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How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

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Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#11

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

ardy42 wrote: post #5

I wonder if sorting could be made feasible by mandating color-coding of different types of plastic? Like PET has to be clear, HDPE white, PP green, etc.? Marketers and package designers may not like it, but whatever. The tiny little recycling symbols seem pretty useless, unless you force consumers to hand-sort their recyclables according to them.

> The tiny little recycling symbols seem pretty useless, unless you force consumers to hand-sort their recyclables according to them.

It gets worse: in King County, WA (Seattle metro area) where WM has most of the contracts we received leaflets from WM telling us to ignore the plastic recycling symbols entirely and to use only WM's "what we can / can't recycle" picture chart - which includes things I didn't think were recyclable (stained pizza boxes) and excludes things that I'd think were recyclable (plastic films).

...and the list varies within the county too: some cities' leaflets say not to put any pizza boxes in recycling (even completely clean ones). Aieeee.

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#13

Post by yodsanklai »

schoen wrote: post #8
x87678r wrote: post #4

I can't remember where I read it but there was the view that recycling allows people to think they're environmentally responsible when they aren't. eg the typical family has multiple cars, lives in a big suburban house, has heating/ac buys loads of stuff but recycles their cardboard/glass so thinks their environmental impact is small.

Every time I took a German course, my textbook had a section something like "was machen Sie für die Umwelt?" ('what do you do for the environment?'), and the first example answer in dialogues was always "Müll trennen" (sorting kinds of trash for recycling). It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I still remember that one of the textbooks even started an answer with "natürlich…

> It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans.

I'm not asking maliciously, but I wonder how Germans reconcile their seemingly environmental awareness with their high CO2 emissions and big cars culture.

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#14

Post by mc32 »

yodsanklai wrote: post #13
schoen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I took a German course, my textbook had a section something like "was machen Sie für die Umwelt?" ('what do you do for the environment?'), and the first example answer in dialogues was always "Müll trennen" (sorting kinds of trash for recycling). It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I still remember that one of the textbooks even started an answer with "natürlich…

> It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I'm not asking maliciously, but I wonder how Germans reconcile their seemingly environmental awareness with their high CO2 emissions and big cars culture.

They also had a recycling scandal when it was exposed all the tidy sorting at home hit all dumped at the refuse center and either dumped or shipped off but mostly not recycled.

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#15

Post by schoen »

yodsanklai wrote: post #13
schoen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I took a German course, my textbook had a section something like "was machen Sie für die Umwelt?" ('what do you do for the environment?'), and the first example answer in dialogues was always "Müll trennen" (sorting kinds of trash for recycling). It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I still remember that one of the textbooks even started an answer with "natürlich…

> It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I'm not asking maliciously, but I wonder how Germans reconcile their seemingly environmental awareness with their high CO2 emissions and big cars culture.

The conflict I heard about was all the coal mining (a huge industry in Germany), although in theory they're going to stop burning coal by around the end of the Unix epoch. (I don't know if that also means that they're going to stop extracting it to sell to other countries' energy markets.)

I think German CO₂ emissions are quite low in comparison to German standards of living (like per joule of electricity, per Euro of GDP, per kcal of food eaten) but that doesn't necessarily mean they're low in an absolute sense, because German standards of living are also very high.

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#16

Post by wyldfire »

schoen wrote: post #8
x87678r wrote: post #4

I can't remember where I read it but there was the view that recycling allows people to think they're environmentally responsible when they aren't. eg the typical family has multiple cars, lives in a big suburban house, has heating/ac buys loads of stuff but recycles their cardboard/glass so thinks their environmental impact is small.

Every time I took a German course, my textbook had a section something like "was machen Sie für die Umwelt?" ('what do you do for the environment?'), and the first example answer in dialogues was always "Müll trennen" (sorting kinds of trash for recycling). It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I still remember that one of the textbooks even started an answer with "natürlich…

> I still remember that one of the textbooks even started an answer with "natürlich trenne ich Müll" ('well, of course I sort my trash...').

Here in the US many communities use "single-stream" recycling (and we applaud ourselves for the effort too). But I wonder how many communities really deliver those contents back to production, especially since China stopped importing it.

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#17

Post by aidenn0 »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #11
ardy42 wrote: post #5

I wonder if sorting could be made feasible by mandating color-coding of different types of plastic? Like PET has to be clear, HDPE white, PP green, etc.? Marketers and package designers may not like it, but whatever. The tiny little recycling symbols seem pretty useless, unless you force consumers to hand-sort their recyclables according to them.

> The tiny little recycling symbols seem pretty useless, unless you force consumers to hand-sort their recyclables according to them. It gets worse: in King County, WA (Seattle metro area) where WM has most of the contracts we received leaflets from WM telling us to ignore the plastic recycling symbols entirely and to use only WM's "what we can / can't recycle" picture chart - which includes things I didn't think wer…

Plastic films can be recycled in theory, they just can't be put into sorting machines, as they tend to gum up the works.

If you had a big box of just PLA films, you could recycle it just like any other hunk of PLA, but getting to the big box of PLA films is not feasible.

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#18

Post by chiph »

yodsanklai wrote: post #13
schoen wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I took a German course, my textbook had a section something like "was machen Sie für die Umwelt?" ('what do you do for the environment?'), and the first example answer in dialogues was always "Müll trennen" (sorting kinds of trash for recycling). It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I still remember that one of the textbooks even started an answer with "natürlich…

> It was amazing what a cultural force this habit seems to have for many Germans. I'm not asking maliciously, but I wonder how Germans reconcile their seemingly environmental awareness with their high CO2 emissions and big cars culture.

Every little bit helps. There is a concern about auto emissions, but car registration tax[0] is proportional to displacement so there is an incentive to buy smaller engines. And of course, fuel is heavily taxed in Europe so there's a big incentive away from larger engines. If you compare something like a BMW 7-Series sold in the US to one sold in Germany, the German model will usually be sold with a smaller engine that costs less to register and much less to operate.

[0] https://kfz-steuer.wiki/en/car-tax-germany/

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#19

Post by newacct583 »

fmajid wrote: post #7

Yes, it’s a scam. Only aluminum actually gets recycled. It’s time to tax plastic so companies start using paper products (even if they go to landfill, they will at least sequester carbon there) or aluminum.

Also glass and steel. Rare earth materials like batteries are very productively recycled. Paper recycling isn't awful either, but more of a wash than a win.

Really, it's thermoplastic disposables that are the real problem here. Those don't recycle (except some very specific items), and frankly never really did. The straw bans are just the tip of the iceberg here. We need to be talking about banning all plastic disposables.

Re: How Big Oil Misled the Public into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

#20

Post by barrkel »

x87678r wrote: post #4

I can't remember where I read it but there was the view that recycling allows people to think they're environmentally responsible when they aren't. eg the typical family has multiple cars, lives in a big suburban house, has heating/ac buys loads of stuff but recycles their cardboard/glass so thinks their environmental impact is small.

Moral self-licensing.

I think a lot of the Green movement has the trappings of a religion, with shame and guilt used as motivators, and expensive rituals like trash sorting used to evidence your membership of the group.

I want to pay someone else to sort my trash. In fact, I want the cost of sorting my trash embedded in the costs of the goods I buy, so I - and in particular, my neighbours - have no motivation to burn their trash, or worse, dump it somewhere illegally.

As it is, I pay for supplemental private trash collection due to the public UK council collection now being insufficient to deal with the quantity. "Recycling" - mostly cardboard delivery boxes - overflows into the private landfill bin because the public bins are only collected every fortnight. Which doesn't help with the smell from nappies and cat litter.

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