[HN Gopher] 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)
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91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 273 points
Date : 2020-09-15 18:07 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nationalgeographic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nationalgeographic.com)
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly
| succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and
| packaging industries.
|
| Governments and consumers need to get serious with these lobbies:
|
| - Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies).
|
| - Heavily tax plastic packaging
|
| - Tax breaks for glass and paper packaging
|
| - Force plastic return deposit schemes at supermarkets _payed for
| by manufacturers_
|
| - Define industry quotas for how much 'new' plastic is allowed to
| be made from crude and make companies bid for it in a "new
| plastic" market, this would enable buy in from petro-chemical
| businesses whose profit currently depends on volume.
|
| Yes, product prices will increase but the reality is that the
| price is already there but is just currently hidden behind the
| recycling PR machine.
|
| None of this requires ocean micro plastic cleaning tech, or
| plastic separating computer vision, it is purely political it is
| purely stopping this protectionism. It can change right now if
| people are outraged enough.
| hiisukun wrote:
| In South Australia (one of the eight states/territories in
| Australia), they have just banned many single use plastics [1].
| The rules are a little delayed - coming in next year instead of
| now because of COVID - and are staged to include smaller items
| (straws) now and larger items (takeaway containers) later.
|
| That state has had a ban on plastic bags since 2009, around ten
| years before some of the more populated eastern parts of
| Australia.
|
| [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-09/sa-first-state-to-
| ban...
| snarf21 wrote:
| These are ideas that could affect change but it has to be a
| process. We didn't get here overnight and we won't solve it
| overnight. It seems like slow adding and raising a plastic tax
| based on packaging containing any plastic would work. Consumers
| have to decide if they will continue to pay more and more for
| convenience year over year. This tax money is used to develop
| technology to recycle and breakdown plastics. Basically, you
| slowly pay the consumer to pay up for their laziness.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > we won't solve it overnight.
|
| We are past and overdue on too many milestones in this
| planetary anthropogenic destruction.
|
| The future of humanity cannot afford anything less than
| solving this overnight.
|
| Some people will sit in Davos and ponder but the longer we
| waste time the longer we risk collapsing the world order that
| allows them to sit at Davos and ponder.
| lightgreen wrote:
| > - Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies).
|
| This is just naive and irrational.
|
| What if I really need a single use plastic thingy because for
| example, it is a wire buckle, and making it multi-use would
| make it effectively expensive single-use wire buckle?
|
| Banning ALL is rarely a good solution.
|
| Just tax it and that's it. And it doesn't matter, if it's
| single use or multiple use, because eventually all of them end
| up in the garbage.
| replicatorblog wrote:
| Separating worthy designs from wasteful ones is essentially
| impossible. I spent the first ten years of my career
| designing medical devices and worked with a wide range of
| suppliers. One of our key vendors also did a lot of work
| designing airtight containers for chewing tobacco.
|
| This is true up the entire supply chain. The same machines
| that produce barrier plastics for first responders also
| produce material for plastic wrap for retail packaging.
|
| Sure, you could hypothetically ban all the "frivolous"
| applications, but I don't think people fully understand how
| the R&D for silly things subsidizes, and cross pollinates
| life-saving innovations.
|
| The real trade-off isn't plastics or landfills, it is
| landfills vs. modern oncology.
| mulmen wrote:
| What about single use plastic for things like cleaning
| supplies? Why _only_ medical?
|
| I don't shop at a grocery store, how will I return my plastic,
| glass or metal containers?
|
| Is plastic so bad if it gets reused?
|
| If we don't make plastic what happens to that portion of the
| petrochemical supply chain? Are there other constructive uses
| or does it just get dumped into a river somewhere?
| gruez wrote:
| > The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly
| succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and
| packaging industries.
|
| At the risk of sounding like an industry shill: why is it being
| characterized as an cost externalization by the
| petrochemical/packaging industries, rather than the consumers?
| I agree that any pollution generated during extraction and
| manufacture can be attributed as an externalize of the
| packaging/petrochemical industry, but why should they be on the
| hook after it leaves their hands? Consumers are using the said
| products, reaping the benefits (either in cheaper products or
| greater convenience), and pay for their disposal via tax
| dollars or fees. I guess you could argue that companies should
| be responsible for the _entire_ lifecycle, but then it becomes
| a slippery slope. Is the automotive industry externalizing the
| cost of roads? Is the food industry externalizing the cost of
| sewer systems? Are electronics manufacturers externalizing the
| cost of electricity?
| ouid wrote:
| All you have to do if you're looking for a "market" solution
| to this, is price in the externality _somewhere_. What
| portion of the externality the consumer and the producer end
| up being responsible for will ultimately be decided by the
| _price_ of the product. As for why the externality should be
| recouped at the industry level, the accounting is just a lot
| less expensive there.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| What externalizes? Most talk of the externalities assumes
| some quantity that exists somewhere, but without a good
| reason to believe they exist why should we?
|
| A simple example is the current cost of recycling plastic:
| it's too expensive so it won't happen. Consequently putting
| these on the sheet as an externalities doesn't make sense
| _Forcing_ it to happen is probably nonsensical, why not
| fund research into plastic recycling instead instead of
| deadening the economy through unintended consequences?
| ouid wrote:
| It seems you either don't know what an externality is, or
| you don't understand how plastic is an externality. In
| the second case, I literally cannot help you. Try to
| imagine yourself as a _member_ of the ecosystem which is
| actively collapsing? The oxygen you are breathing isn 't
| made in a lab.
|
| The creation, purchase, and disposal of plastic has
| consequences for people that are not involved in that
| chain, and therefore have no ability to be compensated
| (or in the case where those consequences produce a
| societal benefit, compensate) in this transaction.
|
| This is a _very_ common market failure. Most
| "transactions" actually effect everybody. One of the
| roles of government (and I suspect there are some radical
| economists that would say the only role of government) is
| to measure these external costs of transactions, and tax
| or subsidize the transactions accordingly. Externalities
| represent an essentially infinite amount of market
| failure, and the heuristics that are employed for dealing
| with them are almost necessarily very crude.
|
| In the case of bottles, we are saying "Hey, we estimate
| the environmental damage of one plastic bottle at %d, and
| we are charging you that amount to sell one".
| thereisnospork wrote:
| What specifically, and how large (dollars / plastic
| item/unit) are these externalites? If you can't describe
| and quantify them then there isn't an argument for
| compensating (taxes, bans) against them.
|
| [0] e.g. If I dump 100 PET soda bottles into the ocean
| how many humans would be inconvenienced, how many fish
| killed? My napkin math says essentially none of either.
| markbnine wrote:
| Here is a recent Frontline on how the petro-chem industry
| fooled consumers:
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/.
| Advocates may be gearing up for a lawsuit, similar to what
| happened to the cigarette companies.
| konjin wrote:
| Were asbestos manufacturers externalizing the cost of
| asbestos? Are car, plane and ship manufacturers externalizing
| the cost of CO2? Are cigarette manufacturers externalizing
| the cost of cigarette butts?
|
| The difference between your examples and examples like
| plastic and the ones above is that yours are a one time cost
| with little to no negative externalities - hell most of them
| have positive externalities. I would pay money for a sewer
| system and electricity (and do!) - whiles the ones like
| plastic, asbestos and CO2 have no positive externality to
| anyone, including the people consuming them and stick around
| for basically ever. We then need to pay to remove them
| sometime down the line if we want a livable world.
