35 ms·

Americans' plastic recycling is dumped in landfills

342 points by srameshc 7y ago

deogeo 7y ago
The large quantity of plastic waste in the first place is due to plastic industry lobbying: https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plastic-recycling/ https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plasti...
mc32 7y ago
Isn’t burying plastics one of the better options for it in terms of sequestering carbon? It goes back into the soil.
- wmf 7y ago
  But you have to admit having people sort plastics into recycling bins and then having the recycling company sort them again is a pretty inefficient way to get to the landfill.
  - mc32 7y ago
    Yes. On the other hand, this “sorting” makes people feel better. We don’t feel like we’re the baddies. From a realistic POV, yes, make people put plastic in a “landfill” bin, from a psych POV, make them do busywork so we feel better about ourselves.
    - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
      If what we're doing is bad, surely it would be better to know that it is bad and be forced to internalize that and deal with the consequences (even be inspired to come up with alternatives!) rather than just being tricked into thinking everything's daisies, no?
      - mc32 7y ago
        So long as we’re using plastics (hence the sorting and “recycling”), the better alternative in terms of what to do with post-usage (non-usage is moot given it’s in the stream already), is to bury it and sequester carbon. Actually recycling it doesn’t sequester carbon and it’s energy negative.
        pcl 7y ago
        > non-usage is moot given it’s in the stream already You can apply backpressure to the stream by buying things not wrapped in plastic in the first place. It’ll take some time for the signal to have an impact, but if enough people selected less-packaged goods, the market would fix the supply chain over time. Also, if you pick items with less packaging up-front, then you don’t need to do as much work sorting waste on the back end!
    - flukus 7y ago
      We shouldn't create huge bureaucracies and pointless busy work to make people feel better. Pretending it's going to be recycled would also undermine efforts to reduce packaging.
    - robbrown451 7y ago
      It makes them satisfied that they've done their part to help the planet. Which is terrible. They could be putting that effort into actually doing something that helps. Or at least have their time back.
      - JudgeWapner 7y ago
        done their part to require a whole other diesel-burning truck to come pick their waste. Even though modern factory equipment can easily sort the garbage automatically at scale. I mean, farms have cameras fast enough to pick out single seeds out of fast-moving conveyor belts. This whole debacle should have been forced on the industry, not consumers.
    - cameldrv 7y ago
      If you look at it from the “environmentalism as a religion” metaphor, sorting the trash is sort of a ritual penance sort of like the rosary. In Germany there are 8 different trash cans in many places, and churches are closing left and right. People need to feel like they are atoning for their sins.
      - mschuster91 7y ago
        8 different trashcans? I'm in Munich, the recycling stations have 3 glass, 1 plastics, 1 aluminium container.
        eb0la 7y ago
        And you have one additional recycling station in the supermarket for Pfand bottles (water, beer, etc.) ;-) https://liveworkgermany.com/2017/05/how-does-the-german-pfand-system-work-and-is-it-effective/ https://liveworkgermany.com/2017/05/how-does-the-german-pfan... I wonder hoy effective this Pfand system is against littering. When I go to germany for a trip with the family I always find the streets clean, and I bet this is not because the germans clean streets lot, but as a consequence they don't litter instead.
        m_rcin 7y ago
        no container for paper?
        mschuster91 7y ago
        Paper, general waste and compost are collected at the house.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      Well, it did make me feel like I was "doing my bit". But knowing now that recycled material ends up in landfill, often getting shipped around the world first... well, now I feel cheated, disheartened, and basically like an idiot.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        I don't understand why people fell for the political ploy though. Even as a kid, the logistics of it never made sense. How could we trust everyone in a society (except maybe Japan and Singapore) to spend their time to sort their trash properly? Which means all the trash would have to be sorted at the waste facility anyway to make sure it wasn't contaminated with non recyclables...in which case why were individuals asked to sort it in the first place? Not only was this supposed to be sorted between paper/plastic/glass/metal, but also between different types of plastic? That was never going to happen on an individual basis. And what about huge apartment buildings and hotels? The only way recycling would have made sense was if it was all being sorted at the waste facility, which if it was, wouldn't have required people to sort it individually. Hence, the whole thing was a sham from the beginning.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      I'm interpretating this as governments having set up these schemes to fool people into thinking they are doing their bit, so they won't push as strongly for other environmental reforms?
  - Arbalest 7y ago
    You'd hope that the sort would be less intensive though. You might not need as many eyes to check that all the inappropriate stuff is out of the stream.
  - McAtNite 7y ago
    From what I heard it’s largely due to a concern that admitting recycling doesn’t work would make it extremely difficult to get it back up and working again once the issues have been addressed. Likewise a lot is the “sorting” people do when they throw out their trash is pretty bad. For example, a plastic bottle the cap on can’t be properly cleaned so it doesn’t get recycled. A pizza box in a stack of cardboard ruins the entire batch. Planet Money did a really interesting two episode series on recycling. That goes into why things are ending up in landfills and why we continue to practice the ritual of splitting our trash. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-should-we-recycle https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...
    - nradov 7y ago
      When I worked in an office I frequently pulled pizza boxes out of the recycling bin. Even highly educated professionals don't seem to understand the rules.
      - lrem 7y ago
        Come to Switzerland, we have well over 90% success rate here. Also: some people complain the total amount of recycled material is only a fraction of European average. Oh well...
        GordonS 7y ago
        Does recycled material in Switzerland actually get recycled, or does it eventually get shipped to the other side of the world to end up in landfill?
        lrem 7y ago
        Basing on the fact that materials not recycled by local companies, say TetraPak, are not accepted in collection: I always assumed they actually get recycled. The rest actually doesn't go to landfill, but gets incinerated.
      - slavik81 7y ago
  - mkl 7y ago
    I view plastics in landfills to be temporary. I think one day it will make economic sense to dig it up and use it, and pre-sorting it probably makes that day closer. Here's a TED talk (from 2011, not sure what's changed if anything) about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle?language=en And a key quote: "Now when you see these mountains, most people think of garbage. We see above-ground mines. And the reason we see mines is because there's a lot of valuable raw materials that went into making all of this stuff in the first place."
    - jessaustin 7y ago
      In fairness, we aren't even mining landfills for valuable metals yet. That seems like it will probably happen first?
      - mkl 7y ago
        I think both will happen in eventually. There's probably a lot more volume of plastic though.
- 01100011 7y ago
  Yes. It goes into cheap storage until we can figure out something to do with it. It's not killing turtles or turning into microplastics in the ocean. We should probably skip the recycling step though, or at least keep the plastics together in one place to make it easier to sort in the future.
- JudgeWapner 7y ago
  This, plus: how about regulation that forces waste management to bury all the plastic in one spot in the landfill, so that its more easily retrievable in the future? Whether for reuse, or if a plastic-consuming incinerator or microbe is ever viable, then you can point it to the quarantine.
- VBprogrammer 7y ago
  It doesn't count as sequestering when the original input didn't come from the carbon dioxide in the air. In effect we are putting perhaps 1% of the fossil fuels back underground. With biochar the land is improved for growing crops where as landfills are unlikely to be useable in any form in the near term.
  - garmaine 7y ago
    A lot of plastic ends up in incinerators, which does put it in the air.
apo 7y ago
> “All these years I have been feeling like I’m doing something responsible,” said Pai, clearly dumbstruck as she walked away with a full bag. “The truth hurts.” All is not lost. Consumers can be responsible by radically cutting consumption.
- realshowbiz 7y ago
  Consumption of what? For example: Virtually every food item is packaged in plastic. And it’s not consumers who decided it was more cost effective to use disposable plastic than wash a reusable container.
  - riffraff 7y ago
    > Virtually every food item is packaged in plastic Is it? Most of what I buy (vegetables, fruits, bread, eggs, milk, pasta, flour, sugar, salt, oil) is not. Meat, fish, rice, and cheese are the things that require some plastic, afaict, but do not constitute the majority of food.
