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> Also, polyethylene is one of the simplest plastics and can be recycled quite effectively Polyethylene can be recycled, but depending on the price of oil it's
by jobu 9y ago
> Also, polyethylene is one of the simplest plastics and can be recycled quite effectively
Polyethylene can be recycled, but depending on the price of oil it's often cheaper to make new things than try to recycle them. Planet money did an episode a few years back that talked about this:
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/27/395815221/episode-613-trash https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/03/27/395815221/epis...
"One day it's profitable to recycle a bottle. The next day, some number in the global economy changes and that bottle suddenly becomes trash."
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoJust because something is cheaper, or more profitable, doesn't make it the right thing to do. You'd ideally include externalties that are not captured by the price. To give one related example, just dumping your trash in the street is cheaper than paying people to come and haul it away but no one seems to make the argument all about cost in that case. Particularly in the US, propaganda campaigns against the entire concept of recycling seem to have been very succesful. Often these are pushed by libertarians and you can trace the funding back to the Koch brothers who (entirely coincidentally of course) are invested in companies that supply the virgin feedstock materials to make new plastic bags or whatever. They've also spend millions on anti-EV and anti-solar campaigns two other rival industries where their product is only "better" if you totally ignore externalities.
- DigitalJack 9y agoIf you are of the belief that we have reached or will soon reach peak oil, then this sounds like a business opportunity for temporal recycling in the form of stockpiling the plastic until recycling it is valuable.