| jolux wrote:
| They lied about the recycling potential to encourage
| widespread adoption of plastics. I don't think consumers are
| blameless, but you can't get everyone in the world to change
| their purchasing behavior without regulation, which is
| necessary when lower prices are subsidized by huge
| externalities that have negative consequences for the world
| at large.
| jariel wrote:
| "They lied about the recycling potential to encourage
| widespread adoption of plastics."
|
| ?
|
| Plastics are an absolutely incredible technology, to the
| point of revolutionary. They are used absolutely
| everywhere, in everything.
|
| Nobody needed to be convinced of the utility of plastics,
| it's one of the most utilitarian things ever created.
| knappe wrote:
| Give this episode of planet money a listen:
| https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land
|
| It discusses extensively the knowledge the petro chemical
| lobby knew about the ability to recycle plastic and how
| little could really be recycled.
| josho wrote:
| So, they lied when they didn't even need to. Doesn't that
| make the lie that much worse?
| jariel wrote:
| They marketed their industry, just as every industry
| does.
| jolux wrote:
| They promoted something they understood to be a fiction
| because they knew it would offset reasonable concerns
| about their product. If you think that's the core of
| marketing then we have very different ideas about what
| good marketing is.
| gruez wrote:
| >huge externalities that have negative consequences for the
| world at large.
|
| What are these negative consequences? The only ones I can
| think of are related to improper disposal (eg. littering),
| and would be present regardless of whether the material was
| recyclable or not. ie. if we replaced all the non-
| recyclable plastic bottles with 100% recyclable aluminum
| cans, the littering problem would still be there.
| ngokevin wrote:
| An idea is to get the companies to internalize these
| costs through a carbon tax which can be invested into
| climate change action (which is another story). At the
| moment, the consequence is that companies have zero
| incentive to act for the planet, so they will continue
| their behaviors.
|
| Perhaps they pass some of these costs down to consumers
| which makes them less likely to purchase (and then
| litter) non-biodegradables. Or they can provide a cheaper
| good to avoid a carbon tax which encourages consumer to
| buy that alternative.
| afarrell wrote:
| If the plastic is sequestered in a landfill, then what is
| the carbon externality?
|
| Does decomposing plastic emit methane?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I think it's important to at least partially separate the
| issues of climate change from plastic pollution. For some
| reason these two have become entwined together in the
| public mind. We need to get a handle on plastic
| pollution, and yes, it's a product of the petrochemical
| industry so there is that, but it's not the same type or
| scale of problem as the emergency around tailpipe /
| smokestack CO2 or methane emissions.
| tekdude wrote:
| > why should they be on the hook after it leaves their hands?
| Consumers are using the said products
|
| Consumers aren't typically buying plastic packaging. They're
| buying whatever the plastic packaging contains.
|
| When regular people buy plastic packaging and throw it away,
| then yes they are culpable (as in plastic bags and wrap for
| food storage, which I'll admit that I do use on occasion).
|
| The rest of the time, it's not really the consumer's
| decision.
| pingpongchef wrote:
| I might be in the minority, but I don't read you as being a
| shill. It's a reasonable framing of the problem, i.e., not as
| a problem of production but of disposal. We already have
| markets, taxes and subsidies around the waste disposal
| lifecycle. What if we simply left it to waste disposal firms
| to run?
|
| I suspect there is criticism in two areas, one in that
| putting the costs on consumers is either unreasonable or
| impractical. I don't agree it's unreasonable, but concede
| that it may be politically undesirable. The other is that
| waste disposal firms are likely to continue to do harm in the
| form of dumping waste into oceans (or similar approaches),
| which I see as fair. I'd be in favor of pursuing
| disincentives to such practices.
| josho wrote:
| The industry and their advocacy groups reduced their costs by
| switching to packaging, proceeded to lie to consumers and
| government that all this new packaging was going to be easily
| recycled and not to worry.
|
| I don't see where consumers are on the hook? We were told
| that plastic was better (e.g. the switch from paper bags to
| plastic).
|
| As a comparison to electronics industry in many jurisdictions
| there are recycling fees paid at the time of purchase. Those
| fees are paid to recyclers to tear down equipment into raw
| materials to be re-used. The electronics industry didn't
| mislead anyway suggesting recycling could pay for itself nor
| add recycling symbols to suggest you could drop a TV in your
| blue recycle bin.
| gruez wrote:
| >I don't see where consumers are on the hook? We were told
| that plastic was better (e.g. the switch from paper bags to
| plastic).
|
| No, that's just fraud. Externality has a very specific
| meaning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality. In this
| case a third party isn't bearing the cost. It's still the
| consumer (via taxes or garbage disposal fees).
|
| >As a comparison to electronics industry in many
| jurisdictions there are recycling fees paid at the time of
| purchase.
|
| That's simply a different way of raising funds for waste
| disposal. I suspect it's not used for other forms of
| packaging because they don't require special handling, and
| therefore the cost is so marginal that it's not worth
| collecting.
| jolux wrote:
| The fraud was in denying the externality, which is on the
| environment in the form of massive amounts of material
| that can't be recycled and which do not biodegrade.
| gruez wrote:
| >which is on the environment in the form of massive
| amounts of material that can't be recycled
|
| Why is that bad? It's not like we're running out of
| landfill space (at least in the US), and it's not like
| plastic in a landfill leeches chemicals into the drinking
| water or something.
|
| > and which do not biodegrade
|
| I don't think anyone was fooled into thinking that
| plastics were biodegradable.
| jolux wrote:
| >Why is that bad? It's not like we're running out of
| landfill space (at least in the US), and it's not like
| plastic in a landfill leeches chemicals into the drinking
| water or something.
|
| Because it's not all going into landfills, it's ending up
| as litter and giant floating pallets of plastic in the
| middle of the ocean.
|
| >I don't think anyone was fooled into thinking that
| plastics were biodegradable.
|
| No, but metal, glass, and paper are all either recyclable
| or biodegradable or both.
| tuatoru wrote:
| If the goals are to cut fossil fuel consumption and/or
| dispersal of waste into the natural environment, it ain't that
| simple.
|
| The best option by far is to not consume things. Don't buy
| stuff. That's working out really well for us, isn't it?
|
| Next best in many places is single use followed by incineration
| for district heating and electricity.
|
| Third, in many places, is single use with well managed
| collection and disposal to a well managed landfill.
|
| When you dig into the numbers, things like reusable glass
| containers, cotton bags, and so on are harmful virtue
| signaling. Karens get to shame other people who harming the
| world less than the Karens are by a long way.
| WA wrote:
| You surely have a source for this right?
| tuatoru wrote:
| Dammit, I knew you would ask that.
|
| I'll have to dig back through my paper notebooks going back
| over about 20 years. (My ex-wife was a virtue signaler, and
| I had started to be sceptical. I used a university library,
| but I don't live near a university any more.)
|
| Probably there's a lot better research to be had now,
| refined! Updated! With 20% lower error bounds!
|
| But I doubt very much the conclusions have changed,
| especially given the world's dependence on Chinese
| manufacturing and China's dependence on coal.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Here's [0] a write-up from NPR, with links to several
| studies comparing the life cycle costs of plastic and
| alternative materials, and noting that from a climate
| change perspective, plastic comes out ahead in most
| analyses, but that plastic has much larger cleanup costs:
|
| [0] https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/735848489/plastic-has-a-
| big-c...
| pathseeker wrote:
| >- Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies).
