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Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

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Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#11

Post by whatshisface »

jrs235 wrote: post #9

I'm trying to figure out if it still makes sense to sort out the plastics before burying them. Make dedicated plastic landfills separate from all the other rubbish. Then when we find an efficient way to reuse it we will know where in the ground a ton of it is rather than having to open a mixed rubbish fill land fill then clean and process ALL the garbage to sort the plastic out. Seems to me that presorting before bur…

If sorting technology gets better over time, why even bother presorting before burying? It would be cheaper to bury and them sort in the future. Maybe conventional landfills, with adequate attention paid to leak prevention, were the smartest solution all along.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#12

Post by noisem4ker »

lacker wrote: post #8
pythux wrote: post #4

This is a source of anxiety for me lately. We use plastic everywhere and yet seem to not know what to do with it. Plastic is cheap they say, but would plastic be so cheap if we had to factor in the price of recycling it or at least handling its after life? Would it be realistic to ask to think about what to do with wastes of the products sold?

The cost of landfill is really low, so it wouldn’t make any difference if it were added to the cost of plastic. The world has a lot of important environmental problems, like climate change. Landfill space is not an important environmental problem. You should spend your worrying energy on something else.

I can't help but think that filling the earth with trash is not the correct solution to the problem, however convenient it may be.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#13

Post by RyJones »

pythux wrote: post #4

This is a source of anxiety for me lately. We use plastic everywhere and yet seem to not know what to do with it. Plastic is cheap they say, but would plastic be so cheap if we had to factor in the price of recycling it or at least handling its after life? Would it be realistic to ask to think about what to do with wastes of the products sold?

https://youtu.be/5QRw6TbeOxA

Raise prices

Push expenses downstream

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#14

Post by ethbro »

noisem4ker wrote: post #12
lacker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of landfill is really low, so it wouldn’t make any difference if it were added to the cost of plastic. The world has a lot of important environmental problems, like climate change. Landfill space is not an important environmental problem. You should spend your worrying energy on something else.

I can't help but think that filling the earth with trash is not the correct solution to the problem, however convenient it may be.

Is it the correct solution, if it allows us to spend effort and money migrating our energy mix away from fossil fuels?

Is it the correct solution, if we have already shifted our economies to carbon-neutral or -negative modes?

These are very different situations, and we only have time and money to focus on so many things at once.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#15

Post by catalogia »

whatshisface wrote: post #11
jrs235 wrote: post #9

I'm trying to figure out if it still makes sense to sort out the plastics before burying them. Make dedicated plastic landfills separate from all the other rubbish. Then when we find an efficient way to reuse it we will know where in the ground a ton of it is rather than having to open a mixed rubbish fill land fill then clean and process ALL the garbage to sort the plastic out. Seems to me that presorting before bur…

If sorting technology gets better over time, why even bother presorting before burying? It would be cheaper to bury and them sort in the future. Maybe conventional landfills, with adequate attention paid to leak prevention, were the smartest solution all along.

Planning on uncapping the landfill in the future restricts what you can put on top of it in the meantime. Whether or not that's really an issue probably depends on how much free space your country has laying around.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#16

Post by ethbro »

Personally, I'm happy that personal recycling hit a bump when China rejected dirty channels.

It was marketed in the 80s-00s as more of a panacea than it is, and specifically seems to have inculcated a dangerously willful ignorance of further action. I.e. "I already do the recycling thing, so I do my part."

From why I can tell, the toxicity, micro-plastic, and energy concerns are the primary mass-scale benefits? In that order?

The majority of which could be reaped at scale by funding toxic material collection programs, mandating less toxic material choices, and re-instituting a bottle tax+.

In return, we've let major, industrial-scale environmental catastrophes go unmitigated, because out of sight, out of mind.

From my reading, the 1970s push for recycling was always predicated as a vanguard movement, intended to educate the populace at large about environmental issues.

The expectation was that we would then pivot to tackle more difficult problems.

Instead, we have 50 years of patting ourselves on the back for hauling cardboard out to our suburban recycling containers.

+ Looking at you, Coke and Pepsi, for fighting bottle taxes around the world.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#17

Post by Retric »

noisem4ker wrote: post #12
lacker wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of landfill is really low, so it wouldn’t make any difference if it were added to the cost of plastic. The world has a lot of important environmental problems, like climate change. Landfill space is not an important environmental problem. You should spend your worrying energy on something else.

I can't help but think that filling the earth with trash is not the correct solution to the problem, however convenient it may be.

Landfills replacement a tiny volume and can be mined long term. It’s mostly organic matter that’s going to turn into coal and oil eventually but there plenty of more useful elements like copper in the mix.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#18

Post by aSplash0fDerp »

Its the industries and businesses with the plastic addiction problem, not the consumer.

This is similar to making a bad long-term bet and having to pay up. There are a lot of other attractive choices to plastic, but the window to transition seemlessly appears to be closing more and more each week.

Seeing the death of coal should give them a map to follow. They made a bad bet on the future too.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#19

Post by UweSchmidt »

lacker wrote: post #8
pythux wrote: post #4

This is a source of anxiety for me lately. We use plastic everywhere and yet seem to not know what to do with it. Plastic is cheap they say, but would plastic be so cheap if we had to factor in the price of recycling it or at least handling its after life? Would it be realistic to ask to think about what to do with wastes of the products sold?

The cost of landfill is really low, so it wouldn’t make any difference if it were added to the cost of plastic. The world has a lot of important environmental problems, like climate change. Landfill space is not an important environmental problem. You should spend your worrying energy on something else.

I'd guess many environmental issues are connected. Rethinking how we produce and consume should lead to solutions that both reduce waste and save energy. Having to deal with the trash ourselves for a bit might put some incentive to consider waste while designing products and supply chains.

Re: Recycling Rethink: What to Do with Trash Now China Won’t Take It

#20

Post by jrs235 »

whatshisface wrote: post #11
jrs235 wrote: post #9

I'm trying to figure out if it still makes sense to sort out the plastics before burying them. Make dedicated plastic landfills separate from all the other rubbish. Then when we find an efficient way to reuse it we will know where in the ground a ton of it is rather than having to open a mixed rubbish fill land fill then clean and process ALL the garbage to sort the plastic out. Seems to me that presorting before bur…

If sorting technology gets better over time, why even bother presorting before burying? It would be cheaper to bury and them sort in the future. Maybe conventional landfills, with adequate attention paid to leak prevention, were the smartest solution all along.

Because you'd have to open and move a bunch more junk to sort. Meaning more energy to dig up, move, and sort. Presorting makes more sense to me, we are also in the habit already to separate certainly materials from rubbish (food waste, non recyclables, etc.)
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