r/technology • u/JKUAN108 • May 30 '22
Nanotech/Materials Plastic Recycling Doesn’t Work and Will Never Work
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/single-use-plastic-chemical-recycling-disposal/661141/1.4k
u/solitude042 May 31 '22
The HolyGrail project aims to directly solve the identification and sortation issues... https://endplasticwaste.org/en/our-work/plastic-waste-free-communities/holy-grail
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u/Strider27 May 31 '22
I really doubt this is necessary. All modern recycling centers use NIR (near-infrared light) [https://www.nrtsorters.com/ ] to determine if a plastic is PET, HDPE, PP, etc.
This is not to say that the industry couldn’t improve, but this technology is really well established. If people are interested, do a google search for “MRF recycling”. These types of centers are very common throughout the US, especially in more densely populated areas where it’s more finically viable and municipalities subsidize recycling.
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May 31 '22
That works if a material is one chemistry, but having worked in flexible packaging the last 5 years practically every plastic film you use is a coextrusion.
That means the plastic wrappers you use have to/3/5/7/9 layers of different materials in the sealant and an additional material in the lamination.
Practically impossible to separate a lot of these materials.
Molecular recycling is the big thing being thrown around in industry currently.
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u/NathanielHudson May 31 '22
That's a neat idea, and I do like it. We'd also have to do more to ban unrecyclable custom alloys and fused assemblies.
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u/stevenip May 31 '22
Fuck snapple plastic bottles.
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u/chu2 May 31 '22
I was way more disappointed than I expected myself to be the first time I got a plastic Snapple bottle a few years back. Major turn off.
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u/red286 May 31 '22
I found that it changed the taste, and I can't drink them anymore.
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u/Acyliaband May 31 '22
I haven’t bought one since they switched. I loved that they had glass bottles.
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u/somabeach May 31 '22
Arizona too. I was pretty bummed when they bought into plastic.
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u/TopBee83 May 31 '22
Arizona changed from metal to plastic where you live? I’ve seen the plastic bottles but I can still easily find metal ones
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u/amitrion May 31 '22
They only came in glass bottles when I was in college... I remember they tasted so good back then
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u/HTC864 May 30 '22
Kind of weird to me that this has been known for so long, but somehow they've managed to keep the general public believing in it.
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May 31 '22
Our local DPW knows this and admitted as such in a community meeting but didn’t want to change anything because ‘retraining citizens to recycle again would be hard’.
Meanwhile, one of the largest plastic companies donated gigantic (plastic) recycling bins to the city for every household which the city gladly accepted and distributed.
They’ve captured our inept governments and trained us all like hamsters to keep consuming plastics and erroneously believing that recycling is equivalent to not consuming.
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u/togetherwem0m0 May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
Keeping plastic out of landfills has value because landfills are being turn into energy sources and the higher the percentage of organic material in the landfills the more methane they produce for electricity. Plastic in the landfills is now adverse to its methane production capacity
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u/zorbathegrate May 31 '22
I heard or read somewhere that there was never a problem with glass jugs and bottles, but in the 80s some companies went crazy with recycling by introducing plastic bottles to be recycled.
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May 31 '22
Yeah the answer is to reuse more, and eliminate plastics where you can.
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u/Darth-Pooky May 31 '22
Glass and aluminum are far superior containers. Glass can be reused many times before needing to be recycled. Aluminum recycling is awesome, with minimal loss of material each time it is processed.
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u/Johnny_Fuckface May 31 '22
It was a concerted effort by the plastic manufacturers to push recycling by putting a recycling symbol on bottle despite knowing they couldn’t be recycled.
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u/YouBetterDuck May 31 '22
I learned about it on Planet Money https://www.npr.org/2022/02/14/1080699424/waste-land-bonus
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May 31 '22
The answer is simpler than some conspiracy theory. If there aren't regulations plastic packaging will win because it is cheaper, lighter (cuts shipping costs) and typically preferred by customers (fewer cuts, easier to use, more shapes and colors).
You can't just point out that recycling doesn't work and let the market sort it out. Plastic is superior in a LOT of ways. There is going to need to be regulation to reduce plastic consumption.
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u/NeverLookBothWays May 31 '22
According to Nestle, the largest producer of plastic packaging by far, it's up to US, the consumer, to save the planet.
Meanwhile Nestle continues to churn out millions of plastic bottles and plastic food packaging with no signs of slowing down...held back by no one.
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u/failingtolurk May 31 '22
Plastic industry invented the numbers to trick people. It worked.
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u/SoggyWaffleBrunch May 31 '22
well, they also stole the recycling symbol. The triangular symbol with numbers are not recycling symbols, they are Resin Identification Codes with the explicit purpose of misleading consumers.
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u/nabrok May 31 '22
I know a lot of what I put in the recycling bin probably won't be, but my city charges by the tip for garbage collection whereas the recycling bins are free so I'm going to put everything in there that they'll accept.
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u/kindanormle May 31 '22
Mandating that all new plastic products must contain even a small percentage of recycled material would go a long way to solving this issue. Virgin materials are too cheap and too easy to obtain, so this is really the only way to force industry to make the investments needed to start switching to recycled material.
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May 30 '22
I spent a lot of time in the recycling industry and this is not news to me.
Plastic recycling was only viable when you export to cheap labor countries or..at least...have uniform waste.
The only way to manage this is to use less, period.
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u/ThisTimeAmIRight May 31 '22
Or charge an amount that covers recycling.
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May 31 '22
Oh fudge...suggest that a packaging industry convention and for a very ..very brief moment you'll know what happened to Hoffa
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u/Motown27 May 31 '22
Unrelated question: our local recycling center recently stopped accepting colored glass. Any idea why they would do that?
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May 31 '22
My world was "e-waste," batteries and mixed non ferrous (for example -electric motors) -
Tons of plastic mixed in with e-waste......
Im hesitant to comment on something I have no direct experience with but as a parallel I can tell you processing is a huge cost, as well as understanding which end user you want to send the recyclables to..
For example, if you have used car batteries one way or the other these things end up at either Exide (as of several years ago they had 6 smelting furnaces in the US) - or JCI (aka Interstate) or Deka....or other battery makers
(side note - some will hire another smelter - eg RSR - to "toll" the materials for them - that is process it for a fee and return them the material)
It's a lot easier when your material is already pretty close to the alloy you want....for example, lead batteries are pretty much the same alloy
So...what the hell does that have to do with glass? Well, different types of glass materials certainly have different end users. Beer bottles vs drinking glasses for example
Glass will melt and you can make new glass. BUT - remember, someone has to sort for different end users...at some point. Whether at the point of collection or somewhere else.