|
| Direct bans for things so heavily used are going to have
| extreme unintended consequences. Are we willing to put that
| much immediate demand on things like tin and aluminum (cans,
| food cases, etc) that will drive up energy consumption and CO2
| emissions? It's not clear that's a win for the environment.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I wonder, with all the material refined from extracted base
| material (be it oil for plastic or ore for alloys) .. how much
| could we live by simply reusing discarded lots (old cars in the
| case of metals, similar for plastics)
| TylerE wrote:
| You're just assuming that glass is better than plastic.
|
| I challenge that assumption.
|
| Glass is much heavier and bulkier (so a truck will carry less
| product, and burn more fuel and cause more road wear to do so),
| and more product will be lost to spoilage.
| tuatoru wrote:
| Glass also takes a lot of energy to produce. In many (most?)
| cases more fossil fuels will be consumed making a glass
| container than the plastic equivalent.
|
| The same sorts of issues apply to coated paper or card
| containers.
| barney54 wrote:
| Glass is also somewhat difficult to recycle. The actual
| recycling is easy, but different colors of glass needs to
| be sorted. And glass is heavy, so it's costly to transport.
| TylerE wrote:
| I think if you really wanted to go all in on glass
| recycling you'd have to ban everything except maybe 3
| colors (Something like clear, a light green, and
| something quite dark).
| coliveira wrote:
| This is good, because transportation costs can be easily
| accounted in the final price of the product. Paying higher
| costs make people more honest about how much they want to
| spend for the privilege of buying small bottles of a product.
| aksss wrote:
| Even this assumes that people will bother to even transport
| the heavier alternative. There are places in the world where
| goods just won't be available anymore. Doesn't affect me, but
| not every place on the planet gets to make choices like "just
| switch to glass".
| jariel wrote:
| What happens if glass packaged goods are much more expensive to
| ship and prone to breakage thereby creating considerably CO2
| exposure?
|
| There are a zillion unforeseen externalizations in the mandates
| your listing - this is why centralization usually doesn't work
| very well.
|
| Plastic is one of many materials that go in landfills, and we
| don't turn it into Co2 either so I'm not sure how we can go
| after that 'evil industry' and not others?
|
| Probably a better solution would be to figure out how we can
| make use of that material afterwards - or - finding rational
| ways to dispose of it relatively cleanly.
| andrepd wrote:
| Yes because decentralisation is working wonders here... Leave
| each self-interested agent to profit off externalities which
| they don't have to pay. We will have good quarterly reports
| for our shareholders all the way to extinction.
| Kluny wrote:
| Yes yes yes. Saved for copying and pasting, and I'd like to
| subscribe to your newsletter.
|
| I've been studying plastic waste for years as a member of the
| Surfrider Foundation, and right now I'm in a BBA program called
| Business and Sustainability, and my colleagues are having a
| really hard time getting past the idea that recycling+electric
| cars=sustainable.
| ummonk wrote:
| Most glass and paper doesn't get recycled either. Recycling is
| broadly speaking nonexistent. Most ends up in the landfill or
| incinerated.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > Recycling is broadly speaking nonexistent.
|
| Can you link to a source for that claim?
| aksss wrote:
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/chin
| a...
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/since-chinas-ban-recycling-in-
| th...
|
| You know how they say the "cloud" is just some other guy's
| computer? Recycling can often be some other guy's landfill.
| makecheck wrote:
| I'm not against these ideas but you do have to zoom out a bit
| to fully realize the impact of each alternative. It's not as
| simple as replacing a "bad" one with a "good" one, because
| there are side effects.
|
| (I haven't added up the total impacts of every option either;
| this is just something to consider.)
|
| For example, glass is much heavier than the plastic used for
| bottles. If you have trucks/etc. hauling _millions_ of bottles
| around the world, it will take more energy to move glass
| bottles. Glass is also fragile so it's possible there is more
| shipping material or more random losses affecting cost. So then
| the problem is not just how to replace plastic bottles with
| glass but how to offset the added environmental cost of
| transporting glass.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| All the cost/energy benefits listed are exactly the type of
| short term business arguments that enabled companies like
| Coca-Cola to transition from glass bootles to producing 110
| _billion_ PET bootles, every, single, year. [0]
|
| There are a number of long-term costs not captured in these
| business decisions:
|
| - The energy cost of recycling a PET bottle is much greater
| than producing a brand new one from crude oil. This creates
| the wrong kind of incentives for recycling
|
| - Plastic degrades everytime it is recycled. Google plastic
| "downcycling". In an ideal circular economy old plastics
| would still have to be replaced with "new" crude oil plastic
| with additional energy and emissions costs.
|
| - The cost of plastic collection and _sorting_ (which
| manufacturers aren't paying for)
|
| - The environmental and disposal costs of unrecycled plastic,
| a PET bottle will take at least 450 years to fully decompose.
| [1]
|
| - The Health costs of the calamity of micro-plastics
| contaminating our food supply and ground water. Simply google
| "plastic endocrine disruptors".
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-
| col...
|
| [1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/pl
| ast...
| acituan wrote:
| I'm with you with your conclusions but not only you are not
| responding to OPs point about the complexity of cost
| calculations, you are adding further data that is
| irrelevant. "This is what Coca-Cola said" is not a valid
| rebuttal.
| jlmorton wrote:
| > hauling millions of bottles around the world
|
| If it's a 1:1 transition from plastic bottle to glass bottle,
| it would be 35 billion bottles annually, in the US alone.
| davinic wrote:
| It wouldn't be. Forcing the producers to pay for their
| externalities will also make some products like bottled
| water cost-prohibitive to sell in glass bottles and reduce
| demand or increase packaging sizes to more is bought in
| reusable plastic carboys, etc. "Reduce" is more important
| than reuse or recycle and while there is an obvious need
| for cheap bottled water, probably at least 80% of plastic
| disposable water bottles do not need to be sold in that
| way.
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| But how much other economic activity are you limiting and
| what other products are affected? For example, what about
| plastic for prototyping and engineering use? Are you
| going to force products to use higher cost and higher
| impact materials like brass and aluminum?
|
| The issue is I can't see any of these restrictions
| accurately reflecting cost. If they could these things
| would not be a concern.
|
| Any of these suggestions that apply only _within_ a
| national market are also ineffective, as by their very
| nature they are going to reduce economic activity in that
| nation... which will be picked up by someone else who
| doesn 't care. The laws need to take this into account.
| Rayhem wrote:
| > Are you going to force products to use higher cost and
| higher impact materials like brass and aluminum?
|
| The post above you didn't suggest using higher impact
| materials like brass and aluminum, they suggested making
| manufacturers pay for externalities which would be the
| case for plastics or metals.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| > For example, glass is much heavier than the plastic used
| for bottles. If you have trucks/etc. hauling millions of
| bottles around the world, it will take more energy to move
| glass bottles.
|
| This is true, but it (mostly) not an externalized cost. By
| forcing environmental costs to be internalized by industry,
| the market should guide industry away from damaging the
| environment. Of course that would require honest, complete,
| and well enforced regulation.
| [deleted]
| dheera wrote:
| > hauling millions of bottles around the world
|
| How much of those bottles are single-use bottles for water?
| We can cut that portion entirely. 100%.
|
| Either install filters (ideal) or use _reusable_ 5-gal
| plastic bottles and water dispensers.
| jakobmartz3 wrote:
| Yeah, I wish we had a president who actually cared about this
| and made it a priority, instead of tweeting bullshit.
| chmod600 wrote:
| A ban seems foolish. First you need to categorize things as
| "single-use" versus reusable, and people will argue about that
| distinction. Then, you need do deal with the inevitable
| unintended consequences from miscategorized items or bizarre
| alternatives companies choose to replace plastic.
