161–170 of 213 posts
This is actually great news. Western people will have to get innovate about avoiding garbage, plastic in particular. Oceans will intake less waste (Yes, I’m optimistic about this one)
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Not necessarily. In 2004, Germany introduced a 25 cent deposit on single-use plastic bottles [1] for types of beverages where single-use bottles were much more common than reusable bottles. The intention was like you describe: to encourage consumers and manufacturers to prefer reusable bottles. However, the opposite happened. In the first few months after the law came into power, each retailer would only take back bo…
No the store doesn't need a supply chain. The distributor who deliver new, filled bottles can take the empty ones back. Which is quite efficient. That's how it works in Quebec for instance.
That’s why you can’t just return any type of reusable bottles at a store, but just the ones it is also selling.
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For one truck load, how much sand can you carry per volume, vs. old glass bottles? For the latter, aren't you mostly transporting air? You don't want to BREAK the glass bottles, since they still need to be sorted, and cleaned.
Do you know what you are talking about? I am far from an expert, but here in germany glas gets recycled in 3 bins, brown, green, white - and get usually smashed by people throwing those bottles in. So not much air. And cleaned they still can get (and should)
Here in Boulder, CO, USA, recycling goes only into one bin. It then needs to get sorted at the recycling center. We're told not to smash bottles. Glass has to first be sorted by color.
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For one truck load, how much sand can you carry per volume, vs. old glass bottles? For the latter, aren't you mostly transporting air? You don't want to BREAK the glass bottles, since they still need to be sorted, and cleaned.
Do you know what you are talking about? I am far from an expert, but here in germany glas gets recycled in 3 bins, brown, green, white - and get usually smashed by people throwing those bottles in. So not much air. And cleaned they still can get (and should)
Seems likely to me. Is this already happening?
May sound silly but could we send it into space instead of burying it? Surely it could be sent on a trajectory to burn up at the sun or another planet’s atmosphere. I guess the obvious issue is cost, are there others?
http://www.astronomy.com/news/2016/07/heres-why-we-cant-just...
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Glass is a terrible material in a recycling sense, as it's weight makes transport costly and wasteful (fuel). The raw material is essentially sand (silica) which we're not going to run out of, soon. Burying it in a landfill won't make a worst landfill - it's essentially inert. It's literally better to NOT recycle glass than to recycle it. Reuse it.
Depending on which kind is used to make glass, we actually are running out of sand. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/29/the-world-is-r... http://www.businessinsider.com/world-running-out-sand-resour...
It doesn't go on to why that is, but the conclusion is that recyclable glass won't work(?).
Seems like Northern Africa would be a pretty logical place for disposing waste. Lots of unused desert land very close to the sea for easy access by barge.
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Bioplastics / biodegradable plastics are not a panacea: https://www.explainthatstuff.com/bioplastics.html
> Unfortunately, not all bioplastics compost easily or completely and some leave toxic residues or plastic fragments behind. Some will break down only at high temperatures in industrial-scale, municipal composters or digesters, or in biologically active landfills (also called bioreactor landfills), not on ordinary home compost heaps or in conventional landfills. This is not that big a problem. The solution to it is m…
If someone is composting they'd prefer not have toxins in there - goal is to grow stuff using the compost. So how do you get rid of this stuff cleanly?