[HN Gopher] A Shocking Amount of US "Recycling" Goes Straight to...
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A Shocking Amount of US "Recycling" Goes Straight to the Landfill
Author : ppjim
Score : 64 points
Date : 2022-10-24 20:22 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (futurism.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (futurism.com)
| kazinator wrote:
| Recycling is largely a scam that was invented by the plastics
| industry to overcome the objections people had against single-
| use, disposable items.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| You're giving the plastics industry too much credit. The useful
| idiots who uncritically bought every word and helped them ram
| it down everyone's throats deserve some blame too.
| standardUser wrote:
| "Recycling is largely a scam"
|
| And then you name one material that is recycled and ignore the
| rest, most of which are highly effective. It's called cherry-
| picking and it's a bad look.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| "one material" - look I hear your point that metals can be
| recycled, but it's reasonable to assume plastics is the "one
| material" that is relevant when discussing recycling.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| This is the short and correct description of what recycling is.
|
| It is a distraction so the packaging industry can fill the
| earth with garbage whilst we feel OK about it.
|
| I'm so deeply indoctrinated to believe the recycling lie that I
| continue to sort my garbage despite believing it all just gets
| dumped into landfill.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Just to be clear, it wasn't being recycled when we were shipping
| it to China either. It was just going into their landfills
| instead of our landfills.
|
| Recycling plastic is a non-solution to a much bigger problem:
| over-consumption of plastics.
|
| The only way I see forward is for governments to implement
| policies that discourage use of plastics by consumers and
| manufacturers. Some places have done this with plastic bags, but
| need to do it for plastic single-use bottles, etc.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| There should be some sort of tax on plastic bottles with less
| than half gallon (~ 2 liters) of liquid in them.
| null_object wrote:
| In 2020 only 10% of plastic was recycled in Sweden. [0]
|
| The rest was burnt to produce heating and electricity - which
| releases an enormous amount of CO2 gases and other pollutants.
|
| Not just a US problem.
|
| [0] in Swedish:
| https://www.ivl.se/press/nyheter/2020-02-21-lattlast-rapport...
| ars wrote:
| > which releases an enormous amount of CO2 gases and other
| pollutants.
|
| No it does not. This is simply untrue.
|
| Burning plastic does not release pollutants, and the CO2
| released just replaces CO2 released from burning other fuel
| (oil, natural gas, etc).
|
| It's a 100% win, and every country should copy them.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| In terms of CO2 per unit energy burning plastic is much worse
| than burning natural gas (and much much worse than any zero
| carbon source). Energy is fungible, there's no reason to
| encourage producing CO2 when it's possible not to.
| ars wrote:
| > CO2 per unit energy burning plastic is much worse than
| burning natural gas
|
| That is simply not true. Polyethylene (the most common
| plastic) is C2H4, while natural gas is a mix ranging from
| CH4 to C3H8. i.e. almost identical in terms of CO2.
|
| Plastic is actually better in some ways since you don't
| need to spend energy a second time to extract even more oil
| from the ground, you can just burn what you already have.
|
| Plus the world does not burn exclusively natural gas, not
| even close.
|
| > when it's possible not to.
|
| As should be pretty obvious the idea is you don't burn some
| other oil, and instead burn plastic. When we are 100% off
| of oil/coal/etc we can stop burning plastic, but right now,
| today, burning plastic is the best option.
|
| Burning plastic is not going to magically cause extra CO2
| emissions, it would simply substitute one for another, with
| total amount unchanged.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand your argument.
|
| It's not how many CO2 molecules per molecule of thing
| being burned. It's about how many CO2 molecules per joule
| of energy released.
|
| You'd have to look at the enthalpy (delta H) of these
| combustion reactions to make a meaningful comparison,
| correct?
| zackees wrote:
| mrinterweb wrote:
| > Burning plastic does not release pollutants
|
| Very false
| ars wrote:
| You are very misinformed. An industrial incinerator for
| burning plastic does not release any pollutants, only water
| and CO2.
| braingenious wrote:
| What if you consider CO2 to be something you would prefer
| not to add to the atmosphere if avoidable?
|
| What exactly is a pollutant by your estimation?
| ars wrote:
| Who's adding CO2? You substitute CO2 from oil, with CO2
| from plastic. This actually _reduces_ the total amount of
| CO2, because you don 't need to pump extra oil out of the
| ground, which costs extra energy.
|
| > What exactly is a pollutant by your estimation?
|
| Something that doesn't belong there in _any_ amount. If
| there 's simply too much of it, but some amount is ok,
| that might be a problem, but that's not a pollutant.
