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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

#131

Post by dkbrk »

nkurz wrote: post #78

Does anyone have a article that clearly shows the energy costs for different container options? Let's use a 12 oz / 330 mL container of soda as the example. What I'd like to see would be something like this: New Recycle Glass: GN Kwh GR Kwh Plastic: PN Kwh PR Kwh Aluminum: AN Kwh AR Kwh That is, rather than seeing statistics that say a recycled aluminum can uses only 5% of the energy needed to create a new can (AN vs…

It's kWh not Kwh

SI prefixes and units are case sensitive.

"k" is the prefix for kilo; "K" is Kelvin.

Similarly, "W" is Watt. "w", as far as I'm aware, doesn't mean anything.

"h" is the accepted symbol for the use of hour with the SI.

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

#132

Post by TeMPOraL »

tzs wrote: post #110
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 How2Recycle label is showing up on more products at the grocery store ... GreenBlue says that there are more than 2,500 variations of the label in circulation" 2500 different recycling rules?! I don't think 2500 variations is actually excessive, when you look at how the labels actually work. The label has four parts [1]: • One part tells what preparation is needed, such as whether you need to rinse the item be…

It's still ridiculous to make this a problem of every individual, though.

> last part tells what part of the item the label applies to (...) given product can have more than one label. E.g., a frozen entree might have a label for the plastic tray it is in, another label for the plastic film that covers the tray, and a third label for the box that the tray is sold in.

This alone cuts down on amount of useful/correct sorting done. The worst is packaging you actually have to disassemble yourself - e.g. something that looks like cardboard (but probably has a thin layer of plastic on top of it; you can't easily tell), but has inserts of thin transparent plastic.

> whether you need to rinse the item before recycling

And this, I believe, essentially kills of recycling as an idea. Not only most people won't bother (and it's a coin toss whether they'll throw the dirty container into general/non-recyclable or recyclable bin), individuals cleaning plastic packaging is a ridiculously inefficient use of water, energy for heating that water, and likely detergent too. I don't have numbers on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the resource use delta between individuals cleaning and doing the cleaning at recycling plant is actually greater than recycling process itself saves.

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

#133

Post by alexisread »

I think taxing packaging along with a country-wide standard for recycling AND for standardised containers (as per other posts here) would be the best option - win-win for governments. Non-homogeneous packaging eg. Cardboard food containers with plastic windows would be taxed heavily.

Taxing packaging by weight and type would theoretically work to minimise packaging and encourage eg. Bringing a tupperware container to the shops. The standardised (countrywide) container types would mean you could eg. Put your standard coffebean container under the supermarket dispenser and do away with packaging.

The taxation would apply to manufacturers (import) not consumers, thus incentivising them to advertise green credentials as a feature, and to cut down packaging or pass the cost on (at which point most customers would move to the cheaper product).

As far as non-homogeneous packaging goes, if it takes longer than 5sec to separate each bit into homogeneous parts, then I'd class it as non-homogeneous.

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

#134

Post by esotericn »

sexydefinesher wrote: post #102
cmroanirgo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My niece has now stopped eating meat... because of plastic. She started out avoiding plastic wrapped meats, and went to a butcher instead, only to find (due to food handling laws in my country) that they used one disposable glove per customer! I applaud her resilience in this aspect: we need to do what we can to stop buying stuff that uses plastic - especially when it doesn't need to.

Wouldn't the lost productivity of sick people due to lower hygiene be more harmful to the environment than the plastic gloves?

This assumes that:

- the plastic glove (and not e.g. hand washing) is the only way to solve this problem

- eating meat is necessary at all, as the OP states, it's not; certainly not in typically accepted volumes, anyway

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

#135

Post by lotsofpulp »

baroffoos wrote: post #103
lyjackal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public awareness at the unrecyle-ability of the majority of products should hopefully upstream business packaging change.

Hopefully. Recycling almost feels like it has been a trick by corporations "Don't worry, you can consume as much as you want and as long as you put it in the recycling bin its all good"

It was a trick, and by politicians and people themselves, who wanted to be seen as being environmentally conscious.

