17 ms·
The dumping of "recycling" onto other countries just goes to show what a lie recycling actually is. It's not recycling, it's just garbage, but the word recycli
by andrewstuart 8y ago
The dumping of "recycling" onto other countries just goes to show what a lie recycling actually is.
It's not recycling, it's just garbage, but the word recycling makes us feel good about sending it to some other country to be dumped.
With India and China refusing it, look to the "recycling" companies to make deals with countries that don't have the political will to say no to accepting the worlds plastic and paper garbage.
Why are we spewing out an infinite quantity of single use plastic and packaging?
It's all about the packaging industry and profit.
The thing that annoys me most is the in almost 100% of cases, the solutions discussed are about "how do we make use of all this plastic and other waste?", instead of asking the question "why haven't we turned off the tap?"
- INTPenis 8y ago>It's not recycling, it's just garbage, but the word recycling makes us feel good about sending it to some other country to be dumped. I've worked at a recycling plant so I know that it's different than the old landfills. But we just separated parts, components and fabrics out of various items. Never saw where they ended up.
- godzillabrennus 8y agoMaybe Russia needs a new industry? Is there any other nation (North Korea aside) that would let foreigners ship trash to be dumped on their land?
- i_am_nomad 8y agoIt would have to be kept very, very quiet, since Russia is very sensitive about prestige these days vis-a-vis the West.
- immernerstheime 8y agoI remember seen on the news or documentary or something kids in Africa burning computer trash for metals and shit plastic poisonous gases covering mouth with tshirts same style brazil jail when some situation and kids you see on the news quakeguy is a One who sails with the speed of googleFu Panda so kids in Africa yeah and I dont think is profitable to move plastic before recicling around probably the economics of recicling it insitu or sitting at sitting place well no sitting analogies and well so nice from LOved India I love India and Wix right so... I need to learn Indian Language and some kind of old characters they probably have and the Cirillic Alphabet too yeah I know jusy few words like Moloko what is MIlk and Krassavtza and Zaidnitzia and Klass`Ne Krassavttza Zaidnitzia JOpa! KlassNe Jopa!!! and some things like that but no much Cirillic yeah but learn like learn Traditional Chinese characters too as the people of Japan and the people of Korea and the people of Hong Kong and the people of Taiwan and the people of All China and VIetnam and Even in Malasya and the people of Cingapur and yeah I learn traditional characters too and I dont want to learn fucking greek old letterts because im lazy yeah yeah yeah thanks
- avip 8y agoJust remove China+India from http://www.atchuup.com/countries-used-as-dumping-grounds-of-worlds-trash/ http://www.atchuup.com/countries-used-as-dumping-grounds-of-...
- Tade0 8y agoYes, my country - Poland, and what happens is this: 1. Some other country exports its trash to Poland. 2. The trash is stored at a specific place and not a few days go by until an "accidental" fire erupts. 3. The "entrepreneurs" who originally took the trash profit not only from that, but any potential insurance claim. 4. Rinse and repeat.
- quakeguy 8y agoWho does profit from it?
- peteretep 8y agoI’ve no idea in practice in this case, but it’s certainly a common trope that organised crime sells expensive but safe waste disposal, then disposes of the waste cheaply and unsafely, and profits.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago1. The company that sent the waste, relative to what they'd pay for a proper disposal. 2. The people that accepted and disposed of the waste, on the difference between how they declared to do it vs. how they actually did it.
