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What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

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Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#11

Post by RattlesnakeJake »

leonixyz wrote: post #3

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

If I bought one cotton bag and used it for my whole life, the argument would seem silly.

In reality, a household can easily gain 5-10 new tote bags a year as businesses hand them out as swag or with legitimate collections of items or paperwork. There's no way to use them all enough to justify their manufacturing.

The point the article is making is that the "use fewer plastic bags" thing was well-intended, but it incentivized an alternative with too many tradeoffs. Businesses could order a ton of bags, and feel like they were being "environmentally friendly" by handing them out. But in reality, they just flooded the marketplace with so many bags that didn't need to be made in the first place.

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#12

Post by alistairSH »

RattlesnakeJake wrote: post #11
leonixyz wrote: post #3

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

If I bought one cotton bag and used it for my whole life, the argument would seem silly. In reality, a household can easily gain 5-10 new tote bags a year as businesses hand them out as swag or with legitimate collections of items or paperwork. There's no way to use them all enough to justify their manufacturing. The point the article is making is that the "use fewer plastic bags" thing was well-intended, but it ince…

[dead]

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#13

Post by heyjamesknight »

A question I've often wondered: is the "cost" of bad recycling higher or lower than the cost of not recycling?

We've moved a few times over the years and it's often surprising what is and isn't recyclable in different jurisdictions. This means I often find myself putting something into the recycle that isn't recyclable in my current jurisdiction.

Is this worse than just not recycling, let's say on a per unit basis? I.e. is one unit of recyclable material in the landfill more or less bad than one unit of trash in the recycling pipeline?

Not sure there's an answer, but it's a question I've pondered often.

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#14

Post by hansvm »

swinnipeg wrote: post #6
leonixyz wrote: post #3

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

I would wager the median number of uses per cotton bag is way below 173 store visits.

I bet you're right. Why though? I've gotten thousands of uses out of mine. Even if you shop infrequently that just means they'll wear out more slowly, so surely that's viable for everyone else, maybe with a 7yr break-even point for an every-2-week shopper?

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#15

Post by abirch »

alistairSH wrote: post #9
leonixyz wrote: post #3

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

Not just that, but they go as far as claiming that single-use Solo cups are more environmentally than using a mug. Literally anything made cheap and quick and with little energy is better by their calculus. Doesn't pass the sniff test, IMO.

Not to mention the microplastics. Plus the Solo cups are transported over a great distance as well, between the fuel and packaging it could easily triple their carbon costs.

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#16

Post by beerandt »

leonixyz wrote: post #3

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

Very few people are using a bag to the expected life cycle limit, and even fewer are doing it without WASHING, which is key in doing full LCA (life cycle analysis).

Washing and cleaning are surprisingly inefficient and costly (in terms of $, energy, resources, and emissions) compared to manufacturing, and many assumptions about recycling and reuse go out the window once the realistic numbers descrbing how people actually behave replace idealistic assumptions that go into a manufacturers internal emissions calculations.

As someone who loves to use cotton everything- it pretty much never makes sense to use from an LCA perspective (and that's OK).

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#17

Post by josefritzishere »

I have a cotton bag in my car. I've been using it for 20 years. It was used 173 times probably in the first 3 years. I have a ceramic coffee mug on my desk. It's moved with me through multiple jobs over the last 25 years. It's been used tens of thousands of times. Some goods are naturally disposable like a Kleenex, but much more could be reusable. The math is right there.

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#18

Post by throwitaway222 »

leonixyz wrote: post #3

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

The author of this comment thinks everyone is like him or her.

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#19

Post by wishgreen »

Engineering is about _tradeoffs_. By reducing a complex objective down to a single metric -- in this case, the author chooses energy expenditure -- you can arrive at a great many number of asinine conclusions, such as, single use plastic bags and solo cups are better for the environment...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: What if everything we know about recycling is wrong?

#20

Post by prmoustache »

swinnipeg wrote: post #6
leonixyz wrote: post #3

The authors think reusing a cotton bag for 173 times is difficult - that's all we need to say about this article. When recommendation for landfilling comes from this kind of sources, I think we can safely assume we are doing absolutely great with our demands to reuse, repair and recycle!

I would wager the median number of uses per cotton bag is way below 173 store visits.

Why would it be that low? I am using 3 if them that are around a decade old.
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