Recent Planet Money podcasts on how recycling got started in the US, and whether it's 'worth it' to recycle.
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/09/739893511/episode-925-a-mob-b...
https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...
Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
291–300 of 344 posts
Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In my experience, products advertising "made using recycled materials" tend to be more expensive than without That's not necessarily because of their higher cost to produce. It's often because they target higher end "environmentally conscious" customers, and use the "made with recycled materials" as a price differentiation / market segmentation strategy (working class Joe? get our $1 notebook. Latte-sipping hipster…
You'd still expect recycled material to be used in preference to virgin materials for cheap products, if recycled material is actually more efficient.
And it happens all the time. But no need to brand it especially, and kill the lucrative recycled lines by associating recycled with el-cheapo...
Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#293As clickbait, I have to applaud the author. tl;dr: As a sustainable (heh!) solution to the current waste crisis, landfilling everything is not a good solution. We tried it for many centuries and are still paying the price for that approach today. The only people who will benefit from a 'landfill everything' strategy will be 23rd century archaeologists. As the UK is mentioned a couple of times in the article, I'll add…
The author is not suggesting that we use landfills built to old standards.
Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#294Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#295This is part of an ongoing attempt by the Koch organization to astroturf Hacker News
This seems inspired by the recent double episode of the popular podcast planet money, and some contrarian gotcha that we all like to do. Is the npr also infiltrated by the kocks?
Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#296Point 5 misses a bit of facts. The reason the US and the UK don't seep garbage into the ocean is we export a bit[0] of it to...guess where? Places like China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. This[1] is relevant. Idk, that refutation alone makes one wonder how effective landfills are in the west if we must send our trash to other countries to keep from filling our own landfills. As mentioned elsewhere in this comment s…
Us sending our garbage to places like China, India, Indonesia has no bearing on us dumping our garbage in the ocean or not. Those countries willingly bought our garbage and chose to dump whatever wasn't useful in the manner that they did, all by themselves. Insinuating that, if we didn't sell it, we'd also dump it in the ocean is more wishful(?) thinking than anything else.
Then why is trash being sent illegally, labelled as fuel?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.scmp.com/news/asia/southeas...
Also is you know it will end up in the ocean, and you still send it, you are responsible. Just like supplying known criminals with a gun is a crime
Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
So is recycling plastic and paper not effective? I have some anxiety issue and one of the ways that they manifest is obsessing about recycling so not having to worry about plastic and paper would be a huge improvement in my quality of life. Edit: I should clarify, I realize that the article is saying that recycling plastic and paper isn't worth it, but is that a mainstream opinion?
"paper" is a broad category of garbage. Newspapers are worth recycling, because they can be turned into new newspapers again, removing the ink and the metal can be done fairly efficiently. Cardboard can be recycled fairly efficiently, and can be turned into new cardboard. Plastic-covered/glued/glossy/window envelopes/food containers/other contaminated papers can't be recycled. Just incinerate it, or turn it into pell…
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Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd still expect recycled material to be used in preference to virgin materials for cheap products, if recycled material is actually more efficient.
This doesn't forbid using recycled materials for cheaps products, you just don't advertise it.
In an economic system, a product will be sold at the highest price possible, so if advertising it as using recycled materials nets you higher profit, than you will do that. So even if non-recycled is more expensive to produce, it will be cheaper if people are not willing to pay as much for it.
Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
It boggles my mind that modern fast food restaurants don't have a clear board above the multi-receptacle trash area telling you which bin each single-use item they serve goes into. I mean, maybe that's partly because it doesn't matter and in the end they're just combining it all and sending everything to landfill regardless. But still; they got the bins, how much harder can it be to put up a sign?
Aren't most of the things sold by fast food restaurants contaminated and thus un-recyclable?
Probably, but in that case, they should be honest and just have a single receptacle.
OTOH, fast food joints are possibly one of the handful of places you could actually do recycling right, since you have a pretty uniform stream of items, thus limiting the need to sort. So instead of having a "recycling" bin, they could have a bin for plastic cutlery, and a bin for straws, and a bin for drink lids, with everything else going in a common trash.
Getting thousands of identical contaminated plastic forks that just need a wash before being melted down is probably a lot more appealing to a recycler than getting a bag that's a big jumble of contaminated junk.
Re: Landfill is underrated and recycling overrated
#300Honest question: From a climate change point of view, burying anything that contains carbon is basically the definition of sequestering that carbon. Why is it bad to bury anything that contains carbon? The obvious response, I think, would be that if we consume and bury 'stuff', then we'll just make more 'stuff', but what's wrong with that? Is it the energy required (presumably from burning fossil fuels) to produce mo…
The British Plastics Federation have a nice (well, colourful) page on their website detailing the various ways plastic
goods and packaging can be reused, recycled, etc - https://www.bpf.co.uk/packaging/recycling.aspx
To quote from that page: "Disposal: No plastics should be put in landfill. Currently 26% of all plastic in the UK still goes to landfill" ... so if the plastics industry itself has finally got the message that burying their product (or dumping it in the sea) is not a good idea, I don't think I'd want to change their thinking by introducing them to ideas about carbon sequestration in landfills.