|
| A tax would be much more straightforward.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Tax just makes things more expensive, and is very slow to
| elicit change.
|
| Taxing plastic bags while grocery shopping just makes your
| groceries a tiny bit more expensive. If you ban plastic
| shopping bags altogether they disappear overnight.
|
| update: I agree that trying to define "single-use" is
| difficult, instead I think governments should just choose an
| item that has good alternatives and ban them.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| I think assessing and charging at the time of distribution, as
| best as can be estimated, the total cost of responsible
| disposal would be sufficient to align incentives, for both
| manufacturers and consumers. More waste means higher prices.
|
| And fees so assessed should actually pay for disposal. Of
| everything. Discourage dumping and garbage burning by making
| waste collection "free" (in reality paid in advance at time of
| purchase).
| lazyjones wrote:
| No.
|
| "Single-use" plastic is often used for a long time, longer than
| "eco" alternatives like paper bags that simply don't do the job
| well enough to be reused.
|
| Glass and paper are horrible alternatives (for the environment)
| if not recycled properly (and they aren't, like plastic).
| oefnak wrote:
| Glass and paper may cost more energy, but don't cause
| pollution. And when we have enough solar panels, energy will
| be free.
|
| Removing all microplastics from nature will be a lot harder.
| kgabis wrote:
| No, energy won't be free with "enough solar panels".
| There's this thing called night. And seasons. And
| transmission losses.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > Define industry quotas for how much 'new' plastic is allowed
| to be made from crude and make companies bid for it in a "new
| plastic" market
|
| If you implemented this one, all of your other goals would
| naturally fall out of the increased cost of plastic.
|
| Where you give the free market conditions where it ends up
| doing the things you were thinking of 'requiring' it to do,
| you'll end up with a _much_ more effective solution, because no
| set of laws or requirements is ever as comprehensive as the
| effect of millions of people in millions of roles trying to
| save a few bucks...
| dang wrote:
| Threads about recycling have started to pile up just like the
| recycling has. A list of the major ones is below (but only with
| "recycl" in the title--if you find more, let me know!)
|
| Given the current picture, perhaps most interesting in retrospect
| is this 1996 article (which apparently set a record for hate
| mail) and its follow-up from 2015:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757853 Recycling is Garbage
| (1996) (55 comments) - https://archive.is/JKG7y
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327585 The Reign of
| Recycling (34 comments) - https://archive.is/o8LBm
|
| ---
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454067 Oil Companies
| Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic (232 comments)
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24441979 How Big Oil
| Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled (310
| comments)
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24440516 Pringles tube
| tries to wake from 'recycling nightmare' (394 comments)
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23040674 Plastics pile
| up as coronavirus hits Asia recyclers (19 comments)
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22927072 'Horrible
| hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares (40
| comments)
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22741635 Industry spent
| millions selling recycling, to sell more plastic (105 comments)
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467015 Coke and Pepsi
| are getting sued for lying about recycling (170 comments)
|
| 2020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22318165 Is Recycling a
| Waste of Time? (94 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21837414 Recycling
| Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won't Take It (152
| comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21742196 The Great
| Recycling Con [video] (77 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21303618 How Coca-Cola
| Undermines Plastic Recycling Efforts (132 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21297639 All plastic
| waste could be recycled into new plastic: researchers (150
| comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21102560 We asked three
| companies to recycle plastic and only one did (64 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21043986 Exposing the
| Myth of Plastic Recycling (17 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20762789 Plastics:
| What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why (215 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20728911 Smart plastic
| incineration posited as solution to global recycling crisis (84
| comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20726689 'Plastic
| recycling is a myth': what really happens to your rubbish (63
| comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20549804 Americans'
| plastic recycling is dumped in landfills (282 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851 Landfill is
| underrated and recycling overrated (336 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20134641 I work in the
| environmental movement. I don't care if you recycle (15 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365 Why Recycling
| Doesn't Work (216 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19844551 Reycling
| Plastic from the Inside Out (46 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19799348 Bikes, bowling
| balls, and the balancing act that is modern recycling (2015) (35
| comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19728391 Just 10% of
| U.S. plastic gets recycled. A new kind of plastic could change
| that (116 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19483074 America
| Finally Admits Recycling Doesn't Work (35 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543 The World's
| Recycling Is in Chaos. Here's What Has to Happen (25 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342 What Happens
| Now That China Won't Take U.S. Recycling (219 comments)
|
| 2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252 The Era of
| Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End (84 comments)
|
| 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584 Recycling in
| the United States is in serious trouble. How does it work? (94
| comments)
|
| 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698 Trash piles up
| in US as China closes door to recycling (272 comments)
|
| 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495872 Californians
| love to recycle, but it's no longer doing any good (14 comments)
|
| 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152 Plastic
| recycling is a problem consumers can't solve (441 comments)
|
| 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16856246 An enzyme that
| digests plastic could boost recycling (122 comments)
|
| 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719 Plastics Pile
| Up as China Refuses to Take the West's Recycling (71 comments)
|
| 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827 Recycling
| Chaos in U.S. As China Bans 'Foreign Waste' (233 comments)
|
| 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15528740 China Bans
| Foreign Waste - What Will Happen to the World's Recycling? (63
| comments)
|
| 2016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11083898 Is it time to
| rethink recycling? (147 comments)
|
| 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10327585 The Reign of
| Recycling (34 comments)
|
| 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9757853 Recycling is
| Garbage (1996) (55 comments)
|
| 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7778956 Is Recycling
| Worth It? (13 comments)
|
| 2010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186666 Recycling is
| Bullshit; Make Nov. 15 Zero Waste Day, not America Recycles Day
| (18 comments)
|
| 2009 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=937097 The Recycling
| Myth (36 comments)
| oblio wrote:
| Very useful, I'm favoriting this to use for future discussions
| :-) Thanks!
| noxer wrote:
| PENN & TELLER: BULLSHIT S02EP05 Recycling
| https://www.bitchute.com/video/j0Hd6UfA4MKo/ Yes its old but not
| much has changed.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| And here's their equally scientifically accurate take on
| climate change from the same time period.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fWt2Rir8OQk
|
| Big fan of both Penn and Teller but libertarian bullshit is
| still bullshit and they proved that even smart people fall for
| it if they hang in the wrong circles too much.
| noxer wrote:
| Admitting that they where wrong on some parts isn't exactly
| bad. Also doesn't affect the countless other topics they
| covered from which almost all are still BS today. Could they
| have been wrong on recycling? Yes, they could but there is no
| evidence that they where wrong.
| mike00632 wrote:
| They've also done a 180 on veganism and animal activism.
| [deleted]
| chubot wrote:
| I still don't get how bottled water became a thing. It wasn't a
| thing when I was a kid, and somehow the industry convinced us to
| buy huge quantities of an inferior product for more money, and it
| pollutes the environment to boot. Insane.
|
| The least you can do is use a refillable container.
|
| 10+ years ago Google switched from bottle water to giving
| everyone a container. And that was a great move. Yet people
| complained, and a few years later we were back to bottled water.
|
| What a waste.
| outworlder wrote:
| > I still don't get how bottled water became a thing
|
| Many reasons. Mostly distrust on how potable the water actually
| is (events like Flint didn't help). Some locations have water
| that tastes bad - even if it should be otherwise healthy.
|
| What I don't understand is how small bottles became a thing.
| Sure, if you are out and about it might be convenient to carry
| some, as they are sealed containers. But some people buy them
| for normal consumption.