| Otherwise a flood from a hurricane would be called "Water
| pollution", which I hope you can see is a pretty silly
| definition.
| braingenious wrote:
| > Something that doesn't belong there in any amount.
|
| I have never heard this definition before! How do you in
| particular decide which compounds shouldn't be in the
| atmosphere in _any_ amount?
|
| It kind of seems like such a narrow definition of
| "pollutant" enables the justification of burning darn
| near anything short of man-made nuclear isotopes that
| don't otherwise exist in nature. How does this definition
| serve a practical purpose?
|
| edit: To address your hurricane analogy, I am not a fan
| of hurricanes or their damage. I have had friends die in
| hurricanes.
|
| I agree that trying to argue an arbitrary definition of
| "pollution" to serve one's pre-existing ideas or pedantic
| need to be Dictionary Emperor is silly and likely
| pointless at best, though.
| ars wrote:
| > I have never heard this definition before!
|
| Let's hear your definition then.
|
| > How do you in particular decide which compounds
| shouldn't be in the atmosphere in any amount?
|
| Why is that hard? Nitrogen, Oxygen, CO2, Water, and some
| noble gasses.
|
| Other stuff might be there naturally (for example salt by
| the sea), but are pollutants.
| braingenious wrote:
| From dictionary.com: any substance, as certain chemicals
| or waste products, that renders the air, soil, water, or
| other natural resource harmful or unsuitable for a
| specific purpose.
|
| Can you link me to where you've found that "pollutant" is
| defined as a nearly infinite group of compounds but
| explicitly excludes CO2? This is the first time I've
| heard this.
| chrischen wrote:
| CO2 is not unavoidable though. Every ounce of plastic
| burned is an ounce of some other fossil fuel not burned.
| braingenious wrote:
| Every ounce of plastic buried is an ounce of plastic not
| burned. Every ounce of plastic not made is an ounce of
| plastic not burned.
|
| There are lots of sentences that you can start with
| "Every ounce of plastic." Which one of those informs the
| definition of a pollutant?
| bombcar wrote:
| Where does the nitrogen go? Is trash entirely made up of
| H, O, C?
| ars wrote:
| There's very very little nitrogen in plastic. Among
| commonly used plastics just nylon has it (and not very
| much - 2 out of 38 atoms are nylon), and there's not a
| large amount of nylon in trash.
| mrinterweb wrote:
| Placing blame and responsibility on consumers to not purchase
| single-use plastic is not the right approach. Discouraging the
| use of single-use plastics should be done at government policy
| level to heavily tax the sale of single-use plastics, and
| subsidize sustainable alternatives.
| sublinear wrote:
| I agree that this isn't the consumer's problem, but I don't
| agree government policy or taxes incentivize anything but
| fraud. Do we really need even more government contractors?
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Prices may increase but imagine how much more competitive
| American or European manufacturing could be if the cheapest
| materials (and incidentally most environmentally harmful) were
| taxed appropriately.
|
| There's a cycle of waste where cheap goods break but its okay
| because its cheap. Instead we could be making things that last.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Building products that last as long as possible is a sure
| fire way to destroy your market.
|
| You can't both build things that can be infinitely fixable
| and sell a steady stream of them.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Product manufacturers should have to bear the cost of disposing
| the products/packaging they ship. It would be great if every
| product came stamped with some manufacturer ID code or
| something, and when you throw it away, the waste management
| company eventually scans it all and each manufacturer got
| billed based on material/weight/etc.
| ars wrote:
| This is supposed to be a surprise?
|
| It's very simple: If you have to pay to recycle things, it's a
| failure. If they pay you, it works.
|
| China used to _buy_ plastic recycling from the US (it was never
| just shipped for disposal, China actually paid for it). For a
| while they actually wanted it because they could use it to make
| new stuff. But it become uneconomical (too labor intensive), and
| they stopped.
|
| Metal: You have people hunting for metal, and going through bins
| for it. i.e. it's good to recycle.
|
| Cardboard: Same thing.
|
| Everything else? Don't recycle it. Burn the plastic for energy,
| and bury everything else. Sweden actually buys garbage from other
| countries to burn for energy. Since they are paying for the item,
| this works just fine.
| vegetable wrote:
| Some more relevant information in this video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXRtNwUju5g Wendover
| Productions - How China broke the world's recycling
| olivermarks wrote:
| The Chinese used practically slave labour to sift through US
| garbage before they ended the imports. 'Recycling' was a
| euphemism for offshoring garbage whether plastic bottles or solar
| panels, but now the Chinese have tightened their standards.
|
| 2017 film 'Plastic China' trailer
|
| https://youtu.be/jnNNnHTLjmg
| gruez wrote:
| >The Chinese used practically slave labour to sift through US
| garbage before they ended the imports
|
| Are we talking about actual slavery, or run of the mill
| "developing country with poor labor standards"?
| rjh29 wrote:
| In the UK too there's been a lot of news on this:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/17/uk-plast...
