[RFC] tagging glass recycling

General talk Tagging general discussion
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21

Just found this thread after seeing an edit near me, where “clear” was changed to “white”. I can see now the use of “white” may be linked to a term used in some countries.

But, I think the use of “white” is misleading, especially if it related to a translation. White is specific colour and “clear” glass is not white. In the UK use of white glass is rare, but most common in bathroom dispenser bottles (eg liquid soap dispensers)

This mass edit should not have been done without more discussion. It does appear there is a reasonable need to decide on colour terms. I would suggest common specific colours used (clear, green, brown), and I think there is need for “mixed”

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22

I think in the Netherlands it’s the same as in Germany or in Poland: literal translation is misleading.

Why Poland? See the wiki discussion Talk:Tag:amenity=recycling - OpenStreetMap Wiki?
@Mateusz_Konieczny

So I propose to use the values “clear”;“green” and “brown” to be compliant to British English. The colour scheme should be documented in the wiki (empty table cell :slight_smile: ) and the German version corrected.

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23

This combines several tags into one tag. A year later someone turns this tag into several tags again. I don’t see the progress.

24

It is clear glass, meaning it is colourless and transparent.

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25

Surely that’s the point of this discussion, and following this, taking it to the wiki.

At the moment there’s no consensus or documentation. The point is to hopefully reach a consensus and make some documentation!

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26

I would default to the terms used by the recycling industry. Can we find out what find out those are in our respective regions?

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27

If you’re talking about glass colours, then in the UK, and the “British English” used in OSM, the common terms used are “clear”, “green”, and “brown”. The term “mixed” appears for all colours.

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28

Hi all,

I’ve added the following description to the recycling:glass_bottles:colour entry in the Recycling Accepts table:

Semi-colon separated values of the colour(s) accepted. Suggested values include: “mixed”, “clear”, “green” (often also includes blue) and “brown”. Note the use of “white” is likely a mistranslation and should only be used for truly white opaque glass.

Hopefully that about sums up this discussion but edits/comments welcomed.

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29

As of today, we have reached the one thousandth recycling:glass_bottles:colour tag.
Currently I’m editing various incorrect tags:
tag (count)
recycling:glass_white (135)
recycling:glass_brown (103)
recycling:glass_green (129)
recycling:white_glass (51)
recycling:brown_glass (40)
recycling:green_glass (52)
recycling:glass:colour (29) done
recycling:mixed_glass (8)
recycling:glass_bottom (8) done
glass_colour (3) done
This will certainly keep me busy for a while.
I have also changed the values from transparent to clear and sorted the values alphabetically. This helps a lot to keep the clarity.
I have noticed that one possible value is still missing.
In the Netherlands, Germany and Austria, white glass is collected separately from colored glass. The names for the colored portion are “bont glas” and “Buntglas”.

I would suggest adding this to the wiki:

Semi-colon separated and alphabetically sorted values of the colour(s) accepted. Suggested values include: “mixed” (all colours) , “clear”, “coloured” (all colours, except clear), “green” (often also includes blue) and “brown”. Note the use of “white” is likely a mistranslation and should only be used for truly white opaque glass.

What do you think?

30

Rather than semicolon separated, I’d use recycling:glass:colour:<colour>=yes if there isn’t a single value for recycling:glass:colour=<colour>.
E.g.

recycling:glass:colour:green=yes
recycling:glass:colour:brown=yes
recycling:glass:colour:clear=no

The last one can be omitted.

31

Hi Jofban,
I didn’t want to start the discussion about whether to write recycling:glass_bottles:colour=XXX;XXX;… or recycling:glass:colour:XXX=yes
again.
I have orientated myself here on the wiki and on this discussion round that ended more than a year ago with the update of the wiki.

However, the tag recycling:glass:colour:XXX=yes does not seem optimal to me, as it refers to all types of glass
(see Wiki) and not to bottled glass.
If you change recycling:glass_bottles:colour, you should also use the correct key to avoid misunderstandings.
So instead of recycling:glass:colour:XXX=yes it is better to use recycling:glass_bottles:colour:XXX=yes.
To demonstrate the problem, here an example.

Consider a recycling centre that recycles both white glass sheets, as well as unsorted coloured glass bottles.

If I understand your suggestion correctly, this should be
recycling:glass:colour:clear=yes and
recycling:glass:colour:mixed=yes.
This is not clear, because it seems that transparent and colour-mixed glass sheets could be collected.

From my point of view the correct tags are

recycling:glass:colour:clear=yes
recycling:glass_bottles:colour:mixed=yes

This way it is possible to avoid ambiguities

Regards,
lyctkel

PS: There are only 2 locations where blue bottles are collected. That seems strange to me.
Either blue bottles were collected earlier or there was an error in tagging.
I have left a fixme tag in both cases.

32

I actually agree with you completely. I guess I could have made clearer that glass was only intended as an example for my point.
On the issue of the semi-colon vs different tags, I missed that it’s already in the wiki. Though I hardly see a consensus here if there is a single post advocating for it? In any case, with proper tooling and semantics, both variants are essentially the same.

33

recycling:glass_bottles:color has been in the wiki for a long time (I can’t say since when). For this reason I use it.
Later I came across this forum and just discovered that there has been a discussion on this topic in the wiki since 2011.

The status of the discussion:
In July 2023 there was a lively discussion in which SekeRob clearly preferred a list with semicolon,
Casey_boy and stevea preferred recycling:glass:color= (which only makes sense with semicolon).
Moohan, who suggested recycling:glass_XXX = yes, summarized the discussion by saying that recycling:glass:color= is preferred.

There was a dispute about whether white or clear should be used for the colors.
I came up with the following distribution:
clear 4 (Casey_boy,habi,JassKurn,Vinzenz_Mai)
possibly clear 3 (stevea,SomeoneElse,goedegazelle)
white 3 (Moohan,SekeRob,IanH)
no opinion 4
This results in a slight majority for clear.

In the wiki, recycling:** recycling:glass_bottles:colour=X;X;X;…**. was entered, clear was set as the value.
Within the last year there has not been a single objection to this definition by any of the discussants.

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34

Just a friendly reminder that we are still waiting for your answers.

35

Hi Bkil,

this is my first contact with matrix (https://matrix.to/#/#osm-jeloles:matrix.org). I was expecting to get informed by the server if there is a question for me.

To summarize the diskussion here a TL;DR:
The tag recycling:glass_bottles:colour was introduced some years ago to give further information abought collected coloures of glass bottles.
A year ago a new discussion started to reach a consensus abought it.
At the end a consensous was reached and the result was written more detailed in the wiki (section recycling:glass_bottles:colour in Tag:amenity=recycling - OpenStreetMap Wiki).
Two weeks ago I asked to add the colour “coloured” to the list of possible coloures.
In the end I summarized the diskussion (12. october)

Could you please contact me here, if there are some further questions directed to my.
It’s rather time consuming to copy and paste the hungarian chat in small chunks into an online translator to find out if there is a question directed to me.
Regards,
lyctkel