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Damn, I hate those two paragraph articles. Damn lazy writers. Edit: This is all that Firefox Reader View shows. No explanation. Just this: > Recycling Rethink: What to Do With Trash Now That China Won’t Take It > Saabira Chaudhuri > 1 minute > For decades, America and much of the developed world threw their used plastic bottles, soda cans and junk mail in one bin. The trash industry then shipped much of that thousand…
If only three plastics were used in packaging -- say, polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate and polycarbonate -- recycling would be much easier. If they're clean and well separated, they can just be reused. Iffy polyethylene makes great "lumber" for decks, or roofing tiles. Iffy polyethylene terephthalate is great for fleece. Iffy polycarbonate plus carbon black is great for structural applications.
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The cost of landfill is really low, so it wouldn’t make any difference if it were added to the cost of plastic. The world has a lot of important environmental problems, like climate change. Landfill space is not an important environmental problem. You should spend your worrying energy on something else.
I'm not sure are you serious about not seeing landfill connection with environmental problems or just being sarcastic. If landfills are not such a problem, why "developed" countries (I won't name them but we know who they are) are exporting junk to China, India and Africa? Why simply not set landfills near popular cities so we can all enjoy the beauty of "low environmental issue" problems ;) These days there is more…
If only three plastics were used in packaging -- say, polyethylene, polyethylene terephthalate and polycarbonate -- recycling would be much easier. If they're clean and well separated, they can just be reused. Iffy polyethylene makes great "lumber" for decks, or roofing tiles. Iffy polyethylene terephthalate is great for fleece. Iffy polycarbonate plus carbon black is great for structural applications.
Is there that much need for fleece?
Edit: And not just fleece. Also cloth, and yarn for knitted stuff.
Damn, I hate those two paragraph articles. Damn lazy writers. Edit: This is all that Firefox Reader View shows. No explanation. Just this: > Recycling Rethink: What to Do With Trash Now That China Won’t Take It > Saabira Chaudhuri > 1 minute > For decades, America and much of the developed world threw their used plastic bottles, soda cans and junk mail in one bin. The trash industry then shipped much of that thousand…
That's because the paywalled text ends there. The article has 18 paragraphs. http://archive.md/75IhQ
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The cost of landfill is really low, so it wouldn’t make any difference if it were added to the cost of plastic. The world has a lot of important environmental problems, like climate change. Landfill space is not an important environmental problem. You should spend your worrying energy on something else.
> The cost of landfill is really low, so it wouldn’t make any difference if it were added to the cost of plastic. The cost isn’t just disposal, it’s also production. Plastic production (‘ethylene cracking’ specifically) is really environmentally gnarly. Communities across the US and internationally will be way better off once we move away from disposable consumer plastics.
If we made less plastic, would the decrease in gas/oil consumption just be increased in other processes?
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I'm continually amazed at how popular the concept of mining landfills for resources is in this forum, while at the same time recycling is regularly dismissed as wishful thinking. Perhaps it just needs rebranded as pre-emptive landfill mining?
It's super duper shitty ore, basically useless.
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Landfills replacement a tiny volume and can be mined long term. It’s mostly organic matter that’s going to turn into coal and oil eventually but there plenty of more useful elements like copper in the mix.
I'm continually amazed at how popular the concept of mining landfills for resources is in this forum, while at the same time recycling is regularly dismissed as wishful thinking. Perhaps it just needs rebranded as pre-emptive landfill mining?
But, in a thousand or even a million years the atoms will still be around. Basically we may find this stuff useless, but that does not mean it’s permanently devoid of value. If nothing else archeology often involves going through trash heaps from ages past.
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It's super duper shitty ore, basically useless.
Until someone creates a machine that can pulverise anything into a fine powder and progressively sort each granule into their constituent metal, plastic, silica and organic type.
If consumers had to pay a significant amount for each load of trash removed from their home, you’d see the market for ultra low waste products skyrocket.
And then the economic value of recycling—from careful sorting by homeowners to the processing of material by recyclers—would immediately make sense.