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There was a similar discussion on reddit yesterday morning: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9hee9n/what_makes_recycling_certain_plastics/?utm_sour

There was a similar discussion on reddit yesterday morning: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9hee9n/what_makes_recycling_certain_plastics/?utm_source=reddit-android https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9hee9n/what_mak... Several different experts weighed in on the comment section. Plastics engineer, garbage collector, recycling machine salesman all had some thing to post. I've always tried to sort my trash, but now I realize that tossing every type of plastic in same bin may not be helping as much. Now I try to minimize plastic purchasing. Bulk dry food and produce without packaging seems to help, and it usually means learning to cook more which in turn saves money. I've been using the same $3 stainless steel liter canteen from Goodwill for the past year. Might last the rest of my life

sevensor 8y ago
This reinforces my perception that plastics recycling is mostly a ploy by the plastics industry to make themselves appear less wasteful while shifting the burden and the blame to the customer. Some things we're encouraged to do, like carefully washing out plastic peanut butter jars, seem like they're probably a net waste of resources.
- ams6110 8y ago
  Yeah I don't recycle anything that needs to be washed first. Quick rinse OK, but if I need hot water and soap it goes into the trash instead.
  - noxxten 8y ago
    It's exactly this mindset that creates such a huge plastic problem. You aren't wrong, and you shouldn't feel guilty either. People in charge of deciding packaging should be taking their end customer's ideas and habits in mind. Why are all my vegetables and fresh foods packaged on styrofoam trays, wrapped in plastic, and packed home in a plastic bag? At least the plastic bag can be reused, but the rest has zero hope of being reusable. It's also a huge problem to recycle plastics that have food waste on them. All in all, plastics are really not needed in most of the things we buy.
- prolepunk 8y ago
  Reading this article it seems that there needs to be fewer types of plastic for certain products so recycling going to be easier. Second there are containers -- like bags of chips, or flower pots that shouldn't be made of plastic at all and instead of biodegradable material. The whole plastic waste seems like a tragedy of commons -- plastic manufacturers make cheap plastic because they make profit, consumers buy it because it's convenient, as the result we have plastic pollution. The government needs to step in and set the rules of what can and cannot be made out of plastic, and what kind of products can be made out of which kind of plastic, invest in research of making packaging so it could be easily recycled or reused. In addition the market for secondary plastic is really underdeveloped, even if the plastic gets recycled it's another challenge to have it used by manufacturers to make products. From my locale, city of Toronto contemplating banning black plastic containers and coffee cup lids -- even though this these things are recyclable, the scanners at recycling plants can't read markings of black plastic.
- stephengillie 8y ago
  I always figured a recycling system would rinse their inputs before melting them down, and that any remaining food or labels would be burned up while melting them down, and end up as slag. The only reason to wash your recycling is so they don't attract bugs - because for some reason our culture don't put recycling in any kind of bag or proper refuse bin.
ofcrpls 8y ago
There is another take on this from the Indian context. This podcast describes the lifecycle of different plastics within urban New Delhi and how the sorting by numbers in developed nations only helps in dumping that waste in developing nations. http://www.audiomatic.in/show/plastic-addiction-destroying-planet/ http://www.audiomatic.in/show/plastic-addiction-destroying-p...
Theodores 8y ago
Keep up the good work. Here is the film that allegedly was watched by the Chinese President for him to ban the plastic imports (and ban the film): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54 Even if you instinctively do your recycling and minimise your waste, this film is a true eye opener. For instance, imagine you buy a plastic bottle containing some healthy juice type of drink, the plastic label around the plastic bottle as well as the plastic cap will have to be taken apart in China by someone with more dexterous hands than yours. You might have washed the bottle out and done your best to get it into the correct recycling bin but there is so much more to it than that. Someone else is doing the hard work of working out what the different plastics are, grading the things, getting everything washed and getting everything cut into smaller pieces that can then be processed into new goods. As part of this process a lot of small bits of plastic float off to end up in the sea. Note in the video how cigarette lighters are used to burn a small corner of mystery plastic items to determine the type. This is particularly the case with those black plastic food trays. Imagine if your local council insisted your children do this before putting things in the recycling! Some comments here have noted that plastics are lighter - you only need 1/20th the weight for a plastic container compared to glass - therefore plastics are 'greener' due to the lowered transportation costs. This we know. Some have also commented that washing glass containers is a 'waste of energy', however this is a moot point given that plastics that get recycled get washed in China. This is after shipping the junk half way around the world. So I am not sure why this is better, it still costs money even if those shipping containers heading for China are empty and therefore the ride is 'for free'. This is merely 'Hollywood accounting', the journey to China is a lot more than twenty times further than the journey to the local dairy or other bottling plant. I think it is time we re-evaluate recycled glass containers again. The recycling is reuse and not this human misery story shown in the film. There are other things that can be done. For instance, the milk in plastic bottles comes with a blue/green/red plastic top that contaminates the white/clear plastic of the main bottle. Underneath the plastic top is a paper laminate piece that is a tamper proof seal. Normally this is a white piece of 'card'. If these small pieces of laminated card were coloured blue/green/red instead of the bottle top with the top being the same clear plastic as the rest of the bottle then we would have a solution to that. This could work well for the industry but nobody has thought of doing it this way. Instead the industry has lightened the colours of the tops so there is less colour contamination in recycling. Then, of course, should we be drinking 'liquid meat' in the first place? Or having this 'liquid meat' carried across mountain ranges to and from dairies when only a generation ago we had glass bottles and local dairies.

