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From a linked nat geo article: “I never thought plastic recycling would work,” says Roland Geyer, an engineering professor at the University of California, San
by NorthOf33rd 8y ago
From a linked nat geo article:
“I never thought plastic recycling would work,” says Roland Geyer, an engineering professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara and author of the study “Production, use and fate of all plastics ever made.” “There is a viable business model around metal, but plastics never has had that. It’s too low-value, too contaminated, with too many different polymers mixed together. And you can only make it work with a really low cost of labor.”
Fascinating stuff. Perhaps it's time to step away from plastic containers for foodstuffs. I'm a little surprised we didn't move at least a little further away post BPA awareness.
In Salt Lake City they stopped accepting many types of plastic in the recycling bin this summer, it's been a huge PITA. It's also led me to recycle less. This bugged me so I've changed my shopping habits a bit to compensate. For example, I avoid shopping at Trader Joe's, because everything there comes wrapped in plastic. Everything. It doesn't seem like retailers have quite caught on that it's becoming more difficult to recycle.
- maccard 8y ago> It doesn't seem like retailers have quite caught on that it's becoming more difficult to recycle. They have, they just don't care. It's not directly their problem that you can't recycle their waste until people stop buying there or start returning their waste to them.
- ggm 8y agoI hassled decor (home plastic container company) about BPA and they said their food grade containers had never had BPA. Oddly they saw no need to market on this.
- Spooky23 8y agoIt’s a risk area because the risks of BPA likely exist in whatever they are using. I always assume there’s something nasty under the surface with plastic drink and serving ware — like 6 months after the first BPA studies hit the press, GE sold its plastic and silicone divisions.
- blattimwind 8y agoProducing high-purity plastics that don't contain any of the many usually toxic ingredients is quite difficult and requires finely tuned and monitored processes. There is a huge price differential between plastics used for consumer garbage and e.g. plastics used for industrial piping and fixtures (when they're nominally the same plastic) which is gladly paid for.
- Mediterraneo10 8y ago> you can only make it work with a really low cost of labor. Yet, isn’t that what automation provides? It has been two decades since supermarkets in the Nordic countries have whizbang bottle-return machines that take back plastic, aluminium, and glass bottles as long as the barcode is still legible. Is there really no way to make a machine that scans the barcode of various other forms of plastic packaging (like yoghurt containers, ketchup bottles, etc.) and then directs the item to the appropriate container? Since the machine will know the exact categorization of the packaging on the basis of the barcode, then consumers would not be required to correctly sort plastic rubbish themselves.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- NorthOf33rd 8y agoOh man, the Nordic nations. I remember studying abroad and being the industrious-borderline-alchoholic I am, taking the empties from any classmate I could, so I could re-up the beer supply for free. Here in salt lake, however, we actually have to pay extra to have a glass collection bin at home. There are a dozen or so sites in the city that one could dump the glass, if they were so inclined, or into the general trash bin it goes. We certainly don't get paid for our our glass. It's extra disappointing because local...legal strangeness, has been encouraging a bit of a local brewery boom. I'd love to return the glass to the brewery for cleaning and reuse, but that's not an option here. All that said, there's a ton of plastic that goes into single stream recycling that isn't barcoded...
- yostrovs 8y agoNo one gets paid for returning bottles in Nordic countries. They get the deposit back that was paid during purchase.
- Mediterraneo10 8y agoIf you return other people’s bottles because they are willing to forego the deposit, then you do make some money. One of the ways that I survived my time as a skint foreign student in a Nordic country was picking up bottles in the city center on a Friday or Saturday night when everyone was drinking in the street and couldn’t be arsed to hold on to their bottles and take them back for the deposit. (I hear that now students find it harder to make money like this, because Roma immigrants have cornered this line of work.) Even later when I wasn’t so poor, there is pleasure in hosting a BYOB party and then being able to get the deposit for all the bottles and cans your guests brought.
- blattimwind 8y agoIndustrial-grade plastics are recycled to some degree, but only certain plastics are and they are collected completely separated by type and coloring (usually just natural or black). Only a tiny number of companies are able to do this.
- sjg007 8y agoThe plastic wrap should be recyclable along with plastic bags. Your local supermarket may take them.