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/may/16/uk-ewast...
|
| https://www.greenpeace.org/africa/en/blogs/11125/africas-exp...
|
| Basically recycling companies pay to export the waste to poor
| countries who simply dump or burn it instead of recycling it.
|
| For this reason I avoid plastic and stick to cardboard, glass and
| aluminium. Fortunately plastic is extremely unfashionable in the
| UK right now and products are increasingly switching to card or
| aluminium instead.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Lots of talk about blaming recycling programs. But the OP as I
| understand it, shows that people are not even bothering to put
| but 5% of their plastic in the recycle bin to begin with!
| res0nat0r wrote:
| Frontline did a documentary about this a while back. Your plastic
| fruit container may have "3" on it with the recycle symbol, which
| means it can go to a facility that can recycle that grade of
| plastic, but that doesn't mean your city / state has a facility
| that can process that, or will spend the money to build such a
| facility.
|
| It was a move from the plastics industry to push a feel-good
| policy, but is likely not doing as much good as many of us think.
|
| https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/plastic-wars/
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Voters wanted a feel good policy too, so it worked for
| politicians and basically everyone. Even today, no one is going
| to get elected by telling constituents they need to consume
| less and lower their quality of life.
| nickpinkston wrote:
| Friendly reminder that modern, well regulated landfills are
| actually fine and there is plenty of space for them.
|
| Also, most of the ocean plastic comes from a small number of
| rivers in the less developed world. [1] Rich countries aren't
| really the problem.
|
| While we should try to reduce waste as much as possible. This is
| far more effective at the front end of the process when they're
| designed and produced, the vast amount of carbon is from direct
| carbon from production and follow on carbon from the carbon
| intensity of the products under use.
|
| [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/stemming-the-
| plas...
| acchow wrote:
| > well regulated landfills are actually fine and there is
| plenty of space for them.
|
| On the other hand, a quick Google search turns up quotes like
| "the US is on pace to run out of room in landfills within 18
| years"
|
| https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/us-landfills-are-fi...
|
| So which is it?
| Baader-Meinhof wrote:
| I think that is just referring to the existing landfills. We
| can/do build new landfills all the time. And there is no
| shortage of unused space for new landfills.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| It's always a willpower issue. If the US needed a fighter
| bomber range it could find the land etc etc.
|
| Whilst the US has a lot of people. its also really big. It's
| got space to solve this problem.
| Tycho wrote:
| That's so obviously not true. Come on.
| golemotron wrote:
| > a quick Google search turns up quotes like "the US is on
| pace to run out of room in landfills within 18 years"
|
| People talk about fake news, but this sort of stuff (which is
| fake news also) damages credibility immensely.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I was just in Thailand... where you can't drink the water. So
| you buy plastic water bottles constantly. All the rivers and
| waterways are just full of plastic bottles floating everywhere.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Since you mention it, there's a surprising effort to remove
| plastic from the ocean too:
| https://theoceancleanup.com/updates/first-100000-kg-removed-...
| It's definitely a drop in the bucket, but a nice improvement
| over the we-can't-do-anything attitude previously on the
| pacific garbage patch
| celestialcheese wrote:
| "Operation National Sword" or "Green Sword"[1] from China in 2017
| killed most recycling in North America and Europe. But no
| municipalities or governments wanted to acknowledge it because
| they spent decades training the population that recycling is
| important and they didn't want to undo those years of hard work.
|
| It's only been in the last year that things are sort of coming
| back, but landfilling happens for almost all plastics and paper
| products, unless your muni does multi-bin sorting and not single-
| stream.
|
| Now that petroleum is more expensive, maybe plastic recycling
| will make a resurgence, but I'm not holding my breath.
|
| Recycling boils down to a really really really big and messy
| sorting problem, and hopefully someone clever can come up with
| 0-marginal effort waste bins that handle the sorting so Americans
| can remain lazy and provide a pre-sorted pickup for recyclers.
|
| Multi-stream recycling at the source yields the lowest
| contamination and best recapture rates for material. [2]. The
| single-stream wave worked when china bought everything, but now
| that material quality matters, the volume benefits from single-
| stream are now a liability.
|
| 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_National_Sword 2 -
| https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-era-of-easy-recycli...
