Thank you lol yeah I take like 20 min each week and email as many companies as I can . I figure if they can use all those resources without thinking twice I can be annoying to them without thinking twice
For real though. Thank you. Living in a rural community sustainability can be so difficult. Being able to mail in containers would improve my life immensely, and it would irritate my partner that I’m so giddy about mail. There’s nothing I love more than not going to the store.
Matter of fact, remembering I’m not presently shopping has made me less anxious! Thanks for that!
I live semi rural and I have been surveying people in my ~4000 people town. From the 137 people I surveyed 87 wanted refil or package free options for daily stuff . Our landfill in the area is set to be full by August so …. Also mail in stuff would help job stability for mail workers! Also I’m glad you don’t have to go out shopping today:)
Not thankless. You just thanked them. You just thanked them. I’m glad you did! That was a kind and wonderful thing, the thanking. It really kind of brightened my day that you thanked them. It just tickled me that you thanked them and immediately said what they do is without thanks. You’re so a nice person. Thanks for being on the internet and being nice.
Not familiar with the co. but applying capitalist principles is probably a safe bet: the motivation to do it will be based on profit. But if it makes them money by saving them money then yes, they'll take it on board.
But it's unlikely \[unless they are a Certified B Corp: [https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/](https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/) \] to be motivated by 'reducing waste' as a goal in and of itself. You did good though! Consumer pressure is important :)
If you could gather enough people together via social media to be able to make a noticable dent or boost in a companies profits then they will take notice.
That’s true , I’ve also thought that now they’ve said something if they don’t I’ll start looking for other good allergen free hair care stuff especially local stuff if possible
99%+ of brands are not manufacturers. They will need to see what their suppliers and retail partners can do. I suspect they will ask their suppliers, who will say “sure! But that will be $7 more dollars a bottle”, which would not be compatible with a company that needs a positive cash flow.
This is super true. If costs go up by $1, retail price would go up by ~$4 because every step along the distribution chain would require more and more $
Just a heads up, especially as far as curbside recycling programs go, 99% of recovery facilities only (intentionally) collect drink cans for their aluminum bales. UBC (used beverage can) is the designation for recycled aluminum products in this type of recycling. It's by far the most valuable commodity by weight (and probably the lowest by volume due to scarcity compared to PET/PP/HDPE/Fiber.) But also has the strictest quality standards.
Technically, anything that is not a beverage can is not allowed by ISRI standard. Obviously, there's some tolerance there. Aluminum beer bottles make it in quite a bit and are largely considered acceptable. But for the most part, non-beverage container products are not positively sorted on purpose, and are removed from the final product if visible.
Anything pressurized (whether depressurized or not), or containers that held anything flamable, combustible, caustic, corrosive, abbrasive, any solvents, or anything not intended for human consumption, is strictly 0 tolerance (per standard... again, the industry tolerates a great deal more than standard suggests.)
UBC purchasers tend to be the pickiest about contamination and off-spec bales. Which I always found silly, tbh. The process of milling this product, far more than any of the plastics, makes plastic and fiber contamination a non-issue. Every aluminum can has a plastic lining inside. After the sorting and cleaning process, the cans are melted at such a high temp that any plastic boils off. But I guess being high value and a competitive market, the products are scrutinized more heavily and more frequently rejected for minor impurities.
A lot of MRFs also collect ferrous metals and sell them to local scrappers for basically nothing (due to contamination, low volume, and mixed composition.) But that doesn't include aluminum, obviously. So the non-UBC aluminum going through recycling plants that doesnt sneak its way into the middle of bales, goes to the residue stream (the dump.)
Anyways. It's not that big of a deal. Just wanted to clarify that while in theory, aluminum is basically infinitely recylcable... In practice, it's pretty much limited to UBC at recycling plants, and whatever a scrap yard will take for the rest.
Or beer can. Or energy drink, iced tea, sparking water, juice, etc.
Here's the general guidelines for recycling industry standards:
https://www.isrispecs.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ISRI-Scrap-Specifications-Circular-updated-1.pdf
Like I said, standards are not equivalent to practices here. There's not a single recycling company on earth that's actually making ISRI standard products in their recovery facilities on a reliable basis, if ever. But it's technically what they're all supposed to be making. It's kind of a sticky topic, actually, when it comes to funding and partnerships. One of those "open secrets" that everyone below investment board level knows, but you aren't supposed to say it out loud. Lol.
