Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 154 posts

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#61

Post by bamboozled »

mirimir wrote: post #44
grogenaut wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there that much need for fleece?

It helps keep me warm in winter. Better than wool, if I get too wet. I just noticed that my wife bought a cute cap, made from recycled soda bottles. Edit: And not just fleece. Also cloth, and yarn for knitted stuff.

One thing to watch out for is what happens to this stuff when you wash it. Yes it contaminates the environment with micro plastics.

One solution is to use a special bag to capture and filter them out. [1]

[1] https://en.guppyfriend.com/

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#62

Post by xvilka »

Animats wrote: post #38

Automated sorting works fine. The newer recycling plants need no human pickers. It's not the robotics startups that are the ones to watch. It's companies like Bulk Handling Systems, from Oregon, which integrates different kinds of machines into a recycling line where mixed junk comes in one end and bales of useful stuff come out the other. They view the robotic grabbers as "automated quality control units". The mecha…

There is quite interesting Israeli startup Ubq[1] claiming it can recycle [2] greasy plastics into the material usable for further plastics manufacturing.

[1] https://www.ubqmaterials.com/

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/climate-solutio...

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#63

Post by Mikeb85 »

aazaa wrote: post #21

> As of October, U.S. scrap exports of plastic to mainland China were down 89% since early 2017, when China began to make clear it would ban many categories, while mixed paper exports were down 96%, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Total U.S. plastic scrap exports to all countries were down 64% in that time period, while mixed paper exports were down 42% according to ISRI. The article doesn't…

> Have wages in China really risen so quickly that human garbage sorters are now too expensive?

Probably. Some Chinese companies are now outsourcing labour to cheaper countries like Vietnam.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#64

Post by thirstywhimbrel »

noisem4ker wrote: post #12
lacker wrote: post #8

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.

I can't help but think that filling the earth with trash is not the correct solution to the problem, however convenient it may be.

Landfills are tiny relative to usable land and are eventually just capped and turned into parks.

Most of the popular fear about running out of landfill space can be traced back to a misused statistic about small rural landfills being decommissioned. RCRA Subtitle D regs basically have driven the shutdown of old town dumps. Modern landfills are much more efficient, with better safety controls for leaching and gas capture, better compression and sorting, and even processes that speed decomposition. The headlines will scream that the number of available landfills are dropping rapidly and neglect to mention that total capacity is actually up and total disposed volume has been trending down since 2000, even despite population increases.

Highly recommend touring a landfill and learning about waste management at scale.

There are really interesting engineering dilemmas that are always a step more nuanced than "we must use x solution or fill the world with trash."

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#65

Post by mirimir »

bamboozled wrote: post #61
mirimir wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It helps keep me warm in winter. Better than wool, if I get too wet. I just noticed that my wife bought a cute cap, made from recycled soda bottles. Edit: And not just fleece. Also cloth, and yarn for knitted stuff.

One thing to watch out for is what happens to this stuff when you wash it. Yes it contaminates the environment with micro plastics. One solution is to use a special bag to capture and filter them out. [1] [1] https://en.guppyfriend.com/

Oops. Damn.

But that's an issue with all synthetic clothing, right?

I guess that making bottles and sheeting would be best.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#66

Post by thirstywhimbrel »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #35
techslave wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you cite this meta study please? i very, very much doubt that said study existed at the time these decisions were made. also the energy cost is a wash (or loss) for almost all but aluminum. glass would be fine but we are awash in glass, so AIUI cardboard and aluminum are the only consumer items worth recycling when consider energy and other input costs. i’ve no idea on total climate impact (eg greenhouse gas prod…

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/pdf/10.1063/1.4965581 and https://www.wrap.org.uk/content/environmental-benefits-recyc... A summary from the latter talking specifically about plastic (though the document covers other materials): The results confirm that mechanical recycling is the best waste management option in respect of the climate change potential, depletion of natural resources and energy demand impacts. The analy…

The first link is a "meta-analysis" where they only found three studies on point with wildly different methods that disagreed in their conclusions.

One of the studies said the costs of sorting made the benefits of plastic recycling negligible to iffy, confirming parent's claim that aluminum drives recycling value and plastics are a wash.

They shouldn't be allowed to call it a meta-analysis if they just read three studies and picked the conclusions they liked best.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#67

Post by randycupertino »

thirstywhimbrel wrote: post #64
noisem4ker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but think that filling the earth with trash is not the correct solution to the problem, however convenient it may be.

Landfills are tiny relative to usable land and are eventually just capped and turned into parks. Most of the popular fear about running out of landfill space can be traced back to a misused statistic about small rural landfills being decommissioned. RCRA Subtitle D regs basically have driven the shutdown of old town dumps. Modern landfills are much more efficient, with better safety controls for leaching and gas capt…

Don't landfills leech lots of pollutants into the groundwater and nearby environment?

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#68

Post by swiley »

xvilka wrote: post #62
Animats wrote: post #38

Automated sorting works fine. The newer recycling plants need no human pickers. It's not the robotics startups that are the ones to watch. It's companies like Bulk Handling Systems, from Oregon, which integrates different kinds of machines into a recycling line where mixed junk comes in one end and bales of useful stuff come out the other. They view the robotic grabbers as "automated quality control units". The mecha…

There is quite interesting Israeli startup Ubq[1] claiming it can recycle [2] greasy plastics into the material usable for further plastics manufacturing. [1] https://www.ubqmaterials.com/ [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/climate-solutio...

It’s not hard to come up with a process that can recycle anything organic into any petrochemical via Fischer Tropsch. What’s difficult is doing it economically.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#69

Post by swiley »

mirimir wrote: post #36

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.

PLA is pretty awesome as far as recycling goes. Also I’m under the impression that cellophane (the “plastic” used for food packaging) is digestible by earthworms. I’m not sure restricting things like that makes sense.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#70

Post by thirstywhimbrel »

randycupertino wrote: post #67
thirstywhimbrel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landfills are tiny relative to usable land and are eventually just capped and turned into parks. Most of the popular fear about running out of landfill space can be traced back to a misused statistic about small rural landfills being decommissioned. RCRA Subtitle D regs basically have driven the shutdown of old town dumps. Modern landfills are much more efficient, with better safety controls for leaching and gas capt…

Don't landfills leech lots of pollutants into the groundwater and nearby environment?

Efficient leachate control is an interesting area, but there are various families of techniques to do it and methods for monitoring effectiveness that have emerged from the last several decades of focused study.

Current facilities are way better equipped than the old solution of uncontrolled municipal dumps.

Post reply on HN