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The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

fivethirtyeight.com

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Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#61

Post by Maarten88 »

James_Owens_69 wrote: post #35

I have an idea, ask me for more money and I will gladly pay for trash companies to sort my garbage. F them for trying to force me to do their job. Hire an army of hobos and inmates. I don't care.

That mentality, combined with the spinelessness of US government and corruption by industry, nicely sums up the article: it can't be improved, we'll have to live with the pollution!

It's just much more difficult to separate stuff after everything is mixed up, like it says in the article.

Most European countries show that it is possible to do much better. I have to separate plastics/cans, glass, paper, vegetables and non-recyclables (5 streams). And the occasional batteries/electronics. Really, it's not that hard, if you furnish for it. In my household, the non-recyclable waste has shrunk to just one garbage bag every two weeks, for a family of four.

And still I think much should be improved, starting with much stricter regulation for packaging. We still dispose a lot of plastics, around 3 medium size bags every two weeks. Just forbid (or tax into oblivion) single-use plastics entirely, and let the food and retail industries innovate their packaging/distribution/fulfillment using paper, carton, bio-plastics, glass or re-usable.

Much should be improved, and everyone should play their part. Maybe there is a startup idea servicing people who just refuse to do so?

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#62

Post by rdiddly »

NorthOf33rd wrote: post #3

From a linked nat geo article: “I never thought plastic recycling would work,” says Roland Geyer, an engineering professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of the study “Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made.” “There is a viable business model around metal, but plastics never has had that. It’s too low-value, too contaminated, with too many different polymers mixed together. And…

You're on the right track; if you don't want to dispose of it, don't buy it.

I feel like this is just one aspect of environmental awareness that has degraded since the 90s. Packaging has become more wasteful, and there's more of it too, because everything is individually shipped in a box in a truck now (from Amazon etc.) Cars have become bigger and more wasteful than ever (the SUV trend). All the new architecture is full of huge glass windows & curtain walls... one of the most energy-permeable and wasteful barriers (to the extent that a wall is supposed to be a barrier) you could possibly design. But it looks great! As does that hermetically sealed pre-packaged salad in the plastic clamshell. I dunno, we seem to be responding to the problem by pretending all the more ferociously that it doesn't exist.

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#63

Post by r00fus »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #36
Spooky23 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is going to do that without a deposit, and that is hard to push through. IMO use tax policy to drive it. Put a $5 tax on plastic clamshells and they’ll be gone in six months.

And replaced with “reusable” clamshells that somehow don’t count as plastic and they’ll be five times as thick and use way more resources to produce. :-/

Props to amazon for their frustration-free (and shipping cost friendly) packaging effort.

I have seen a marked reduction/elimination of clamshells the past decade of buying from them.

I'd love to complain to retailers nearby: "see this, I'm returning it and buying it from Amazon right now because of your consumer-unfriendly packaging"

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#64

Post by manicdee »

brownbat wrote: post #55
captainbland wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean maybe it is, but then comes the problem: Plastics are used because they're cheap, they're not worth recycling because they're so cheap but you can't just do away with the packaging material entirely because that just leads to, in the case of food, spoiled goods and foods which can't be stored or transported for so long which can cause its own environmental issue. It doesn't make economic sense to use a differe…

You're right... There are some powerful heuristics in environmentalism-- disposable is generally worse, plastics are bad, recycling is better for the environment... But these will break in some special cases. We should avoid treating them as dogmas and be open minded when examining the entire lifecycle of products. For example, styrofoam is so much less energy intensive than firing ceramics. Given the hot water used…

Disposables are only the better option when you move some part of the entire planet outside the system you are measuring.

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#65

Post by nradov »

wst_ wrote: post #49
anonymous5133 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't know because most recycling is the "feel good" type of mentality. People don't actually know what can and cannot be recycled.

So let's start with better education maybe? In Japan each ward/city office publishes online manual with detailed explanation and, probably more important, with illustrated examples.

Telling users to RTFM seldom works here.

