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91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#91

Post by pathseeker »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #57
chubot wrote: post #42

I still don't get how bottled water became a thing. It wasn't a thing when I was a kid, and somehow the industry convinced us to buy huge quantities of an inferior product for more money, and it pollutes the environment to boot. Insane. The least you can do is use a refillable container. 10+ years ago Google switched from bottle water to giving everyone a container. And that was a great move. Yet people complained, a…

A thought exercise: Sugary bottled drinks are even worse for the environment. They not only have the same bottles and water involved but they also have other ingredients that add even more environmental consequences. They have public health consequences too. But of course to ban sugary drinks would cut into the realm of personal choice right? After all people may choose to want a sugary beverage. So no one argues tha…

Drink water out of the tap like a civilized person.

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#92

Post by [deleted] »

Skunkleton wrote: post #86
makecheck wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not against these ideas but you do have to zoom out a bit to fully realize the impact of each alternative. It’s not as simple as replacing a “bad” one with a “good” one, because there are side effects. (I haven’t added up the total impacts of every option either; this is just something to consider.) For example, glass is much heavier than the plastic used for bottles. If you have trucks/etc. hauling millions of b…

> For example, glass is much heavier than the plastic used for bottles. If you have trucks/etc. hauling millions of bottles around the world, it will take more energy to move glass bottles. This is true, but it (mostly) not an externalized cost. By forcing environmental costs to be internalized by industry, the market should guide industry away from damaging the environment. Of course that would require honest, compl…

[deleted]

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#93

Post by snarf21 »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #19

The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries. Governments and consumers need to get serious with these lobbies: - Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies). - Heavily tax plastic packaging - Tax breaks for glass and paper packaging - Force plastic return deposit schemes at supermarkets _payed for by manufacturer…

These are ideas that could affect change but it has to be a process. We didn't get here overnight and we won't solve it overnight. It seems like slow adding and raising a plastic tax based on packaging containing any plastic would work. Consumers have to decide if they will continue to pay more and more for convenience year over year. This tax money is used to develop technology to recycle and breakdown plastics. Basically, you slowly pay the consumer to pay up for their laziness.

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#94

Post by markbnine »

gruez wrote: post #60
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #19

The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries. Governments and consumers need to get serious with these lobbies: - Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies). - Heavily tax plastic packaging - Tax breaks for glass and paper packaging - Force plastic return deposit schemes at supermarkets _payed for by manufacturer…

> The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries. At the risk of sounding like an industry shill: why is it being characterized as an cost externalization by the petrochemical/packaging industries, rather than the consumers? I agree that any pollution generated during extraction and manufacture can be attributed as an externaliz…

Here is a recent Frontline on how the petro-chem industry fooled consumers: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/. Advocates may be gearing up for a lawsuit, similar to what happened to the cigarette companies.

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#95

Post by DoingIsLearning »

makecheck wrote: post #33
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #19

The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries. Governments and consumers need to get serious with these lobbies: - Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies). - Heavily tax plastic packaging - Tax breaks for glass and paper packaging - Force plastic return deposit schemes at supermarkets _payed for by manufacturer…

I’m not against these ideas but you do have to zoom out a bit to fully realize the impact of each alternative. It’s not as simple as replacing a “bad” one with a “good” one, because there are side effects. (I haven’t added up the total impacts of every option either; this is just something to consider.) For example, glass is much heavier than the plastic used for bottles. If you have trucks/etc. hauling millions of b…

All the cost/energy benefits listed are exactly the type of short term business arguments that enabled companies like Coca-Cola to transition from glass bootles to producing 110 _billion_ PET bootles, every, single, year. [0]

There are a number of long-term costs not captured in these business decisions:

- The energy cost of recycling a PET bottle is much greater than producing a brand new one from crude oil. This creates the wrong kind of incentives for recycling

- Plastic degrades everytime it is recycled. Google plastic "downcycling". In an ideal circular economy old plastics would still have to be replaced with "new" crude oil plastic with additional energy and emissions costs.