    - savoytruffle 7y ago
      In my kitchen cupboards right now, I have all of these things packaged in plastic and I've never seen an alternative except sometimes milk in returnable glass jugs that nobody in the store knows how to ring up to get the deposit back.
      - riffraff 7y ago
        interesting, where do you live? I have seen pasta packaged in plastic, but I've literally never seen flour packaged in plastic.
    - GordonS 7y ago
      Yes, a lot of fruit and veg is usually loose, unless you're buying it pre-chopped. There is still a lot of fruit and veg that is wrapped in plastic though. I don't think I've ever seen pasta not in a plastic wrapper? For milk, it's usually in a plastic bottle, but often in tetra-pak type containers (don't honestly know what they're made of!). With oil, it's usually in a plastic bottle, occasionally a glass one for more expensive EV olive oils, and rarely in Europe I've seen shops with oil dispensers that allow you to fill your own container. For eggs, they are usually in a cardboard box, but occasionally in a plastic one. For salt, I think I've only ever seen it in plastic bottles or bags.
dang 7y ago
Related and recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342 Not quite as recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827
- blaser-waffle 7y ago
  We need some sort of reddit-style repost bot. "Times we've talked about this before... ... -Love, Repost Bot"
  - dang 7y ago
    I'm reluctant to do that because it often takes human intervention to find the good ones or drop the bad ones. For example, in the above case I searched on both recycling and landfills. Also, we don't allow bots to post HN comments. For submissions, the whoishiring ones are done by software, but that's it.
    - pvg 7y ago
      Maybe you can pawn it off on the Algolia people under the guise of a Smarter 'Past' Button Challenge!
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I don't know why landfills are so controversial. Shit doesn't decompose there which means it doesn't find its way into the ecosystem. Undisturbed in a big pile underground is a great place for all sorts of other nasty things.
- Moru 7y ago
  That's what we thought in the 70ies. Now we know better.
  - celeritascelery 7y ago
    Care to elaborate? I certainly don’t “know better”.
- JTbane 7y ago
  >I don't know why landfills are so controversial. Well, when corporations and governments say "it's properly lined and safe" and then years later the groundwater gets contaminated, people start creating controversy.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    Groundwater doesn't get contaminated if it is done properly. It's true that it is possible for it to be done badly. It seems a lot more likely that the public will care, and pressure people to make sure it is done right, if they aren't spending their energy sorting their supposed recyclables and thinking everything is taken care of.
    - riffraff 7y ago
      The problem is "it's done properly" will be verified decades later, and by the time the damage is done, and there may not even be anyone to sue anymore.
      - robbrown451 7y ago
blisterpeanuts 7y ago
Where are we with compostable plastics? For retail packaging of products that move fairly quickly, it seems like a reasonable solution.
- nkurz 7y ago
  I posted this article earlier today, which summarizes some of the positives and negatives of compostable plastics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547252
  - schoen 7y ago
    This article seems to break it down very well (no pun intended).
- justin66 7y ago
  I recently dug a black plastic flip-close food container that was marked "compostable" out of my parents compost pile, after burying it there almost exactly four years ago. It looked exactly the same as when I put it in there. Interesting experiment but that's what I was already expecting, based on the very small amount I'd read suggesting that one needs to put plastics marked "compostable" into some kind of weird high-temperature bioreactor in order to get them to break down. nkurz's article seems to delve deeper into this topic.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - lh7777 7y ago
    We have municipal composting here in Seattle, which can handle everything from food scraps to yard waste to bioplastics. The city incentivizes recycling and composting by charging a lot for trash collection, less for compost, and nothing for recycling. I’ve known for some time that much of my recycling is really going into a landfill, but there’s still value to separating for me because I can use a very small (low rate) trash can as there’s hardly anything left that goes in the trash. I wonder if composting is really a net benefit, though.
torgian 7y ago
I remember asking my parents about this in the late eighties and early nineties. We went to the landfills several times a year, and I saw so much plastic that I asked why plastic was being dumped here if we were supposed to be recycling. I think he said something that not all plastic is recycled or something.
ggggtez 7y ago
Just one more reason to hold corporations accountable for pollution and global warming. The free market is not going to solve this one, even when you give people warm and fuzzy feelings for "doing the right thing". It's just not profitable to be Green yet, and maybe that won't change until companies have to pay for the second order effects of their products.
- dehrmann 7y ago
  What does plastic that went from the recycling bin to the landfill have to do with "pollution and global warming" beyond plastic being an almost trivial use of oil?
  - sh-run 7y ago
    This is a question I've found myself asking quite a bit lately. Paper products are often marketed as a 'green' alternative to petroleum products. IIRC much of the plastic we use is made from a byproduct of the oil refinement process so it's something we have anyways. Even though paper products biodegrade quicker, it seems like unless the paper product is made from 100% post consumer waste a properly disposed plastic product is better for the environment. I do think part of the problem is that so many of our landfills are poorly managed. In high school I used to spend my summers working for the public works department in the rural community I grew up in. A few days out of the month we had to go out to the fields near the landfill and pick up plastic bags and other bits of trash that had blown out of the landfill before being covered. I say this as someone who avoids single use plastics, drinks tap water, recycles, etc.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      More like plastics are usually made from polyethylene. Thanks to fracking, the ethane that goes into making it is dirt cheap in N. America. More and more polyethylene plants are being set up all the time.
    - graeme 7y ago
      Plastics leech estrogen mimicking materials into the food chain. All living creatures now have bits inside us, and there have been large hormonal effects such as early puberty, increase in intersex births, declining male fertility, and so on. It's hard to say exactly which types of plastics do what, so maybe some are benign, but it's a large uncontrolled experiment at present. For example this shows how plastics shed fibres that end up in sea creatures: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics-found-in-stomachs-of-deepest-sea-creatures https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics... Some info on plastic estrogen-mimicking leaching: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ Bisphenol A is only one type. Plastics likely have other hormonal effects from other components. Increased intersex births from endocrine disrupting chemicals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ Testicular cancer rates are rising in the developed world, and it's linked to endocrine disruption in the womb. Waste is the focus, but I think it's misplaced. Our materials are everywhere in the environment. Even synthetic clothing sheds fibers everytime it's washed, and the same for microfiber clothes. (Note of course that plastics are not the only source of endocrine disruption)
carapace 7y ago
Plastic recycling is "solved": Thermal Depolymerization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization Even better: Molten Salt Oxidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation this is an exothermic reaction! I wish I had the gumption to make a start up out of MSO.
- chii 7y ago
  > Molten Salt Oxidation but then how do you get rid of the salt afterwards when it is fully saturated?
  - carapace 7y ago
    Well, worst case scenario: that's your trash, and at least you saved all the other atoms from the (toxic!?) landfill. That's the floor. The ceiling would be some sort of automated chemical/mechanical filter and recovery system. Technically all those "waste" molecules (chlorine and stuff) are useful industrial material, just in the wrong place. In the long run we should retire most toxic stuff, just stop using it as much as we do now. Spend out "pollution budget" on rockets and such.
  - 08-15 7y ago
    Landfill it, it's harmless. And since it's only ash that messes up the salt, the mass is tiny compared to the input. Plastics produce virtually no ash. Salt disposal could be a problem if it contains heavy metals, or if it contains something you want to recover (possibly phosphorus). Either way, MSO ended up concentrating the material in question and transforming it into a simpler chemical form, reducing the disposal problem, or making the recycling easier.
- hinkley 7y ago
