4 ms·

Isn't part of the problem though that recycling facilities vary greatly in capability or breadth in the things they can manage, and are necessarily regional? Co

by Cd00d 5y ago

Isn't part of the problem though that recycling facilities vary greatly in capability or breadth in the things they can manage, and are necessarily regional? Couple that with the fact that some facilities turn functionality on or off depending on market prices at any given time (esp. with say single use plastic grocery bags). I mean, a #n plastic may be easily recycled with your curbside pickup, but be a processing issue with mine. I don't know how that can be handled better.

burkaman 5y ago
> Products would be considered recyclable if CalRecycle, the state’s recycling department, determines they have a viable end market and meet certain design criteria, including not using toxic chemicals. I think that's reasonable. If a particular material is viable for recycling but many facilities can't handle it, CalRecycle can work with them to resolve the issue. They'll probably update the standard every few years, so producers don't need to worry about the rules changing every week as market prices fluctuate. It's certainly better than allowing companies to slap a recycling symbol on any kind of plastic just because the technology to recycle it exists somewhere in the world.
neltnerb 5y ago
1 and 2 are easy. The rest are regional and don't help much from everything I've seen about the topic. I want glass, paper, and cardboard packaging to make a comeback. We shouldn't be using space age high performance single use materials for making sure the SD card is contained in 100x the mass of plastic it is itself made of. It's insulting, honestly, that they feel it's worth spending their money to make me throw away trash that didn't need to exist. Where I am you can technically recycle 1, 2, 4, and 5 but 4 (grocery bags) sucks and 5 is nearly prohibitively expensive. So really you can recycle 1 and 2 and feel good about pretending that the 4 and 5 will be recycled. Meanwhile no one teaches the places that do takeout that they can just use different containers that cost the same or less but are recyclable. And no one teaches them that getting "compostable plastic" is trash here and almost everywhere.

by Cd00d 5y ago

burkaman 5y ago

> Products would be considered recyclable if CalRecycle, the state’s recycling department, determines they have a viable end market and meet certain design criteria, including not using toxic chemicals. I think that's reasonable. If a particular material is viable for recycling but many facilities can't handle it, CalRecycle can work with them to resolve the issue. They'll probably update the standard every few years, so producers don't need to worry about the rules changing every week as market prices fluctuate. It's certainly better than allowing companies to slap a recycling symbol on any kind of plastic just because the technology to recycle it exists somewhere in the world.

neltnerb 5y ago

1 and 2 are easy. The rest are regional and don't help much from everything I've seen about the topic. I want glass, paper, and cardboard packaging to make a comeback. We shouldn't be using space age high performance single use materials for making sure the SD card is contained in 100x the mass of plastic it is itself made of. It's insulting, honestly, that they feel it's worth spending their money to make me throw away trash that didn't need to exist. Where I am you can technically recycle 1, 2, 4, and 5 but 4 (grocery bags) sucks and 5 is nearly prohibitively expensive. So really you can recycle 1 and 2 and feel good about pretending that the 4 and 5 will be recycled. Meanwhile no one teaches the places that do takeout that they can just use different containers that cost the same or less but are recyclable. And no one teaches them that getting "compostable plastic" is trash here and almost everywhere.