- The cost of plastic collection and _sorting_ (which manufacturers aren't paying for)

- The environmental and disposal costs of unrecycled plastic, a PET bottle will take at least 450 years to fully decompose. [1]

- The Health costs of the calamity of micro-plastics contaminating our food supply and ground water. Simply google "plastic endocrine disruptors".

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/oct/02/coca-col...

[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/08/plast...

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#96

Post by AnotherGoodName »

pathseeker wrote: post #91
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought exercise: Sugary bottled drinks are even worse for the environment. They not only have the same bottles and water involved but they also have other ingredients that add even more environmental consequences. They have public health consequences too. But of course to ban sugary drinks would cut into the realm of personal choice right? After all people may choose to want a sugary beverage. So no one argues tha…

Drink water out of the tap like a civilized person.

Unfortunately public taps/fountains seem to be far more rare than drink vending machines in this world of ours.

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#97

Post by afarrell »

ngokevin wrote: post #87
gruez wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>huge externalities that have negative consequences for the world at large. What are these negative consequences? The only ones I can think of are related to improper disposal (eg. littering), and would be present regardless of whether the material was recyclable or not. ie. if we replaced all the non-recyclable plastic bottles with 100% recyclable aluminum cans, the littering problem would still be there.

An idea is to get the companies to internalize these costs through a carbon tax which can be invested into climate change action (which is another story). At the moment, the consequence is that companies have zero incentive to act for the planet, so they will continue their behaviors. Perhaps they pass some of these costs down to consumers which makes them less likely to purchase (and then litter) non-biodegradables.…

If the plastic is sequestered in a landfill, then what is the carbon externality?

Does decomposing plastic emit methane?

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#98

Post by acomjean »

narwally wrote: post #14

This is for glass recycling not plastic, but I recently found out that my county ships all of their glass recyclables to be dumped in a landfill of a neighboring state. In my state, waste disposal companies are legally obligated to recycle everything they can that ends up in a recycling bin. But with glass it's actually vastly cheaper to produce new glass bottles than it is to make them out of recycled material. So t…

In Massachusetts the last glass recycling plant closed a couple years ago. The main problem glass bottle demand was down and the plant making the bottles closed ( beer being more popular in cans is cited as a cause)

https://www.wgbh.org/news/local-news/2018/07/19/massachusett...

They've been using the ground glass as aggregate in roads..

You are 100% correct in that there needs to be economic incentive.

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#99

Post by DoingIsLearning »

snarf21 wrote: post #93
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #19

The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries. Governments and consumers need to get serious with these lobbies: - Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies). - Heavily tax plastic packaging - Tax breaks for glass and paper packaging - Force plastic return deposit schemes at supermarkets _payed for by manufacturer…

These are ideas that could affect change but it has to be a process. We didn't get here overnight and we won't solve it overnight. It seems like slow adding and raising a plastic tax based on packaging containing any plastic would work. Consumers have to decide if they will continue to pay more and more for convenience year over year. This tax money is used to develop technology to recycle and breakdown plastics. Bas…

> we won't solve it overnight.

We are past and overdue on too many milestones in this planetary anthropogenic destruction.

The future of humanity cannot afford anything less than solving this overnight.

Some people will sit in Davos and ponder but the longer we waste time the longer we risk collapsing the world order that allows them to sit at Davos and ponder.

Re: 91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018)

#100

Post by DoingIsLearning »

ummonk wrote: post #85
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #19

The Plastic recycling process as a whole is an incredibly succesful cost externalization for the petro-chemical and packaging industries. Governments and consumers need to get serious with these lobbies: - Ban ALL single-use plastic (except for medical supplies). - Heavily tax plastic packaging - Tax breaks for glass and paper packaging - Force plastic return deposit schemes at supermarkets _payed for by manufacturer…

Most glass and paper doesn't get recycled either. Recycling is broadly speaking nonexistent. Most ends up in the landfill or incinerated.

> Recycling is broadly speaking nonexistent.

Can you link to a source for that claim?

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