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Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

phys.org

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Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#91

Post by scotty79 »

piokoch wrote: post #50

There is no such a thing like "plastic". The article is about PET - polyethylene terephthalate, there are hundreds other "plastics", which different chemical propensities. The problem is not actual act of recycling, but figuring out what a given piece is made of. PET is popular - 70% of all bottles are made of it, but there are those 30%, so the most expensive part - sorting - has to be carried anyway. Plus we target…

I think there should be a rule that to sell a certain amount of plastic products you should need to gather a certain amount of plastic trash.

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#92

Post by baranul »

foxglacier wrote: post #81
baranul wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep seeing these "possible breakthroughs" in breaking down plastic waste, but no concrete time frames on expanding to scale nor real world costs. Meanwhile, the mountains of plastic continues. Finding it also odd that biodegradable plastics and safer alternatives are going quiet. As if the new scheme is to keep fossil fuel companies rolling, with the promise that one day a solution to get rid of incalculable mountai…

Incalculable mountains aren't a real environmental problem. People just believe that for some reason. We can just leave them there forever. The actual environmental value in recycling is reducing the CO2 emissions from making new plastic by reducing production of new plastic. I don't know if biodegradable plastic actually helps at all or just placates the people worried about the fake problem of incalculable mountain…

I'm not sure why you have the take that plastic pollution is not a problem. If anything, it is a massive catastrophe that threatens the environment and possibly the human race. Plastic pollution is destroying the environment[1], wildlife[2], and damaging humans[3][4]. That includes newborn babies[5].

[1] https://www.unep.org/plastic-pollution

[2] https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics...

[3] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/microplas...

[4] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/microplas...

[5] https://scitechdaily.com/startling-discovery-scientists-find...

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#93

Post by [deleted] »

littlestymaar wrote: post #85
culi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If $100M is what it would cost to internalize the economic externalities of fleece then that is the true fair price of the item. Anything less than that is a subsidy We are subsidizing these materials with our health and our environment. And it affects certain people more than others—usually people who have the least say in it A 100% linen shirt currently costs around $40 and, when cared for properly, can last a life…

But a $100M price tag is exactly equivalent to a blanket ban, so you're not fundamentally disagreeing with the person you're responding. You're just over rationalizing it with 101-level economics ;).

[deleted]

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#94

Post by Gigachad »

culi wrote: post #88
littlestymaar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a $100M price tag is exactly equivalent to a blanket ban, so you're not fundamentally disagreeing with the person you're responding. You're just over rationalizing it with 101-level economics ;).

$100M is certainly an overestimation and some types of pollution are more solvable than others. In general I think it's important for price tags to communicate the full price of an item Also no need for the patronizing comment. Economic externalities are a valid criticism of market failures and you haven't provided the more convincing, "advanced economics" jargon-laden analysis you're pretending to harbor

The original comment was talking about cleanup costs. You realistically can not clean up shed microplastics. A fleece jacket sheds millions of them every wash as well as just wearing it. How are you meant to collect all of those microplastics that just blew off in to the air.

So just a blanket "Charge everything based on it's cleanup costs" doesn't work.

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#95

Post by timschmidt »

Gigachad wrote: post #94
culi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100M is certainly an overestimation and some types of pollution are more solvable than others. In general I think it's important for price tags to communicate the full price of an item Also no need for the patronizing comment. Economic externalities are a valid criticism of market failures and you haven't provided the more convincing, "advanced economics" jargon-laden analysis you're pretending to harbor

The original comment was talking about cleanup costs. You realistically can not clean up shed microplastics. A fleece jacket sheds millions of them every wash as well as just wearing it. How are you meant to collect all of those microplastics that just blew off in to the air. So just a blanket "Charge everything based on it's cleanup costs" doesn't work.

Same way you do asbestos remediation. Enclose the area, filter the air, create a clean room around the entire area.

Maybe in the future you laser-atomize every spec that floats past the actor inside an 8ft cube. Who knows?

I don't think it'd be practical to switch overnight - much of our societal infrastructure needs re-engineering for sustainability which will take time - perhaps a gradually increasing percentage of externalized costs can be integrated over time. It'd be real progress toward a Venus Project style resource based economy.

