'Horrible hybrids': the plastic products that give recyclers nightmares

Personally, I find hard plastic fabric bags (multiple use, not foil) to be as good. Some of those have 40 years now and I'm not the first user (nylon). (Formerly known as potato sacks.) However, you do have to be diligent and not leave them lying about and they have to be durable enough to not tear, or mended. Hard polypropylene fiber bags are also good and durable, take less energy to make. PET is not durable enough, even thick.

A good cotton or linen or jute bag will live for some years of use too though. Main trade-off is water resistance. Only waxed woolen bags and leather (obnoxious for other reasons) are waterproof.

Another travesty are packing filler "peanuts", "airbags" and foam and plastic tape.

> Paper bags have a worse impact in a very few, small, narrow metrics such as "ocean de-nutrification".

Paper bags require more reuse, that's the core finding of the study:

https://www2.mst.dk/Udgiv/publications/2018/02/978-87-93614-...

> Everyone blurts this out because of a study done in Europe that looked only at a very limited range of environmental factors specifically suited to the country that commissioned the study.

I wasn't aware that Denmark is a huge player in the international plastic bag trade, but perhaps I'm just uninformed.

> But most plastic bags don't end up mindfully collected, sorted, and incinerated.

Actually, they do - at least in the EU.

> The plastic bag I (HYPOTHETICALLY) threw out my car window is now several billion flakes of microplastics and the world is struggling with the health ramifications of a century of build-up in the environment.

The world doesn't even know yet if microplastics are a serious health problem, but if they are, then we've already reached the point of no return.

> For that matter, the glass bottle is now harmless beach glass or sand (or a valuable collectible on ebay-next), and the aluminum beer can is now its 10,000th reincarnation-- having been picked up by a bum and traded in for cash.

What about the added weight of the glass bottle requiring more fossil fuel to transport? What about all the energy required to reuse that aluminum? There's good arguments for either of these materials - I don't want to drink my beer out of a plastic bottle - but helping the environment isn't one of them.

> My favorite "HOT TAKE" from that study is that "yOu HaVe To ReUsE a ClOtH bAg 500 tImEs" for it to be more efficient (in a very narrow spectrum of categories, remember) like that's an insurmountable hurdle.

It's not insurmountable, but people just don't do it. These bags get disgusting after a while. People are throwing them away. Same with "reusable" PET bags.

> My made-in-USA cotton totes I got on Amazon for $13.99 in 2010 have been used once a week since I got them.

You deserve a burial at Arlington for that.

Whoever told you that is mistaken.

Even in “incineration-friendly” countries, less than a quarter of all trash is incinerated.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

How about not buying the trash card and instead opting for regular paper or fully electronic?

Each tiny piece of complex trash adds to a horribly polluted landfill...

Recycling indeed is not cost effective or even impossible. Even cardboard can be contaminated with wax or paint enough to prevent recycling or require use of expensive and dangerous solvents.

Perhaps Asian way of outright banning bad packaging and products is the solution.

Are properly lined landfills really that much worse than the trouble and expense of recycling? Especially with clean landfill technology?

I think people tend to underestimate the cost and inconvenience of proper recycling. The value regenerated is so low that, personally, I'm ok with sacrificing a couple plots of land to be later reclaimed and turned into parks/preserves.

Edit: downvotes are not intended to signal disagreement. Recycling is not free and I am just looking for a reasonable cost/benefit analysis. Zero environmental footprint is not practical. There is a happy medium somewhere.