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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

#71

Post by baroffoos »

darksaints wrote: post #16
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 sorting absolutely should be done downstream, ideally with robots doing the vast majority of the work.

It is done that way. Thats how you can put a aluminum can and cardboard in the same bin. But what does a robot do when a tictac container comes in with a Polyethylene body and a Polypropylene lid. Does it sit there with high precision fingers trying to pick the glued in lid off?

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

#72

Post by SirLuxuryYacht »

TylerE wrote: post #24
knowaveragejoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plastic bottles are pretty much all included according to this site. There's no reason not to include them too.

It takes more energy to ship and reprocess them than you save. That's why you don't. If you do, it's explicitly because it makes you feel good - it's worse for the planet.

Maybe it takes more energy because of the diversity of materials? If we used an order of magnitude less types of plastic than we currently do, it might become more economical because it wouldnt require as much mechanical labor to sort and process. Removing shipping from the equation seems like the removal of quite a bit of carbon.

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

#73

Post by ip26 »

TylerE wrote: post #15
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…

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

Also good quality cardboard or nice letter paper, I'm told. (Not junk mail & phone books)

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

#74

Post by TylerE »

SirLuxuryYacht wrote: post #72
TylerE wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It takes more energy to ship and reprocess them than you save. That's why you don't. If you do, it's explicitly because it makes you feel good - it's worse for the planet.

Maybe it takes more energy because of the diversity of materials? If we used an order of magnitude less types of plastic than we currently do, it might become more economical because it wouldnt require as much mechanical labor to sort and process. Removing shipping from the equation seems like the removal of quite a bit of carbon.

When you melt plastic down, you get lower quality material than what you fed in. It's not a closed loop. Plus, the wide variety of available properties are what makes plastic so useful in the first place.

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

#75

Post by SECProto »

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…

> FFS. Have you ever tried to remove [beverage bottle] labels? It's impossible.

As a consumer in North America, it's not easy. Japan has stronger national regulations, however, and beverage bottles universally have labels with either perforated strips or peel-up corners, to facilitate removal. Plastic caps are also easily removed from glass bottles - peel the cover back and it splits in half and releases from the bottle.

So, agreed on your final point. It can be done easily, and not necessarily at additional cost. Manufacturers just haven't been motivated to do so.

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

#77

Post by secabeen »

wlesieutre wrote: post #27

I live in New Haven and saw on our handy recycling flyer [0] that pizza boxes are listed, with no caveat, as being a single stream curbside recyclable item. Which is great, because pizza is a whole thing in this town. We eat a lot of it. So I was surprised to learn, if you go poking around and find the RecycleCT website [1] and hover your mouse over the pizza box, up pops this note. "No food residue. No liner." Never…

You can tear the top off and recycle that, and discard the greasy bottom. While some pizzas will also soil the top of the box, you sometimes get one that's pristine.

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

#78

Post by nkurz »

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 AR), I'd like to see how that 5% compares to the energy to create a new plastic bottle (AR vs PN), or to recycle a plastic bottle (AR vs PR). And I'd love for it to be units that make sense. My searching hasn't turned up much.

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

#79

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #60
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not an entirely terrible idea. Could all(?) packaging intended for recycling by made from aluminium?

Well aluminum does take a whole lot of energy to manufacture, so if it doesn’t all get recycled there would likely be a lot of waste there.

Heaps of energy. Here in Tasmania the aluminium refinery consumes something like 56% of the states electricity.

This site https://www.aluminum.org/industries/production/recycling claims that 75% of all aluminium is recycled and that over 70% of all aluminium ever produced is still in use.

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

#80

Post by p1necone »

baroffoos wrote: post #65
esotericn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small pack sizes are such a load of shite. Some small number of people are travelling. For the rest, 500g of rice is a pointlessly small amount. It lasts forever, is dense enough to stash, etc.

I once got a 10KG sack of rice from an Asian store once. After a year it got full of tiny bugs less than 1mm in size. Now I buy 1kg bags that I can more easily seal airtight with pegs.

But you're missing out on all that extra protein!
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