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#96

Post by timschmidt »

Gigachad wrote: post #41
timschmidt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One includes freedom and creates an economic incentive for the development of environmental rehabilitation, recycling, and carbon negative technologies. If some celebrity wants to single-handedly fund the development of a microplastics recovery technology as part of a red carpet fashion item, I'm OK with that.

The problem with this is it doesn't give any consideration to the feasibility of alternatives or timelines to change things. If you just drop a blanket "every product must include it's cleanup costs", you're telling the public that their current life essentials are now unbelievably expensive. Vs selectively picking products which have easy alternatives and providing phase out periods which match the difficulty of rep…

The trouble is that the market allocation of funding is dependent on the valuation of goods and services. Until the externalized costs are accurately represented, the market will under-allocate capital toward solving the problem. To push the transition to happen faster without internalizing costs, you'd have to subsidize development with significantly more cash than the market would be willing to allocate with accurately internalized costs. Which I'm not sure is possible.

There are definitely reasons to subsidize some products - medical devices, for instance - as you say, things without readily available alternatives. I'm not writing a detailed transition plan here, just pointing out observations.

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#97

Post by djentile »

XorNot wrote: post #71
lxmorj wrote: post #37

Wouldn't (fully) burning all single-use plastics effectively make them no more long-lived and problematic than burning crude oil at sea? I know that's a low bar, but it seems like at least you're getting two uses out of them at that point...

Landfilling plastics avoids even putting CO2 back into the environment. Modern landfill is highly engineered and extremely stable: what goes in there stays there. Plastic starts as oil in the ground. Replacing it as solids in the ground isn't a problem.

Among other problems, plastics release methane and c02 as they decompose in landfills, so it's not as cut and dried a solution as you imply.

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#98

Post by math »

culi wrote: post #63
math wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aduro’s tech works with hard to recycle, dirty, mixed plastic. Search for Eric Appelman interview on YouTube for more info. Some of the retail investor coverage is cringeworthy, but my take is the tech is likely as good as described (disclosure: I’m an investor).

Mixed plastic is definitely impressive, but how is it separated? I imagine a lot of it must be done by hand? And then washed with water? Seems both labor intensive and energy intensive

No, they pass it through successively intensive process conditions, each of which selects for a different plastic type. No need to wash, their process is water based and some contamination from organic material actually helps in saturating the output product.

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#99

Post by gsf_emergency_2 »

082349872349872 wrote: post #89
dinkblam wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or golden rings of power

looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_eruption#:~:text=Ther... suggests that if a goal is to avoid eruptions, low-water content golden rings would be preferable to the bags of mostly water that are live human beings.

Reminder: fast approaching era of {(precious metal) androids,(factory floor) lava} being a valid drop-in for {e-waste,recycling}

Pulo ng suso ng dalaga

https://youtu.be/uh4dTLJ9q9o

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perhentian_Islands#:~:text=of%...

Re: Scientists break down plastic using a simple, inexpensive catalyst and air

#100

Post by littlestymaar »

culi wrote: post #88
littlestymaar wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But a $100M price tag is exactly equivalent to a blanket ban, so you're not fundamentally disagreeing with the person you're responding. You're just over rationalizing it with 101-level economics ;).

$100M is certainly an overestimation and some types of pollution are more solvable than others. In general I think it's important for price tags to communicate the full price of an item Also no need for the patronizing comment. Economic externalities are a valid criticism of market failures and you haven't provided the more convincing, "advanced economics" jargon-laden analysis you're pretending to harbor

> $100M is certainly an overestimation and some types of pollution are more solvable than others. In general I think it's important for price tags to communicate the full price of an item

In theory, I agree with you, but trying to internalize these cost is itself extremely costly. That's why the criticism about econ-101 level reasoning: it's a convincing idea in theory that isn't tractable at all in practice and can only end up with a bureaucratic nightmare.

The EU has many such rules that are designed around economics first principle like that, in order to build an “efficient market”, and they are all extremely burdensome and at the same time ineffective (see EU-ETS, the single Electricity market, CBAM, etc.)

In the realm of policies, tractability is always preferable to theoretical elegance.

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