Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic • Hacker News Board

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#31

Post by Ericson2314 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:30 PM UTC

chrischen wrote: post #13

nend wrote: post #4

Reduce, reuse, recycle - meaning recycling is the last option. It's better to not consume plastic in the first place, but if you must, find additional uses for it. It takes more of a lifestyle change though than to simply put your cans in a different barrel. Which is probably why few people are willing to try it.

I feel Americans tend to over-consume and undervalue reuse. I always get made fun of for selling my used things on ebay and also buying used instead of new.

Tons of countries want our dollars and flood us with with plastic shit to try to buy those dollars.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#32

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

flatline wrote: post #29

blululu wrote: post #10

It is always a little surprising how naive people are when it comes to recycling. The majority of the cost and difficulty comes in sorting. Back in the good old days most US municipalities used to require people to sort their recycling by type, but over the years we have switched to a more wasteful system. For aluminum cans the material is valuable and relatively easy to sort. For plastic the material is cheap and so…

Living in a city, we get two bins: trash and commingled recycling. They get picked up once a week. Anything that is not obviously “garbage” goes into recycling. I believe that most but not all of it can be recycled. I have no idea what they actually do with it, or why they do it this way, but the logistics of pickup are dead simple.

Are you sure the recycling acceptance rules are broad? In my town, they'd rather not get anything other than #1 or #2 plastics and don't want some other things like boxboard (or pasteboard; cereal boxes and the like) or aluminum foil.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#33

Post by taf2 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

sxp wrote: post #25

taf2 wrote: post #21

Is there maybe an opportunity to use machine learning and vision here to perhaps create a business ? Anyone working on this ?

https://www.youtube.com/c/Bulkhandlingsystems/videos has demos of automatic sorting machines.

From the looks of those machines (size) it looks to be a big business already

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#34

Post by Ericson2314 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:32 PM UTC

Almost all the plastic trash I see is due to food takeout. If we simply were to require that food take out use reusable containers (special bins in public spaces, deliver people transport back to restaurant for home deliver) I think NYC could cut its waste by a huge portion.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#35

Post by flixic » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

mirekrusin wrote: post #24

If you go to Switzerland it opens your eyes a bit - there's no plastic recycling, there's only PET plastic recycling. If the bottle/whatever is not PET, it's not recycleble and you have to buy special, taxed bag that's used for "everything else" that gets burned/whatever. PET plastic can be recycled to lower grade plastic used for outdoor mats etc.

Same in Japan.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#36

Post by hesdeadjim » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:33 PM UTC

blululu wrote: post #10

It is always a little surprising how naive people are when it comes to recycling. The majority of the cost and difficulty comes in sorting. Back in the good old days most US municipalities used to require people to sort their recycling by type, but over the years we have switched to a more wasteful system. For aluminum cans the material is valuable and relatively easy to sort. For plastic the material is cheap and so…

I get doubtful looks from friends when I explain to them that the only waste worth sticking in the recycling bin is aluminum and glass.

These articles that have popped up on this topic are hugely useful to refer people to. I don’t enjoy being right, I just want there to be an open understanding of the lies that have led us to this situation so new solutions can be developed.

It might just be that burying it in the ground for the next few hundred years is the best solution, and through laws attempt to curb the explosive growth of plastic use.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#37

Post by drak0n1c » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:34 PM UTC

It doesn't help when progressive cities like Seattle provide giant recycling bins to houses with no charge for pickup, while charging regressive high prices for small regular garbage bins. It's a huge incentive just to throw excess plastic and foam bits into the recycling - people do not like getting charged another $5 for a one-time extra garbage bag pickup.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#38

Post by 205guy » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

admn2 wrote: post #2

I'm in Chicago. Literally every time I see a garbage truck, it's dumping the recyclables in with the trash. This doesn't surprise me at all.

I’m sure it has happened, that like in he article, the recycling collector just puts it in the trash. But in many places, recycling is collected in garbage trucks, and sometimes in the same trucks as the trash with separate internal compartments. Whether that truck takes the contents to a recycling facility or not will depend on the local practices and economics.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#39

Post by snazz » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #32

flatline wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Living in a city, we get two bins: trash and commingled recycling. They get picked up once a week. Anything that is not obviously “garbage” goes into recycling. I believe that most but not all of it can be recycled. I have no idea what they actually do with it, or why they do it this way, but the logistics of pickup are dead simple.

Are you sure the recycling acceptance rules are broad? In my town, they'd rather not get anything other than #1 or #2 plastics and don't want some other things like boxboard (or pasteboard; cereal boxes and the like) or aluminum foil.

Where I live they don't want waxed cardboard (pizza boxes and similar) or aluminum foil, but everything else you mentioned is acceptable. It clearly depends on the municipality.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#40

Post by csharptwdec19 » Sat, Sep 12, 2020, 7:35 PM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #22

saddlerustle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cost of recycling is high, what is the benefit? It's not significantly reduced carbon emissions (a person's average annual plastic usage is priced at only tens of dollars worth of carbon emissions under a system like the EU ETS), and in the US it's not land shortage (an order of magnitude more land is used by golf corses than landfills), and modern landfills don't pollute the surrounding environment.

The landfill here supports recycling (on site) because it reduces their operating costs. I believe one of the more effective diversions is cardboard (where recycling it at slight income is better than spending resources burying it).

Typically the more treated the paper, the less useful it is to recycle. Think Newspaper vs Book paper or Glossy and bleached cardboard vs plain brown.

Last I knew, it's many metals, some paper, and some glass that are typically net benefit to recycle (from an energy perspective.) Plastics tend to be a lot tougher because of the energy requirements (transporting, cleaning, etc.)