|
| At least use the big bottles that are supposed to be used with
| watercoolers. Those are actually reused.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| A thought exercise: Sugary bottled drinks are even worse for
| the environment. They not only have the same bottles and water
| involved but they also have other ingredients that add even
| more environmental consequences. They have public health
| consequences too.
|
| But of course to ban sugary drinks would cut into the realm of
| personal choice right? After all people may choose to want a
| sugary beverage. So no one argues that case.
|
| Still it's weird to draw the line at bottled water and not
| further along. I used to live near a council area (Manly City
| Council) that banned bottled water. It meant you could only buy
| sugary drinks at the local corner store. Go to the beach and
| forget your water bottle? You better like Coca-Cola because
| that's all they'll sell you!
|
| I'm not opposed to encouraging people to use a re-usable
| container. But i am opposed to a ban on something that's far
| better than the alternatives that remain unbanned.
| josho wrote:
| > Go to the beach and forget your water bottle? You better
| like Coca-Cola because that's all they'll sell you!
|
| Your comment reveals your age. The parent and myself are old
| enough to remember a time when you could go to numerous
| public places and drink from a water fountain.
|
| It also showcases just how far we've fallen as a society and
| have settled to create profit seeking solutions at the
| expense of what is best for society.
| aksss wrote:
| Part of that "fall of society" has been the fact that
| people don't always trust their fellow citizens to upkeep
| the sanitation of public facilities. I can think of plenty
| of places where, even if they had a public fountain, I
| wouldn't touch it. It's not always some great capitalist
| conspiracy.
|
| https://www.today.com/food/video-woman-licking-container-
| blu...
| tayo42 wrote:
| The better ban would be to ban drinks sold in single use
| containers.
|
| > ban sugary drinks would cut into the realm of personal
| choice right?
|
| if you're talking about environmental effects then its no
| longer a personal choice issue.
| caturopath wrote:
| Soft drinks, booze, etc. are really harmful, but at least
| they have a value add that makes shipping them around
| coherent. Bottled water is a different matter.
|
| Obviously we should be discouraging the use of soda and
| alcohol and such.
| pathseeker wrote:
| Drink water out of the tap like a civilized person.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| Unfortunately public taps/fountains seem to be far more
| rare than drink vending machines in this world of ours.
| lm28469 wrote:
| I had people visiting from Greece, Poland and Spain asking
| me if my tap water (Berlin) was safe to drink. You don't
| have to go to uncivilized parts of the world to get bad tap
| water.
| lightgreen wrote:
| There are different levels of "safe".
|
| For example, in London it's "safe" to drink tap water, it
| does not contain toxic checmicals of bacteria, but it is
| calcium rich, and drinking it constantly may be harmful
| for kidneys.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's really very simple to understand, even if you think it's
| wrong.
|
| Soda, juice, etc. were sold in bottles which normalized it.
|
| Then people wanted to be healthier and so putting water in a
| bottle at events/meetings felt like providing a healthy choice
| to people, directly next to the unhealthy choices. Plus the
| water in small bottles could be kept cold in ice more easily.
| Also sparkling water already needed to be in bottles, so it
| seems even more natural to have still water next to it in the
| same way too.
|
| People in some parts of the country also realized the bottled
| water tasted better than their local highly chlorinated tap
| water. (Other parts of the country there's no difference.)
|
| The industry didn't even have to convince anyone. It's
| genuinely consumer-led.
|
| And refillable containers have their own disadvantages. It's
| not always easy to lug one around the office as you juggle your
| laptop and documents and phone, or you forget it in another
| conference room, etc. It's easy to keep in a backpack, but
| people aren't usually lugging their backpack to every meeting
| or to the cafeteria.
|
| I'm not defending single-use water bottles... but sometimes I
| do wonder if all the materials+energy spent on refillable
| bottles has actually turned into a huge net loss, as so many of
| them go unused, lost or thrown out long before they'd achieve a
| net positive.
| RankingMember wrote:
| It's literally convenience trumping everything. For example,
| for gatherings (back when we were able to have those), you
| could either bring a big jug of water and a bunch of solo cups,
| a case of bottled water, or, the eco-friendly option, a jug of
| water and just assume everyone else will have a reusable water
| bottle (e.g. Nalgene). The easiest option there is the bottled
| water option.
|
| This can only be solved by shifting from the "wish upon a star
| that all consumers will somehow solve the problem themselves"
| strategy to putting the responsibility squarely on the
| shoulders of the people profiting from putting municipal water
| in single-use plastic bottles.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| People are bad decision agents. Selling bottled water to
| Americans is like selling snow to eskimos, but we buy it in
| droves because advertising fuckin works and works well. They
| make a few dollars off of every person in the country to
| contribute nothing, but that's just how capitalism works. The
| only way to win is to start making your own water bottles and
| market them harder!! (btw the planet is still screwed doing
| this, but you'll be rich!)
| mattbeckman wrote:
| If someone was to Elon Musk the shi* out of this problem, what
| would they build or do differently?
|
| My gut is that it would focus on plastic identification
| automation, but not positive.
| f00zz wrote:
| Maybe not the most environment-friendly solution, but plastic
| waste can be depolymerized into crude oil. No idea about the
| economics though.
| aforwardslash wrote:
| They did. The plastics industry sinked millions in campaigns to
| convince the people plastics are reclyclable. The only thing
| missing from being a true Musk move is that they came up with
| it themselves, instead of buying off the idea from someone
| else.
| mattbeckman wrote:
| You know that's not what I meant.
|
| Let's chat again when you've executed and launched five
| unique revolutionary companies.
| hristov wrote:
| As I have said before the solution is compostable plastic. It
| solves the problem with the smallest net change in behavior of
| the affected parties.
|
| As we have regrettably seen with the coronavirus changing the
| behavior of large populations is incredibly difficult even if
| there are dire repercussions for failure to change.
|
| The cost of compostable plastic is slightly higher than the usual
| plastic, so the governments will have to enforce its use, but it
| will be a small price to pay for removing the externalities of
| dealing with actual plastic waste.
| ars wrote:
| I disagree. The solution is burning plastic for energy.
|
| You get to use the oil from the ground twice: Once as plastic,
| and again for energy. It's a win/win since you reduce oil you
| burn and get rid of plastic waste.
| hristov wrote:
| Have you ever burned ordinary plastic? The smell is horrific,
| there are some truly nasty poisons being released.
|
| Furthermore, compostable plastics will solve the biggest
| problem of plastic pollution -- the a-hole that just tosses
| plastic garbage in the ground because he/she doesn't give a
| damn. Compostable plastics compost much faster in proper
| municipal/industrial composting facilities, so it is still
| important to throw the stuff away in compost bins and to have
| regular pickup service, but they will compost in the
| environment too. Thus, there is some defense against the
| morons that just litter.
|
| In other words, compostable plastics fail better than all the
| other choices.
| ars wrote:
| > Have you ever burned ordinary plastic? The smell is
| horrific, there are some truly nasty poisons being
| released.
|
| Only if you don't use enough oxygen. Except for PVC plastic
| does not have any bad atoms in it, if fully burned the
| exhaust is completely safe (it's just water and CO2).
|
| A proper, hot, incinerator will burn plastic very safely.
| kgabis wrote:
| Why bother with compostable plastics if we can just bury
| the plastics in a landfill and forget about them? The
| volume of plastics is insignificant, the only problem is
| plastics that don't end up in landfills but in oceans
| instead.
