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Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

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Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#361

Post by dpkonofa »

insaneirish wrote: post #351
dpkonofa wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a big part of it and it's amazing that they get away with it. Case in point: Blue Apron. Blue Apron positioned itself as one of the more "recycle-friendly" food delivery services to try and fight the stigma against every delivery having bags upon bags of individually wrapped goods by providing recycling services. As a former Blue Apron customer, I loved that I could separate stuff out (hard plastic, soft…

> There is a solution here. Rant: the solution is to learn how to read a recipe and cook without a paint by numbers erector set that has an unreasonable packaging:food ratio. I’m fine with these services as a ‘gateway drug’ to independently cooking for yourself, but they’re insane as a long term thing. (Not to mention that I have no idea how they stay viable in the long term, given their customer acquisition costs. I…

That's nonsense. I have formal culinary training and Blue Apron was never about needing to learn how to read a recipe and cook with "a paint by numbers erector set". It was almost exclusively about the convenience and ease of recycling what was sent.

You're projecting.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#362

Post by roenxi »

Jarwain wrote: post #326
marcosdumay wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's absolutely nothing that you can do indefinitely and not have it kill you.

Not having it kill you isn't the best metric, but land is currently a finite resource.

Pretty much every physical object we had started out underground and was mined by human or plant activity, except for the minerals that are synthesised directly from the air.

It isn't a hill I'm going to fight on, but 'land is a finite resource' has, to me, always meant arable farmland and prime coastal real estate. There is no actual shortage of land. At best, there might be a shortage of prime away-from-water-table-with-less-permeable-rock-surroundings sites that are ideal for landfill - but I doubt that is true.

For example, the deepest mine is about 4km deep, and about half the atmosphere is within 5km of the surface of the earth. Running out of landfill space in that sense is like running out of oxygen. The only limits are transport costs and making sure the landfill is either non-toxic or kept well away from water (which, economically speaking, might be a substantial limit but plastics are clearly quite inert, because we store food in them and they apparently don't degrade).

EDIT But the key point here is that these costs aren't externalities. The people paying for them are the consumers who are buying the plastic. If landfill costs go up, municipalities will start to charge more for waste disposal and consumers will favour products with less packaging.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#363

Post by toomanybeersies »

idbehold wrote: post #8

Perhaps we should start doing something like what Taiwan did with their trash: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/separation-anxiety/ > The trucks only accept trash bags officially sanctioned by the government of Taiwan which come in a distinctive blue color, complete with an official seal. The bags range in price and size, from 3 liters to 120 liters. The most popular bag is 25 liters (similar to a tiny bathroom…

That pay-as-you-go system is used in Wellington, NZ as well.

Recycling bags are free, but you have to pay for landfill bags (around $2). That way, there's an incentive to recycle as you save money.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#364

Post by roenxi »

wutbrodo wrote: post #205
roenxi wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remind me again why the 'real cost' of plastic is higher than all the other garbage we put into landfill? I know there is something going on with microplastics or somesuch that I'm not up to date on, but I would have thought that sealing it in a big hole in the ground would be cheap, effective and safe.

I'm not an expert but I'd imagine the fact that it doesn't really biodegrade would be a reasonably big factor.

Yeah, but ... most things in the earth's crust don't biodegrade. Sandstone doesn't really biodegrade, and we have a lot of sandstone near where I live. What makes plastic worse once it is covered with a layer of soil?

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#365

Post by quantum_magpie »

victorhooi wrote: post #327
WalterBright wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, people have built-in biological CO2 detectors. If it is just flight crew (no passengers), they all have oxygen masks they can use if the CO2 suffuses the cabin.

Umm, surely you can see that's a little crazy? I'm all for environmental awareness - but it's a bit like the people saying, oh, why do you not use re-usable containers for everything, or do you really need to dishwash everything? Things like food safety, and not making your customers sick are enshrined in law - and that's a good thing. Even at my work, they aren't allowed to re-serve/re-heat things that have been ser…

>[...]do you really need to dishwash everything?

You don't! Unless you have flies and cockroaches infested kitchen, some stray bacteria left after just water-washing will be much less harmful than eating the stuck-on-surface dishsoap (which does not rinse off completely, since it's hydrophobic). I have an even worse opinion of people constantly bleaching their countertops. shudder

As an anecdote, I once had a misfortune of living with a guy who would never rinse off the dishsoap from the dishes at all, just leave them out to dry still covered in suds!