The only solution has always been to reduce consumption, but deep down, everyone wants to consume more and more, while at the same time feel better about and blissfully ignore that they are destroying the environment.

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

#136

Post by 5555624 »

ImprovedSilence wrote: post #41
TylerE wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really pretty simple if you actually care about results. Is it aluminum? Recycle it. Is is not aluminum? Don't recycle it.

I'm under the impression glass is worth recycling as well. Prove me wrong.

Earlier this year, Arlington County, Virginia removed glass from their curbside recycling program, "A significant drop in the market value of glass recyclables means it is no longer economically or environmentally sustainable for the County to collect them via single-stream recycling."

They have two drop-of locations, where residents can drop off glass "for crushing and reuse as construction and landscaping material."

(https://newsroom.arlingtonva.us/release/arlington-shifting-g...)

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

#137

Post by pbhjpbhj »

masklinn wrote: post #118
teekert wrote: post #101

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...

> Be carefull with this info, much depends on the factory. Indeed, recently we were looking into getting bio-degradable / compostable cups for an event, however: * you need "industrial" (high-temperature) composting, your garden's compost pile is not going to work (it will probably degrade over time but very slowly) * the average collection center can't easily differentiate between bio-degradable and regular plastic…

The bio-degradable items won't degrade at the expected rate, as you say it's an industrial composting facility that's needed, but they _will_ degrade far, far, more readily and won't leave the environment strewn with microplastics. That's what we seek.

I've tested composting a couple of compostable nappies (aka diapers) in my under-used, low temperature, domestic compost bin. After about 3 years we emptied it out and there was no sign of the nappies at all.

If an animal eats the corn-starch (or whatever compostable type it is) cup then it's not going to be especially harmful to them. Moreover, it appears from what I've seen that the compostable materials will not retain mechanical integrity after a small time of exposure to weather, this is good too.

It's not all sunbeams though, we had a fairtrade chocolate bar for sale in our store that was wrapped entirely in compostable wrapping (with vegetable dye printing, etc.), the compostable "cellophane" wrap was incredible. Completely transparent, flexible, shiny. But [I believe] the humidity was too high and the wrap grew sticky before the shelf life of the chocolate [It mightn't be perfect but it's a good way better.

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

#138

Post by martin-adams »

Maybe a solution is the same with cigarettes in the UK. Any packaging which is non-recyclable must be a standard color (i.e. red), and may not contain any creative branding on it. If advertisers want to market their products and make them look attractive on the shelves, they'll find creative solutions to using recyclable packaging.

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

#139

Post by flavor8 »

18pfsmt wrote: post #114
ImprovedSilence wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> One cannot coercively distort the market with government power and expect that life will not, "uh, uh, find a way."

Uh, yes you can. Just look at the different car fleets in Europe (where gasoline taxes are high) vs the US (where gasoline taxes are low.) The first thing I notice when driving from the airport either in Europe when I'm visiting or the US when I'm back is the different composition of cars on the road - the US has lots of pickups and SUVs, where Europe has a lot of small coupes and sedans. That's driven by gas pricing, and mpg standards.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/03/climate/us-fu...

> Great intentions do not always lead to great outcomes (often the opposite).

"Do not always" is not the same as "cannot". It is true that incentives can have unexpected results, but as another poster replied, the answer to that is to iterate and improve rather than "not try in the first place". Markets do not lead to perfection without guidance.

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

#140

Post by joshspankit »

martin-adams wrote: post #138

Maybe a solution is the same with cigarettes in the UK. Any packaging which is non-recyclable must be a standard color (i.e. red), and may not contain any creative branding on it. If advertisers want to market their products and make them look attractive on the shelves, they'll find creative solutions to using recyclable packaging.

I have been thinking that it could also work to force all material which is not in direct contact with food to be single-process recyclable. No layers, made from a select number of materials, and no extra labels. Just drop the package in the recycle and it can be re-used as-is.
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