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As Costs Skyrocket, More U.S. Cities Stop Recycling
- andrewstuart 8y agoThe packaging industry is going to fight tooth and nail so it can continue to spew out single use plastics for every single sales transaction that occurs. There's big money involved. Imagine the costs to the packaging industry if it was no longer allowed to create infinite garbage. I do find it strange that there seems to be zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles.
- SamReidHughes 8y agoIt would create infinite other forms of garbage that people throw in the trash anyway.
- outside1234 8y agoPlastic lasts essential forever - aluminum and steel do not
- cc81 8y agoIn countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled. Other containers such as paper might sometimes even be worse as it will cost more energy to produce them than plastic.
- NullPrefix 8y ago>paper might sometimes even be worse as it will cost more energy to produce them than plastic That's the point. Plastic is cheap to produce but costly to look after. Paper is costly to produce but cheap to look after.
- cc81 8y agoAnd my point is that it is not necessarily true in countries with good waste management. I will take Sweden as an example with plastic bags. I cannot find the quotation now but a researcher was asked about plastic bags and the environmental impact on them and the point was that it was not as clear as people think. In Sweden almost all plastic bags ends up being burned like this: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/energy-production/sweden-is-great-at-turning-trash-to-energy.htm https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-tech/e... That is very cheap. And the result would be that the total environmental impact for the complete life cycle might be greater if you choose a paper bag as more energy was required in creating it.
- gambiting 8y ago>>In countries with good waste management I assume they are burned if they are not recycled Those countries are so rare that it's almost not worth mentioning. Vast majority of places around the world, including most of the developed world do not have "good waste management" by this definition. Even in countries as rich as UK, Germany and France most waste goes to a landfill, not an incinerator. Sure Sweden shows a good example how it can be done, but it's like dismissing the problem of car-related pollution because there exists one hydrogen car that you can actually buy. Yes, it doesn't have those problems but in the large scheme of things it's completely irrelevant.
- barney54 8y agoI’m not seeing the problem with plastic going into landfills. That means it doesn’t result in plastic pollution in waters and the ocean and is sequestering the carbon back in the earth.
- martinald 8y agoNot true in the UK anymore. Nearly every local authority has or has under construction a 'waste to energy' plant (incinerator). Most of South London's waste has been burnt since 1994: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELCHP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SELCHP, for example.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y ago> Even in countries as rich as UK, Germany and France most waste goes to a landfill, not an incinerator. Dumping untreated waste into landfills has been illegal in Germany since 2005, so that's not a thing anymore.
- tonyedgecombe 8y agoLandfill has been falling steadily in the UK for a long time. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/607416/Digest_of_Waste_and_Resource_Statistics__2017_rev.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- xorfish 8y ago
- newnewpdro 8y agoNot all forms of garbage are equally harmful to the environment. We should enforce prioritizing producing garbage that provides nutrition to the things it passes through. Plastics do the opposite, to the extent of killing the animals mistaking it for food.
- crooked-v 8y agoSingle-used cardboard wrappings for non-perishables don't have nearly as much impact on the environment as plastic, even if just thrown away.
- bunderbunder 8y agoIt really depends on whether you value apples or oranges more highly. My understanding is that paper fares better on the litter front, since even the stuff that escapes landfills still degrades quickly, while plastic tends to fare better on the carbon footprint front, because it's lighter (which reduces fuel burned to ship things) and less energy-intensive to manufacture.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoI'm no packaging expert, however we did innovate ourselves in to this mess, it seems reasonable we may be able to innovate ourselves out of it.
- majewsky 8y agoIs that anything more than a sentiment? It's easy to come up with counter-examples. For example, it's easy for me to "innovate" myself into a 15-foot hole in the ground, and likely impossible to innovate myself out of it without outside help.
- TheSpiceIsLife 8y agoWhat is the point of this comment? I’m not suggesting any one individual attempt to innovate themselves out of a world polluted with plastic without outside help, but I guess digging yourself a 15-foot grave could be construed as one method. It’s always easier to say why a thing can’t be done than come up with methods of doing a thing and implementing that thing. I have friends who intentionally restrict the amount of plastic-packaged items they buy, they would struggling to throw out a 200mm cube of tightly bound plastics every month or two; so we know significant reductions in plastic waste are possible on an individual scale. In the scope of, for example, landing a probe on an asteroid and returning a sample, the engineering challenges facing us in the form of reducing plastic packaging use seem to me, the non-expert, fairly trivial. I could list some possibilities I, and others, have consider, though they seem to be extensively thrashed out in the comments here and the internet at large. Was going to the moon, or being able to buy an all electric production vehicle, or the modern microchip, not a mere sentiment at some point? It seems like the primary lack in this context is the desire for collective action, which appears to be changing. Perhaps I wildely misunderstood your comment?