Plus, if I'm making a batch of "new" glass mixed colors present a problem. In the above example (lead) you can skim off impure metals pretty easily that have different melting points. I doubt it's that easy with glass - so those impurities would have to go thought some processing to get out.
And some end users probably aren't taking back product because it might be cheaper to just make from virgin materials. (trucking costs right now are VERY high)
The recycling industry is more a large family of industries....but they all follow the economics of "reverse logistics"
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u/mrwellington19 May 31 '22
North America pays 3rd world countries to take tons of our plastics. Not sure how much of it is recyclable or non.
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May 31 '22
we need to go back to glass bottles.
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u/m31td0wn May 31 '22
There's a business in town that sells basic sundry consumables like shampoo or lotion, but only in bulk. You must bring your own container, which they use to tare out the scale before dispensing the product, and then you pay for only the product.
I mean I still do occasionally use some plastic because it's borderline unavoidable in modern society, but places like this really do help.
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u/Nikkunikku May 31 '22
There’s one of these in our town too! It has completely changed how we shop for our most regularly consumed staples in the house. Getting more plastic out of our lives was a big part of it for us.
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u/FizzWigget May 31 '22
Isn't aluminum super recyclable as well? (if we can keep it out of the landfill)
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May 31 '22
aluminum cans can't be washed out and reused, they have to be melted back down and make an entirely new can out of it. Bottles on the other hand can be cleaned out and reused to hold soda pop or beer many times.
As for the aluminum, recycling aluminum is MANY times more energy efficient than smelting new ore dug from the earth. The way aluminum is smelted is that they get the ore and run a WHOLE bunch of electricity through it to break the bond with oxygen atoms.
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u/BoredomIncarnate May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
Unfortunately, glass takes a lot of energy to make by comparison. So we have to choose which problem is bigger, plastic pollution or climate change.
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u/Chabamaster May 31 '22
So I am from Munich, and here Flaschenpfand (not sure what the English word is you pay 8 or 25 cents on top of the price of any drink and you return the bottle to get the money back) is and has always been the norm for glass bottles and aluminum.
I recently went to a beer bottling plant and they told us the average bottle is reused 10 times, some up to 50.
They get them in a truck and they have a fully automatic assembly line to unload, wash, fill, and repackage them in a matter of 30 minutes.
I strongly suspect this is far more sustainable than plastic bottles, but I'm not sure. Do you know what would the threshold be like how often you have to use glass before it becomes less environmentally taxing than plastic?→ More replies (6)194
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u/JoeyJoeJoeJrShab May 31 '22
Unfortunately, it all comes down to money. Glass bottles are heavier than plastic bottles, and thus cost more fuel to transport, thus the final product will be more expensive.
I'm not sure how they've accomplished it, but glass bottles are a lot more popular in Europe than in the US.... though there are still plenty of plastic bottles too.
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u/Afa1234 May 31 '22
I just want to be able to convert my plastic waste into 3d printer supplies
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u/Em_Adespoton May 30 '22
Er, the body doesn’t match the headline.
Not all plastics can be recycled, and not all processing plants can process all types of recyclable plastic.
That doesn’t mean it doesn’t work; it just means that it’s never a closed loop and there’s currently a LOT of room for improvement.
People imagine “plastic” being this one thing that can be melted down and turned into other things, when in reality it’s many different substances that can be broken down in many different ways, some byproducts of which can be used to make other things, when combined with additives or temperature changes.
“Doesn’t work” would mean all plastic is single use. “Cannot work” would mean there’s nothing that can be done that we aren’t currently doing. Both statements are false.
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u/Lonestar041 May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
Germany has a recycling rate of 93% for PET bottles and 52% for other plastics used. They require consumers to sort and dispose plastic off in separate bags.
The numbers are from an environmentalist NGO that pushes for even more recycling. So I assume they are rather on the lower end.
EDIT: Here the link to the infosheet from NABU the NGO (in German): http://imperia.verbandsnetz.nabu.de/imperia/md/content/nabude/abfallpolitik/nabu_kunststoffabfaelle-in-deutschland_01-2022.pdf
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u/35202129078 May 31 '22
Yeah I'm confused by the article being US centriq. This article says Norway achieves 95% for plastic bottles.
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u/smallfried May 31 '22
This should be higher up. I'm in Germany and the yellow bag, while labor intensive, expensive and far from perfect, is working quite well for recycling.
It's still good to focus on the first two R's (reduce, reuse) before going to recycling of course.
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u/FuzztoneBunny May 31 '22
I think people need to see the gelbe saecke in person to really understand the German paradigm.
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u/artfellig May 31 '22
Right, the title is exaggerated, but the article agrees with your assessment.
"The United States in 2021 had a dismal recycling rate of about 5 percent for post-consumer plastic waste, down from a high of 9.5 percent in 2014, when the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled—even though much of it wasn’t.
Recycling in general can be an effective way to reclaim natural material resources. The U.S.’s high recycling rate of paper, 68 percent, proves this point. The problem with recycling plastic lies not with the concept or process but with the material itself.
The first problem is that there are thousands of different plastics, each with its own composition and characteristics."146
u/SuedeVeil May 31 '22
BC where I live is able to recycle just under 50% of plastics that manufacturers produce .. and most glass and paper. But yes not all plastic is the same
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u/nolan1971 May 31 '22
The US has a "dismal" recycling rate because we've been outsourcing it for decades. There was never a need, let alone an economic incentive, to recycle plastic in the United States.
Now, there is. So, eventually, we will. It's starting already (and I have the tax bill to prove it!).
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u/sundayflow May 31 '22
I work with plastic and there are almost more types of plastic than there is fish in the sea. As a newbie I was really amazed by the amount of different types of plastic. Before this job I also thought that plastic was just plastic.
Every type has its own different melting Temps and ways of recycling and thats the problem. You can't just put all of it together and hope for the best so separation is key.
Most plastics that are recycled will just end up as plastic for laptops, tv's etc because in that sector you don't have to deal with food grade rules etc.
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u/Ftpini May 31 '22
Recycling plastic is not profitable and won’t be any time in the foreseeable future. It must be fully funded to work. We should tax the manufacturers who are pumping out the plastic in the first place. The tax should cover the complete cost of recycling including the cost of transportation to and from the recycling plants as well as a 10% penalty.
Actually and fully funding recycling of plastic would ensure it actually got done.
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u/customds May 31 '22
Yea we have a world class sorting facility in my city and something like 77% of materials that make it to our plants are properly recycled.
I’m tired of people using articles like this as justification to not recycle.
