'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#2Goddammit. I've been buying the plastic bags of Tide Pods because I just assumed it was less waste than getting a plastic tub every time. Definitely less space taken up in my recycle bin. Blergh.
It's not like it's 1953 and the world is just discovering the wonders of plastic. We should be doing better. I don't understand why it's even legal to produce disposable plastic containers today that are not 100%, easily recyclable - without some sort of express permit for exceptional needs.
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#3Goddammit. I've been buying the plastic bags of Tide Pods because I just assumed it was less waste than getting a plastic tub every time. Definitely less space taken up in my recycle bin. Blergh. It's not like it's 1953 and the world is just discovering the wonders of plastic. We should be doing better. I don't understand why it's even legal to produce disposable plastic containers today that are not 100%, easily rec…
Or at the very least, tax them.
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#4> plastic pouches .... are apt to end up in the ocean
Say what now? No they are not apt to end up in the ocean. Where do they get that idea from?
Plastic in the ocean is two things: fishing gear, and household garbage in certain Asian and Oriental countries.
> The program allows consumers to mail in their razors to be recycled.
Now why would they do this, sigh. Mailing them is going to consume more resources than just throwing them away.
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#5Goddammit. I've been buying the plastic bags of Tide Pods because I just assumed it was less waste than getting a plastic tub every time. Definitely less space taken up in my recycle bin. Blergh. It's not like it's 1953 and the world is just discovering the wonders of plastic. We should be doing better. I don't understand why it's even legal to produce disposable plastic containers today that are not 100%, easily rec…
> I don't understand why it's even legal to produce disposable plastic containers today that are not 100%, easily recyclable
It's because it's completely harmless to landfill them.
Litter is bad. Full stop. Landfill however is not.
I've noticed a trend in these types of articles that conflates the two things as if they were the same. Then they tend of mix in info (plastic in the ocean) that applies to countries that dispose of trash in their local rivers.
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#6Went on a garbage plant tour a few months back and we were advised not to practice optimistic recycling for this matter.
With plastics, if it's not hard plastic, don't hope it will be recycled. Soft plastics like bags end up gumming up the machines. Sure you can bundle the bags together in a ball and supposedly the waste collector will process it separately (i.e. outsource it to someone else), but the general public is better served with fewer exceptions. Just assume that any plastics aside from bottles and cartons are not recyclable.
Reduce, reuse, then recycle.
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#7I wish there was some sort of scoring system for product packaging that would take into account the quantity and environmental impact of the packaging. Like, if the product comes in a small cardboard box it gets a good score, but if that cardboard is lined with a plastic film (effectively making the cardboard non-recyclable) then the score goes way down.
That score could then be used by consumers to make informed decisions or maybe it's used to charge producers to cover the cost of safe disposal of the packaging when it reaches its end of life.
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#8"Discarded single-use plastics have become an international environmental flashpoint, as they have turned up in the bellies of birds and fish, flooded pristine beaches in remote countries with litter and even been detected in microscopic quantities in rainwater."
Ironically, this is almost certainly due to recycling being so uneconomical that trash gets shipped to foreign countries, where less diligent actors will simply dump in the ocean.
Landfills are the best solution, let the trash robots of the future figure it all out.
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#9Goddammit. I've been buying the plastic bags of Tide Pods because I just assumed it was less waste than getting a plastic tub every time. Definitely less space taken up in my recycle bin. Blergh. It's not like it's 1953 and the world is just discovering the wonders of plastic. We should be doing better. I don't understand why it's even legal to produce disposable plastic containers today that are not 100%, easily rec…
> I don't understand why it's even legal to produce disposable plastic containers today that are not 100%, easily recyclable It's because it's completely harmless to landfill them. Litter is bad. Full stop. Landfill however is not. I've noticed a trend in these types of articles that conflates the two things as if they were the same. Then they tend of mix in info (plastic in the ocean) that applies to countries that…
You know where landfill ends up in when not properly sealed?
Groundwater and rain runoff.
Drinking partially degraded plastic is not exactly neutral to health. Poisoning wildlife with the added colorings or plastics themselves, neither. Especially insidious are plastic fibres - partially synthetic textiles. These should all be burned clean at very high temperatures first.
Litter is easy to remove and even burn, micrometer level plastic dust is not. Standard water treatment at best can sediment some kinds of microplastics but not all. The cutoff levels that are safe for health for some plastics are miniscule for chronic intake. (Urethanes especially - kidney toxicity and cancer, probably others too. BPA is a joke compared to base PET stock at micrometers chronically.)
Re: 'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares
#10I wish there was some sort of scoring system for product packaging that would take into account the quantity and environmental impact of the packaging. Like, if the product comes in a small cardboard box it gets a good score, but if that cardboard is lined with a plastic film (effectively making the cardboard non-recyclable) then the score goes way down. That score could then be used by consumers to make informed dec…
Given that paper bags have a worse environmental impact than plastic bags, I would suppose cardboard is worse than those plastic containers that are so annoying to open.