- SamReidHughes 8y agoRecycling has nothing to do with plastic pollution. Plastics that don't get recycled instead get buried in a hole in the ground.
- tyoma 8y agoAs a counterpoint, single use packaging is a godsend to people with food allergies.
- ddebernardy 8y agoOut of curiosity, what's wrong with single use paper packaging or some other non-plastic alternative to the same effect?
- abainbridge 8y agoBroadly speaking, I expect the answer is that plastic better prolongs shelf life and leads to less food waste. And plastic is cheaper.
- abainbridge 8y agoFor example, in the UK a punnet of strawberries in the supermarket has a little rectangle of bubble wrap glued into the bottom of it. It is there to reduce the amount of physical damage to the fruit. It looks like it couldn't do anything. But the food companies would love not to have the extra cost of the rectangle of bubble wrap and the gluing process. They do it because it works.
- GordonS 8y agoI always thought it's more like a nappy than bubble wrap; it's always stained with the colour of the fruit, so assumed it was there to absorb moisture from bruised fruit.
- abainbridge 8y agoOh yeah, sometimes there's a nappy thing, but I'd say bubble wrap is more normal for strawberries. I think the nappy thing is impregnated with something that absorbs ethylene. See http://www.itsfresh.com/Absorbing_Ethylene.html http://www.itsfresh.com/Absorbing_Ethylene.html The bubble wrap can be seen in a photo in this BBC article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/in_search_of_the_naked_strawbe.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/monthwithoutplastic/2008/08/in_se...
- dredmorbius 8y agoThat's been a very long-term strategy. See Annie Leonard's "Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change": In one of the most iconic ads of the twentieth century, a Native American (actually, it was an Italian dressed up as a Native American) canoes through a river strewn with trash. He disembarks and walks along the shore as the passenger in a car driving past throws a bag of litter out the window. As the camera zooms in to a single tear rolling down his cheek, the narrator announces, “People start pollution. People can stop it.” This 1971 ad, just a year after the first national Earth Day celebration, had a huge impact on a generation awakening to environmental concerns. Children and young adults watched it over and over, shared the faux-Indian’s grief, and vowed to make changes in their individual lives to stop pollution. That response was exactly what the ad’s creators hoped for: individual action. For the ad was produced not by a campaign to protect the environment but by a campaign to protect the garbage-makers themselves. http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainabilitypossible/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/SOW2013-23-Leonard-.pdf http://blogs.worldwatch.org/sustainabilitypossible/wp-conten...
- thinkingkong 8y agoIt's a little more nuanced than that. The ad was produced by soft drink companies, because the tabs were strewn all over the place. The goal of the companies banding together and creating this campaign was to put the onus on the individual to clean up garbage, and defer responsibility themselves.
- dredmorbius 8y agoThat's Leonard's message, precisely.
- blablablabla991 8y agoI don't get the logic behind this? How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? And if it isn't superfluous, getting rid of it might be a net negative?
- andrewstuart 8y ago>>> How can the packaging industry force companies to order superfluous packaging? By strongly opposing any initiative to implement returnable, multi use packaging, coming up with a bunch of plausible reasons why it doesn't work - maybe it's unhygienic, maybe things can't be washed etc etc
- blablablabla991 8y agoBut if multi use packaging would work just as well other single use packaging, wouldn't the packaging industry make the same profits?
- Dylan16807 8y agoMany types of wasteful packaging work better for them, when they don't have to pay a lot of the costs. That doesn't mean they're the better overall choice.
- blablablabla991 8y agoWhy would THEY have to pay the costs, and not their customers? Presumably, if the costs for packaging would go up, packaging industry would also rice the prices to make up for it?