  I think you need to read that TDP article a little more closely. I followed this story leading up to them building the first plant and for a while after that, as the whole thing fell to pieces. That plant had problems due to welds that weren't capable of handling the pressure. The smell was horrible and the neighbors considered it a nuisance. And the company went bankrupt. Ten years ago. Has anyone else tried TDP since then? If so then please update the article.
jnwatson 7y ago
Recycling has little to do with the environment except for the minor factor that transfer trucks will have to drive slightly farther as the close landfills fill up.
ars 7y ago
Why are people so against burning plastic? It's easily the most environmentally friendly option. Plastic has a lot of energy, burn it and use that energy. Then you don't need to dispose of it, and you can pump slightly less oil.
- aikinai 7y ago
  This is what Japan does.
  - Phenomenit 7y ago
    Nordic country's as well.
- hanniabu 7y ago
  I love plastic fumes in the air I breathe /s
  - ars 7y ago
    There are no fumes in a modern incinerator. Is that why people are against it? They think there are fumes?
    - noragami 7y ago
      I honestly was not aware you can burn plastic with minimum air pollution. Where I live, many people warm their homes in winter by burning plastic junk they find on the street. I don't have to explain what sort of air it produces. Being in it feels like washing your face with sulfuric acid. After living under these conditions for many years, it'll be hard to let go of stereotypes.
      - hanniabu 7y ago
        As with all things, just because it' possible to do it safely doesn't mean it will (chernobyl anyone?). I have a recycling plant near my house and about once a weak it smells horrible. That's just because it's strong enough to reach me on those days, living about a mile away. Those that live near it smell it every day. IT's been reported numerous times, but as always you're limited to what you can do as a mere civilian (in practical terms, not theoretical terms). Also as the other comment stated, much of it will no doubt be shipped to burn plants that aren't upgraded with the latest and greatest tech. Even then you also have to worry about proper maintenance of the systems. Sure, you can create regulation to cover all these angles, but I highly doubt that will happen.
nkkollaw 7y ago
Same thing in Italy. In many regions citizens separate waste, and they mix it back into a single landfill to save money or because they're not organized to dispose of it properly.
philliphaydon 7y ago
Singapore burns it all and turns it into reclaimed land.
PeterStuer 7y ago
And now you know why you have been seeing all those 'landfills are not all that bad' spindoctor articles of late.
- B-Con 7y ago
  It's going to landfills for a reason. This has prompted people to investigate why and then write about it.
hanniabu 7y ago
Wish there were separate landfills for these recyclables that aren't being recycled so that in the future they can be dealt with in a more proper manner. This can either be the ideal recycling we all imagine when we put a bottle in the bin, or it could be further advanced plastic decomposing microbes and worms.
- pmontra 7y ago
  How about allowing only plastic that can be recycled and banning everything else? This is also going to open a market for companies that create ways to recycle unappealing plastic types (but beware for shady companies that pretend to recycle and actually dump.)
  - mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
    This would be ideal but unfortunately laws are written by corporations that profit from plastic.
logifail 7y ago
It's not as though this issue only affects the US: "Between January and October 2018, Germany exported 114,000 tons of plastic rubbish to Malaysia, an increase of 125 percent" "Germans are great at separating their household waste, and the country is not allowed to export plastic unless it's for recycling. So why are there piles of German garbage all over Malaysia?" https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/the-plastic-trail-how-germanys-recycling-ends-up-in-malaysian-dumps-/24037020.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/the-plastic-trai...
- neuronic 7y ago
  This fails to mention that German recycling of paper, biowaste, cans and bottles is excellent. Plastic is a huge problem because it is a different beast and technology isnt there to efficiently recycle a lot of different plastics economically at nationwide scale. Some plastic needs to be used as ignition help when burning other garbage in power plants (where filtration massively reduces negative effects from burning in a centralized manner).
- Brotkrumen 7y ago
  >Schwandorf charges €150 per ton of industrial waste but this can increase to €800 per ton depending on the material. That's about 3 cent per package if the average package weighs 42g. That's dirt cheap for a pretty clean solution. We suck as a society.
- samirm 7y ago
  Not sure what the point of this comment is. It's not as though this article said this issue only affects the US...
dharma1 7y ago
I wish biodegradable polymers would take over non-biodegradable plastics in many applications. There are many interesting research avenues, I wish more money was thrown at it to accelerate the future. Here is a good summary of SOTA - https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/searching-for-biodegradable-polymers/3010102.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/searching-for-biodeg... From the article (quote by the inventor of a biodegradable foam) - ’I see now that the main hurdle we face is financial in the sense that if you want to go large you need to have financial guarantees because you are not yet selling the product,’ he says. ‘That is still very hard to find – there are very few actual risk investments in the field of chemistry… it’s very traditional.’ I think there are VC scale returns to be made if the stuff took over conventional plastics but it seems largely overlooked by venture capital. I think regulation could help here too.
stunt 7y ago
You only realize how much plastic waste we are generating, when you start separating your own plastic waste.
jakobegger 7y ago
One thing I don't understand is why nobody seems to consider the obvious solution: put an exorbitant tax on every piece of single use plastic. If you had to pay $1 for your coffee cup, and $1 extra for the lid, you might consider foregoing the lid. Or maybe you would even bring a reusable coffee cup from home.
- mavhc 7y ago
  Tax everything the amount it costs to clean it up. That way a) people will reduce the pollution it causes so they can sell it cheaper, and b) people will invent cheaper ways to clean up pollution. If it costs $1 to clean it up, but only $0.50 to collect and recycle, problem solves itself.
  - eb0la 7y ago
    > Tax everything the amount it costs to clean it up. And don't forget to keep that taxes up to date so recycling still costs less than cleaning in the future :-)
- yur3i__ 7y ago
  obvious to us yes, to big corp this is the opposite of a solution.
- radiator 7y ago
  In Germany you pay a deposit of 0,25 € for your plastic bottle of water, which you get back when you return it empty in the supermarket. The empty bottle gets shredded, not sure where it ends up, though. This could be probably be extended to other kinds of plastic.
- mffnbs 7y ago
  I don't like the trend of putting the environmental onus on consumers. If you want to stop single use plastic then ban companies from producing it.
vectorEQ 7y ago
nice, over here in my country we just burn it :D good stuff, separating trash to have it re-combined at the burners :D
euroclydon 7y ago
Putting plastic in a landfill is not a crisis. Sending it to Asia to be processed out in the open where storms carry it off to sea is. Just throw your plastic in the garbage like I started doing after watching Plastic China. Spread the word. If you could be assured it would be burned, then separating it would make some sense, but as long as we're looking for a cheap feel-good moment from the recycling bin, there is no assurance of what will happen to it. A properly designed landfill is the best place for plastic right now, unless it can be shredded and mixed with bunker oil to provide a cheap fuel -- that might actually make it more valuable.
gingabriska 7y ago
Why is it a surprise? Isn't the whole idea that at present we do not have economically viable recycling process and it's much cheaper to set it in a pit then dig it out later once we are able to convert plastic into something useful for cheap. That makes putting plastic in landfill first step towards recycling with more steps to come later. So I think we can call it recycling.
- benj111 7y ago
  If that's recycling everything's recycling, rendering the word meaningless.
  - gingabriska 7y ago
    Not really, if the companies are putting plastic in unrecorded landfills, we can claim they are just dumping and not really recycling (this happens in South Italy). If the landfills are documented and it's not easy to make any place a landfill without going through a proper regulatory process, then it can serve as a good recycling step.
  - quickthrower2 7y ago
    Probably the pre separation. Mixed waste would be harder to future recycle.
    - benj111 7y ago
      What pre separation?
      - quickthrower2 7y ago
        From the article: > A Guardian investigation reveals that cities around the country are no longer recycling many types of plastic dropped into recycling bins So I am suggesting, on the premise that there is a system in place to separate trash, but it is being sent to landfill - to keep it separate WITHIN the landfill, so that a future us can potentially mine it once we have efficient recycling tech.
Causality1 7y ago
