91% of plastic isn't recycled (2018) • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by agotterer » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

spodek wrote: post #183

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…

> hauling millions of bottles around the world I haven't used a bottle of any sort for water for at least ten years. Not everyone has access to safe water, but billions do and billions more would if by not thinking we can fall back on bottles and therefore maintained cleaner water supplies. We don't need alternatives for many things. Paper or plastic? Neither. I've shopped with the same bag since the 90s. Most bevera…

The folks at Tap (https://findtap.com/) are trying to make it easier to refill a water bottle while your out and about or traveling. It doesn’t solve the problem globally, but it’s great to see companies trying to reduce plastic waste and make it easy and free/cheap to access clean water.

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

#192

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

spodek wrote: post #183

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…

> hauling millions of bottles around the world I haven't used a bottle of any sort for water for at least ten years. Not everyone has access to safe water, but billions do and billions more would if by not thinking we can fall back on bottles and therefore maintained cleaner water supplies. We don't need alternatives for many things. Paper or plastic? Neither. I've shopped with the same bag since the 90s. Most bevera…

[deleted]

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

#193

Post by jillesvangurp » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

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…

Transport energy cost is a challenge. Luckily, that whole sector is moving towards using clean energy. So, it matters less as long as we clean that part of our economy up. Also, it perhaps incentivizes manufacturers to recycle and produce closer to consumers. That's the beauty of making this the manufacturers problem: they get to be creative finding solutions to these problems.

Germany already has deposits on things like soda cans, plastic bottles, and beer bottles. It works and isn't crippling the economy. Also the likes of Coca Cola are operating in Germany and turning a profit despite this. They face similar rules elsewhere in Europe. This is already part of their business today. A lot of the plastic bottles are ending up being recycled. Half the success is simply collecting them separately from normal waste so you get all the PET plastics sorted together. That makes that easier. Some of the bottles are actually cleaned and reused.

Simply making recycling a concern for the manufacturer is the key to getting businesses to compete on being more sustainable because it becomes their problem to solve. Single use plastics only make sense when you get to dump them for "free" without regard for cleaning up the mess.

IMHO the main challenges with plastics long term are ensuring the stuff either breaks down when dumped or does not end up in land fills and our oceans. Secondly, we are using oil for producing plastics and could long term be switching to synthesized carbohydrates produced using clean energy. This requires a lot of R&D to happen to scale this and do it more efficiently of course. But it would change things a lot. We'll need stupendous amounts of cheap energy for this. That's actually a good thing when the cheapest form of energy we make is increasingly from renewables. So, the more demand we have on that the faster the demise of dirty energy.

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

#194

Post by dgellow » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 3:30 AM UTC

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #165

dgellow wrote: post #109

Germany has some recycling plants with modern sorting machines, almost entirely automated, it’s quite impressive to see it working. https://youtu.be/I_fUpP-hq3A I was checking for details a few days ago, they announce on their website 53% of their input recycled, and 47% used for “energy recovery” (which is newspeak to say they burn it for the cement and steel industry). I was surprised by the fact that they burn so…

Burning plastic in a modern (read: clean) incinerator is probably the best thing to do with it at this point. It's certainly better than burying it in a landfill. Of course, it would be better to just not make it in the first place.

Yes, that’s what I read. It still feels dirty and counter intuitive IMHO, but I get that by doing so they can avoid using even more fossil fuel.

Regarding the German system, they could really improve the percentage of recycled plastic trash by using more explicit bins, you currently have one single yellow bin for anything recyclable instead of one for PET, one or aluminum, etc. Because of this it is always a bit difficult to know what is supposed to go or not in the bin, and people just put everything they think is plastic.

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

#195

Post by simonebrunozzi » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 3:33 AM UTC

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.

Absolutely nailed it here.

The rest of your comment is not going to happen easily though...

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

#196

Post by pfdietz » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 3:58 AM UTC

Plastic shouldn't be recycled. It should be burned. It's a compact store of energy, and that energy can be recovered and used, even if plastic cannot be easily reused as a material.

Waste handling should focus on making plastics cleanly combustible and keeping problematic materials (like, toxic heavy metals) from being mixed with them in the waste stream.

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

#197

Post by jasonmp85 » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 4:11 AM UTC

agotterer wrote: post #191

spodek wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hauling millions of bottles around the world I haven't used a bottle of any sort for water for at least ten years. Not everyone has access to safe water, but billions do and billions more would if by not thinking we can fall back on bottles and therefore maintained cleaner water supplies. We don't need alternatives for many things. Paper or plastic? Neither. I've shopped with the same bag since the 90s. Most bevera…

The folks at Tap ( https://findtap.com/ ) are trying to make it easier to refill a water bottle while your out and about or traveling. It doesn’t solve the problem globally, but it’s great to see companies trying to reduce plastic waste and make it easy and free/cheap to access clean water.

Well, is it free or is it cheap?

The solution is called a water fountain and they should all be free.

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

#198

Post by lopmotr » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 4:29 AM UTC

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…

At some point, won't it be cheaper to just bury it in a landfill away from any cities and drinking water? We can already afford to ship it to other countries, so why not ship it to the desert where there's unlimited capacity and it will never harm the environment?

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

#199

Post by wcoenen » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 4:35 AM UTC

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #95

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…

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 cr…

> Simply google "plastic endocrine disruptors"

I did, and found that the 1996 paper that helped launch the movement against endocrine disruptors, was retracted in 2001 because the data was made up.

https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-02-0...

(I'm not making any claim here about whether endocrine disruptors in our environment are a problem or not. Maybe they are. But I don't like to be told "just Google X" because that can be used to support any nonsense nowadays. Just give me a good reference and I'll try to figure out whether it's credible.)

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

#200

Post by lopmotr » Wed, Sep 16, 2020, 4:39 AM UTC

jay_kyburz wrote: post #148

chmod600 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A ban seems foolish. First you need to categorize things as "single-use" versus reusable, and people will argue about that distinction. Then, you need do deal with the inevitable unintended consequences from miscategorized items or bizarre alternatives companies choose to replace plastic. A tax would be much more straightforward.

Tax just makes things more expensive, and is very slow to elicit change. Taxing plastic bags while grocery shopping just makes your groceries a tiny bit more expensive. If you ban plastic shopping bags altogether they disappear overnight. update: I agree that trying to define "single-use" is difficult, instead I think governments should just choose an item that has good alternatives and ban them.

My country banned single use supermarket bags, which they defined by the thickness of the material and whether they had cut-out handles. So a supermarket that used to charge 10c for one of those bags replaced them with 20c bags of slightly thicker plastic with attached handles. For me, the extra cost was negligible so I just bought the more expensive bags and threw them in the rubbish. They don't offer them anymore, for some reason.