- anonymous5133 8y agoThat's why plastic should just be "recycled" in a waste to energy plant.
- NorthOf33rd 8y agoThat would raise an entirely different set of issues in Salt Lake City.
- captainbland 8y agoI mean maybe it is, but then comes the problem: Plastics are used because they're cheap, they're not worth recycling because they're so cheap but you can't just do away with the packaging material entirely because that just leads to, in the case of food, spoiled goods and foods which can't be stored or transported for so long which can cause its own environmental issue. It doesn't make economic sense to use a different material which is more recyclable because, by the definition of this problem, they're much more expensive. Perhaps the answer is re-usable plastic containers - maybe some system where you can post them back to the manufacturer for cleaning and re-use. It might just be that once oil drilling for energy goes away, so does some of this problem - at least in that plastics would cease to be so cheap.
- brownbat 8y agoYou're right... There are some powerful heuristics in environmentalism-- disposable is generally worse, plastics are bad, recycling is better for the environment... But these will break in some special cases. We should avoid treating them as dogmas and be open minded when examining the entire lifecycle of products. For example, styrofoam is so much less energy intensive than firing ceramics. Given the hot water used in rewashing, you can get some unexpected consequences where disposables are the better option. https://sustainability.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/Comparativelifecyclecosts.pdf https://sustainability.tufts.edu/wp-content/uploads/Comparat... (That analysis is sensitive to how energy efficient your dishwasher is, and how durable the ceramic is.) So imagine if even after we stop using petroleum, Texas finds a giant pool of easy oil next to abundant landfill space... Could be Texans should probably just use plastics and toss them in that situation. New Yorkers might have a different calculus, because the cost of trash hauling and processing is more significant there. It all depends.
- manicdee 8y agoDisposables are only the better option when you move some part of the entire planet outside the system you are measuring.
- 8y ago
- crankylinuxuser 8y agoPlastic is fine, as long as you get lots of uses out of it. We have knit plastic bags that we can put veggies in. Super light (no tare needed) and can hold a lot... Yet we've used them hundreds of times. Now think of that crappy flimsy plastic bag, or plastic wrapping. It's used once, and "thrown away" (please: define where away is..). That's the problem - single use and nearly impossible to use for anything else.
- coliveira 8y agoThe oil industry is interested in the maximum amount of use of plastics. The less reusable glass and other materials we use, the higher the profits for the big oil and chemicals conglomerates.
- gruez 8y ago>the higher the profits for the big oil and chemicals conglomerates is that relevant if plastic is still the cheapest option? should we pay more just to spite them?
- KozmoNau7 8y agoYes. Doing the right thing is often less convenient and more expensive than doing the lazy and easy thing. So we have to stop being so lazy and cheap.
- rdiddly 8y agoYou're on the right track; if you don't want to dispose of it, don't buy it. I feel like this is just one aspect of environmental awareness that has degraded since the 90s. Packaging has become more wasteful, and there's more of it too, because everything is individually shipped in a box in a truck now (from Amazon etc.) Cars have become bigger and more wasteful than ever (the SUV trend). All the new architecture is full of huge glass windows & curtain walls... one of the most energy-permeable and wasteful barriers (to the extent that a wall is supposed to be a barrier) you could possibly design. But it looks great! As does that hermetically sealed pre-packaged salad in the plastic clamshell. I dunno, we seem to be responding to the problem by pretending all the more ferociously that it doesn't exist.
- tenpies 8y agoIn this way, recycling has been one of the most catastrophic environmental efforts ever. If we had stuck with just "reduce and re-use" the world would look drastically different. But no, recycle got included and we got the 3 Rs, so now I can purchase that salad in a single-use clamshell plastic container and feel zero guilt because, hey, recycle!
- pfarnsworth 8y agoWe need to code this in law. Any type of plastic used in consumer products needs to be recyclable easily, otherwise outlaw it. Any food containers need to be compostable. I'm willing to pay much higher food and product costs so that the waste we create can be easily recycled. If it makes the product economically unviable then maybe the product isn't that useful.
- eeeeeeeeeeeee 8y agoYep, seems the solution is to get rid of it or make plastic producers pay part of the share of recycling it.