Good. The carbon footprint from recycling plastic is larger than that from just making new plastic. https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ/774/ https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ/774/ A 35 square mile landfill could accommodate the total waste of the United States for the next thousand years. https://books.google.com/books/about/U_S_Wastepaper_Recycling_Policies.html?id=m9YsAQAAMAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/U_S_Wastepaper_Recyclin... It would be great to develop technologies that would allow us to efficiently recycle plastic. We don't have them yet, and until we do, landfilling plastic is better for the environment and the climate than recycling it.
njreid777 7y ago
The same people who make this argument usually take the view that government can't get anything done... Or, corporations are far far more effective at tax burden reduction than governments are at revenue maximization, all things held equal.
stesch 7y ago
Americans have landfills and Germans recycle and burn the plastic. Where is all the plastic in the oceans coming from???
- neuronic 7y ago
  From all over the world. Germans cannot recycle most plastics - it's simply not viable at scale at this time. Therefore things are shipped to Asia. The plastic created and received in Asia often lands in landfills and subsequently in rivers. A handful of major streams transport massive amounts of plastic waste into the Pacific ocean [1]. That's at least where a good chunk of it is coming from. That's how you get US or European plastic running down rivers in China into the Pacific. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti...
tim333 7y ago
Sticking plastic in landfills is a sort of recycling - before human intervention the hydrocarbons were in the ground as gas or oil, we bring them up, use them a bit then put them back in the ground again.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
The correct place to take plastic out of landfills is by forbidding its use in manufacture, for anything except unavoidable necessities such as medical uses. You can use glass bottles and wash and reuse them. You can package things in wax paper. You can wear clothes made of natural fiber. Plastic needs to be treated like asbestos: useful, but the uses do not justify the risk in most cases.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- wormseed 7y ago
  What's wrong with putting plastic in landfills?
  - JulianMorrison 7y ago
    It doesn't stay there. And microplastic looks very likely to be an asbestos-level menace up and down the food chain, including to humans. The more it breaks down, the worse it is. The only safe way to dispose of plastic is incineration, adding to the carbon dioxide problem. The best way to avoid this is not to make it.
    - wormseed 7y ago
      It does just stay there in a well run landfill, and microplastics mostly either come from tyres and cosmetics, or plastics that aren't disposed of in landfills. There's some poorly run landfills, but how about we campaign to somewhat improve landfills instead of trying to reform all of modern society?
      - sambull 7y ago
        We many just need to reform all of modern society.
      - isostatic 7y ago
        Isn't that like saying nuclear waste is fine if it's in a properly run container. How many years will it take until the plastic is no longer able to get into the food chain?
Shivetya 7y ago
I live in an area my friends like to tell me as, just past the banjo line of Metro Atlanta. We have no separate pickup however our county has for ten plus years published a list of drop offs for different items they would prefer to not have in the landfill, from computer equipment to batteries. the issue is that they are not widely known and to be honest they really should be at least getting kids in school in on the act if not the schools themselves. Used to be schools had aluminum and paper recycling bins but those long left as people abused them with general junk. Now some fire stations do the same. I think more people would play along if it were easier and more well known. Get corny if you have too, fire station drop offs, we save lives and you are saving the planet.
KibbutzDalia 7y ago
The woman profiled in the article would get in her car and _drive_ her recyclables to other towns that had programs for them?
- chihuahua 7y ago
  To some people, recycling is a religion, so they drive to the recycling center just like other people drive to church. It doesn't matter what happens with the stuff after she drops it off, it doesn't matter how much gas her car uses to get there. The religion demands that certain objects are brought to the sacred place and that's all there is to it.
acrossthepond10 7y ago
I'm hoping that applying recent advances in Machine Learning and Robotics we could build better, automated sorting facilities. Or is that being too naive?
- xwolfi 7y ago
  It is, sorting could be done for cheap by humans like immigrants, elderly and disabled, it was done by chinese in the past. It’s a chemistry advance you need to pray for.
thrower123 7y ago
This is obvious if you stick around to watch the garbage trucks roll by. The blue and the green bins get dumped right into the truck together.
xwolfi 7y ago
I cannot believe all these idiots throwing away tons of plastic in poor countries with a big proud smile. Makes me vomit honestly as a resident of China.
userbinator 7y ago
It is a form of recycling --- in the future, when we run out of other sources of petroleum, we can start mining the plastic we buried. ;-)
linsomniac 7y ago
I wonder if a deposit system or similar could help. In some ways I'm reminded of glass bottles, littering, and encouraging the collection and reuse of them. The core of the problem is that producers are blind to a significant portion of the lifecycle cost, so they'll package something in plastic, inside cardboard, inside another cardboard, inside another plastic. That's pretty much the standard packaging for small electronics these days, and it's insane. The only way I think we've come to accept this is that much of it is pretty recyclable.
pfdietz 7y ago
Plastic (and paper, for that matter) is a good energy store, for use when intermittent sources become unavailable. Incineration should not be seen as a failure, but celebrated as a contribution to an integrated energy system. Of course the plastic should be sourced from non-fossil carbon sources.
Waterluvian 7y ago
My understanding for a while now has been that papers and glass are pretty recyclable, aluminum is super recyclable, and everything else is just garbage by another name.
turk73 7y ago
It's all been a lie. I get charged extra for "recycling" when I should just toss it all in the same trash and forget about it. Carbon taxes are bullshit. That money is just going to right into the corrupt pockets like most of our taxes do. It's not a solution for anything and will just make poor people even poorer. Reduction in plastics for food packaging would be welcome. I've stopped buying food items that are over-packaged.
g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago
Whenever you try and legislate something into existence the consumer is the one who ends up paying the cost. I think a better method would be to incentivize using a more environmentally responsible product ( glass? ) where applicable. Perhaps a tax break for companies that start taking new initiatives to promote this. A good example would be soda: being able to fill up a glass container of even your own reusable plastic bottle. Just like many do with water at the grocery. I've often wondered why we don't do this as a society and it ( like many things...) boils down to cost. Incentivize this cost and it will start happening. Starbucks has done this with straws, and even their hot and cold cups. It would be great to start seeing others do the same in more areas.
georgem4 7y ago
We as a society need to train an army of material engineers that can design new packaging solutions to minimize impact on the planet. Recyclability (and maybe reusability), lifetime CO2 footprint, biodegradibility etc should be carefully considered and new solutions researched where they will provide the most benefit. We should also look for low resistance ways to work in container/packaging reusability into the product supply cycle. Are there cases where collection could be done at the store with minimal effort and spare truck space could be used to transport reusable containers back through the supply chain to the originating factories? Are there ways this could be made to work for mainstream products (premium milk products sold in glass are the only case where this is being done where I live)? In Canada they return beer bottles to the store, maybe we should do this in the US if a cost/benefit analysis shows it would worth it. I must not be the only one that thinks of this sort of thing regularly when taking a product off the shelf.
badrabbit 7y ago
Silly question: why doesn't trash get dumped into the dessert? There will be Minimal ecological impact if trash is dumped in places like the sahara dessert,siberia,antarctica,etc... As opposed to the ocean or near major animal and human population centers.
gridlockd 7y ago
> "vast quantities of plastic are now no better than garbage" That's because they are garbage. Anything that can't be re-used without expending more resources than can be reclaimed is garbage. This equation changes all the time, and it will change in the future, depending on technology and market rates. Today, Chinese labor might not want deal with the plastic. Tomorrow, some other country might. The day after tomorrow, Garbagebots can do the job. That's why stockpiling and and landfilling is exactly the right thing to do, for the time being. Even burning for energy isn't necessarily that bad, modern incinerators can be relatively clean.
compuguy 7y ago
This is why I'm looking into buying more beverage products that use aluminum cans...they are more recyclable than plastics...

