We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
1–10 of 67 posts
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#2https://i.cbc.ca/1.5299276.1569615441!/fileImage/httpImage/i...
Not sure what's going on in this picture. Can I hazard a guess - the "tracking device" is a cheap smartphone?
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#3There is nothing wrong with landfill or incineration. Unlike metals, recycling plastic is not economic. So converting it to energy by incineration is a pretty good option. In the future if the oil supplies will dwindle it might be economically viable to recycle plastic and then people (or maybe robots) will excavate those landfills for material. It is us taking care of the future generations. Isn't it what all those Gertas of the world want?
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#4https://i.cbc.ca/1.5299276.1569615441!/fileImage/httpImage/i... Not sure what's going on in this picture. Can I hazard a guess - the "tracking device" is a cheap smartphone?
They're wedging the bale to insert a tracker in it. The trackers look something like -
https://images2.opb.org/c_limit%2Ch_1000%2Cq_90%2Cw_640/news...
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#5Summary: one company recycled, one incinerated (which creates a small amount of hazardous waste), and one company sent the bales to landfill.
In the U.K. (at least a few years ago) councils (ie local authorities) are supposed to try to meet targets for recycling. These come in various kinds:
1. Targets for the percentage of their waste that is recycleable
2. Targets for the percentage of the waste that is recycled
3. Targets for the total quantity of kinds of unrecycleable waste
Part 1 generally means trying to reduce the amount of non-recycleable waste that is produced. Partly this can be done by reducing waste in general, and partly by ensuring that waste is better categorised (in the EU there is a complicated categorisation scheme of waste, so eg hardcore is treated differently to various plastics which are different from food or batteries. Some categories are hazardous and have to be treated differently and may only be sent to certain facilities)
Part 2 generally means trying to increase the available facilities to recycle that waste (and decrease the capacity for recycleable waste [1])
Part 3 is generally about trying to guess how much waste will be produced (eg population/large construction predictions)
[1] in the eu waste is typically handled by companies where one must pay a fee (or sell—the fee may be negative) for another company to handle the waste. By reducing the supply of landfill (or by giving incentives for recycling), the price for recycling can become low enough that it is preferable. If the price decreases sufficiently then further sorting of mixed waste may become profitable. In general the main method for trying to control recycling is trying to change market conditions (ie prices) rather than trying to impose and distribute quotas. There are various arguments among economists about which method is better (and whether the methods are actually different). Success is measured by trying to estimate how much of the waste in a local authority is recycled (by asking various waste disposal facilities, assuming no illegal disposal, and somehow figuring out what waste was sourced/handled outside the local authority)
In the UK, incineration (aka Energy from Waste or EfW) is generally considered a “good” kind of waste disposal but slightly less good than recycling.
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#6There is nothing wrong with landfill or incineration. Unlike metals, recycling plastic is not economic. So converting it to energy by incineration is a pretty good option. In the future if the oil supplies will dwindle it might be economically viable to recycle plastic and then people (or maybe robots) will excavate those landfills for material. It is us taking care of the future generations. Isn't it what all those…
Orthogonally, claiming and getting paid to provide service X while not in fact providing it, would usually come across as fraud.
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#7There is nothing wrong with landfill or incineration. Unlike metals, recycling plastic is not economic. So converting it to energy by incineration is a pretty good option. In the future if the oil supplies will dwindle it might be economically viable to recycle plastic and then people (or maybe robots) will excavate those landfills for material. It is us taking care of the future generations. Isn't it what all those…
Incineration means needlessly releasing greenhouse gasses.
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#8Ah the realities of the difficulty involved in recycling like for like come to the fore.
In some ways I think this situation has been exacerbated by proponents of plastic who have marketed it as "infinitely recyclable" for many years. That statement is technically true, in that there exists a process by which you can take post consumer plastic and reduce it back to its component parts for re-use. At the same time it ignores the reality that 'original' plastic, as the end product of a chemical process, is quite pure.
Thus when you build a system that uses plastic to create products, if you build it to assume the purity levels of pre-consumer plastic, then the onus is on the recycler to create the same level of purity. Estimates on the cost of doing that range from 10x to 100x the cost of creating plastic out of raw pre-cursor chemicals. The reality is that there isn't a market for $20 coffee cups over $2 coffee cups because they are "100% post consumer".
I think getting the discussion on to a more realistic footing is a good one. It is much easier to make policy when you have a shot at working with markets rather than against them.
To that end, incinerating plastic to generate energy makes a lot of policy sense in a 'peaker' plant. It isn't "reused" in the sense of making more product but it does give additional benefit to the consumer.
I am also a proponent of structural re-use of post consumer plastics. It has good insulation value, especially when foamed, and building engineered walls with the post-consumer plastic providing a better than air insulation layer has a durable long term effect of reducing baseline energy load which goes to environmental control (heating/cooling) in buildings.
It violates the stories that people have been told that their shopping bags will be infinitely recycled into new shopping bags, but it feels to me as a much more authentic way to represent recycling.
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#9There is nothing wrong with landfill or incineration. Unlike metals, recycling plastic is not economic. So converting it to energy by incineration is a pretty good option. In the future if the oil supplies will dwindle it might be economically viable to recycle plastic and then people (or maybe robots) will excavate those landfills for material. It is us taking care of the future generations. Isn't it what all those…
Orthogonally, claiming and getting paid to provide service X while not in fact providing it, would usually come across as fraud.
Right. I think parent commenter hasn't read the article, and doesn't realize that these are _recycling_ companies, not just your average tech office with a blue bin in the snack room.
Re: We asked three companies to recycle plastic and only one did
#10Ah the realities of the difficulty involved in recycling like for like come to the fore. In some ways I think this situation has been exacerbated by proponents of plastic who have marketed it as "infinitely recyclable" for many years. That statement is technically true, in that there exists a process by which you can take post consumer plastic and reduce it back to its component parts for re-use. At the same time it…
> I am also a proponent of structural re-use of post consumer plastics.
Wouldn't the flammability of plastic make this a non-starter?