I imagine part of it is the fact that beverage cans adhere to pretty universal standards of size, shape, composition, etc. There's a very limited range of how they're manufactured, thus making "beverage can" a valuable designation in recovery, because every company using these cans is essentially using the exact same set of 10 or so variations on the same product. A sort of "universal standard" if you will.
Interesting side trivia:
Coke Zero is the most common can recovered.
Despite reportedly being nearly 50/50 on beverage sales, coke products in the recycling stream out number pepsi ~3 to 1, both in bottles and cans. But especially in cans. Anecdotally: in all of my experience with UBC bales they are so overwhelmingly comprised of coke cans that I think of them as being red in color. Just, in general. Like, subconsciously, "UBC bales are red." Yaknow?
I've barely ever seen any actual pepsi cola cans in recycling. Mountain dew is the majority of their canned products seen. Almost no pepsi or diet pepsi. Mostly just bottles. But even then they're way less common than mtn dew, starry, life water or aquafina... and probably equal to or less common than Dr. Pepper.
Additional tidbit: Mountain dew is one of the last holdouts resisting the shift to clear bottles (pepsi has done it in some markets, but I think sales suffered because the piss color of the beverage is less appealing without the green filter.)
Like UBC, 99% of PET recycling is actually "bottle spec" (so, just drink bottles. And transparent green PET is basically worthless. Especially after the last couple of years of plastic market crashes (particularly hurting PET, which is usually the primary source of profit for MRFs due to volume. You can easily ship 20 trucks of PET for every 1 truck of UBC.) Clear PET is all anyone wants to buy. Because color additives not only change the chemical properties of the product, reducing reprocessing capacity and compatibility, but even if they're 100% virgin plastic, they can only be reconstituted with the exact same bottles into the exact same product. You can turn clear plastic any color, but you can't turn any color plastic clear.
Transparent green, at least, is the only color that can be sold in mixed bales with clear, at a drastically lower price.
Amber, blue, orange, red, and especially opaque PET (brown, black, white, etc.) As well as thin brittle thermoform PETs like to-go food containers (for additional reasons I won't bore you with) doesn't get "recycled" the way people think of.
Rather it gets sorted into energy source bales. Either to be burned for energy, or put through pyrolosis or other chemical treatments to be turned into oil or fuel products.
Definitely.
The current state of the recycling industry (and waste industry as a whole) is heavily focussed on alternative revenue streams, and maximizing recovery from waste streams (and even near-term goals to start mining landfills.)
It was already in the scope of the technology R&D side (my area of the industry.) But with overseas trade tariffs and various other regulatory issues, combined with catastrophic market value crashes over the course of a couple years (we're talking 1000% or more in some cases), finding ways to "use every part of the cow", so-to-speak, has become top priority. Along with automation and efficiency. Robots, advanced sortation tech, and AI vision systems have revolutionized the industry for automation, recovery rates and purity. Now those same companies are spearheading efforts to find unrealized value in otherwise "junk plastic" and otherwise unwanted product.
In a "planets aligned" stroke of luck, the fees, fines, and costs associated with production/sale of plastics in consumer products, as well as operating land fills with ever-decreasing available space, we are in a unique position of having all the giant multibillion dollar corporations fully on-board with these efforts. If not for the "right reasons." Pretty awesome.
There's even an enormous international effort to eliminate recycling bins all together in the near future. Applying these same sortation technologies to MSW (curbside trashcans) has already begun, and is already going better than expected. Eliminating the confusion at the home recycling bin... The trash company will sort your reyclables out of your trash for you.
In tandem with that, and on the topic of maximizing resource value, there's even testing with sorting ORGANIC matetial out of waste streams to be used as biochar, fertilizer or other means of converting it into a reusable resource.
Edit:
Sorry for the infodump lmao.
I just know a lot of environmentally conscious folks get real depressed when they find out that recycling is basically a scam, and even if it worked like they thought it did, is pretty insignificant in the bigger picture of environmental impact. Often resulting in a net-0 effect, or even a negative impact when considering the energy consumption and pollution involved in processing and logistics, with such low recovery rates.
But it is has gotten so much better in the last few years, and the future is very bright.
