9 ms·
I feel like the entire concept of recycling from the very beginning has been a lie. Now we're all paying for what we thought was being handled properly. Edit:
by overcast 7y ago
I feel like the entire concept of recycling from the very beginning has been a lie. Now we're all paying for what we thought was being handled properly.
Edit: Plastic recycling.
- titanomachy 7y agoAluminum recycling still makes economic sense, right?
- overcast 7y agoMetals I'm sure make sense, at least the valuable ones. I was referring to only plastic recycling.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- anticensor 7y agoAluminium, copper and 1st grade wood-free paper.
- samatman 7y agoSteel as well, but in most places in the US you don't have to bin it separately, since it's magnetic and valuable, hence easy to remove from the waste stream.
- jiveturkey 7y agoyes. it is evident by the fact that recycling centers still pay for aluminum.
- lm28469 7y agoDepends on how you do it. Burning electronics in African open dumps to melt their metal parts is recycling and make economical sense. It doesn't mean it's a particularly good idea though.
- Lev1a 7y agoAlso glass bottles.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoPretty much anything that needs to come out of the ground in a form far less concentrated (aka "ore") than the form in which it is useful is economically recyclable because the product provides a more concentrated source of raw material for making into new things than the natural deposits in the earth do. That's basically a long winded way of saying most metals are cheaper to recycle than to mine new.
- redbeard0x0a 7y agoIf I recall correctly, its like 5% of the energy to use aluminum scrap vs. ore.
- karatestomp 7y agoReduce and re-use, as the slogan goes, were always preferred, but never seemed to be taken as seriously as the (apparently) largely-BS recycling efforts that got most of the attention. I guess because that was much easier and more visible than efforts at reduction and re-use.
- Infinitesimus 7y agoReduce and Re-use are not a great slogan for an economy that incentivizes increased consumption of new things unfortunately. Maybe as more people become aware of recycling inefficiencies, we'll start diverting dollars go businesses that focus on longevity and reusability of their products?
- karatestomp 7y agoIt doesn't help that plastics, in particular, derive a huge part of their utility from directly countering those two parts. They replaced other things because they were so cheap they were disposable (as in food packaging) and created new categories of ultra-cheap crap that couldn't have existed, or certainly not to that degree, without plastic, and often to dubious benefit to society—dirt-cheap toys, for example (dubious benefit to society because if not for marketing I very much doubt kids would be much less happy with a couple metal and wooden toys plus some rocks and sticks, versus a mountain of cheap plastic figures and playsets and such, source: have kids, have been a kid)
- mumblemumble 7y ago> I very much doubt kids would be much less happy. . . Perhaps they'd actually be happier. There's at least the beginnings of a body of research that suggests that owning a mountain of toys in childhood is associated with a lifelong increased risk of mood disorders.
- gramakri 7y agovery interested in reading more about this. do you have any pointers/links?
- 101404 7y agoAbsolutely not. Plastic recycling does exactly what it is supposed to. It helps the consumer to continue feeling good with themselves while tossing more and more plastic into their shopping carts. It gives us the feeling that we are doing nothing wrong producing each a ton of garbage every year. Plastic recycling does what it was invented to do.
- TheSoftwareGuy 7y agoMy understanding is that it used to be true, but recently-ish China stopped taking in our recycling and now we have nowhere to put it
- kelnage 7y agoYes, they took it. But my understanding is that only a small proportion that made it to China even got recycled and much of it ended up in Chinese landfill or being incinerated [1]. Hence they banned accepting it. 1. https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782?ijkey=8a4d9e091515bf3d2427ce25c9f06afe0793f5f7&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782?ijkey=8...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ppf 7y agoAt least now we can actually see the problem, instead of passing our "recycling" to developing countries and calling it good.
- Keverw 7y agoYeah. Seen the news station talking about that a few months ago. Some cities are just taking the recyclables to the regular city dump's landfill like regular trash, and some are just burning it since that's cheaper than sending it to China... and I thought they said not to burn plastic? Well using an incinerator, not like a campfire... but still, feels a bit misleading. Then cities got grants to fund recycling and some cities even have mandatory recycling laws too for residents. Seems like we've all been scammed in a way, but I think the intentions of recycling is good.
- redbeard0x0a 7y agoRecycling Aluminum cans is actually much easier and better for the environment. If I recall correctly, it takes about 5% of the energy to make aluminum from recycled sources vs. from ore. The fact that you can take cans into a recycler and get paid for them is a _really_ good indicator that recycling aluminum works.
- smhenderson 7y agoI agree that it's not as effective as it should be but things like this do exist: https://breezesta.com/ https://breezesta.com/
- jjkaczor 7y agoLookup "greenwashing" and who (hint, corporations as people) actually founded "Keep America Beautiful"...
- samatman 7y agoAgreed, plastic should be treated as a substance which delays the burning of petrochemicals to provide power. Also, minimized whenever possible. Cheap single-use plastics are often more trouble than they're worth. Many people don't realize exactly how much plastic is used up in logistics, just wrapping things before they reach the consumer. It's a bit appalling.
- zepearl 7y agoMaybe something might change => official news from Nestlè (7.Feb.2020): > Swiss mineral water brand Henniez announced that its entire plastic bottle range is now made of 75% recycled PET plastic (rPET). Henniez has already been using 30% Swiss recycled PET since 2013 and has the clear ambition to move to 100% locally recycled PET. This will close the PET circular loop, as discarded PET bottles will be made into new Henniez recycled plastic bottles multiple times, without tapping into new oil resources. https://www.nestle.com/media/news/henniez-mineral-water-bottles-recycled-plastic https://www.nestle.com/media/news/henniez-mineral-water-bott... I don't know/understand why they would use this process only for their Henniez brand. Maybe it involves $-margin or maybe they want to do this experiment without endangering all their brands, etc... .
- PaulKeeble 7y agoInjection moulding can utilise about 30% recycled pellets to 70% of new plastic or it doesn't flow properly. Since that is how most of the mass-produced plastic used gets utilised it is a bit of an issue when the recycling volume is just 30% of the total. More problematically plastic containing prior recycled material can not be recycled again, you get just one extra use of 1/3 of it. That is basically throw away, it doesn't really recycle in any usable way.
- umvi 7y agoThere isn't any sort of chemistry that could be used to refine it to a higher quality state?
- derefr 7y agoCertainly, you can turn plastic back into its constituents (e.g. PET into ethylene), with input of enough energy. But where do you get that energy? Consider: any drop of fossil fuel that is spent recovering plastic back into oil, could instead have been used to make new plastic in the first place, obviating that recovery. It's more efficient to turn oil into plastic directly, than to use oil to turn plastic into oil, and then turn that oil into plastic. And, of course, any watt of renewable energy used on this process, is one that drives up grid demand and thus makes fossil fuels more competitive as grid base-load supply...