342 points by srameshc 7y ago

The large quantity of plastic waste in the first place is due to plastic industry lobbying: https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plastic-recycling/ https://theintercept.com/2019/07/20/plastics-industry-plasti...

mc32 7y ago

Isn’t burying plastics one of the better options for it in terms of sequestering carbon? It goes back into the soil.

wmf 7y ago
But you have to admit having people sort plastics into recycling bins and then having the recycling company sort them again is a pretty inefficient way to get to the landfill.
- mc32 7y ago
  Yes. On the other hand, this “sorting” makes people feel better. We don’t feel like we’re the baddies. From a realistic POV, yes, make people put plastic in a “landfill” bin, from a psych POV, make them do busywork so we feel better about ourselves.
  - mandelbrotwurst 7y ago
    If what we're doing is bad, surely it would be better to know that it is bad and be forced to internalize that and deal with the consequences (even be inspired to come up with alternatives!) rather than just being tricked into thinking everything's daisies, no?
    - mc32 7y ago
      So long as we’re using plastics (hence the sorting and “recycling”), the better alternative in terms of what to do with post-usage (non-usage is moot given it’s in the stream already), is to bury it and sequester carbon. Actually recycling it doesn’t sequester carbon and it’s energy negative.
      - pcl 7y ago
        > non-usage is moot given it’s in the stream already You can apply backpressure to the stream by buying things not wrapped in plastic in the first place. It’ll take some time for the signal to have an impact, but if enough people selected less-packaged goods, the market would fix the supply chain over time. Also, if you pick items with less packaging up-front, then you don’t need to do as much work sorting waste on the back end!
  - flukus 7y ago
    We shouldn't create huge bureaucracies and pointless busy work to make people feel better. Pretending it's going to be recycled would also undermine efforts to reduce packaging.
  - robbrown451 7y ago
    It makes them satisfied that they've done their part to help the planet. Which is terrible. They could be putting that effort into actually doing something that helps. Or at least have their time back.
    - JudgeWapner 7y ago
      done their part to require a whole other diesel-burning truck to come pick their waste. Even though modern factory equipment can easily sort the garbage automatically at scale. I mean, farms have cameras fast enough to pick out single seeds out of fast-moving conveyor belts. This whole debacle should have been forced on the industry, not consumers.
  - cameldrv 7y ago
    If you look at it from the “environmentalism as a religion” metaphor, sorting the trash is sort of a ritual penance sort of like the rosary. In Germany there are 8 different trash cans in many places, and churches are closing left and right. People need to feel like they are atoning for their sins.
    - mschuster91 7y ago
      8 different trashcans? I'm in Munich, the recycling stations have 3 glass, 1 plastics, 1 aluminium container.
      - eb0la 7y ago
        And you have one additional recycling station in the supermarket for Pfand bottles (water, beer, etc.) ;-) https://liveworkgermany.com/2017/05/how-does-the-german-pfand-system-work-and-is-it-effective/ https://liveworkgermany.com/2017/05/how-does-the-german-pfan... I wonder hoy effective this Pfand system is against littering. When I go to germany for a trip with the family I always find the streets clean, and I bet this is not because the germans clean streets lot, but as a consequence they don't litter instead.
      - m_rcin 7y ago
        no container for paper?
        mschuster91 7y ago
        Paper, general waste and compost are collected at the house.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Well, it did make me feel like I was "doing my bit". But knowing now that recycled material ends up in landfill, often getting shipped around the world first... well, now I feel cheated, disheartened, and basically like an idiot.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      I don't understand why people fell for the political ploy though. Even as a kid, the logistics of it never made sense. How could we trust everyone in a society (except maybe Japan and Singapore) to spend their time to sort their trash properly? Which means all the trash would have to be sorted at the waste facility anyway to make sure it wasn't contaminated with non recyclables...in which case why were individuals asked to sort it in the first place? Not only was this supposed to be sorted between paper/plastic/glass/metal, but also between different types of plastic? That was never going to happen on an individual basis. And what about huge apartment buildings and hotels? The only way recycling would have made sense was if it was all being sorted at the waste facility, which if it was, wouldn't have required people to sort it individually. Hence, the whole thing was a sham from the beginning.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    I'm interpretating this as governments having set up these schemes to fool people into thinking they are doing their bit, so they won't push as strongly for other environmental reforms?
- Arbalest 7y ago
  You'd hope that the sort would be less intensive though. You might not need as many eyes to check that all the inappropriate stuff is out of the stream.
- McAtNite 7y ago
  From what I heard it’s largely due to a concern that admitting recycling doesn’t work would make it extremely difficult to get it back up and working again once the issues have been addressed. Likewise a lot is the “sorting” people do when they throw out their trash is pretty bad. For example, a plastic bottle the cap on can’t be properly cleaned so it doesn’t get recycled. A pizza box in a stack of cardboard ruins the entire batch. Planet Money did a really interesting two episode series on recycling. That goes into why things are ending up in landfills and why we continue to practice the ritual of splitting our trash. https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-should-we-recycle https://www.npr.org/2019/07/12/741283641/episode-926-so-shou...
  - nradov 7y ago
    When I worked in an office I frequently pulled pizza boxes out of the recycling bin. Even highly educated professionals don't seem to understand the rules.
    - lrem 7y ago
      Come to Switzerland, we have well over 90% success rate here. Also: some people complain the total amount of recycled material is only a fraction of European average. Oh well...
      - GordonS 7y ago
        Does recycled material in Switzerland actually get recycled, or does it eventually get shipped to the other side of the world to end up in landfill?
        lrem 7y ago
        Basing on the fact that materials not recycled by local companies, say TetraPak, are not accepted in collection: I always assumed they actually get recycled. The rest actually doesn't go to landfill, but gets incinerated.
    - slavik81 7y ago
- mkl 7y ago
  I view plastics in landfills to be temporary. I think one day it will make economic sense to dig it up and use it, and pre-sorting it probably makes that day closer. Here's a TED talk (from 2011, not sure what's changed if anything) about this: https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_biddle?language=en And a key quote: "Now when you see these mountains, most people think of garbage. We see above-ground mines. And the reason we see mines is because there's a lot of valuable raw materials that went into making all of this stuff in the first place."
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    In fairness, we aren't even mining landfills for valuable metals yet. That seems like it will probably happen first?
    - mkl 7y ago
      I think both will happen in eventually. There's probably a lot more volume of plastic though.
01100011 7y ago
Yes. It goes into cheap storage until we can figure out something to do with it. It's not killing turtles or turning into microplastics in the ocean. We should probably skip the recycling step though, or at least keep the plastics together in one place to make it easier to sort in the future.
JudgeWapner 7y ago
This, plus: how about regulation that forces waste management to bury all the plastic in one spot in the landfill, so that its more easily retrievable in the future? Whether for reuse, or if a plastic-consuming incinerator or microbe is ever viable, then you can point it to the quarantine.
VBprogrammer 7y ago
It doesn't count as sequestering when the original input didn't come from the carbon dioxide in the air. In effect we are putting perhaps 1% of the fossil fuels back underground. With biochar the land is improved for growing crops where as landfills are unlikely to be useable in any form in the near term.
- garmaine 7y ago
  A lot of plastic ends up in incinerators, which does put it in the air.

apo 7y ago

> “All these years I have been feeling like I’m doing something responsible,” said Pai, clearly dumbstruck as she walked away with a full bag. “The truth hurts.” All is not lost. Consumers can be responsible by radically cutting consumption.