- jpatokal 8y agoThis is already big business in Africa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agbogbloshie
- nothrabannosir 8y ago> It's all about the packaging industry and profit. Everything is about profit. The invention of the assembly line was about profit. Toothpaste is about profit. YC companies are about profit. It’s how our society works, and it’s not enough to just claim it’s about profit and call it a day. Good things are also about profit. What makes this bad? The lack of pricing in negative externalities. That is the root of all capitalist evil. Global warming, micro plastics, holes in the ozone layer, all of it can be traced back to negative externalities not properly priced in. Once you do that: saving the planet becomes about profit. And something tells me, we’d be pretty good at saving the planet, if there were money to be made… :)
- NeedMoreTea 8y agoBefore the neoliberal revolution globally, and the Thatcher+Reagan dogma, there was an awful lot that was not about profit that did not require a communist state. Things were done "for the good of the nation/town", or just because it was thought good to do. The NHS was not about profit. Flowers outside the town hall were not about profit. Nor were youth clubs, libraries, parks or a free town swimming pool. It is the fashion, and it is a fashion, for small government that comes with neoliberalism which has made everything about profit. Most countries (as opposed to shareholders) are worse off in many ways as a result. Not every state sale provided benefit, nor every privatised industry more efficient. I fully agree that pricing in externalities and environmental costs should be in all goods. Nothing to do with profit though. It's the only way to compare in a market economy. I also tend to sympathy with Keynes in aspiring for a middle ground somewhere between rampant market dystopia and communist dystopia.
- frankbreetz 8y agoI agree with you completely. Imagine if Libraries didn't already exist and the US Government tried to implement a Public Library. Fox New would have a field day.
- maxxxxx 8y agoGood point. Or think about the Interstate system. No way the country could so such a thing today.
- PaulHoule 8y agoPart of the problem is that markets for commodities are always volatile. That is, recycling plastic X might be very profitable in 2015 and not at all be profitable in 2019. It is the same problem that producers of oil, aluminum and everything else have from time to time. Prices go up and prices go down.
- NullPrefix 8y agoSubsidies would help with that.
- cobookman 8y ago+1 us gov Does this for agriculture. Ensuring that farmers have a price floor by purchasing surplus
- A2017U1 8y agoDon't those subsidies cause fluctuations elsewhere? Last I looked most countries get very upset when others dump products on their markets at below cost. Chinese steel in America being a prime example.
- cdolan 8y agoPeople in the commodities business are used to this, it’s not as big a problem as you’d think. The bigger factor that makes recycling harder to justify is that it’s very easy and cheap to make new stuff.
- systematical 8y agoI wonder if a plastic credit system ala carbon credit system could work. This could prop up the recycling market.
- akudha 8y agoI understand commerce makes the world go around, but why is anything and everything always measured in terms of profit and loss? We know plastic sucks and we know we need to reduce its usage, and yet we are still primarily talking about these things in terms of profit and loss, instead of talking about these problems in terms of welfare/sustainability/survival of this planet?
- benj111 8y agoThere are companies (in India) buying the plastic though. So there obviously value being extracted. This isn't a story of the 1st world paying to get rid of their waste. I agree with you in general. We should be generating less waste and recycling and we should be taking responsibility for that waste and recycling. I would stop short of cutting out the 3rd world from the opportunity to benefit from the opportunities waste and recycling bring though. Theres money to be made, they have the ability to compete. We developed nations shouldn't let it become a race to the bottom though. If China wants clean pure plastics, we should be willing to supply that.
- Pfhreak 8y agoIs a problem that we use a single label ('recycling') to describe many different efforts with different outcomes? E.g. paper and aluminum recycling seem to result in products being efficiently returned to use. While some mixed recycling basically gets routed to landfills? Edit: Agree on turning off the tap. That's the primary thing we need to focus on.
- fmajid 8y agoPaper recycling doesn't work because it needs to be 99%+ pure and most Americans are lazy and put contaminated paper in the stream, so our paper sent to recycling is only 90% clean and thus recyclers cannot accept it. Aluminum is pretty much the only material that is economically viable to recycle.
- Nasrudith 8y agoI wonder about garbage and recycling why we don't see more sorted stockpiles in a "junkyard" ethos for "might be worth something in the future when resource extraction vs new costs" change. My best guess is that the sorting is too expensive.