| MayeulC wrote:
| While it's better than burning oil for energy, that's still a
| loss for carbon emissions, though. And you still need fresh
| oil to produce more plastic.
|
| I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but this is not the end
| game. The end game is either:
|
| ~ 100 % reduction in plastic use.
|
| ~ 100 % recycled plastic
|
| Those two goals are not mutually exclusive either. Yes, it
| might cost a lot of energy to recycle plastic. As long as
| that energy comes from a clean source, it shouldn't matter
| much.
|
| Obviously, only the first goal reduces the amount of plastic
| in the ocean, soil, rivers, etc. I am hopeful that bacteria
| will develop that can ingest plastic, which would both get us
| rid of the waste, and limit plastic usefulness, but it can't
| really be counted on in the short term. And plastic waste has
| a mostly local, short-term effect. Carbon dioxide has a long-
| term, global effect. So I'd prefer it to be buried until it
| can be recycled.
| ars wrote:
| Until we completely stop burning oil, it's always more
| worth it (environmentally) to burn plastic, vs recycle it.
|
| Once there is no oil burned, and it's all used for plastic,
| then it makes sense to implement your plan. But not until
| then.
| hinkley wrote:
| Method started out as a stealthily eco-friendly company, and when
| they first introduced refills for their products they did not
| make the container recyclable but did a big defense of that.
|
| They claimed recycling of plastic loses a large fraction of the
| input as waste, and recyclables/recycled materials have to be
| bulkier. They could make a very thin nonrecyclable package that
| had less plastic than the unrecoverable fraction of a recyclable
| alternative, and reduce shipping costs/footprint in the process.
| So sometimes less of a bad thing is better than more of a
| mediocre thing.
|
| They have since marked that packaging as recyclable, so I don't
| know whether they found a workaround or are participating in the
| recycling mythos now.
| ProAm wrote:
| There is an excellent Planet Money podcast about this from NPR
| [1]
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/912150085/waste-land
| vinhboy wrote:
| I don't really understand why recycling plastic is not viable. I
| feel like this is more of a problem with ideology than actual
| process.
|
| For example, I buy these "Green Toys" products that are
| supposedly made from recycled plastic and I love it. I have no
| idea why this recycled plastic is not used in other kid's toys,
| kitchenware, or random things like garden tools. This recycled
| plastic is tough, it doesn't decay in the sun like regular
| plastic. I would pay more for it!
|
| I have actually tried looking for more items made from recycled
| plastic and it just doesn't exist.
|
| My conclusion is that people don't like the way it looks, because
| it's very rough and the color is different, so there is no market
| for it. Most people probably prefer to buy the cheaper, "nicer"
| looking plastic.
| gruez wrote:
| >I don't really understand why recycling plastic is not viable.
| I feel like this is more of a problem with ideology than actual
| process. [...] Anyways, if someone smarter than me tells me the
| economics doesn't work, I will believe them, but until then I
| am skeptical of the idea that we can't properly recycle
| plastic.
|
| This comment is baffling. In the beginning you think it's an
| ideological issue. Later on you acknowledge that cost might be
| an issue, but then you move to goal posts from "plastic is not
| viable" to "we can't properly recycle plastic". Cost is
| absolutely the main issue here, not that it's "not possible".
| Even if recycled plastic is substandard compared to virgin
| plastic, most consumers can be convinced of otherwise if it's
| sufficiently cheap enough.
| [deleted]
| vinhboy wrote:
| You're probably right. My comment was confusing so I edited
| it to make it more coherent. I struggle with writing, so I
| appreciate the feedback to improve it.
|
| However, regarding your comment
|
| > In the beginning you think it's an ideological issue. Later
| on you acknowledge that cost might be an issue
|
| I don't see these as contradictory. Ideology affects what
| people are willing to spend. As someone who cares about the
| environment I don't mind spending more on recycled plastic to
| reduce waste. Most of my peers would not spend a cent more if
| they don't have to.
| gruez wrote:
| >I don't see these as contradictory. Ideology affects what
| people are willing to spend. As someone who cares about the
| environment I don't mind spending more on recycled plastic
| to reduce waste. Most of my peers would not spend a cent
| more if they don't have to.
|
| I disagree with this characterization. Photovoltaic
| technology in the 70s were insanely expensive and clearly
| not economical compared to the alternatives. There were
| some environmental enthusiasts who would use it despite the
| economic issues, but I wouldn't characterize the lack of
| adoption in photovoltaic technology as being an
| "ideological problem"
| lettergram wrote:
| In a large part it has to do with the logistics. For
| simplicity: Oil is used for plastic, the specific kind of oil
| is siphoned off and processed in bulk for plastic.
|
| If you want to recapture plastic and recycle. You'd need to get
| plastic, separate it, reprocess (more expensive in most cases),
| then you could mold again (often at a slight loss of input,
| I.e. there will be waste).
|
| This makes recycling plastic (today) multiple times more
| expensive to produce the same good. No one would want to spend
| double the current price on a soda.
| jacobmischka wrote:
| The recently popular NPR article on the same subject[1]
| mentioned a few reasons why the economics doesn't work, at a
| high level of detail. Overall I believe it's because there are
| so many different kinds of plastic and they all need to be
| recycled differently, and mainly just that producing new
| plastic is just so cheap and easy by comparison.
|
| Hopefully with better processes and technical innovations that
| will change soon.
|
| [1]: https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-
| misled-...
| _Microft wrote:
| Recycling plastic is difficult because despite being labeled as
| PE, PET, PP, PS, ... most plastics [0] are customized by
| additives that change the material properties (in the simplest
| case the color)[1]. Recently I saw an imprint on the tub of a
| washing machine that read "PP-K40". Searching for it revealed
| that this is polypropylene (not surprising) but 40% of the mass
| of the material is added calcium carbonate filler (very
| unexpected)!
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Common_plastics
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic#Fillers
| oblio wrote:
| They've been trying and failing since the 1980's.
|
| It's a lie from the plastics industry. If they increase their
| costs in order to cover recycling, plastic is no longer viable
| as a solution for many things it's used for. We're talking
| about a huge industry, one which is very closely connected to
| another one resisting change successfully for over half a
| century: fossil fuels.
|
| As dang put it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24485399
| :-))
| elliekelly wrote:
| Have you noticed they're more expensive than other plastic
| toys? "Recycled" plastic toys aren't much different from other
| types of "green" marketing - they're charging for a slightly
| premium product but the market is niche: upper middle class
| people who care about the environment and aren't super price
| conscious.
| vaccinator wrote:
| I pretty much stopped using my recycling bins... except for
| aluminum.
| kgabis wrote:
| I don't get why this comment is downvoted. This is the only
| reasonable thing to do from the energy standpoint.
| idoubtit wrote:
| Since no one comments on the precise content of the article, I'll
| do it.
|
| First of all, it's mostly based on a paper "published Wednesday
| in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances". Unfortunately,
| there is no link to the article. The exact title is not even
| given. The date is unclear since the magazine published this in
| 2017 and updated some (undetermined) content in 2018. Most links
| are dead (home page of the lead author, web site of an
| association about statistics).
|
| The basis is scientific, but this National Geographic article is
| not. For instance, the title is misleading: "91% of plastic isn't
| recycled" means "an estimated 91% of all the plastic ever
| produced has not been recycled as of today (2017)". Another
| dubious sentence is: "79 percent is accumulating in landfills or
| sloughing off in the natural environment as litter." Since 12%
| were incinerated and 9% recycled, it assumes that the rest
| (100-12-9) is just garbage. I suppose the reality is that a large
| proportion of the plastics produced is still used.
