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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

#231

Post by maxerickson »

oldcynic wrote: post #38
gambiting wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's always cheaper to make new packaging than recycle old one. It's extremely hard to make any sort of business out of recycling old material. Like you said, reusing would help - but glass has the issue of being very heavy so you're burning more fuel to move it around, while it only takes a drop of oil to make a new plastic bottle that weighs 1/20 of an equivalent glass one. I'd love to see all drinks being sold exc…

I wish this myth would die, or we fully priced-in the externality cost of plastic recycling. Look into the roughly 15 step process of recycling those cheap plastic bottles, including pressurised steam, abrasive steps, cold and hot water, and chopping into pieces before yet more washing. It is probably vastly more expensive in energy costs, especially when after all that it's still common to lose batches to contaminat…

Why do they clean it before shredding?

This process starts with the shredding:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyF9MxlcItw

And then giant bales of plastic chips are hand sorted by color in China!

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

#232

Post by oldcynic »

jklinger410 wrote: post #156
dougmwne wrote: post #65

This is a classic externality problem. We can berate consumers all day long to be more diligent in their recycling, but all that finger wagging is for show meant to distract from the real source of the garbage, the manufacturers. Just like the classic "blame the user" mentality, the users were given an impossibly complex system with barely any incentive to get it right. Nothing about the interface is intuitive or dis…

This also reminds me, in a way, of the argument I always make about water waste. Yes, it is great to keep your faucet off if you aren't using it. And yes, if enough people keep theirs off, it will make a big impact on water waste. But as an individual, or a neighborhood, you will never waste as much as factory farms, chemical processing, and many other industries. Add to it the fact that these companies produce these…

You'll never waste as much as is used in plastic recycling either. The number of separate hot and cold washing stages is quite astonishing.

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

#233

Post by dd36 »

qudat wrote: post #147
dougmwne wrote: post #65

This is a classic externality problem. We can berate consumers all day long to be more diligent in their recycling, but all that finger wagging is for show meant to distract from the real source of the garbage, the manufacturers. Just like the classic "blame the user" mentality, the users were given an impossibly complex system with barely any incentive to get it right. Nothing about the interface is intuitive or dis…

Why can't it be both a supply and a demand problem? No actor should be immune to criticism, don't you think?

You're right. And the point is only one side is currently being criticized: the consumer. Nothing is being done on the other side except for all out bans. There is an array of solutions. Pricing is a great one IMO. If that single use plastic bottle of Coke is $1.99 instead of $1.49, and that 50c goes into funding clean up of plastic waste, that's a good market signal. A metal can has recycling value so maybe it isn't charged the 50c fee. And therefore we see more cans in use with more consumer-side recycling.

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

#234

Post by hw »

vmarshall23 wrote: post #152

This has long driven me crazy. I have a version of this argument with my wife every few weeks. I live in a city that has three bins: compost, landfill, and recycling, and overall the city (SF) does a really good job apparently of sorting trash. But if you want a system that doesn't break down if someone throws a handful of batteries in the compost bin, then someone or something somewhere still has to sort the trash s…

Plastic straws end up in the ocean because straws are given out when people purchase drinks. Those straws are then thrown indiscriminately into rivers or the ocean, or thrown off a cruise/boat, or left by the beach for the tides to swallow them up. You can't fix human behavior as there will always be people who just don't give a f. A ban on plastic straws is probably one of the best solutions.

On the whole multi-bin thing that puts the burden on people to sort their trash - I totally agree with you. I've never understood why that was necessary. In the end, the trash still needs to be sorted anyway, since, again, some people DGAF.

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

#235

Post by fooblitzky »

technofiend wrote: post #106

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 sol…

I'd love to see that too. I've seen a range of industrially-compostable products, such that I feel it ought to be possible to eliminate the recycling bin altogether (for plastics, I guess metals/glass/paper still work), and have cities/states mandate the use of compostable packaging. They'd save a ton on reducing landfill/plastics recycling, and also being able to sell the resulting compost.