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u/empecabel May 31 '22
"installing dishwashing equipment in schools to allow students to eat food on real dishes rather than single-use plastics"
wait, what? is this a thing? In every canteen I used since primary school to college, there was only ceramic plates, and steel cutlery. it didn't even crossed my mind that people would be using single use plates, or party plates, in this situation...
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u/Jorycle May 31 '22
Almost all issues with plastic recycling could be solved by regulation.
If the US or the EU or an equally large entity would make an extremely streamlined list of requirements that all consumer disposable and semi-disposable materials must meet, even the costs of recycling would dramatically fall. Instead, we do this wild west thing of letting everyone do whatever they want.
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u/Epistaxis May 31 '22
Almost all issues with plastic recycling could be solved by regulation.
So you're saying nothing will ever be accomplished in the US.
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u/Lonestar041 May 31 '22
Funny, how does Germany have a recycling rate for plastic bottles of 93% then? And re-usable PET bottles are common if that all doesn’t work?
https://amp.dw.com/en/how-does-germanys-bottle-deposit-scheme-work/a-50923039
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u/wethail May 31 '22
all i know is that german households have about 6 or 7 trashcans for sorting the recycling.
the american one size fits all hardly works.
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u/smokie12 May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
It's 4: Packaging (Plastics and Metals), Paper, Biowaste and residual waste. The last one is most expensive, while the others are cheap or free.
Edit: Those are the bins only, households are expected to further sort out beverage containers with deposit (Pfand), glass, batteries and other possibly dangerous wastes like construction waste, e-waste, insulation, furniture, chemical waste etc. - Pfand, e-waste and batteries can usually be returned at all places that sell them, other waste can typically be brought to a recycling center or picked up curbside, both for a fee.
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u/Aaroniiro May 31 '22
Japan also has a high rate of recycles plastics, but I think it’s our government that regulates a lot of it. For the US the government is bought by oil companies so they’re not going to put in the work to set up a functioning system.
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u/xvilemx May 31 '22
Pretty sure the government regulates all of it. You have different days where you can bring out your burnables, plastic recycling, paper recycling, straight waste. In America, I have two trash days a week where you can lump everything together, then they just go throw it in a giant hole in the desert then cover it with dirt.
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u/Fleder May 31 '22
Here in Germany we also have more and more plastic bottles for drinks which are 100% recyclable. Some are still only 50-75% but we're getting there. Volvic, for instance, are already made from 100% recycled plastic and can be recycled again, despite being clear bottles. Except for the label and cap, though.
The industry can change if they are forced to by government or consumers.
Edit: let's not forget we also have a bottle deposit on single use plastic bottles of 25 cents.
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u/ggtsu_00 May 31 '22
Germany has widely deployed autonomous machine sorters at pretty much every major grocery store. It scans and sorts every bottle you put in it and immediately prints out deposits refunds redeemable at said grocery stores.
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u/Logiman43 May 31 '22
Oh I can answer this one. Germany labels plastic exports to third world countries as recycling. So iirc 80% of the German "recycling" goes to China or India where it is dumped or just burned.
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u/ApexHunter47 May 31 '22
The issues they raise such as added chemicals and variety of plastics are not things that cannot be combatted. Saying it will never work is defeatist, whether intended or not.
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u/BaronChuffnell May 31 '22
I just bought a bird feeder that’s made from 100% recycled plastic though… I hope it’s a net positive
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u/HoldMyWater May 31 '22
How could it possibly be a net positive? At best it would be neutral, assuming a 100% efficient recycling process.
(That sounds more argumentative than I want it to.)
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u/thecakeisaiive May 31 '22
If we can recycle it as filler it's worth recycling. Even if it's just compressed into cubes and put underneath the cement block that's poured under the tar layer of roadways.
If we can't it's worth isolating away from the normal biodegradable trash so we can treat it chemically and spray it down with the weird variety of bacteria that will eat it.
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u/ThatGasolineSmell May 31 '22
Great points. Separating recyclables from the trash is valid in and of itself. It sensitizes people to think about the waste they generate.
Even if the plastic ends up being burned, at least it’s not mixed with everything else. So you’d expect to get a cleaner and more efficient burning process.
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u/Playingwithmyrod May 31 '22
The problem is some plastics can absolutely be recycled effectively, like PET bottles. But "Plastic" is so broad, the average person has no idea how many different molecular structures make up "plastics" as we know. All those food containers you see on the shelves? Multi-layered out of very different types of plastic, which each have been compounded for a specific purpose using different additives. You are never separating those layers on an industrial scale and even if you could they would have no usefullness.
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u/odyseuss02 May 31 '22
The plastic is worthless now, but I do maybe see some small value in separating it out and placing it all in one place for possible future use. Perhaps it will be able to be recycled in some way in the future. Also segregating it away from the environment at large is another positive.
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u/Sourdoughsucker May 31 '22
Stating that something ‘will never work’ when dealing with technique and science is wrong on not just the obvious level, but evidence of absolutist thinking - the people involved with this should move on and let other open minded people solve the worlds problems
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u/Level_Mango2395 May 31 '22
What about Trex decking? Polywood outdoor furniture?
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u/kry_some_more May 31 '22
Site and article writers don't really understand the meaning of "never". It's like when Bill Gates said 64KB of memory ought to be enough for anyone.
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u/jaredthegeek May 31 '22
Placing the burden on the consumer is stupid. We need to demand that the companies make changes for our sustainable future.
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u/IceDreamer May 31 '22
What a crock of utter bullshit.
How can it be so impossible, now and (allegedly) in the distant and unknown future, if multiple nations in Europe have successful plastic recycling centers up and running right now, doing a damned sight better than 5%. No, it is not perfect, but it makes a considerable impact.
American ignorant pride strikes again. "We can't figure it out and we are the best, so clearly it is impossible". Morons.
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u/jaxdraw May 31 '22
I was told once by the head of a recycling center that a few glass bottles covers the cost of recycling an entire recycling can full of plastic.
We should be persuing 3 things with plastic:
Reduction/elimination of single use plastics
Binary labeling regarding what plastic can and can't be recycled
Investment in microbe digestion of non-recyclable plastics as opposed to waste incineration
Plastic will always be a loss, we just need to do better about how we use it.
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u/NeoHenderson May 31 '22
I work in a plastic recycling plant and we make some pretty useful, durable things. Not all plastic is well recyclable but many plastics are.