realshowbiz 7y ago
Consumption of what? For example: Virtually every food item is packaged in plastic. And it’s not consumers who decided it was more cost effective to use disposable plastic than wash a reusable container.
- riffraff 7y ago
  > Virtually every food item is packaged in plastic Is it? Most of what I buy (vegetables, fruits, bread, eggs, milk, pasta, flour, sugar, salt, oil) is not. Meat, fish, rice, and cheese are the things that require some plastic, afaict, but do not constitute the majority of food.
  - savoytruffle 7y ago
    In my kitchen cupboards right now, I have all of these things packaged in plastic and I've never seen an alternative except sometimes milk in returnable glass jugs that nobody in the store knows how to ring up to get the deposit back.
    - riffraff 7y ago
      interesting, where do you live? I have seen pasta packaged in plastic, but I've literally never seen flour packaged in plastic.
  - GordonS 7y ago
    Yes, a lot of fruit and veg is usually loose, unless you're buying it pre-chopped. There is still a lot of fruit and veg that is wrapped in plastic though. I don't think I've ever seen pasta not in a plastic wrapper? For milk, it's usually in a plastic bottle, but often in tetra-pak type containers (don't honestly know what they're made of!). With oil, it's usually in a plastic bottle, occasionally a glass one for more expensive EV olive oils, and rarely in Europe I've seen shops with oil dispensers that allow you to fill your own container. For eggs, they are usually in a cardboard box, but occasionally in a plastic one. For salt, I think I've only ever seen it in plastic bottles or bags.

dang 7y ago

Related and recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20433851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19889365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19399543 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19346342 Not quite as recent: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18893252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17841584 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17677698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17409152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16174719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15888827

blaser-waffle 7y ago
We need some sort of reddit-style repost bot. "Times we've talked about this before... ... -Love, Repost Bot"
- dang 7y ago
  I'm reluctant to do that because it often takes human intervention to find the good ones or drop the bad ones. For example, in the above case I searched on both recycling and landfills. Also, we don't allow bots to post HN comments. For submissions, the whoishiring ones are done by software, but that's it.
  - pvg 7y ago
    Maybe you can pawn it off on the Algolia people under the guise of a Smarter 'Past' Button Challenge!

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

I don't know why landfills are so controversial. Shit doesn't decompose there which means it doesn't find its way into the ecosystem. Undisturbed in a big pile underground is a great place for all sorts of other nasty things.

Moru 7y ago
That's what we thought in the 70ies. Now we know better.
- celeritascelery 7y ago
  Care to elaborate? I certainly don’t “know better”.
JTbane 7y ago
>I don't know why landfills are so controversial. Well, when corporations and governments say "it's properly lined and safe" and then years later the groundwater gets contaminated, people start creating controversy.
- robbrown451 7y ago
  Groundwater doesn't get contaminated if it is done properly. It's true that it is possible for it to be done badly. It seems a lot more likely that the public will care, and pressure people to make sure it is done right, if they aren't spending their energy sorting their supposed recyclables and thinking everything is taken care of.
  - riffraff 7y ago
    The problem is "it's done properly" will be verified decades later, and by the time the damage is done, and there may not even be anyone to sue anymore.
    - robbrown451 7y ago

blisterpeanuts 7y ago

Where are we with compostable plastics? For retail packaging of products that move fairly quickly, it seems like a reasonable solution.

nkurz 7y ago
I posted this article earlier today, which summarizes some of the positives and negatives of compostable plastics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20547252
- schoen 7y ago
  This article seems to break it down very well (no pun intended).
justin66 7y ago
I recently dug a black plastic flip-close food container that was marked "compostable" out of my parents compost pile, after burying it there almost exactly four years ago. It looked exactly the same as when I put it in there. Interesting experiment but that's what I was already expecting, based on the very small amount I'd read suggesting that one needs to put plastics marked "compostable" into some kind of weird high-temperature bioreactor in order to get them to break down. nkurz's article seems to delve deeper into this topic.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- lh7777 7y ago
  We have municipal composting here in Seattle, which can handle everything from food scraps to yard waste to bioplastics. The city incentivizes recycling and composting by charging a lot for trash collection, less for compost, and nothing for recycling. I’ve known for some time that much of my recycling is really going into a landfill, but there’s still value to separating for me because I can use a very small (low rate) trash can as there’s hardly anything left that goes in the trash. I wonder if composting is really a net benefit, though.

torgian 7y ago

I remember asking my parents about this in the late eighties and early nineties. We went to the landfills several times a year, and I saw so much plastic that I asked why plastic was being dumped here if we were supposed to be recycling. I think he said something that not all plastic is recycled or something.

ggggtez 7y ago

Just one more reason to hold corporations accountable for pollution and global warming. The free market is not going to solve this one, even when you give people warm and fuzzy feelings for "doing the right thing". It's just not profitable to be Green yet, and maybe that won't change until companies have to pay for the second order effects of their products.

dehrmann 7y ago
What does plastic that went from the recycling bin to the landfill have to do with "pollution and global warming" beyond plastic being an almost trivial use of oil?
- sh-run 7y ago
  This is a question I've found myself asking quite a bit lately. Paper products are often marketed as a 'green' alternative to petroleum products. IIRC much of the plastic we use is made from a byproduct of the oil refinement process so it's something we have anyways. Even though paper products biodegrade quicker, it seems like unless the paper product is made from 100% post consumer waste a properly disposed plastic product is better for the environment. I do think part of the problem is that so many of our landfills are poorly managed. In high school I used to spend my summers working for the public works department in the rural community I grew up in. A few days out of the month we had to go out to the fields near the landfill and pick up plastic bags and other bits of trash that had blown out of the landfill before being covered. I say this as someone who avoids single use plastics, drinks tap water, recycles, etc.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    More like plastics are usually made from polyethylene. Thanks to fracking, the ethane that goes into making it is dirt cheap in N. America. More and more polyethylene plants are being set up all the time.
  - graeme 7y ago
    Plastics leech estrogen mimicking materials into the food chain. All living creatures now have bits inside us, and there have been large hormonal effects such as early puberty, increase in intersex births, declining male fertility, and so on. It's hard to say exactly which types of plastics do what, so maybe some are benign, but it's a large uncontrolled experiment at present. For example this shows how plastics shed fibres that end up in sea creatures: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics-found-in-stomachs-of-deepest-sea-creatures https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/nov/15/plastics... Some info on plastic estrogen-mimicking leaching: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3222987/ Bisphenol A is only one type. Plastics likely have other hormonal effects from other components. Increased intersex births from endocrine disrupting chemicals: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5017538/ Testicular cancer rates are rising in the developed world, and it's linked to endocrine disruption in the womb. Waste is the focus, but I think it's misplaced. Our materials are everywhere in the environment. Even synthetic clothing sheds fibers everytime it's washed, and the same for microfiber clothes. (Note of course that plastics are not the only source of endocrine disruption)

carapace 7y ago

Plastic recycling is "solved": Thermal Depolymerization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization Even better: Molten Salt Oxidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_oxidation this is an exothermic reaction! I wish I had the gumption to make a start up out of MSO.

chii 7y ago
> Molten Salt Oxidation but then how do you get rid of the salt afterwards when it is fully saturated?
- carapace 7y ago
  Well, worst case scenario: that's your trash, and at least you saved all the other atoms from the (toxic!?) landfill. That's the floor. The ceiling would be some sort of automated chemical/mechanical filter and recovery system. Technically all those "waste" molecules (chlorine and stuff) are useful industrial material, just in the wrong place. In the long run we should retire most toxic stuff, just stop using it as much as we do now. Spend out "pollution budget" on rockets and such.
- 08-15 7y ago
  Landfill it, it's harmless. And since it's only ash that messes up the salt, the mass is tiny compared to the input. Plastics produce virtually no ash. Salt disposal could be a problem if it contains heavy metals, or if it contains something you want to recover (possibly phosphorus). Either way, MSO ended up concentrating the material in question and transforming it into a simpler chemical form, reducing the disposal problem, or making the recycling easier.
hinkley 7y ago
I think you need to read that TDP article a little more closely. I followed this story leading up to them building the first plant and for a while after that, as the whole thing fell to pieces. That plant had problems due to welds that weren't capable of handling the pressure. The smell was horrible and the neighbors considered it a nuisance. And the company went bankrupt. Ten years ago. Has anyone else tried TDP since then? If so then please update the article.

