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The Era of Easy Recycling May Be Coming to an End

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

#71

Post by OldHand2018 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #20
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…

It would be a great way to differentiate retail. Get your authorized Tide refill at Target instead of having Amazon ship it. People don’t like glass because of the energy used to produce it, but it’s always seemed like a no brainer to me.

> Get your authorized Tide refill at Target instead of having Amazon ship it

You write that as if Target didn't used to sell Tide refills but gave up because nobody bought it.

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

#73

Post by cc439 »

NorthOf33rd wrote: post #24
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can only make it work with a really low cost of labor. Yet, isn’t that what automation provides? It has been two decades since supermarkets in the Nordic countries have whizbang bottle-return machines that take back plastic, aluminium, and glass bottles as long as the barcode is still legible. Is there really no way to make a machine that scans the barcode of various other forms of plastic packaging (like yoghu…

Oh man, the Nordic nations. I remember studying abroad and being the industrious-borderline-alchoholic I am, taking the empties from any classmate I could, so I could re-up the beer supply for free. Here in salt lake, however, we actually have to pay extra to have a glass collection bin at home. There are a dozen or so sites in the city that one could dump the glass, if they were so inclined, or into the general tras…

>I'd love to return the glass to the brewery for cleaning and reuse

This is one of the few cases where glass "recycling" makes sense. Unfortunately, glass is stupid cheap in terms of base material and production process so the only way to make recycling glass products worthwhile is to put the used product right back into service in its whole form (after cleaning of course). I'll try to find the study I'm thinking of but from what I recall, glass recycling isn't just uneconomical to recycle, it often winds up requiring more energy to recycle than it does to obtain the base materials and create a new container. Contamination knocks down the efficiency and the logistics of collecting and sorting glass are far less efficient than the bulk mining and transport of silica into a centralized production plant.

A possible solution to this, IMO, is to force bottling operations to standardize on a handful of containers in different sizes, colors/opaqueness, and closure type. This could also work hand in hand with a ban on plastic bottles for common products like juice, soda, etc. Marketing departments would hate it but the centralized redistribution of reusable containers that are useful to every bottling operation would finally make glass recycling a rational concept.

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

#74

Post by brownbat »

manicdee wrote: post #64
brownbat wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is your worry that we'll convert every inch to landfill?

Rest assured, at the rate we create landfills, the tectonic plates will push our landfills below the surface of the Earth and create new untouched landmasses before we run out of space.

There are unintuitive results in this domain. Highly recommend you check out some of the lit, like Hocking mentioned above.

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

#75

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

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…

Yep, seems the solution is to get rid of it or make plastic producers pay part of the share of recycling it.

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

#76

Post by nitwit005 »

I'm not sure how it is elsewhere, but here if you peek inside the separate bins outside, or in restaurants, it's basically just mixed trash.

Aside from the usual problem of people not caring about sorting, one or more of the bins is often full, and homeless people sort through the trash to take the aluminum cans, leaving mostly the incorrectly sorted stuff behind.

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

#77

Post by PinkMilkshake »

diggernet wrote: post #8

I can't wait for the glorious era of fusion-powered recycling. Dump literally anything in the bin. It all gets vaporized (thanks to plentiful, cheap energy), and is centrifuge-sorted into its constituent atoms. Out of curiosity... Just how delusional am I?

I believe you are referring to a fusion torch!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_torch

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

#78

Post by Evidlo »

cc439 wrote: post #73
NorthOf33rd wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, the Nordic nations. I remember studying abroad and being the industrious-borderline-alchoholic I am, taking the empties from any classmate I could, so I could re-up the beer supply for free. Here in salt lake, however, we actually have to pay extra to have a glass collection bin at home. There are a dozen or so sites in the city that one could dump the glass, if they were so inclined, or into the general tras…

>I'd love to return the glass to the brewery for cleaning and reuse This is one of the few cases where glass "recycling" makes sense. Unfortunately, glass is stupid cheap in terms of base material and production process so the only way to make recycling glass products worthwhile is to put the used product right back into service in its whole form (after cleaning of course). I'll try to find the study I'm thinking of…

This is what a local milk company does in Illinois (Oberweis). You get $1.50 for returning the jug to the store.

https://patch.com/img/cdn/users/37924/2013/01/T800x600/3722a...

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

#79

Post by charliebrownau »

Japan for YEARS has had dedicated bins and the WHOLE country managed to adapt

Is it FINALLY time for the West to seriously consider recycling glass, plastic , cans , paper , food scraps , etc

or we can just double down on stupid and keep burying rubbish in the ground

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

#80

Post by forkLding »

saurik wrote: post #53
forkLding wrote: post #7

Wonder what would happen if plastic bags and straws were just no longer used, I already pack my groceries in a school bag when I go shopping because the plastic bags are flimsy. Straws aren't also necessary, I don't drink coffee I buy with a straw and I'm managing fine. Soft drinks can probably just have those coffee caps and then gradually transition.

Aren't those "coffee caps" made out of plastic? (FWIW, I don't drink coffee, so it is highly possible there is new non-plastic coffee lid technology.)

Yea, it's a sort of transition that mitigates usage of the straw, right now plastic cups served at fast food restaurants have both a cap and a straw. I think it could be easier for customers to accept just having a cap right now and then later on removing the cap as well and drinking from just a cup.
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