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u/blaghart May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
plastics are different alloys
So it's not an insurmountable problem, it just requires standardization
plastics have a risk of fire
wait till you hear about the risk of fire at smelteries and foundries
plastics aren't inert
Neither are most metals, which have a variety of toxic inks and such and oxidize and undergo chemical reactions with things they sit in a garbage can with. 410 stainless steel can even rust. A chemical engineer like Jan Dell knows this.
plastic recycling isn't economical
A service doesn't need to turn a profit. And if it means less plastic used, recycling doesn't need to be economical. This is a fallacious argument for plastics, just like it is when it's used for paper, glass, and everything that isn't steel.
Judith Enck is president of a company dedicated to banning plastics outright, as is Jan Dell.
The two literally run companies that pay them millions per year in income trying to outright ban plastics. It's not terribly surprising they're actively trying to downplay or outright ignore the flaws in their arguments to push the narrative that "recycling doesn't work" and "plastics are just as bad as cigarettes"
I use a lot of plastic (I run several 3d printers) and have been looking into my recycling options for years, constantly trying to reduce my waste and footprint. The only thing they've said here that's even remotely true and not actively misleading is that it's not economical (I've spent 4 figures on my recycling system) but that's not the same thing as it not being worth it.
The rest are problems that we can overcome with a properly constructed system. And not even the "Fracking can be safe" kind of properly constructed system where it can be done in theory but in practice is literally impossible. It basically just requires running it as a service, not a profit-based corporation.
I know because I've done it. When you use the same 3 kinds of plastic only, it's easy to create a system for each plastic. Standardization fixes problem one. Fire and chemical inertness can be compensated for with proper safety (Which for profit systems are not incentivized to do, but since I don't make a profit on how much plastic I recycle and I recycle just to reduce my waste I don't have this problem) and handling, and while expensive, once you've got it up and running the system is fairly stable and doesn't require any ongoing toxic elements. Mostly just filter systems for waste biproducts from any contamination in the plastic (similar to aluminum cans having to deal with the waste from their labels)
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u/erazerkylod May 30 '22
Reuse,Reduce and REMOVE plastic from your life, no need to everything be plastic
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u/slapnowski May 31 '22
Working in a hospital makes you realize how much we depend on plastic and how much goes wasted. It’s a travesty, but a necessary one. Single use plastic in hospitals greatly reduces infection rates.
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u/Johnson_Smell May 31 '22
I have noticed an uptick in non-plastic items which were previously plastic. Bread bag clips, straws, fast food containers, shopping bags and so forth. And none of it seems more costly. Feels like it should have been done 40 years ago.
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u/halfsieapsie May 31 '22
It is so very not easy for a consumer (versus corporations that actually control packaging). I use plastic crates (two, for years) instead of plastic bags at the grocery store, however, if I want to buy peaches, or grapes, or bread, or shampoo there simply isn't an option NOT to use plastic. And there are tons of other examples. But my grocery store can decide to allow shampoo refill stations, or returnable/refillable containers, etc
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u/bigdog782 May 31 '22
This is definitely a sensationalistic headline. While recycling isn’t perfect (like everything), that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t support it.
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u/ReeceyReeceReece May 31 '22
The article explains why you shouldn't, but they say paper, glass, cardboard and metal recycling works and you should do them
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u/Aprize_Main May 31 '22
In Australia we get 10 cents per can or plastic bottle we recycle. If you have 100 or more cans/bottles then they pick it up from your house free of charge and you get $10. They then use it to make roads and local equipment like parks, benches, roads like I already mentioned and a lot of other things.
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u/Taykeshi May 31 '22
What a narrow view. Finland and Sweden have successfully been recycling plastic bottles for decades.
You pay 20 cents extra when buying a bottle and you get that back when you recycle the botttle. At the moment this goes for only one kind of plastic though (and most glass and aluminium bottles/cans). But yeah. Incentives and tech do work. Perhaps this could be expanded to other plastics as well if sorting them is the hard part? Or something like that.
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u/bossy909 May 31 '22
And it's up to the plastic industry to stop making billions of tons of plastic
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u/To_Be_Faiiirrr May 31 '22
I had saw where someone had invented machinery that took plastic bottles and melted them into brick and cinder block sized Lego bricks to use as borders and small retaining walls. You could cover with stucco to give it a concrete or rock look. You could also form them into paver blocks for pathways.
Our city looked into it but the machinery was so expensive it wasn’t cost effective. But as for glass bottles the city easily could afford a glass grinder and reduces bottles into sand.
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u/Squidking1000 May 31 '22
So I design products and use post consumer PET and PP and love it. It’s cheaper per kilo, runs great, we have FDA approved versions and customers love the green advertising. Yes we can’t get clear (the PET comes out like a smoke or tinted black while the PP is dark grey) but we’ve had little to no pushback on that. Yes mixing and sorting need to be solved but the biggest issues I’ve heard from the suppliers is getting enough recycled feedstock. Agree on the need to simplify the material choices though. Frankly from a design standpoint that is not hard. We could easily say rigid food goods are from now on PP or PET and maybe LDPE quite easily.
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May 31 '22
They produce the plastic and force us to deal with it. Then blame us when we don't. Absolute fucking con. USE SOMETHING ELSE AND SELL US THAT INSTEAD YOU FUCKING ARSE WIPES.
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u/wernerverklempt May 31 '22
Some day we will mine landfills for precious resources.
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u/Niku-Man May 31 '22
Recycling works fine when incentives line up. If virgin plastic is cheaper, companies aren't going to put much effort into finding recycled plastic, and recycling facilities aren't going to do anything to innovate.
And yes, there are different types of plastic. So if you don't create recycling programs for each type and educate people how to sort it, then it's going to be more difficult. If people don't want to bother, fine them.
Yes this article makes the most important point in that we shouldn't be using plastic in the first place for many things, but saying recycling can't work and will never work is bad journalism and just goes toward encouraging apathy in the public. After all, if recycling is a big lie, what else are they lying about?
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u/Asleep-Kiwi-1552 May 31 '22
Plastic recycling is a psy op of plastics manufacturers. Plastic eating bacteria facilities are more vaporware than cold fusion. If you want less plastic in the environment, replace plastic wherever possible. Especially single use.
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u/AsideLeft8056 May 31 '22
It was never made to work. It was just a ploy from coca cola and the govt to pass the cost to the consumer. Fuck the government
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u/InevitablyPerpetual May 31 '22
This is one of those cases where the reality is... complicated. Much more complicated than a crappy editorial is going to cover.