- Dylan16807 8y agoCharging the customers at point of purchase is perfectly fine and equivalent. Customers are already indirectly paying, the point is to move that cost to a point where it's super obvious and affects purchasing decisions. Customers as a group were already paying the cost of the garbage, but there was no pressure on the manufacturers to reduce it. Once you make the change then the total cost is the same, but now reducing packaging can improve a manufacturer's profit margin[1], even if it costs them a tiny bit more to make! This pushes things toward reduced waste, with the total number of [shelf price + garbage harm] dropping by some number of pennies. [1] Even if you charge the customer directly, presumably the manufacturer still wants to hit a specific shelf price.
- anonymous5133 8y agoI think there will eventually be a public outcry since now based on the research, it appears that plastic has made a full loop into the human food chain. Plastic fibers are being found in human sewage...which basically means we have plastic in our diets. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-plastics-microplastics-human-feces/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/10/news-...
- akvadrako 8y agoMost people could use more fiber in their diet.
- grecy 8y ago> zero noticeable social pressure on bottled drink companies to stop using single use plastic bottles Plastic water bottles - of any size - have been illegal in NSW, a state of Australia for many years. It has been fantastic. Governments need to grow a spine and stop taking so much corporate money as bribes, and actually get to work making our world better.
- m3at 8y agoIs it for water only? If yes, did consumption of other drinks still sold in plastic bottles increase? Genuinely interested, if no hard numbers exist anecdotes are fine
- dannyw 8y agoI'm drinking from a plastic water bottle right now in NSW, so I'm no sure what you're referring to.
- zebracanevra 8y agoSome small towns like Bundanoon [1] have banned water bottles, but in no way have water bottles been banned across NSW. There has been a push from leading supermarkets Coles and Woolworths to ban single use plastic bags, with great success. But that's a private matter, not from the government. Other states have banned them, but not NSW. [2] [1] https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/bundanoon-in-world-first-ban-on-bottled-water/news-story/03d20a2496881eafa9510b3fdf019b36 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/bundanoon-in-wo... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/supermarket-ban-sees-80pc-drop-in-plastic-bags-nationwide/10576554 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/supermarket-ban-sees-...
- adventured 8y agoThis is a market opportunity to come up with less costly systems that can operate at slim margins and with scale. Recycling will never be the greatest of businesses. However the scale of demand in a country as large as the US is extraordinary. 5% margins at $100 billion in sales is ultimately a giant, $60-$80 billion market cap business. That's the kind of opportunity this presents for an enterprise that can quickly move to be the solution to the post China recycling problem.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI always think this is a great opportunity for AI and Robotics. Sorting recycling automatically would be a huge improvement. Edit: I know you are not supposed to ask about downvotes but I have no idea why this got downvoted. This would finally be an application of AI that benefits mankind instead of more surveillance for ads.
- therealx 8y agoI didn't down vote you, but I do know that some robotics is used now. In addition with different sized mesh screens to filter size. Then they use float/sink and melting point to further separate.
- maxxxxx 8y agoIn Germany you pay a deposit when you buy a bottle and when you bring it back, you get your money back. At least when I lived there the system worked well. there is always a lot of pressure from industry to go one-way though.
- i_cant_speel 8y agoThat is also a thing in a few states. But based on the labels on the bottles, I believe it's maybe 4-7 states that participate in that program.
- berbec 8y agoThe bottles are labeled at your local plant for your area. My bottles talk about NY-NJ-CT.
- genocidicbunny 8y agoCalifornia has this as well -- CRV, but I dont see too many people taking advantage of it. Part of the problem is that most stores dont accept the bottles back -- you need to bring them to a recycling dropoff point that seem to be relatively rare and far in between.
- maxxxxx 8y agoIt's also too cheap. The deposit needs to be significant to make sure people bring things back.
- usrusr 8y agoOnly enough to make very poor people collect it. In most of the bigger German cities it is considered rude to put a deposit-system beverage container inside a public trash can, you are supposed to put them on top of below, or even in a special tray so that collectors don't need to use their little LED flashlights to search the inside. Some progressive beverage companies have even made it part of their brand identity to print instructions for easily accessible abandoning on their labels.
- aviv 8y agoRecycling is treating the symptom and not the root cause. The real problem is people buying too much crap they don't really need or shouldn't consume in the first place.