sevensor 8y ago

This reinforces my perception that plastics recycling is mostly a ploy by the plastics industry to make themselves appear less wasteful while shifting the burden and the blame to the customer. Some things we're encouraged to do, like carefully washing out plastic peanut butter jars, seem like they're probably a net waste of resources.

ams6110 8y ago
Yeah I don't recycle anything that needs to be washed first. Quick rinse OK, but if I need hot water and soap it goes into the trash instead.
- noxxten 8y ago
  It's exactly this mindset that creates such a huge plastic problem. You aren't wrong, and you shouldn't feel guilty either. People in charge of deciding packaging should be taking their end customer's ideas and habits in mind. Why are all my vegetables and fresh foods packaged on styrofoam trays, wrapped in plastic, and packed home in a plastic bag? At least the plastic bag can be reused, but the rest has zero hope of being reusable. It's also a huge problem to recycle plastics that have food waste on them. All in all, plastics are really not needed in most of the things we buy.
prolepunk 8y ago
Reading this article it seems that there needs to be fewer types of plastic for certain products so recycling going to be easier. Second there are containers -- like bags of chips, or flower pots that shouldn't be made of plastic at all and instead of biodegradable material. The whole plastic waste seems like a tragedy of commons -- plastic manufacturers make cheap plastic because they make profit, consumers buy it because it's convenient, as the result we have plastic pollution. The government needs to step in and set the rules of what can and cannot be made out of plastic, and what kind of products can be made out of which kind of plastic, invest in research of making packaging so it could be easily recycled or reused. In addition the market for secondary plastic is really underdeveloped, even if the plastic gets recycled it's another challenge to have it used by manufacturers to make products. From my locale, city of Toronto contemplating banning black plastic containers and coffee cup lids -- even though this these things are recyclable, the scanners at recycling plants can't read markings of black plastic.
stephengillie 8y ago
I always figured a recycling system would rinse their inputs before melting them down, and that any remaining food or labels would be burned up while melting them down, and end up as slag. The only reason to wash your recycling is so they don't attract bugs - because for some reason our culture don't put recycling in any kind of bag or proper refuse bin.

ofcrpls 8y ago

There is another take on this from the Indian context. This podcast describes the lifecycle of different plastics within urban New Delhi and how the sorting by numbers in developed nations only helps in dumping that waste in developing nations. http://www.audiomatic.in/show/plastic-addiction-destroying-planet/ http://www.audiomatic.in/show/plastic-addiction-destroying-p...

Theodores 8y ago

Keep up the good work. Here is the film that allegedly was watched by the Chinese President for him to ban the plastic imports (and ban the film): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooRVhRt1p54 Even if you instinctively do your recycling and minimise your waste, this film is a true eye opener. For instance, imagine you buy a plastic bottle containing some healthy juice type of drink, the plastic label around the plastic bottle as well as the plastic cap will have to be taken apart in China by someone with more dexterous hands than yours. You might have washed the bottle out and done your best to get it into the correct recycling bin but there is so much more to it than that. Someone else is doing the hard work of working out what the different plastics are, grading the things, getting everything washed and getting everything cut into smaller pieces that can then be processed into new goods. As part of this process a lot of small bits of plastic float off to end up in the sea. Note in the video how cigarette lighters are used to burn a small corner of mystery plastic items to determine the type. This is particularly the case with those black plastic food trays. Imagine if your local council insisted your children do this before putting things in the recycling! Some comments here have noted that plastics are lighter - you only need 1/20th the weight for a plastic container compared to glass - therefore plastics are 'greener' due to the lowered transportation costs. This we know. Some have also commented that washing glass containers is a 'waste of energy', however this is a moot point given that plastics that get recycled get washed in China. This is after shipping the junk half way around the world. So I am not sure why this is better, it still costs money even if those shipping containers heading for China are empty and therefore the ride is 'for free'. This is merely 'Hollywood accounting', the journey to China is a lot more than twenty times further than the journey to the local dairy or other bottling plant. I think it is time we re-evaluate recycled glass containers again. The recycling is reuse and not this human misery story shown in the film. There are other things that can be done. For instance, the milk in plastic bottles comes with a blue/green/red plastic top that contaminates the white/clear plastic of the main bottle. Underneath the plastic top is a paper laminate piece that is a tamper proof seal. Normally this is a white piece of 'card'. If these small pieces of laminated card were coloured blue/green/red instead of the bottle top with the top being the same clear plastic as the rest of the bottle then we would have a solution to that. This could work well for the industry but nobody has thought of doing it this way. Instead the industry has lightened the colours of the tops so there is less colour contamination in recycling. Then, of course, should we be drinking 'liquid meat' in the first place? Or having this 'liquid meat' carried across mountain ranges to and from dairies when only a generation ago we had glass bottles and local dairies.