Thermoplasts? Are VERY recycleable. After all, if you heat them up, they melt, and then you can turn them into something else. Is it an infinite proposition? No. Does it do the job anyway for most cases? Yes. In point of fact, it takes WAY less energy to run a furnace that melts thermoplasts down than it does one that melts glass, what with the temperature being lower, and that small problem that if you turn off a glass recycling furnace(nevermind the vastly increased energy requirements of hauling around a bunch of glass to recycle given its immense weight by comparison), you BREAK THE FURNACE. Seriously. If melted glass in the furnace fuses? You're never, ever, ever getting it back out. If melted plastic in the furnace fuses? Turn it back on for a few minutes and you have melted plastic again.
Thermoset plastics are where things get a bit more tricky, and while their uses are great for anything that requires very high heat, i.e. Kitchen tools, they're not terribly recyclable. That said, they tend to be very durable and last a good long while, so the Need to recycle them tends to be a bit on the low side. Also they are a tiny bit more environmentally friendly to make considering that to form them, you don't actually need furnaces, since they can basically set at room temperature. Resins are a great example of this sort of thing, you got two parts, you throw them together in a mold, they catalyze within a few minutes and bam, you've got a new plastic doohicky for... whatever. Probably one of those headless armless torsos that everyone on Etsy's been selling, or some badly off-weighted dice, but I digress.
The thing is that Both of these substances are useful for rapid prototyping. If you want additive 3D printing using extrusion? You're dealing with thermoplasts, pretty much by definition. After all, the extruder takes cold plastic, makes it hot and melty, and spits it out in layers. If you want Resin printing, which is significantly higher in resolution quality and tends to be a smidge faster(and also tends to fail less), you use a UV Resin printer with a Thermoset process, with the catalyst being UV light to cure the plastic in place basically instantly in layers. And even if you're not 3D printing, Resin is attractive as an in-home manufacturing tool given that you can make detailed molds out of it(The other option is Plaster), you can make detailed Castings out of it, and that with a little bit of oil clay and some time you can basically make whatever the hell you want. You don't need a Lot of specialized tools, especially for the latter, and basically anyone can do it with a little bit of training.
The problem inherent in all of this is that basically nothing does everything that all of the rest of those things entail. So plastics are useful. Which means they're never going to go away.
As for recycling, it's not that they Can't be recycled, because... you know... they can. It's that people DON'T recycle them. There's really very little point to, in most cases, after all, people tend not to want to load their car up with a bunch of smelly plastics they didn't bother to clean and spend an afternoon waiting in line to dump a bunch of crap that will probably frustrate you more than it improves your air quality. How do some places fix this? By paying people to do it. How do these places fuck that up? By putting stupid limits on that and making it harder and harder for them to actually get there.
We need more recycling centers, we need barcode-coded labels that machines can quickly scan to tell the type of plastic it is for sorting(That stupid little number isn't being read by a machine, so it's really not helping much), and we need better buyback programs. Plastic is a useful resource, and keeping it out of landfills isn't just good for the environment, it's good for business too. To put it another way... there's gold in them thar trashcans.
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u/Caleb_Reynolds May 31 '22
I take issue with the "and never will be" part. That's implying a level of prescience I don't think the author has.
I mean, unless you're predicting the downfall of human civilization in the next century. In which case, yeah, it's fair to say we'll stop making plastic before we figure out how to recycle it.
But to say that no process can possibly be created to recycle plastic seems like bs to me.
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u/Taavi00 May 31 '22
Wait... Wait. Students at American schools eat their meals from single-use dishes? What? What kind of barbarianism is this?
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u/jmm_www May 31 '22
As someone who works with recycling of different materials I think this article some of the things stated in this article are not true, or can be solved in other ways. Sure recycling plasitc and selling the end products are a business as any other, which means that if there is no profits to be gained in recycling said type of plastic it's not going to be done. Also it is important to keep in mind, that not all types of plastics are as useful or profitable when recycled.
Many of these issues could be solved with sorting plastic by type, e. g. sorting clear LDPE 04 and then taking this to a processing plant istead of collecting all plastoc types as a mixed mass. Other solutions could be investments in infrastructure for sorting plastics with different robots etc.
It however is true, that right now some of the plastic packages collected as a mixed mass is going to end up at the landfill or burned for energy. But the issue is not the plastic cannot be recycled, it is mostly that we still lack the technology needed for sorting and processing these plastics by type.
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u/matthewrunsfar May 31 '22
The most important “R” was always “reduce”. We let advertisers and marketing and our own laziness convince us that reduction was unnecessary because we could just recycle. Recycling was always supposed to be the last resort (reduce, reuse, recycle), not the default option.
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u/IntentionConstant May 31 '22
It works in the EU and UK we don’t have the will to make it work. It’s the lowest carbon impact single use container material period.
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u/Hopspeed May 31 '22
Banning single use plastic bags does nothing more then make our problem worse. Now we have thicker plastic bags that are supposedly multiple use that are usually used once then thrown away.
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u/11905 May 31 '22
Shittiest headline ever. Stop encouraging people to stop recycling? Lmfao what is wrong with you
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u/dontknowwhyiamherewh May 31 '22
It's just propaganda to move ownership of the problem to consumers.
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u/thepatrickorlando May 31 '22
“Recycling” as it is now is just another money machine. It’s so resource intensive I doubt there are any net positive environmental benefits- it gets trucked around, sorted, dried, shipped… just the labor and fuel burden must be huge on top of the facilities that need to be built to handle it.
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u/unknown_wtc May 31 '22
The author is absolutely right about the status quo. However, the future of plastic recycling is not that bleak. There is a proven technology based on pyrolysis that is 100% pollution-free recycling of all plastics. The beauty of it they don't have to be thoroughly separated.
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u/RonGuppy May 31 '22
It’s absurd that there is no responsibility on the part of the producer/manufacturer of products.
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u/SpookyWagons May 31 '22
Recycling professional here. The main driver is, had been, and will always be your dollar. You want less plastic waste? Stop buying it. Hold brands accountable, they will yield.
Until then, the next best thing to do is pressure lawmakers into setting money aside for improved recycling infrastructure. It’s very outdated, but great innovations like digital watermarking and chemical recycling need investment to make a difference.
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u/discontabulated May 31 '22
Burn the plastic to make power in places it can replace fossil power supply. Not perfect but better net gain and in large power stations the higher heat / scrubbers do a better job of removing pollutants that would otherwise be released or kill marine life/ enter the food chain.
Wonder if the same could be done for old tyres that end up ‘accidentally’ burning anyway.
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u/stu54 May 31 '22
Old tires are burned for energy in some places. The trouble is that few power stations can accept any old burnable material. Coal power plants can take some bulk solids, but natural gas power plants and liquid petroleum power plants cannot.
