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Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

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Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#11

Post by paultopia »

eloff wrote: post #6
paultopia wrote: post #3

This is LUDICROUS. Recycling is harder than doing your taxes. We desperately need uniformity on this. " BEVERAGE BOTTLES Recyclable. Be sure to remove the plastic film label, which isn’t recyclable. " FFS. Have you ever tried to remove one of those labels? It's impossible. " A bottle with a cap or an opening the same size or smaller than the base of the bottle is probably going to be recyclable. " -- WTF does the siz…

I've noticed that people aren't actually fully capable of just sorting the recycling correctly. There's always stuff in the wrong bins in my building despite an ongoing education effort to fix that and helpful illustrated rules above the bins. Rules about lids and labels is a joke.

Since lids and labels and such seem to actually matter, the only sensible solution is for the governments of the world to legislate to mandate specific shapes and material compositions for things like drink containers. Standardize it all.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#12

Post by jgibson »

paultopia wrote: post #11
eloff wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've noticed that people aren't actually fully capable of just sorting the recycling correctly. There's always stuff in the wrong bins in my building despite an ongoing education effort to fix that and helpful illustrated rules above the bins. Rules about lids and labels is a joke.

Since lids and labels and such seem to actually matter, the only sensible solution is for the governments of the world to legislate to mandate specific shapes and material compositions for things like drink containers. Standardize it all.

I've been thinking about this more and more, and it just makes so much sense. No one cares what shape a beer bottle is, the label is enough to tell them apart. Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging, but less of them isn't something to worry about either

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#13

Post by userbinator »

leggomylibro wrote: post #10

You can recycle polyethylene pretty easily on its own, and a lot of those plastic wraps that the article says aren't recycled are made out of LDPE. HDPE and LDPE are great materials for a lot of things that you might otherwise make out of wood or 3D-print. It's easy to machine, and it can be very strong and rigid for its weight. Basically, you just shred the donor plastic, heat it to 300-350F, press the air out, and…

Notably, plastic bags are a plentiful source of nearly pure polyethylene, which being composed entirely of only hydrogen and carbon essentially in the form of a petroleum wax, is also one of the safest plastics to work with. The decomposition products of fluoro/chloropolymers can be deadly.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#14

Post by cj »

nightfly wrote: post #7
swframe2 wrote: post #5

I was wondering if we should put "seller unique rfids" on everything so the trash can be sorted and returned to the seller. Then we just add the cost of recycling to the cost of the product. Alternatively, add a "recycler unique rfid" and every seller has to partner with a recycler in order to sell a product.

Now you've got to ship everything back to the seller, and then the seller has to ship the waste to their actual processor. Plus the added cost/waste of the RFID tag.

> Now you’ve got to ship everything back to the seller, and then the seller has to ship the waste to their actual processor

That’s actually an interesting idea.

If it actually worked that way, there would be an amazingly high incentive for sellers to minimize packaging waste.

It would also have a side effect of making high-waste packaged goods much more expensive than low-waste packaged food, promoting the purchase of eco-friendly packaging.

I wonder if there’s a less radical way to implement these kind of market incentives.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#15

Post by TylerE »

paultopia wrote: post #3

This is LUDICROUS. Recycling is harder than doing your taxes. We desperately need uniformity on this. " BEVERAGE BOTTLES Recyclable. Be sure to remove the plastic film label, which isn’t recyclable. " FFS. Have you ever tried to remove one of those labels? It's impossible. " A bottle with a cap or an opening the same size or smaller than the base of the bottle is probably going to be recyclable. " -- WTF does the siz…

It's really pretty simple if you actually care about results.

Is it aluminum? Recycle it.

Is is not aluminum? Don't recycle it.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#16

Post by darksaints »

paultopia wrote: post #3

This is LUDICROUS. Recycling is harder than doing your taxes. We desperately need uniformity on this. " BEVERAGE BOTTLES Recyclable. Be sure to remove the plastic film label, which isn’t recyclable. " FFS. Have you ever tried to remove one of those labels? It's impossible. " A bottle with a cap or an opening the same size or smaller than the base of the bottle is probably going to be recyclable. " -- WTF does the siz…

The sorting absolutely should be done downstream, ideally with robots doing the vast majority of the work.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#18

Post by gregable »

I've sort of wondered if recycling plastics is actually maybe bad from a CO2 angle.

It seems that using mined virgin oil for plastics that gets tossed in a landfill means that at least a little more of the oil we are mining ends up not getting burned and emitted as CO2. In this way, we're creating non-global warming demand for oil which competes with the energy demand in the market. I don't know if this is a reasonable way of thinking about it.

Of course, the energy required to haul a bottle of water hundreds of miles is huge, so I'm not arguing for buying more plastic waste, just not sure how recycling existing plastic waste affects global warming in particular.

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#19

Post by aznpwnzor »

paultopia wrote: post #3

This is LUDICROUS. Recycling is harder than doing your taxes. We desperately need uniformity on this. " BEVERAGE BOTTLES Recyclable. Be sure to remove the plastic film label, which isn’t recyclable. " FFS. Have you ever tried to remove one of those labels? It's impossible. " A bottle with a cap or an opening the same size or smaller than the base of the bottle is probably going to be recyclable. " -- WTF does the siz…

reduce and reuse are much easier than doing taxes, but they're not in speculative shareholder corporate interest

Re: Plastics: What's Recyclable, What Becomes Trash and Why

#20

Post by flukus »

jgibson wrote: post #12
paultopia wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since lids and labels and such seem to actually matter, the only sensible solution is for the governments of the world to legislate to mandate specific shapes and material compositions for things like drink containers. Standardize it all.

I've been thinking about this more and more, and it just makes so much sense. No one cares what shape a beer bottle is, the label is enough to tell them apart. Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging, but less of them isn't something to worry about either

> Marketing people will complain if they can't differentiate on packaging

Cigarette companies have already fought and lost legal battles forcing them to use standard plain packaging, so complaining is about all they can do.

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