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China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

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Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#171

Post by Animats »

justinator wrote: post #102
FooBarWidget wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why it's better to not recycle glass. Yes transporting used glass is costly, but isn't collecting and transporting sand even more costly? And while we won't run out of sand, good sand is limited. Or can you use any sort of sand to produce glass instead of a specific type of sand? Doesn't refining sand into glass take additional energy compared to melting existing glass?

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.

It's easier to sort broken glass cullet than bottles.[1]

The actual sorting step scans each small piece of glass cullet individually, and air jets kick different types into different outlets. This is very fast - 30 metric tons an hour.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkILrp11Jq0

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#173

Post by manveru »

justinator wrote: post #168
theandrewbailey wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

From the first article, "In some applications, natural aggregate can be replaced by or supplemented with recycled materials, but the possibilities are limited. " It doesn't go on to why that is, but the conclusion is that recyclable glass won't work(?).

The problem, if i remember correctly, is that you cannot control the purity of recycled glass very well. The last time I checked it was mostly used to lower the temperature needed for the furnace.

But if you want to make pure boro-silicate glass, you cannot tolerate much contamination of oxides, lime, lead, dolomite, salt, etc. or your glass will be tinted, full of bubbles, and possibly even cracks while cooling.

Even with the recycling system in Germany where you separate glass by color, people will not distinguish a soda-lime, boro-silicate, or lead glass. And I don't know a process that could extract the pure SiO2 from old glass (though I'd love for someone to jump in and tell me about a cheap method)

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#174

Post by HoochieKoo »

lozenge wrote: post #155
majewsky wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What if they just standardised on say 10 form factors for reusable bottles? Just replace the label and you can refill it at the factory.

Yes, bring back stubby beer bottles!

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#175

Post by chris_va »

Grazester wrote: post #104
state_less wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic is an amazing material. You can thermoform it, it's a great insulator, molds and fungi don't feed on it, it's incredibly strong (e.g. UHMWPE rope a.k.a dyneema) and so on. The trouble seems to be we don't really respect the environment enough, so we use it in terrible ways, like single use products. We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due…

Yes with the glass bottles please. In the Caribbean Soda use to come in glass bottle with a $0.50 deposit. You would never find a bottle on the side of the street, kids lamented losing their deposit if they broke a bottle(also ran the risk of getting yourself cut if you did) so they made sure to hold on to those bottles with both hands. Now soda comes in a plastic bottle with no deposit on it and isn't recycled on th…

If what you care about is pollution, just tax the pollution instead mandating a specific solution. In this case, it seems easier to add a $0.50 deposit to the plastic bottles.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#176

Post by bmer »

RealityVoid wrote: post #148
bmer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landfills are not sustainable, and are best used as a stop gap measure. It might seem like we have lots of easily accessible empty land right now, but eventually easily accessible land is going to become harder to find. It seems that it would be wise to come up with a sustainable solution, rather than assuming we can rely on a non-renewable resource forever. That being said, why can't volcanoes be used as some sort o…

I am unconvinced by this argument. I would like to believe it, but I can't, I would need some numbers, for example, how much of the available terrain do we cover with trash each year? I think I'd instinctively agree with you if landfills were everywhere... but they are not. They actually seem to be pretty constant in proportion to the space human population occupies, and if this is so, they aren't a bigger problem th…

> They actually seem to be pretty constant in proportion to the space human population occupies, and if this is so, they aren't a bigger problem than human spread and encroachment of wilderness.

I didn't make any claims landfills grow in space at a faster rate than other human land uses, and like you, I agree that they probably just increase linearly with human spread (maybe even more slowly than linearly).

My point is that space on earth is still a finite resource. It doesn't matter how quickly it's getting used up right now, and it may be many generations before we start to hit "peak earth land", but eventually, we'll get there.

Plus, there is something to be said about conserving resources (such as usable land) in the same way that we save money for future generations to use: you never know what unforeseen circumstances may come up requiring some "cash in the bank", so to speak.

That's why I think landfills are nothing are temporary measures, rather than a sustainable way of dealing with waste. It's not something we can hope to do for a few millennia and be cool.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#177

Post by davidf18 »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #105
justinator wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

See latest Sherlock Holmes TV series "Elementary" Season 6 Episode 8 "Sand Trap"

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#178

Post by corey_moncure »

aarongough wrote: post #138
JulianMorrison wrote: post #7

We need to stop making things out of plastic, where any alternative exists. The stuff is going to be the asbestos of the 21st century. Microplastic has been vastly, vastly underrated as a problem. All my lifetime the attitude has been that plastic takes eons to degrade and pulverize, but when it does, the problem of unsightly or dangerous litter is presumably finished. Now we're seeing the opposite: plastic dust is a…

A friend of mine is a researcher in water quality, I asked him what the primary source of microplastics was and his answer surprised me: textiles. Apparently things like fleece shed small plastic fibres constantly every time they're washed, and those fibers make up the bulk of most microplastics.

Have you seen what goes into our childrens' clothes and toys lately? My kids and house are always covered in this microscopic glitter stuff that falls off their clothing and toys. The winter holidays are the worst. I never buy it but inevitably someone will get this junk for my kids, and I'm the evil dad if I say "no". I hate to be a grinch, but I really wish we would stop importing and/or selling this stuff. But nope, we seem to value cheap thrills over the future of our natural environment.

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#179

Post by mamcx »

r00fus wrote: post #35
state_less wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic is an amazing material. You can thermoform it, it's a great insulator, molds and fungi don't feed on it, it's incredibly strong (e.g. UHMWPE rope a.k.a dyneema) and so on. The trouble seems to be we don't really respect the environment enough, so we use it in terrible ways, like single use products. We often don't need those nice properties in single use products, yet we use it anyway because we don't pay due…

> Should we go back to glass bottles and paper bags? If you put a price (read: tax) on plastic, I'm sure many folks would jump at the opportunity of replacing plastic-heavy stuff with no/minimal plastic options possibly using glass or paper (or metal where things are disposable that shouldn't be). Thing is, plastic has a subsidized price right now due to petroleum supply chain being subsidized - plastic is a byproduc…

Here in Colombia the plastic bags in stores cost some (very little) money now.

Suddenly, people discover that are not as necessary!

Now, people take stuff with their own hands (before EVERYTHING was put in a plastic bag, event single units that are already in plastic bags!) or use bags made of fabrics or just get one with them...

Re: China is no longer importing waste – 111M tons will have to go elsewhere

#180

Post by s0rce »

Sukram21 wrote: post #162
byroot wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The distributor will only take the empty ones that resemble the type he delivers => this is a supply chain. That’s why you can’t just return any type of reusable bottles at a store, but just the ones it is also selling.

You can do what Ontario used to do for beer and make everyone use the same bottle. Can't see that happening with branding being so important.

http://www.cbc.ca/archives/entry/beer-a-sad-farewell-to-stub...

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