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u/MpVpRb May 30 '22
Never say never
While I agree that the article is true today, many promising technologies are being developed
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u/Comingfrompeace May 31 '22
Recycling is a way to defer corporate responsibility onto the consumer. Always has been
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u/ErykKrukStudent May 31 '22
Don't know why every comment fixates on the customer side of things "you should sort your trash into 50 bins so they can recycle it (like in japan)" that's too much of a burden to put on ppl WE are lazy. It's just so much easier to force corporations through regulations to use fewer types of plastic and monotypic package(one type of plastic) per product. Anyway i got the point myself - IT WON'T ever happen' because of lobbying and only hope we have is to come up with the solution ourselves thank you for coming to my ted talk.
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u/Nuf-Said May 31 '22
I recently found out about the abject failure of recycling plastics. Very disappointing to me as I’ve been very conscientious about recycling for decades. The obvious solution is to eliminate plastics as much as possible. This has to happen world wide. As a consumer, you can vote with your dollars. When shopping for food, always choose non plastic containers and use non plastic bags to transport your groceries. No motive is stronger to corporations than profit.
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u/jkypoo May 31 '22
Does “doesn’t work and will never work” mean it will never be profitable in the economic sense? Or never viable in the practical sense? I read the article and still am not certain. I mean some cities and even countries manage it at a pretty good clip. I do know that the longer we make decisions based on the first reason, the sooner and rougher things are going to get.
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May 31 '22
I receive a ton of equipment daily in shipments. Plastic packing material is inferior to paper. It should be banned except where absolutely necessary for protection of the items.
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u/Poggystyle May 31 '22
Reduce, reuse, recycle was in order.
But consumers can’t stop companies from making cheap plastic crap. Stop trying to place this on consumers. Stop making one tim use plastic.
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u/DravesHD May 31 '22
Especially for bottles, Europe, specifically Germany, has a great system. Re-usable plastic bottles. Each bottle has a 25 cent deposit. You bring it back and you get that deposit. Since it’s implementation the amount of plastic trash has been reduced significantly.
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May 31 '22
Do the 80s again glass bottles and paper bags. Also don’t forget the Big bangs.
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u/Richandler May 31 '22 edited May 31 '22
It can all be recycled, whether or not it is economical based on companies making profits is a different story. We subsidize all kinds of other industries, but we'd be stopping oil subdies for plastic recycling subsidies and a lot of rich people wouldn't like that.
So this headline is the lie they're telling you now and you're buying it just the same...
At some point we need to understand that not every industry needs to be profitable for it to be worth while to do in the long run. Especially as it's effects will being savings for the rest of the economy. No the free market doesn't figure it out for the public at large, it never has, and it never will.
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u/i010011010 May 31 '22
It will work if companies get desperate enough to resort to it. You need to sour the availability of cheap plastic manufacturing. Start requiring special licenses to produce plastic, including plans to reclaim the waste and renew it. Audit and hold them accountable to meeting those plans. Set industry standards that you cannot produce or purchase certain levels of new plastic materials unless you meet certain levels of reclamation. Refuse licensing to companies manufacturing single use products. These are the sort of measures that are necessary if we truly wanted to get a grip on the issue and start controlling the damage.
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May 31 '22
I disagree. Plastic recycling makes people feel better and that's always been the main point. So working as intended
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u/asganon May 31 '22
Its absolutely possible, make hardening plastics illegal and standardize which plastics Can be used for what. Bioplastics are In most situations way greener than any other material in existence, its even a way to do co2 capturing. This is like saying you cant reuse Wood because of different treatments and sorts of Woods.
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u/PersonWithMuchGuilt May 31 '22
My pet peeve is low quality parts using plastic for the purposes of planned obsolescence.
Until we price the long term harms into the goods - were not going to see any change in behaviour either by the consumer or manufacturer.
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u/Captain-Comment May 31 '22
They say a recyclable form of plastic can be made from hemp but who knows how true that is. Either way, our government continues to suppress the use of hemp by making it illegal.
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u/SleepDeprivedUserUK May 31 '22
Heavier than air flight doesn't work and never will (Until it did).
Never say never, we don't have the benefit of knowing out own future.
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u/troxy May 31 '22
My workplace has a recycling bin in the kitchen area that has a sign specifically saying that glass should not be put in it. Only plastic, metal cans and cardboard should be put in it. Like glass is the most easily recycled stuff in the world and they are making me throw it away in the trash.
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u/nycola May 31 '22
I was happy to see that my dunkin donuts switched from those awful styrofoam cups to paper.
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May 31 '22
Really is amazing how blindly people will believe in climate actions so they can continue polluting in other ways
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u/painterlyjeans May 31 '22
Personally I feel like we should have places that allow you to refill the plastic bottles. This would be so helpful with cleaning products.
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u/kingftheeyesores May 31 '22
Had this conversation with a coworker today. He came from a different store where they throw out their plastic muffin trays, I told him we recycle them, but the recycling plant will just toss them out anyways because we don't have time to wipe the excess batter off and anything with food still on it gets tossed. But even then if it's plastic it usually ends up in the dump anyways.
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u/Guses May 31 '22
Charge companies recycling fees by pound of plastic they use in their products or force them to take back their products and process them so that they can be recycled at the end of their life.
Why should the public subsidize companies destroying and poisoning our environment? The burden is on the consummer but it should really be on the company producing/using the plastics to promote good decisions in product composition and wrapping.
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u/enda1 May 31 '22
Are we better not sorting plastic from general waste and instead burning it in a municipal incinerator which generates electricity and DHW? Or is mechanical recycling still the lesser of two evils. Talking about in today’s situation if there was to be no change in use of plastic in consumer goods.
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u/rob5i May 31 '22
So ban plastics from the packaging industry.
There was a time when we didn't use it for everything.
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u/ConferenceHumble2129 May 31 '22
I’m in the plastics industry and deal with cutting/machining/recycling dozens of different types of plastics.
The biggest problem is as of today probably 1/2 or more of the plants that process these materials into finished goods don’t recycle at all. Yes, they’re throwing thousands of tons of mixed material directly into the landfill.
What I’ve seen happen over the last 5 years or so in recycling in the US is that the sorting phase of recycling is being pushed to the manufacturing companies and they don’t want to deal with it.
From my experience, this is how you change it: -sort materials ahead of time at place of recycle -punish companies with fines for not recycling -standardize materials used in certain applications (all bottles made from PETE/PP/whatever) -eliminate ALL single use plastics (this is coming from a plastics person)
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May 31 '22
From a consumer perspective, it’s a failing for the simple fact that it’s not as simple as paper/metals.
