[HN Gopher] Industry spent millions selling recycling, to sell m...
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Industry spent millions selling recycling, to sell more plastic
Author : ctack
Score : 148 points
Date : 2020-03-31 19:42 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| golemiprague wrote:
| I think in those times of corona plastic proves to be very
| beneficial, I wish shops still had those good old plastic bags
| rather than me carrying around my "recyclable" bag with who knows
| what kind of diseases and contaminations. That's assuming I
| remembered to take one out of the 20 I got which I bought every
| time I forgot to take one.
| baron816 wrote:
| I've heard a sentiment from people that it's ok to drink lots of
| bottle water, use plastic utensils, etc. because they can be
| recycled. Plastic won. Try to tell people that they're wasting
| their time trying to recycle and they'll freak out.
| daxfohl wrote:
| I feel like there is another side too, of "plastic replacement"
| industry that also doesn't particularly have our interests at
| heart either. Do I really think reusable aluminum drinking straws
| are the answer to humanity's next crisis? Are plastic straws even
| in a top 1000 list of humanity's problems? Is the change even a
| net positive if the average person uses an aluminum one three
| times and throws it out? Or is it just someone (maybe even well
| intentioned) looking to make a quick dollar?
| capableweb wrote:
| > Is the change even a net positive if the average person uses
| one three times and throws it out?
|
| Well, the point of the aluminum drinking straws is that you
| don't throw them. What's the point if you're gonna throw them
| in the end anyways? Just wash it, like the rest of utensils
| that you use.
|
| Anyways, I think we can all survive without straws. McDonals
| where I live has started just not giving you straws at all, and
| the cup has a message that if you want straws, ask the people
| working there for one. Looking around me when eating there,
| most people seems to be able to drink their sodas just fine
| without straws.
| pestaa wrote:
| No straws??? What are they planning to do next, taking away
| our lids?!
| daxfohl wrote:
| > Anyways, I think we can all survive without straws
|
| Yip, and that's somewhat the point. But for whatever reason
| we keep getting lulled into the idea that we can fix the
| problem of consuming too many resources without actually
| consuming fewer resources.
| darepublic wrote:
| "Reducing" takes discipline, "Recycling" maybe just delusions.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| Nonsense.
|
| "Reducing" requires proper pricing, that is it
| Afforess wrote:
| We need to ban most consumer uses of plastic. Plastic is much
| like nuclear waste, it's harmful to life, and takes thousands to
| millions of years to degrade. Outside of uses like medical
| devices or smaller electronic devices, plastic is just wasteful.
| At the supermarket, I just cringe when I see a single banana or
| apple wrapped in plastic wrap. And I shudder to imagine the
| future health effects all the microplastic beads in the water
| supply are doing to us.
| hammock wrote:
| You are being downvoted because this is an extreme position,
| but you back it up with reasoning and I believe it deserves to
| be heard.
| nitrogen wrote:
| The plastic-wrapped fruit lasts longer so there is less food
| waste (and less carbon wasted on shipping wasted fruit).
| hnhg wrote:
| Don't forget its use in cigarette filters.
| lnsru wrote:
| I am afraid, that environmental topics will drown in current
| pandemic. There will be millions units of medical safety
| equipment disposed in coming months. Probably this will be
| incinerated since contaminated. It's basically all sorts of
| plastic. Maybe this will push forward recycling industry to deal
| with large amount of plastic waste. Maybe not.
|
| I can speculate, that more and more products in the stores will
| be wrapped to create safety feeling for the buyers. "Buy here,
| our food is well packed and clean!"
| Retric wrote:
| Environmental issues always come down to scale. Disposing of
| excess medical equipment is a tiny issue relative to shutting
| down the economy.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Shutting down the economy and reduced pollution that resulted
| will far far outweigh increased medical supply disposal. Just
| go look at the skies in India and China.
| Iwan-Zotow wrote:
| If it is 100% recyclable+degradable, I don't care how much they
| sell
| dpix wrote:
| Even if we had 100% recycling, most if not all forms of
| recyclable plastic can only be recycled once into the "Made from
| recycled materials" type of plastic which cannot be recycled
| again.
|
| So the Oil industry will still have massive demand for new
| plastics if every piece of existing plastic got recycled only
| once. For recycling to work, we need a solution that makes it
| easy to re-use many many times.
|
| This is why recycling really isn't the answer to solving the
| plastics crisis anyway
| pestaa wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated I believe, because with each cycle
| the material loses some degree of quality, but there are
| several categories to begin with.
|
| So the thin water bottles (PET) might be reused only once, but
| advanced plastic required by medicine containers, infant food
| packaging, or even thicker bottles, may get recycled multiple
| times.