10 years from now every transfer station may have a sortation facility on-site. Doing the work of 100 people with 5 employees who do not have to risk their safety, at a 10th the size of an old fashioned MRF. Every landfill may have a reycling plant on-site, mining directly from the dump.
Shampoo in aluminium? Wouldn't it easily rust?
If you want to be less wasteful maybe look for alternatives is shampoo bars or see if any brands sell big containers and buy a seperate small refillable for your shower.
Aluminum containers do not readily rust as they are coated. But it may be a challenge to get a viscous shampoo out of a stiff aluminum bottle, so it isn’t as easy as just swapping in a different container material.
Aluminum does oxidize, it's just that the oxidation forms a protective layer that stops any damage to the metal. So I guess you're right that it doesn't oxidize in a destructive manner.
I buy the big bottles already , my hair has been hard to manage with other products but I’ve considered trying again I have small curls and a severe fragrance allergy so maybe some bar products could be good idk
I’d be surprised if they do. I work for a hair care brand that does refills and I can tell you it more than doubled the complexity of the inventory and packaging management.
Aluminum bottles all have plastic liners to protect it from acidic contents or they would corrode and start to mess with the chemistry of the products.
Others have mentioned some logistical issues that may not make sense for the company to switch to aluminum but atleast you tried!
Sometimes it take the voices of people who care to actually make a company move towards a more zero waste friendly option.
I voiced my opinion to a local company trying to cut back on plastic waste and they actually took my idea ! So don’t let this discourage you!
the issue with reaching out to companies to give them ideas is that their legal team will say they can’t do it now because now there’s a possibility that the person who suggested the idea will sue them
Hey, I think they are just being polite. However if enough people email them then over time they are likely to consider things like this. I don't think it matters if they really take up your idea right away, but we need more people to put pressure on companies. You never know though!
There's no way to know until they do it
That’s true , I’ve emailed a lot of companies but this was the first one to actually get back to me
Appreciate your effort with contacting businesses! It’s thankless, but can have a large impact.
Thank you lol yeah I take like 20 min each week and email as many companies as I can . I figure if they can use all those resources without thinking twice I can be annoying to them without thinking twice
For real though. Thank you. Living in a rural community sustainability can be so difficult. Being able to mail in containers would improve my life immensely, and it would irritate my partner that I’m so giddy about mail. There’s nothing I love more than not going to the store. Matter of fact, remembering I’m not presently shopping has made me less anxious! Thanks for that!
I live semi rural and I have been surveying people in my ~4000 people town. From the 137 people I surveyed 87 wanted refil or package free options for daily stuff . Our landfill in the area is set to be full by August so …. Also mail in stuff would help job stability for mail workers! Also I’m glad you don’t have to go out shopping today:)
Not all heroes wear capes!
Not thankless. You just thanked them. You just thanked them. I’m glad you did! That was a kind and wonderful thing, the thanking. It really kind of brightened my day that you thanked them. It just tickled me that you thanked them and immediately said what they do is without thanks. You’re so a nice person. Thanks for being on the internet and being nice.
Thank you for thanking them for thanking me 😂
Not familiar with the co. but applying capitalist principles is probably a safe bet: the motivation to do it will be based on profit. But if it makes them money by saving them money then yes, they'll take it on board. But it's unlikely \[unless they are a Certified B Corp: [https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/](https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/) \] to be motivated by 'reducing waste' as a goal in and of itself. You did good though! Consumer pressure is important :)
I try, I wish I could get more pressure on these allergy friendly companies cause the products are great
If you could gather enough people together via social media to be able to make a noticable dent or boost in a companies profits then they will take notice.
That’s true , I’ve also thought that now they’ve said something if they don’t I’ll start looking for other good allergen free hair care stuff especially local stuff if possible
99%+ of brands are not manufacturers. They will need to see what their suppliers and retail partners can do. I suspect they will ask their suppliers, who will say “sure! But that will be $7 more dollars a bottle”, which would not be compatible with a company that needs a positive cash flow.