jnwatson 7y ago

Recycling has little to do with the environment except for the minor factor that transfer trucks will have to drive slightly farther as the close landfills fill up.

ars 7y ago

Why are people so against burning plastic? It's easily the most environmentally friendly option. Plastic has a lot of energy, burn it and use that energy. Then you don't need to dispose of it, and you can pump slightly less oil.

aikinai 7y ago
This is what Japan does.
- Phenomenit 7y ago
  Nordic country's as well.
hanniabu 7y ago
I love plastic fumes in the air I breathe /s
- ars 7y ago
  There are no fumes in a modern incinerator. Is that why people are against it? They think there are fumes?
  - noragami 7y ago
    I honestly was not aware you can burn plastic with minimum air pollution. Where I live, many people warm their homes in winter by burning plastic junk they find on the street. I don't have to explain what sort of air it produces. Being in it feels like washing your face with sulfuric acid. After living under these conditions for many years, it'll be hard to let go of stereotypes.
    - hanniabu 7y ago
      As with all things, just because it' possible to do it safely doesn't mean it will (chernobyl anyone?). I have a recycling plant near my house and about once a weak it smells horrible. That's just because it's strong enough to reach me on those days, living about a mile away. Those that live near it smell it every day. IT's been reported numerous times, but as always you're limited to what you can do as a mere civilian (in practical terms, not theoretical terms). Also as the other comment stated, much of it will no doubt be shipped to burn plants that aren't upgraded with the latest and greatest tech. Even then you also have to worry about proper maintenance of the systems. Sure, you can create regulation to cover all these angles, but I highly doubt that will happen.

nkkollaw 7y ago

Same thing in Italy. In many regions citizens separate waste, and they mix it back into a single landfill to save money or because they're not organized to dispose of it properly.

philliphaydon 7y ago

Singapore burns it all and turns it into reclaimed land.

PeterStuer 7y ago

And now you know why you have been seeing all those 'landfills are not all that bad' spindoctor articles of late.

B-Con 7y ago
It's going to landfills for a reason. This has prompted people to investigate why and then write about it.

hanniabu 7y ago

Wish there were separate landfills for these recyclables that aren't being recycled so that in the future they can be dealt with in a more proper manner. This can either be the ideal recycling we all imagine when we put a bottle in the bin, or it could be further advanced plastic decomposing microbes and worms.

pmontra 7y ago
How about allowing only plastic that can be recycled and banning everything else? This is also going to open a market for companies that create ways to recycle unappealing plastic types (but beware for shady companies that pretend to recycle and actually dump.)
- mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
  This would be ideal but unfortunately laws are written by corporations that profit from plastic.

logifail 7y ago

It's not as though this issue only affects the US: "Between January and October 2018, Germany exported 114,000 tons of plastic rubbish to Malaysia, an increase of 125 percent" "Germans are great at separating their household waste, and the country is not allowed to export plastic unless it's for recycling. So why are there piles of German garbage all over Malaysia?" https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/the-plastic-trail-how-germanys-recycling-ends-up-in-malaysian-dumps-/24037020.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/politics/the-plastic-trai...

neuronic 7y ago
This fails to mention that German recycling of paper, biowaste, cans and bottles is excellent. Plastic is a huge problem because it is a different beast and technology isnt there to efficiently recycle a lot of different plastics economically at nationwide scale. Some plastic needs to be used as ignition help when burning other garbage in power plants (where filtration massively reduces negative effects from burning in a centralized manner).
Brotkrumen 7y ago
>Schwandorf charges €150 per ton of industrial waste but this can increase to €800 per ton depending on the material. That's about 3 cent per package if the average package weighs 42g. That's dirt cheap for a pretty clean solution. We suck as a society.
samirm 7y ago
Not sure what the point of this comment is. It's not as though this article said this issue only affects the US...

dharma1 7y ago

I wish biodegradable polymers would take over non-biodegradable plastics in many applications. There are many interesting research avenues, I wish more money was thrown at it to accelerate the future. Here is a good summary of SOTA - https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/searching-for-biodegradable-polymers/3010102.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/features/searching-for-biodeg... From the article (quote by the inventor of a biodegradable foam) - ’I see now that the main hurdle we face is financial in the sense that if you want to go large you need to have financial guarantees because you are not yet selling the product,’ he says. ‘That is still very hard to find – there are very few actual risk investments in the field of chemistry… it’s very traditional.’ I think there are VC scale returns to be made if the stuff took over conventional plastics but it seems largely overlooked by venture capital. I think regulation could help here too.

stunt 7y ago

You only realize how much plastic waste we are generating, when you start separating your own plastic waste.

jakobegger 7y ago

One thing I don't understand is why nobody seems to consider the obvious solution: put an exorbitant tax on every piece of single use plastic. If you had to pay $1 for your coffee cup, and $1 extra for the lid, you might consider foregoing the lid. Or maybe you would even bring a reusable coffee cup from home.

mavhc 7y ago
Tax everything the amount it costs to clean it up. That way a) people will reduce the pollution it causes so they can sell it cheaper, and b) people will invent cheaper ways to clean up pollution. If it costs $1 to clean it up, but only $0.50 to collect and recycle, problem solves itself.
- eb0la 7y ago
  > Tax everything the amount it costs to clean it up. And don't forget to keep that taxes up to date so recycling still costs less than cleaning in the future :-)
yur3i__ 7y ago
obvious to us yes, to big corp this is the opposite of a solution.
radiator 7y ago
In Germany you pay a deposit of 0,25 € for your plastic bottle of water, which you get back when you return it empty in the supermarket. The empty bottle gets shredded, not sure where it ends up, though. This could be probably be extended to other kinds of plastic.
mffnbs 7y ago
I don't like the trend of putting the environmental onus on consumers. If you want to stop single use plastic then ban companies from producing it.

vectorEQ 7y ago

nice, over here in my country we just burn it :D good stuff, separating trash to have it re-combined at the burners :D

euroclydon 7y ago

Putting plastic in a landfill is not a crisis. Sending it to Asia to be processed out in the open where storms carry it off to sea is. Just throw your plastic in the garbage like I started doing after watching Plastic China. Spread the word. If you could be assured it would be burned, then separating it would make some sense, but as long as we're looking for a cheap feel-good moment from the recycling bin, there is no assurance of what will happen to it. A properly designed landfill is the best place for plastic right now, unless it can be shredded and mixed with bunker oil to provide a cheap fuel -- that might actually make it more valuable.

gingabriska 7y ago

Why is it a surprise? Isn't the whole idea that at present we do not have economically viable recycling process and it's much cheaper to set it in a pit then dig it out later once we are able to convert plastic into something useful for cheap. That makes putting plastic in landfill first step towards recycling with more steps to come later. So I think we can call it recycling.

benj111 7y ago
If that's recycling everything's recycling, rendering the word meaningless.
- gingabriska 7y ago
  Not really, if the companies are putting plastic in unrecorded landfills, we can claim they are just dumping and not really recycling (this happens in South Italy). If the landfills are documented and it's not easy to make any place a landfill without going through a proper regulatory process, then it can serve as a good recycling step.
- quickthrower2 7y ago
  Probably the pre separation. Mixed waste would be harder to future recycle.
  - benj111 7y ago
    What pre separation?
    - quickthrower2 7y ago
      From the article: > A Guardian investigation reveals that cities around the country are no longer recycling many types of plastic dropped into recycling bins So I am suggesting, on the premise that there is a system in place to separate trash, but it is being sent to landfill - to keep it separate WITHIN the landfill, so that a future us can potentially mine it once we have efficient recycling tech.