- TylerE 8y agoNot just sorting, but contamination. Cardboard is recyclable. A pizza box soaked with grease ins't, and can contaminate other potential recyclables as well.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoIsn't it? All reused cardboard gets soaked and cleaned first, I'm sure the recyclers can deal with oils and other such contaminants.
- cdolan 8y agoThere is a powerful (sub?)culture in the business world based upon proclaiming your company is sustainable. LEED is actually part of the problem in a way. The metrics are based on unimportant factors like “diversion” (meaning it was dumped in a foreign country as “recycling” rather than safely burned or land filled), and the measurements are almost All estimates. It will be a long road to change a culture that demands “recycling” simply because a politician or CEO committed to “Zero Waste by 20X0”, and the recycling rate must always go up year over year.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoWhat does safely burned in the context of plastic packaging mean?
- cdolan 8y agoWaste to energy programs, where exhaust is contained and not released into the atmosphere, is a viable means of disposal for many materials. Particularly viable for those which are oil based, like plastic, which are highly pollutive if not contained (see our oceans), take a massive amount of time to naturally decompose, and have relatively high potential energy (because they are petroleum based). Edit: I notice you said plastic packaging. Which made me thing of the massive amount of plastics in retailed packaging. My answer there would be that reducing is always better than recycling - start shipping with less material and/or more paper based products that naturally decompose in a few days/weeks.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoThank you for your swift and comprehensive reply. I wasn’t aware plastics could be burned and the exhaust contained / treated / whatever.
- phkahler 8y agoBurning plastic is perhaps not ideal. But I'd guess it's better than pretending to recycle it while actually dumping it somewhere.
- quakeguy 8y agoYou are absolutly right. To others seeing this comment, i‘d recommend you watch the Documentary named „Plastic China“. It is on YT, but you support the makers here: https://www.plasticchina.org https://www.plasticchina.org We need to stop plastic polluttion now, or im afraid the earths ecosystem will collapse sooner or later.
- 14 8y agoThat documentary saddened and disgusted me. I realized that recycling is nothing more then moving my garbage to another country where some of it is recycled at the cost of their health and environment. I realized it is actually better to just toss my stuff in the trash and at least it stays in my country. But this still bothers me. In the past every jar you would buy at the store would fit the same lids as the canning jars and you could literally buy a jam, use it, then put your own jam in that jar. Why did they stop doing that? The packaging industry has promoted waste for years and people want change. I too recommend that documentary if you haven't seen it.
- immernerstheime 8y agothere maybe something very easy to recycle some kind of plastic maybe PET maybe PP or whateve that maybe could be easy to produce and cheap to produce in a small plant like bricks for say Dog HOuses for example or to pile at the borders of gardens or something like this oreven to rplace bricks at some parts of a barn wall or even fences whateve anything kind of that size maybe roof tiles yeah... The goal is to keep them at a sight at the same time not small parts and particles around and easy to take to some other recicling step if demand demands or whatever righ and to keep it contained at same places not fucking around like garbage yeah with small plants for rough simple cheap shape of tile or roof or whatever Jars for water right BIg and THick Jars of water to have rain water or so for gardens yeah thanks
- shortoncash 8y agoYeah, I always wondered why I couldn't just get my MacBook at the Apple store unboxed and then let them keep the packaging and re-use it for transport. It's not like their box has any utility to me after; I just put my laptop and its pieces in a bag and never look back at that box. The worst part is -- I keep a lot of boxes around for years thinking the little plastic doodads and little accessories might become useful for me someday. What actually happens is that they never get used and then get tossed after the product is no longer useful to me.
- madengr 8y agoChina is also a big exporter of plastic shit. Maybe there ought to be a law that requires plastic shit to be retured to the country of origin.
- mikekchar 8y agoAlternatively there could be a law that countries that import plastic shit have a plan for dealing with it before they import it.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoYup. China doesn't export into another dimension; they're country that specialized to be the world's factory. And a factory doesn't do anything without work orders, which come predominantly from the western markets.