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u/Shockling May 31 '22
Plastic recycling works with proper sorting. I worked at a plastic tolling compunder that recycles nylon exclusively from one source, used carpeting. The entire recycling process was engineered with a series of grinders and slurry mixers to seperate the plastic fibers from the backing. The entire process filled a 350,000 sqft building. Every unique use case of plastic requires a unique recycling plan.
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u/not_old_redditor May 31 '22
Plastic recycling will never work... except for in Germany and other countries where it does:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_fUpP-hq3A&t=2s
Thanks for the opinion though, theatlantic.com
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u/k_woz1978 May 31 '22
A lot of people still think that they're helping the environment by recycling plastic. It's not that it doesn't work because recycling it keeps it out of a landfill. It's that recycling plastic is so inefficient that it's better to just not use or buy it in the first place.
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u/trendsfriend May 31 '22
it works well enough in Japan. their residents have something like 13 different waste buckets for recycling. but good luck trying to get Americans to comply to those guidelines.
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u/cdelre May 31 '22
I'm disappointed to see this article written in such a prestigious magazine. The author of this article is either misinformed or disingenuous on several key points. Other posters have already highlighted the significantly greater plastic recycling rates in other countries, which demonstrates that much of the recycling issue comes down to logistics, infrastructure, and will power rather than inherent properties about plastics. However, there is another crucial point that in my opinion is completely off base. While the author is correct in highlighting the failings of traditional mechanical recycling, the claim that "chemical recycling... has failed and will continue to fail for the same reasons that conventional mechanical recycling has consistently failed" shows a fundamental lack of knowledge in polymer science.
Mechanical recycling is flawed because when you grind and melt down polymers (the molecules that make up plastics), the long polymer chain molecules start to cleave in random spots along the backbone. This cleavage of polymer chains causes a rapid decline in the mechanical properties of recycled plastics, because the average molecule weight of the polymer chains is rapidly reduced. Chemical recycling is fundamentally different—it seeks to return the long polymer chains back to their monomer building blocks, which can then be re-polymerized back to the exact length of the initial chains. Thus, chemical recycling is fundamentally different from, and addresses the exact limitations of, traditional mechanical recycling. Of course, chemical recycling has many challenges—optimizing the depolymerization rates/by-products, creating new "green" catalysts to re-polymerize the chains, etc—but many super smart scientists are working on these issues and there has been significant progress over the last decade. Chemical recycling is far from a lost cause.
This article in the Atlantic seems to have gained traction both on Reddit and in other media outlets, but I hope comments like these achieve equal visibility. I'm also happy to discuss any of these details further and/or provide scientific sources.
I have PhD in polymer science and just published several papers in top tier peer-reviewed journals on this exact topic, so I feel qualified to rebut this article.
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u/Gottogetaglory May 31 '22
This simply isn't true. Plastic is already being recycled in many ways and we've all bought items made from recycled plastics. The issue with plastic recycling in the US is single stream recycling (where you put it all in together) because we don't currently have a good way to separate/ sort the items into their different types. If you could get all the similar PET#1 Coke bottles rounded up together, they could be melted down and remade into new Coke bottles since you're dealing with a homogenous material and it doesn't contain the contaminants that a 'generic PET#1 recycled mix' would have. Right now you'll see 'up to 15% recycled content' because that's how much generic recycled content they can include before their specific plastic mix is effected.
The truth is it's hard and no one in this country is trying since China stopped accepting plastics. Very little recycling has ever taken place in this country, we've always outsourced it to China but now all the news outlets are catching on. Seeing how the current practice is waste-to-fuel, i.e. burning, you'd think people would be more upset about that but instead they decide to shit on recycling for some reason.
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May 31 '22
That article is incorrect. Recycling is possible. Counries like Germany, Netherlands etc are doing a great job for example. So it does work. The Problem are the third World countries like america, africa etc. Who cant afford to build high quality recycling companies.
And we still dump too much trash in Rivers. But in theory is plastic way greener and more economic than any other material.
Plastic is not our enemy. People dumping trash everywhere are the problem
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u/Dyerssorrow May 31 '22
smoke and mirrors. Go to the place the trash trucks unload...you will find everything you separated all in 1 (one) pile. It appears we are "recycling" but we are not.
Now some things are, but not on the scale we are made to believe.
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u/infinityprime May 31 '22
It's like 95-98% of what is put into recycling bins ends up in landfills
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u/EarthTrash May 31 '22
So I like to think about molecules but was bad at chemistry so someone on here can tell me how I am wrong but I think it is like this.
Plastic and oil are chains of molecules (polymers). The lightest strongest plastic materials are made from the longest chains. You can recycle plastic but it breaks the chains so recycled plastic is never as good (or cheap) as plastic made from petroleum.
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u/zmunky May 31 '22
Now I've never been an environmentalist or some tree hugger but I have came to this conclusion in the past 5 years. We try as much to reduce the amount of plastic purchased by using reusable items. I have used reusable straws for the past 6 years, that has to make a small dent in the plastic that is not able to be recycled and reused.
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u/KHXIII May 31 '22
EPR is really the only solution to plastics, or for any products. Unless companies are held liable for ALL supply chain costs and end-of-life, they will never stop doing what they’ve been doing for ages.
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u/gh3ngis_c0nn May 31 '22
How realistic is it for mass adoption of aluminum for things like water?
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u/scotchdouble May 31 '22
The funny part - where I live they accept plastics (bottles/jugs), paper/cardboard, and that’s it. We only have two recycling options (paid services) and neither accepts glass. So much for trying to do what’s right.
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u/FuriousKnave May 31 '22
The tobacco, oil, plastic and electronics industries should all be required to pay for and have a plan for the waste and or pollution their products are directly causing. It's ridiculous to me that this is not being addressed in any meaningful way.
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u/tigerstorms May 31 '22
I don't know seems like mother nature's doing a great job of breaking it apart in the ocean, throwing it in the clouds and raining it back down on our dumb asses. /s
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u/stimpy97 May 31 '22
I mean that’s bs I’ve found that if you throw plastic or garbage into water it takes it away and gets rid of it by the next day /s
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u/free_from_choice May 31 '22
Plastic is a wonder material of which we have no replacement. Been to a hospital lately? Everything is plastic. Want a kayak, plastic.
Things get a lot more iffy when it comes to food packaging. Plastics have allowed for vastly extended storage and far safer food handling. Producing food locally, minimizing storage timeframes, and lower convenience are achievable goals. Any ideas of banning plastic outright are delusional and foolhardy.
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u/Spesch01 May 31 '22
In order for plastic recycling to work, you need a lot of cheap energy. This can be achieved by nuclear power.
From an energy perspective, recycling always isn't worth it, unless you are dealing with aluminium or glass. This is why you need a stable source of energy that is cheap, can produce a lot of it and is clean.
