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The Violent Afterlife of a Recycled Plastic Bottle

23 points by nkurz 11y ago

Animats 11y ago
At one point, California had about 110% plastic bottle recycling. Then the California Highway Patrol caught the outfit that was bringing in semis full of crushed bottles from out of state and the recycler that was paying for them.
- ams6110 11y ago
  Kramer and Newman?
Zhenya 11y ago
"Metals, such as, tin and aluminum are then extracted by magnets. " umm, what? I know aluminum can be slightly magnetic under intense magnetic fields, but surely this isn't the case in this situation?
- pwg 11y ago
  The article should have said: "by magnetic induction". An AC current driven electromagnet induces a current in the metal, the induced current in the metal also has a magnetic field (basic physics), and it is this magnetic field that is then used to "sort" the conductors (metals) from the non-conductors (non-metals). But then, the article was likely written by someone lacking an engineering/physics background, and so "extracted by magnets" was likely as much as they could comprehend of the process.
ams6110 11y ago
A MRF sifts through recyclables to recover ... glass, metal, and plastics with the resin code #1 or #2 (that’s the little tiny number in the triangle on the bottom). It discards the rest. I have heard this, that a good bit if not the majority of the waste that people think they are recycling ends up in the landfill anyway. Would it not be more efficient to just say "don't bother recycling anything except metal, glass, and #1 or #2 plastic." The rest can be trucked directly to the landfill, saving the extra trip and energy used to take it to the MRF for sorting. I think there's a good bit of political deceptiveness going on, people like to think that they are recycling and helping the environment so local government sets up a program to make it appear that they are. I wonder how many would be shocked to learn that half of what they recycle ends up in the landfill.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  I have a friend who's an environmental engineer and he say's while no one says this publicly, the only thing that is clearly a win for the environment is recycling aluminum. The rest is either questionable, or not even close.
  - Laforet 11y ago
    Glass, copper, steel and even asphalt scraped from roads are eminently worth recycling, plastics and paper recycling tend to be swayed by commodity prices, but you can't have a policy that recycles only when crude price is above $60 a barrel.
  - ZenoArrow 11y ago
    In most of these cases, is it questionable because of... 1. ...the cost of the recycling process? 2. ...the utility of the end product? 3. ...the pollution generated by the recycling process?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

23 points by nkurz 11y ago

At one point, California had about 110% plastic bottle recycling. Then the California Highway Patrol caught the outfit that was bringing in semis full of crushed bottles from out of state and the recycler that was paying for them.

ams6110 11y ago
Kramer and Newman?

Zhenya 11y ago

"Metals, such as, tin and aluminum are then extracted by magnets. " umm, what? I know aluminum can be slightly magnetic under intense magnetic fields, but surely this isn't the case in this situation?

pwg 11y ago
The article should have said: "by magnetic induction". An AC current driven electromagnet induces a current in the metal, the induced current in the metal also has a magnetic field (basic physics), and it is this magnetic field that is then used to "sort" the conductors (metals) from the non-conductors (non-metals). But then, the article was likely written by someone lacking an engineering/physics background, and so "extracted by magnets" was likely as much as they could comprehend of the process.

ams6110 11y ago

A MRF sifts through recyclables to recover ... glass, metal, and plastics with the resin code #1 or #2 (that’s the little tiny number in the triangle on the bottom). It discards the rest. I have heard this, that a good bit if not the majority of the waste that people think they are recycling ends up in the landfill anyway. Would it not be more efficient to just say "don't bother recycling anything except metal, glass, and #1 or #2 plastic." The rest can be trucked directly to the landfill, saving the extra trip and energy used to take it to the MRF for sorting. I think there's a good bit of political deceptiveness going on, people like to think that they are recycling and helping the environment so local government sets up a program to make it appear that they are. I wonder how many would be shocked to learn that half of what they recycle ends up in the landfill.

merpnderp 11y ago
I have a friend who's an environmental engineer and he say's while no one says this publicly, the only thing that is clearly a win for the environment is recycling aluminum. The rest is either questionable, or not even close.
- Laforet 11y ago
  Glass, copper, steel and even asphalt scraped from roads are eminently worth recycling, plastics and paper recycling tend to be swayed by commodity prices, but you can't have a policy that recycles only when crude price is above $60 a barrel.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  In most of these cases, is it questionable because of... 1. ...the cost of the recycling process? 2. ...the utility of the end product? 3. ...the pollution generated by the recycling process?
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]