- sagartewari01 8y agoBecause it will be inconvenient. It's like an unspoken agreement between us, "listen pal, if everyone does it, noone can be held accountable, and if you stop, it will be useless effort since everyone else will keep doing it". The second statement is used very often to justify the lazy decisions our fragile mind takes.
- gotocake 8y agoMaybe, or maybe it would be unprofitable.
- sagartewari01 8y agoI don't think it will be even fractionally unprofitable compared to billions of us dying. I just realized I'm making an argument for socialism. Anyone up for it?
- gotocake 8y agoPeople have to care about those people, and have to believe in that reality instead of a pleasing fantasy, and they have to believe it will happen soon enough to matter to them. It turns out that a lot of corporate execs either believe in a fantasy (tech will save us), don’t give a shit if they make their money (lovely fallout shelters in NZ), or even see opportunities in a few thousand megadeaths. If you can sell cigarettes to kids...
- 00N8 8y agoever since I heard Noam Chomsky describe himself as a libertarian socialist, I thought, that's the non mainstream political affiliation for me!
- Nursie 8y ago> The second statement is used very often to justify the lazy decisions our fragile mind takes. Unfortunately it's also true, in a sort of self-fulfilling prediction kinda way. And even if not, and it remains true for the majority of others, what have you done? Put in a load of extra effort and made your own life more difficult, but achieved nothing. This is why collective action at the state level is necessary.
- Iv 8y agoI am skeptical of the idea that it is all about the profits of the packaging industry. All the revenues they make is from costs for other, more powerful, industries that would not mind cutting down on packaging costs. In the end that is really just about giving the good incentives. India blocking waste imports is a good way. Countries blocking waste exports or forcing actual, effective and demonstrable recycling may be another.
- Pristina 8y agoWhat annoys me is the consistent blaming on the 'industry' and 'profit' when industries only make thins people buy. So why do people use single-use plastic? Because they are lazy, and it's convenient.
- DangitBobby 8y agoAnd because it's often the only option. Here's a question for you, which one happened first? A) someone packaged a good in plastic or B) someone bought a good packaged in plastic?
- tengbretson 8y agoIts a third option: At some point someone decided to package an existing product that was not usually packaged in plastic, in plastic. Consumers decided the new way of packaging was superior and everyone adopted it to keep up.
- DangitBobby 8y agoI have to disagree that all changes in the details of product disbursement originate from an increased benefit to consumers (rather to to benefit producers as your comment implies), but I cant deny that there are substantial benefits on both sides once you ignore the externalities. Regardless, it is practically impossible to avoid buying most goods without at least a small amount of plastic packaging, so even if the masses were capable of organizing to effect change regarding packaging, someone has to recognize a market for it and change practices accordingly.
- Pristina 8y agoIt's the only option because it's the best option. Without plastic what would you package things with? Everything is shit by comparison.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoIt's a problem of scale, convenience, hygiene, etc. "back in the day" stuff like paper bags or waxed paper was a lot more common, but the volumes were also much lower, the availability of luxuries like idk, takeaway food and soda was much lower, etc. Going back will mean going to the market, getting fresh vegetables and potatoes and shit, and put them in either paper bags or reused burlap sacks. I think an individual's biggest contribution would already be changing their food habits; stuff like keto, primal diets, vegetarianism / veganism are a step in the good direction. Assuming you cook your own food, instead of idk, grabbing a McD's salad (in a plastic container) or pre-packaged vegetables (plastic bags).
- black-tea 8y agoPlastic recycling has always been a massive con that just makes people feel better. If you have food wrapped in plastic that is new material that will never be recycled. Even if it was melted down and turned into something else, that's not recycling, it's just slowing the spiral down to the landfill. Some materials can truly be recycled, like steel and glass.
- mikorym 8y agoI do think there is merit in the waste-as-a-commodity view.
- kevin_b_er 8y agoCorporations can make and ship plastic trash more cheaply than reusable containers. The populace likes it because its less time to toss something than to something actually reusable or actually recyclable.