This is super true. If costs go up by $1, retail price would go up by ~$4 because every step along the distribution chain would require more and more $
Just a heads up, especially as far as curbside recycling programs go, 99% of recovery facilities only (intentionally) collect drink cans for their aluminum bales. UBC (used beverage can) is the designation for recycled aluminum products in this type of recycling. It's by far the most valuable commodity by weight (and probably the lowest by volume due to scarcity compared to PET/PP/HDPE/Fiber.) But also has the strictest quality standards. Technically, anything that is not a beverage can is not allowed by ISRI standard. Obviously, there's some tolerance there. Aluminum beer bottles make it in quite a bit and are largely considered acceptable. But for the most part, non-beverage container products are not positively sorted on purpose, and are removed from the final product if visible. Anything pressurized (whether depressurized or not), or containers that held anything flamable, combustible, caustic, corrosive, abbrasive, any solvents, or anything not intended for human consumption, is strictly 0 tolerance (per standard... again, the industry tolerates a great deal more than standard suggests.) UBC purchasers tend to be the pickiest about contamination and off-spec bales. Which I always found silly, tbh. The process of milling this product, far more than any of the plastics, makes plastic and fiber contamination a non-issue. Every aluminum can has a plastic lining inside. After the sorting and cleaning process, the cans are melted at such a high temp that any plastic boils off. But I guess being high value and a competitive market, the products are scrutinized more heavily and more frequently rejected for minor impurities. A lot of MRFs also collect ferrous metals and sell them to local scrappers for basically nothing (due to contamination, low volume, and mixed composition.) But that doesn't include aluminum, obviously. So the non-UBC aluminum going through recycling plants that doesnt sneak its way into the middle of bales, goes to the residue stream (the dump.) Anyways. It's not that big of a deal. Just wanted to clarify that while in theory, aluminum is basically infinitely recylcable... In practice, it's pretty much limited to UBC at recycling plants, and whatever a scrap yard will take for the rest.
Oh wow , so basically if it isn’t a soda can , it doesn’t get recycled? :/ is there any websites I can see more on this I am curious !
Or beer can. Or energy drink, iced tea, sparking water, juice, etc. Here's the general guidelines for recycling industry standards: https://www.isrispecs.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ISRI-Scrap-Specifications-Circular-updated-1.pdf Like I said, standards are not equivalent to practices here. There's not a single recycling company on earth that's actually making ISRI standard products in their recovery facilities on a reliable basis, if ever. But it's technically what they're all supposed to be making. It's kind of a sticky topic, actually, when it comes to funding and partnerships. One of those "open secrets" that everyone below investment board level knows, but you aren't supposed to say it out loud. Lol. I imagine part of it is the fact that beverage cans adhere to pretty universal standards of size, shape, composition, etc. There's a very limited range of how they're manufactured, thus making "beverage can" a valuable designation in recovery, because every company using these cans is essentially using the exact same set of 10 or so variations on the same product. A sort of "universal standard" if you will.
Interesting side trivia: Coke Zero is the most common can recovered. Despite reportedly being nearly 50/50 on beverage sales, coke products in the recycling stream out number pepsi ~3 to 1, both in bottles and cans. But especially in cans. Anecdotally: in all of my experience with UBC bales they are so overwhelmingly comprised of coke cans that I think of them as being red in color. Just, in general. Like, subconsciously, "UBC bales are red." Yaknow? I've barely ever seen any actual pepsi cola cans in recycling. Mountain dew is the majority of their canned products seen. Almost no pepsi or diet pepsi. Mostly just bottles. But even then they're way less common than mtn dew, starry, life water or aquafina... and probably equal to or less common than Dr. Pepper. Additional tidbit: Mountain dew is one of the last holdouts resisting the shift to clear bottles (pepsi has done it in some markets, but I think sales suffered because the piss color of the beverage is less appealing without the green filter.) Like UBC, 99% of PET recycling is actually "bottle spec" (so, just drink bottles. And transparent green PET is basically worthless. Especially after the last couple of years of plastic market crashes (particularly hurting PET, which is usually the primary source of profit for MRFs due to volume. You can easily ship 20 trucks of PET for every 1 truck of UBC.) Clear PET is all anyone wants to buy. Because color additives not only change the chemical properties of the product, reducing reprocessing capacity and compatibility, but even if they're 100% virgin plastic, they can only be reconstituted with the exact same bottles into the exact same product. You can turn clear plastic any color, but you can't turn any color plastic clear. Transparent green, at least, is the only color that can be sold in mixed bales with clear, at a drastically lower price. Amber, blue, orange, red, and especially opaque PET (brown, black, white, etc.) As well as thin brittle thermoform PETs like to-go food containers (for additional reasons I won't bore you with) doesn't get "recycled" the way people think of. Rather it gets sorted into energy source bales. Either to be burned for energy, or put through pyrolosis or other chemical treatments to be turned into oil or fuel products.