| lucisferre wrote:
| As everyone in the media wakes up to the fraud that is recycling
| I'm reminded that Penn and Teller looked into this in 2004.
|
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0771119/
| laCorona wrote:
| >many plastics and their byproducts
|
| Woah woah. Many? Plastics are useful because they are inert. They
| are gigantic chains that basically don't react.
|
| Byproducts are part of the process, not the actual plastics. And
| I'm not sure what you are referring to here.
|
| Sure BPA is potentially unstable, but it's pretty easy to figure
| out if a chemical is dangerous. Chemicals aren't free, so you
| know what you are buying.
|
| Source- chem Engineer who worked in polyurethane seating
| DubiousPusher wrote:
| Something I've wondered about for a while is if we just decreased
| the variety of things we allow to be put into combined recycling
| if that would help.
|
| For example, if we eliminate paper and glass entirely from
| recycling programs and all recycling was plastic and metal. Would
| this help?
|
| I know a some amount of paper is carbon neutral at this point
| because planting is required which offsets use.
|
| And a deposit could be charged for glass which would help that.
|
| If we focused on metal, which is profitable and plastic which
| seems to be most problematic would we be better off?
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| I think you're right, but we'd eliminate plastic- paper and
| metal are economically recyclable.
|
| Paper is a huge problem, too. It's one of the most polluting
| industries, up there with mining. And, I believe, that is just
| the production of paper- not including the forestry that is
| also required.
| _delirium wrote:
| Some single-stream systems have stopped taking glass.
| Paper/cardboard seems to be cost-effective so there isn't a
| real pressure to remove that. If anything it's one of the few
| things (along with metal) that the recycling systems actually
| want.
|
| The reasons for removing glass in particular seem to be: 1)
| it's the heaviest component, so removing it decreases
| transportation/processing costs, 2) after China stopped
| accepting exported glass, there's a lack of processors who will
| accept it, and 3) broken glass shards contaminate more valuable
| things in the stream, plus damage machinery.
|
| Plastic isn't really cost-effective either and has low recovery
| rates, but it's at least lighter than glass and doesn't break
| into shards as easily, so a lot of places still take it, if
| only to make people feel good.
|
| Links: https://wamu.org/story/19/04/26/arlington-ends-curbside-
| glas..., https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/news2/glass-containers-
| no-long..., https://www.recyclingtoday.com/article/recycling-
| programs-ph...
| lukifer wrote:
| Plastics in general make me nervous. I watched a talk from an
| endocrinologist that many plastics and their byproducts can bind
| to chemical receptors, throwing off the production and ratios of
| various hormones and neurotransmitters. We made a big push
| against BPA-free plastic years ago, but there may be other
| varieties that are just as harmful:
| https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/03/tritan-certi...
|
| (I'm also very nervous about "biodegradable" plastic which
| appears to break down granularly, but persists microscopically in
| the environment.)
|
| As much as I applaud the effort to use cloth bags at the grocery
| store, the vast majority of the products we place in them are
| still wrapped in _huge_ quantities of single-use plastic. While
| metal cans and glass jars are at least somewhat more recyclable
| /reusable, I'm not even sure we _have_ a good replacement for the
| necessary evil of food-safe containers.
|
| If someone more knowledgable than myself had suggestions on how
| to look for safer/greener plastic varieties, or general
| strategies to reduce their use, I'd love to hear them.
| goda90 wrote:
| Unfortunately, metal cans have a plastic liner too. We use
| plastic in so much it'll be really hard to get away from it.
| Amygaz wrote:
| So, it that motherjones.com article you link, it's clearly BPA
| they are talking about, an additive to plastic, not plastic
| itself.
| lukifer wrote:
| > According to Bittner's research, some BPA-free products
| actually released synthetic estrogens that were more potent
| than BPA.
|
| I don't know if that means that "BPA-free" is often deceptive
| advertising, or it's referring to different additive that's
| _technically_ not BPA but problematic for other reasons, or
| what. (Bear in mind, as a layman, my mindset on this stuff is
| that the burden of proof should be on proving safety, not on
| proving harm.)
