[Tagging] Recycling of PET beverage bottles

[Jan Michel]

Hi Raphael,

On 22.05.21 23:05, Raphael wrote:
 > In my opinion, it is useful to know which recycling facilities only 
accept PET beverage bottles and with facilities also accept other 
plastic bottles (and which facilities accept PET in general or plastic 
in general).

Yes, absolutely. It makes a lot of sense to have this distinction.

 > He thinks that contributors are not aware of the difference between 
plastic bottles and PET beverage bottles

That's not correct. I wrote that mappers are not aware that there are 
two different tags now and will continue to use the tagging they are 
used to. And this tagging will be wrong in many cases, so it has to be 
checked in detail.


 > i asked on the wiki if a new tag should be used for PET beverage 
bottles. [2] One contributor answered me and recommended me to do so. 
I've then started to use the tag recycling:PET_drink_bottles=*, which i 
documented on the wiki. [3]

This is all fine, but there is still a problem.
There are two well-known tags (plastic_bottles and PET) which are in use 
since years and which got partially replaced by the new tag. So, 
everybody who searches for plastic_bottle as they did in the past years 
now misses POIs because this tag was removed and replaced by the new 
PET_drink_bottles. E.g. https://openrecyclemap.org/way/266776739 is not 
listed as accepting plastic bottles any more.



 > In my opionion, contributors that are interested in recording 
recycling facilities are aware of these differences (as most people 
using these facilities are, too). Besides, the name of the tags are 
clear and they are clearly definied on the wiki.

No mapper checks the Wiki for changes every time they add a tag 
somewhere or look up some data in the database. There was a mail about 
the changes sent by the Wiki to very few people - only those who have 
this page on their watchlist AND visited it since the last change of the 
page, i.e. within 25 hours before your addition.

Additionally, this is just one line in a huge table which can be missed 
easily (like it is done for most other recycling tags, unfortunately).
There should be a page for this key (at least a redirect to the main 
recycling page), so that all the tools (e.g. JOSM - right-click on Tag - 
Wiki or Taginfo) can show the page with the definition.

This is no critical issue about your particular change in tagging, but 
more about the general fact that important changes to tags are edited 
very silently in the Wiki and it takes ages for other mappers to notice.
I think that newly introduced tags should be at least announced here on 
the mailing list - clearly there is no need for a full proposal and 
voting in cases like this, but a simple email would help a lot.
E.g. those people working on presets in editors should be aware of it - 
after all they are the ones who "spread the word" to the typical mapper 
who is not too involved with tagging details.

Jan