121–130 of 219 posts
Or is the dissolving-into-acetone part a non-reversible operation and one ends up with a boatload of contaminated acetone?
Be carefull with this info, much depends on the factory. In the Netherlands we separate plastic and much cannot be recycled but new techniques and factories are being developed as a results of the constant stream of (at the moment!) worthless plastics. [0] [0] https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2018/06/18/weg-met-plastic-in-laag...
I concur, everything on that list is recycled curbside in my city, Paris [0]. Those rules can evolve very fast, and unfortunately the communication is lacking. A lot of people still use the rules of several years ago, not recycling things that are now accepted. There is also an issue on products labels: a lot of them will say something isn't recyclable, while it can be in some cities. Only the most dedicated consumer…
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I concur, everything on that list is recycled curbside in my city, Paris [0]. Those rules can evolve very fast, and unfortunately the communication is lacking. A lot of people still use the rules of several years ago, not recycling things that are now accepted. There is also an issue on products labels: a lot of them will say something isn't recyclable, while it can be in some cities. Only the most dedicated consumer…
Indeed, and I feel that way to contribute is to just add all your plastics to the recycle bin, hoping that even the most difficult types will reach a threshold amount that will trigger research into their recycle-ability, or at least into better separation techniques. Please show me I'm wrong if I am.
Some plastic types should be banned, it would make recycling more viable...
I'm really curious how much plastic China was importing, and what they were doing with it.
The US actually sends a lot of its unrecyclable plastic trash in boats across the world to Asia (in return ships that delivered goods), but it's coming back more and more. Here is a cool video that explains this - Asian Nations Reject Western Trash - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-htnUTN4mH0 For example, for recycling plastic bottles, we are supposed to take the plastic lid off, and even remove the attachment of th…
This will vary depending on the recycling facility, but where I live in Japan, you're supposed to separate the plastic label and the screwcap. According to a documentary about the recycling facilities here, the machines are able to automatically separate out the different kinds of plastic on PET bottles (bottle/cap/label), but the more there is that gets separated off, the more it slows down the process. So if one person forgets to separate their bottle's components, it's fine, the machine handles it, but if nobody separates, then the process takes too long and they can't keep up and have to divert unprocessed plastic to the incinerators.
The US actually sends a lot of its unrecyclable plastic trash in boats across the world to Asia (in return ships that delivered goods), but it's coming back more and more. Here is a cool video that explains this - Asian Nations Reject Western Trash - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-htnUTN4mH0 For example, for recycling plastic bottles, we are supposed to take the plastic lid off, and even remove the attachment of th…
Force companies. Individuals don't get to choose what the packaging is made of. And making it too inconvenient for end users is going to get pushback we don't need.
I'm wondering if there should be a mandatory deposit scheme on all packaging as there currently is on glass bottles in some place. Give people a few cents for returning a plastic bottle, and make it the manufacturer's problem to recycle or dispose of it. If your deposit-return system scans the barcode, it knows what product it is and which recycling stream to put it into ...
The truth is that plastic generally can't be recycled, and we should stop pretending as such. Consequently it would make sense to tax it and generally discourage its use as much as possible. Polluters get away with overusing plastic packaging precisely because consumers stop caring when they think it can be recycled.
This. Plastic _was_ developed to be long-lasting, the indestructibility is _by_design.
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Agreed. Incentivize the correct materials.
One cannot coercively distort the market with government power and expect that life will not, "uh, uh, find a way." Great intentions do not always lead to great outcomes (often the opposite).
But this shows that regulating the market is not a "fire and forget" deal, but an iterative process. First you make the main bad thing more expensive than good behavior. Then you look for "life finding a way", "clever entrepreneurs" abusing loopholes, and make those more expensive too, one by one. You end when you hit diminishing returns.
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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.
The rules are just insanely complicated and depend entirely on what suburb you are in. There are countless different kinds of plastics which all have the recycling triangle on them but you have to actually check the number inside and remember all the kinds of plastics there are and which ones your local council can recycle as well as keeping up to date if this changes. And then you have to deal with the fact that loa…
I actually suspect that even with actually recyclable materials, if individuals have to wash them before giving for recycling, it would be a net benefit for the planet for them to just throw that trash into a landfill.
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…
Hey, you should see how they do it in Japan (there are about 20 containers for recycling, everything must be disassembled). And...people actually do it.
Where I live, we have like 6 different containers (PET bottles, other plastic, glass+cans, cardboard/paper, burnable garbage, unburnable garbage).
Coming from Sweden, it's actually a bit easier here (e.g. in Sweden cans, clear glass, colored glass were all separate, and aluminum drink cans had a deposit so you took them to the supermarket)