Then they’d be store-drop-off recyclable right?

        • Anivia@feddit.org
          7·
          21 hours ago

          Yeah, reading this comment section as a German is mind boggling. You have to bring your food packaging back to the store you bought it from to get it recycled? We just have a separate recycling bin (and a separate paper bin and an organic waste bin) at home that gets picked up by the municipality

          The only thing we have to bring back to the store are empty bottles to get the deposit back

          • Starya67@lemmy.world
            1·
            20 hours ago

            You have to bring the glass (non Pfand anyway) to the glass container, no? I always find it a bit odd that they don’t pick that up.

            • Anivia@feddit.org
              3·
              20 hours ago

              There are different glass bottles, some are multiple use (water and beer bottles), which you have to pay a deposit for and bring back to the store so they get washed and reused. And others are single use (wine bottles) which you don’t pay a deposit for, and they have to be brought to glass containers (different containers for different glass colors), those don’t get washed and instead get molten down to make new bottles

              Plastic bottles always have a deposit and depending on the bottle either get washed and reused, or molten down. Aluminium cans also cost a deposit and have to be brought back to the store

        • Cousin Mose@lemmy.hogru.ch
          3·
          22 hours ago

          Right? I couldn’t get any retailer in the Los Angeles, CA (USA) area to accept shopping bags, forget cereal bags. Happy that the state sued the shit out of them then banned plastic bags though: it always sucked when I’d forget my bag and I’d have to pay for that thick-ass plastic shit.

          I do still struggle with plastic bags in packaging still though because my waste management company doesn’t accept them.

  • litchralee@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    I’m not familiar with cereal bags being accepted for recycling at grocery stores – although I’m aware that grocery store recycling in California has deep issues regarding implementation – but regarding why a chip bag is different than a cereal bag, my guess is that it has to do with the former being air tight.

    Chip bags are intentionally filled with gas (usually nitrogen) in order to preserve the contents for a long shelf life. Rather conveniently, this also helps the chips not smash up against other chip bags in the same box, at the cost of fitting fewer bags into a shipping container. As such, chip bags have to be air tight, and mylar is good at that, as evidenced by mylar balloons that keep helium inside for far longer than a latex balloon (to the sadness of every electricity provider on Earth).

    Whereas I suspect the clear plastic – maybe polyethylene? – bags used for cereal have different requirements, because a cereal box already provides mechanical protection against other boxes, and an expectation that cereals (a bona fide breakfast foodstuff, compared to chips which have always been categorized as a snack food) will be eaten in quantities that make recyclability a priority; this is a guess.

    I also think cereals might historically have been just free-floating inside the box, in the same way that dishwasher power detergent is still packaged within a thick cardstock box, with a pour-out metal spout. That said, this citation seems to indicate that cereal bags are in-fact liners, which would suggest the primary reason is one of food safety, if contact directly with the inside of the box would be a problem.

    And this kinda makes sense to me, since nobody would want to eat soggy cereal if a bit of rainwater seeped through the box and contacted the food.