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#366

Post by mrob »

ars wrote: post #331
bunderbunder wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CO2 doesn't really go into anything to any significant degree unless it's under pressure.

And yet it did when I had food cooled by dry ice. So what counts more, what actually happened, or the theory? The reason is that if the item is cold (especially right above freezing) you don't need much pressure to get CO2 to dissolve. The food was weird it was all tingly and fizzy on the tongue. Kind of like the flavor of flat seltzer.

Solubility of CO2 in water at 0C and roughly atmospheric pressure is about 0.001337 mole fraction [0]. CO2 molecules are 44/18 times heavier than water molecules, so that's about 3.3g of CO2 dissolved in a liter of water. Carbonated water is usually specified in "volumes of CO2". One mole of gas at STP has a volume of about 22.4L, so one liter of CO2 weighs about 2g. "Lightly carbonated" is usually considered about two volumes of dissolved CO2, so 4g/L, which isn't much higher than 3.3g. Assuming the packaging is sealed well enough to maintain a high percentage of CO2 within, and the temperature is low enough, it looks plausible that there would be a noticeable change in taste/mouth-feel. This is confirmed by a study I found showing average taste threshold for dissolved CO2 in water of 0.26g/L [1].

[0] http://sites.chem.colostate.edu/diverdi/all_courses/CRC%20re... [1] https://home.zhaw.ch/yere/pdf/Teil16%20-%20Expression%20of%2...

The theory supports ars. Calculate before you downvote.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#367

Post by fraudsyndrome »

ryan-allen wrote: post #337
newswriter99 wrote: post #240

Let's look at some actual numbers without the hype. "91% of potentially recyclable plastic ends up in landfills, or worse, in oceans." So right there, no ratio. How much goes into the landfill and how much into the ocean? Because lets face it: Landfill>Ocean For comparison, 8m tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean annually according to the cited 2015 UCSB study: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014985/ocean-plastic Tha…

My cynical take is that these kinds of articles are cooked up in major polluters PR departments. It's classic misdirection, and we seem to fall for it every time.

Also how countries are still delivering their waste to there knowingly(!) that it has a high chance of reaching the ocean. They want to get rid of it for the lowest cost and then blame the other country for not following through.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#368

Post by fraudsyndrome »

newswriter99 wrote: post #240

Let's look at some actual numbers without the hype. "91% of potentially recyclable plastic ends up in landfills, or worse, in oceans." So right there, no ratio. How much goes into the landfill and how much into the ocean? Because lets face it: Landfill>Ocean For comparison, 8m tonnes of plastic ends up in the ocean annually according to the cited 2015 UCSB study: http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/014985/ocean-plastic Tha…

How much of that 2.4m tonnes comes from other countries though? And the other countries know that it's not getting recycled properly yet still send it over to offload their guilt.

Also you can't just use raw numbers as the population numbers are completely different. Waste generated per capita (excluding and import/export) would be a more accurate metric.

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#369

Post by [deleted] »

kalleboo wrote: post #320
60secz wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be surprised to see local distribution through grocery stores (whole foods/ralphs) dominate the subscription meal space over the next few years due to better distribution margins and economies of scale.

This is how it works where I lived in Europe. All the big grocery store chains have their own food subscription boxes, and instead of having it delivered home you can also just pick it up at your local supermarket on you way home from work.

[deleted]

Re: Plastic recycling is a problem consumers can't solve

#370

Post by tgb »

dpkonofa wrote: post #200
dougmwne wrote: post #65

This is a classic externality problem. We can berate consumers all day long to be more diligent in their recycling, but all that finger wagging is for show meant to distract from the real source of the garbage, the manufacturers. Just like the classic "blame the user" mentality, the users were given an impossibly complex system with barely any incentive to get it right. Nothing about the interface is intuitive or dis…

This is such a big part of it and it's amazing that they get away with it. Case in point: Blue Apron. Blue Apron positioned itself as one of the more "recycle-friendly" food delivery services to try and fight the stigma against every delivery having bags upon bags of individually wrapped goods by providing recycling services. As a former Blue Apron customer, I loved that I could separate stuff out (hard plastic, soft…

This is what Blue Apron recommends for "recycling" their freezer packs:

"We recommend cutting the ice pack open and disposing of the gel in the trash. You can then recycle on your own or send back to us!" [1]

Yes, you take the stuff out of the freezer pack bag and put it into a new bag, and recycle the old bag. Where does the new bag go? In the trash.

[1] https://twitter.com/blueapron/status/652141163948847104?lang...

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