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Metal cans are lined with plastic. You're basically limited to
| glass and wax paper.
| spqr0a1 wrote:
| Peaches and pineapple are some of the few foods still
| distributed in tin-plated cans without a plastic lining.
| hammock wrote:
| Wax paper uses synthetic wax (or silicone for parchment
| paper), which might as well be plastic.
| barney54 wrote:
| And while it is possible to recycle glass, in practice it is
| tough. Glass is heavy and therefore costly to transport. It
| also generally has to be sorted by color before it is
| recycled (and this is a problem with U.S. multi stream
| recycling collection).
| https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-
| recy...
| lukifer wrote:
| The other thing I wonder about is all the extra crap on
| nearly all bottles: glue and stickers and wrappers and ink.
| I suspect some/most of what I put into recycling just ends
| up in a landfill anyway. And what kills me is, if our E2E
| supply chain was anything resembling sanity, there's no
| reason the identical bottle couldn't be shipped back to the
| manufacturer to be washed and reused directly!
| (...pandemics notwithstanding)
|
| Maybe it's unrealistic, but in light of the efficiency and
| innovation created by standard-sized shipping containers, I
| wonder if it would be worthwhile to try to push
| manufacturers to standardize on various glass bottle shapes
| and sizes, to make them easy to reuse directly across
| different products and locations.
| [deleted]
| jbay808 wrote:
| I think package standardization would be a revolutionary
| benefit to humanity, beyond even what the shipping
| container has achieved.
|
| I remember visiting Japan and being blown away when I
| walked into a bookstore - almost every book was a
| standard size. This means _bookshelves_ can be a standard
| size. This means people can fit books into their small
| homes efficiently. Boxes are designed to fit the books
| perfectly. Cloth book-covers fit library books perfectly.
| Coming back to North America, it felt that bookshelves
| were a war between publishers to produce the most
| awkwardly shaped book that would stick out from the shelf
| more than any others.
|
| In an age where Amazon will ship you a toothbrush in a 1'
| box stuffed with paper, where a lot of consumers don't
| even see the product on a shelf so the attractiveness of
| the box doesn't matter, think of the benefits that
| package standardization could have.
|
| Apparently the USSR would wash and reuse glass bottles,
| and the container shape would be the same whether it
| contained pickles or whatever. I've only heard this
| anecdotally though.
| malandrew wrote:
| Foamglas is a great use for recycled glass
|
| https://www.buildinggreen.com/blog/foamglas---my-new-
| favorit...
| nervousvarun wrote:
| Ouch. Even the classic aluminum coke/beer can? Or
| tuna/sardine can etc?
|
| Always just assumed that was the only practical recyclable
| container. Apparently even those have plastic? Wow.
| hammock wrote:
| Yes they are all lined with BPA or equivalent, to protect
| the can from corrosion.
| chrisjc wrote:
| Perhaps this video will answer your question. I was also
| shocked to learn this.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| They use a thin plastic liner to prevent reaction with the
| Aluminum. These will burn off when the Al is melted for
| recycling.
|
| Great video here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQHFQoFoxvQ
| heymijo wrote:
| I see plastics as our generations asbestos.
|
| Analogy isn't perfect, but it's a material we saw as benign
| that could end up having untold impact on our bodies.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Plastic is an amazing product and it is responsible for
| saving much more lives than it takes.
|
| It's important to always think about both the positive and
| the negative impacts of anything we humans use, not just the
| negative or positive.
| heymijo wrote:
| I think this is an excellent comment when taken by itself.
|
| As a defensive human however, I think it assumes something
| about my original comment that is not there.
| ThomPete wrote:
| Well I think the analogy is not just not "not perfect"
| it's very very misleading IMO.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| I don't think you can use a scale to weigh the outcomes of
| technology, there WILL be positive and negative impacts.
| It's also useful to think about how a technology changes
| our culture, way of life and way of thought.
|
| There are many positives that can be said about plastics,
| but it has shifted us into a "throwaway lifestyle", i.e.
| packaging, containers. Many plastics are used in a very
| ephemeral manor, which is great if you want to consumerism.
| But i suspect this obsolescence is baked into plastics.
| ThomPete wrote:
| These throwaway lifestyle items is someone elses
| business, someone elses jobs, someones elses ability to
| put food on their childrens table.
|
| I totally get the "war on plastic" tendencies when you
| see how it's hurting our oceans but it's very important
| to separate that which is something that can be fixed
| with some underlying idea that plastic in itself is a
| problem. It's not. It's literally right now saving lives
| through the ability creating single use masks, gloves,
| medical instruments, part of ventilators and I could go
| on.
|
| We are getting a taste of what the world would look like
| without consumerism and the use of fossil fuels etc. I
| don't know about you but I prefer consumerism to what we
| have now.
| triceratops wrote:
| I actually like the non-consumerist, non-fossil-fuel-
| consuming aspects of our current situation. If it wasn't
| for the omnipresent dread and social isolation, I'd say
| things were pretty good. The air is clear, there are
| people walking outside, CO2 emissions are down.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| I agree, that are unintended positive consequences.
|
| I worry more about the economic impact this will have in
| the long run. Hopefully, it's a hiccup.