- glial 8y agoThat's a narrow perspective - the root case is the broader expectations about packaging, from both producers and consumers. Lots of food comes wrapped in single-use plastic, too. It's one way to keep food shelf-stable. We need alternative packaging (or package re-use), since can't stop buying food.
- aviv 8y agoI would argue most of what you are referring to as "food" is not and should not be considered food for humans though.
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoThis is a rather elitist perspective.
- aviv 8y agoEating fruits and vegetables that can easily be composted is elitist? News to me.
- barbecue_sauce 8y agoEver heard of a food desert?
- aviv 8y agoGive me a break. First address the atrosious food consumption habits within the 94% of US population who do not live in so called food deserts before it can be used to justify the behavior of the vast majority.
- coldtea 8y agoRecycling was always a lipstick on a pig. Inefficient, subsidized, hypocrisy. Wanna help the environment? Reduce consumption overall.
- nraynaud 8y agovery specifically: don't take the plane, don't got to work with your car, and live in high density housing.
- thundergolfer 8y agoAnd have a vegan/vegetarian diet.
- nostrademons 8y agoAnd don't have kids.
- Iamhisalt 8y agoEspecially if you are white.
- t1lthesky 8y agoI think this is a misguided sentiment, and this article sums up the reasons why pretty well: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/want-to-help-fight-climate-change-have-more-children?utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=view&cmpid%3D=socialflow-twitter-view&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-03-14/want-t...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- crygin 8y agoSarah Taber explained the complexity of this aspect of dietary environmentalism better than I ever could in this thread on Twitter: https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/1006363775723888640 https://twitter.com/SarahTaber_bww/status/100636377572388864... tl;dr: the effectiveness of vegetarian diets is dependent on local conditions. Vegetarianism in a globalized world relies on fossil-fuel-based transport or farming techniques.
- nostrademons 8y agoIt makes me wonder if we were ever really recycling, or if "recycling" was a marketing buzzword for "cheaply dumping your trash in China". I seem to remember a lot of controversy over recycling in the 80s and early 90s, with my local town government insisting it was too expensive. Suddenly everything changed in the late 90s, right around the time that globalization took off, and recycle bins took off everywhere. By the late 2000s everything was moving to "single stream recycling", where you just throw all your trash, cardboard, plastic, etc. in one bin and somehow it'd magically get sorted at the facility. That frankly seemed a little too good to be true to me, but everybody was buying into it. Suddenly Plastic China comes out, China stops accepting recyclables, and we're back to where we were in the early 90s. What if all the "progress" was just an illusion where companies figured they could brand trash-hauling as recycling for eco-friendly customers, charge more for it, and then dump the trash on an unregulated Chinese buyer who could do whatever they want with it?
- maxerickson 8y agoThis is one of those things where you can probably just go to your local sorting center and ask for a look at what they do. Cardboard is profitable to recycle domestically...
- mirimir 8y agoThat's true. Sort of. Clean cardboard is recyclable. But cardboard with broken glass, not so much. And not cardboard with food waste. Or even cardboard with too much plastic tape. Recycling only works with source separation. But how does that work when there are so many types of plastics in use? And worse, stuff made from multiple types of plastics? Often now plus aluminum and paper. It's a mess.
- SeanBoocock 8y agoI had the opportunity to do this about 15 years ago. I found it pretty shocking. The recycling center consisted of two large and open warehouses on the site of a landfill. Inside were a series of multi-level conveyor belts staffed largely by Hispanic workers. In front of each worker was a station on the other side of the belt with several chutes for different types of materials. The workers operated in shifts with the belts moving at what felt like an impossible pace. The primary job requirement according to an overseer was not vomiting during a two hour trial run working in front of the belt. Despite being in central Arizona, the interior was darkened with a confetti of small paper particles hanging in the air and covering every surface in nearly an inch of "dust". The only thing I could liken it to was the ash particulate in the aftermath of a volcano eruption. I wouldn't want to spend any time in there without heavy air filtering, yet I saw many workers operating without even light paper masks. The experience brought home what the cost was for single stream recycling. Short of automation I have a hard time justifying that human sacrifice even as I continue to recycle out of habit.