|
| They mention that 40% of plastics are for packaging. According to
| PlasticsEurope, 20% for construction, 10% for vehicles. People
| often focus on packaging and forget the variety of plastics and
| their usages.
|
| What surprised me was that the USA were so bad at recycling (9%)
| while Europe and Asia were far better (30% and 25%). I had read
| that some American soda producers were mostly using recycled PET,
| so I wondered if there was a contradiction. I've just read more
| about it, and these companies recycle in many countries but not
| much in the USA because there is no large-scale infrastructure to
| do so. The lack of national leadership means it can only exist
| locally, with varying quality and lack of long term committing.
| Even when the recycling exists, consumers in the USA do not
| behave as well as they do in Netherland, so the recycled PET is
| more costly with a lower quality.
| dgellow wrote:
| Germany has some recycling plants with modern sorting machines,
| almost entirely automated, it's quite impressive to see it
| working.
|
| https://youtu.be/I_fUpP-hq3A
|
| I was checking for details a few days ago, they announce on their
| website 53% of their input recycled, and 47% used for "energy
| recovery" (which is newspeak to say they burn it for the cement
| and steel industry).
|
| I was surprised by the fact that they burn so much but 47% is
| apparently considered very good.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| narwally wrote:
| This is for glass recycling not plastic, but I recently found out
| that my county ships all of their glass recyclables to be dumped
| in a landfill of a neighboring state. In my state, waste disposal
| companies are legally obligated to recycle everything they can
| that ends up in a recycling bin. But with glass it's actually
| vastly cheaper to produce new glass bottles than it is to make
| them out of recycled material. So there isn't a market for the
| waste management companies to even sell the product they legally
| have to produce. To get around this regulation they just ship
| their recycled glass to a state without this regulation, and dump
| it all in a landfill there.
|
| It seems like the only way to make recycling truly effective at a
| large scale is to make it economically viable, either through the
| creating of new recycling techniques that make using recycled
| materials the cheapest option, or through subsidies to
| artificially produce the same effect.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Here, specifically about glass, are some of the reasons the US
| fails at this, while Europe just does it.
|
| https://cen.acs.org/materials/inorganic-chemistry/glass-recy...
|
| Basically the lack of sensible policy.
| fullstop wrote:
| At least the glass is inert.
|
| At some point in the future landfills will be on par with gold
| mines, and only then will we see how truly wasteful we have
| been.
| acomjean wrote:
| In Massachusetts the last glass recycling plant closed a couple
| years ago. The main problem glass bottle demand was down and
| the plant making the bottles closed ( beer being more popular
| in cans is cited as a cause)
|
| https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2018/07/19/massachusett...
|
| They've been using the ground glass as aggregate in roads..
|
| You are 100% correct in that there needs to be economic
| incentive.
| leafmeal wrote:
| If the cost of recycling was added in as a tax on the material,
| that could be effective as well. Then the market could decide
| which materials are truly cost effective.
| snowbrook wrote:
| Possible new use for recycled glass:
| https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/two-startups-se...
| hinkley wrote:
| I believe you can also use glass in concrete and asphalt
| (although we just talked about how nasty asphalt is). I think
| I heard brown glass can use mixed color feedstock, but other
| uses for commingled glass should also help with the logistics
| of recycling it. Especially since multiple consumers should
| decrease shipping distances.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >It seems like the only way to make recycling truly effective
| at a large scale is to make it economically viable
|
| I think it's easier and less corruptible to have the goal be to
| reduce the consumption causing the waste and attack the problem
| at the root. I.e. a tax increasing the cost of everything to
| reflect the cost of properly disposing it.
|
| Recycling doesn't undo the environmental damage, and in many
| cases it takes huge amounts of energy to recycle causing even
| more damage.
| wolco wrote:
| Doesn't this hurt the poor while enabling the rich to
| continue being wasteful.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It solves the problem of excess consumption by humans as a
| whole. If this creates a new problem, such as allowing some
| humans consume disproportionately more than others, then
| that can be solved separately. The easiest and least
| corruptible solution that comes to mind there is wealth
| redistribution.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _Doesn 't this hurt the poor while enabling the rich to
| continue being wasteful._
|
| Absolutely
| aNoob7000 wrote:
| Listen to the latest episode of Planet Money.
|
| https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money
| scottndecker wrote:
| This. Most plastics can't be recycled; it was a PR play by the
| plastic industry decades ago. Using plastics for such things as
| medical devices and such makes complete sense to me. Using
| plastics for items which inherently are only used for a few
| minutes or an hour (see the F&B industry) makes no sense at all
| to me.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "Using plastics for items which inherently are only used for
| a few minutes or an hour"
|
| Of course it makes sense. Plastic is cheap, light,
| watertight, strong, and mallable.
|
| It's kind of a miracle material, except that it's too stable.
| If we had a version that decomposed in a year, it would be
| awesome.
| hadlock wrote:
| Compostable "plastics", e.g. PLA, which sometimes is corn-
| based, exist; in California I've seen compostable
| disposable silverware, as well as compostable decorative
| planters (I own two, holding up good after three years,
| which makes me wonder how compostable they really are). But
| compostable "plastics" do exist, at least in some markets.
| _Microft wrote:
| A quickly decomposing plastic wouldn't be awesome either as
| it would add all the carbon extracted from fossil sources
| into the short term carbon cycle more quickly.
| olejorgenb wrote:
| There are a few companies claiming progress in chemical
| recycling. eg.:
|
| https://quantafuel.com/ |
| https://newsweb.oslobors.no/message/513575
|
| 80% (by weight) recovery into high quality liquids (eg.:
| nafta). They claim the majority of the energy used by the
| process comes from the remaining 20%.
|
| The acceptable input is mostly PP and PE, the two most
| commonly used plastics (at least for packaging). A special
| catalysator is used to remove additives like chlorine.
| pstrateman wrote:
| The vast majority of things people think of as recyclable are
| actually not.
|
| The result is an endless stream of trash in the recycling stream
| which makes the actual recyclables worthless.
| diggan wrote:
| Fitting, I just started looking into reusing plastic myself by
| collecting plastic from my own, family and friends trash and
| remoulding it into something useful. In my quest for this, I
| found Precious Plastic, an amazing community around recycling
| plastics yourself and for your community.
| https://preciousplastic.com/
|
| While individuals plastic pollution is not the biggest emitter of
| plastic here in the world, we can always take small steps towards
| making sure we don't throw as much plastic as we currently do.
| marmshallow wrote:
| What kinds of things do you mold it into?
| diggan wrote:
| I've only run smaller experiments so far, mostly focusing
| around storage containers as I have a lot of electronic stuff
| that is currently just laying around. You can get some more
| inspiration here of what you could mould:
| https://bazar.preciousplastic.com/moulds/
|
| But in general, anything you've seen in the real world would
| be possible to recreate with your own moulds, the limit is
| your imagination!
