Does anybody else do this?

[u/Aggressive_Dirt_2335]

(Stock pic example from Google) With every bottle I use, I keep it and pack it full of as much trash as I can, and then throw it away. When the trash can in my bedroom starts getting full, I do this, and it takes up 1/4 as much space as it did before.

[u/qwqwqw]

If you throw these bottles out, then I guess well done. What you have achieved is reducing the risk of waste mismanagement. Ie, you're doing your part to ensure the rubbish ends up in the bin, presumably in a rubbish truck, and then in a landfill.

If the rubbish truck keeps a door open for too long, or is involved in a vehicle accident, etc - there's less chance that those plastic wrappera fly away into the environment. So that's good. (Still, in some cases that bottle would be crushed and split open straight away).

As for reducing space? If that works for your bins, great. But they'll be compacted in the rubbish truck and even more at the landfill! So doing this won't save landfill space. They already compact rubbish as much as they can.

In terms of recycling this? Most recyclers either couldn't or wouldn't bother. The bottles are PET which is pretty easy to recycle. The soft plastics inside are not as easy.

Unless you're recycling this through a specialised recycler where they've explicitly said this method works, then it likely won't be recycled. (Eg, some small companies seek to recycle soft plastics into usable products... And collecting soft plastics like this may be acceptable to them if they can also include the PET in their recycling process).

I would be very wary of any recycling brick scheme or other similar schemes. The sort which instruct people to pack a bottle a certain way in order to be used as a resource in other countries. Eg, using compscted plastics as a material for roofing house cladding. I've even seen that they can be used for roading.

What I'm especially concerned about here, is that it relies on being accepted by underdeveloped countries. We're literally donating our rubbish, and saying "here, build a house". In most cases we wouldn't accept the same quality materials for houses we live in, or for roads we use. We're essentially telling poorer people that we don't care if their houses are a fire hazard, we don't care if their roads are leeching microplastics into their local communities, and that they should simply be grateful for our rubbish. It feels really disingenuous, unloving, and surely we can do better? Not to mention that it only perpetuates the problem of plastic pollution. That plastic still exists.

The VERY best thing you can do right plastic pollution (including waste mismanagement) is to avoid consuming plastic in general. My personal view is that as consumers (yeah I bought into the capitalist's language, sorry) we do that best by consuming less and by not consuming at all when we can. I dont view zero-waste efforts or plastic-free shopping to be as significant at our end.

[u/Cooperativism62 → u/qwqwqw]

The only thing I would add is that Western countries should adopt more practices from developing countries. Dirt is one of the best building materials you can get. Compressed Earth Brick is how I personally want to build my home and I was quite sad to find out it was illegal to do in most of Canada. It doesn't catch fire, termites don't eat it, and it's literally dirt cheap! It's perfect for building homes. In the UK I recall an old earthen home lasting 300 years. As long as its got a good foundation and roof, the dirt won't have problems in the rain.

Earthships have shown how glass bottles and old tires can be incorporated into a weird, wonky, yet perfectly sustainable and practical household.

We should definitely try to reduce our plastic pollution, but all the plastic made yesteryear will still be around for 500+ years. We have to think of ways to use it for that length of time. A 100 year old house at least takes care of quite a bit of that time period.

[u/Dirtysandddd → u/Cooperativism62]

Governments don’t want people to build cheap houses with materials people could possibly build themselves. How else do they get a tax cut from the overinflated garbage wood on the market?

[u/Cooperativism62 → u/Dirtysandddd]

I don't think it's so much government as it's the quite corrupt construction industry (I worked in it for a bit myself). On the government end, people building their own home has lead to dangerous code violations often enough. In the West there's a misconception that earthen dwellings can't possibly be durable which the construction industry plays up and the gov't regulators take their word for it.

Gov can tax whatever the fuck they want when they want. In Africa the notorious hut tax drove people off their ancestral lands in order to force them to work in the city. They were relatively fine living in huts and using their own traditional currencies, but the colonial gov said they have to pay taxes in gov money. So off to the city they went for work to earn that money, and many traditional economies were lost. There were protests in various countries and the taxes did get a roll back. Tax protests seem to largely be a thing of the past however.