- rdtsc 8y ago> In Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a landfill. I heard other cities doing that. It is interesting in municipalities where people diligently separate their recycling into multiple streams, everything neatly going into a separate bins and so on, and then it all goes and gets dumped in the landfill. That says something about human psychology. People need to engage in this ritual because it makes them feel better. They might say to themselves "I am separating my glass, from metal, from plastic, I am saving the environment! I feel good about myself". The economy doesn't work out in the end, but nobody dares to tell the people that, so they happily continue to sort their trash. It's kind of a dystopian win-win situation.
- SiempreViernes 8y agoWell no, the environment gets ruined so it's more of a "everyone suffers and die ahead of time" situation
- rdtsc 8y agoThat's why I called it a "a dystopian win-win" :-)
- selimthegrim 8y agoRecyclables, Please! Steam greenlight that stat. I’d buy it. Maybe the plot twist is you’re homeless all along!
- BrandonMarc 8y agoOr the recyclables are made out of people.
- umanwizard 8y agoRecycling is completely unrelated to most of the actually serious environmental issues. (E.g., climate change)
- dade_ 8y agoI think that we should have started with municipal composting, paper recycle and plastic Reduce programs. Most of the contamination is from food waste and it makes up most of the weight of trash (obviously because of water content) and I imagine is the major source of methane in our landfills. Somehow we started with recycling plastics programs (perhaps industry manipulation) which is a complicated mess. Where I live, they still can't recycle black plastics so they end up in the landfill anyway. The these latest developments, I am sure if we actually looked, we would find out that there are provinces in China making a fortune importing recyclables that actually just went straight to a landfill. Of course, now they have decades of trash to contend with. Meanwhile we can all sit pretty thinking about how wonderful we were for separating our recyclables.
- mymythisisthis 8y agoI can't even find a way of properly recycling batteries. It would be nice if all the fire halls allowed you to drop-off batteries, and old fire-alarms (they contain radioactive material).
- jiaweihli 8y agoHow do compostable products compare to recyclable ones? How much better/worse are they and how much impact do they have?
- pfranz 8y agoJust my opinion, but compostable doesn't make that great of a product in a lot of places they're being pushed. I've seen a bunch of places switch to compostable silverware and cups. The silverware is a lot less durable than plastic (which is already a low bar) and coffee lids don't fit properly. One place I frequent uses them and I constantly hear others complain and discover this for themselves. I sound like an old man, but I am often very explicit about getting a mug of coffee when I order, but a different person fulfills the order and often puts it in a compostable cup. Poor products turns people off to that technology and discourages me from ordering coffee.
- icebraining 8y agoArguably, being annoying is a feature, not a bug; we want to discourage single-use packaging and get people to bring their own reusable containers.
- pfranz 8y agoI was trying to think of a way to write my first comment without coming across as insensitive to the environment. I much prefer the cheapest reusable containers to most expensive disposable. I believe it's common for people in Japan to carry their own towels to dry their hands. I think it's becoming more common for people in China and Japan to carry their own cutlery. I hope that catches on. My preference would be to get coffee in a mug, which they offer (afaik they don't offer byo containers), but due to whatever other incentives (poor communication between workers when ordering or not wanting to wash a dish) I often get a compostable disposable cup.
- icebraining 8y agoFWIW, I didn't think your comment was insensitive; mine was about the population in general, not targeted at you.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- siliconunit 8y agoThe alternative to total recycling could be to rough recycling what can be easily extracted and used (ie metals) and the rest could go through a cycle of thermolysis/pyrolysis, powered by solar or other sustainable sources...
- opportune 8y agoNot sure about burning recyclables, but burning trash in general is more environmentally friendly than it seems. Sure it releases CO2 (which isn't really an issue if that energy would otherwise come from fossil fuels) but it's possible to scrub out most other contaminants, and it prevents the burnable materials from languishing in a landfill producing methane. It's not recycling, but it is reusing. I'm kind of skeptical about the benefits of recycling certain materials that are so cheap that the operational costs of recycling are much greater than the value saved. This seems to be happening in the article where people are increasingly subsidizing unprofitable recycling programs. As far as I know, it's not an environmental disaster to just dump aluminum, glass, and plastic in a landfill, and it seems cheaper to just produce more of those products from their original materials than to recycle the used materials. Maybe we should take a step back and ask ourselves whether it's worth our time to recycle certain materials.