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#66

Post by r00fus »

Maarten88 wrote: post #61
James_Owens_69 wrote: post #35

I have an idea, ask me for more money and I will gladly pay for trash companies to sort my garbage. F them for trying to force me to do their job. Hire an army of hobos and inmates. I don't care.

That mentality, combined with the spinelessness of US government and corruption by industry, nicely sums up the article: it can't be improved, we'll have to live with the pollution! It's just much more difficult to separate stuff after everything is mixed up, like it says in the article. Most European countries show that it is possible to do much better. I have to separate plastics/cans, glass, paper, vegetables and…

> spinelessness of US government and corruption by industry

There are beneficiaries to this negligence and they are handsomely profiting (and giving their cronies in Congress campaign contributions) while the world starts to resemble the one in Wall-E more and more.

Campaign finance reform and fixing broken electoral processes has the best probability to exposing and removing the corruption.

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#67

Post by grogenaut »

r00fus wrote: post #57
captainbland wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean maybe it is, but then comes the problem: Plastics are used because they're cheap, they're not worth recycling because they're so cheap but you can't just do away with the packaging material entirely because that just leads to, in the case of food, spoiled goods and foods which can't be stored or transported for so long which can cause its own environmental issue. It doesn't make economic sense to use a differe…

> in the case of food, spoiled goods and foods which can't be stored or transported for so long which can cause its own environmental issue How do local supermarkets compete with TJs? Seriously, I love me some TJs but if the plastics are truly non-recyclable I will need to consider - we need go back to using a more sustainable method. Also paper, glass and wood are all much more easily recycled. Re-Use should be king…

Because TJ's is essentially 1/4 of a grocery store. There are many many things you can't make from ingredients at TJs that you could from even the worst stocked super market in the blandest food areas.

TJ's in many ways is a way over stocked 7-11 full of prepped foods and the most common of things.

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#68

Post by grogenaut »

nradov wrote: post #11

We need to focus more on reuse than on recycling. I'd like to see regulations and tax incentives to encourage beverage companies to use glass bottles that can be washed and reused, rather than disposable aluminum or (even worse) plastic. It's a common sight in Silicon Valley offices to see greasy empty pizza boxes in the recycling bin. People just don't seem to realize that greasy cardboard can't be recycled, and mig…

You can compost many greasy pizza boxes though. Thta's the guidance up here in Seattle.

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#69

Post by tenpies »

rdiddly wrote: post #62
NorthOf33rd wrote: post #3

From a linked nat geo article: “I never thought plastic recycling would work,” says Roland Geyer, an engineering professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of the study “Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made.” “There is a viable business model around metal, but plastics never has had that. It’s too low-value, too contaminated, with too many different polymers mixed together. And…

You're on the right track; if you don't want to dispose of it, don't buy it. I feel like this is just one aspect of environmental awareness that has degraded since the 90s. Packaging has become more wasteful, and there's more of it too, because everything is individually shipped in a box in a truck now (from Amazon etc.) Cars have become bigger and more wasteful than ever (the SUV trend). All the new architecture is…

In this way, recycling has been one of the most catastrophic environmental efforts ever. If we had stuck with just "reduce and re-use" the world would look drastically different. But no, recycle got included and we got the 3 Rs, so now I can purchase that salad in a single-use clamshell plastic container and feel zero guilt because, hey, recycle!

Re: The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

#70

Post by pfarnsworth »

NorthOf33rd wrote: post #3

From a linked nat geo article: “I never thought plastic recycling would work,” says Roland Geyer, an engineering professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of the study “Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made.” “There is a viable business model around metal, but plastics never has had that. It’s too low-value, too contaminated, with too many different polymers mixed together. And…

We need to code this in law.

Any type of plastic used in consumer products needs to be recyclable easily, otherwise outlaw it.

Any food containers need to be compostable.

I'm willing to pay much higher food and product costs so that the waste we create can be easily recycled. If it makes the product economically unviable then maybe the product isn't that useful.

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