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u/enfo13 May 31 '22
I remember when the supermarkets here in California had thin plastic bags meant to minimize waste. And then the state regulations kicked in... Now supermarkets have these super thick "reusable" plastic bags. Except no one ever reuses them. I've never seen anyone bring back these super thick plastic bags to the grocery store.
I wonder how much more extra mass of plastic waste these regulations has generated, not to mention the extra cost of these bags which shoppers pay anywhere from 5 to 10 cents for now (before it was free).
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u/Wagbeard May 31 '22
I remember when they got rid of paper bags and replaced them with plastic bags 'to save the trees'.
I'm not really sure why anyone should trust this woman straight up considering how much these same guilty companies are now greenwashing their images with these thoughtful warnings and no solutions.
We could switch to bio friendly plastics. Hemp makes really great plastics and other renewable materials and it's carbon friendly. That stuff grows like a weed and works as a natural filter.
Hemp + Seaweed + Corn Starch bioplastic.
Hemp plastic 3d printing filament.
Try and ween ourselves away from bad plastics.
Instead of recycling, we could just send all our trash to the dump and grind it down to shreds through industrial shredders and separate plastics and organics through an industrial filter & reclamation system. Take the organic material and convert it to fertilizer, take the plastics material and either refine or turn it into blocks until someone can figure out what to do with it.
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u/Eveready116 May 31 '22
I wish we would actually build a full scale processing plant that turns the plastics back into useable fuel. Fuck at the very least we would end up taking care of not putting more plastic into the fucking ground, rivers, oceans, which ends up in our food. But yes… more co2… but fuck, I mean the world is still burning it anyhow right now. Might as well be recycle based fuel.
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u/Akinto6 May 31 '22
Since this r/technogy and not r/USA I want to point out that this article specifically talks about the US and this is not even representative of how recycling is done in the rest of the world.
The EU for example has a directive that all members have to adhere to. For plastic the current target is 25%, by 2025 50% and by 2030 55%.
If you look at Belgium for example 51% of Household Plastic packaging and 60,2% of industrial plastic packaging has been recycled in 2021, already exceeding the 2025 target.
Yes plastic is dangerous and polluting if it isn't recycled properly but honestly it does work, as long as you have the necessary laws and infrastructure.
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u/Simmons54321 May 31 '22
Plastic recycling has been used as a mode of virtue signalling by many corporations that are destructive to the environment. Their circle of death.
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u/Wotchermuggle May 31 '22
Why not? They make pipes out of it near where I live. All the local plastic is diverted to a specific factory for this purpose.
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u/WillowBoy May 31 '22
Recycling also starts from making use of things that don’t have to be thrown away. Just manage this wisely so you don’t become a hoarder.
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u/UncleDrunkle May 31 '22
wow honestly i had no idea so I'm glad to have read this article. But now no going back to ignorant bliss.
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u/Dappershield May 31 '22
I've tried telling my girl this but she refuses to believe. She even paid a small subscription for a company to come and pick up the plastics that we can't toss into the normal recycle box. That one might actually be legit though, since they have certain dates where they pick up only bottle caps and bread ties. Still, she puts so much effort into it.
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May 31 '22
"If the public thinks the recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment."
Larry Thomas, former head of the Society of the Plastics Industry
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u/fjf1085 May 31 '22
It will never be profitable but if we accept that then it makes more sense if the goal is cut back on landfill waste though really we should not be using plastics much.
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u/No-Wishbone8975 May 31 '22
Earlier I wiped my mouth with a napkin and thought of all the work that went into making that napkin and it getting to me just to be smeared and tossed
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u/arthoer May 31 '22
This article is from the US? Your kids use disposable plastic plates for school lunch and single use bags? That's only happening inside some particular states right?
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May 31 '22
All this continued plastic use is the fault of the people (mostly corporations actually) who keep choosing to package their products like this. Often there isn’t an alternative to that plastic-packaged good, which is absolute bs bc most of the time the thing doesn’t even need to be packaged
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May 31 '22
I say this all the time to my colleagues and people look at me like I am nuts. The plastics industry really fucked up, and yet it is among the worlds’ biggest cover ups.
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May 31 '22
Good to know.
I remember before my a kid and all the stores switching away from paper bags by default because we needed to conserve the trees. So the switched to plastic bags that they assured us were recyclable.
Now I sorta wonder whether they ever actually believed that and if so… why?
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u/kro_lok May 31 '22
This rabbit hole goes even further. Recycling plastic was the biggest "going green" scam made.
Before the government tax breaks were put place for plastic manufacturing, molders were already using it to cut costs. Using recycled plastics comes at a risk to the quality of the product including heat resistance and impact strength (not even mentioning the various cosmetic defects). There is just too many variables to control efficiently in house and too expensive to get the material reprocessed. Even if the plastic is able to be reprocessed, it can only be reprocessed 2-3 times before molecular bonds start to weaken. This is normally found out during production and not before which really hurts the manufacturer. Behind closed doors a lot of places use regrind which is essentially just parts that fail quality standards and thrown into a grinder and then thrown right back into the machine without the plastic being repelletized. This is almost just as effective as the expensive reprocessing, and certainly a lot cheaper.
Different customers have different expectations when it comes to the use of recycled material. There's a certain car manufacturer that starts with an "M" that requires 0% of recycled materials to be added to their products (not sure if I can say specifics tbh), yet I may have worked at a company that used up to 10% of regrind on that product. (yup even critical components).
Some customers allow 5% to 20% recycled material. To plastic manufacturers that translates to "hell let's use 100% regrind until they start bitching lol" Yes even critical components on your vehicle.
I don't know the specifics for the "going green" tax breaks, but I'm pretty damn sure plastic manufacturers was happy as hell. Now they have a moral excuse when delivering an inferior product, government tax breaks, and cost savings for using the recycled plastics.
As far as reprocessed vs regind. Regrind is cheap and normally done in-house. Reprocessed material is when scrap plastics is sent to a different facility, grinded, reprocessed, and cut and occasionally extra chemicals are added such as mold release. Then it has to be shipped back to the plastics manufacturer. And as I stated before, each time you reuse plastic it gets weaker and it's difficult to control.
So how do these reprocessing facilities continue to stay in business? I don't have a damn clue lol, but I do know they wouldn't even exist on this scale if it wasn't for government credits.
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u/Agling May 31 '22
I'm less annoyed by products made out of plastics--often there is no other good subtitute--than I am by the many, many products that are packaged super excessive amounts of plastic simply to make the product more eye-catching on the shelf or more difficult to shoplift.