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I'm one of those recycling-zealots of some sort, or was. I believed in it but never naively, always actually thinking about consumption and waste. And the first

I'm one of those recycling-zealots of some sort, or was. I believed in it but never naively, always actually thinking about consumption and waste. And the first day my town announced single-stream recycling, I was immediately skeptical. In every way it, it seemed like an absolutely awful idea. There was all this focus on pure weight of recycling, as though consuming more stuff to then recycle more of it was a good thing. And I bothered keeping all my stuff cleaning, pulling plastic windows out of spaghetti boxes to put in the trash, so the box was just paper. It's trivially easy to do this stuff. Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix?? ABSURD I feel like single-stream as a whole concept was a complete destruction of actual recycling efforts and progress up to that point.

Animats 8y ago
Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix?? ABSURD. Nope. Routine.[1] There are shakers, screens, magnets, blowers, crushers, and optical sorters. It's not that complicated. Mixed recycling goes in, and aluminum, ferrous metal, glass cullet sorted by color, paper, and trash come out. Separation is working fine. The problem is that the markets for waste paper, glass cullet, and plastic are weak, even when fully sorted. Waste paper, especially. Paper mills in North America have been closing for years. Plastic bottle recycling is coming along well. CarbonLite has a huge plant near LA, and plants in Denver and Pennsylvania. Recycled plastic bottles go in, and plastic pellets ready for injection molding into new bottles come out. This is the area where things are getting better. Glass cullet is in trouble. Fewer manufacturers are using glass containers and there's a cullet glut. All this is at best marginally profitable and tends to need subsidies. Aluminum is the only real moneymaker. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc [2] https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-inside-the-worlds-largest-plastic-bottle-recycling-plant-0 https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-inside...
- quadrangle 8y ago
  I'm not actually claiming that all mixing is bad, but the general "just dump it all into one bin" style of appeal to consumers' convenience is the problem. Along with the mixing, we saw widespread advocacy that people just recycle thoughtlessly. Encouraging such carelessness gives a false impression about the whole system, encourages ignorance… It's one thing for single-stream to be feasible in terms of a mix of clean paper, plastic containers, and metal. It's another thing to discourage consumer thoughtfulness and end up with all manner of plastics, strange mixes of rules in different municipalities, and tons of problematic contamination — all of which could have been avoided if we didn't aim to make recycling a mindless activity. Obviously the real problem is the externalizing of the whole waste cost from the manufacturers. If we could make all manufacturers pay for all the recycling and environmental costs, they'd change their products to be more recyclable and less wasteful.

Animats 8y ago

Separating the stuff after it gets dumped in a truck in one big mix?? ABSURD. Nope. Routine.[1] There are shakers, screens, magnets, blowers, crushers, and optical sorters. It's not that complicated. Mixed recycling goes in, and aluminum, ferrous metal, glass cullet sorted by color, paper, and trash come out. Separation is working fine. The problem is that the markets for waste paper, glass cullet, and plastic are weak, even when fully sorted. Waste paper, especially. Paper mills in North America have been closing for years. Plastic bottle recycling is coming along well. CarbonLite has a huge plant near LA, and plants in Denver and Pennsylvania. Recycled plastic bottles go in, and plastic pellets ready for injection molding into new bottles come out. This is the area where things are getting better. Glass cullet is in trouble. Fewer manufacturers are using glass containers and there's a cullet glut. All this is at best marginally profitable and tends to need subsidies. Aluminum is the only real moneymaker. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIVKmwzWSuc [2] https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-inside-the-worlds-largest-plastic-bottle-recycling-plant-0 https://www.kcet.org/shows/socal-connected/carbonlite-inside...

quadrangle 8y ago
I'm not actually claiming that all mixing is bad, but the general "just dump it all into one bin" style of appeal to consumers' convenience is the problem. Along with the mixing, we saw widespread advocacy that people just recycle thoughtlessly. Encouraging such carelessness gives a false impression about the whole system, encourages ignorance… It's one thing for single-stream to be feasible in terms of a mix of clean paper, plastic containers, and metal. It's another thing to discourage consumer thoughtfulness and end up with all manner of plastics, strange mixes of rules in different municipalities, and tons of problematic contamination — all of which could have been avoided if we didn't aim to make recycling a mindless activity. Obviously the real problem is the externalizing of the whole waste cost from the manufacturers. If we could make all manufacturers pay for all the recycling and environmental costs, they'd change their products to be more recyclable and less wasteful.