- mymythisisthis 8y agoHigh temperature burning is a bit better environmentally than people just burning garbage at home. The extremely high temp is the key. There is a demand for aluminum and metal, many people make a bit of a living collecting these for money. The problem with glass is that it has food residue on it. This causes leaching in the landfills. Farmers need COMPOST! Soil around the world is nearly depleted. We need an efficient way of cleaning out the food particles from food containers, before disposing or recycle, and having those particles end up on farms.
- seanalltogether 8y agoWhen I first moved to the UK I was frustrated about the fact that I had to separate my food waste from my general garbage, or my glass from my general recycling. I can see now why it's a better system because the potential to reuse these materials is higher when they are separated at the source. Not to mention the fact that cities have landfill/recycling centers you can drive to and get rid of anything and everything for free.
- woah 8y agoWouldn’t it be better in terms of co2 production for plastics to stay in a landfill rather than being burned? seems like they would sequester carbon for a very long time
- wyattpeak 8y agoPeople keep saying that China was accepting recyclables. They weren't accepting them, they were buying them. It's hard to make a case that it was all just trash when somebody was paying for it.
- czps 8y agoI don’t know the industry but it seems to me that if the “trash” was bought by Chinese companies only to be dumped there for the most part then it’s still trash. Was it cheaper to ship this stuff to China than to pay American landfills to handle this stuff? I don’t think having someone pay for it matters. Isn’t it the end result that matters?
- dang 8y agoCould you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. HN is a community. Users needn't use their real name, but should have some identity for others to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. There are legit uses for throwaways, just not routinely. Lots more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20community%20identity https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- czps 8y agoGenerally when I reach a certain number of points I destroy the account by changing the password to something that I can’t remember and I don’t use an email address with my accounts. There is no delete option that I’m aware of. I’ve been on the site for a long time. Since the beginning. I didn’t know you guys kept track of MAC addresses or however else you track this stuff. I won’t do it again. This is the push I’ve needed to stop coming to the site. Thanks. I mean it.
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- irrational 8y agoIs there anyway to get transparency on what individual communities are actually doing? At our last county fair, the recycling department had a game set up to help people understand what should go into trash versus recycling. I was asking the manager about the specifics and he said that the recycling was taken to a local facility where local people were paid to sort through it on a conveyor belt to pull out stuff that should've gone into the trash. It sounded feasible at the time, but reading through these comments I wonder if the recycling was actually being shipped to China (this was before the whole thing about China refusing recyclables started). We are on the west coast by a large port, so I would think it would easier for us to have been shipping recyclable to China that people farther inland.
- nullc 8y agoRecycling is good for the world. NO! YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG!! Recycling is NOT good for the world. It is bad for the environment, it is bad for our health, and it is bad for our economy. I’m not kidding. Recycling is not good for the environment. It is destructive to the earth and it is a major contributor to global warming. Recycling is not good for our health. It contributes to obesity and diseases like heart disease and cancer. Recycling is bad for our economy. It increases the cost of a product, and in turn, the price of everything that is made with that product. Recycling is not good for our nation. We pay a tremendous price for the privilege of having the world’s most advanced and efficient recycling system. Recycling is a huge, colossal waste of time, energy, money, and resources. And THAT is why we need to get back to basics and get back to basics in our recycling efforts. One of the best ways to start is to look at the process of creating a paper product. When you make a paper product, it is basically a long chain of materials. Everything from the raw materials (wood, cardboard, paper, etc.), to the reagents (dyes, solvents, etc.) to the printing equipment (chemicals, glue, paper, ink, etc.), to the packaging, to the packaging materials (mercury, chemicals, etc.) to the processing equipment (heating, cooling, etc.), to the packaging materials, to the packaging materials that are shipped overseas and to the packaging materials that are used in the United States. Each step along the way creates tons of waste that we constantly have to clean up. The process of making a paper product is a very wasteful one. But the end result is something that all of us need to consume. And if we want to keep the recycling process running efficiently, then we really need to think about each and every step that goes into making a paper product.
- GistNoesis 8y agoNice try GPT-2 :)
- chungleong 8y agoI often wonder how much of the plastic in the ocean actually came from "recycled" plastic being shipped to another country for burning and/or burial.