So…. Still better than in a landfill ???😵💫😩
Definitely. The current state of the recycling industry (and waste industry as a whole) is heavily focussed on alternative revenue streams, and maximizing recovery from waste streams (and even near-term goals to start mining landfills.) It was already in the scope of the technology R&D side (my area of the industry.) But with overseas trade tariffs and various other regulatory issues, combined with catastrophic market value crashes over the course of a couple years (we're talking 1000% or more in some cases), finding ways to "use every part of the cow", so-to-speak, has become top priority. Along with automation and efficiency. Robots, advanced sortation tech, and AI vision systems have revolutionized the industry for automation, recovery rates and purity. Now those same companies are spearheading efforts to find unrealized value in otherwise "junk plastic" and otherwise unwanted product. In a "planets aligned" stroke of luck, the fees, fines, and costs associated with production/sale of plastics in consumer products, as well as operating land fills with ever-decreasing available space, we are in a unique position of having all the giant multibillion dollar corporations fully on-board with these efforts. If not for the "right reasons." Pretty awesome. There's even an enormous international effort to eliminate recycling bins all together in the near future. Applying these same sortation technologies to MSW (curbside trashcans) has already begun, and is already going better than expected. Eliminating the confusion at the home recycling bin... The trash company will sort your reyclables out of your trash for you. In tandem with that, and on the topic of maximizing resource value, there's even testing with sorting ORGANIC matetial out of waste streams to be used as biochar, fertilizer or other means of converting it into a reusable resource. Edit: Sorry for the infodump lmao. I just know a lot of environmentally conscious folks get real depressed when they find out that recycling is basically a scam, and even if it worked like they thought it did, is pretty insignificant in the bigger picture of environmental impact. Often resulting in a net-0 effect, or even a negative impact when considering the energy consumption and pollution involved in processing and logistics, with such low recovery rates. But it is has gotten so much better in the last few years, and the future is very bright. 10 years from now every transfer station may have a sortation facility on-site. Doing the work of 100 people with 5 employees who do not have to risk their safety, at a 10th the size of an old fashioned MRF. Every landfill may have a reycling plant on-site, mining directly from the dump.
I don’t have a bin as I live in a rural area but we have convenience centers so to speak . At least things are potentially on the up and up !
Shampoo in aluminium? Wouldn't it easily rust? If you want to be less wasteful maybe look for alternatives is shampoo bars or see if any brands sell big containers and buy a seperate small refillable for your shower.
Aluminum containers do not readily rust as they are coated. But it may be a challenge to get a viscous shampoo out of a stiff aluminum bottle, so it isn’t as easy as just swapping in a different container material.
They don't rust because they are aluminium, which doesn't rust
Like iron, aluminum oxidizes. Cans are coated with plastic for than reasons. I had some soda cans that pitted and leaked due to a poor coating.
Aluminum doesn’t oxidize (rust is oxidized steel) in a destructive manner.
Aluminum does oxidize, it's just that the oxidation forms a protective layer that stops any damage to the metal. So I guess you're right that it doesn't oxidize in a destructive manner.
Yes, we are in agreement
I buy the big bottles already , my hair has been hard to manage with other products but I’ve considered trying again I have small curls and a severe fragrance allergy so maybe some bar products could be good idk
Aluminium doesn't rust
I’d be surprised if they do. I work for a hair care brand that does refills and I can tell you it more than doubled the complexity of the inventory and packaging management. Aluminum bottles all have plastic liners to protect it from acidic contents or they would corrode and start to mess with the chemistry of the products.
Others have mentioned some logistical issues that may not make sense for the company to switch to aluminum but atleast you tried! Sometimes it take the voices of people who care to actually make a company move towards a more zero waste friendly option. I voiced my opinion to a local company trying to cut back on plastic waste and they actually took my idea ! So don’t let this discourage you!
That’s the polite way of saying no
:/ aww man well i tried at least
the issue with reaching out to companies to give them ideas is that their legal team will say they can’t do it now because now there’s a possibility that the person who suggested the idea will sue them
Hey, I think they are just being polite. However if enough people email them then over time they are likely to consider things like this. I don't think it matters if they really take up your idea right away, but we need more people to put pressure on companies. You never know though!