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As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

nytimes.com

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Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#121

Post by avar »

Tempest1981 wrote: post #85
nraynaud wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

very specifically: don't take the plane, don't got to work with your car, and live in high density housing.

Not disagreeing, but looking at global temperature readings, temps were almost flat from 1940-1980. Weren't those decades characterized by interstates and polluting cars, and people living in suburbia? At least in the US. Was the temperature ramp-up from 1980-2019 a delayed reaction? Or due to emerging nations getting industrialized? Graph: http://berkeleyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/TimeSeri...

Within climate change what you're asking about is called TCRE or "transient climate response to cumulative carbon emissions". E.g. this research article should answer some of your questions. It's an analysis of historical temperature, CO^2 emissions, and the relation between the two: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsta.201...

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_climate_response_to_...

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#122

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

majewsky wrote: post #111
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no packaging expert, however we did innovate ourselves in to this mess, it seems reasonable we may be able to innovate ourselves out of it.

Is that anything more than a sentiment? It's easy to come up with counter-examples. For example, it's easy for me to "innovate" myself into a 15-foot hole in the ground, and likely impossible to innovate myself out of it without outside help.

What is the point of this comment?

I’m not suggesting any one individual attempt to innovate themselves out of a world polluted with plastic without outside help, but I guess digging yourself a 15-foot grave could be construed as one method.

It’s always easier to say why a thing can’t be done than come up with methods of doing a thing and implementing that thing.

I have friends who intentionally restrict the amount of plastic-packaged items they buy, they would struggling to throw out a 200mm cube of tightly bound plastics every month or two; so we know significant reductions in plastic waste are possible on an individual scale.

In the scope of, for example, landing a probe on an asteroid and returning a sample, the engineering challenges facing us in the form of reducing plastic packaging use seem to me, the non-expert, fairly trivial.

I could list some possibilities I, and others, have consider, though they seem to be extensively thrashed out in the comments here and the internet at large.

Was going to the moon, or being able to buy an all electric production vehicle, or the modern microchip, not a mere sentiment at some point?

It seems like the primary lack in this context is the desire for collective action, which appears to be changing.

Perhaps I wildely misunderstood your comment?

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#123

Post by mxfh »

Is there some life cycle assessment (LCA) writeup somewhere on the whole plastics issue? From what it looks "recycling" was big lie due to no accountablity? So all consumer facing regulation in societies with a working waste disposal system is pretty much pointless, if the mess is on the systems top end side.

In Germany, I now get everything in single use paper bags as the default, if I don't intervene, which I see as worse environmental impact, the then few grams of plastic bags we had before. As long as you have a closed system, with near 100% waste caputure, no plastic should end up in the wild when accountability is enforced through all waste management transactions.

So I'm still not shure, how this whole garbage patch topic connects to consumer policies in countries with working closed disposal systems, is this just activism to distract from inability to control the systemic issues here?

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#124

Post by dsfyu404ed »

nostrademons wrote: post #18

It makes me wonder if we were ever really recycling, or if "recycling" was a marketing buzzword for "cheaply dumping your trash in China". I seem to remember a lot of controversy over recycling in the 80s and early 90s, with my local town government insisting it was too expensive. Suddenly everything changed in the late 90s, right around the time that globalization took off, and recycle bins took off everywhere. By t…

I assure you that anything metal gets recycled. It's much cheaper to recycle than dig more ore out of the ground.

tosses brake rotors in city recycling pickup bucket

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#125

Post by berbec »

mikewilliams wrote: post #119
mdorazio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have been profitable for the US.

Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.

I don't know about never. The price of a product is related to its scarcity. At a certain point, there will be recyclable materials we are almost out of. At that point, I can see recycling becoming very profitable.

I can see a time when we mine garbage dumps for materials.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#126

Post by dehrmann »

woah wrote: post #106
opportune wrote: post #49

Not sure about burning recyclables, but burning trash in general is more environmentally friendly than it seems. Sure it releases CO2 (which isn't really an issue if that energy would otherwise come from fossil fuels) but it's possible to scrub out most other contaminants, and it prevents the burnable materials from languishing in a landfill producing methane. It's not recycling, but it is reusing. I'm kind of skepti…

Wouldn’t it be better in terms of co2 production for plastics to stay in a landfill rather than being burned? seems like they would sequester carbon for a very long time

It would, but far more CO2 is emitted for transportation, heating, and power generation. Plastics are maybe 2% of petroleum use:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.php?page=oil_use (see "petrochemical feedstocks")

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#127

Post by berbec »

i_cant_speel wrote: post #15
maxxxxx wrote: post #12

In Germany you pay a deposit when you buy a bottle and when you bring it back, you get your money back. At least when I lived there the system worked well. there is always a lot of pressure from industry to go one-way though.

That is also a thing in a few states. But based on the labels on the bottles, I believe it's maybe 4-7 states that participate in that program.

The bottles are labeled at your local plant for your area. My bottles talk about NY-NJ-CT.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#128

Post by berbec »

tyoma wrote: post #64
ddebernardy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with single use paper packaging or some other non-plastic alternative to the same effect?

The original poster specifically mentioned plastic bottles, which, I imagine, are hard to make from paper. Refillable glass allows for exactly the kind of cross contamination that makes otherwise safe products inedible.

I've started to see boxes of water. They look like milk cartons.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#129

Post by SamReidHughes »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #122
majewsky wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that anything more than a sentiment? It's easy to come up with counter-examples. For example, it's easy for me to "innovate" myself into a 15-foot hole in the ground, and likely impossible to innovate myself out of it without outside help.

What is the point of this comment? I’m not suggesting any one individual attempt to innovate themselves out of a world polluted with plastic without outside help , but I guess digging yourself a 15-foot grave could be construed as one method. It’s always easier to say why a thing can’t be done than come up with methods of doing a thing and implementing that thing. I have friends who intentionally restrict the amount…

Recycling has nothing to do with plastic pollution. Plastics that don't get recycled instead get buried in a hole in the ground.

Re: As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling

#130

Post by michaelbuckbee »

mikewilliams wrote: post #119
mdorazio wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't all trash, but a significant portion was. Without expensive sorting machinery, recycling is generally only profitable with extremely cheap labor and a disregard for environmental damage caused by tossing the unprofitable stuff in the nearest dump. What was profitable for 1990s China would not have been profitable for the US.

Recycling will never be profitable, but we can't just keep burying trash and forgetting about it, or maybe we can, I don't know.

What's missing from the "profitability" equation are all the costs that are pushed elsewhere:

- polluted water so we're all injesting micro plastics - polluted air as the manufacturing is a mess - increased energy consumption to manufacture "perfect" looking packaging.

These all have real, hard, cash driven consequences that aren't factored into the normal profitability equation.

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