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

#236

Post by titzer »

dougmwne wrote: post #65

This is a classic externality problem. We can berate consumers all day long to be more diligent in their recycling, but all that finger wagging is for show meant to distract from the real source of the garbage, the manufacturers. Just like the classic "blame the user" mentality, the users were given an impossibly complex system with barely any incentive to get it right. Nothing about the interface is intuitive or dis…

Clear example of how the market fails the efficiency test: look at the trend in water bottles and aluminum cans getting taller and skinnier. Takes up more visual space on the shelf. Looks bigger and more substantial, but actually has less product inside. Takes more material and energy to produce. But the markup is larger = more profit! (also a PITA because tall skinny things have a tendency to fall over, but who cares). Producers are cynically anti-consumer and anti-efficiency, completely pro-profit.

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

#237

Post by ada1981 »

roenxi wrote: post #198
corey_moncure wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>i.e. the consumer choosing the cheapest option This is what he means by "externality". The disposable plastic garbage isn't really the cheapest option. It's just that the real cost of all the garbage isn't priced in at market.

Remind me again why the 'real cost' of plastic is higher than all the other garbage we put into landfill? I know there is something going on with microplastics or somesuch that I'm not up to date on, but I would have thought that sealing it in a big hole in the ground would be cheap, effective and safe.

Burying garbage in a big hole in the ground is not a sustainable solution.

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

#238

Post by titzer »

xapata wrote: post #142
stingraycharles wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The creators of all this garbage do so because it's profitable” Isn’t this rather something that market forces demand, i.e. the consumer choosing the cheapest option? Don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with the rest of what you’re saying, I just think that the businesses aren’t as evil as you portray them to be. In the end, the solution is probably government regulation by subsidizing alternatives and/or a compl…

Easiest solution would be a tax on petroleum as it comes out of the ground. That discourages both plastic and greenhouse gas.

Propose this, and even implement it. Then the first economic downturn, whoosh, out the door. Politicians promising the masses the snake oil of economic booms based on cheap energy, driven by lobbyists from the oil industry. Stop me if you heard this one before, but hey, it's reality.

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

#239

Post by oldcynic »

maxerickson wrote: post #231
oldcynic wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish this myth would die, or we fully priced-in the externality cost of plastic recycling. Look into the roughly 15 step process of recycling those cheap plastic bottles, including pressurised steam, abrasive steps, cold and hot water, and chopping into pieces before yet more washing. It is probably vastly more expensive in energy costs, especially when after all that it's still common to lose batches to contaminat…

Why do they clean it before shredding? This process starts with the shredding: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyF9MxlcItw And then giant bales of plastic chips are hand sorted by color in China!

Going entirely on memory, so I may have misrepresented a bit or been out of order. I seem to remember there's an initial automated sort and wash before shredding to remove dead mice, contamination from single stream recycling, assorted junk thrown in the wrong bin and so on. Then after shredding there's washing and rinsing stages, and a steam and abrasive stage to remove glue and labels etc. It left me quite astonished how incredibly involved it is when I looked into it.

Hand sorting? This really is fundamentally broken isn't it?

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

#240

Post by newswriter99 »

Let's look at some actual numbers without the hype.

"91% of potentially recyclable plastic ends up in landfills, or worse, in oceans."

So right there, no ratio. How much goes into the landfill and how much into the ocean? Because lets face it:

Landfill>Ocean

For comparison, 8m tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean annually according to the cited 2015 UCSB study: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014985/ocean-plastic

That's 8m tonnes globally. The US makes about 30m tonnes a year. What's the US' share of plastic in the ocean?

https://jambeck.engr.uga.edu/landplasticinput

About 340 tonnes a year. Yeah, that's a lot, but that's 0.00425% of the total. We're in 20th place.

China drops 2.4m tonnes a year. About 30% of all the plastic waste that goes into the ocean each year.

Article does nothing to point out the plastic waste just getting chucked into rivers in India and Asia.

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