Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic • Hacker News Board

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#211

Post by gingericha » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 12:21 AM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #108

LordDragonfang wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about where you live, but in California, we have a "bottle deposit" on both glass bottles and aluminum cans (~$0.10 per item), which gets returned to you if you bring it to a recycling center. The only people I see actually bothering to sort and return these are very low income people and homeless people that go through public trash cans.

In Denmark its 1-3kr, or 15-50¢, depending on the size and material of the container. Plenty of cans are collected by homeless / lowest income people, but it's also just about enough that average people will collect them too. If I have a huge bag after a party, I return them. When I normally only have 0-2 bottles in a typical week, I take them outside and put them on the little shelf on the bin for someone to collect…

This mirrors my experience in Germany. We would often save up a dozen or so bottles and bring them all to the grocery store where they could be returned. If we had a beer on the way to the bars we would typically just set the empty next to a garbage bin for someone to collect and return.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#212

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 1:46 AM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #98

xyzzyz wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not even glass, actually. Glass is pretty much just molten sand, and there's scarce value in recycling glass, when you can get fresh and clean sand instead. It makes sense to reuse glass bottles, but recycling glass into new ones is pointless.

> fresh and clean sand The thing many people don't know is that not all sands are equal. For example desert sand is not usable for cement or other building purpose. We are currently running out of sand usable for it and are scrapping it from the sea ground or islands, both doing MAJOR environmental damage. For glass the context is a bit different the sand needed for glass production seems to be readily available, at…

As someone who can look down from above into the recycling trucks I don't know what to make of the fact that they empty the separate collecting containers for green, brown and white glass into the back of the truck. Without any separation at all. Once I asked a driver why that is, and he answered: "I'm just the driver, no clue." The trucks are just regular "Muldenkipper / Dump Truck" which have a little crane behind the drivers cab, crane hooks into their tops, lifts them up over the back, does something to the top hook, shakes a little, bottom opens up, glass falling down, empty container back to the curb.

I mean... "Wat soll dat? / WTF?!"

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#213

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 2:04 AM UTC

pvorb wrote: post #185

greedo wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the dairies nearby sells their milk in heavy glass bottles. They charge a $2 surcharge that's refundable when you return the bottle, and they reuse all the bottles they get that aren't damaged. I wonder how many cycles they typically get out of a bottle before it's no longer useful.

I'm not sure about those milk bottles, but in Germany the "Mehrwegpfandsystem" typically gets 40 to 50 cycles from a glass bottle and up to 25 cycles out of a PET bottle. Unfortunately, this system has been on the decline in recent years and customers often choose single-use plastic bottles.

Depending on where you return them, the Mehrweg PET ones just get shredded. You can hear that. Sometimes I heard glass getting crushed too, but that was a few years ago. Not recently.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#214

Post by stjohnswarts » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 2:20 AM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #118

stjohnswarts wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Separation actually works pretty well, I'm not sure why we need to "fix" that. What doesn't is people still leave food in things and don't do basic things like not throw in little bits of plastic like straws.

Separation is another step that needs to be taken somewhere else if not done by the consumer. The person throwing out garbage is the person responsible for the garbage and also the person that has the item in it's hand so they are both the best suited to sort it and the person that we should incentivize to do it.

I don't agree. It's more energy efficient and less environmentally destructive for you (or I) to walk everywhere we need to get to and yet here we are with bicycles, cars, airplanes, etc.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#215

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

andrekandre wrote: post #196

franciscop wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have these very fancy incineration towers distributed around Tokyo, I suspect they do filter a lot of the stuff being burned since I have never even seen them throw smoke nor smelled any burning: https://www.tokyotimes.com/mysterious-tower-in-tokyo/

thats good to know, i wonder if there are some differences between older and newer inceneration facilities... when i lived near the ocean in kawasaki there was always some black fine-grained soot that would slowly build up over the year on a veranda, and wondered if it wasnt the nearby incinerators...

Hm, harbour, ships? And in general dust from the tires and brakes of cars and trucks? In 2014 one container giant coming into the port here had a little mishap, burning heavy bunker oil which is only allowed at high seas. Turned on the fire alarms in a hospital 1 km away from the river, and several others too :-)

https://www.fotocommunity.de/photo/schwefelpilz-ms-yang-ming...

https://www.mopo.de/action/mopo/23044568/search?query=yang+m...

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#216

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 7:15 AM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #212

dathinab wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fresh and clean sand The thing many people don't know is that not all sands are equal. For example desert sand is not usable for cement or other building purpose. We are currently running out of sand usable for it and are scrapping it from the sea ground or islands, both doing MAJOR environmental damage. For glass the context is a bit different the sand needed for glass production seems to be readily available, at…

As someone who can look down from above into the recycling trucks I don't know what to make of the fact that they empty the separate collecting containers for green, brown and white glass into the back of the truck. Without any separation at all. Once I asked a driver why that is, and he answered: "I'm just the driver, no clue." The trucks are just regular "Muldenkipper / Dump Truck" which have a little crane behind…

The answer I've always heard: because recycling facilities can't trust regular people to sort their trash right (and for good reason), so it gets dumped into one pile on the truck and then resorted properly at the facility.