Causality1 7y ago

Good. The carbon footprint from recycling plastic is larger than that from just making new plastic. https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ/774/ https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/fac_journ/774/ A 35 square mile landfill could accommodate the total waste of the United States for the next thousand years. https://books.google.com/books/about/U_S_Wastepaper_Recycling_Policies.html?id=m9YsAQAAMAAJ https://books.google.com/books/about/U_S_Wastepaper_Recyclin... It would be great to develop technologies that would allow us to efficiently recycle plastic. We don't have them yet, and until we do, landfilling plastic is better for the environment and the climate than recycling it.

njreid777 7y ago

The same people who make this argument usually take the view that government can't get anything done... Or, corporations are far far more effective at tax burden reduction than governments are at revenue maximization, all things held equal.

stesch 7y ago

Americans have landfills and Germans recycle and burn the plastic. Where is all the plastic in the oceans coming from???

neuronic 7y ago
From all over the world. Germans cannot recycle most plastics - it's simply not viable at scale at this time. Therefore things are shipped to Asia. The plastic created and received in Asia often lands in landfills and subsequently in rivers. A handful of major streams transport massive amounts of plastic waste into the Pacific ocean [1]. That's at least where a good chunk of it is coming from. That's how you get US or European plastic running down rivers in China into the Pacific. [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluting-our-oceans-comes-from-just-10-rivers/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/06/90-of-plastic-polluti...

tim333 7y ago

Sticking plastic in landfills is a sort of recycling - before human intervention the hydrocarbons were in the ground as gas or oil, we bring them up, use them a bit then put them back in the ground again.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

The correct place to take plastic out of landfills is by forbidding its use in manufacture, for anything except unavoidable necessities such as medical uses. You can use glass bottles and wash and reuse them. You can package things in wax paper. You can wear clothes made of natural fiber. Plastic needs to be treated like asbestos: useful, but the uses do not justify the risk in most cases.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
wormseed 7y ago
What's wrong with putting plastic in landfills?
- JulianMorrison 7y ago
  It doesn't stay there. And microplastic looks very likely to be an asbestos-level menace up and down the food chain, including to humans. The more it breaks down, the worse it is. The only safe way to dispose of plastic is incineration, adding to the carbon dioxide problem. The best way to avoid this is not to make it.
  - wormseed 7y ago
    It does just stay there in a well run landfill, and microplastics mostly either come from tyres and cosmetics, or plastics that aren't disposed of in landfills. There's some poorly run landfills, but how about we campaign to somewhat improve landfills instead of trying to reform all of modern society?
    - sambull 7y ago
      We many just need to reform all of modern society.
    - isostatic 7y ago
      Isn't that like saying nuclear waste is fine if it's in a properly run container. How many years will it take until the plastic is no longer able to get into the food chain?

Shivetya 7y ago

I live in an area my friends like to tell me as, just past the banjo line of Metro Atlanta. We have no separate pickup however our county has for ten plus years published a list of drop offs for different items they would prefer to not have in the landfill, from computer equipment to batteries. the issue is that they are not widely known and to be honest they really should be at least getting kids in school in on the act if not the schools themselves. Used to be schools had aluminum and paper recycling bins but those long left as people abused them with general junk. Now some fire stations do the same. I think more people would play along if it were easier and more well known. Get corny if you have too, fire station drop offs, we save lives and you are saving the planet.

KibbutzDalia 7y ago

The woman profiled in the article would get in her car and _drive_ her recyclables to other towns that had programs for them?

chihuahua 7y ago
To some people, recycling is a religion, so they drive to the recycling center just like other people drive to church. It doesn't matter what happens with the stuff after she drops it off, it doesn't matter how much gas her car uses to get there. The religion demands that certain objects are brought to the sacred place and that's all there is to it.

acrossthepond10 7y ago

I'm hoping that applying recent advances in Machine Learning and Robotics we could build better, automated sorting facilities. Or is that being too naive?

xwolfi 7y ago
It is, sorting could be done for cheap by humans like immigrants, elderly and disabled, it was done by chinese in the past. It’s a chemistry advance you need to pray for.

thrower123 7y ago

This is obvious if you stick around to watch the garbage trucks roll by. The blue and the green bins get dumped right into the truck together.

xwolfi 7y ago

I cannot believe all these idiots throwing away tons of plastic in poor countries with a big proud smile. Makes me vomit honestly as a resident of China.

userbinator 7y ago

It is a form of recycling --- in the future, when we run out of other sources of petroleum, we can start mining the plastic we buried. ;-)

linsomniac 7y ago

I wonder if a deposit system or similar could help. In some ways I'm reminded of glass bottles, littering, and encouraging the collection and reuse of them. The core of the problem is that producers are blind to a significant portion of the lifecycle cost, so they'll package something in plastic, inside cardboard, inside another cardboard, inside another plastic. That's pretty much the standard packaging for small electronics these days, and it's insane. The only way I think we've come to accept this is that much of it is pretty recyclable.

pfdietz 7y ago

Plastic (and paper, for that matter) is a good energy store, for use when intermittent sources become unavailable. Incineration should not be seen as a failure, but celebrated as a contribution to an integrated energy system. Of course the plastic should be sourced from non-fossil carbon sources.

Waterluvian 7y ago

My understanding for a while now has been that papers and glass are pretty recyclable, aluminum is super recyclable, and everything else is just garbage by another name.

turk73 7y ago

It's all been a lie. I get charged extra for "recycling" when I should just toss it all in the same trash and forget about it. Carbon taxes are bullshit. That money is just going to right into the corrupt pockets like most of our taxes do. It's not a solution for anything and will just make poor people even poorer. Reduction in plastics for food packaging would be welcome. I've stopped buying food items that are over-packaged.

g00s3_caLL_x2 7y ago

Whenever you try and legislate something into existence the consumer is the one who ends up paying the cost. I think a better method would be to incentivize using a more environmentally responsible product ( glass? ) where applicable. Perhaps a tax break for companies that start taking new initiatives to promote this. A good example would be soda: being able to fill up a glass container of even your own reusable plastic bottle. Just like many do with water at the grocery. I've often wondered why we don't do this as a society and it ( like many things...) boils down to cost. Incentivize this cost and it will start happening. Starbucks has done this with straws, and even their hot and cold cups. It would be great to start seeing others do the same in more areas.

georgem4 7y ago

We as a society need to train an army of material engineers that can design new packaging solutions to minimize impact on the planet. Recyclability (and maybe reusability), lifetime CO2 footprint, biodegradibility etc should be carefully considered and new solutions researched where they will provide the most benefit. We should also look for low resistance ways to work in container/packaging reusability into the product supply cycle. Are there cases where collection could be done at the store with minimal effort and spare truck space could be used to transport reusable containers back through the supply chain to the originating factories? Are there ways this could be made to work for mainstream products (premium milk products sold in glass are the only case where this is being done where I live)? In Canada they return beer bottles to the store, maybe we should do this in the US if a cost/benefit analysis shows it would worth it. I must not be the only one that thinks of this sort of thing regularly when taking a product off the shelf.

badrabbit 7y ago

Silly question: why doesn't trash get dumped into the dessert? There will be Minimal ecological impact if trash is dumped in places like the sahara dessert,siberia,antarctica,etc... As opposed to the ocean or near major animal and human population centers.

gridlockd 7y ago

> "vast quantities of plastic are now no better than garbage" That's because they are garbage. Anything that can't be re-used without expending more resources than can be reclaimed is garbage. This equation changes all the time, and it will change in the future, depending on technology and market rates. Today, Chinese labor might not want deal with the plastic. Tomorrow, some other country might. The day after tomorrow, Garbagebots can do the job. That's why stockpiling and and landfilling is exactly the right thing to do, for the time being. Even burning for energy isn't necessarily that bad, modern incinerators can be relatively clean.

compuguy 7y ago

This is why I'm looking into buying more beverage products that use aluminum cans...they are more recyclable than plastics...