find a more sustainable solution.
Tax the source, not the destination!!
Holy shit! Why do we always have to be the one who pays?!?!? Fuck them!
It’s plain dumb… Recycling should supposedly generate revenue (glass, metal for instance), making disposal more economical AND environmentaly friendly than just dumping. Without any incentive, I see no reason to invest time and space to separate plastic.
We need to force the seller to stop wasting packaging plastic!
someone needs to find a formula for plastic packaging taking account of:
* plastic weight vs sold good
* surface of plastic vs surface of sold good
* amount of used plastic not used for packaging
everyone knows these products:
* shampoo bottles filled to 3/4
* packaging of cold cuts. The upper 1/3 where the label and printings are, are always empty
* packaging of sliced salmon – probably 1/2 is just empty wrapping
* cookie packing – they make special molds to keep the packaging as big as possible but with as fewer as possible cookies
* and let us not talk about the wrapping of scissors or calculators or those things.
Yes, I know, everything has a label with the weight on it. So everybody know how much stuff they get – but nonetheless the packaging engineers and marketing hoschis know exaclty why they sell deceiptive packaging!
but honestly: the polluter-pays-principle is not wrong.
In Switzerland plastic goes straight to the incinerator, no?
I refuse to buy those bags. I will continue to discard plastic for free in the supermarkets that still take it, and if they end it, unless they make the price cheaper, I will just trash everything in the normal trash bag.
the new concept is inconvinient. you are not supposed to flatten, put them into others or cut up the plastic. they want you fill bags full with air and bring it back to specific places, not all stores.
in a 35l ZüriSack i can place 2 squished black bags, tetrised or cut up bigger pieces.
It is totally unfair that the ZH Gemeinde is receiving money where Coop could totally receive the same money for selling bags. So please buy Coop bags instead of gemeinde bags. Thank you.
So now the more plastic Coop sells you, the more Coop platic “recycling” bags you have to buy. I see it as genius. I thank all the brainless greenwashers that allowed this. Wait for my next invention, the “carton-carton” that you can buy to put your discarded Karton.
Hey, but we got rid of drinking straws and free bags at check out!
Except from environmental protection there is no positive. Cost is almost the same as with regular Züri-Sack, at least when considering the smaller recybag as compared to 35l Züri-Sack. Now, this might be not a fair comparison, but an additional 35l only for plastic takes quite a lot of space. Even with the smaller one recycling takes time and needs space. Finally, disposing plastic together with other trash in the Züri-Sack has even the advantage that smell management improves, since it will take fewer days to fill it. Protecting the environment is important, but there are too few incentives for buying the recybag. Or to put it straight, there are only disadvantages.
I would appreciate a general recycling bag for PET, Glass and Metal to encourage people to recycle when it’s inconvenient for them.
I can imagine that a lot of good material ends up in the general trash because people don’t have easy access to recycling points. I.e. I’m not driving to the communal trash collection thingy, just to drop off 2 PET bottles and a glass jar.
Supid concept. Here a Recybag is 50 cents more expensive than a normal one! Nobody will recycle the plastic anymore.
What I want is that they put a plastic separation bin in the same place we already separate the glass and metal, otherwise I’ll keep putting the plastic in the 35lt züri-sack.
> shouldn’t companies focus more on avoiding plastic in the first place rather than making end consumers pay for recycling?
In theory, passing the recycling costs on to consumers incentivizes them to prefer products that use less packaging, which in turn incentivizes companies to reduce packaging (which they otherwise have little incentive to do; rather the opposite, since larger packages look more luxurious).
Contrary opinion- I use the PP/PET bag because why not. If it helps even in the slightest it’s worth it. At the very least it gives statistical data. Agreed a discount would incentivize, but I’m already going to the recycling plant for alu and pap so I don’t view it as a heavy lift.
Me, living in Geneva where there is no system of taxed trash bags: O __ O
*quietly goes back go paying 35% of income taxes*
The only proper solution is a polluter-pays system. When it comes to plastic and paper recycling, i definitely like the German system more than the Swiss system.
In Germany every company that is selling something with a plastic and/or paper packaging, has to pay a fee per unit sold towards the “Duales System”. Collection and Recycling of plastics in the yellow bags and bins is entirely paid for by these fees. The yellow bags can be picked up for free at public offices or garbage collection will leave you new bags.
For paper the same is applied but there is also non-packaging paper, so you still have to pay a small fee for the part of the paper that you produce yourself (newspapers, mailings, etc.).
For residual waste (and compost, if you dont have a place for it in your garden), you pay everything on your own.
Prices are a lot cheaper compared to buying individual bags, i’d say. Where my parents live you pay 170€ per year for 2 people. This gives you a black bin for residual waste with 80 l volume which is collected every 2 weeks. 80l can fit about as much as 6-7 35 l bags, as you can properly compress your stuff in the bin. Then you get a 120l paper bin, which is collected every 4 weeks and as many yellow plastic bags as you need, also collected every 4 weeks. Compost has 80 l and is collected every week.
Was it really cheaper? I remember that the initial offer was 17 CHF, so I didn’t even bother.
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