| opportune wrote:
| Just fucking throw it away. Why do we pay extra for the privilege
| of recycling something that is barely recyclable to begin with?
|
| Putting plastic in a landfill sequesters carbon, has less
| emissions in transportation, and doesn't require paying people to
| sort it (ultimately born by us chumps paying extra to recycle it
| - if recycling were truly worth it, they'd be paying us to take
| it away, or at least discount our garbage service for separating
| out plastics). Landfills already have mitigations in place for
| groundwater contamination since landfills can have much more
| harmful things than micro plastics seep out of them.
|
| Not to mention all the micro labor involved in cleaning plastic,
| and in sorting it for people who aren't lucky enough to have
| single stream recycling. Maybe it makes some people feel good but
| it seems like a distraction and waste of time just to make an
| unviable activity slightly more viable (if plastic recycling were
| actually viable this would be centralized since it's more
| efficient).
|
| I completely support recycling for materials like aluminum and
| glass that make sense to recycle, but recycling plastic has never
| made sense economically, and putting it in a landfill isn't that
| bad.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Oddly, my county (Fairfax Co, VA) stopped collecting glass, but
| continues to collect plastic. IIRC, the problem was broken
| glass clogging up the sorting machinery.
|
| Anyways, I'd prefer we taxed the crap out of single-use
| packaging to properly account for the waste handling over time.
| squokko wrote:
| I always suspected this, because given what I know of the average
| American, there's no chance that the recycling bins aren't full
| of all kinds of nonrecyclable items. The only things that I
| expect are reliably recycled are those which are profitable
| enough to pick out of the mess.
| c22 wrote:
| I was working at a fast food restaurant, emptying the trash
| cans several times a day, when my city decided to mandate
| separate recycle and compost bins in dining areas. It tripled
| the number of cans I had to empty and clean out, but they all
| ended up in the same garbage dumpster. Some of my coworkers
| didn't give a fuck but I couldn't in good conscience dump a bin
| full of half-empty milkshakes and chewing gum into the
| recycling dumpster, or a bunch of foil wrappers and plastic
| bottles into the compost.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Dude, it is disgusting what people put in recycling. I think
| people may be trying to sabotage it the stuff they put in
| there. Lots of used kitty litter. Lots of soiled clothes. Worst
| thing we had come through was a human body.
| mateo411 wrote:
| > Worst thing we had come through was a human body.
|
| This should really go in the compost bin.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| wow tell us more about this recycled human body
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| > In large part, that's due to the fact that China stopped
| importing plastic waste back in 2018, causing a massive pile up
| in western countries.
|
| I don't think so, I've seen reports that most plastic waste sent
| to China wound up in landfills or incinerators too. So it's
| actually probably a net improvement to not spend all that energy
| sending it 7000 miles to China to put it in a landfill.
|
| It's been a fiction all along, we just paid China to make it
| easier for us to pull the wool over our own eyes. Or, even more
| cycnically, to get it into _their_ landfills or incinerated air
| pollution instead of ours.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Keeping it isolated to its own landfill might prove better than
| mixing it if plastic eating bacteria tech continues to innovate:
| https://www.livescience.com/plastic-eating-bacteria
| jh00ker wrote:
| This is so disheartening. I subscribed to and helped perpetuate
| The Lie. Damn.
|
| While we're on this topic, does anyone have info regarding what
| happens to the plastic bags I return to my local (CA, US) grocery
| store collection bin? Are they part of a separate stream?
|
| I add all sorts of used plastic bags to that bin (thin produce
| bags, the more heavy-duty grocery bags, Amazon padded shipping
| envelopes, deflated shipping air bags, clean zip lock bags,
| etc.). I also wonder if I'm gumming up the works by putting
| different types of plastic bags in the bin because most bags
| don't have recycle markings/numbers.
| anm89 wrote:
| Throw your plastics directly in the trash. This way you will be
| honest with yourself about where your plastic is going and maybe
| use marginally less.
|
| The truth is though that if you aren't growing your own food and
| making your own household items, you are pretty much signed up to
| create large volumes of plastic waste in a way that is mostly out
| of your control.
| legitster wrote:
| If only!
|
| Western landfills are amazing technology that affordably and
| safely lock away garbage. Most of the land can be reclaimed for
| parks or golf courses or other public spaces.
|
| Recycling programs often end in plastics being sent to Asian
| landfills which are little more than open dumps susceptible to
| rain, flooding, and contributing to the Pacific garbage patch.
| freedomben wrote:
| I'd be very interested in a source to read/watch/learn more
| about landfill tech if anybody knows of a good one
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