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Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

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Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#101

Post by politician »

I suspect that separating a stream of trash is simpler if the stream is younger and lower volume. Suppose we created a "Recycler" -- a mandatory household appliance like "Dishwasher" and "Dryer" and "Oven". This fantasy device has a few holes on top for common use cases, it beeps at the user if they screw up or when full, and it compacts the waste into small blocks. A cross between a paper shredder and trash compactor.

Since it integrates with your household Nest devices, you can link the device to the city waste department to receive sweet rebates on the electricity you wasted to power it. Rebates that the city pays for with the money they receive from taxes levied on manufacturers.

The entire scheme is far more wasteful than requiring manufacturers to pay for disposal of their packaging, but since it pushes even more burden onto the consumer I think it's a winner.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#102

Post by ChuckMcM »

I think the article makes some good points but it keeps jarring me with the "impossible to recycle" statements.

There is "recycling" as implied by the author of the article which is that the material is converted into feedstock to make the same material again, there is "recycling" which can be defined by "is used again", and their is "recycling" which is defined as "it didn't end up in a landfill or ocean." The nuance is important.

For example, you can chemically break down plastic by exposing it to high heat in an oxygen free environment (like a nitrogen)[1]. For many polymers this will reduce it to essentially various long chain polymers, some water vapor, and some left over carbon. You can incinerate plastic in a closed loop exhaust system and extract net positive energy from it. You can mechanically decompose it (think shreedding) and then either ultrasonically or thermally bond into engineered materials (which are not yogurt cups but can provide structural insulation for example)

I had thought at one time that using an engineered material approach you could make things like picnic tables for Forest Service campgrounds (they would be extremely durable, insect and weather immune, and difficult to burn) however in discussions with people who could advocate for such a program I learned that they often just re-used lumber they were clearing as part of the forest management mission for such things so their materials were "free" to begin with. Conceptually though I still like the idea.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/app.1974.070...

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#103

Post by oomkiller »

We should charge per unit of garbage generated (per liter or whatever), and have tracking on how much of it was actually recyclable, which would cause some percent of the price to be refunded (billed at a lower rate to encourage recycling). Otherwise we will be constantly drowning in trash. It blows my mind that we allow people to create as much trash as they want for a flat fee when there's such a negative externality affected on our environment and community, especially since it's a much less controversial and nebulous problem than something like climate change. Billing the consumer for trash affects the design of packaging and shipping of everything they consume.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#104

Post by koube »

aeternus wrote: post #22
idbehold wrote: post #8

Perhaps we should start doing something like what Taiwan did with their trash: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/separation-anxiety/ > The trucks only accept trash bags officially sanctioned by the government of Taiwan which come in a distinctive blue color, complete with an official seal. The bags range in price and size, from 3 liters to 120 liters. The most popular bag is 25 liters (similar to a tiny bathroom…

Is careful sorting of trash/recycling really a good use of time? Seems better to put that effort towards development of techniques to sort en-masse. Likely controversial, but I think there is also an argument for simply throwing hard-to-recycle items in a landfill. If consumption continues to increase, it will likely become economically viable to eventually mine those landfills for raw materials.

I believe some of them can't be mixed, like if you throw something oily and paper in the same bin, the paper can't be used anymore. Also plastic bags make things very difficult to sort, and are difficult to separate from other things.

I'm skeptical that it will ever be economical in a scalable way to mine landfills, but I don't know enough to dispute it.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#105

Post by mikec3010 »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #97
mikec3010 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting a coke bottle in a recycling vs trash can does nothing to reduce its probability of ending up in the ocean. But doubling the number of trucks picking up waste at my house does double the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere.

Trucks in my local area of London pickup both mixed recycleables and landfill waste in a single visit - waste is separated into two bins, and the truck has two separate receptacles for waste. No extra ongoing emissions, streams are kept separate, and the household overhead of sorting is negligible. There is an entirely separate, less frequent service that collects organic waste, so there’s probably some overhead ther…

Assigning me a chore that benefits a business that I pay a service fee for is unacceptable. I'm paying them to take away my waste. If they want to sort it or alphabetize it or apply the Dewey decimal system they're welcome to. But I won't do chores for someone else without an employment agreement and adequate compensation.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#106

Post by technofiend »

Call me crazy but I'd love to see the next round of LEED certifications require any food establishment with seating for dining required to serve with reusable dinnerware and utensils, i.e. plates, forks, knives, spoons, cups and glasses. The amount of plastic wasted by people like me who get lunch from a food court, walk ten feet away to eat lunch and then toss single use items is astounding.

Yet there's no other solution without restaurants moving back to reusable items: health code won't allow them to take my container for food nor should it.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#107

Post by Reason077 »

slavik81 wrote: post #55
jdavis703 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say yes it is a good use of our time. I really want ours to be the generation that stops punting problems out to the next generation. I'd be happy if my friend's children don't need to grow up worrying about how to deal with oceans filled with plastics, global warming induced fire storms and flooded coastal cities.

I'm pretty careful about following my city's recyling guidelines, but I don't think recycling is always the right way to handle a material. It doesn't neccessary solve the problems you mentioned. Improperly sorted plastics are burried in a landfill. They will not fill the ocean with plastic whether recycled or trashed. Global warming is mostly a matter of energy usage, so recycling only helps that when it's more ener…

The fact that beaches around the world are covered in huge quantities of washed up plastic suggests that someone, somewhere is dumping an awful lot of it into the ocean. (And not just in Asia)
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