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Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

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Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#41

Post by flatline »

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.

They are broad, but it’s been years since I looked and I am confident I am not always in compliance. But at the end of the day they take it away, and there is not room in the trash for everything. I am obviously not acting in very good faith, but theN my wife will put anything into the recycling. I lived in Boulder years ago and they would ding you for mistakes, I always wondered what level of effort was required to do that.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#42

Post by dboreham »

I discovered this last year when our city posted on FB that you couldn't put berry and salad clamshell containers in recycling because if these were found then the entire batch would go to the landfill. After some clarification basically only water and coke bottles are eligible here.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#44

Post by genericone »

jonplackett wrote: post #8
jonplackett wrote: post #5

I wonder what the world would look like now if there never was any oil. We’d have missed out on a lot of industrialising. Would we have had as many wars? I guess we could still have got into space using methane. Will all the positive stuff oil’s given us be undone by just how bad the climate gets? Interesting thought experiment!

Just realised it would probably just be a world filled with coal smoke, but at least less plastic pollution!

Have you seen before and after pictures of London buildings being power washed? The caked on coal dust is no joke, just imagine the inside of people's lungs...

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/nostalgia/manch...

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#45

Post by kencausey »

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.

In my small city the recycling program was cancelled earlier this year but the restriction on plastic was #1 or #2 and only bottles.

The local university had a drop-off location obviously intended for use by students and staff, but it wasn't closed off in anyway. They had signs that specified what was acceptable and had separate containers for each category. I was never quite certain from the signs but it appeared that they accepted all plastic as long as it had a recycling mark (actually it said #1-#7 which seemed to me to be all, but I could be wrong.)

My assumption at the time was that they sent their recycling somewhere else other than the city provided recycling program. However, that drop-off location was removed soon after the city program was cancelled. I have to assume that what the recycling company would accept was more of a negotiation than a sign of what could actually be effectively recycled.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#46

Post by microcolonel »

Non-aluminium recycling doesn't make a whole lot of sense in North America.

For plastics, you can make some case for PET recycling, but little else is at all practical.

Paper recycling is doable, but basically pointless when we have such high volumes of farmed pulp trees, and new pulp is more efficient than ever.

The one thing I could see working well is a subsidized glass reuse program. I know a lot of people who prefer to get things in glass anyhow, and cleaning/sanitizing glass at an industrial scale is an existing capability.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#47

Post by fuckyah »

flixic wrote: post #35
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.

And germany

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#48

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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.

I think that if you read the article, you may change your mind about at least one thing you've said here.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#49

Post by Retric »

hesdeadjim wrote: post #28
jonplackett wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just realised it would probably just be a world filled with coal smoke, but at least less plastic pollution!

A jump from coal straight to nuclear and renewables would have been possible. That said, there are an innumerable number of side effects from cheap fossil fuels that would change present reality as we know it were they removed. Removing cheap fossil fuel energy could have drastically slowed down emigration from cities to the burbs, so it’s also fun to imagine a different present where there’s dozens of New York Citie…

Most of what oil provides you can get from coal and some chemistry, even liquid fuels. I think a world without coal would have been significantly different though.

Metals would be much more expensive, so most structures would have stayed would or stone. I think electric street cars would have been possible based on hydropower and minimal metal usage. That means cities would end up with mid density suburbs based on row houses like san francisco. More dramatic is the lack of cars means dramatically higher density by default without parking etc.

Wind power would have been a much bigger deal never really falling out of favor. Eventually solar would have become a major deal which probably scaled back to most of what we are used to.

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