New plant-based plastics can be chemically recycled with near-perfect efficiency

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 10:00 PM UTC

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #34

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic disposal is a clear example of the failure of current economics. It's clearly bad for the environment and has long term costs, but there basically isn't any way economics to calculate that or incent it to not be done. So IMO, recycling is an exploratory exercise in seeing if we can socially engineer behavior that is "better". The cynic would say "it doesn't", but I could argue civilization is built on short t…

90% of ocean plastic comes from Asia and Africa: http://odinafrica.org/about-us/news/217-90-percent-of-ocean-... . We need to prohibit Western companies from packaging food and FMCG for the developing world in plastic - until both the disposal infrastructure and societal attitudes around pollution and environmental management change. Or, charge those polluters to build that infrastructure or change those attitudes. H…

Post by yojo » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 10:05 PM UTC

thret wrote: post #53

tachyonbeam wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should recycle plastic if we can, or better yet, switch to other materials that are easier to recycle. For example, glass bottles can just be sent back to the factory, washed and reused. This is already done for beer and wine AFAIK. It could be done for milk and every other kind of drinks as well. However, if we fail to recycle plastic, isn't burying plastic in a landfill, in a way, a form of carbon captur…

My mother used to say this happened with milk. They'd deliver it daily and collect the used bottles to be washed and reused.

Post by labawi » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 10:11 PM UTC

joshspankit wrote: post #32

jvanderbot wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe plastic recycling is not motivated by oil use primarily. I believe it is motivated by trash accumulation in oceans and the food chain (microplastics). There are a ton of areas of the world where plastic just piles up.

Off-topic, but sometimes I feel like we could harvest the plastic from the ocean, make plastic bricks, and build millions of houses. Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that this is a viable solution to anything, or that it’s a good use of resources based on our current methodologies. I’m more just trying to say that there’s so much raw material out there and that it’s better if it comes out of the ocean. L…

Post by Animats » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 10:26 PM UTC

Post by joshspankit » Sat, Feb 20, 2021, 10:41 PM UTC

beckman466 wrote: post #62

joshspankit wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-topic, but sometimes I feel like we could harvest the plastic from the ocean, make plastic bricks, and build millions of houses. Edit: Just to be clear, I’m not trying to say that this is a viable solution to anything, or that it’s a good use of resources based on our current methodologies. I’m more just trying to say that there’s so much raw material out there and that it’s better if it comes out of the ocean. L…

Or... we could not use so much plastic, and make actual bricks to build ‘millions of houses’. Since you sound so excited, are you going to live in the first plastic house with your family? I think suggestions like this are super demeaning. I often see them coming from privileged knowledge workers, who are eager to share ‘free ideas‘/psuedo-solutions as a sort of ‘charity’ for poor people (and people in the global sou…