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| People are so into recycling, but I fail to see how I can make a
| difference by recycling. It just seems like the problem is too
| massive at this point.
| njarboe wrote:
| What is the difference you are trying to make? If it is the
| depletion of resources and/or polluting to world, recycling is
| much, much less important than reducing consumption. One less
| airline trip per year, one less weekend road trip. Do you eat
| out? The amount of hidden waste in restaurant meals would amaze
| most people. Reduce the amount of meat you eat. Stay healthy so
| that you don't use the medical system.
|
| Your instinct is right that recycling does not help much. It is
| more of a ritual to allow people to consume guilt free than an
| effective way toward a less polluted world.
| Mvhsz wrote:
| Don't let plastic recycling get you down, recycling aluminum is
| a great way to help the environment. Paper and cardboard are
| also good. Glass is just ok. Reduce your consumption where
| possible, and make sure that non-recycleable materials make it
| to a landfill where the environmental impacts are contained.
| Our individual efforts have a small impact, but it's a small
| effort and it does matter.
|
| While there are some uses for recycled plastics, I fear that
| we'll likely continue to see a lot of single-use plastics until
| some economic force makes plastic unprofitable. Maybe public
| anger drives new regulation, maybe we use up all the oil, maybe
| we ween off of oil and it's too expensive to pump oil just to
| make plastics. In any case, I think we need to embrace some
| short and medium term solutions to mitigate environmental
| damage from single-use plastic.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| Maybe if there was a simple setup to convert recyclable
| plastic into 3D-printing filament?
| Loic wrote:
| This is the drop in the oceans. If people start to buy low
| single use plastic intensity products, the producers will start
| to reduce and it starts the pump for changes.
|
| Usually just buying less helps a lot.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| I feel like you have it backwards here. Consumers aren't the
| ones deciding how much plastic is in what. For example, I
| didn't decide that my new pair of scissors should come in
| large, impossible to open blister packaging. I didn't decide
| that my grocery store should only sell milk in large plastic
| jugs. And that's just going by the packaging I can see. Who
| knows how much disposable packaging is used throughout the
| production process.
|
| I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to reduce the amount of
| plastic you use. But the end consumer wasn't responsible for
| the huge rise of plastic products, and there's only so much
| they can do to fix it.
| dahart wrote:
| Not buying plastic is a better solution. But is that realistic
| for you right now? If everyone thinks the same thing you do,
| and gives up without trying, then we never start solving the
| massive problem. Instead if everyone recycles, then we begin
| the process of keeping the problem from growing even larger
| than it already is.
|
| I do think you raise a great point that it's a little silly to
| put this on the shoulders of individual consumers, and let the
| corporations off the hook. This is a problem that does need to
| be addressed with policy, and companies shouldn't be allowed to
| continue polluting this planet with no consequences. I don't
| know how what the solution should look like, but this is a
| specific example of where free markets can fail us - the costs
| of producing all this unnecessary packaging was externalized
| starting 60 years ago, and is now starting to catch up with us.
| Because the delay between market forces and outcomes can be a
| century, we need to be more careful about just letting things
| run wild.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Instead if everyone recycles, then we begin the process of
| keeping the problem from growing even larger than it already
| is.
|
| Or you give people an excuse to consume more because now they
| can feel good about their consumption. Recycling does not
| solve any problems, as the revelations of the past decade
| have shown. Reducing consumption is the only solution, and
| recycling was the excuse sold to the public to keep the
| consumption music going.
| dahart wrote:
| Well, this is a good point, plastic recycling isn't working
| well at all, and this article demonstrates what you're
| saying.
|
| I would say that paper recycling has been working, it's
| plastic recycling that isn't currently working. I would
| also say that it's not that plastic recycling _can 't_
| work, it's just that it hasn't been working.
|
| I am curious why it's not working. Would mandatory
| recycling help? Is it the recycling services cheating,
| taking money to recycle but throwing it away instead? Is
| the issue public mistrust of municipal water? I do suspect
| there are ways to make a much bigger dent than we have by
| better understanding what's happening.
|
| Anyway, all that said, I tend to agree with you that
| recycling is being used ironically as a way to continue
| consumption and avoid responsibility rather than start the
| real work of reducing plastic production.
|
| Yeah I don't know. I'm a little torn, I don't want to give
| up all hope on plastic recycling, but I think you're right,
| we probably need amputation more than stitches.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >I am curious why it's not working
|
| Problem number one is expecting people to put forth the
| time and effort into sorting all of their recyclables.
| The whole situation is so complicated and rules so
| difficult to enforce, I don't see how it can be
| considered a feasible solution.
|
| The vastly easier, far more high impact solution is to
| reduce consumption.
| dahart wrote:
| Is sorting really the biggest problem? Are there studies
| that back this up? (Asking honestly; I'd love to read
| them if they exist). Some countries not named the United
| States are pretty good counter-examples, where the public
| is generally very good about sorting.
|
| I've personally watched people ignore recycling signs on
| purpose, or get flustered by multiple bins because
| they've never seen more than one, but ultimately I just
| don't buy the argument that this takes extra time or
| effort, I'm convinced that is a mental block or
| resistance to change and not a real physical problem.
| It's like saying I can't be bothered to figure out where
| my dirty dishes go, and I can't understand the difference
| between the trash bin and dishwasher and cupboards, so
| I'm going to throw everything away. My neighbors are
| perfectly fine with putting yard waste in a separate bin,
| zero people screw that up.
|
| If sorting is the biggest impediment to recycling, then I
| think that we have hope of fixing recycling and maybe
| reducing consumption at the same time. Sorting is the
| easiest problem to fix of all. It'll be easier to get
| people to understand sorting than it will be to get
| people to understand that municipal water is cleaner,
| cheaper and easier than their favorite bottled water
| brand.
|
| I'm with you about reducing consumption being the best
| option. I'm not sure about easy, but no question it'll be
| the highest impact.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Here's a good op-ed from the CEO of Recology explaining
| the issue:
|
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/It-
| is-...
|
| This site has some good links:
|
| https://phys.org/news/2020-03-recycling-broken.html
|
| > recent Greenpeace report found that some PET (#1) and
| HDPE (#2) plastic bottles are the only types of plastic
| that are truly recyclable in the U.S. today; and yet only
| 29 percent of PET bottles are collected for recycling,
| and of this, only 21 percent of the bottles are actually
| made into recycled materials due to contamination.
|
| >China used to accept plastics #3 through #7, which were
| mostly burned for fuel. Today #3 - #7 plastics may be
| collected in the U.S., but they are not actually
| recycled; they usually end up incinerated, buried in
| landfills or exported. In fact Greenpeace is asking
| companies such as Nestle, Walmart, Proctor & Gamble and
| Unilever that label their products made with #3 -#7
| plastics as "recyclable" to stop or it will file a
| complaint with the Federal Trade Commission for
| mislabeling.
|
| On my street, people put out 2 bins, one for recycling,
| and one for non recyclable trash. We put all our
| recycling in one bin, paper, plastic, metal, etc, and
| everything else in the trash that you don't think is
| recyclable. And no one is checking which number plastic
| is placed in the bin. I assume it all goes to landfill.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > Recycling does not solve any problems, as the revelations
| of the past decade have shown.
|
| Fair.
|
| > Reducing consumption is the only solution
|
| Reducing waste is the important part, which may or may not
| involve reducing consumption.
|
| Better waste management is also an alternative solution.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I don't believe the technology in waste management can
| exist in a reasonable timeframe to be able to address the
| damage done by consumption. Namely, one of the biggest
| problems in waste management, carbon emissions from
| fossil fuels, simply has no solution other than reducing
| consumption of fossil fuels.
|
| And consumption of everything increases consumption of
| fossil fuels since basically everything requires energy
| to move mass from one place to another.
| hosh wrote:
| I knew that plastic recycling were not as big but I did not know
| it was 91%.
|
| I started looking up stuff like this:
| https://leapsmag.com/plastic-eating-mushrooms-let-you-have-y...
|
| I mean, if the corporate community won't do what they say, then
| I'm going to look for a practical way to do this locally, onsite.
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