- mxfh 8y agoIs there some life cycle assessment (LCA) writeup somewhere on the whole plastics issue? From what it looks "recycling" was big lie due to no accountablity? So all consumer facing regulation in societies with a working waste disposal system is pretty much pointless, if the mess is on the systems top end side. In Germany, I now get everything in single use paper bags as the default, if I don't intervene, which I see as worse environmental impact, the then few grams of plastic bags we had before. As long as you have a closed system, with near 100% waste caputure, no plastic should end up in the wild when accountability is enforced through all waste management transactions. So I'm still not shure, how this whole garbage patch topic connects to consumer policies in countries with working closed disposal systems, is this just activism to distract from inability to control the systemic issues here?
- throwaway12iii 8y agoPeople try really hard in Germany. But it's still only at something like 40% of stuff recycled. Also, most of that "recycling" means "burn it" for energy. Beer bottles do remarkably well in Germany. Mostly because a lot of the beer drank is by major brands who Reuse the bottles, and there are good money incentives for people to bring them back (or give them to homeless so they do). Beer bottles don't get moved very far on trucks burning fossil fuels. That system is one of the best in Germany and the world. Moral of the story 1: drink beer like Germans. Moral 2: Even in societies that try really hard to recycle well... they still mostly fail.
- pointillistic 8y agoIsn't burning the trash also hurts the environment?
- ineedasername 8y agoExtremely high temperatures mitigate most of that.
- Publik_Emily 8y agoMy understanding was that since China decided to stop taking in the world's plastic and toxic recycling, it's now virtually impossible to get rid of this stuff. Allegedly some of it is now dumped at sea.
- grizzles 8y agoA problem crying out for a robotic solution.
- rasengan0 8y agoSo is there a startup disruptive market here? Since less than clean recyclables is the new environmental pollution, is there an UberTrash in sight? Honey, I have a new gig, I pick up trash and my hours are flexible. Wee!
- kingkawn 8y agoSomeone I knew was trying to make a film a couple of years ago following the recycling stream from his neighborhood in nyc to China. His takeaway was that basically nothing is recycled.
- andrew_ 8y agoWhere's Mr. Fusion when you really need it?
- foxhop 8y agoI have a family of 5 (three young children). We don't bother trying to recycle paper or cardboard anymore. We compost it or use it in the garden as sheet mulch. Still our recycling bin fills faster than our "trash" due to packaging. I also make eco bricks out of any plastic bags or plastic wrappers.
- millstone 8y agoPlease share more about your eco bricks, this is the first I've heard of them. Is it as simple as filling a 2L plastic bottle with other plastics? Do you donate them, what are they used for?
- foxhop 8y agoI use Gatorade bottles. I'm currently using them between the studs in my shed to act as insulation.
- tpkj 8y agoThere is a problem with the materials the packaging industry uses. Are there any start-ups or big companies working on a solution?
- habosa 8y agoIn school we were taught the 3 RS: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Nobody ever taught me that they were in order. Reducing consumption is best. If you can't reduce, reuse. If it can't be reused, recycle it. I think we thought recycling was enough.
- masonic 8y agoKey to the economics of it working was that profit from redeemables (beverage cans, bottles) would pay for the rest of the process. Then came people "harvesting" out all the valuable elements.
- jillesvangurp 8y agoThe problem is not waste but the fact that is not a problem for consumers or manufacturers. A lot of product packaging only makes sense because you don't have to worry about disposing in a responsible way. Milk used to come in glass bottles, which the milkman would take back for reuse. Not anymore. There's no more milkman and the factory uses cheap to produce one time use packaging. Disposal cost is not their problem. The solution is twofold. 1) we can do better now at separating waste using AI and robotics. Instead of having 3 or 4 bins at home where we toss things based on our mood, gut feeling, or simply which bin is the least full; a robot could confidently be sorting waste into hundreds of buckets. And unlike humans they'd get it mostly right. Waste becomes a resource when you treat it properly. There are some places where former land fill sites are being mined for precious materials. This stuff is not worthless anymore. 2) Price for disposal needs to be part of the deal when selling a product. E.g. disposal cost for e.g. washing machines is part of the sales price in some countries. They take back the old one when you buy a new one. Already payed for when you bought it. Also, super convenient to not have to do that yourself.
- ragebol 8y agoSomething like https://zenrobotics.com https://zenrobotics.com? Sorting action in https://youtu.be/X_1sOPqM_VA https://youtu.be/X_1sOPqM_VA