| oldsklgdfth wrote:
| I'm not making a case for plastic being/creating a
| "problem". Plastic as a technology has allowed us to make
| cheap, single use products that are easy to replace and
| hard to repair. Like you are saying masks, gloves, etc.
|
| In the broader sense, human thinking has shifted to this
| mode. We can't fix this start over, it reduces the pride
| of ownership and being accountable for your things. When
| you have no pride of your material possession, why would
| you develop pride for culture, institutions, countries.
| These are all things that we can just make to our
| pleasing.
|
| I would argue that this might not be a global pandemic if
| it were not for global trade/consumerism.
| beerandt wrote:
| I completely agree (disposable plastic bags are an
| underappreciated marvel of both engineering and
| manufacturing, despite their faults) but exactly the same
| thing could be said about asbestos.
|
| And even the safe uses of asbestos are now (mostly) off-
| limits because of the taboo.
| colechristensen wrote:
| "biodegradable" plastics are chains of polymerized lactic acid.
| Proper disposal requires heat and time, but the chains do break
| down in nature, and lactic acid is everywhere, unlike many
| other "plastic" materials which are much more exotic. (talking
| about polylactic acid PLA)
|
| It is also true that many plastics are active biologically,
| mimic hormones, etc. etc. _BUT_ to temper this fear you have to
| realize that nearly everything is. Many foods, "essential
| oils", and natural plant and animal exposures have the same
| sort of hormone mimicry or other biological drug-like
| interactions which are poorly understood at best.
|
| The point I am trying to get across is that your body is not an
| impenetrable fortress that new and evil synthetic compounds are
| attacking. Instead, biological interactions with small effects
| are _everywhere_ , and while concern about some of them isn't
| unwarranted, it should be tempered by the idea that these
| influences abound.
| lukifer wrote:
| Cool, thanks for those details. I'm certainly not succumbing
| to any sort of naturalistic fallacy, or any illusion that
| plastic is in an intrinsically unique category compared to
| other products. I'm more operating from a general
| Precautionary Principle, where I want the burden of proof to
| be on demonstrating long-term ecological and health safety,
| especially for substances that come into contact with food
| and water.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Absolutely reasonable.
|
| 21st century medicine (and many other fields), in my
| prediction, will be the century of small effects. The broad
| strokes are out of the way, mostly, and it's now time for
| the less glamorous and more numerous small details and ever
| more complex interactions.
| zxcmx wrote:
| It's difficult because ontologically you can never actually
| prove something is "safe". It's proving a negative (never
| any harmful effects).
|
| Some harms are subtle or situation dependent, and small
| effects will only show up under widespread or frequent use.
|
| Perhaps deliberately slowed or phased rollout could help.
|
| It would also make materials science and the chemical
| industries "feel" a lot more like medicine. Companies would
| have to spend billions on studies to get new chemical
| formulations or materials to market which could have
| similar effects on innovation (and monopoly) to those we
| see in the drug market.
|
| Not necessarily bad depending on what you value but the
| effects would be very far reaching.
| lukifer wrote:
| Granted. I mean, strictly speaking, we can't prove that
| the gravitational constant won't change tomorrow. :) But
| I would like a substantial enough body of evidence from
| competent and disinterested assessment(s) so that our
| societies can take the right long-terms risks on new
| materials (where "new" = less than 100 years). Obviously
| easier said than done; I like the idea of putting it in
| the same category as medical treatments (though let's be
| frank, even that process is hardly flawless).
| colechristensen wrote:
| _Shrug_. You can define "safe" as an absolute and then
| argue absolute is impossible, yes. It's a bit of a straw
| man argument though.
|
| Or you can drop the binary label and start developing
| statistics about known effects and outcome ranges. These
| things can be done; further understanding of bio-chemical
| systems and simulation makes discovery by widespread
| experiment less and less extant.
|
| The issue isn't that looking for and finding effects
| positive or negative is _hard_ , the issue is that few
| are trying and few are interested in the effort. (i.e.
| most people either have the conservative, 'everything is
| safe' attitude or the luddite 'everything is bad for you'
| attitude, and neither involve much discovery)
| hirundo wrote:
| > As much as I applaud the effort to use cloth bags at the
| grocery store ...
|
| Maybe that's worth a little less applause during a pandemic.
| E.g. the governor of Massachusetts just reversed the ban on
| plastic bags ... and banned reusable shopping bans, during the
| emergency. Fear of pollution is getting pushed back by fear of
| germs.
|
| https://www.wcvb.com/article/gov-baker-grocery-store-pharmac...
| penneyd wrote:
| Did Gov. Baker previously support the ban on plastic bags?
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