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Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

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Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#61

Post by bombcar »

hinkley wrote: post #42
declan_roberts wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately glass isn’t recycled here. I’ve been trying to figure out why. Probably more common in places that have glass production.

From what I understand they want a mix of recycled and virgin glass to maximize the characteristics of the glass. Once upon a time they used to reuse coke and beer bottles, not just recycle them.

I've heard (but am not sure) that the (energy) cost of transporting the empties + washing/sanitizing them may be more than making new ones. At least the dollar cost is higher, or they'd still do it (some local milk farms wash and reuse their jugs, so at some low level it's still efficient).

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#62

Post by bombcar »

Arn_Thor wrote: post #31
cfr2023 wrote: post #15

Is there no value in merely separating and gathering this material, even if it's all dumped in a "plastics only" landfill, as opposed to one containing other types of trash? Isn't keeping different types of waste sorted inherently useful in other ways?

I suspect you’re right. From my hometown’s local waste authority: After [we have] collected the waste from your bin, the purple dotted bag [with plastic waste] is sent on for collection and pressing before being transported to large sorting facilities in Northern Germany and other places in Europe. Here, 75% of the content in the purple dotted bag (figures from 2019) is recycled, and the remaining waste (often residu…

> remaining waste is used for energy

This really is the key - if people weren't so scared of incinerators, the "landfill" problem would be basically solved.

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#63

Post by epistasis »

mouse_ wrote: post #27
epistasis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we have built entire civilizations that require orders of magnitude more burning of gasoline to get through a day, plastics are the least of our worries, IMHO. If my fellow Americans were forced to lift and pour the 20 gallons of gasoline when they refill their tanks, they might start to realize the true source of the vast majority of their environmental damage. (And as far as waste, tire microplastics are a far…

Then ban oil and cars, too. I'm deadly serious.

Friend, I am right there with you. Its a long political battle ahead of us...

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#64

Post by ofrzeta »

riversflow wrote: post #47
ofrzeta wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not so sure about this. Do you have any sources? I think I read that it's difficult due to the abundance of very different aluminium alloys.

I don’t know where you read that. To quote wikipedia: > Recycling scrap aluminium requires only 5% of the energy used to make new aluminium from the raw ore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_recycling Which cites this article from The Economist: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2007/06/07/the-price-of-vi...

Ok, one example (granted it's a bit niche):

"Since the demand for recycled aluminum continues to increase, the discarded aircraft provide a large source of valuable metal. However cost-effective recycling of aircraft alloys is complex because aircraft alloys are: (a) typically relatively high in alloying elements and (b) contain very low levels of impurities to optimize toughness and other performance characteristics."

https://www.totalmateria.com/page.aspx?ID=CheckArticle&site=...

Also

"The separation of scrap into specific aluminum alloy groups can be checked by Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) or color sorting, but economic and technological challenges limit the use of these processes (Capuzzi and Timelli 2018; Gaustad et al., 2012). All sorting methods offer less than 100 % efficiency. This leads to significant contamination of the aluminum, in particular with iron and copper"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134492...

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#65

Post by dmoy »

Ma8ee wrote: post #22
dmoy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or aluminum recycling, crazy efficient compared to making new aluminum.

Or glass, or paper, and almost all types of metal.

I mean from like an energy perspective.

Glass and paper are not significantly more efficient to recycle than to manufacturer new stuff. Paper is like 2x more efficient to recycle. Glass is... somewhere around there I forget. In both cases you can recycle all of the stuff, but it costs comparable-ish energy. For paper it's sometimes a clear win because trees.

Aluminum is like 20x more efficient for energy use.

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#66

Post by epistasis »

baggy_trough wrote: post #33
mouse_ wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then ban oil and cars, too. I'm deadly serious.

"Deadly" is the operative word, as that would cause incalculable suffering and damage.

Cars do cause absolutely untold amounts of death and suffering. Something like 60-80 millions deaths and 2 billion injuries have been caused by cars.

It's one of the major causes of early death. Most of our fire departments' time in the US is spent dealing with the carnage and bodily mutilation caused by cars, and only a tiny fraction spent on actual fires.

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#67

Post by mathgradthrow »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

One of the big problems with plastic recycling is that people read "plastic recycling is a scam" but internalize "recycling is a scam". Some types of recycling are massively successful and efficient, like the recycling of vehicle lead acid batteries or post industrial steel recycling.

Sorting your recycling is probably a scam. My understanding is that the aluminum content is already high enough to hire workers to sift through garbage. It's a terrible job but robots will do it soon.

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#68

Post by phero_cnstrcts »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #8

One of the big problems with plastic recycling is that people read "plastic recycling is a scam" but internalize "recycling is a scam". Some types of recycling are massively successful and efficient, like the recycling of vehicle lead acid batteries or post industrial steel recycling.

Do you have any numbers on how big that problem is?

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#69

Post by ofrzeta »

SomeoneFromCA wrote: post #46

I call it bullshit. PET used in plastic bottles can easily be depolymerized or even used as fuel. I live in a poor ex-USSR republic, and plastic recycling is a popular business; it were a scam no one would do that, as government neither mandate nor sponsor recycling.

Contains a lot of microplastic, too:

https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/plastic...

Re: Plastic experts say recycling is a scam. Should we even do it anymore?

#70

Post by cfr2023 »

anticorporate wrote: post #37
cfr2023 wrote: post #15

Is there no value in merely separating and gathering this material, even if it's all dumped in a "plastics only" landfill, as opposed to one containing other types of trash? Isn't keeping different types of waste sorted inherently useful in other ways?

Probably, but, separating is actually a really hard problem. People do not do as good of a job separating their own recycling as they think they do. Others don't care at all. MRFs are expensive due to maintenance, labor, and other operating costs, and if there's no cost recovered from the recycling there's little to fund their existence.

Valuable considerations.

Seems like a perfect machine learning/robotics application, but probably not one that will receive funding if it's pitched with the objective of, "look now all of this problematic crap is in one place."

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