Regardless whether that's the reason, I think making people sort their trash is dumb anyway, and the more requirements you give (sort into 7 piles, must be clean of grease, etc.) the dumber it gets. The effort discourages a good chunk of the population, while the rest end up wasting so much water inefficiently washing their trash in their sinks.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#217

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 7:25 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #190

thayne wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it decomposes, instead of remaining unchanged in the ground for thousands of years.

And that is an advantage... why?

Because things that decompose quickly re-enter the "matter economy" of the ecosystem.

But GP isn't entirely correct. There's less problem with stuff that can remain unchanged (you can bury it and forget it, or use it as filler for construction, etc.). The problem is stuff that decomposes into toxic compounds, poisoning the ground and risking poisoning drinking water. And the other problem is stuff that gets shredded by UV rays over time into microscopic particles that then gets eaten by small fish/animal, and ends up being present in organisms all across the food chain. The particular case of the latter is microplastics, and AFAIK we aren't yet sure if they cause any concrete problems to living things, but it's probably still better to not have them in our bodies.

...and back to those things that don't decompose at all: it's a potential problem long-term, because we're just throwing away matter exponentially fast. You can imagine life in modern capitalist countries as one fat pipeline of: Raw resources => Factory => Brief use => Landfill. And that pipeline is pushing exponentially growing amount of matter through it. And then ask yourself, how is this a sane way of living? It's a machine that quite literally turns the surface of Earth into a pile of waste.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#218

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 8:02 AM UTC

blululu wrote: post #10

It is always a little surprising how naive people are when it comes to recycling. The majority of the cost and difficulty comes in sorting. Back in the good old days most US municipalities used to require people to sort their recycling by type, but over the years we have switched to a more wasteful system. For aluminum cans the material is valuable and relatively easy to sort. For plastic the material is cheap and so…

> Back in the good old days most US municipalities used to require people to sort their recycling by type, but over the years we have switched to a more wasteful system.

It's ridiculous to see the increasing burden put on consumers wrt. recycling. In the city I come from (Kraków, Poland), we started with simple categories (AFAIR: trash, glass, metal/plastic), and accrued new over time, along with extra requirements. These days, as my family tells me, they have ~7-9 categories and recyclables have to be washed. Which is ridiculous. Even if everyone went along with it, that's literally wasting every citzen's time where it could be done efficiently, in a central place, by salaried workers. On top of that, it creates a water waste issue - as people wash their plastic/metal/glass containers in their sinks, where again, it could be done more efficiently at a central facility.

But of course, and quite wisely, people at this point don't bother recycling much.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#219

Post by TeMPOraL » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 8:29 AM UTC

SahAssar wrote: post #66

When I first heard that in the US they just throw all "recycling" in the same bin it sounded insane. I'm used to sorting into colored glass, clear glass, paper, cardboard, metal, compost, batteries, plastic and "general". I'm pretty sure the metal and plastic (if it actually is ever recycled) categories could benefit from better segmentation too.

> I'm used to sorting into colored glass, clear glass, paper, cardboard, metal, compost, batteries, plastic and "general".

I wonder how much people in your area recycle in general. With this many categories - and the unstated requirement that plastic/metal/glass containers must be cleaned/degreased, labels peeled off, etc., I'd personally give up on recycling altogether.

This work shouldn't be done by consumers because it's inefficient across the board. It wastes much more total man-hours, and a lot more water and power, compared to a centralized sorting facility.

Re: Oil Companies Touted Recycling to Sell More Plastic

#220

Post by smarnach » Sun, Sep 13, 2020, 9:21 AM UTC

franciscop wrote: post #119

pfdietz wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recycling is a hack to try to fix the downside of another hack. The other hack is that the cost of trash disposal is artificially depressed to reduce the incentive to dispose of refuse by illegal dumping. But this means refuse is overproduced. Recycling is an attempt to reduce this increased volume of refuse going into landfills. The better strategy would be to charge a fee, up front, for all goods that reflects thei…

A fee up-front like _taxes_ (VAT)? It is the government that subsidizes the disposal, and does it through the taxes that they charge everyone, so in fact exactly what you are saying it's happening. If the tax depended on e.g. volume of packaging vs volume of content, or weight of packaging vs weight of content, that might be a different story and more useful. But even then not all trash is done equal, a paper envelop…

The important property of a dedicated packaging fee is that it scales with the actual disposal costs, and thus creates incentives to use less packaging or packaging that is easier to dispose of. A flat tax like VAT doesn't change incentives in any way.